posted: January 29, 2007

This Business Week illustration did run about 2 weeks ago. I wanted the colors to look like a a sun bleached color photo print.

Wal-Mart, the largest retailer in the world, unveiled a new store that could revolutionize how the company builds and powers their stores. The experimental design combines a host of renewable energy technologies including numerous solar PV arrays, wind turbines, a bio-fuel boiler to recycle and burn recovered oil from store operations.

posted: January 16, 2007

Last winter after cleaning out the stable I noticed some green plants peeking out from underneath a foot of snow. After a investigation with a pitch fork I found a bunch of weeds growing in midsts of winter with their roots cozy warmed by the composting wood shavings and horse manure. All summer long I have been eating from my garden that I started from seed for the first time this year. By early October I realized, I wasn't quite ready to give up my salad section of the garden. After a little research in my gardening books I found a cold frame solution with a  composting heat source. With a few left over bricks and an old glass door at hand, I dug out my raised bed filled it up withthe magic mix and toped it of with some fresh soil and built a rectangular cold frame on the top of it. The pond has frozen a few times, yet this has been one of the mildest winter so far.
I had plans to test the cold frame idea with at least a foot of snow.
In an eerie sense I feel lucky growing lettuce in January.

Lucky me I found some delicious Illoz in my spice rack. It makes salad taste even better. ;)

posted: January 5, 2007

I found this wonderful site last week.
In a far sense it's a online version of cadavre exquis (exquisite corpse). Based on an old parlor game, it was played by several people, each of whom would write a phrase on a sheet of paper, fold the paper to conceal part of it, and pass it on to the next player for his contribution.
SwarmSketch is an ongoing online canvas that explores the possibilities of distributed design by the users. The site generates randomly a popular search term which becomes the sketch subject for the week. The collective is sketching what the collective thought was important last week. A new sketch begins after one week, or after the previous sketch reaches one thousand lines, whichever comes first.

It's fun and "borg" at the same time.