Ives Faye will get some well deserved publicity from the Dutch EO-television broadcast company for his garden project in Senegal, where the new well is finished, offering plenty water at 40 meter depth. He phoned me only a few days ago that he would come today to our workshop together with a television crew.
Short notice for me. I could not prepare the well mockup, the full scale model to give people in Keur Mousse in Senegal an idea what we expect to build.
But I just finished in time a new way to make the plastic rope bearing for the pulley wheel axle (see picture). It asks for a lengthwise cut in the end of the frame rod. I expect a blacksmith can get it done when the ends of the frame are made red hot in his furnace. With this setup it is much easier to wind the rope cross wise from the frame over the axle buts to form the bearing. It looks neat and effective.

Ives and his wife told the television people the story of the why and how of their Keur Mousse project. I had liked to focus attention to the pulley wheel, but Ives choose to put the rope pump forward. Together with Ives' and Els' their kids, I explained once again in front of the camera how the rope pump works. In just under ONE minute!

The weekend was used to reconsider the presentation of Demotech targets and policies with the means available in a website. The question of what Demotech is about, stood central. Currently the menu-item 'About us' links to text, but this text may not clarify in a visitor's mind the exact direction of Demotech's policies. How could this be done better?
Richard Zuidhof, Marc van der Kamp and Rejo Zenger have the experience in web-design to offer alternatives. It was my task to relate these alternatives to the present setup of our website.
The usual way in which presentations are made to an audience with a projector and images using MS Powerpoint seemed an effective as well as attractive option. It could combine short bits of text that relate (and are hyper linked) to a cluster of information. Such text could be displayed with a related picture as background. Text items with background could then be presented as a series of slides. How could this idea come together with other demand for a presentation of text related to images?
Two more text-picture related items need attention. One being the downloadable manual of a design. Which is what future users need. The second is the description of prototype development process. This is essential for making use of the feedback from others through the website. People collaborating with Demotech do not need a polished presentation, just a rough and sketchy presentation will do.
Rejo and I feel attracted to the simple but clear set up for a construction manual found on Internet. Marc promised to look into the possibility of programming the above three options for the Demotech website.

Should this website have a glossy finish before it is published? People accustomed to regular product promotion will say "yes, it irritates to look at unfinished and untidy stuff. There is no compagny who dares to risk that".
This website for sure, does not have a glossy finish and I doubt if it ever will have a finish at all. I like to take the risk because:
- The basic innovation, that we pursue, cannot give a final result for a long time to come. It is impossible to program its progress with any certainty.
- Anything left unfinished is an invitation to others to join development. What we publish, we publish as a contribution to Open Source interaction.
- Time is better invested in continuation of design instead of in an in-between stop.

Today I had a conversation on this subject with Dina Septiani (see picture), a student at the University InHolland in Diemen. She came over to our workshop for an interview about our website.
It struck me how much intellectual capacity is available in the environment of a school as this one, also remembering our interaction with its students Ayunda, Zhu, Farah and Lillian, half a year ago.
Over the years, interaction with students has always been very inspiring. They said it was inspiring for them, we felt the issues put forward by us, really mattered for them and could count on support in some way later on. Could it be that there are better ways for interaction between students and Demotech?
Last Saturday Rejo and I discussed with four students of the faculty of Industrial Design of the Delft Technical University how to shape an "inspiring environment on design for sustainability". At stake is the use of our workshop in Dieren. How to link our "inspiring environment" with the wish of students to have some reference from a radical design approach?
Some ideas were put forward, we will continue to work on them.

Today a big step forward was made with our website. As our website will soon contain more than five Megabyte of information, it will be a good thing to be able to find information by a search query. Marc van der Kamp has now created this potential. From now on it is possible to fill in a key-word in a search window and get the immediate result neatly sorted out by our database.
Marc is working on extending this search capacity. Soon it will be possible to sort information on categories of design, progress made so far, design targets and many other issues.

Forking is the expression for a split in approach, a new way taken up next to the research that goes along according to a previous plan.
Bram de Vries, one of the people I recently met through the contact with LHUMP thought different about a method to create the draft of air through the stove.
Demotech proposed the use of a Stirling engine. Such a machine could have a very low efficiency, as heat was plenty available in a stove, while the energy needed to drive the ventilator was but a little.

However Bram asked himself the question how to reach the same effect with even less moving parts. Today he came over to our workshop to discuss and demonstrate his ideas.
He started experimenting with a tin can functioning as a vessel to heat up air. Over this vessel a rubber membrane is attached with an air valve in the middle. This valve should switch at reaching the top and the bottom of its stroke, thus creating a draft by sucking air in and pushing air out.
Bram realizes his forking concentrates on a mechanical train of thoughts. Next step is to discuss it with people who can make a proper calculation, as the expansion of air by heat can be properly calculated. To inspire these people he plans to make in his kitchen at home a new set up, clarifying his idea better. Such a contraption could even shown a first sign of life!

The machine that organizes the data of this site is working to full satisfaction. No, it is not yet complete. Yes, some more components will be added by Marc van der Kamp and Rejo Zenger. However it was time to look again at our site with the eyes of our customers.
English speaking visitors may like to read about some philosophy on technology that we present in our publications, project descriptions and plans. But if this Demotech site should be of any use to people in Third World countries, the best would be to omit the use of written text all-together. Just pictures, graphics and photographs should tell the story and for that reason should use very many of them.
What would be the generally used size of the monitor? I should check it, but I guess it is 15''. To make best use of the 800 pixels offered in the width of such a monitor, I can use slightly larger pictures. Not 114 pixels width, but 140 pixels per inch.
For Rejo it is not to much work to adapt the general layout of the pages. But for me it will take a considerable time to resize a hundred or more images to the new size.
Best solution would be to get some assistance for this job. But also when I'll have to do it myself in clumsy slowness, even then it will give me the good feeling that the ability to explain our ideas has improved.

To filter the waste water of our workshop while using it for growing flowers or vegetables, we made a glasshouse against the wall of our barn. We used techniques as promoted by "De Twaalf Ambachten", such as lowering the glasshouse half way into the ground to collect in the cold season some stored warmth from deeper layers.

Under the cover of this glass house shallow trays filled with a mixture of shredded foam plastic and compost are attached to the brick wall of the barn, facing South. Our neighbour Paula had put a diversity of seeds into these shallow trays.

Yesterday I received my first feedback from nature: notwithstanding a glass cover mice found a way in and dug up and eat most of the planted seeds.
Trying to be smarter then mice, I used a lot of waste glass strips. I placed them close together with only a narrow slot between them for ventilation. The space offered under the glass cover should be high enough for the seeds to grow up some more. When then the glass strips are removed, Paula expects the plants will not to be appriciated by our mice anymore.
However such a protection is not in line with the more simplified setup for growing vegetables as described in the project idea Green Walls. According to this idea there is no need for a glass house. A plastic cover hung over the plant trays could give the neccesary protection. I doubt if this plasitc will also give protection against hungry mice. Yet this problem has to be solved.