Garden Update

The last time I told you anything about the garden it was just two boxes of dirt. Since then we've learned a lot and even have a couple things to show for it. We started with a variety of herbs from seeds, but a late frost hurt our efforts. Lauren then brought home a number of plants ready to be planted in the ground. These were tomatoes, squash, zucchini, eggplant, onions and arugala. At the same time we started some beans, peas, and carrots from seeds. Right now I have to say that the plants from seeds have been doing better than the plants we bought, but I think it may also be due to the types of plants. The beans, peas and carrots are producing, but the squash may be getting too much sun and heat to survive.

The tomatoes have started to produce and the arugala is going gangbusters but is getting too big and bitter before we can pick it. About a month after that first planting I planted more bean, pea and re-tried basil from seeds. We also picked up a few pepper plants. The basil is looking good now and we just picked the first chilli pepper. One important thing I learned which I think made a difference was pruning. This is taking some of the plant parts off in order to guide the growth of the plant, for example steering the plant to put more energy and nutrients into fruits. Another thing that we've had to do was provide plant food once and awhile, including worm poop and amending the soil further with compost. We also put down some pine needles in the bed as a sort of mulch to retain moisture. Now I'm trying to deal with some pests on the green peppers.

In addition to the garden proper I've transplanted some of the basil into separate pots and am keeping them around the deck to keep mosquitoes away (possibly?). We've also added some rhododendrons in the back as well as a honey crisp apple tree and a blackberry bush. Finally I spit around 6 watermelon seeds into a planter and they are starting to sprout. This week we're also getting some rain so it looks like everything's coming up roses. My biggest challenges at the moment are trying to save the squash and green peppers and possibly getting the eggplants to produce.

What to do with all the Boxes from Wedding Gifts

Just back from San Francisco for the wedding of Paul and Hilary I found a few ideas worthy of pulling me out of my blogging slump. The first is obviously the wedding. It all went down in the Presidio on a beautifully clear July day. The whole weekend was a unprecedented success for which the couple deserves much of the credit.

The second thing to really capture my attention is a far more public matter to which I can provide more information. On Sunday during some free time I wandered down to Dolores Park with Lauren and Peter. We found great people watching and were content to just pick a spot on the side of a hill and relax for an hour but as we entered the park a gathering on the far side caught our eye. At first glance we thought it was a fight or maybe some performance art. We could see one man on stilts but no juggling and so we decided to go have a look for ourselves.

We found that many of the people were dressed in cardboard armor adorned with superhero logos or medieval flavor. In the center of the circle were two children doing battle with swords which were actually the remains of a roll of wrapping paper. It was a tournament that we watched in it's entirety. Then, when we thought we could get on with our frisbeeing and people watching, the whole thing was taken up a level. Adults with wristbands of different colors were allowed to get their own tubes and do some battle and eventually the sides formed at opposite ends of the field to do Braveheart-style battle. We were standing near the person who took this video. Notice the guy in battle garb (red plume) riding a play horse. He was on the team at the far end and flanked the charging team to appear right behind them, wonderful strategy.



Looking into this further I found that what we witnessed has happened before in Seattle and Sydney and is called the Cardboard Tube Fighting League. Interesting enough. What I was surprised to find out was that there is a formal declaration of war from the Government of Box Wars against the CTFL.

Declaring that a state of war exists between the Government of Box Wars and the government and the people of the Cardboard Tube Fighting League and making provision to prosecute the same.

Whereas the Government of Box Wars has formally declared war against the government and the people of the Cardboard Tube Fighting League:

Therefore, be it Resolved by the Representatives of the Cardboard Tube Fighting League, that the state of war between the Cardboard Tube Fighting League and the Government of Box Wars which has thus been thrust upon the Cardboard Tube Fighting League is hereby formally declared; and the President is hereby authorized and directed to employ the entire naval and military forces of the Cardboard Tube Fighting League to carry on war against the Government of Box Wars; and to bring the conflict to a successful termination, all of the resources of the country are hereby pledged by the Cardboard Tube Fighting League.

This group also meets in Dolores Park but appears to be less formal with fewer rules. Box Wars sells itself as an art movement or an edgy-eco-sensitive motivation to recycle. Both make the point that people need to get out and have simple fun more often.

I did find some LARP in Atlanta called Nero, but it looks a little too scripted. Until my next trip to San Francisco I'll be waiting for the CTFL or another classically quirky phenomenon to make its way to Atlanta and wishing I had the energy to make it happen here sooner rather than later.

Bicycle News

With gas prices as high as most people have ever seen, more and more news stories are popping up about transit use and biking to work. Also, May is National Bike Month. A couple of interesting bits of bicycle news have caught my attention recently.

First, there is the story of the Dutch cycling lobby group working to prevent bike theft by teaching people how to steal bikes in the hopes of making them more aware of how to secure their bikes.

Second, last weekend there was a nude bike rally in the UK. It was held in Sussex and full nudity was allowed by the police there. It seems a bit akin to Critical Mass, drawing attention to bikes as a mode of transport by throwing them right in front of motorists in a way they can't ignore. But this goes one step further and captivates (or appalls) even the most apathetic bystanders. It also had a bit more focused purpose, taking on oil. This weekend a similar ride is planned for London and it should be even larger.

It doesn't have to be bike month to bike.

May Daze

I consider myself pretty lucky. I don't think I'm one to plan big outings but still continue to find myself involved in them and having a great time, all thanks to the hard work of others. (click photos for more photos)

For four weekends in-a-row during May I was out of town on a trip of some sort. On the 9th Shannon and John set up a camping trip on Jekyll Island that we were fortunate enough to be a part of. Shannon is a wizard at these things and I am not surprised that this trip was awesome. We all took our bikes down there and rode around the entire island.

A week later Lauren and her mom organized a meetup in Blowing Rock, NC. The plan was for them to drive down from the northeast with a table that was made for us by a townsman up there (who coincidentally presided over our wedding) and we would meet them, hang out and take the table the rest of the way home. It gave us a chance to see them, them a chance to see other family in the area, and us a chance to get the table which could not be taken apart and shipped. Lauren and I rented a Dodge truck and headed out early on Saturday. In another stroke of good fortune we all stayed in a house owned by some extended family and had the opportunity to visit the quaint mountain towns, including Boone. There the people were surprisingly gentle as they came to find out I had loyalties to the University of Michigan. We also found out of some bouldering spots very close to the house up there and made it out to the Blowing Rock Boulders twice.

The following week was Memorial Day weekend and thanks to the splendid vision of Liza's sister, Jess, we were set up in a beachside condo on Folly Island near Charleston, SC. We enjoyed lot of beach time as well as complimentary breakfast and happy hours. We also made it into the city to see the historic preservation efforts of the city and got to pay attention to some of the ultra high class old-money you might not expect of South Carolina. It was captivating but a bit surreal at the same time.

Finally last weekend I got off my butt and did some planning. I booked a backcountry site at Black Rock Mountain State Park for a weekend in the mountains. Lauren was off in Yellowstone for work and I used it as an opportunity to take Jorge out to see some of Georgia and visit a different park named for a colorful cobble. Dave and TJ made it up on Saturday to make it an official festival de salchica and for some creekside debauchery.

I also used it as an opportunity to get some hiking practice in for an upcoming trip on the west coast. In late July I will be heading to British Columbia to do the West Coast Trail with 7 other compatriots. The trip deserves more mention than I give it here and I will be providing updates and recaps as it nears and takes place.

This weekend I'll be at home in Atlanta, taking care of all the things I have neglected during May (ironically the month of May 'labor' Day). I'll be thinking of all the effort that others put into making this a great May for me and wondering what I can plan to give them some fun.

Re-invention

About two months ago I went to a wedding out in LA. In this politically correct, main stream environmental age that we live in couples are now starting to make note of all the ways their special day is a nice day for a green wedding (I hear an updated single for the Billy Idol comeback). A poem written and read by two friends of the couple mentioned the Canadian roots of the wedding ring diamond. Perhaps the food was local and the flowers organic, but as we proceeded to dance the evening away I continued to think about how it could go a bit further. The thought crossed my mind, how could the energy being expended by this party's patrons be harnessed and put to further use?. I thought that if underneath the floor were many cylinders (like springs) under pressure then the movement up and down of people on the floor could somehow be turned into energy. Perhaps for electricity to power the party. I didn't take it very far and the idea fell to the wayside like many of yours, I'm sure.

Today I was watching a video called The 11th Hour and they had a short video simulation of a dancefloor that produces energy very similar to what I had envisioned. I googled "dance floor collects energy" and got over a 200,000 hits (actually not that many). Turns out a fitness club chain in Hong Kong, called California Fitness, actually put the idea into practice. The article mentions a similar idea that place the generator into a shoe and could be used to power a cellphone.


This came a few days after I finished reading Malcom Gladwell's article on the how ideas are created and how similar ideas can often come about at the same time from different people and places. He reports on a briantrust formed by a former Microsoft Exec for the purpose of creating innovation. As Gladwell says:
"It was not a venture-capital firm. Venture capitalists fund insights—that is, they let the magical process that generates new ideas take its course, and then they jump in. [The exec] wanted to make insights—to come up with ideas, patent them, and then license them to interested companies."

I have to admit that I am always a bit proud of myself for a new idea, especially when I see it appear in practice later. But for real innovation to happen different views need to come together and combine knowledge to create new ideas or fields. A lot of you readers are my knowledgeable and creative friends from a variety of backgrounds. Who wants to start our own Manhattan Project of sorts? Even if we don't produce anything earthshaking (and it's very likely we won't) I think it will at least be enriching.

PS: DJs are the new fossil fuel.

Hear more from Gladwell Sports fans must watch!!

Sustainable Dance Club

Radiohead

Last Thursday we had the opportunity to see Radiohead play in concert here in Atlanta. We were on the lawn for a night that expected severe storms but most of the rain held off and we got a great show. Someone with us had binoculars, still most of the time I had no idea what J. Greenwood was doing over in his corner.

Below is a copy of the setlist. Nothing from Pablo Honey and a lot of new stuff (though noticeably lacking Jigsaw Falling Into Place). Though there were two of my favorite slower ballads, "How to Disappear Completely" and "You and Whose Army." I know plenty of you are going to see them this summer, let me know what you think.

"All I Need"
"There There"
"Lucky"
"15 Step"
"Where I End and You Begin"
"Nude"
"Pyramid Song"
"Optimistic"
"Weird Fishes/Arpeggi"
"The National Anthem"
"Idiotheque"
"You and Whose Army"
"Reckoner"
"Everything in Its Right Place"
"Bangers and Mash"
"Bodysnatchers"
"Videotape"

Encore:
"The Gloaming"
"Talk Show Host"
"Just"
"Faust Arp"
"How to Disappear Completely"

Second Encore:
"Paranoid Android"
"House of Cards"

Lexicon

I was killing some time on Facebook today and came across a feature that was able to capture and hold my attention enough to warrant a post. It is called Lexicon and it allows you to query words from posts made to people's walls. The results are plotted along a time line and you can perform searches on multiple words to compare trends.

With Lexicon we, the users of these mass social networking (read preference collection) sites, have the ability to mine some of the data we provide. Facebook, even give the data a first-cut cleaning to correct for common mispellings (sp.) and problems with apostrophes. Notwithstanding the absence of a scale on the y-axis, the conclusions we draw from the data are not always incredibly interesting. Take, for example, the graph below showing the appearance of each candidate's name on Facebook walls. You can add the word 'delegates' to your search and watch the peaks line up. You can pick out Super Tuesday (Feb 5) easily. More than that, you can see that Obama is getting a lot more free press out there in the Facebook-a-sphere.


I think this could be useful to get a rough idea about some associations we suspect to exist. Unfortunately the wall is not the best place to collect data as only certain topics are discussed and the makeup of the users is likely to screw up any generalizablity, and sometimes the scale of the two things you are comparing makes it difficult to find what you might be looking for (see 'cold' vs. 'bike'). Nonetheless it is fun to see you suspicions confirmed (no one mentions 'smog' in Dec or Jan)and to think a bit about what people are talking about. Remember that you will not be able to infer causation from anything you find here so be humble with what you discover. Here are a few more of my favorites.

Elevate

Over the weekend I had some time to sit down with some reading materials that I have not had time for recently.
This article was one that I particularly enjoyed and find myself bringing up to people over and over.

Like many of articles in the New Yorker it concerns a topic of only superficial interest (elevators) but covers it with penetrating detail. The article is built around an anecdote about a man who experienced one of the most dreadful thoughts many of us have about elevators: being stuck in one. A video of the ordeal is included below.


More than impressing me with this rare account, the article made me think of elevators as a legitimate form of transportation - enabling societies and furthering 'progress' for the last 150 years.

EWE 2008

In the middle of another late frost advisory I thought it was about high time to finally post something of the tornado we had about a month ago. It ran through downtown and then hit Cabbagetown, but little known to everyone is that it continued south and east into East Atlanta. We haven't attracted as much attention from the press and the volunteer corps but quite a few houses were hit hard over here.

Luckily we were about one block south of the real damage. We only lost a 'small' cedar in the front between our house and the neighbor. Several houses had damage from debris, if not a whole tree, hitting them.

We were out of town for a wedding but got plenty of calls and texts from family to check on us, from the neighbor about the tree, from Jorge about his first tornado and
from Mikey about the NCAA basketball in the Georgia Dome.

We expect that this type of event is a rarity and hope not to see our house crushed by the massive trees that surround it.

more pictures from Matt

ALR 2008

I have been away for awhile and as you may have guessed that means a lot has been going on. I have been accepted to the planning PhD program at Georgia Tech and have been awarded a three year assistantship to work on climate change and urban planning. I am still working out the details of it all but I will keep you informed.

This week I was in Washington DC presenting a poster on my thesis work at the Active Living Research Conference. Friday's schedule featured some activity for the participants in the form of walking tours, group runs and even yoga. I figured that I should disseminate some of the information I was exposed to at the conference. The theme related to linking research and policy and we heard from Oregon Rep Earl Blumenauer. He's a bike fanatic and you can see him on The Colbert Report below. Also are some of the best links I hear about.



Travelsmart a site from the Australian Government with information to help citizens make smarter travel choices. Also, the old guy at the top looks like he has the same helmet as me.

Perils for PedestriansThe guy who ran this was also at the conference. It looks like he puts out a show about the perils for pedestrians on some public tv station.

I first heard about Smart Growth America'sGrowing Cooler Report at APHA in November. It came up again in a talk from DC's director of planning on Friday morning. It relates directly to the type of questions I'll be asking about how climate change affects urban areas and vice versa.

The Participatory Photo Mapping Project at the University of Wisconsin was one of the coolest presentations I saw while I was at the conference. It combines photovoice with GPS and GIS to map the issues that residents identify themselves. Reminded me a bit of the work we started in Bogotá this summer and gave me some new ideas.

There was a lot of talk and presenting at the conference that related to schools and children. At times it seemed that we were always talking about tackling childhood obesity but not much about changing our own habits. CDC's SHPPS website has the baseline data to introduce you to this issue and to point out some of the weaker spots in the policy that guide school diets and curriculum. Some of the best slogans to come out of these discussions were
"you can't spell GPA without PA" and
"No child left inside"

There were plenty more informative speakers and tons of things I guess I could point you to but I hope that this gets you thinking and maybe even more active.