It is important to put primer under white paint.
- posted by Charles @ 1:07 PM

 
A Discipline for Making Better Movies
Dogme 95 is a minimalist recipe for making movies.

Here are the rules.

1. Shooting must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in
   (if a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be chosen
   where this prop is to be found).


2. The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa. (Music
   must not be used unless it occurs where the scene is being shot).


3. The camera must be hand-held. Any movement or immobility attainable in the
   hand is permitted. (The film must not take place where the camera is standing;
   shooting must take place where the film takes place).


4. The film must be in colour. Special lighting is not acceptable. (If there
   is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut or a single lamp be
   attached to the camera).


5. Optical work and filters are forbidden.


6. The film must not contain superficial action. (Murders, weapons, etc. must
   not occur.)


7. Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden. (That is to say that
   the film takes place here and now.)


8. Genre movies are not acceptable.


9. The film format must be Academy 35 mm.


10. The director must not be credited.

- posted by Charles @ 1:47 PM

 
Way of curing a hangover
Even one glass of red wine can give me a miserable migrainy headache. Here's a plausible hangover palliative.. I'll try it and report back
- posted by Charles @ 9:27 PM

 
Recipe for heating hot tub without gas or propane
Speaking of heating, I love the idea of a wood fired hot tub. Fire in control is the ultimate luxury.
- posted by Charles @ 8:47 PM

 
Methodology for do-it-yourself Radiant Heating
I want to put some radiant heating into our house because it would be so cozy to have warm floors, especially in the kitchen. The best documented do it yourself process I could find is from a Vermont company called the "Radiant Floor Company". They have kits you can order, and the documentation on the site is terrific.
- posted by Charles @ 8:45 PM

 
I spent a year learning from Min Basadur, then using his innovation tools with groups solving problems together. He's developed a great innovation methodology.
- posted by Charles @ 6:55 PM

 
If you're innovating, it is helpful to have stuff around to spark ideas. Amazon is great for books, and this Chicago company, Inventables, has created a kind of "cool materials of the month club." It costs $1,000 per year for five materials per quarter, or $3,000 a year for 20 materials per quarter. IDEO offers something similar with their Tech Box. They don't put the pricing on their site. Both products have searchable databases subscribers can use to get more info about the strange and wonderful goodies that come in the mail.
- posted by Charles @ 6:44 PM

 
I think I'm on this "get organized" kick because I spent the day cleaning out the garage. This is where I come face to face with the amount of crap that drifts into our house. The retailers own more of my home than the bank does.

I might implement a regime that dictates we must remove 1.1 times the amount of junk before we add any new junk to the house. Want to go to Costco? Fill up two or three boxes full of outbound post-consumer waste first.
- posted by Charles @ 11:08 PM

 
And here's a magazine devoted to keeping yourself organized
- posted by Charles @ 11:04 PM

 
How to get your home organized

- posted by Charles @ 11:01 PM

 
The Fly Lady has created A funny how-to-keep-your-house-clean regime I heard about on To the Best of Our Knowledge on NPR.


- posted by Charles @ 10:20 PM

 
There was a great article in the WSJ yesterday about Cluster Ballooning.

It looks like a terrific sport.
- posted by Charles @ 10:53 AM