This one won't be around for long...maybe this one will...

Pressure grouting in Sonoma County...

Eradicate star thistle.

"Model towns like Celebration and Prince Charles' Poundbury settlement on the edge of Dorchester are prime examples of utopian nostalgia: places where everything is freshly minted to look old."—Charles Leadbeater, Financial Times, July 5, 2002

Mission Divided

landslide
http://www.coastal.ca.gov/lb/5-00-459.pdf
engineered fill
slope instability
Devil's Slide
http://www.tfhrc.gov/structur/gtr/century/chap03/chpt03.htm
landfill design
geofoam bibliography
Fills Over Marginal Building Sites - elastizell concrete

Housing Prototypes International Multifamily Housing

Pattern Language is the site that lets you design something, however humbly.

I've been looking at a way to schedule work. This is a system I picked up from Joel on Software where you break the various essential tasks to completion into hour-size chunks in Excel. Example:

Feature	Task	Priority	Orig. Est.	Current Est.	Elapsed	Remain
Spell check	Dialog	1	8 (hrs)	12	8	4

This way, when I go through the book with missing building section, missing HVAC, missing/extra doors called out on the door schedule, missing foundation plan or whatever, at least I'll know roughly, but convincingly, what size is the heap of trouble that I have to deal with. By creating a spreadsheet like this, I can defer or avoid altogether spinning wheels on something not needed to push thing out the door.

This reference to pictures of housing is from another world.

Soil nailing

In Peru(?) they daily clean with the strongest (smelling) cleanser they can find; e.g. Pine Sol. I disagree with this. Spic and Span are gone gone gone from shelves of Safe Way Wall Green?

Verdura 30
Metal Roof Company
IMSA Building Products

I drive through the suburbs every day on my way to work. There is a striking similarity between the efficiently designed regularity of the neutral toned houses and the gray cubicles I spend my day in. BUT, when I turn my eyes away from the houses this is what I see: beautiful green pastures, fields of grass darkened by the shadows of passing clouds, sheep, cows, goats, a lama, wetlands, tall reeds, red-winged blackbirds, great blue herons, crumbling abandoned houses and farms, aspiring Christmas trees, wild flowers.

On Vianya is a good article on apartment living and the vision above.

Land use in Wendover, Somewhere, but not Massachusetts, is worth visiting.

Villa Montalvo as to architecture consists of ten new live/work cottages and common building slated for completion fall, 2003. It's supposed to look to Rural Studio for inspiration. Right.

Time. Schedule the givens that make a practice work, the job. Move things around as incoming work, the creative, demands. Keep a tickler file for future paper, 1 - 31.

It's just out there,
flotsam and jetsam
on the big
cyber sea...

SF Chronicle had a great article today on Samuel Mockbee with pictures.

The first of the new-house families included the Bryants, an elderly, handicapped couple raising their three grandchildren in a shanty without plumbing or heating. They were delighted to get a solid, translucent roof over their heads.

Nick Denton has a great find on skyscrapers, or just go directly to SkyscraperPage.com. Just click on Mies and see what he did.

Size...............................................4"H x 12"W x 8-1/2"D
Weight.............................................................26-1/2 lbs.
Area....................................................................1/3 sq. ft.
Setback...........................................................................1"
Radius..........................................................................2'1"
Wall Height.................................................up to 2.5 feet
Comp. Strength...................................3000 PSI minimum
Absorption...................................................6% maximum