Archive for March, 2009
Wednesday, March 18th, 2009
First Conference Call on Global Development Strategy
We organized a conference call for Friday, March 20, 10 AM GMT-5 (instead of 9 AM to accommodate West Coast USA), with Conference Dial-in Number: +1.218.339.3600 and Participant Access Code: 362126# . The conference can accommodate up to 96 people, and we hope to involve some of our European friends.
We will have the first …
9 Comments » - Posted in Global Village Construction Set,Open Source Product Development Pipeline by Marcin
Wednesday, March 18th, 2009
Against School
I’ve been aware of John Taylor Gatto since about 8 years now, and to me, he remains a beacon of clarity on the subject of the educational system. Joseph Zarr, one of our True Fans, just passed on this article. Since it has the proper deference to authority, ie., it was featured in Harper’s …
9 Comments » - Posted in Education by Marcin
Monday, March 16th, 2009
A Shower at Factor E Farm
I know I promised the True Fans group that I would work documenting Factor E in video (there will be some to come), but I found more pressing needs on site- namely hygiene facilities.  Riding to the airport with Cat and Richard from U. Missouri Columbia and Lonny from Appropedia, Lonny helped me frame …
4 Comments » - Posted in Open Source Ecology by Mathew
Monday, March 16th, 2009
Taking Open Product Development to the Next Level
We have previously introduced an open collaborative product development process. Developing an effective open source product pipeline – as a worthy competitor to corporate research and development (R&D) – remains one of the hottest topics of the peer-to-peer economy. We know of no other comprehensive product development pipelines, with well-defined, applied methodology – outside …
19 Comments » - Posted in Open Collaboration,Open Engineering by Marcin
Monday, March 16th, 2009
Spring Rains
For the record, check out what our place looks like during the rainy season in the spring. This is why we need to do major work on creating contoured swales and berms throughout the land. That will take a bulldozer, so we aim to build an open source version later this year.
The flowers in …
1 Comment » - Posted in Documentation,Seasons by Marcin
Sunday, March 15th, 2009
Open Source Tractor Walkthrough
Here is a walkthrough for LifeTrac. We cover the basic structure and hydraulics design. This is for those of you who want to study the design more closely, or may be replicating this in the future. Keep in mind that this is the first prototype, and several changes will be made for the next …
No Comments » - Posted in Documentation,LifeTrac by Marcin
Saturday, March 14th, 2009
Solar Village Underground
Pretty soon we will demonstrate that we can press 3000 bricks with the CEB prototype two. We have been thinking about our village design. For some time now I was considering earth-sheltered ecotecture, such as this beauty found at undergroundhousing.com:
The only question is, can CEB bricks be utilized in below-grade applications? While as strong …
20 Comments » - Posted in Open Source Ecology by Marcin
Thursday, March 12th, 2009
The Beginning of a Revolution (in hygiene): a Hand and Dish Washing Station
Wednesday afternoon I packed up my most useful belongings, hitched what didn’t fit to the sides of my camping backpack and set out from Fort Greene in Brooklyn, NY to spend 3 weeks at Factor E Farm in Missouri. I’ve never been to that area of the world, and neither have many of …
6 Comments » - Posted in Guests,Infrastructure,Quality of Life by Molly
Thursday, March 12th, 2009
Recruiting a Farm Manager
Any good village will have a robust, low-maintenance agricultural operation. I always dream of the near-future time for us here – of orchards dripping with fruit, trees dribbling with nuts, open source combine and tractor making easy time of formerly full-time food-getting activity – and other people being able to replicate entire food operations …
1 Comment » - Posted in Open Source Agroecology (OSA),Open Source Permaculture by Marcin
Monday, March 9th, 2009
Hexahatch: the Open Source, Automatic Egg Incubator
So far, we’ve built a Hexayurt, two Hexacubes, and now we’re adding Hexahatch to our hexaform product line. Hexahatch is a 6-tube, 60 max capacity chicken egg incubator, with automatic egg turning. The construction is simple and symmetric, based on a hexagonal arrangement of the egg-holding tubes:
Frustrated with lack of adequate design from any …
