Klint Finley's Blog (15)

My wife and I just got done with the first round of planting in our garden. I hope to do something to increase the food security of more than just the two of us soon, like participate in the Multnomah Food Summit, but this will have to do for now.



Today we planted bush beans, peas, and zuccini outside. We also got a few things started inside, such as herbs. We are using Mel Bartholomew's square foot gardening system to maximize the space… Continue

One of the most striking inefficiencies (both ecological and economic) in the modern work place is HVAC-related system of the server room.



Even in the dead of winter while an organization is spending money keeping the rest of the building warm, it's spending money keeping its server room cool.



There are a few ways around this.



A. Cloud Computing



To resolve the economic inefficiency only, they might move to… Continue

Third in my series on carbon-negative power is the The Mechabolic. The Mechabolic is a Burning Man art project currently in development. The Machabolic uses gasification to convert coffee grounds and other biomass into fuel for a moving "mechanical… Continue

Continuing on the subject of carbon negative energy, here's one existing project that's changing lives right now:



Amy Smith's "biochar" cooking stoves. From the write-up of her TED talk

Fumes from indoor cooking fires kill more…

Continue

It's hard to believe EsoZone's been going on for 13 years now. I try to go to every EsoZone I can during my travels, but the original Portland EsoZone remains my favorite.



EsoZone's become something more like a holiday than a than a discrete event, with dozens of parties and activities happening all weekend, but there does remain the core "official" unconference event.



Thanks to the venue's use of passive… Continue

Can energy be not only sustainable but carbon negative? There are several projects working towards this goal.



One of the most promising future energy sources in algae. The city of Venice plans to be using algae to provide at least 50% of its fuel by next year, and Boeing is throwing its weight behind the development of algal jet fuels. You… Continue

Food for thought:

From all my travels and speaking gigs in 2007, I’m most confident about the following advice: Stop using the word innovation in 2008. Just stop. Right now. Commit to never saying the word again. Einstein, Ford, Leonardo da Vinci, Picasso, and Edison rarely said the word and neither should you. Every crowd I’ve said this to laughed and agreed. The I-word is killing us. Here’s why: it doesn’t mean anything anymore. Or more specifically, it means many…

Continue

Playing Evoke is already having an impact on my life, specifically it's lead to me making some changes in how I approach things at work. I think what I've learned can also be applied to other situations: communities, families, etc.



I figured if I'm supposed to be resourceful and big-picture motivated, I should be able to solve some problems at work before I set about trying to solve world problems (and, lucky for me, my job is supporting people who are solving world… Continue

Some of you might find this useful. I'd like to try it myself:



Willem Van Cotthem is a researcher specializing in combating desertification, an occupation he describes on his other blog, "Desertification". Here lies the origin of his low-cost, low-tech methods to grow plants and crops. Van Cotthem manages to grow vegetables and fruits in the middle of the desert with minimal water (pictures). Apart from the methods using plastic bottles described above, he also uses mini-greenhouses… Continue

This is a response to Cian's network challenge MASTERPIECE



My masterpiece was Esozone: the Other Tomorrow, a three day multimedia festival that took place October 10-12, 2008. Along with my collaborators: I raised money, put up money out of pocket, made travel arrangements, booked talent, spoke and performed at the event, promoted it, recruited volunteers, and handled on the… Continue

I asked my friend Biohabit about food security in Portland and he pointed me to Multnomah County Food Initiative. They list the following on their About page:

• Oregon is ranked second in hunger by the United States Department of Agriculture.
• About 36,000 Multnomah County residents access emergency food boxes each month.
• Half of all adults in Multnomah County are either…

Continue

Our first night back in Portland after Iceland and Tokyo, my wife and I decide to go out instead of cook.



We head to the New Grub Cafe. It's a part Resilient Food Systems International, a co-op of cafe/food-producer operations. Member groups run cafes that serve food they've either produced themselves or traded with other co-op members for and transported using carbon-negative transit systems. Most employ green roofs and a network of city-wide small garden patches in the oddest… Continue

The day Alchemy called me I was at a cafe in Reykjavík. I biked down on a rented bike after leading a community class on critical thinking. I was mainly in town to consult an new investigative journalism start-up. My main source of income isn't consulting, it's blogging, so my wife and I like to take our time in each country we visit. I took time to attend local meet-ups, performed improvised noise at a night club, and organized an all-ages critical thinking 101 class. Reykjavík is a major… Continue

I've chosen Jon Lebkowsky as my Evoke role model. Jon is known as as a co-founder of or contributor to of many influential projects, such as: Fringeware Review, Mondo 2000, the original Boing Boing zine, The Electronic Freedom Foundation, WorldChanging, and Extreme Democracy.



I decided on Jon because many of his interests are similar to mine (online privacy, participatory democracy, sustainability, social media, high weirdness,… Continue

The advice "Innovation (often) comes from constraint (If you’ve got very few resources, you’re forced to be very creative in using and reusing them.)" has resonated with me deeply since the first time I read it on Ethan Z's blog.



As a noise artist, I've found this advice to be true several times - there's a narrow overlap between "what I can do" and "what I'd like to do." For me, good work comes from discovering that area and going from there.



In an interview for Engine… Continue