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Author Archive for matt
Here is a motion piece that Peter Kim and his team created about the tragedy in Japan. It takes you through some of the hardships the Japanese people are going through and the fantastic progress made thus far.
OnlineSchools.org presents Japan One Year Later
In the last decade, Japan’s Ministry of Education has responded to market imperatives and a need for managers with specialized skills by increasing the number of graduate programs. But Japan’s new professional and graduate programs have experienced chronic under-enrollment — basically, no one is showing up to class. Now the Ministry of Education is playing catch-up to market these educational programs to a very truant bunch of students.
It is not hard to determine why Japan’s graduate classrooms sit empty. For one thing, the promise that graduate programs offer does little to remove the stigma associated with continuing education courses. Traditional definitions of success lead many professionals to fear that they will be perceived as less competent if they pursue education after they have entered a professional career. In the past, Japanese companies have also based career advancement on seniority. An extra one or two years in school has often meant falling behind less educated counterparts who move faster up the corporate ranks.
As Japan approaches the first anniversary of the crisis that transformed the nation, global attention will undoubtedly focus on the progress that the country has made in resurrecting its physical infrastructure. Restoring homes, roads, hospitals and schools, and mitigating the damage of the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl certainly deserve our attention and reflection. Still, it is important to remember that solving the social and economic problems that Japan faced before the crisis are just as critical.
The unique skills that graduate programs offer will play a vital roll in managing Japan’s long-term recovery. If students and professionals continue to avoid higher education, Japan will find itself ill-equipped to maintain its revival. Considering how many people have been displaced and how much there is yet to be rebuilt, it may be worthwhile for the Ministry of Education to encourage distance learning or online graduate programs. Because online schools are more cost-efficient, offer the ability to reach a larger audience across vast distances, and provide the opportunity to study while working full-time — thereby avoiding the stigma of a late entry into the workforce — they may be the perfect tool in ensuring that once Japan’s physical recovery is complete, the nation will have an educated workforce capable of leading an economic recovery.
To learn more about Japan’s recovery and to see the photos that inspired the hand drawn illustrations in the video above, check out:
The Atlantic
Washington Post
NPR
CNN
To get involved in Japan’s recovery, donate to:
…or should it be titled “Judge Napolitano: How to help spark a revolution in under 5 minutes”?
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<h1>traditional gardening vs. nanotechnology gardening</h1>
<p>lately i have been trying to divvy up my free time between programming and gardening. i like gardening, but i love programming. nowadays, when i am not with my daughters – i am writing code. it is the most relaxing and fulfilling hobby i have had.</p>
<p>i would check up on superforest though and feel and twinge of guilt about neglecting the garden. i felt as though i was needing to be out there so i could help change the world!</p>
<p>but then i started thinking about nanotechnology. i started thinking about us being on the brink of taking the plants that nature has given us and making them suit our needs better. i started thinking about how we can very soon create large quantities of tissue matter – eliminating the factory farming industry and having totally karma-free meat.</p>
<p>then i started thinking about monsanto. i started thinking about how a few people with greedy intentions made proprietary plants for the first time in our history. i started thinking about how they must be leading the forefront on these uses for nanotechnology. my optimism slowly started to fade</p>
<p>then i started thinking about gnu and linux. i started thinking about what they did to microsoft. richard stallman thought that making software that was proprietary instead of open was wrong and put the users in a moral dilemma. so, he created gnu – a collection of hundreds of open source programs for an os to use. linus torvalds then saw this and created the linux kernel. once the two were combined, an os that competed (and in some ways was better) with microsoft was created.</p>
<p>i started then thinking about how this has been done time and time again (skype, wordpress – the platform of this very site, gimp, open office and the list goes on and on). then it hit me – if we give anything enough time, some very smart and very good people will make an equivalent and use it for good instead of greed.</p>
<p> html is my garden, c++ is my garden, java, javascript, css, php, sql, jquery, xml is my garden. i’m not sure what the point of this post was besides just wanting to share these ideas. so…………….. here you go!</p>
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Okay, not that kind of mind control.
Anyways, this will be about controlling your own mind and it will be quick and to the point:
The thinking mind is a horrible master, but a wonderful slave.
A thought cannot think itself. Who is creating it?
A mind cannot think without interest. Who is giving it that interest?
A mind cannot be troubled. A mind can only cause trouble. Who is it troubling?
That is all. Have a wonderful day Superforest!
Most people who have owned a computer for awhile have probably needed to re-format their hard drives at least once. It just got to a point where there were too many programs launching at start-up, too many pop-ups clicked, too many mistakes trying to download something and it just got to be too much for your computer to handle. Just performing it’s basic operations took up all of it’s usage because of all of the processes happening in the background.
So what do you do? You fight with it to save what you can and then wipe the slate clean. Yeah, you are going to lose most of what you had. You are going to have to install all of your programs again and tweak the appearance until you like it again. But, it had to be done.
However, you now have a computer that is happy again. It has a bunch of free space to think and perform quickly and easily. Also, you are now more cautious than ever to make sure you don’t end up in that situation again.
This is what I am doing with my life right now.
I have too many processes going everyday to make much progress on anything. I have too many programs that I have installed in my life over the years that I have to maintain. It was never something I had the intention of doing and everything was done with good intentions.
I fell in love with a girl at 17. Our relationship was filled with infatuation and passion. Caution was thrown to the wind and a new life was conceived. So I finished school early, made connections and got a job in a field I was good at but didn’t enjoy. But, it paid well so I took it because it was the right thing to do to support my new family. Time went by and we brought another awesome person into the world. So I went and got a new car – we would need a reliable one to get around. Then I got a house – we need a nice, big place to live. Then I got a nice new bed, a nice new TV, pretty bedroom sets, a bunch of movies, new dishware, so many toys that we have to give away 10 trash bags per year just to have enough room for the new ones, dogs, cats. The list goes on.
There are so many things to worry about that I barely have time to think.
That is why we are moving.
The reasons I have stated are only half of it, but I cannot discuss the rest out of respect to other people’s personal lives. The bottom line is – there are some people here that we don’t want to be around anymore. We thought we had gone far enough, but we were wrong.
We are going to pack up the necessities, give away or sell the rest of our stuff and drive until we find a place we fall in love with.
I know that we just now got the ball rolling on Zero One Oklahoma and this is a complete 180 degrees from what I have been posting recently – but this is something my family and I have to do.
So, we are taking this negative (having to leave) and turning it into a positive (we get to start over!).
We are still planning to get another Zero One going wherever we end up, but it will not be here.
We are going to be embarking on this adventure in early 2012 and I want to visit some Superforesters if I can! So email or Skype me if you want us to stop by. We might just decide to move in next door if we like it there!
Wish us luck!
Much love,
Matt
I’m not trying to flood you guys with posts, I promise : )
There is just a bunch of stuff going on with me and Zero One Oklahoma that I want to share with you guys!
We got our name reserved with our Secretary of State! I know it really doesn’t mean much, but it means a lot to me that I have something tangible and “official” that shows I am actually moving forward with getting the nonprofit going!
I have also started putting the word out that I will host a Permaculture Design Course on my land at no charge if I can attend, so if you know somebody who might be interested – let them know!
We will be submitting forms to the state and IRS next week to form the foundation. After those are resolved we will submit forms with the state and IRS again to get recognized and registered as a nonprofit!
I also wanted to thank all of you for posting and commenting here and giving me motivation and inspiration.
Much love,
Matt
Hello again Superforest!
There are many things happening or about to happen, so I figured that I would update you awesome Superforester’s on what is going on with the project that was inspired by all of you!
Right now we are working and working on getting the ball rolling on things. It is a hefty ball, so it is taking a lot of time and work while utilizing different techniques.
I have been putting some work into the website and added a Donate page, About Matt (me) page, About Permaculture page and a Friends page.
We are scrounging up items for a garage sale right now to start raising money. I will most likely sell my mower, weedeater and chainsaw to help pay for an electric mower.
We are beginning the process of registering as a nonprofit, which is an incredibly tedious and slow process. We will most likely have our Certificate of Incorporation sent out next week. Then we will start plugging away at the IRS forms, which, by the way, are ridiculously long.
We just registered with chipin.com to start accepting donations. Since we are not a nonprofit yet, any donations made now will not be tax deductible. We will notify everybody we can and post it on the website when we are finally registered. More about that on our donations page.
We have a pair of “living-work exchangers” that found us on WWOOF tentatively scheduled to arrive in 2-3 weeks. We have another awesome person coming September 23rd or 24th for a living-work exchange. We are super excited about that.
Right now, my days are filled with working and playing with the kids while trying to cram website updates/fixes, nonprofit logistics, permaculture studying, drawing up plans for the land, working on the land and sleeping/eating in there somewhere. I am counting down to the day that we can produce enough to pay our bills and I can stay home all day and play with my kids and work on the land (taking a deep breath at the thought of it now).
I am working on trying to get registered with as many fundraisers as I can (which is hard because we are not registered yet), linking to as many sites as I can and basically just trying to draw some more attention to the project to try to get some more steam going!
We have bamboo growing on our property. It is super resilient and just keeps growing and spreading no matter what happens really.
So I think I am going to try to use bamboo as the crop to pay the bills. That way, any food we grow will be consumed by us or given away. The farmers markets have most of the crops covered, so I think I can carve a niche with bamboo. We might even try to make things out of it to sell. I never really knew how awesome bamboo is until we came here and I started using it for things.
I currently have a grey water run-off from my kitchen sink that runs-off into the front yard. I am going to extend it a little further from the house, dig down a little bit, put in some good drainage soil and transplant the bamboo that is right next to the house and trying to take over my AC unit. In a few months, we will have moved to biodegradable and natural cleaners and soaps. We also will transition from using regular toilets to building our own that will handle waste without having to waste water by flushing. Once all of that is in place, I am going to get our sewage (which will then be grey water) to run-off in the back of the property and plant bamboo around it as well. If I do it right – the bamboo should take over a good chunk of the property. Then I will start experimenting with some companion crops.
I think if we do it correctly, we can find a way to pay the bills with bamboo. Only time will tell…
Much love and aloha,
Matt
Hello Superforest!
Awhile ago, an awesome person named Kristal went on our forum looking for funds for her project called Kauai Kombucha – a project that brews Kombucha on Kauai using all recycled materials.
A few of us donated and helped spread the word. She raised enough money to get funded by Kickstarter.
That was some months ago and I wanted to share an update she sent out on the project.
Jackson – all of you at ZO so need to stop by and get some home brewed Kombucha! ; )
“Aloha! I recently looked the calendar and realized it’s already august! where does the time go?? my apologies for not getting an update on the project out sooner, but the good thing is the reason is most of my time has been spent on it! It’s coming along even better than i could have imagined. there’s still too much demand on the island for the amount of kombucha i’m able to produce ( hooray! ) so i’m putting all money coming in right back into more brewing vessels and equipment. It’s still just me working on it so i’m putting anywhere from 50 to 60 hours a week into working in my kitchen and delivering and other such things. that combined with my 3 other jobs and rescuing a puppy has kept me practically spinning in circles. i suppose the good thing is that all of my work whether it’s brewing, fire dancing, working with skydiving, and creating eco friendly clothes are all things i love so much it’s hard for me to even think of it as work. All I can say is right now i can’t imagine a more perfect outcome to what started in this kitchen 7 months ago.
There’s definitely been a few hard times for sure. Just recently i had to throw roughly 120 gallons of kombucha away and start my batches completely fresh. i say ‘roughly’ because after the 100th gallon i was weeping hysterically and throwing the worst tantrum to where i couldn’t count anymore. lol. things are always funnier when you get to look back at the situation. See the problem with kombucha is that there are a lot of small time home brewers who make enough for themselves and maybe their friends, and there are a lot of big brewers that make it the 150 million dollar industry it is. there are definitely few brewers that brew my amount ( around 50 gallons a week ) and even fewer who do it in the sustainable way that i do. So when there’s an issue with my batches i have absolutely no one to reference or even to ask. You can say I’m working on a lot of intuition. So my intuition says that with the summer spike in temperature and the lack of proper ventilation in my commercial kitchen on top of the addition of more vessels created an environment where the fermentation process went completely haywire ( i could go into the science behind it, but that’s essentially what happened ) now the good news is that it’s an easy fix and i have over 80 gallons of wonderfully fermenting booch starring at me right now. unfortunately, it will take another week or so before it’s ready for the shelves so i will be sold out for a little bit. but someone just reassured me that will help keep the demand up on it, so in the end i’m sure it’ll all work out.
before this little set back i had maxed out my production at 40-50 gallons a week, right around 200 wine bottles. I suppose the majority of my time is spent collecting and scrubbing the crap out of each of them to get the labels off and to resanatize them. Most of the time i feel like i’m in the dishwashing industry and not the brewing industry. But i know in the end it’s worth it. Eventually once my product is known enough i can cut out the bottling part and have it set up in more of a co-op form with lots of other products. So i suppose right now all this is mainly just a learning stage for me, and i’m very grateful to be where i’m at.
I have lots of ideas for expansion, so once the booch is all dialed in ( prolly another 6 months ) i will most likely be adding other products to help with the sustainability efforts on the island. it’s definitely a lot of work, but everytime just that one person understands and thanks me for all of what i am doing it makes every inch of it worth it. I couldn’t have done any of this without each one of you, and i sincerely hope you know that by pledging back in january you weren’t just helping me, but you were in the end helping the entire island have less waste and create a tighter community with our farmers and consumers. because of you it is all possible. so thank you all again. and hopefully within the next 3-4 months i’ll have another great update to send to you all!”
Congratulations Kristal!
Here is a link to her Kickstarter page:
http://www.kickstarter.com/profile/583547191
Jackson,
I am writing this to express my appreciation and gratitude for you.
Ever since I incorporated Superforest and the Humanifesto into my life, it has gone nowhere but upwards.
I went from being an average American (which means miserable and trapped) to a super citizen of the Earth.
I went from living in an apartment in the city where my girls had to be cooped up all day to a house on 2.5 acres in the beautiful country where my girls are free to play outside without fear of abduction.
I went from avoiding conversations with strangers and neighbors to being good friends with all of my neighbors and turned into somebody who let’s total strangers into my home and have in-depth conversations with them.
I went from trying to fit in with everybody else by acting negative and trapped to trying to improve the lives of everybody I know, bringing positiveness in every situation and showing how we should be living life by setting an example.
I went from preparing my daughters for the system to preparing my daughters for life.
I went from fearing love to loving without fear.
I went from a self-centered person that was not concerned with the lives of people I don’t know to a person who actively tries to make positive changes in the world.
I went from eating McDonalds for lunch to eating kale and spinach salads out of my own garden.
I went from daily trips to Walmart for groceries to growing my own food.
I went from a wannabe macho tough guy who didn’t share any feelings or weaknesses to a person who addresses my faults with a smile on my face.
I went from almost divorcing my wife to creating the best relationship either one of us have ever been in.
I went from constantly showing toughness and professionalism to somebody who expresses love more than anything.
I went from dwelling on the negatives of life to somebody who turns every situation into a positive one.
I have become a better father, husband, friend and person.
Your posts and our conversations are what kick-started all of this. I am writing this on the site because I want everybody to know my gratitude for you and I want to show everybody how much impact one person can have on so many lives.
The site you created allowed me to meet so many awesome people, learn so many awesome things and share so many awesome ideas. You and all Superforesters have had an indescribable impact on my life and, subsequently, on all of the lives of the people I know. My wife is a better partner and mother and my daughters will better and more giving people than I.
Just from creating this community, posting your thoughts and having conversations with me, you have made countless lives better, just through me.
I want you to know that you have improved the lives of so many people that it is incredible. Your posts create so much inspiration and motivation for me. You are constantly making me strive to be a better person by just being you.
So, I give to you all of the gratitude and love I can give.
Looking forward to talking with you again.
Matt
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