Your leaking thatched hut during the restoration of a pre-Enlightenment state.

 

Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



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decay & ruin
Biosphere II
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dead malls
Detroit
Irving housing

got that wrong
Paleofuture.com

appropriate tech
Arduino μcontrollers
Backwoods Home
Fractal antenna

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Like my brownhouse:
   getting shit done
Tuesday, September 21 2010
Work work work, I worked all day on getting shit done. And at some point I visited the brownhouse for a more literal manifestation of that expression. Every time I go to the brownhouse, I try to remember to give the composter a turn or two. As you may remember, it contains the collective fecal output for the period between late February and late August, 2010. The climate in there is as temperamental as the weather. Sometimes it's hot and dry and other times it's hot and wet. It doesn't smell particularly bad, indicating (along with the high temperatures) that the decomposition is mostly ærobic. Depending on the biochemical pathways, there can be lots of water and carbon dioxide released. The latter isn't much of a problem, but the former can accumulate and effectively drown the lower parts of the system. Turning the pile helps, but I've also been adding more dry biomass. This takes the form of leaves, small sticks, and pine cones. I'll have to see if this woodier debris actually breaks down.
Gretchen's father is a rather avid amateur photographer with and, like most males, something of a gadget freak. He keeps himself outfitted with equipment a lot closer to the bleeding edge than I do. While I'm generally happy if equipment is small and workable, he goes for the more elaborate, professional devices. So when he announced some weeks ago that he was cleaning out his closet of old cameras, I jumped at the opportunity to take possession of his old Olympus SP-550UZ. A Google search told me that it had an 18X optical zoom, but what I didn't expect was that it came with a 1.7X conversion lens, resulting in a 30X telephoto combination. That's enough to see the rings of Saturn! I played around with it a little in the yard, but my actual need for it will probably only occur three or four times per year, when some weird bird lands in a tree near the house. It will save a lot of time and frustration trying to cobble together a binoculars with a digital camera, my usual solution to this photographic challenge. But who knows, maybe I'll start taking good pictures now. I've never actually owned something so close to a professional-grade camera.


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