2014: The Year in Review

...na, but I haven’t used it much other than to check in on a local net a few times. I may have to table my amateur radio activities in 2015 in order to focus on other, more pressing, projects. April Easter Lessons Kelly wrote about a troubled project involving dyeing eggs with natural materials. Natural dyes are a subject that interests us both, and I suspect we’ll revisit this topic in 2015. May On the Documentary Fed Up and Giving up Sugar and the...

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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Grub

...rning you empty a bucket full of grubs for your grateful chickens or fish, making sure to reserve a few to ensure future black soldier fly generations. Adult black soldier flies don’t bite and are only interested in flying around looking for sex and, in the case of the females, to find a good place to lay eggs. At $179, the BioPod™ is above our humble slacker budget level, but you can make your own out of the ubiquitous five gallon bucket. While I...

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Earth Building Classes!

...asonry. We are also looking at having an horno workshop in Los Angeles sometime this summer. Events October 2-4 – EarthUSA 2015, Santa Fe, NM: A reminder that EarthUSA, the premier North American earthbuilding community event is coming up this October. The event brings together expert practitioners, historians and conservation specialists from all over the world for lectures, classes, and field trips in the center of American adobe culture. Intere...

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Saturday Tweets: Don’t Fear the Green Reaper

...the light relentlessly pierced through even the tiny slits in the shades, making it difficult to fall asleep. Thanks goodness I moved from that area. pic.twitter.com/ECmbRPxz4h — Robert Kwolek (@RobertKwolek) January 31, 2019 “The internet’s emphasis on metrics and quantity over depth and quality has engendered a society that values celebrity, sensationalism, and numeric measures of success.” – #TeamHuman, #39 Get the manifestohttps://t.co/QCJ0Ng...

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More on How to Make Clear Ice

...did a whole National Geographic special on ice that includes a segment on making clear ice. And did you know that clear ice sometimes happens naturally? Behold this viral YouTube hit, “Walking on beautiful clean ice in Slovakian Mountains:” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WBqX7MSqWw Lastly, I want to leave you with one of the most satisfying videos I’ve ever watched, Tokyo bartender Hidetsugu Ueno carving ice into diamond shapes (note the use of...

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