John Evans's Blog (10)

For dinner I've prepared a dish of my own creation that I refer to (rightly or wrongly) as "vegetarian fajitas". I start with a flat bread or pancake made from a mixture of corn and acorn flour (acorns harvested from local white oaks the previous autumn). The filling is cooked runner beans and chopped broccoli stems, grown in a container garden. It's flavored with locally grown garlic, basil and mint, as well as some… Continue

Nixtamalization - Something you need to know if you want to grow corn (maize) for food.



The Three Sisters - Native American companion planting.



Amaranthus cruentus - A grain with a great deal of nutrition (including lysine, which is often missing from other grains). Also see… Continue

Ecocrop





I'm just recording this so I don't misplace the link. Of course, if anyone else has any cool links about plants, I'd… Continue

PHP is a scripting language used to create dynamic web pages. Whenever you point your browser at a web address, the browser sends a request to the web server asking for the page. Often, the server simply has an HTML doc**ent stored on a disk somewhere, and it sends this doc**ent. However, if PHP is used, the server will execute the program code and send the result to your web browser. The code can do anything—query files on disk, create images, modify databases or bring in data from… Continue

Here's an entry for the Next Step Challenge.



I read a couple of interesting posts recently; "Provide skills, not just finished technologies" by Fleep Tuque and The Graveyard of Good Ideas by Nick Heyming. Nick's post is about someone who… Continue

This is part of the Power Evocation GAME1 activity.



GreenThumb is "the nation's largest urban gardening program", giving people in New York City the opportunity to work with local gardens. Of course, an urban gardening program might be appropriate for many different Evoke Powers; Spark, Collaboration, Resourcefulness, Sustainability...But looking through the… Continue

In 10 years...

I live with several dear friends in a single house. We pool our creative talents to create games, websites and books for purposes of entertainment and education, advancing the state of the art of interactive entertainment. In my spare time I grow crops in small gardens around the house. I also teach programming, mathematics, gardening and cooking to whomever wants to listen.

I don't have much experience with social innovation, but the one organization I know about is Kiva. For those not familiar with the site, Kiva lets people loan money to low-income entrepreneurs. The fact that these are loans and not donations connects lender and recipient with bonds of responsibility. Also, the recipients of the loans use the money for specific purposes to improve their situation. For example, in December of 2008 I loaned $25 to a woman named… Continue

"Iteration" literally means doing something over and over, much like repetition. However, there's a connotation of doing something a little differently each time; perhaps getting better each time.



This website is all about solving problems. More precisely, it's about creating and deploying solutions to problems. If we consider this process in very general terms, we might come up with a series of steps:

1. Gather information about the problem.
2. Design a solution…

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The "Exhibit A" article, Innovation in Africa tips, has several tips that might fall under the umbrella of "Sharing skills and knowledge". That phrase is explicitly included as the next-to-last tip in the final summation.



The article was written for an audience hailing from industrialized countries, where people have access to a lot of technology, resources and knowledge. It gives advice for people… Continue