Let’s Talk About the Holidays

December 23, 2014

...Enjoying the Holidays.” Like Shannon, we also don’t want to come off as a self-righteous Scrooge or further our lifestyle as fodder for future Portlandia scripts. At the same time I’m also haunted by the tension between tradition and its conflict with modern life (note Habermas’ 2010 dialog with Jesuit scholars if you want to fall down a ponderous and inconclusive philosophical rabbit hole). Then there’s what I call the fake snow on Hollywood Bou...

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Everything Must Go Part 3: Clothing

Mrs. Homegrown

January 13, 2015

Cleaning, Domesticus, Tidying up

30 Comments

...“to sell” hunkering in some corner, gathering dust – don’t do that to yourself. Don’t undermine your tidying. As with mending, give yourself an action deadline, and if you don’t meet it, accept that it’s okay to give these things away. Finally, a cheat of sorts, one which KonMari would not like. If you have an out-of-sight space, like a garage, you can, for a short period, put aside a sack of clothing which you are unsure about giving away. Think...

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Cool Tools: A Catalog of Possibilities

Mr. Homegrown

January 29, 2015

Reviews

7 Comments

...cent and it’s convenient. The BBC’s amazing podcast In Our Time. Advice on self publishing (I’m working on that whole grain bread book). With both Cool Tools and the Whole Earth Catalog, there’s also a lot of stuff that fits into the fantasy category: fun to read about but I’ll probably never do. I’d include igloo making, boat living and camouflage here. But you never know . . . And, thanks to Cool Tools editors Elon Shoenholz and Mark Frauenfelde...

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As Above, So Below

Mr. Homegrown

April 8, 2014

Thoughtstylings

7 Comments

...this year. Dobson’s life took an unusual trajectory. He went from being a self described “belligerent atheist” to a monk in the Vendanta society to co-founding the San Francisco Sidewalk Astronomers. Most of his life was spent bringing the night sky to people around the world and teaching people how to make their own low-cost telescopes. As a monk, Dobson could not afford expensive materials. He kept the design inexpensive by using a simple mount...

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What the Internet Will Look Like After the Zombie Apocalypse

Mr. Homegrown

February 27, 2014

Water and Power

...as ten miles with a stock router and no boost in power. And the network is self healing. If one router goes out the other routers take on the traffic. For more info on how to set up a network like this see www.broadband-hamnet.org. or watch this series of videos. There’s also a free e-Book: Wireless Networking in the Developing World. Cat photo kidding aside, this relatively simply hack has potential to help a lot of people. This post was inspired...

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