If they are any designers out there, please do make me happy : )

See-Through Animal Photos, Translucent Creatures Wallpapers, Download, Photos — National Geographic

for example, i could grow small vegetables in the top and use them to feed the ants, after a time, switch the earth from the ants to the top (im guessing it will be fertilized).

and finally, i guess it wont hurt letting the ants to the upper level everyonce in a while…

anyways this is just RC.001 i’ll be hacking mods and publish them

On one side, it delivers what I’ve always wanted , clean and dry in a single chamber, Secondly it can help reduce health problems in developing countries.
Third, It recycles human energy that its usually lost in everyday activities.

you can read more on http://www.cyclean.biz/ or contact Alex Gadsden.

Facts

• 50% of the world’s population lives in cities.^[6]
• 800 million people are involved in urban agriculture world-wide and contribute to feeding urban residents.^[7]
• Low income urban dwellers spend between 40% and 60% of their income on food each year.^[8]
• By 2015 about 26 cities in the world are expected to have a population of 10 million or more. To feed a city of this size – at least 6000 tonnes of food must be imported each day.^[9]

With the increasing costs of food, and the misuse of cropping lands for bio fuels, Urban Agriculture seems an obvious solution for importing food, which helps to generate employment and decrease costs, and reduce contamination produced to transport food across states and countries.

Any major technology or process that leverages the adoption of Urban Agricutlure and Horticulture will gain great economic and social value. From Guerilla Gardening and Local Markets to Urban and PeriUrban Crops.

There exists a great development and social opportunity for business in urban irrigation, distribution

In Mexico cities like Monterrey, Guadalupe, Santa Catarina etc, there are city wide local markets called Mercado de Abastos, yet they import from long distances and while they offer an open market solution (free prices) they operate under un-optimal conditions and are centralized.

For a deeper insight please read more at Wikipedias references its practically a whole argument in favour of urban agriculture systems, for economic and social development, including wellfare, health and pollution.

Moonjar v2.01, originally uploaded by .hj barraza.

This moonjar jar includes foil paper to make reflections and cover the guts, and a small layer of water at the bottom to create nice light effects when slightly shaken,

This Moonjar is for a present, so i dont want to turn it on until breceda sees it… ill take a picture of it in action later

Coca-Cola Bottles turned into a indoor gardening tool
go green and make stuff !!

: )

Catedra Blanca, regeneracion centrito valle

Today using birdfeeder I accidentally stumbled across the presentation of a urban regeneration proposal for one of “Centrito Valle” an historical and key area of garza garcia (monterrey practically).

Its proposed by “Catedra Blanca” sponsored by CEMEX Mexico and ITESM. Coordinated by Urban Planing office: IMPLAN San Pedro (Instituto Municipal de Planeacion Urbana de San Pedro Garza Garcia)

For one thing I’m glade that even if its 40 years late (at least), we are starting to plan our urban development, the proposal includes mix use of ground, hybrid buildings and tons of natural lightning and conditioning.

What still worries me is that they plan to use massive amounts of cement (remember the sponsor CEMEX?) which might not be the best solution if we are planning to mitigate an heat island effect and leverage better solutions against global warming.

but who knows, I’m not an architect urbanist nor civil engineer and nevertheless this is an important step towards progress and a better living for future generations.

To learn more you can contact IMPLAN at  catedraurbana@gmail.com or visit their website

check out max’s blog

My friend Joanna, wanted to do some ant-hunting safari some months ago, (and i thought i was the only ant-freak around) but it was still to cold for them to shake their winter lazyiness away.

With the average tempeture over 35 celsius these days, it makes a perfect weather to go out and ant-hunt a while.

But since my old antfarm got lost somewhere in restate office, i had to build a new one. not to mention that the old one had leaks and no way to escape humidity. And lennin chopped of a finger while trying to make a second one (for real).

any way here we have AntFarm 2008, Release Candidate 2.0 in the making

The end of the begining, the campus-mall metamorphosis has begun

El Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Monterrey, le invita a la inauguración
de la Tienda EXA Apple Campus Store este viernes 25 de abril a las 11:00
horas en el Centro Estudiantil.

Durante el evento se darán a conocer los beneficios y descuentos que
ofrecerá a la comunidad Tec, así como también se presentará la línea de
productos Apple, como computadoras portátiles y de escritorio, Ipods,
paquetes de software y accesorios.

Además de ser la primera tienda en Latinoamérica ubicada en un campus
universitario, la Tienda EXA también manejará el esquema Apple Premium
Reseller, como distribuidor autorizado.

I just saw a conference Casey gave a few days ago, but since im the kind of dude that likes to download and watch stuff on the go,i didnt want to see it all online.

So i just went ahead and find the mov file for everyone to download

enjoy:

via tagr.tv

Made with Processing with 2 hours of rendering per each

My code is slow and slopy, but it creates nice images : )

It is a software based 100% on Javascript so it can be embedded pretty much anywhere they use a technique called “Parallel Text” which places pieces of text side by side to compare them:

“parallel text conveys the meaning and flavor of sentences, but does not compare how the ideas are put together, nor does it relate specific words and phrases; CHUNKS OF MEANING:”

While I’m a bit concerned on the interactivity of the method, its a young project which with further versions can bring a always free and extensible tool for learning new languages to schools everywhere.

You ned but a browser (internet connection can be optional)
Get your demo here

The main idea is the following. The result of digital technology and its miniaturization is incomprehension and tearing away of high technology by people. Time dictates a necessity not only of use but of constant improvement, replacement of different facilities by users. And this causes a discomfort.The creation of well-known from childhood shape (form, character) endowed with magic is an attempt to inspire, animate an object, to attribute soul to it, to give an explanation of its essence, which would be more understandable than presence of great number of not completely understandable abbreviations (Mpx, Gb, RAM, ROM & others).At the same time the Object is individual (expensive creation technology) and unified (both for lefthanders and right-handers) – mirror duality.

Seems to me that everyone including developing countries are obsessed with hi-tech solutions. Whereas this might be a good model for developed economies, it might no the the most wise solution for undeveloped areas, such as the south of Mexico and similar latin-american zones.

We would rather need low-tech barebones replicable technology from which people can generate micro-economies to autofinance themselves and solve their own local problems; instead of being subsidized by outside aid as we have been doing for years now.

Un gran reto que tenemos para areas sub-desarrolladas.

Debemos orientar a nuestros ingenieros, emprendedores y dise–adores a crear nuevas soluciones y “baja-tecnologias” replicables para promover el micro-financiamiento y micro-empresas de zonas sub-desarrolladas.

La idea es proveer a personas en pobreza, una oportunidad de desarrollar su propia micro-economia con soluciones distintas a las tradicionales que no les están dando resultado (agricultura, artesania, etc).

La “baja-tecnologia” que necesitamos proveer debe de ayudar a estas personas a agregar valor a su estilo de vida, preservar su cultura y resolver sobrellevar sus propios retos.Nuestra cultura y educacion empuja a las personas en zonas en pobreza a creer que deben de dejar de hacer lo que hacen para migrar y tomar otra profesion.

La solucion no esta en migracion ni cambio de cultura sino en el progreso local.

My good old mac must have the world record for most drops off starbucks tables and random bumps. The few of you that have seen it must must agree that it looks as if it just survived a train wreck.

It has died on me about 5 times and somehow I always managed to repair re-build re-format and revive. But this time… oh lord.. this was simply too much. It simply died and denied even to boot or give me open firmware (i once had to learn open firmware in 10 hours to bring it back).

So here is where our story starts, giving up on my mac for good i had to turn to an antique acer travelmate manufactured maybe 10 years ago (Kindly Provided by Mista Moi Kirsh).

The problem was, it had a screwed up windows instalation. With its CDRom and floppy drives not working i had few options to make this laptop usable again.

But allas a single search on google enlighted me.

I came to Wubi a point and click ubuntu installer for windows.

Instalation was a breeze, no problems at all, as easy as installer any other well formed application and it also comes with an unistaller too.

Now im not going to lie it did took me all night long to download and install updates but this was mainly cuz i had 256 mb of ram. But after it finished everything was love and sugar.

I don’t expect to be able to make some renders, graphic design or genetic algorithm design. but it sure has brought me the web back.

Today im 100% webbased Gdocs, Gmail GReader at excellent speed (using xubuntu a lightweight ubuntu distro for old computers) and i have to admit im a google bitch now and I’m loving it. 100% free and opensource now.This will keep me going till i get my new mac and who knows maybe i will just stick to linux for a while.

So if you see yourself in the need to rescue some old hardware or simply want to try linux this is a risk free method to get you started

Thanks Ubuntu and Wubi,
oh yeah a google too

Although they might seem not to have too much in common, by mashing up some of their ideas it is possible to design a replicable model for sustainable habitat in emerging communities.
Let me explain. One of Clinton’s greater achievements is the reorganisation of markets related to healthcare in Africa, Rwanda to me precise. By doing so his foundation has manage to lower costs of medicines down to 10 times its original value, (thus saving 10 lives for the same price). They are now working in other areas of economies.
Brad Pitt, at other hand commissioned 13 low cost houses to rebuild neighbourhoods in New Orleans.
Take a look at WeeHouse a prefab solution by alchemy architects that can send you a complete solution starting from US$65,000.
But that is still to costly for the budget we have to rebuild Tabasco after the floods?I read somewhere (i cant remember where) that the cost per house should be US$5,000.

What if ?  

What if we took open architecture principles by cameron sinclair to share and adapt designs to local requirements AND we reorganise the markets involved in construction to lower the costs ?
While i can’t assure that it will be possible to lower the cost to a tenth of its current costs, i can assure than open architecture market reorganisation can leverage tabasco’s reconstruction. 
Low cost doesn’t mean lack of design, Actually a good design can evidently help improve the life-quality to families that so much need it after their tragedy.
I might even risk myself to say its probably the ONLY right way to rebuild it in a long sustainable plan in mind.
so…

Open Innovation + Market Reorganization = affordable sustainable growth   

makes sense doesn’t it ?

read full story

read full story

read full story

read full story