Or medical equipment for alien alchemists etc. These would be excellent to turn into terrariums… but once they’d been terrarified, they’d be impossible to unterrarify. I’ve had trouble with this sort of thing before.

From : Via

Although I’m not sure about that long bit sticking out the back. Reminds me of something off Dune… and it’s good to see a bit of chrome etc. Proper. Proper styling.

The way there’s a MASSIVE windowsill at the front is cool as well – you can fit literally dozens of old crisp-packets and coke cans etc up there – although I think personally, I’d put in some sort of herb (pronounced H-erb… like “Herbie”) garden in instead. So you could nibble on a bit of mint, or a chive or something as you were driving along.

As this (with a bit of tweaking) has only one wheel at the front, it’s technically/legally a bike – which means you don’t need to conform to all sorts of safety regulations.

A new website where you can grow stuff in your garden and sell it to your neighbours. A bit like Etsy for plants.

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I feel a bit sorry for these guys – I’ve been there so many times… set up a site that depends on people joining… then wait… then wait… try some desperate marketing measure to get attention… then wait… all your hopes pinned on some “next big thing”…

Maybe it’ll work – I don’t think so though… and the reason why I don’t think so goes to the heart of currency… or more specifically, currency being a byproduct of the size of social-sphere… or economy or whatever.

Which is to say, you get a LOT more from giving stuff to your neighbours than selling it. People pay neighbourhood kids to mow lawns or collect lemons or whatever because they’re doing it for the kids, so they can have pocket money – and because accepting neighbours kids like this helps tie a community together.

The level that adults operate at is a little different – the community-level glue-of-giving being more direct. The Unspoken Social Contract that Clay Shirkey was on about.

Personally I can’t imagine selling vegetables to the people next door. It would… put a wall between us. We would only participate in this if it meant that we were buying things from other people who were retired or unemployed or whatever.

But um… I guess this site caters to a wider geography than that… so um… what do I know.

I hope it works out to be honest – if it could take the pressure off people having to find a proper grown-up’s job.

And it could work the other way – when I was living in the UK I didn’t even know what the other people in my building looked like, let alone… know them as people. Maybe flogging stuff to them would be an excuse to get to know them… but you’d be so much better of giving it away. I mean if you give people stuff, they like you. If you could sell “people will like you” spray – that actually worked – as well as giving them tomatoes that you’ve grown, how much would it be worth? A fuck of a lot more than the tomatoes, I bet.

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But getting back to some sort of point… I’ve got this nagging sense (that I can’t quite put my finger on) that the key to alternative currency is to do with face-to-face community. It’s more than networks of trust… it’s networks of dependency? Networks of gut-level responsibility?

I think television has been a disaster.

Art Bin – in which people are invited to turn up and chuck all their failed art into this massive bin thing.

Utterly brilliant. I’ve got failed art. I’ve got a LOT of failed art. In fact in one way or other, most of it’s failed. I’ve had two exhibitions so far, and nobody bought a single thing. Idiots.

This is a bit like the thing I’m working on at the moment – time-capsules for all the things you thought might come in handy one day, but never have. I’m making an instructional video etc – which is proving to be a lot more difficult than making the actual thing, and that’s hard enough.

Anyway, Michael Landy’s Art Bin reminds me of these massive fallen-angel/devil/bat things that I once found off the side of Battersea Bridge in London when I was sleeping on Mark’s sofa, and getting drunk all the time.

Mark’s Sofa

Me at the time

The Greeky, where I used to get drunk quite a lot

Those days are gone. Soho has been cleaned up. Mark’s tidied up his living room, I’ve moved to Brighton, New Zealand and Tallinn. I don’t shave or cut my hair that much any more. The weeds have turned into trees, and the trees have grown. It will be autumn soon.

Someone’s made a mechano centrifuge to see if a lava-lamp will work on Jupiter. Because that’s the sort of thing you do.

And much to everyone’s surprise…

Note use of Android phone to measure G-force. I tell yer – the smartphone is the breakout device for the internet of things. It’s the Intel Outside.

(via)

A hacked Roomba that (while it’s performing its duties) indexes your stuff.

From Sweden etc, where Logh come from, who are one of my best bands.

I think that possibly the… killer-component of this thing is the software/sensor combo. Because let’s face it, most of your stuff doesn’t actually live on the floor – it’s up on top of things. So you’ll probably want a little helicopter, or your own CCTV system – or even just the ability to use your iphone to photograph a room when you want it indexed.

Why do you want it indexed?

Control.

You. Just. Want. To. Be. In. Control.

A Wing in Ground Effect thing – someone in NZ has put wings on his hovercraft and controls and such… and

a) got on TV

b) sold it on ebay – for $27,000 which let me tell you people, is bugger all. It’s about 1/2 that in USD.

“The fuel economy is far better than a boat of the same size and speed.It has a range of over 225km and cruises at 90km/hr when flying,and has a smooth ride above the waves!”

And legally, it’s a boat rather than a plane.

Brilliant – and if you hit the water at 90km an hour, you wouldn’t automatically die – assuming you were wearing enough bubble-wrap, or were entirely encased in a safety-zorb or something. That would be cool. You could have zorb-fights.

It was a kiwi bloke who made a cruise-missile in his backyard about 5 years ago as well.

And of course there was Richard Pearse.

Who I will never stop going on about.

My Grandfather used to fly Tiger-Moths. I mainly watch television.

I feel a bit sorry for George in a way – I think he used to know Susan back in the day… although I don’t neccessarly feel sorry for him for that, although…

No I feel sorry for him because he’s a nice bloke, and he’s a fuckwit magnet. His column in the guardian is invariably followed by braying heaps of bile-spewing, right-wing cunts… and when I see him actually trying to answer some of these people I suffer a sensation akin to seeing one of your mates playing in a rubbish dump.

Anyway, he recently went on about how people feeding solar-home-generated electricity back into the grid is basically just a giant shift of money from the poor to the middle-classed. The rubbish dump murmured in vague (if not slightly confused) approval, because the rubbish-dump wants nuclear-power… or coal… or anything that’s basically top-down controlled, and polluting.

(If you’re reading this George, here’s why Nuclear is a seriously stupid idea.)

But back to the feed-in tariffs being a transfer of money from the poor to the middle-classed… he may be right. Personally I think being able to supply energy for sale to the grid is an incredibly important thing to be able to do… but I didn’t realise it came with such massive subsidies – so theoretically you could buy electricity from the grid at 7p and sell it for 44p.

It might be worth checking with the Germans to see if crims actually did this… and maybe the Germans aren’t as… assiduously criminal as the British (because they are, oh yes, they are)… but that just seems to be a bit out of wack to me. The subsidy I mean.

However.

I think purely looking at it in terms of superficial economics is… not taking in the whole picture.

The photo at the top is something that you see all over England – permanently bricked up windows… because back in the 17th Century (in the age of Rickets), some bright spark had the bright idea of taxing the number of windows in everyone’s houses.

The great unwashed responded by bricking up their windows. The tax created a bricking-up-windows pressure.

Now, the government creating a platform where people get paid for their net energy is creating various pressures.

1) The pressure to be more efficient – so your net is higher. President Carter came on TV wearing a jumper in the hope that everyone would be more frugal with energy savings, and everyone laughed at him. They won’t laugh at this.

It would be fairer (and have a similar effect) if the subsidy went on insulation – but “saving” money is a very different psychological proposition to “making” money.

2) It creates a pressure for smart-metering. If you want to increase your net energy production, you need to know what your overheads are.

3) I’ll tell you what they are – they’re all to do with heating water. I think solar water heaters might actually be a better way of lowering your energy costs than solar-electricity – I visited a guy who was selling them (for 3K $NZ a go) and on a cloudy day, at mid-day, the tubes were too hot to touch. I know they won’t work in winter, but… it’s still a fairly mega subsidy, coming out of the sky to you for free.

But failing that, lagging your pipes becomes an investment with immediate returns, rather than something you might get around to one day.

4) It creates a pressure to produce other micro-generation devices – not just solar. Solar is piss-weak really – although the prices are coming down massively (see Konarka et al), you’re not going to be using them do your cooking any time soon. But… converting an excercycle? A little wood-gas generator?

I can see bad as well as good coming of this to be honest – as I say, The British are assiduously criminal (I know. I’m British. I used to work for a slum-lord)… but it does create a pressure to produce other micro-generation devices – a pressure away from top-down control of energy (which has created so much in the way of war and suffering) to something localised. I think this part is vital to be honest.

So… I’m a poor person. By UK standards – and I’ve lived in about 20 different houses in the UK… and I’m not sure that any of this would have applied to me because I either rented or squatted (or lived in a van) but… I guess I would have had the sky-space to do solar in about 1/3 of these properties?

Something like the little Whispergen CHP Sterling Engine generators from New Zelaand would be a better bet – although that might create an anti-tree pressure. You certainly wouldn’t be seeing skip-loads of scrap wood any more.

So although I’m not so sure about the subsidy side of things – I think being able to sell energy back to the grid creates drivers for efficiency, decentralisation, and exploration of non-solar devices. And I think it’s a good thing. There’s more to it than meets the eye I think.

As opposed to Nuclear, (which George seems to be advocating) which is just clangingly fucking wrong in every conceivable way. £8 a tonne? Don’t make me fucking laugh. If you’re British, your taxes (yes you) are still paying for the Nuclear Waste created by this generation:

Next time you see a photo of the Pyramids, you can proudly say to yourself… “Yes, my legacy will last longer than this. 3000 years from now, my radioactive waste will still be radioactive. Will they still be paying taxes then? Who can say… but one thing we know… they’ll still be looking after our (govt subsidised) pollution”

Further to my vague, nagging suspish, that the main use of repraps is printing other reparaps…

… Julian has started selling sets of parts on ebay – the Uni machines, at cost (£40). This initial one is auctioned, and his home machine(s) will be put to work, auctioning.

The bid price has gone up to £250 in 2 days (it’ll go higher) – which (by my 2-mile-an-hour, pea-brained reckoning) is a profit of around 400% (which isn’t bad)… and it also includes the plea, that you build them and sell your parts on ebay as well.

I think there’s something to be said about having a direct-descendant of the original machine. I mean a Chinese factory could wack these out for less than a dollar each, but where’s the story in that?

Still… buy yourself one on Ebay. Replicate, Replicate, Replicate, Replicate (so now you have 16 of them)… and have them working round the clock, selling the parts on Ebay.

Any why stop there? Breed them with The Machine To Deceive and Slaughter, and get them to sell their children on Ebay themselves.

This is something that’ll happen more and more – cellphones as brains for physical objects.

I think this photo is kindof neat as well – it’s an unbelievable miracle of technology, powering a cart made out of corrugated cardboard – rubbish basically. And… you know? In five years time, the phone will probably be as worthless as the cardboard – ie: it’ll just be chucked out.

And 5 years after that, it will be regarded as a quaint retro-curio, and 10 years after that, it’s former-owner will wish that he hadn’t ditched it, because now it has value as an historical artifact.

It will be 2030. All bets are off.

(edit)

Although to be honest, I was envisaging something a little more like this