Archive for the “Projects” Category

For the past few days I’ve been sparing moments to think about personal mobility. As an individual of practically no engineering background this has unfortunately not been quite as easy a process as I had hoped. In fact as of writing it remains at the conceptual stage, as may be seen.

Yes I have set my sights upon the prospect of designing and perhaps constructing a four-wheeled personal-scale mode of transport. I remain highly skeptical of my odds of completion – but hey at least it is something worth trying for.

I’ve decided to take a bit of a systems analysis approach to the project starting from the conceptual design phase and working my way back to defining the problem. That tends to be the flow of things when you respond to what you perceive as a nagging want or need.

So the problem that I seek to solve is that of getting myself from point A to point B in as efficient, convenient, practical and economical a fashion as possible. Oh yes. And I would like the resulting vehicle to be very light, compactable and thus portable.

Yes, portable. A vehicle that can stop a driver outside a workplace, be folded up in under a minute and carried indoors in a zip-bag. At this early stage I know that a lot of design questions may need revisiting.

How often have we heard of food crops being ruined locally and worldwide? Just recently in China a typhoon took the lives of two in Taiwan and ruined fruit crops for the season. It was touching to watch footage of the wife of a farmer break down into tears but beyond the emotions there lay a grim reality that will extend far beyond the day. The crops were destined for the market for consumption. Not only is the livelihood of this farmer ruined but the global food crisis was not helped any.

Upon the wings of disaster human innovation has a habit of riding, like a surfer riding a large incoming wave before it breaks. Without the disaster there is just too little interest in the improvement of any given situation. In this regard one may recall echoes of various improvements made following local disasters. Without doubt the unfortunate Simshar incident will also result in its own fair share of policy modification, such as the requirement of all vessels beyond a certain distance from shore to possess certain standards in safety and communications gear. However as with many disasters the potential victims try to push the worst case scenarios out of their heads. Such could ‘never’ happen to them. In saying this I wish those surviving the victims a steady recovery.

However, returning to agriculture one cannot but note that most farm lands are excessively exposed to the elements by the shear nature of the methods used. Common agricultural practice involves the clearance of ground for the sowing of seeds intensively. This leaves bald soil unprotected by foliage or other vegetation and so such is vulnerable to both the sun and the wind. At the peak of hills erosion is even worse due to the increased exposure of the layout, which is why it is good practice to preserve cover vegetation at the tips so as to help prevent slides and to retain the regenerative properties of the cover. This would set the would-be farmer at advantage compared to a more ignorant food-grower but even multiple crop rotation cycles would still leave the fields relatively exposed. It is an age old problem. The outdoor farmer will always be at the mercy of the elements that he or she depends upon.

An alternative is to construct shelters of plastic or glass. Such provides the farmer with more control over the environment to which the crops are accountable. Results are also more reliable though the structures themselves are usually not impervious to the effects of weather. However in recent years a new concept in agriculture has been doing the rounds in the agricultural world. What if we were to integrate the concept of indoor farming with an architectural structure? The result would one variant in a variety of vertical agriculture plans that already exist on the web or in real life. The concept is in its infancy but I am of the belief that the concept is sound in principle, the growth of food crops within the urban environment. That would make food production much more reliable, provided that the structure can withstand a few good earth tremors.

Well while I get things in order I would like to promote an initiative upon another site that I’ve sadly had to let rest due to reasons of technical difficulties. However it is an open invitation and an opportunity. Feel free to contribute and I hope to get back to it ASAP.

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Well in this time of downtime (and ensuing up-time ^_~) I have had a lot of time to think about the purpose of pathforger.com – While I hadn’t wanted to make this a show about myself circumstances have made it so. Fortunately I am not one to just allow circumstances to dictate themselves to either myself or my projects, so here is what I have been up to and shall be up to. More importantly, this is where you come into the picture.

I have taken the liberty of setting up jamescauchi.org and this shall allow myself to be a lot clearer about the standing of pathforger, which I have repeatedly stated is ‘not’ about me (ok so I allowed it to stray during the election period. That wasn’t ideal but I did what I had to do ^_~). I meant it every time and this time it is no different. Since setting it up I was presented with a new dilema. How will this affect pathforger?

While I had originally feared that it would fall behind due to divided attentions I now realize that that kind of reasoning runs contrary to the very purpose of pathforger. Pathforger is not about ‘my’ views (though I am welcome as a participant) but about the views of every single person who would like to develop their fragments of ideology in an environment that is purposely set up for pluralism and debate.

So here is my invitation to every reader out there. Do you feel that you would like to contribute to the pathforger project, donating your articles on various aspects of ideology in the context of reality?

Here are the prerequisites:

- You need to have ideas of your own
- You need to be willing to have your ideas debated in an open fashion
- While taboo topics can be written about, they should be written about in responsible fashion

I am only concerned about your political leanings (left/ right/ liberal/ conservative) for the purpose of attempting to understand the make-up of contributions. Yes, that means that you can be from any country also and of any personal faith, although at least decent-quality english is expected. I also very much prefer quality over quantity. ^_^

I welcome contributions that are ideological in nature (unconcerned with real-time events) as well as observations of real-time events (preferably not too far removed from the writers in question).

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Do you already have a blog or other web-presence? That is fine. You may include a link to your website either at the top or bottom (preferably not within any contribution unless refering to other posts within your website).

If you become a regular writer then your name will be included in the list, just as my own has been as of late. I shall also be seeking to redo the forum space by or within the summer months, and would also like to restructure it so as to be simpler, more user-friendly, more attractive, and more conducive of debate (and remember the object is to identify and challenge ideologies constructively and not to pitch them against each other destructively).

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At this point in time I would like to hear expressions of interest, comments are also appreciated. Like, for example, how do you feel that the list of categories should be altered or redone in a scenario of the sort I am describing? ^_^

Don’t be afraid to be the first! After all, I am hoping to offer persons a platform to air their views, promote their respective websites and themselves (indirectly through their articles), and sow the seeds for something bigger, without requesting monies (though I wouldn’t decline any of course ^_^). I suggest that it is a good opportunity to enrich each other!