One of the canards about open source is that it only produces hardcore hacker programs - dev tools, infrastructural stuff etc. - that have little to offer the general, non-technical, *normal* user. While that may have been true ten years ago, things have moved on. For example, here's MakeHuman, an amazing program that lets you create photorealistic 3D humanoid characters:MakeHuman is an open source (so it's completely free), innovative and professional software for the modelling of … [Read more...]
The Diagonal Economy 2: The Impact of Energy Descent
I’ve wondered how to best explain the advantages of the Diagonal Economy in confronting energy descent. I think that reference to an old post addressing “anti-economies ” is perhaps the best framework. There, I discussed the classical sources of economic efficiency: economy of scale and economy of place. Both economies of place and scale will be impacted by the phenomenon of energy descent—the idea that there will be increasingly less surplus energy available to society going forward. While … [Read more...]
City Repair LA
Mark Lakeman stares down the new Bimini Street salamander.Portland architect and activist Mark Lakeman, founder of the City Repair movement, is in Los Angeles for a week of lectures and activities. Lakeman believes in actions that correct what he believes is our disassociation from nature and our alienation from each other. He's a passionate opponent of the grid, the imposition of street networks and regimented thinking that he traces back to Roman imperialism. He's probably most famous for … [Read more...]
Collaboration for large groups
There is a dialogue taking place over on Transition Culture, about how Transition hubs relate to the UK network which started this whole Transition idea. If an opportunity arose, to rewrite this MoU collaboratively, we would need a tool which can manage the input from a large number of authors. Check out this video introduction to a tool called Mixed Ink. I have been facilitating online groups for a few years and watching the tools evolve very rapidly. To date. this is the best I have found for … [Read more...]
On Opening Up with PHP
PHP is one of the big success stories of open source, so it's great to read this interview with its creator, Rasmus Lerdorf. I was especially struck by these words of wisdom:in 1997, it basically came to the point where I was going to kill the project, because it was growing so fast and my mailbox was filling up with suggestions, complaints, patches, all these things. Up until then, I had been doing everything myself. Someone would make a suggestion, send me a patch and I'd rewrite the patch … [Read more...]
want to start a csa?
In a city? Just Food will help you! Here’s info on an upcoming workshop series: Interested in how to get fresh, local and organic produce in New York City? Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) connects local farmers with New York City residents through a unique, pre-paid share system. Members buy a share at the beginning of the CSA season and in exchange, receive a weekly share of 7-10 types of locally grown, organic vegetables – enough for a family of 2-3 people. Members pick up their … [Read more...]
Open Everything
Today, an Open Everything event will take place at the Paraflows Festival in Vienna, Austria. Michel Bauwens of the P2P Foundation is the main speaker. Franz Nahrada and Ralf Schlatterbeck will follow up with the hardware side of open production, with Factor e Farm and Open Source Ecology as a case in point. We prepared a short video - which Ralf will present - on creating a post-scarcity village on the scale of 30 acres. The essence of such a village is open technology and knowhow. This video … [Read more...]
Permaculture to the Rescue!!!
Can Permaculture Save the World???from Permaculture USA and elsewhere around the net. Editor’s Note: Point one – this article is circa 1998, from the now ceased-publication Permaculture International Journal. Point two – it is now more relevant than ever, so please read and ponder. Ted Trainer argues that although the planet cannot be saved without Permaculture, not enough people in the movement realise where Permaculture fits into the solution. We are fast approaching a … [Read more...]
so when you say collapse…
This funny thing used to happen when my friend Todd and I discussed peak oil and energy descent back when we were just coming to grips with all of that. One of us would begin to explain a particular future scenario or perhaps a strategy to address that scenario. All of these conversations could be loosely described as plans to addresses to collapse of modern civilization. We were both a little more Doomer than we are today but even back then we recognized that “collapse” wouldn’t necessarily … [Read more...]
Soil Pulverizer Annihilates Soil Handling Limits
We are glad to report that the LifeTrac-mounted, open source soil pulverizer has annihilated soil-handling limits from our compressed earth brick (CEB) pressing ability. Initial testing achieved 5 ton per hour soil throughput, while The Liberator CEB press requires about 1.5 tons of soil per hour. We have shown the pulverizer rotor development in a previous post. See the build and testing of the machine after the addition of the bucket and lift cylinder: Soil Pulverizer Prototype 1 Complete … [Read more...]
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