WattSec

Sustainability begins at home.

From the 23rd September 2011 to the 18th May 2012 I cancelled my electricity and was off the grid in the hope of learning more about energy, dependence, and behaviour change. In that time I learned a lot about myself and others, but most importantly (both in my mind and heart) I began another new journey in earnest. From my previous rural zen retreats in the mountains outside of Kyoto and San Francisco - to river valleys in northern NSW(New South Wales) Australia, I've been learning about, experiencing, and deliberately practicing non-violent ways of co-existing with mother earth.

Albeit I still currently live in the metro region of Melbourne (where I'm privileged with proximity and access to many types of markets) I decided to explore what I could learn about certain types of energy dependence, production, storage, and consumption. This is just the beginning and admittedly one could highlight deficits with my current lifestyle in regards to sustainability and toxicity, yet that is no excuse to maintain the status quo or remain complicit in the demise of our shared global commons.

Solar Tree v1

I have begun with electricity (as it lends itself to my techie disposition) and will focus more upon food security (another form of energy) over time. For example: I'm attending a 12 day hands-on Permaculture Design Certificate course next week (January 2013).

Solar load (previous series+parallel design was ~31VDC but now all parallel on ~16VDC)

For now, this post is being facilitated by electrons harvested via a new homemade solar tree and portable energy pod. It can be hard to be 'green' in rental apartments/properties due to limited sunlight, roof access, and inability to modify or augment the structure.

Wiring Diagram (high level view)

Above is the wiring diagram and here http://s.nodecity.com/rig is more info regarding parts, costs, evolution etc. but suffice to say the ADSL modem/router is next on the list and I haven't figured out hot water and cooking yet.

Note: The choice to use modular parts was in the hopes of scaling more easily via lessons learned for bigger rigs (inlcuding maximising surface area in a small vertical space).

annica

Many things come to mind. Less to body.

"Consciousness contemplating consciousness through consciousness" is the recurring theme.

Footfalls.

Mindfalls.

Communication.

Signals.

Hesitance. Reluctance. Projections. Stories.

Food security and energy security, other reoccurring themes. Solutions sought. Problems provided.

Bananas. Monkeys. Pigs. Rats. Dogs. Ants. Humans.

Energy. Flows.

Webtech creates a slipstream which, when combined with coffee and attention seeking squirrel genes, results in an anxiety predator, compounding twitchy turnkey solutions with no longevity nor real costs.

Carbon ephemera.

Universal dust.

Synthetic connectedness with elements of natural messages metamorphosing silicon. Radio commons and light privacy. Multiplexing.

Analogous aliens exploring inside and out.

De-salt the meat and the kids.

Prep' em?

Doomed repetition. No compound intrinsic knowledge and experience.. yet…

Genes, memes, and dreams.

Didjeridoos, frogs, and roos. Throat chakras. Speak fool. Silent wizards manifesting.

Playtime, anytime.

Protectors. Defenders. The power of nightmares. 

If you can imagine the worst, can you imagine the best? Which to fear?

Safety not in numbers. Belief in the power of one, belief in many. Malleable. Passive. Pain. Plan. Perceive. Promote.

Circles. Ellipses. Orbits. Dots. Nodes.

Drowsy dragons. Flying feet. Hearts on the line.

Loops

I can feel it,
I can taste it,
I can track it.

It arose,
I can identify each linked thought,
I can see the seed of each,
I can surveil the physical discomfort,
As each thought manifests,
As the anger, joy, desire is triggered,
And plays me like an instrument.

Which came first?
The image, the motion, the experience, the pattern,
Matched.
The conversation builds in my head.
An ease to the words that facilitate my anger, my joy, my desire.
Ephemeral.
Hunger is a trigger.
Shapes are triggers.
Sounds are triggers.
Touch triggers.
Sense gates.
'I' is a trigger.
When the quality of consciousness surveils itself.
There is hope.

Jungle Ducks

Jungle ducks,
Peppered with iridescent eyes,
Waterproof to fifty metres,
Hunting in packs,
Preying on predators,
Snuggling like bunnies.

Cloud and Moral Engineering

[nominal delivery draft, SOURCE Boston 18 April 2012]

Criticality, Rejectionists, Risk Tolerance - Daniel E. Geer, Jr. http://geer.tinho.net/geer.sourceboston.18iv12.txt

[excerpt] Summing up so far, risk is a consequence of dependence. Because of shared dependence, aggregate societal dependence on the Internet is not estimable. If dependencies are not estimable, they will be underestimated. If they are underestimated, they will not be made secure over the long run, only over the short. As the risks become increasingly unlikely to appear, the interval between events will grow longer. As the latency between events grows, the assumption that safety has been achieved will also grow, thus fueling increased dependence in what is now a positive feedback loop.

In the language of statistics, common mode failure comes from under-appreciated mutual dependence. Quoting from NIST's section on redundancy in their "High Integrity Software System Assurance" documentation[6] *public link permission revoked on previous link*:

[R]edundancy is the provision of functional capabilities that
would be unnecessary in a fault-free environment. Redundancy
is necessary, but not sufficient for fault tolerance. ... System
failures occur when faults propagate to the outer boundary of
the system. The goal of fault tolerance is to intercept the
propagation of faults so that failure does not occur, usually
by substituting redundant functions for functions affected by a
particular fault. Occasionally, a fault may affect enough
redundant functions that it is not possible to reliably select
a non-faulty result, and the system will sustain a common-mode
failure. A common-mode failure results from a single fault (or
fault set). Computer systems are vulnerable to common-mode
resource failures if they rely on a single source of power,
cooling, or I/O. A more insidious source of common-mode failures
is a design fault that causes redundant copies of the same
software process to fail under identical conditions.

That last part -- that "A more insidious source of common-mode failures is a design fault that causes redundant copies of the same software process to fail under identical conditions" -- is exactly that which can be masked by complexity precisely because complexity ensures under-appreciated mutual dependence.....[excerpt]