Home Coming

Today is electric, today V comes home. I haven't seen her since before we lost our baby, and the distance of the only person other than my wife I feel open to has been a small weight on my mind. A tickling itch, with no satisfaction to be had. The week visit will be over all too soon, and she will be back in that other country Texas.

V coming made J cry. Every friend that she hasn't seen since the baby forces her to re-acknowledge what happened. The tears could have been from her long day too, most of the time I feel like I don't know what stabs at her core anymore. There is some depth to her now that she chooses not to share anymore and I don't know how to get back into that space. I gave J a homework assignment to try find an opening even thought I think it is very unlikely she will do it.

Eco Kitchen concept

Via Engadget

I don't know why I find this so interesting, even when some shortcomings jump out quickly. The smell of decomposition is very hard to contain, especially if you continue to add to it over time. Even with great venting, and tight seals there will be some smell. The compost tea harvesting for watering plants is really a neat idea, and as drawn might even be workable. I am less sure about the integrated recycling, especially the glass breaking part. I just see that piece needing very careful maintenance, and I don't believe that my recycling provider would appreciate the broken glass. If the broken glass went into some sort of container that was refillable or replaceable that I could put into my recycle bin that might be more tolerable for current urban recycling programs. Either way I think it looks neat, and think some of the ideas could be rolled into real kitchens with a little work.

EKOKOOK

Working from the inside

image via Gapingvoid

Hugh was recently writing about the way that blogs where considered boring, but how he had never been making more money from his blog now than back when blogs where exciting and sexy. I didn't really ponder on the post itself, but the print he chose really stuck with me. I suppose it was mostly the post just before it talking about purists being the only ones without any skin in the game, that really set me to think about a teacher friend of mine in Texas. She and I where chatting about how discouraged she was feeling about how her school didn't have any school spirit, or investment in their identity as a group and that was part of why the students had no interest in school or even graduating. She was feeling penned in because the State is amazingly narrowly focused on teaching to pass the standardized tests, and she wants to try to take steps to help the culture of the school to encourage interest, rather than alienating the students. Her administration told her that when the students reach their desired levels of achievement on their testing they would consider different approaches to improving the school spirit, until then her job was to get the children to meet state testing requirements.

She finds this to be soul crushing and is lamenting not only wandering from her friendly Blue State into the buckle of the Bible Belt, but her career and the interminably long road it will represent for her. I asked about working with in the system for change, and she pointed out that all the "Great" teachers that they make movies about finding and overcoming adversity work so hard they burn out and move on to other careers before those movies are made about them. Maybe teaching is too big of a problem to tackle on her own, but I suppose I am pushing my own rock up a hill here with State Government. I am a firm believer in change from the inside, and all you can do is pursue what you believe to be right.

Design for Dissasembly: Why it doesn't happen very often in America

I was linked to this article about Designing for the afterlife of a product from one of the blogs I follow and I was struck that by how unlikely it was to happen in America.

The tenants and ideas are simple enough to understand, and the advice offered is reasonable enough I could see it showing up in a business class book sort of like the Book "The Goal". The trouble is that this sort of design run against many manufactures ulterior goals. HP et al don't want you to repair (in this case refill) their cartridges. The have a vested interest in you not doing so, and design their products as such. They thrive on the repurchase of their highly priced ink.

Similarly the iron company that made the iron that the article was based around probably thrives not by making the best quality iron, bur rather by selling a lot of them at a low enough price that the consumer doesn't mind that they have to buy another one every two years or so. Designing an iron that is maintainable, would require that they have to charge more for the iron in the first place, in a price obsessed markets such as America, that don't have a strong ability to fix things doesn't place value in maintainability of items and will choose items that don't carry that added cost.

Given that value of the future costs versus the current costs are hard to determine for most people given options consumers often choose the least expensive or one that is in the middle of the pack. Given that consumer behavior, and given that Executives listen to finance people about maximizing profit by reducing costs rather than to designers or production staff on how to make better products there is an constant race to the bottom.

Likely the only way to reverse this trend is to retrain the public on the value of maintaining the things you own, rather than the over emphasizing the cachet value of new.

Pocket Doors

image via Andenbathrooms

Toolmonger reminded me of how badly my house needs pocket doors in a few locations. These marvels of innovation can help to fix terrible layouts and make rooms that would otherwise feel quite crowded seem less so.

At $62 for the pocket hardware these are a very attractive thing to me right now. I suppose right after I finish up that birch butchers block from a leftover scrap of an NUMERÄR countertop from Ikea I will get on convincing my wife this is something we should do. I really want it in the master bedroom, but start with the closet in the basement.

Beer brewing on the way

Recently a friend that lives close by proffered the idea of brewing beer to me, and the idea has stuck. It looks like we are going to start gathering supplies and knowledge to make that amber stuff, and here are some links to local Seattle Home brew stores.

Larry's Brew Supply in Kent

The Cellar in Greenwood

Gallagher's Where you brew in Edmonds

Larry's and The Cellar look like standard supply stores just local, but Whereubrew has an interesting service model added to the mix. They have recipes and professional equipment that you can pay to use and they guarantee your batches. For someone that doesn't want to have to buy all the supplies to get started, it seems interesting if not a touch expensive way to brew 12.5 gallons of beer. It is slightly cheaper than buying 12 gallons of growlers at The Ram, but not significantly. The real benefit is that they have worked out the recipes for you, and have nice equipment and storage space to take care of the "waiting" stages of brewing.

Wireless video transmission

After watching the Engadget Show EP5 I was reminded of the Intel wireless display technology demoed at CES recently. This is using some custom drivers for the wifi chip in the laptop to switch quickly between the Wireless network for internet access and a PAN link to a television set/ or display device. There are have been some rumblings about the limitations of the 2.4ghz spectrum being saturated, but I think that this technology shows that there is still a ton of opportunity for innovation in how we use that spectrum. Saturated or not, the ability to sling the images from your laptop to your tv without having to purchase another STB ala The Boxee Box or a popcorn hour is a pretty neat feature, but it would make it hard to surf the while you are image slinging. So rather than getting a dedicated box to use while you surf the internet, you have to get another laptop. Oops, guess Intel forgot that people actually watch tv with a laptop on their lap now to distract them from their distraction.