Smart Energy

A snip from a marketing profs email; they’ll charge you to learn more about this. I won’t: call or email me for more information.

Video is a fresh, dynamic, and increasingly essential way for you to reach your customers.

* Visitors who view online product videos are 95% likelier to buy than visitors who do not view the videos. (Internet Retailer, April 2010)

* Video increases the likelihood of a front-page Google search result by 53x with proper page optimization. (Forrester, January 2010)

* A minute of video is worth 1.8 million words according to Dr. James McQuivey of Forrester Research. (Forrester, January 2009)

Loving Lampposts, a documentary by Todd Drezner: highly recommended.

Loving Lampposts: Living Autistic

Review by Brian Charles Clark
4.5 stars (out of 5 possible)
Directed by Todd Drezner
Originally published on Curled Up with a Good DVD

Todd Drezner’s beautiful investigation of autism is motivated by the personal. His son is autistic and loves to look at lampposts. They walk every day they can in Central Park and the young boy gazes up at the lampposts, recognizing them as individuals in ways us mere normals simply cannot.

There is a lot of bad information about autism out there and, with grace and compassion, Drezner gives even the lamest and most discredited notions their moment in the sun. The film is divided into sections and a recurring one is called “Autism is…” The reality is, no one knows for sure. But it is certainly not caused by vaccines or mercury, and it very likely isn’t genetic, either. Read the rest of this entry »

The title of this post comes from Nietzsche, while the video below comes from YouTube. This one-man band uses a looping pedal (if someone can tell me which pedal, that would be great) and is amazing. As one person commented on the video:

it’s so sad that rebecca blacks bullshit has 30 million something views, and this which is amazing only has 65,000 someone needs to fix popular culture

Yeah, well, as Nietzsche said, “Success has always been a great liar.”

In Hong Kong, because of the space, apartments are small and expensive. Gary Chang, an architect, decided to design a 344 sq. ft. apartment to be able to change into 24 different designs, all by just sliding panels and walls. He calls this the “Domestic Transformer.”

I’ve been a fan of Diego Stocco’s since I saw his Experibass video a couple years ago. He’s up to new tricks with the Bassoforte:

I started thinking about how I could re-purpose the keyboard of the dismantled piano I keep in the garden, so I thought to build a new instrument by combining it with some other parts I had laying around. I ended up with this mechanical hybrid thing I thought to call “Bassoforte” (bass + pianoforte).

The neck is from a broken electric bass, as a bridge I used a cabinet handle, the pickups are from a guitar, and the part at the top where the strings are attached is a chimney cap, which works as resonator as well as percussive sound.

I keep telling my wife she has the rhythm to be a great drummer. She thinks I just need a drummer and that, anyway, we don’t have room in our house for a drum set. Maybe not — unless we get this kit.

Open Source Ecology is developing and testing the Global Village Construction Set, a set of tools to build replicable, open source, modern, off-grid resilient communities. By weaving open source permacultural and technological cycles together, we intend to provide basic human needs while being good stewards of the land, using resources sustainably, and pursuing right livelihood.

With the gift of openly shared information, we can produce industrial products locally using open source design and digital fabrication. This frees us from the need to participate in the wasteful resource flows of the larger economy by letting us produce our own materials and components for the technologies we use. We see small, independent, land-based economies as means to transform societies, address pressing world issues, and evolve to freedom.

via Open Source Ecology – Open Source Ecology.

A great TED talk by inventor, surgeon and all-around brainiac Catherine Mohr on building green.

In a short, funny, data-packed talk at TED U, Catherine Mohr walks through all the geeky decisions she made when building a green new house — looking at real energy numbers, not hype. What choices matter most? Not the ones you think.

via TED Blog: Building green: Catherine Mohr on TED.com.

A feel-good elevator short, this film brings together local Washington state and national leaders in green building, climate change, manufacturing, and work-force development to make the case for green buildings capacity to create jobs and boost the economy while not further imposing on our environment. The transcript is available here. For more info about the film and the economic outlook expressed therein, contact Rachael Jamison, Green Building Coordinator (Washington Dept. of Ecology), at (360) 407-6352 or email rjam461@ecy.wa.gov.

Garbage Warrior

KJ and I just watched Gargabe Warrior and we recommend it to all interested in green building.

Oliver Hodge’s award-winning documentary chronicles the life and work of visionary Michael Reynolds, the radical architect-engineer who has been designing and building self-sustaining, eco-friendly homes out of disposable materials for 30 years. Battling opposition from bureaucrats, politicians and big business, Reynolds strives to show the entire world that “Earthship Biotecture” is the key to preserving mankind’s future on earth.

And here’s what Narz has to say on Amazon:

Garbage Warrior will not give you the latest cutting edge information about sustainable design (though it certainly is a great primer), nor is it a full biography of Mr. Reynolds (though it covers the period of his life relevant to the film superbly) or of the ins, outs & tangents of the Earthship movement. What it did do, for me, is whet my appetite for more & reminded me why I am interested in this type of thing to begin with. This movie is pure inspiration, what you do with it & where you take it is up to you!