There’s more to this than just one blog.
If you checked the About page you got to know about why I started this blog, but that doesn’t tell you much about all the other things I’m trying to get happening.
Since that day in 2019, I feel things are a bit more normal. But at the time we were dealing with a large demolition directly across the road, and an almost year-long change of landlord, that dragged on and dragged on and left us with what I reckon looking back was almost PTSD, and it really hasn’t gotten any better.
But I got projects rolling, projects that I’d just been mulling over before that, and which I’d like to quickly acquaint you with here.
Writing.
I’ve kept at least one blog (or several…) going since the early 1990s (yep, before there was an Internet there were Bulletin Board Systems or BBSs and I ran one [between 1992.Nov.06 – 1997.Sept.12] and had my editorial section on there) and many of them didn’t survive the changes in hard drives, technology, and finally the Internet. But my oldest still extant blog TEdALOG Lite II – don’t touch that dial!!! was a direct tribute to my BBS ” TEdLIVISION – Don’t Touch That Dial!!! ”
Since then it’s grown to multiple blogs I write to keep all my major topics separated, a few guest spots and a few (a very few . . . well . . . okay . . . just two actually) paid gigs on online publications and a few websites all of which I keep up out of my own pocket, and some of which languished for years while I was weathering a few personal situations – but they’re back.
I’ve found my love of writing again, thanks in no small part to a very fortunate chance meeting online and then a move halfway across Australia; I’ve been quite literally living my best life with the best person to share it with, despite both of us aging and having long-term illnesses, we’ve decided that we’re the Universe’s gift to one another. And that brought back the gusto that my past life had all but squished.
My News Stand page on here will get you to all except the private family blog, and if you’re family you can contact me and become a member there too.
Activism.
I’ve always had a bit of a green streak, and a HUGE anti-corporate-abuse attitude. When a supermarket can put farmers in debt meeting their ridiculous contracts and the general populace in a semi-poverty situation by using their duopoly power to extort ridiculously inflated prices on the stuff they sell, hell yeah I will call them out again and again and again.
Meanwhile 15yo me realised that our household had gone from occasionally burning a few sheets of butcher’s paper and cardboard, and a tin can here and there, to filling a Shire-provided rubbish bin every few weeks, and projected that into the future, and didn’t like that picture at all.
Parts of my activism are hands-on – I’m 65 with slight mobility issues but we’ve had a vege garden every place we’ve been and I’ve kept lambs and chickens and ducks and rabbits where possible, and that’s not an attempt at cheaping out on the grocery bill but an attempt at a light balanced footprint on the Earth.
But my main efforts the last fifteen years have been directed at the waste we’re drowning out Nature with. And my most scathing writings are aimed at the corporations and companies telling us all that waste is for our convenience while it’s always only ever been for their convenience and profits.
Recycling.
Almost two years ago I bought a 3D printer. It was admittedly the cheapest model bought on a double sale event and which I’d been saving my pennies for over a year for, and it might look like would generate more plastic waste than it’s worth – but that’s not the case. I’ve used it to print trinkets for my wife but its main function has been to print useful alternatives to commercial plastic. (More of this on my ptec3d/RCX and above mentioned TEdLIVISION blog and why this is actually a better choice.)
It’s now also providing me with structural parts for machines I’m developing that people will be able to replicate and which will provide ways to recycle plastics, cardboard and paper, fibre material, some metals, ceramics/glasses, and possibly even e-waste. I’m looking for collaborators / sponsors / etc to work on this, because thanks to modern technology all these things can be collaborated on, online.
RCX the recycling development has a basic introductory page but needs something better. Also of course that makes several domain names I have to pay for each year, hosting fees each month, and takes a fair bit of time to fine-tune and keep running. I could do with people that want to get involved. . .
If you’d like to get involved with RCX in any way, please contact me, if you’d like to help me by getting the word out please share this page or any of my other articles. I look forward to hearing from you.