People have crafted some great computer cases out of wood.  I thought about doing something like this for awhile, partly because wood is much easier to work with using hand tools than metal or plastic.  I'll probably end up making one out of a table as an Ikea hack, but for now my laptop does the job.  A wood lid for that isn't out of the question.

I've thought about a fixed-gear bike and its simplicity, but only one gear seems so restrictive.  I'd heard about bikes where you had two gears, but no shifter: instead, you pedal backwards to get the second gear.  Strange but efficient and reliable.  Sounds like my style!  Recently I had a rear wheel failure and started thinking I might try such a setup but forgot what it was called.  After some mental engineering I had a method that should work, and found a forum post with my same idea of a dual-chain setup.

I applied for a grant!  PSU got some serious private funding to promote their programs and connections for urban sustainability, and I'm asking for a piece of it.  It turns out a larger-scope project related to green building got approved in the first round, and I'm hoping to at least coordinate with that effort, and perhaps be under its umbrella as additional funding within it.  I'm working to make more specific contacts to see what my options are.  It all would fit together with my goals and PSU's, so I hope it works out.

The meeting on-site with my development team was very encouraging.  Some of my assumptions were re-evaluated, such as ideal site placement and how much to avoid major landscaping.  Perhaps the biggest change so far is that I'm likely to build just a single story for this project, and set it up to be able to add another story as a second living unit in the future.

My contractor asked me to create a ranking of goals and wants for the project, to base our planning on and get closer to a budget.  Here's what I came up with.

1. Develop using shipping containers, in an efficient way.  I want to gain knowledge and other resources in order to do more work with container structures in the future, with a focus on sustainable
methods and features.

2. Maximize value per dollar.  I am willing to make numerous sacrifices in design and scope, in order to be able to have a new home that is not a condo at an affordable cost.  This also includes a strategy that creates monetary return on investment, by increasing the overall value of the property by a net total that factors in the cost of construction.  I expect to extensively seek out tax advantages and
financing options to serve this goal.

My girlfriend introduced me to a contractor who seems almost tailor made for my project, having worked on a shipping container project in town and having strong green building credentials.  We share the excitment for this kind of thing and I think it'll turn out to be a good partnership.  He's going to put me in touch with some designers that could provide the design work, with the more expensive path available to us, and get me closer to a realistic working budget.  We'll work from there to narrow it down and get a design ready for permit application.

I saw these headphones at Breeze Block on Alberta, and fell in love.

I'm tempted to convert my mid-sized headphones myself, but hand out cards for the original if people ask.

I had come up with a shared-space concept awhile ago, that basically works like a private community center with parking, targeted at urban dense-housing residents.  The idea is that members of a co-op who don't have a lot of space at home can own a car, work on projects, or have room to hold get-togethers would pay use-based fees on top of a small membership cost.

In my planning of what to do next in my real-estate projects with shipping containers, it occurred to me that I could use this in a condo/apartment building I would put together: have a shared work and play space.