Humanize the Earth!

How to Disappear by Pete Leki

Please go read this very short book by Pete Leki: How to Disappear. I love it. I’ve also been working on a wiki with Michael here How to Disappear Wiki. We’re not sure yet what’ll come of the wiki project, but we’d really like to see this book widely read.

phpunit / selenium seg faults

Anyone know anything about this?  I’m using assertElementContainsText and assertElementNotContainsText but I’ve seen the seg fault with methods as well.

linkage

Shout out to Jon Husband! And over at omidayr.net, there’s a conversation going on about connecting existing networks, and blogging as part of that. As a result, two new blogs were started, OurSelf and David Braden’s blog and then links from the Tutor/Mentor Connection and Neighbor Networking. There’s also a reference there to elearnspace and Knowledge Collaboration City - Critical Questions & Answer Maps of Citizen & Netizen.  Cool to weave things together folks!

A Public Service

A while back, I posted about how our basic infrastructure should be provided collectively. I was speaking about trains, but could’ve just as easily been talking about overnight bus service in Winnepeg, or community wireless internet. We don’t expect our police department to cover 50% of it’s budget by writing tickets (in Chicago the tickets are mostly written by the Department of Revenue anyway), nor do we expect the Fire Department to cover it’s own budget. Streetlights don’t pay for themselves? Why do we require Amtrak to cover it’s own bills? Highways certainly don’t pay for themselves. We subsidize the heck out of both roads and fuel. Anyway, just ranting again. Public service means by and for the public.

Online Go Server OGS Status Page Enhancer

I’ve been playing the game go at Dragon Go Server and Online Go Server, both “turn-based” go servers, which means it’s like playing by mail.  You don’t have to devote an hour to sitting down and playing a whole game, like you do in person, or on a real-time server.  You might only play one move per game every day, or every couple of days.  Because of this, most people are playing more than one game at a time.  Each server has a status page where all of the games are listed where it’s your turn.

For DGS, tps12 wrote a greasemonkey script that enhances the status page by automatically refreshing it and also by putting the number of games where it’s your turn in the title of the page, so it shows up in a tab even when you’re looking at a different page.  It’s an awesome script!

I thought it would be cool to have something similar for OGS, so I wrote the: Online Go Server OGS Status Page Enhancer.  Let me know if you us it, or if you improve it, or if you have an idea for improving it (no promises I’ll be able to do it!).

Green Roofs

I met with Kevin from Xero Flor America, LLC tonight.  The name is a bit confusing because their website is xeroflora.com.  Anyway, they’re the leading contenders for suppying our green roof.  A green roof means growing stuff up there.  Not flowers or anything, but sedum.  Sedum is a succulent that’s ideal because it can hold a lot of water, but is also very drought resistant.  The whole point of having a green roof is to reduce stormwater runoff.  Well, that’s one of the points.  Here in Chicago when we have heavy rains, the water treatment plants can’t handle all of the volume in our combined storm water and sewage system so we release raw sewage into the river.  That’s bad, obviously.  So here at the HUB (my co-op) this year we’re going ot install a green roof, which should vastly reduce the amount of runoff we have.  We’re also depaving part of our concrete courtyard to plant a rain garden, which is native grasses that grow really deep roots so then can absorb a lot of water.  Water for the rain garden will come from our disconnected downspouts as well as our rainbarrels.  Wow, we’re doing a lot!  We’ll see how it goes.  Anyway, let me know if you have experiences with Xero Flor.  Thanks!

new HUB Housing Cooperative website

hubcoop.org

It’s where I live!

Digital Excellence - Environmentally Sustainable Best Practices Improve the Well-Being of All Neighborhoods

I recently posted a link to the Ten Principles for Digital Excellence. Here’s one I particularly like:

7. ENVIRONMENTALLY SUSTAINABLE BEST PRACTICES AND INNOVATIONS IMPROVE THE HEALTH AND WELL-BEING OF ALL NEIGHBORHOODS. The tools of the information age must adhere to and support the highest levels of environmental and economic sustainability. The city should use the new network as a means to disseminate and capture information vital to improving the sustainability of our city, such as gathering air and water quality data and improving transportation choice. Economically and environmentally sustainable processes for disposal and recycling of outdated electronic materials should be supported by the City and technology vendors in all communities, particularly those low-income areas traditionally targeted for the potentially harmful disposal of used and toxic computer hardware. The City and technology vendors should support the creation of neighborhood-based recycling and refurbishing initiatives for environmental remediation and job creation.

vermicomposting

I’ve posted about composting quite a few times. That’s always been about composting outdoors. Last fall Sarah in my co-op went to a workshop about vermicomposting and came home with a bin and some worms (red wigglers, specifically). Over the winter, she and I took some plastic kitty litter containers to the basement to drill holes in the tops and on the sides near the tops so the worms could breathe and not stay too wet and she then gave me some of her worms (they’re all called “Wiggly”). They’re doing very well in my house, eating some of my garbage. Hopefully as they reproduce, their capacity will increase and I won’t have to put so much organic waste outside. This is especially true in the winter when our bins get really full!

Uganda Hospital Experience post

I mis-dated this post when I wrote it, so if you were reading my Uganda trip notes, you might’ve missed this one. I’ve fixed the date now: Gulu, Uganda - Day 1 - Hospital Experience