SolSource Review Part I: Assembly

June 17, 2016

Appropriate Technology, Solar, Solar Oven Summer, Water and Power

When we wrote our second book, Making It, I wanted to include a parabolic solar cooker project. I found a castoff satellite TV dish and covered it with aluminum foil. The problem was how to position a cooking surface in front of it while simultaneously tracking the sun. If you knew how to weld this might be possible– if still a challenging project. I just couldn’t figure out a way to do it without custom welding and gave up on my dream of solar g...

Read…

What the Internet Will Look Like After the Zombie Apocalypse

Mr. Homegrown

February 27, 2014

Water and Power

...of off the shelf wireless routers overlaps with amateur radio frequencies making it legal for Hams to boost the range of these devices. That and the fact that several models of ubiquitous Linksys routers are cheap and easy to hack. Photo: Texas Ham Radio All you do is take your Linksys router, screw in a better antenna (note the one above made with a tin can), load some open source software on to it, scatter them around town and you’ve got a wire...

Read…

Salt Sugar Fat

Mr. Homegrown

March 4, 2014

Reviews

21 Comments

...g and the lifestyle it expounds come off as too extreme. But then I read a book like Michael Moss’ Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us, and I begin to think it’s not extreme enough. Salt Sugar Fat is a history of the marketing of junk foods. Moss’ sources are a mix of food scientists and disenchanted former food executives–most of whom, of course, are wealthy men with personal trainers who never eat the unhealthy foods they marketed. The...

Read…

I’m Fed Up With Amazon

Mr. Homegrown

December 6, 2019

Thoughtstylings

11 Comments

...(which has always been very generous to Kelly and I as authors–placing our books prominently and hosting a book launch event for us). Right now I’m left with a problem. I’ve got hundreds of Amazon links embedded on this site and need to ponder what I’m going to do about that. When Amazon dumped California-based affiliates a few years ago rather than pay their taxes I switched to Portland-based Powell’s partner program but nobody used it. I’ve also...

Read…

Getting Out of Your Head

Mr. Homegrown

October 8, 2018

Thoughtstylings

10 Comments

...“We need more welders and less philosophers.” Matthew Crawford in his 2015 book The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction proves why it’s important to be a welder and a philosopher. Crawford’s believes that certain unquestioned philosophical assumptions dating from the enlightenment are at the heart of our current malaise, specifically the notion that we are all independent and separate logical beings with the...

Read…