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Hey Everyone, It looks like Vinay Gupta, the designer of the Hexayurt found out I blogged about it, and posted an addendum. I have it copied below for your reading pleasure. The more curious I got about this, I had to test it myself. I whipped out some 2.5″x5″ Index Cards, and the always abundant Electrical tape and made a rough model. Check it out. It’s pretty sturdy, even with my bad taping/construction methods. I can see living in one of these for awhile.

Hi, Vinay here, designer of the Hexayurt.

For disaster relief in America, we have a plan. It’s a good plan, according to both the American Red Cross and FEMA.

Here’s how it works. You got four things you need to put together when it comes to rehousing a person in a hexayurt in a disaster. Those four things are:

* the person who needs shelter while the situation calms down

* a household who’ll give them a place to put the hexayurt, and provide access to a toilet, a shower, and electricity etc.

* the raw materials to make the hexayurt. Every day the building industry in the US uses enough to make 120,000 hexayurts, enough to shelter 600,000 people.

So we have a plan for using a distributed database to connect these resources in a disaster. It’s something that Amazon, Google or Yahoo - or any number of other big internet companies - have the hardware and software to do.

Then we need a way of making sure that you can get access to the database and find your way to where you need to get to. Two ways of doing that.

* Pre-printed emergency response plans, or
* A dynamic system you connect to over the cell phone network, coupled with emergency cell systems.

An emergency cell system is a national supply of free cell phones, and mobile cell towers made to be helicoptered into disaster areas, with self-contained power and satellite links to carry the calls.

Expensive, but necessary. When something happens, you fly in the emergency towers, and give anybody who doesn’t have their phone with them a phone. It’s that simple.

On the phone, there’s a link to the “where do I go to find a shelter?” link, and it takes the GPS data from the phone, and guides you to a place where a volunteer host family, raw materials, and some builders all coincide to give you a nice new place to live.

There are three goals here:

* reduce the load on first responders, like the fire service

* enable the people involved in a really huge disaster to get shelter, to prevent more Superdome type scenarios

* to built self-reliance as a key part of disaster response

We’ve learned, from Katrina, that the Federal Government is not well suited to doing disaster response in the US. It’s got too many separate departments, too many rules, too much bureaucratic slowness and all other kinds of problems. And that’s not something we can reasonably expect to change: you make a machine to do one job well (handle ordinary times) and you can’t expect it to suddenly do well in a massive crisis.

http://disastr.org

Is the site we made that describes the plan. Please click the link and learn more about our plans for protecting Americans in disasters.

Imagine this scenario, if only for a moment: Your town undergoes a terrorist attack. Somebody poisoned the water supply, and now it’s raining poison. You have to evacuate. What do you do? What do you bring? Can you survive by yourself or with your family/friends? Some o us can simply goto a friends house, others not so. A recent project I ran across called Hexayurt. This project was designed with refugees, and disasters in mind. Basically, using a dense foam board, and a minimal of cuts, you can literally tape (yes, I said tape) a building together. Such a building is weather-resistant, is insulated and reflective, so it’s both cool and warm at the appropriate times, durable since it’s part geodesic dome, as well as cheap. Yes, I said cheap. How cheap? Try $200 for a medium-sized building. Build the big’un for a mere $300. These aren’t as small ass they appear to be either! Look at some of the videos, to see someone walking around inside. Remember - 8 feet is a standard ceiling height.  The big Hexayurt has a usable 166 square feet of floor space, with a ceiling of 8′ or higher. That’s not bad for a mere $300, considering here’s a Home Depot 80 square foot shed, for a mere $398. That’s half the size for more money, not to mention a lower ceiling height, and no insulation. The organization giving out the plans for Hexayurts also has a water/electricity plan in place too they are trying to put in place.

Why should the average American consider these useful? Well for starters, they compact down nicely. The pile is never larger than 4′x8′, and can be from 6-12 inches high. That can be kept under most beds. Secondly, they can be constructed in 1-2 hours, from scratch, less with practice. So your having a party, set up a small cool shelter, or perhaps a heated outdoor smoking room. Now it’s cheap. I particularly enjoy the idea of using a slightly stronger material, and a second layer of tape (reflective foil tape) and turning these into 10-20 year structures. For $500 I can have a decent sized, insulated cabin in the woods. If I decide to move, it comes with me. Perhaps the best part of this dwelling is the recyclable nature of it. Just give the panels to a friend doing some home renovations - it’s standard insulation, so you’ll only lower there HVAC costs.

I really like this idea. It’s perfect for many projects and situations. Hexayurts were recently featured at Burning Man, where they kept quite cool during the day and warm at night, those lucky dogs.

Investigating ways to nullify fear is a very arduous task. There are many schemes, many different ideas of what fear is, and many different approaches to overcome it. I personally feel as though I may have a “deeper” understanding of fear than most people due to my panic disorder, and this affects my perception of how I overcome panic, and the associated fear.

As a long-time sufferer of panic attacks, I’ve been on many medications, and have been on many different therapies. Few of them worked, but the one treatment that worked for me, and worked well was actually a placebo. I took Klonopin, a highly-addictive drug, for 9 years, without any noticeable benefit. One day, after realizing that it didn’t help me, and cost my family a respectable amount of money, I stopped taking it. I just took it out of my morning routine, and rationalized it was wasting time for me, and I should just forget it. How did I apparently break my 9 year old addiction with such apparent ease? It was nothing another person said, nothing a drug did, and certainly nothing forced on me.

Read the rest of “The Power of Suggestion” »

Fear is a dehabilitating emotion. Seriously. I know that some of you, when you think of fear, think about maybe bees, a cockroach, maybe a snake. I’m hoping none of you came out of it maimed. Seriously, how many times in say … a month do you face your fears?

Well I’ve decided to face all my fears - and chronicle them here, with the tag “fear”. I started today, by facing my fear of heights. I climbed a 70 foot later straight into the air, off a fire truck. Let me tell you it was quite scary, as you approach the end the ladder starts twisting, and swaying. I mean, really rocking around, by as much as a foot or so. I got to the top, locked myself in, pulled out my phone, and took a picture to share. I plan on exceeding this height in the future! Click on the pic for a larger version.

So lately I’ve been investigating some alternative lifestyles, and I’ve compiled a small list of the most appealing lifestyles.

1. Minimalist

The minimalist lifestyle is what alot of people would consider camping, only long-term. Think 200 years ago. The minimalist lifestyle involves building a permanent home, that is both made from natural resources, as well as efficient. Several examples are log cabins, hill-homes (homes which are built into homes), as well as homes built into the trunks of large trees. Another pervading theme is the self-sustainment, or basic ability to feed, clothe, and amuse oneself. This is usually done through hunting, trapping and fishing.

This lifestyle is very detached, as well as risky. It relies totally off the local environment to provide sustainment, and comfort. There’s no going to the supermarket for burgers if you missed your catch.

Initial Cost: $1000-$2000

Weekly Cost: $0

2. Minihome

The minihome lifestyle is most appealing to people who want to reduce environmental impact, but don’t want to give up all technology, and conveniences. A minihome in itself is a home designed to be the least obtrusive, as well as environmentally friendly. These homes are really trailers, but with the commodities needed to live there permanently. Generally, these homes are powered via solar panels, but some may use optional gas/propane to help power them, as well as using an outside water source. The only commodity I would miss with these homes is my internet, but with EVDO and other cellular internet technologies advancing, it’s possible to be completely disconnected in this fashion. Consider these homes only appropriate for one person, unless you are very comfortable with the other individual, as you will have alot of time spent right next to them.

Initial Cost: $5000-8000

Weekly Cost: $50-200

3. Green House

 The Green House design is becoming very popular lately, as it involves giving up close to none of the conveinces of a normal lifestyle, however offers a greener way of living. Green Houses are homes that have either been retrofitted, or built with an energy-reduction design, as well as recycled, or enviromentally friendly materials.  Common examples are Photovoltaic Panels, Photothermal panels, as well as Energy Star products.

Which freedoms and conveniences would you give up for the environment?

Could Microsoft’s latest operating system, Windows Vista be the kickstart that will feed the Linux Desktop?

Linux currently has a 1% market share in the desktop environment, as opposed to Windows 90%, and to no surprise. Linux is considered to be more painful to use, as opposed to Windows, and only beneficial for the tiny amount of end users who manage to learn anything beyond how to copy/paste MySpace layouts. However, Vista could be the kickstart Linux needs to enter the common household. Vista has many enterprise users regretting they deployed it, and indeed many corporations are reverting to Windows XP. Also, Microsoft’s latest claim-to-fame is it’s new documentation format - Office OpenXML is flying in the face of current open standard documents. Basically, Microsoft is reinventing the wheel, but with a way they can put their name on it.

Linux on the other hand, is much more difficult to break than windows, as well as supporting a more open operating system. A classic example of this is your bootloader. When you start your computer up, a small program executes, to tell the computer how to boot the operating system. Windows bootloader (NTLDR), only allows for Windows Operating systems to boot from it. Basically, preventing you from using linux, or mac os, or anything else you might be able to put on your computer. However, GRUB and LILO, linux’s primary bootloaders will let you boot anything you want, from Windows to Linux, to even a memory test tool. Not only that, but Linux supports a very cross-version compatibility. The very same wireless driver I’m using now, I can use on any computer running Linux. Try that with Windows. (XP vs Vista, 32 bit vs 64 bit). Not only that, but most of the hardware I use on Linux don’t even require me to install another driver. It just works! Combine that with a price of $0, an easy way for a company to fix it’s own products (open source), as well as 0 known viruses, and an excellent security reputation and Linux might be posed to take over the desktops of the world.

So, tonight I begin my journey, my quest, nay my … mere introduction to the world of blogging. Well, why blog? Well, I plan on publishing my personal interests, reviews, and perhaps some useful tips related to technology. Now why would I, a mere 19 year old man publish such information? Because I am a geek. A geek with alot of experience and a eye for useful tools. I hope to make my first few posts tonight, and bring you all into a new level of techno-consciousness.

Stay Geeky,

Kyle Y