OpenStreetMap – Project Haiti from ItoWorld on Vimeo.

This is the OpenStreetMap community’s response to the Haiti earthquake. Via The Map Room.

I wonder whether raster analysis could help provide an interim route detection algorithm for these Crisiscamp-type events.

If, on your journey, you should encounter Veggie-Tales God... Veggie-Tales God will be peeled.

While I may not see my dream of acquiring a solid mag-block of Japanese steel knives fulfilled for a few years, using a protective rubber glove and this thing was shockingly effective today.   20 minutes saw 10lbs of medium-sized Russets go from washed to flawless-white & quartered.

The problem is the fundamental disconnect about costs in that market. When you build with well insulated walls, non-toxic materials and better build quality, the cost goes up. The people who understand the mobile home/trailer park system, where you rent the spot and own the manufactured home, balked at the price. No, they laughed at the price. They thought we were all kidding.  The people who understood how much it cost to build a proper, healthy green trailer didn’t get the model of tenure. There was nowhere for them to put the home because they had no intention of going into a park.

French fries, brown gravy and cheese curds topped with a poached egg, bacon, Hollandaise sauce

Neopolitan mini-cupcake set with wafer cookies and strawberry marshmallows dipped in white chocolate dipped in chocolate cookie crumbs

A wheel of brie stuffed with chocolate and baked in a puff pastry

The Rubix Cubewich

Cubes of pastrami, kielbasa, salt pork, salami, and two types of cheddar between flattened toast

While on the topic, I am stunned to see that the Gourmet Project has survived Gourmet Magazine – but one does reach a point in photography when it’s clear that their absolutely epic cover shots are within an amateur’s grasp with a little lighting, a $400 DSLR, and a fast 50mm prime. I just bounced my first flash for some family Thanksgiving shots on my aged Powershot S3 IS… and wow, it worked well. Since I used a spoon, it was useful for pumpkin pie afterwards. I see camera gear on my Christmas list.

Favorite food of the moment:
O’Tasty BBQ Pork Bao with Oyster Sauce

The ‘manifesto’ manages to at least articulate the urgency and the scale of the changes needed to ensure that my great-grandkids and their contemporaries around the world enjoy a better quality of life than I do – which is one of my basic definitions of a ‘sustainable’ civilization.

A concise snippet:

We can no longer afford to mistake the symbolic for the effective, or put our hopes in the mystical idea that if enough of us embrace small steps, our values will ripple mysteriously out through the culture and utterly transform it. We’ve been saying that for more than 40 years, it hasn’t happened and we need to stop lying to ourselves that it will. Live the life that fits your values, but don’t mistake that for changing the world.