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.

Lifestraw a Life Saver

he looks highGlobally, about 6,000 people a day die from water-borne disease. These are preventable deaths but, in many places it is too expensive to provide clean water for everyone and as a result people contract water-borne diseases. A fancy new drinking straw can stop 99.99% of parasites and bacteria from drinking water.

It’s called the Lifestraw and is currently being tested in the field. It is not as small as your average straw, but it’s small enough to wear around your neck. The manufacturing costs are low too – only $3 per unit. 70,000 units were handed out to earthquake victims in Kashmir last year. More testing is needed, but this is off to a very promising start!

Thanks, Kathryn!

Sonic Fabric

dressEver wanted to wear your favourite bands, well how about their album? Now you can!

Sonic Fabric is a a fabric woven out of old audio cassettes. The great part is not just that reuses otherwise trashed material, but that it can still be used to play music. Since the fabric retains the audio signature all you have to do is run a tape head over it.

One of the members of the band Phish has even worn one on stage and “played” it live.