Archive for November, 2007
Friday, November 30th, 2007
Les Visiteurs (The Visitors)
Andrius (Minciu Sodas) and Jeff (One Village Foundation) helping Ronny and Marcin mix mud for a cordwood house. They joined us for two days of conversation, collaboration, and construction.
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The legendary movie of my high school French class was “Les Visiteurs”: two men traveling through time making humorous mistakes and narrow escapes, but learning …
No Comments » - Posted in Challenges,Construction,Guests,Open Source Agroecology (OSA),Winter Gardening by Brittany
Monday, November 26th, 2007
Brick is Born
It was thirty days before Christmas, two thousand and seven. The first compressed earth brick was born from an open source compressed earth block press.
It was smooth, it was sleek. Six inches by twelve and four. Wouldn’t give it away for twice that of your Porsche. It was the seed of new villages, worldwide.
Not …
2 Comments » - Posted in Compressed Earth Block Press,Open Source Economic Development,Open Source Technology by Marcin
Monday, November 26th, 2007
CEB Day 20 – Winter Migration
On the Compressed Earth Block press, I am looking to press the first brick today. The mounted pressing cylinder looks like this:
It got into the 20s on the Fahrenheit scale, so I moved development operations into the greenhouse. We have a good stove in there. We collected some black locust firewood from a neighbor …
1 Comment » - Posted in Compressed Earth Block Press,Flexible Fabrication by Marcin
Friday, November 23rd, 2007
Bio-Butter
The cold weather blew in to join us at the harvest Thanksgiving dinner. We had our first snow of the season and our first bio-butter: biodiesel which solidified due to the cold. No, we did not spread it on the dinner rolls. And fortunately, we did not put it in the …
No Comments » - Posted in Biodiesel,Biofuels by Brittany
Tuesday, November 20th, 2007
Secrets are no fun.
Biodiesel has returned to the back burner at Factor E Farm. The potential collaborator has not yet responded. Apparently, he does not understand that biodiesel is one of numerous pursuits and without a little lubercation (ie. cash), we cannot simply drop everything for biodiesel.
But for a few days, we did …
No Comments » - Posted in Biodiesel by Brittany
Monday, November 19th, 2007
Freedom Funk
Freedom Funk became considerably more pungent this weekend after a grueling day of piling logs for the new addition. Freedom Funk is the smell of the sweat that seeps from one who is working toward personal or societal evolution. To the ordinary olfactory glands, the odors may be offensive, but due to the satisfaction …
No Comments » - Posted in Challenges,Construction by Brittany
Saturday, November 17th, 2007
Solar Turbine Update
Yesterday I talked to Dan Granett of Granett Engineering. He made a boundary layer turbine successfully, and has performance data (please let me know if you know others). This turbine is an external combustion engine, and is a cheaper, simpler, and more efficient alternative to mainsream internal combusion engines. It consists of smooth, rotating …
1 Comment » - Posted in Biodiesel,Flexible Fabrication,Global Geopolitics,Open Source Technology by Marcin
Friday, November 16th, 2007
Logs and Thoughts
I have been cutting lumber for my new little house almost for two weeks now. It is hard and extremely slow. Every few days we have to change a chain or the whole chainsaw all together.
Look at this picture:
Isn’t it beautiful?
This house is being constructed thanks to CEB. If all goes well, in …
10 Comments » - Posted in Challenges,Compressed Earth Block Press,Construction,Open Source Technology by Ronny
Tuesday, November 13th, 2007
Definition of Open Source
It is not open source to go to the car shop three times in one day only to finally realize that the part you really need is obsolete.
That happened to me today.
No Comments » - Posted in Challenges by Brittany
Tuesday, November 13th, 2007
CEB Day 11 and Update
Quick update. On CEB, I am hoping to spit out the first brick by this week.
The flexible fabrication front is hot. Deep in the fiery Iceland underground, Smari and his Fab Lab team are working on an open source, computer controlled XYZ table for acetylene torch cutting and routing:
This means that you draw a …
