Archive for February, 2008
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008
Turn Up the Heat
Vinay just informed me today of a great post on our work on BoingBoing, a Directory of Wonderful Things. Sam found another link about us at the Wired magazine blog.
A few days ago, Steve Bosserman wrote a great post on how open source products can make economic sense, with the CEB press as a …
1 Comment » - Posted in Open Source Economic Development by Marcin
Monday, February 25th, 2008
Solar Cows
A friend of ours stops in from time to time unannounced, often with a technical question on his mind. Before the weather turned so cold, he asked if we had any ideas for keeping his pond open for the winter. We had nothing intriguing to offer; just a cheap way to run …
4 Comments » - Posted in Solar concentrator by Brittany
Thursday, February 21st, 2008
Turn On the Heat
When I was eight years old or so, my mom took us to the local lake. It was a particularly hot day and I put on sunscreen. After hours of fun in the lake, we came in for a picnic lunch. I was crispy. The swim suit straps had saved …
7 Comments » - Posted in Solar concentrator by Brittany
Monday, February 18th, 2008
Ubuntu Booted
Yesterday, Ubuntu failed to meet our expectations as an operating system for my Mac iBook. A little research showed that indeed the airport and dimmer capacities, among other features, are rendered useless under Ubuntu. As I use these features frequently, their absence was unacceptable. And embarrassingly, I have grown a soft …
8 Comments » - Posted in Computer by Brittany
Friday, February 15th, 2008
Visiting Sam Rose
I’m now in Lansing, Michigan, visiting with Sam Rose. We’re having fiery discussion on putting the P2P Economy into practice, starting with the collaborative open source product development platform. While we’re discussing the CEB press, solar energy, Fab Labs, and psychology of collaboration, the home front is in good hands.
1 Comment » - Posted in Visiting by Marcin
Tuesday, February 12th, 2008
How it all (could) work
“When solar cell companies develop cheaper panels, then we’ll switch to solar power.”
Did you ever hear someone say this?
Instead of waiting around for solar panels to become affordable, why don’t we collaborate and make them ourselves.
By we, I mean anyone who’s interested in affordable, ecological energy production. We all have some …
3 Comments » - Posted in Open Source Economic Development by Brittany
Tuesday, February 12th, 2008
Open Engineering: Better Than Sliced Bread
We are presently struggling with explaining a general open source product development method to others. We are talking about developing a large-scale, parallel effort of world-class, optimal product development to address the needs of the emergent, peer-based, localized economies with global information flows.
We are convinced that there is huge merit to this, and much …
4 Comments » - Posted in Open Engineering,Open Source Economic Development by Marcin
Tuesday, February 5th, 2008
Quality of Life Poll
Today, Dave Pollard of How to Save the World Blog wrote an interesting formula for how each day should be spent, which I copy here:
9 hours a day for sleeping and personal hygiene
2 hours a day for physical exercise — running, meditation, working out, yoga, hiking etc.
3 hours a day for play — learning …
7 Comments » - Posted in Quality of Life by Marcin
Monday, February 4th, 2008
A Letter to the Concerned Denizen
We have been busy on refining our funding method for open product development, and in particular, for the open source Compressed Earth Block (CEB) press. Our present strategy is to recruit social network leaders to spread our collaborative funding request to their audiences. This way, we can reach the numbers required to produce a …
No Comments » - Posted in Open Source Economic Development by Marcin
Sunday, February 3rd, 2008
Super Productive
When I initially began learning about organics, I had mixed feelings about the terms “super-weeds” and “super-bugs”. I understood the concept that weeds and insects could evolve until strains developed that would withstand the powerful herbicides and insecticides being used against their species. And I liked the image that the terms created: ever-harsher poisons …
