Thoughts on Greenbuild 2012 and San Francisco

Welcome to my post Greenbuild 2012 blog entry!  Scroll on down for the typecast...

This is probably the most touristy thing I took a photo of other than looking back on the Ferry Building from an adjacent pier.

This hybrid Fisker Karma is about 3,000 times cooler than my hybrid Prius.  Maybe I should buy a lottery ticket.

This is USGBC Founder and CEO Rick Fedrizzi delivering a message to the anti-LEED lobby during the Opening Plenary session.  I work for a construction product company, but I also help write and maintain LEED.  Politics is a complicated beast.

Fast forward from Tuesday to Friday for the Closing Plenary.  That statistic on the screen is accurate: the entire number of volunteer hours that have gone into building and curating Wikipedia are equal to three weeks of Angry Birds play.  This statistic makes me a bit more prone to be focused on life and learning.

The Closing Plenary was a bit more dynamic than last year's, but they all tend to seem long after several days and nights of sessions and receptions.  The speaker, Jane McGonigal, is a TED favorite.  She presented a variation of her TED talk on harnessing the problem solving and creativity of gamers to crowd source solutions to difficult problems.

The next speaker is a prominent architect and proponent of regenerative design, William McDonough. Among others, his most widely known project is the redesign of the Ford Rouge Truck Plant.  From the perspective of moving towards a Net Zero future, he raised the fundamental question of "What's Next?"

William McDonough has very strong opinions on materials in design.  His consulting group has worked with a number of Fortune 500 companies.  His TED talk tracks many of the concepts brought forth at Greenbuild.

This cursive typeface is unique to Royal portables from the 1960s.  Mine is a grey on grey Futura 800/

And the last Greenbuild related photo below is the view from the Google Green Team lair.  The food was fabulous as well.

Here are a few scenes from around San Francisco.  For anyone who is curious, all shots were taken with a Sony NEX-3 with the kit lens or 16mm f2.8 pancake lens.  Many of the street photos were taken by pointing the camera in the right direction without looking at the view screen.  The auto-focus is quick enough to shoot from the hip and capture casual scenes.

Public skating rink at Union Square.  The sight of palm trees and a giant Christmas tree together was only a little disconcerting.

The homeless fleet massing across from the Ferry Building.  In my limited experience, I found the panhandlers to be far less aggressive here than in Atlanta, Chicago or Washington, D.C.

Public protest is a way of life in San Francisco.  This is across from the cordoned off entrance to the Federal Reserve building.

Again, public protest is a common event.  However, this guy was angry, loud and semi-intelligible.  Even the locals were giving him wide berth.

This much vacant sidewalk at midday is a rarity.

At the very end of Greenbuild week, I found myself with no meetings or working meals.  I hopped the bus to find the Super7 Store.  The fact that it is located in Haight-Ashbury was a happy coincidence.  The food was great and cheap.  The stores were great for browsing and I was able to bring home some Super7 merch straight from the source!

Yeah, it was sunny all week while I was in the convention center (sigh).  This gives a little bit of the flavor of the area.

One of the cool specialty stores.  Well, cool if you enjoy irony.  They even had an Underwood 3-bank portable for sale!

But the main reason I took the bus to Haight-Asbury is the one and only Super 7 Store!  Imagine, a store full of giant robot, Star Wars, giant monster and urban vinyl paraphernalia.  Nerd heaven!

Unexpected bonus:  the first Kid Robot store was just up the street!

And with one last awesome storefront, we shall bid the fair city of San Francisco adieu.

 Hmmm...let us see if I can think of something creatively snarky to say about my Copyright to the text and images contained herein this little blog of mine.  Well, I own it all!  Bwa, ha, ha.  Yes, so greedy of me in this open-source world; but that is just the way it is.  Images may be used for non-commercial purposes with attribution pointing back to this blog or to my Picasa collection.  They may not be utilized for commercial purposes without express permission from the owner - that being Dwayne F.  I know:  that which can be published digitally can be hacked.  Go ahead.  Just see what happens.  I happen to have a fleet of giant robots and monsters at my command.  Remember what happened to poor San Francisco in my last post.  I repeat:  bwa, ha, ha.

New Maker Space - Teen Spirit Free of Charge

This page was scanned from the 1954 edition of "Science for Here and Now".  The student information inside indicates it was a second grade textbook in the Kansas City, Kansas schools.  It is a Good JuJu find from a couple of months ago.

Behold our new slate top work bench!  It should be impervious to solder, fire, many fine chemicals and Lego NXT pieces.  Metal bits can scratch slate, so we'll be careful with typewriter repairs and robot builds.

The real challenge is keeping a house full of book, crossword, pen, typewriter and electronics loving nerds from filling up this luscious horizontal space.  We will do our best and try to keep the major builds out by the drill press on the junk art bench.

Here is the new multipurpose maker space.  This was before addition of 200 watts of halogen lighting above.  This beast is all oak and the slate is 1 1/4" thick.  Yes, it as heavy as it looks.

I finally have a place to set up a proper soldering station.  This is our trial run with a new Radio Shack digital unit I picked up during one of their many sales.  It heats up quick.  Now we just need to improve our soldering skills.  I found the magnifier stand at a local thrift shop.

First Project:  I'm working with Claire on a kit we picked up at the Kansas City Maker Faire.  One of the local hacker spaces put together a pre programmed TV Be Gone.  It will be housed in a mini Altoids tin.  These things are the only way to stay sane in airports and waiting rooms.  I use my TV Be Gone selectively when it is obvious that no one is paying attention.  I've never noticed anyone even look up when the random, blaring TV suddenly goes dark.  Southwest terminals were horrible in 2010 and through the middle of this year.  I've noticed many of them have muted the screens except for football games.

This is what decades worth of teen spirit looks like.  There are few random gouges in the slate as well, but none profane.  Some of the graffiti looks pretty recent.  There is a Springfield, Missouri school district property tag on the bottom that can't be more than  20 years old.

This is somewhat benign teen spirit spoor.  Shelf liner covers up the worst of it.  Not that we or our middle schoolers have never seen four letter words.  Mild refinishing will have to wait for spring.

Well, my boring gray Royal Futura 800 looks like it grew out of the slate.  If I'm not careful, the color scheme may actually grow on me.

Travels with Trollie

Gators can only wish they were as attractive as Trollie.

Trollie loves elaborate desserts!

He has his eye on high class bling available in downtown Naples.

You might not have guessed that he is a friend to all children.

Soak him in vinegar for three days and he might soften up a bit.

Perhaps he could use a protector.  Yes, this is all downtown Naples.

Um. some coffee just isn't drinkable.

"Poor gator!", my wife replied upon receiving a text with this image.

He looks right at home in the Big Cypress Preserve.

Strangler figs  are pretty tricky.

Please excuse the margins of Typecast Part 2.  In true Florida style, it has more than a few hanging chads.

Yes, the heading should read "Swamp Lair" as opposed to "Swap Lair".  This is one of the joys of typecasting.  This one comes courtesy of the Royal Futura 800.  Saying it is cursive would be redundant if it weren't for the existence of search engines.

So Part 2 of the typecast sounded a bit extreme.  I think the proprietor was in the process of selling the handgun in question to a fellow enthusiast.  Sure, this was happening less than 100 feet away from a busy state highway that passes through the Everglades National Park.  The right to bear arms does not take a break for traffic; not in this part of America anyway.

I have to say that it was an impressive gun.  On the first loud and low pitched shot, I thought it might have been a muzzle loader.  Nope, just Dirty Harry grade large caliber fun!

I regret not capturing an image of the fake tourist family surrounding the 40 foot panther but I suspected the shooter was not the type that liked having his picture taken by strangers.  Here is the really strange part:  I have driven this road roughly a dozen times and only now noticed these impressive sculptures.  I do a lot of photography and am pretty observant.  If I did not have photographic evidence of Trollie and the Skunk Ape, I might have been concerned about my sanity.

It occurred to me later that covering a giant panther with camouflage netting overnight is a practical approach.  It's a pretty valuable piece of property that needs protection from aerial observation what with all those UFOs and U.N. black helicopters cruising above the swamps.

Trollie and the roadside Skunk Ape.  You only think your eyes are playing tricks on you.

Imagine yourself inside this store and taking this photo when the gunfire starts.  Yeah, it was a surreal experience, but I try not to be an average tourist.  Honestly, it didn't freak me out since I was in new experience mode.  I would have been more concerned in an urban setting.

A haven for outdoors types and rugged individuals.  This is on the loop road to the south of Tamiami Trail.

 I don't want to leave a bad impression, so here is the other real Florida.  The guided swamp walk through a slough in the Fakahatchee Strand was awesome!  Except for the dried out pools, this is all part a really wide and shallow running river.  The water is clear and cold with nary a gator or venomous snake to be seen.  In the deeper water the mosquitoes were surprisingly scarce.  I still put on 100% DEET to be on the safe side.

Merry Christmas from all of us!

Analog Record Keeping and Kansas City History

I'm plucking out cards from cancelled sales for typing use.  This is the back of a card like the one below.

The story of one customer and his watch.

Each drawer held hundreds, if not thousands, of customer records.  The earliest were from the 1920s and the latest from the 1960s.  The entries from the '50s on weren't as interesting since they added small appliance repairs.

I have a certain nerdy fascination with forgotten history gleaned from esoterica.  Out of all the antiquities I looked at during the October First Fridays' sale at Good JuJu, this was my only purchase other than a 1960s vintage Girl Scout Handbook for my wife.

There are many uninteresting stories in this collection, but that is made up for by the really interesting customer stories.  I settled on this one because it contained a record of a house call to repair the dashboard clock on a "Ladies Red Buick".  In looking at the customer addresses, I've come to the conclusion that this jeweler generally served the upper middle class and above in Kansas City proper.  There are many monied addresses along Ward Parkway in the file.

The drawer full of record cards was one of many.  In talking to the seller, I found out that the whole lot of drawers came from a single huge estate sale cabinet that was in very poor condition.  So out came the drawers for sale to crafters, creative types and nerds.

I guess since I am using backs for typing, that makes me semi-creative.  The fact that I am blogging about it places me squarely in the nerd category.  At any rate, I have lots of fun reading material to pick through.

Typecast Courtesy of the Royal Futura 800 (Borg Edition)