When I mentioned over the holidays that the croutons on our Christmas salad were actually homemade (in response to a question on the brand), I was met with more surprise than I expected. Unfortunately, that response is something I've heard from lots of other people who actually make their own stuff, from food to robots.

The last 100 years of manufacturing, particularly the last 60 or so, have rendered the bulk of several generations incapable of seeing certain items as anything other than the result of factory production.

For food, that means that really simple items like croutons and whipped cream, when made instead of bought generate incredulity. It's as though those items have been moved from the class of things you can make yourself into the class of things you pay $3 for in the grocery store in a hermetically sealed container that's been on the shelf or in the refrigerator for 6 weeks or 6 months.

Fortunately, the whole "Maker" movement is helping to rectify some of this problem. Lots of people are taking these matters back into their own hands and discovering the joy of having made this stuff yourself as well as products that end up at a higher quality standard than the stuff plopping off the end of the Kraft factory line.

Anyway, last night, the homemade crouton supply was running low, so I made up another batch. I had the small digital camera in my pocket, so I took a few shots while I made them and strung them together early this morning into a quick slideshow and put the video up.

The croutons themselves look a little dark in the photos, but they taste great.

A couple of months ago, I ran across a link to a light electric vehicle called the BugE. It was notable not only because it's just a cool little bit of transportation technology that'll do 40mph, but because it was going to be far cheaper than the $25,000 to $100,000 that other electric vehicles capable of that speed tend to cost.

Today I got a note indicating that these things are finally shipping and you can order one. While they're a bit more expensive when all is said and done (about $5000 plus shipping) than the $3000 ballpark number thrown out when it was first mentioned, we're still talking about a very reasonable price for a slick little vehicle. The $5000 number is what it takes when you buy the kit, plus the lighting bits and the motor/controller/etc kit in addition.

I really like that his design specifically set out to be simple, using fewer parts than his previous designs. This makes the kits easier to build and cheaper to manufacture, which are critical to pushing stuff like this into the public consciousness. Even at $5000, it's in the price range of a snowmobile, ATV, boat, etc. That makes it a do-able project for a dedicated enthusiast (though it'll be a year or 2 before I'm up for it yet), instead of only for the die hards out there.

Given some of the recent total-cost-of-ownership I've seen for the iPhone, this would be a much more interesting way to spend that same money, as far as I'm concerned.

Photo: Fanch

At the moment, I'm inclined to pretty much put my DIY electric bike on hold. This first appeared to be a simple project.

1. Buy a cheap bike
2. Buy a hub motor kit
3. Install the wheel and connect the basic connectors.
4. Ride away.

First, the original bike didn't have enough room between the forks, so I bought a replacement bike after measuring quite a few.

Then, today, I finally had the time to put on the tire, install the motor, and hook it all together. My mom, Shelly and my sister headed out shopping for the day and the garage is mostly cleaned out after last weekend.

I got the wheel installed, and then wired the controller, the motor and the throttle together (they were just clip-together connectors) and went to hook the charged up batteries.

It was at that point that a bright flash of light blinded me. The smell of ozone filled the air and my fingers, newly scorched black and burned by the arc, dropped the connectors. Despite there really only being one way to hook this all together, something is apparently very wrong with one or more of the components.

Then, apparently proving which side of the scientific divide I'm on, I tried it again.

I think there was more ozone, but less scorching the second time.

This, combined with the fact that I nearly lit my pants on fire by casually tossing a couple of AA batteries into my pocket along with my keys a couple of weeks ago, thus shorting them out has me thinking it might be time for a refresher course in battery safety. Does anyone have some aloe vera?

This weekend, despite removing 15" of snow from my driveway, the calendar convinced me that the weather will be changing in 4-6 weeks to something that's more suited to riding atop a bicycle. And, given my stated intent to get my *electric* bike built "this winter", I needed to get off my butt and at least get the parts ordered.

So, I ordered the 600W hub motor kit from We're Electrified. It's initially going on the cheap Target bike ($100 or so). That's to help establish a baseline. That this project can be done and works with a clunky cheap bike, ridden by a guy who's never likely to be much smaller than 200 pounds. It looks like the total cost for the project will be about $500. The bike was $100, the kit $350 and the shipping $50 (lead batteries aren't cheap to ship).

Once it's built, I'm going to be using a plug-in electric meter to track the kilowatt hours required per mile traveled. That's for a couple of reasons.

1. To know exactly how much this replacement commuting option costs and saves over driving the truck.
2. To be able to properly size a solar charging solution, rendering the commute powered by the sun.

It'd be easy to over or under estimate the size of the solar charging setup. I want it to match my actual commute fairly well.

Beyond the electric bike, I want to also get a gas moped of some sort. Either a "traditional" 49cc moped or something more "bicycle" styled like one of these or these. I'm also intrigued by this 3 wheeled electric vehicle. That kit, my electric bike and a gas bike would cost less than $4500, and provide a variety of options, ALL of them greener than my current truck. The point being a continuum of transportation options.

I'm still going to keep the pickup, because it's paid for and is useful for hauling cargo. However, I'd like to have it shift to occasional use (which has the side effect of it lasting longer) to be replaced by lighter options rather than trying to have a single vehicle for all of my needs. That "all-in-one" approach is what's led to so many SUV's on the road in the United States. Since we believe we can only have our one vehicle (per person of course), we insist that it can take care of everything we might possibly need.

As a result, instead of renting a van, the 1 time per year we need to transport a group of 7 adults somewhere, we drive around 364 other days of the year by ourselves in an 8 passenger SUV. Instead of considering an electric vehicle that will cover our needs for everything except for 2 trips to Grandma's a year (and renting a car for the long trip), we turn it down because it can't drive more than 150 miles in a day.

So, I'm taking a stab at incremental improvement. I'm not going to pretend that I'll somehow find myself willing to take up full human-powered cycling. I've tried that in the past and didn't get very far. I think the key is to treat this as something where you work toward improvement *over your current situation* instead of worrying about comparing to the ideal, you are making things better. Success needs to be anchored to the appropriate benchmark. And, that benchmark needs to be *your* starting point, not the perfect end point.

And with every gallon of gas not burned, you save 19 pounds of carbon dioxide from getting dumped into the air. If I replace 105 round trips to work, that's a literal ton of CO2 that stays out of the air.

Now, I just have to figure out how to get a decent MP3 speaker setup strapped to it by the time I'm ready to roll.

A while back, I went looking for A5 paper (about half a "normal" American sheet in size if you didn't know) and came up empty. At the time, pretty much no one had a reasonably priced option. I have a hard time paying $20+ for 250 sheets of ordinary paper.

Anyway, one of the sites that came up as a decent source of A4 paper recently started stocking A5 and dropped me a note. It's still like $8 a ream, but, apparently, that dropped it below my unwillingness threshold because I ordered 3 reams.

They came today, which means that I'm pretty much equipped for the project I wanted the paper for in the first place. An article from back in May detailed how to do your own paperback book binding without the complicated equipment, sewing needles, etc. A similar article shows another simple setup (though with a simple jig instead of the basic clips).

Beyond the fact that I just like the idea of messing with bookbinding because I like books (even if I more aggressively use them than some others do), it's a handy way to put together little reference books, poetry, short stories, etc. I probably won't do any binding until this weekend, but I can think of a few things worth compiling into documents for printing this way.