City Repair LA

...nd the kids had a great time participating in what became a giant coloring book. At the conclusion of a day of painting under the bright LA sun, a piñata was hoisted, bashed apart and candy rained down across the colorful new street mural. Jimmy Lizama operating the piñata. The mural incorporates lizard and ocean motifs, and enhances the crosswalks in the intersection, which is adjacent to a public school. The mural will act as a traffic calming d...

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Out Of The In Box

...available as a pdf for free here along with a couple of other interesting books from the period. Above is Isaac’s clever cube crapper. Not much headroom in the head, but what a nice view. Isaac’s work has a playful plywood-meets-the-moon lander vibe. I think I would have loved this modular bunk bed as a kid. Dwell Magazine did an interview with Isaacs recently: After I complained about hippie aesthetics in a previous post, an astute reader counte...

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Is it safe to use cinder blocks or red bricks in stoves and ovens?

Source: Capturing Heat. As how-to book and blog authors we face many questions that begin, “Is it safe to . . . ?” And, for some reason, any post of ours involving rocket stoves sets off a firestorm of incoming Google hits. An old blog post on a “Redneck Rocket Stove” made out of cinder blocks prompted many to suggest that the cinder blocks would explode due to heat. Leon, of the blog Survival Common Sense, does a good job of refuting this notion...

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008 Grind Your Own Flour With Erin Alderson

...ling your own flours at home. Erin is the author of The Homemade Flour Cookbook and blogs at naturallyella.com. In our conversation Erin mentions that she uses WonderMill Grain Mill . We also discussed where to get unique grains. Erin mentions a few sources in her book: Bob’s Red Mill Arrowhead Mills Nuts Online Jovial Foods (source for Einkorn) Lundberg Family Farms I’ll add that if you’re in the Los Angeles area you can buy flour and grain at Gr...

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What the Internet Will Look Like After the Zombie Apocalypse

...nd the network is self healing. If one router goes out the other routers take on the traffic. For more info on how to set up a network like this see www.broadband-hamnet.org. or watch this series of videos. There’s also a free e-Book: Wireless Networking in the Developing World. Cat photo kidding aside, this relatively simply hack has potential to help a lot of people. This post was inspired by a lecture given by Gary Wong, W6GSW at the Pasadena R...

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