July 17, 2008
July 16, 2008
It is fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE.
My poor brain just asploded a little bit. I think there is some drying gray matter on my monitor.
Crispin Glover is coming to town to do some strange sort of performance art/movie screening.
This is a thing of mind-scarring beauty.
July 15, 2008
“With my freeze ray, I will stop the world.”
What are you doing? Stop it! Stop reading this blog right now. You should be here:
See Doogie Howser wield a Freeze Ray! See Captain Mal ride a van like it’s a skateboard! See Codex…do laundry!
All this, in an exciting, action packed internet superhero musical.
It’s only up until Sunday night. Stop staring at me like that, and GO.
July 14, 2008
Prius, the Sun God
“Wait… so you’re saying that since my car sits out in the sun all day long, I should be able to do something with that knowledge? Are you high?”
Go, Toyota. I will give my Highlander Hybrid an extra pat on the back tonight.
July 12, 2008
Take the Train
There is a story at the GOOD Magazine site about a cross-country Amtrak ride. The article is part travelogue and part historical yarn. Inside, the author makes the case for a revitalized light and high-speed rail system as part of the attack on the high costs of fuel.
“Per passenger mile, an Amtrak train uses about half the energy of an airplane, and can carry twice the number of people. It’s also the passenger-carrying equivalent of 16 lanes of highway.”
The Japanese Shinkansen trains that The Greatness and I took on our two trips there were incredible - speedy and relaxing. Meanwhile, I live in Atlanta, a major U.S. city that can’t even build a decent subway system, for any number of reasons, many political in nature. Hopefully, the current energy costs will help to bring down some of the barriers to better public transportation.
(via MetaFilter)
Thermal Depolymerization
Buried deep within the comments of an article on Slashdot, there was a link to the wiki article for Thermal Deploymerization. Basically, it’s the process of turning biomass and plastic waste into a light crude oil by simulating the circumstances which caused oil to be created in the real world, using heat and pressure.
There’s an actual plant up and running right now that does this. Other companies are looking into it.
And some people are considering even more radical ways to use waste materials as a source for obtaining energy and fuel.
There’s not going to a magic bullet solution to our energy problems. It’s all the smaller efforts combined that are going to eventually allow us independence from foreign oil.
July 10, 2008
All the Pretty Pictures
There’s a nice write-up (via Slashdot) on a blog called Ubuntu Productivity about various linux-based photo editors for professional quality photo editing. Several editors are mentioned along with some pros and cons.
Make it so it does not fall apart.
Hello internets.
Judging by the datestamp on my previous post, I would appear that I have been gone awhile. As in more than a year. In fact, “awhile” is probably stretching the legitimate definition the word. But I digress.
I was busy.
We built our house. It’s done (mostly). We’re moved in (mostly). It’s amazing (mostly).
I’m really frakkin’ tired (completely).
The experience has been intense, life-altering, brilliant, trying, difficult, fantastic, painful, and a literary host of other adjectives. No, I’m not sure I would ever do it again. But I might.
The most important lesson I took away from this year has been this: Do it right the first time. I learned this from my hopelessly incompetent contractors, as well as from my own struggle to fight against an inherent laziness that lives inside of me and rears its head on occasion. On such a massive project, every little detail feeds into the next step. Do something wrong early on, and it will have an affect on every thing else that comes after.
Make it so it does not fall apart.
Smell the Glory is going to change. How, I’m not 100% sure yet. I’ve got an idea in mind, a new model. There will be blood! Or milkshakes! Or oil! I’m not sure, the thinking is all over the place.
But I’ll get there. And God-willing, maybe a couple of you are still with me.
April 9, 2007
Bamboo Flooring
As Melanie briefly mentioned in the comments of the previous post, Kim and I will have solid bamboo flooring throughout the entire first floor of our house. Bamboo is actually a very fascinating plant, and there are several environmentally sound reasons for using it as a building material (and hemp, Melanie would say, don’t forget hemp!). But I’m not really an environmentalist in any sort of traditional sense, so I’m not going to preach about the use of bamboo over mainstream hardwoods for floors. I just happen to think they look gorgeous.
As such, we found such an amazing deal on some prefinished bamboo, that we’ve already purchased some 1800 square feet of it. This is not the best picture, but what you are looking at is 77 boxes of flooring, lines up in the sunroom of the extremely tiny rental house that Kim and are currently living in. One day I’ll write about a post about my penchant for finding deals on inexpensive flooring - best deal so far: tile for the powder room in the new house: 7.5 cents a square foot - and this bamboo will certainly be included in that post (though Kim actually found this one first). Anyway, this is the first major purchase for our new home, which won’t even begin construction for at least a month and a half.
Better pictures coming soon. And hopefully, floor plans!
March 13, 2007
The Bright Green Future
So about a month ago, I posted a picture of a weird, ugly little house. Kim and I own that house. It is nestled on approximately one acre of land which borders a local park in beautiful Tucker, GA. We are divesting ourselves of our current real estate holdings (the house in Sugar Hill has been sold, and we close on our Athens house in a few weeks), and moving to Tucker. We bought this tiny little house with one thought in mind.
Let’s tear this bitch down and build new one.
And starting in May, that’s exactly what we are going to do. We’re going to build a modern Craftsman style home where this little house currently stands. But, in a somewhat unusual step, we are going to build an extremely energy-efficient home out of non-conventional building materials. I’ve spent literally hundreds of hours researching this topic, and I’m going to talk a little bit about the process right now. If this sort of thing bores you, you can stop reading. If you want to learn a little, just click more.