Michael Janzen

I just stumbled on this from a reader’s private website. This page is not private… but a very cool collection of solar cookers and plans. Solar cooking is a great way to use the sun for free to cook food.

Solar Cooker Plans

I spotted an ad in the back of an issue of Mother Earth News for a Granberg chainsaw lumber mill. It looks like a great way to turn fallen logs into lumber. I suspect what you don’t see in the video is that it would take a long time to cut up the log and you’d be spending some time now and then sharpening your chain… but it still seems like this would be a very useful (and relatively low cost) tool to have especially if you wanted to build a small or tiny house on a tight budget.

I just ran across this very funny joke video about a product everyone needs to survive doomsday. It’s a sturdy and comfortable suit that protects you from mother nature.

SurvivaBall

SurvivaBall Commercial from Blight the Clown on Vimeo.

While watching a video on Rowdy Kittens I learned of this little bike bag company in Seattle that makes handmade bike bags. It’s an excellent example of how real people can find their own economic freedom through doing what they enjoy in spite of a tough economy. Really inspiring story and great bags!

Swift Industries

I found this amazing video/lecture on TED over the weekend. The primary topic is visualizing the Manhattan Island of the past but the underlying message is all about sustainability. For example the last minute of the video shows what Dr. Eric Sanderson envisions as a sustainable Manhattan of the future.

I ran across this big backyard sized mirrored solar dish on CleanTechnica. It’s a project by some students at MIT that has turned onto a new start up called RawSolar. I’ve often thought that there would be a big market for a mirror like this coupled with small stirling engine for backyard alternative energy generation. But it would have to be low cost. These folks are planning on using it to generate steam to drive a turbine.

The other day I was thinking about how cool it would be to make some windows for the Tiny Free House out of old glass bottles and then I was browsing through my RSS Reader and spotted this great article on the very topic via MAKE Magazine.

How-To: Glassworking techniques for bottles

I’ve been collecting as much information about rain water collection as I can find. I’m not sure why I’ve been obsessed with this but it just seems like a good thing to know how to do. Here’s a very good article on the topic called Eight Principles for Successful Rainwater Harvesting.

This is an excellent article on how America in general got so fat and why we should never eat processed food loaded with salt, fat, and sugar. I also want to point out that there’s no conspiracy here; food manufacturers are simply trying to make us want to eat more and more of their food while reducing their costs. Unfortunately the methods they are using to make themselves more profitable are unethical and extremely dangerous to our health.

How We Became a Society of Gluttonous Junk Food Addicts

I’ve been on the lookout for an inexpensive green roof system for existing roofs. After reading an article on Jetson Green about this supermarket green roof project, Julia and I found this green roof system and GreenGrid. I’m pretty sure GreenGrid is the system being used by the supermarket project. Basically these are plantable water collection and storage systems.