Day: 1 November 2006

Explosive Coffee

In Ethiopia, a man uses spent shell casings to make coffee machines. I love it when people use former weapons of destruction to make something that can be used everyday in a constructive way. It shows a willingness to acknowledge the past while building a better today, plus some neat human ingenuity!

“The shells were dropped in Ethiopia during the war with Eritrea. They were dropped so people hid them in their homes and now they sell them,” Mr Azmeraw says.

“He cuts off the pointed ends, seals them and puts holes into the aluminium cylinder. The cylinder channels the water, coffee and milk.”

NANOWRIMO

runnerIt’s that time of the year again – NANOWRIMO!

“National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.”

I’ve tried this before and it was great fun, just kiss your life goodbye as you try to write a novel in a month.