This past weekend I had a good time meeting like-minded people at the first Food Hackathon here in San Francisco. The organizers billed it as “the first of its kind”, however I’m familiar with Food+Tech Connect in New York City so I’m not sure they can make that claim (see: 2010 eventbrite. Note the almost free ticket prices. Can’t quite say the same for the event we just went to… Paid hackathons? Not sure this is how it’s supposed to work…) Anyway, we still had a lot of fun participating in the madness.

My co-founder and I went to this event together with the idea of building a simple local foodsharing, fresh fruit and vegetable barter marketplace to help create a more accessible sustainable alternative to the very money-dependent food system we all primarily rely on every day to feed ourselves. However in the process of brainstorming a name for our fruit and vegetable exchange we actually found at least two pre-existing websites that we hadn’t found before and were the exact same thing we had been trying to find, and ended up deciding to try using those sites first and reconsider what to build for the Hackathon.

We teamed up with Luke Iseman of Growerbot (Kickstarter) and Garduino (Project), along with his girlfriend Heather to work on his idea for building an online game similar to the mega-popular FarmVille (Facebook game by Zynga) but In Real Life. So like, you earn points (“Seeds”) for actually planting plants in your garden, and earn more points for uploading pictures and checking on your plants and posting measured growth values regularly. It’s called “Seed Mogul” and the goal is to encourage more local, independent, and distributed food production with an addictive and truly rewarding game. One of the parts of the idea that I really liked was his plan to actually allow users to “cash in” their “Seed” points for actual heirloom seeds that they would receive in the mail and use in their garden.

You can see what we built here (You just sign in with Facebook, just like FarmVille). Unfortunately we did not win any of the competition categories at the Hackathon. We probably could have made it a little more polished. But a lot of the key functionality is there. I’m realizing now that we could have also made a stronger case in our final pitch presentation for how this fits into the larger picture of the food sustainability movement and the efficacy of hyper-local fruit and vegetable production as a truly viable alternative food system model. In any case, feel free to sign up and check out our game! We’re hoping to see if anyone’s interested before working further on it. Most of all, James and I are very happy to have met Luke and Heather, and foodclouds is looking forward to possibly working together with Luke more in some fashion in the near future.

Turn the TV on.
Start playing something 3D or turn the 3D mode on.
Press the Power button on the glasses, and wait for them to connect.

Well, that wasn’t working for me. After about an hour of research, I came across the solution! You have to unplug the television from the wall for at least 40 seconds (wait for the red TV power light to go off in the front), and plug the TV back in and retry the above procedure.

Apparently this resets the bluetooth(?) receiver in the TV. Good luck!

 
 
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.