"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way."

• Silver nanoparticle ink producer NanoMas raised a $3.2mm Series A, with $1.5mm from BASF.  Earthrise Capital Partners and NanoMaterials Investors LLC also participated.

• White Energy Company Ltd. and Black River have formed a JV to deploy White Energy's coal upgrading technology across Africa.

• Novolyte Technologies raised $0.8mm in equity and $7.0mm in debt from Triangle Capital Corporation.

• Second Rotation raised a $6mm Series B led by RockPort and including existing investors Venrock and angels.  There's been a little mini-wave lately of these e-waste recycle/ barter plays.

• RRE Ventures and NGEN led a $14mm Series B for Flipswap an incentivized e-waste recycling company.  RRE also announced an investment into Kashless last week.  See note above.

• Solix Biofuels raised a $10.5mm Series A co-led by I2BF Venture Capital and Bohemian Investments, and including Southern Ute Alternative Energy, Valero Energy Corp., and Infield Capital.

• Carbon emissions information software (let's start calling that sub-category "Carbon dashboards" to save on future typing) vendor Planet Metrics raised a $2.3mm round of financing from DFJ and angels.

• VentureWire reported that waste heat capture developer ElectraTherm has raised a $2.6mm Series A round, led by Interlaken LLC and friends and family.

• PE Week Wire reported that Solexant (a "well-funded startup") has raised $18.17mm in Series B financing from Trident Capital, Firelake Capital, Medley Partners and X/Seed Capital.

• Cleantech investors in the news:  Aviva is raising a $625mm fund for cleantech in Europe...  Australia's Starfish closed their second fund at $185mm, and it will include cleantech investments...  Michael Kanellos dishes on Quercus Trust...  And they finally took the wrapper off C Change Investments.

Other news and notes:  Water markets to rise quickly...  I hereby extend the same offer to Fisker that I made to Tesla -- give me a loaner for a while, and I'll write about my test drives in what I promise will be very glowing terms!...  Here are your California Clean Tech Open winners...  Here's a really good overview of angel investing and investors...  Finally, as if you needed any more reason to watch Jon Stewart. . . .