I’m posting this link to remind myself to read it.
BBC News: UK scientists have developed a process for making hydrogen from sunflower oil which could prove an important future source of eco-friendly energy.
I found this on Adam Curry’s weblog.
Sunflower to Hydrogen
28 August 2004 – 11:32 am
Notes from How Buildings Learn
6 August 2004 – 2:00 pm
I borrowed a copy of How Buildings Learn by Stewart Brand via ILL through my local library. I’m trying to work through the last couple of chapters right now because it’s due back soon at the originating library.
These are a couple of ideas I wanted to jot down before I return the book.
First, the “six S’s” from Chapter 2 (p. 13):
- Site – The … setting … whose boundaries and context outlast generations of ephemeral buildings. …
- Structure – The foundation and load-bearing elements that are perilous and expensive to change, so people don’t. …
- Skin – Exterior surfaces….
- Services – … [T]he working guts of a building….
- Space Plan – The interior layout-where walls, ceilings, floors, and doors go. …
- Stuff – … [A]ll the things that twitch around daily to monthly. …
Second, the strategic building rules of thumb from Chapter 11 (p. 186.):
… [S]pecfic to buildings: overbuild Structure so that heavier floor loads or extra stories can be handled later; provide excess Services capacity; go for oversize (“loose fit”) rather than undersize. Seperate high- and low-volatility areas and design them differently. Work with shapes and materials from near at hand,” advises Massachusetts building John Abrams. “They’ll be easier to match or replace.”
Closed Due To Weather
12 May 2004 – 7:12 pm
There’s simply nothing quite like a blizzard in May in Manitoba. Most folks are obviously a little grouchy, but the pure oddness of it means no one gets terribly worked up about it.
As you can probably read on any Canadian news site, most of the southern prairies got dumped with snow over the last couple of days. In southern Manitoba yesterday we had a curious mixture of thunderstorms and great quantities of wet snow and ice pellets. As long as you didn’t have to go anywhere it wasn’t that bad, except of course that the hydro was jittery or completely out for most of the day.
It was still snowing today. The wind was up a bit creating a whiteout during the bulk of the day. The hydro was generally back up (a few people were still without in the morning at least), but every major road in the area was closed.
It’s all died down now, so I went and snapped this picture of The Station (one of the local retail establishments). It’s the perfect summary for the last couple of days.
![[Photo of a snowy store front.]](/weblog/images/thestation.jpg)
For that picture to make sense you need to be able to read the handwritten sign on the door. It’s too small in the first picture, so I blew it up a bit. It reads “Closed Due To Weather”.
Idea for a Grain Elevator Adaptation
Elevators are great buildings. They look cool, but they also have this huge tall space inside. Unfortunately, with changes in agriculture, they aren’t as useful as grain storage facilities as they once were. A lot of people are always talking about alternative uses for them, because it’s such a shame when structurally sound elevators are torn down.
The ideas that I’ve heard include turning them into museums or putting a restaurants up top. The museum one is obvious, and it has happened (at least in Inglis). I don’t know if any of the restaurant proposals have actually happened.
There’s one idea that’s been clunking around in my head for a while, but I’ve not yet seen it mentioned anywhere else. I think an elevator would make a great rock climbing facility. A lot of climbing walls are put into normal sized buildings, which means they aren’t very tall or explorable like a real rock face would be. But, an elevator would allow the creation of some truly awesome walls both inside and out.
The really interesting part is that on the inside, in addition to being all-season and all-weather, it might be possible to make the walls easily movable. Most of the climbing walls I’ve seen (an admittedly small quantity) are static except for the movable holds, but I think it would be cool if you could also move the wall portions. I think the structure of an elevator lends itself to that kind of reconfiguration because there are so many different ways to build supports.
(Note to self: Google this.)