Couple good TED talks

Saw a couple really good videos recently on TED...

Chip Conley: Measuring what makes life worthwhile (strong believer):
http://www.ted.com/talks/chip_conley_measuring_what_makes_life_worthwhile.html

Reminds me of a good blog on simplicity: Becoming Minimalist

And this funny one from Dan Phillips: Creative Houses from Reclaimed Stuff:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/dan_phillips_creative_houses_from_reclaimed_stuff.html

Dan's a funny guy and eloquently describes our human tendencies to think in predictive ways.  Very interesting and nice houses.

To my 5 followers.. sorry so long between posts.  Here is a new topic which I plan to devote a lot of time to (well, a lot relative to my overall free time):  complementary currency, LETS, barter-exchange, and other forms of grassroots economic systems.  Here is Bernard Lietaer, author of "Growing Wealth: Growing Local Economies with Local Currencies", from TEDxBerlin:

The Blind Optimist

Here’s how a conversation went between myself and someone who will remain nameless.  Let’s call him “Blind Optimist” (BO).  

BO is of the mindset that the economy will always trend upwards, that there will always be a new technology and new sources of energy to push civilization onwards and expand our global population without any worry of negative side-effects.  

I don’t know how we got on the subject but we were talking about the economy and how uncertain the future is.  I said something to the effect of “this will be a prolonged downturn unlike any other we have seen”.  BO’s opinion was that the economy ebbs and flows up and down and will always recover a temporary downturn to higher than the previous economic level.  

I don’t disagree that this is how things have played out for the past 200 years.  But what he couldn’t imagine was the concept of finite resources.  Substitution can work for a while but only until the resources you need have no readily available alternative.  The population boom and changing demographics accelerates this pace.

As we all know, it’s important that our economy continue to grow.  Even when it plateaus we see mass panic in the markets.  The significance of Peak Oil or any other threat to continued growth should not be underestimated because of the turmoil stagnant economies can create.  There are “Occupy x” protests in the streets over it already and the US government is getting ready for further civil unrest.

I can’t blame BO for his blind optimism.  He has good reason to believe what has happened in the past 200 years would continue.  BO doesn’t care about big picture issues, there’s enough to worry about in our daily lives.  However, the astute economy-followers, investigative journalists and big-picture thinkers are more likely to be correct in turning observed trends into a picture of the future.  I try to pay attention to these folks.  

Here is an incomplete list of Peakers/Doomers/Economy buffs I sometimes read:

Nicole Foss, The Automatic Earth
Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute
Chris Martensen
Michael Ruppert, CollapseNet

For local solutions and inspiration:

Transition Ottawa / Transition Network / Robert Hopkins
Becoming Minimalist
the list above
my son...

A few bike pics

Just a few pics - I'm at the stage where I have to weld the diagonal parts to the sidearms.

Front view.  Ruler on the floor is to measure the desired 30inch track.

Holding the headstocks up with masking tape.  Not ideal but it works.

Wheel alignment is not precise at the moment, but I just want to see what I'm up against.

It's going to be a slow painful process cutting the arm to accept the headstock.

Can't wait to weld it up!

Improvising the build

I had a couple hours in the garage tonight so I got on to the hardest part of the trike project, the side arms. The key is to get the two front wheels at a right angle to the ground, and about a 75 degree angle forward on the headstock (the pivot). The forward angle will help automatically right the wheels. I started shaping the odd fishmouth on one of the side arms. When I lined up the frame with the wheel it became obvious I would need to either raise the riding height of the trike, or improvise something with the side-arms to line up with the headstocks.

Houston, we have a problem. A height problem.

I don't want to raise the height of the bike so time to improvise the side-arms!  I need to cut a diagonal piece of square tubing to mate with the headstock at the right angle.  It will have to be angled slightly backwards to get the 75 degree angle. 

Additional piece roughly marked.

Additional diagonal piece will be welded to the headstock.

It turns out I cut the piece on the opposite angle - luckily it's perfect for the other side. 

About a 75 degree angle is desired for proper handling.

So the next step will be cutting the left side diagonal piece to the right angle, visually line each side up with a wheel and headstock, then weld them in place.  Then I'll trim the excess off the main horizontal arm and start the process of cutting the fishmouth out for each headstock.  Once they're welded on I'll have a rolling chassis with no steering.