Demotech News
News Tue Mar 23 (2010) -- Tue Sep 23 (2025)
News Mon Apr 03 (2006) -- Thu Jun 19 (2008)
News Wed Nov 24 (2004) -- Fri Oct 21 (2005)
News Sat Oct 18 (2003) -- Wed Jul 07 (2004)
Games with heat and air |
Sun Oct 12 (2003) |
Mail contact with Sasha Mrkailo, Serbia brought me to this link on small gassifying woodstoves:
First of all it shows the feasability of the idea of forced draft through the oven, as tests show. This encourages, as Demotech explores this principle in experimenting with the Brick Stove.
Second it shows how helpfull it is when information exchange really centers on the issue at stake. It saves everybody a lot of valuable time.
The picture indicates how the draft through this small stove results in gassifying wood and burning this gas in the top part of this stove. It looks like a very smart game with heat and air. How it works is explained in this article.
|
Layout test |
Sat Sep 20 (2003) |
Why *This is a layout experiment to find out how the layout should be of the listing of the records in the category page. I want to see how it looks if I use the same method as with making the layout of News. so please do not look at the text that is just a dummy
* Progress within poverty depends on improving conditions for education for 1 billion students world wide.
* Poverty reduces the capacity of young people to study at home. Cramped interior space used by too many and insufficient interior lighting are negative factors to be overcome.
How
* Education ask for time to study. Four hours each day after sunset can be used for study with a proper reading light, called the NightReader, that fits conditions of poverty.
* A box with batteries to which two LED's are attached is placed on the page or paper to be read. The LED's only illuminates a few lines of text, not attracting insects.
* A NightReader can be constructed with the help of a construction manual by its user or people around from local scrap material.
|
Second layout test |
Sat Sep 20 (2003) |
Why *This is a second layout experiment with a smaller picture, to find out how the layout should be of the listing of the records in the category page. I want to see how it looks if I use the same method as with making the layout of News. so please do not look at the text that is just a dummy
* Progress within poverty depends on improving conditions for education for 1 billion students world wide.
* Poverty reduces the capacity of young people to study at home. Cramped interior space used by too many and insufficient interior lighting are negative factors to be overcome.
How
* Education ask for time to study. Four hours each day after sunset can be used for study with a proper reading light, called the NightReader, that fits conditions of poverty.
* A box with batteries to which two LED's are attached is placed on the page or paper to be read. The LED's only illuminates a few lines of text, not attracting insects.
* A NightReader can be constructed with the help of a construction manual by its user or people around from local scrap material.
|
Getting ready for Cameroon |
Sun Sep 14 (2003) |
|
A NGO in Cameroon contacted Demotech by mail. They had a sincere interest in many of the designs, related to rural as well as to urban conditions. It would be nice to be able to serve these people better. Still not even the old manuals of the rope pump are properly visible in 'Make It'. It just is an amazing amount of work, taking a amount of time destructive for other projects that should be done as well.
However on behalf or these people in Cameroon I organized the 'Make It'-manual for the construction of the Bathroom/Toilet unit better. This became possible after the reorganization of the images was done. Also my answer to the demand of Leonora and Petz for a bullets in 'How' and 'Why' extends now into 'Presentations'.
The demand of these intern girls resulted into a sceme to present a few short items marked with bullets in 'Why' and 'How' , these two fields as presented for each record in the 'Category' page. Together, these items can be read as a summary that is covered more extensively in "Why' and 'How' as visible in the design page.
This proves to be a workable structure.
The same structure now applies also to the first page of a presentation, such as Manual for the Bathroom/Toilet unit. Each chapter of such longer manuals is in short described in one sub-record of 'Presentations', hyper-linked to this page. I made sure the chapter descriptions together could be read and understood as a summary of the total manual.
The net result should be easier navigation through Demotech's website. Our new contact in Cameroon is the first who can tell us if this works. I sincerely hope they will use our discussion page to air their findings!
How to find out what works and what does not work? Only to try gives an answer. Around 1986 Demotech tried to speed up instruction around improved wells and water pumps in Ghana with the Mobile Training unit.
We bought a DAF-truck to get going .. but got nowhere. No support or support that halfway redoing the electric wiring thought of something better. Now the DAF-truck at last is on the road again. I gave it away to a nice guy in exchange for his promise that he would support Hanna's Senegal project with some free transportation when needed.
|
Drifting apart, creeping together |
Mon Sep 08 (2003) |
The big cleansing operation of images that relate to Demotech projects and design did not stop at renaming and ordering pictures. It was a painful discovery that the description of designs in our FileMakerPro database had got far behind the description of the same designs in the our website. To make the confusion even bigger, names given at an earlier state did not match the present development. Even worse it became, when names and descriptions in fact partly related to other records.
By now, I have sorted out most of this mess. Giving names to designs is important as they should be descriptive. Each name should be composed out of two short words. The two-letter code that has to be drawn from the first letter of these two word components is used to indicate and sort related images. When the logical name of one design resulted in a letter code that already was taken, I had a problem. It took all my fantasy to think of a different logical name, leading to a two-letter code that was still free. Most of the letter code combinations found at last look familiar, but I am afraid some of them will never stop to confuse me.
To prevent this mess to return, I asked Marc, Demotech's web designer, if the FileMakerPro-database of designs could interact with the MySQL-database of our website. He expects that will not be too difficult to achieve.
If this indeed will become possible it will make a big difference. The FileMaker database contains more that a hundred descriptions of designs. Only twenty of them have been transferred to the web. The transfer would made eighty more designs accessible. Though this is of course what I strive for, in practice all this new information asks for translation into English, better pictures and bringing text up to the present level of development. This is a massive amount of work that can only be done over time.
The big advantage however is that work on any record only has to be done once, instead of the confusing two times in the present situation.
Dull administration |
Wed Aug 27 (2003) |
This website asks for an enormous amount of pictures to clarify its content. Hundreds are already uploaded to the computer of Demotech's provider, AS-Hosting. Many thousands will follow. Many recent mistakes make it clear that a simple and clear system is needed first to size, then to name and finally to store the images.
Coordinating work with volonteers like Leonora and Petz, who produced a flood of most beautiful photo's, also ask for a system that is very easy to explain, as such workers assist Demotech only for a short time, be it days or weeks.
Today I cleaned up only the beginning of the mess that came into being as such an administrative system had not yet been perfected. This is the work drill from now on:
Every picture worth to be kept is cut back to a square and saved sized 1000 x 1000 or 500 x 500 pixels, at 300 dots per inch and in a JPEG-format.
All such pictures get a name, starting with two letters, indicating the name of the related record for this design initiative. (see picture) They are stored in alphabetical ordered files. A to D, E to J, etc. Later pictures wedge in without a problem.
Of each picture a Gif copy is made in the size 120 x 120 pixels, 160 x 160 pixels and 250 x 250 pixels. Apart from the gif-extentions, its name remains exactly the same. Exceptions of this rule should remain seldom. During the process of sizing down color, sharpness and contrast are adjusted. These Gif-pictures are stored in a different file, but in the same alphabetic division.
Only when an image is needed for the web page, it is uploaded and properly embedded in the content. When the content is changed, superfluous pictures should be removed.
This dull administrative work will also lead to conflict with Google, that does not like changes in file names. All by all it is work, a lot of work and frustrating work. I expect there will still many mistakes be made, but once this system grinds itself into our genes, life will be slightly easier.
|
Welding wood, checking the manual |
Thu Aug 14 (2003) |
Rogier is now familiar with the technique of welding wood. When I asked him to set up the construction of the new toilet seat, he had no difficulty in selecting the right size nails, width and thickness of sheet metal, and then a good position for the wooden parts to fit nicely together. He does the nailing swiftly, the sheet flows around the wood, and there are no sharp bits sticking out.
Yet this is only the eighth joint he has welded. Does this prove that the system of Welding Wood does what it promises: offering real strength in connections between wooden parts, without the need for professional abilities?
The two interns Leonora and Petz checked it for themselves. They found the welding OK, but had several remarks on the effectiveness of the manual.
I will discuss these with the girls today and make the appropriate changes.
|
Make it! See it! |
Sat Aug 02 (2003) |
It seemed the right thing to make the presentations more accessible. So Marc guided me in choosing a good approach for it. The outcome was two menu items which link to the presentations.
Both start-up presentations are now click-able from the menu. Once in 'Make it!' or 'See it!' you can navigate to each presentation.
Specially when working on the presentation of the Bathroom Toilet unit, it became clear that it would take too long to download files as large as this one. So these long presentations will again be split up into chapters. And the first page of each presentation will give the content of the whole.
The sunny side of the NightReader |
Fri Aug 01 (2003) |
|
The interns Leonora and Petz now focus on the NightReader. They have another two weeks to go and want to get this design job done. They plan to use their experiences with this design in the presentation they are expected to deliver at their school. However it is still not clear how a number of problems should be solved.
Leonora and Petz discovered two fundamental new approaches for the construction of the box that houses the three batteries of the NightReader. Both ideas help to make the instruction package to make the NightReader thin enough to be sent to users by post in an envelope.
One is to link all parts of the box -if sheet metal is used- with a hinge-like construction so that is is completely collapsible. We have still to explore the possibilities this method offers.
The other approach does away with sheet metal. It makes the box from two layers of cloth, sewn into rectangles made stiff with inserted bits of carton. This approach is promising: easy to make on a sewing machine, looks nice, easy to decorate. But as yet there is no answer to how a number of parts will be joined.
I trust that the continuing experiments, by the two girls, in our sunny garden will provide that answer.
|
Stills from video |
Thu Jul 31 (2003) |
Stills are the very few images taken out of the thousands of images that together make a video film. Such stills are just now made accessible in a new presentation on the construction of the BathroomToilet unit.
Some years ago Erik Holthuis has made a video on the actual design of this toilet system for rural use. While I was working on it, thinking, trying out, changing plans and approaches, Erik recorded it on video tape. The one hundred hours of video footage made in this way, Eric and his wife Anneth editted it into a one hour movie on design, called "The Concept". The Concept is a valuable document of how a design grows from idea into reality along thousand of small decisions on construction details and sometimes on the concept as a whole.
Erik and I plan to take some shots out of this movie and put it on this website as a first experiment in using streaming video to clarify our ideas. Many questions have to be answered. Time for download with slow data transfer? The small window of 250 by 250 pixels large enough to see and understand? Very short shots better than pictures with a description? Possible of a kind of slide show of text and images mixed with video?
It is really helpful to be able to rely on the use of high-tech electronic consumer products for Demotech's work. Stills taken from Erik's video recordings are now shown in a set up for a construction manual for the BatroomToilet unit. It took me very long to prepare all the images for it. But they came out in a good enough quality.
When I get some more routine, this way of making presentations holds a promise.
News Fri Jul 11 (2003) -- Fri Apr 25 (2003)
News Wed Apr 23 (2003) -- Fri Feb 21 (2003)
News Sun Jan 19 (2003) -- Wed Nov 13 (2002)
News Tue Nov 12 (2002) -- Fri Sep 20 (2002)
News Mon Sep 16 (2002) -- Thu Aug 08 (2002)
News Mon Jul 01 (2002)
|
