OSLOOM Open Source Manufacture of a Jacquard Loom

Looking forward to some projects like this for food processing systems, but this is a great example of what's going to be common in ten years. Dream then build.

Vertical Farming, Livingry Systems: windowfarms.org

our.windowfarms.org | Home

In situ solutions for local food. Paul Polak pointed me at this via Engineering for Change.

Open source design. I submitted a proposal yesterday for the Google Fiber project speaking about the reinvention of rural through open source manufacturing.

The windowfarms systems seem pretty low power; I'd be a tad careful about wall sockets myself (they have a warning about drip loops).

I got our KWH down by ~30-40% in peak months by pulling kit off the grid and improving insulation and criminally bad windows installed in the 1970s.  Even with the reduction in energy I'm warm in winter and eating well.

Really uncomfortable green technology will not be adopted by consumers other than the Deep Granola side of the conversation. Sustainable means there's a viable market that does not require ongoing subsidy.

Windows and Tomatoes and Herbs

Herb Booth. Jamie Oliver's Happy Days video has an herb booth roaring like a jungle. That'll be a tactic this fall. I've been playing with making pesto with dried basil and fresh garlic - not bad. But the idea of going over and plucking some fresh basil in January does appeal. He does a great quick pizza crust with just flour and water - I like it a lot and I can prep, mix, and have it out of the oven before I could even get to town for a (lesser) pie. If you're not familiar with Mr.Oliver, he's a socially responsible food rock star - helping teens stay out of trouble and into work see www.fifteen.net for more.  Really like his chops - a few ingredients, don't sweat it too much, and just do it. Friend the gentleman on FaceBook and read his recipes.

A mash up of Jamie Oliver from YouTube: Note the shed greenhouse at 0:19



Good Bugs and Good Eats

But fresh, even small scale, makes the winter days brighter.

Got started late this year and have only anemic prototypes of growing tomatoes, but have achieved proof of principle.

I use a rusted out metal bookcase in a south window. That works too. It's been a safe house for the many ladybugs that pop out during the warmer days here. They've been munching some kind of pests on the plants and it seems a fair deal. (Introducing exotic species generally a very poor idea. Finally starting to see native lady bugs again).

So the bookshelf's not really a bona fide prototype, but I bought a bunch of end of season seed geraniums for a dime on the dollar which faded, then came back and made me smile throughout the winter.

Even had success with some cherry tomatoes that I started in September. They're horribly abused but I have a few green ones now. Brandywines started at same time about a foot high, and wintered over not much the worse for wear. Nice early start for spring (if something doesn't eat 'em when transplanted from the pots).

Urban food, local food, good eats. We'll get there.

More urban farming at Will Allen's www.growingpower.org/

Haiti - Crisis Camp Today - Design/Coding and other solutions

Just a quick note to make you aware of an initiative to develop quickly some infrastructure pieces for the Haiti rescue/recovery mission. Activities are taking place today (Saturday 16 January). I just found out about this. My sense is that this is only the beginning, but figured that any of you with interest would be self-starters on following up. A top level overview is at

http://www.npr.org/blogs/inside/2010/01/this_saturday_volunteer_coders.html

or

http://j.mp/8bCr0k

http://haiti.crisiscommons.org/ has links and updates with project wiki etc. Meetings taking place in

• Crisis Camp Haiti, Boulder/Denver
• Crisis Camp Haiti, Brooklyn
• Crisis Camp Haiti, London
• Crisis Camp Haiti, Los Angeles
• Crisis Camp Haiti, Silicon Valley
• CrisisCamp Haiti Washington, DC

This immediate project is pointed toward software/gis and resource matching (family finder, have/need), but I am trying to find more mid-longer term solutions groups working toward recovery of water, housing, etc. I do not have any particular information on projects beyond what's at the site listed above - and do not want to be a bottleneck (since I cannot promise to turn around info requests promptly) but will do what I can to push info around.

I will post this at my site techneblog.blogspot.com which has an rss feed, etc. My apologies for sending this as a bcc to you all, but I figured that this would allow for benign forwarding of this note without getting people onto the many wonderful mailing lists on the Internet....

Thank you for your consideration.

With very best wishes,

Mike

SIU Innovative Systems Conference SIUIS4 First Light

A very quick look at some photographs from the Southern Illinois University Innovative Systems conference, SIUIS4.

Flyover Country No More!!!

Tight security involved gas powered weaponry capable good for three to five rounds of T-shirt bombardment in this backpack-mounted platform. I'm sure 2.0 will be good for ectoplasm.

I'm all for elegant code, but there's something about cannon that just says one *really* cares about the project.

See also http://www.punkinchunkin.com/ for more insights into the Sport of Geeks. Now *that* is art.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Anil Mehta, sweating the small stuff to make a good conference even better.

The weather's been outstandingly North Sea here in the Carbondale Illinois area, but I say that will make the Seattle area visitors feel right at home.

There was a nice level of enthusiastic chaos amongst the student volunteers pulling together services for the conference, and a pretty comfortable, smiling group of people moving through the event.

Like a said in another post: World View, Intimate Venue. Nice, bright folks pumped about what they're doing and the potential of it all.

Cheeze Pizza Cheese Pizza Cheese Pizza

The "Green Room" loaded with Pizza, coffee, and volunteers. (And hungry people like me sneaking pizza.)

Logistics were a little shaky, but this is the kind of conference where a few more bucks would really make it sing. Parking permit in advance would have been nice, 'frinstance.

I want to see another conference here in six months, oh please.

Low cost, low hype, high content, real people. Sahweet mercy what a refreshing spin on tech. All here in Southern Illinois.

Robots? Got 'em. UAVs? Sure.

These guys had just torn down a 4H robotics demo from the night before and bless their cotton sox were back putting it together for this conference. The group's also working on some interesting UAV concepts and I hope DARPA, et.al, pick up on the potential.

All for now. Two more good days of the SIUIS4.

-30-

The Illinois Way of Beautifying the Farm 1914

From the Internet Archive:

University of Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station, 1914

The Illinois Way of Beautifying the Farm

Performance Test Lab

I get a crushing chest pain when I read the words "Performance Test Lab". They have no standard meaning.

After reading about Red Hat and H-P's project on Slashdot, I conducted a Google survey of "Performance Test Lab".

Bonafide, guaranteed, unscientific mix of signal and noise. I assure you, this has no standard meaning.

Windows.....250
Macintosh...241
Linux.......189
Unix........169
SAN.........163
Oracle......106
Browser......94
TCP/IP.......75
Solaris......67
Firefox......54
Ethernet.....51
EMC..........49
MySQL........43
Cisco........43
Explorer.....37
Novell.......35
Amiga........32
DB2..........32
Fibrechannel.24
Opera........24
Sybase.......17
PS2..........16
Token Ring...15
Gameboy......14
AS/400.......14
NAS..........13
Symbian......13
Wang.........12
ATM..........12
MVS..........10
IPv6..........9
Citrix........8
FDDI..........7
Teradata......6
VMS...........6
SNA...........3
VM............3
BeOS..........1
Infiniband....1
TPF...........1
Beowulf.......1
Grendl........0 (Chuckle)
X.25/Arcnet...0
SMDS..........0 (Muahhaha)
PDP or Nova...0 (Sigh)