It's kind of hard to explain, it's probably best to just try it yourself. The website is http://ifttt.com. Have fun! And feel free to ask me questions in the comments if you need help figuring it out.

Let’s say you’re reading a magazine article you really like and want to share it with your friends. Just point Goggles at a part of the page, and instantly find a link to an online version to share immediately or read again later. You won’t even need the entire article in the frame. Goggles will also pull up more information from pages around the web where that text is mentioned, so its easier to learn about what you’re seeing. more

 
Original Post: 
So... It seems to me that if Newspapers truly wanted to get “hip”, they would not just use social networks to let their readers spam their friends, but actually integrate with social networks to let their readers connect with their friends and co-comment on articles and create and foster real discussion about the issues presented.
Picture this: For every article in the newspaper, you can scan it with your phone and pull up the online version.. Check in with facebook or twitter or your newspaper website account, and see which friends have read, liked, commented or shared, and then be able to join the conversation either on site or link through to the 3rd party site.
Or how about scanning the front of the newspaper to see which of the articles your friends have read/liked/shared/commented, and then being able to jump to the article on your phone, or see which page it’s on?
This sounds like an epic iPhone/Android/MobileWeb application dev project for any local or major newspaper that wants to not only stay relevant, but be the leader in connecting the physical paper experience with the digital world.
I'd love to work with a local paper on this.

Do you ever worry about the problems in the world? Would you consider yourself "concerned" about Global Warming? Do you ever wonder what your daily actions are contributing to the bigger picture? Are you comfortable with the way you are living now or is it a guessing game of greenwashing and faux sustainability? I'm here to blast through all the bullshit and get back to basics with you, right here right now.

So basically, here's what you want to do...

In the words of Mahatma Ghandi: "Be The Change"

And in the words of Marie Curie:

"Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less."

So read up! Educate yourself. And do everything that you can live your life in a way that affects the most positive reality around you.

My suggestions? Meditate. Breathe deeply. Focus on what you can change. Drink water. Eat for nutrition. (Raw Vegan is best). Give yourself rest. Love often.

Blessings!
+Rex

A Google Calendar of all of the Farmers Markets in and around San Francisco- Pretty neat!

Right now I'm adding all the ones I actually go to to my own calendar... Menlo Park. Palo Alto. Los Altos. East Palo Alto. ...and counting

From NYC HDR, posted by Rexford William Pechler on 3/03/2011 (29 items)

Generated by Facebook Photo Fetcher

1. Grow Your Own.
2. Buy In Bulk.
3. Bargain.
4. Cook.
5. Share.
6. Forage.
7. Get it for free.
   + Bonus

Full details after the jump.

Grow your own. Imagine walking out your door to a suburban/urban fruit and food forest, with a natural abundance almost unbelievable in it's bounty. It's not only possible, it's probably the best thing you can for yourself and the planet, and potentially extremely rewarding. If you're interested in growing a lot of food together *with* nature and not against it, check out Permaculture. It can even fix the desert: YouTube: Greening The Desert

Buy in bulk. With a little creativity, the potentially savings here are enormous! Calculate some meal costs small vs bulk. Think of ways you can split with neighbors or friends. Websites or social network apps will increasingly help with this.

Bargain or Haggle! Especially when you're buying in bulk or at a farmer's market, it makes a lot of sense (cents) to make an offer lower than the listed price. The more you buy, the bigger the discount you should expect. And, shop around, too!

Cook! Especially if you are buying foods in bulk... It makes sense to cook big meals and store them in your refrigerator for eating during the week. If you have enough time, it's really nice to cook dinner every day, and prepare breakfast before going to bed.

Share. ...with your family and friends, your neighbors, your apartment building, your whole neighborhood. Cook together! Eat together! Buy food together! Grow food together!

Forage your 'hood.
Find Edible Wild Greens (Weeds) around your neighborhood for your Green Smoothies. Pick Fruit from trees hanging over the sidewalk. I couldn't find any legal definition online, but it's possible your city might. (see disclaimer). You can make a (Fruit Picker, V2)  to reach those fruits that the rest of us can't. If you're going to eat a bunch it's nice to bring some friends and eat and hang out, not just come and take the fruit and leave. Don't be a stranger, we're all fam.

Get it for free. Feeling desperate? Get a free meal at your local community shelter. (Notice: this makes you homeless person)

Bonus: Geurilla Gardening and Guerilla Grafting

Guerilla Gardening - Sunflowers of Parliament




Grafting Fruit Trees



* Guerilla Grafting is just Grafting onto public trees. For example, there are a ton of ornamental plum trees in my neighborhood that can carry all kinds of fruit. Another example is a big wild apple tree in your neighborhood that could be grafted with all of your favorite varieties. Learn what kinds of trees you have in your neighborhood and what you can do with them.

<rant>
Even better, you can do *all* of the above and stop PAYING for food altogether and get your hands back in the Production of our Economy! More than ever, we need individual competition in the food market to give us better options. As you may have noticed, people will eat practically *anything* if they're hungry, so the more healthy better options we have available in more places, the better off we are. And I really like the idea of Public Fruit Orchards in park-like settings, where the community can learn permaculture techniques and co-create natural abundance through rainwater harvesting, accelerated composting with effective micro-organisms etc. Whoa permaculture for parks USA? Grass roots community program to encourage community participation in suburban/urban reforestry with combined fruit production. Educating neighbors how to produce their own food as healthily as possible to encourage maximum nutrition using completely natural homemade non toxic and recycled ingredients and materials to maximize productivity and reduce wasteful resource usage. Thinking of a wireframe hoop house open to the air, growing vines etc with built in hydroponics and aeroponics. The urban rainforest. Possibly Has optional/removable plastic cover for nighttime and or winter? Not sure best way to build. Sliding insulated cover goes over house during day for cooling, back over garden at night for heat retention for tropical fruits. Cold winters can be sustained inside the sealed insulated structure, with moved living quarters.
</rant>

Every house is different. We do what we can.

The goal is to create a place from the ground up, building shelter with straw bales, growing almost all of our own food. No septic tanks, no sewer systems, no paved roads. The ideal situation looks something like the garden of eden, lush edible foliage and abundant fruit trees. By fully embracing natural methods we can decrease the cost of living significantly by greatly reducing the cost of housing and food. To foster entrepreneurship and build a new community based on these fundamental principles of sustainability. And to show off and share our efforts and methods with the world through YouTube, media coverage, partnerships, and social networks.

Recently I left my job to focus my time on this project...

What does it look like?

When you first get to our eco-village, you find a large mud-covered building called the Better Earth Institute. This is a community center where we research sustainable technologies and hold community meetings and events. Next to the Institute there is a dormitory for interns and visitors. We've started building a neighborhood of houses across the courtyard.. All around there are young fruit trees growing vigorously. Patches of edible greens are everywhere around your feet. Berry bushes can be seen lining the pathways. Beyond the houses you can see a soccer field, and a series of greenhouses constructed out of wood and metal and plastic sheeting. You will also find an outdoor event center for summer music concerts, and film screenings. Not to mention, lots of lovely, happy, healthy people everywhere!

Here are some of the sustainable technologies I'm excited about:

• Permaculture
  This is term (coming from "Permanent" + "Agriculture"), is a general farming/lifestyle principle that embraces natural systems, paying attention to combinations of plants to design a system that minimizes the need for manual labor like weeding, and at it's best, creates an environment that is self-maintaining and provides perpetual abundance (for example, a combination corn field that replants itself every year). I've been studying this for a few years now, and I'm very excited to start putting it into practice.
• Composting toilets
  Check out the book: Humanure.  Our human waste makes a fantastic fertilizer, and composting toilets are a sanitary and highly efficient way of making the most of what would otherwise be polluting waste.
• Rainwater harvesting
  Rooftops make excellent rainwater harvesting. Permaculture gardening techniques can also be used to absorb as much of the rain into our soil as possible, instead of running away into a stream.
• Solar water heating
  For showers, hand washing, etc!
• Graywater treatment / recycling
  Drainage from showers, kitchen/bathroom sinks will be collected into a series of living water treatment tanks that house fish, beneficial bacteria and other micro-organisms that process and filter the water.
• Organic Hydroponics
  Hydroponics can be used to simplify food production.
• Year-round greenhouses
  By growing certain foods indoors, we can provide for ourselves year round. Greenhouses will be heated in the winter with active indoor compost piles and large water tanks that retain heat with thermal mass.

Funding
How are we going to pay for it all? Well, we have an initial committed group of about 12 people and together have some amount of savings to get started. We're looking for a grant to help us build the initial Better Earth Institute center, and will be also accepting donations for that cause. Beyond that, membership in the eco-village will require some combination of labor and capital, following the model of Habitat for Humanity that requires home recipients to invest 300-500 hours of labor in the construction of their home, providing a foundation for strong community relationships in the process.

I'm now putting together a 501c3 non-profit educational organization called Better Earth Institute to provide the legal framework for this enterprise, with the stated mission of:

Researching and sharing methods to reduce the environmental and monetary cost of living by fully embracing and augmenting natural systems and embodying the spirit of entrepreneurship.

If you're interested in getting involved, please donate and/or come join us!
Questions? contact me, or leave a comment below.

I've been reading this really exciting book called Alcohol Can Be A Gas, and it argues that the technology for a sustainable fuel economy is already here, and we can start driving on carbon-sequestering biofuels with our same cars, already today! What's better news? Because the nautral economics of alcohol fuel produxtion, rhe market will davor small to medium size farms, supporting family farms and young organic entrepreneurs. Not only is it going to instantly turn driving into an environment-healing activity, it's also already cheaper! (At the pump, if you can find it where you live).

Now, alcohol fuel, or Ethanol, is a historically controversial issue- the current popular methods of production are literally insane from a sustainability standpoint, only making sense because of the skewed economics of grain subsidies causing resource-intensive and destructive farming methods to dominate our fields. I am in full agreement that we should not be harvesting corn with diesel-powered tractors and petrochemically fertilized soil. It's stunningly inefficient environmentally. However, taking advantage of the best permaculture techniques, we can build fuel farms capable of sequestering up to 13 times the amount of carbon than the amount that is released in the production and consumption of the fuel. Literally reversing global warming with your choice at the pump. This fuel can be produced locally and organically. We just need to demand it, and it will come...

Farmers can make a lot of money from growing and/or producing alcohol fuel. The integrated production methods described in the book include many different integrated farm business models ranging from raising livestock to fish to selling  earthworms or animal feed or premium vegetables or compost.

Update: I noticed my engine kind of hesitating when idling. This was when gasoline/alcohol ratio was approximately 55/45 ratio. I'm still looking for a garage that can help me install the kit, also replace the fuel filter on my 2001 Acura CL-S. I could possibly do it myself, but the fuel filter on this car is located in the gas tank, so I need to drop the tank to replace it =\... That sounds pretty messy, and it would probably be a lot easier on hydraulic jacks haha. I'm still looking for a garage that can help me with the installation. Please contact/email me if you know someone who could help with this flex fuel conversion!