Bottom-up Urbanism

...tal property. Johnny describes himself as a “rodent who scurries about finding the opportunities other don’t recognize.” A lot of the things he talks about in the video are things we’ve done in our own very small Los Angeles house, such as adding sheds and making the garage space usable, all strategies for getting by on the expensive West Coast. The video even includes a bonus visit to a Murphy bed manufacturer. You can follow Johnny on his blog G...

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Curing Boredom with Solenoids

...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcgFfY4fVqU Sixteen year old Brandon Switzer came up with a way of dealing with boredom: build a player piano. The project uses a humble Arduino and a whole lot of solenoids. It took six months to finish. I’ve come to see the value in taking on a project that’s out of your comfort zone and this is a great example of learning while making....

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On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

...e things you like to read about on this blog: gardening, beer brewing, jam making, beekeeping etc. Or how about a world in which teachers, nurses and caregivers made more money than tech CEOs? Sadly, we don’t live in that utopia. Instead we have an economy that often rewards people who either do nothing all day or whose work degrades our lives. Anthropologist David Graeber takes up these questions in his book Bullshit Jobs: A Theory. Judging from...

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A Thanksgiving Debriefing

...Kelly’s miraculous recovery from an aortic dissection. But, for the first time in memory, both Kelly and I did nothing on Thanksgiving. We had colds and spent the day at home watching movies. We ate pasta for dinner. Between coughs and sniffles, I had a few idle thoughts on ways the holiday could be improved: Ditch the turkey. Ask around and you’ll find out it’s probably not most people’s favorite food. Why not serve something else? If you are go...

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The American College of the Building Arts

...I was more invested in the idea of being a musician rather than the act of making music. And let’s not get into the plinky-plunky, modernist musical cat fight that passed for the musical curriculum at UCSD, where I did my graduate work. If I were to step into a time machine back to high school and ponder my next move I have no doubt that I’d ditch the University of California and head to Charleston, South Carolina to attend the American College of...

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