I have an old soul. At least that’s what one of my bosses at IBM told me once. He made the comment in referance to the fact that I would often bring a paper notebook to our one on one meetings instead of a laptop. I like paper, I like drawing, I like the printed page, I like books. You can’t exactly read Jasper Fforde or Terry Pratchett through the takeoff or landing of a plane with a laptop or a kindle. Sometimes I’ll read a book on my laptop, but that’s only because there isn’t a physical copy handy.

Everybody tells me that newspapers are dying. Which is sad. I can’t complain too much though, because I’m the demographic that’s killing them. I never subscribed. Part of it was that I didn’t really like the local newspapers, (although the Independant is great and it’s free), and part of it is that I’m not a morning person and generally a little rushed in the morning. As result most of my news comes from RSS feeds; sources such as the BBC and NY Times online editions.

Which brings me to my point. I always thought it would be great if I could get a newspaper that was personalized for me. It would aggregate my selection of news sources and simply format, print and deliver. I’ve been sick for the last few days and spent a lot of time on my computer. In that time I learned a bit about LaTeX, which is a way of laying out text. Apparently it’s widely used in the academic world because it’s a way of separating formatting from content and it does professional fonts pretty well. I hacked out a quick and dirty python program to grab an rss feed and turn it into a PDF via LaTeX. It’s not polished but it’s a Proof of Concept. rss2latex.py

I’m not sure I want to avocate printing off your RSS feeds everyday; it’s a waste of a lot of paper. However I think this idea could be developed to format RSS in a more Newspaper sort of format, complete with all my web comic strips on one page! Acrylic’s Times RSS reader tries to form RSS feeds like a Newspaper, and it’s a really nice looking program, however, it doesn’t work very well with web comic strips and when it comes down to it, it’s all about the funnies.

To every thing there is a season, turn, turn turn. Bangladesh is one of MCC’s oldest projects. There’s a plaque in the Dhaka commemorating the first volunteer in West Bengal back in 1946. At one point MCC Bangladesh had over 300 National staff and something like 70 Expatriate service workers or Bideshi’s, but a few years ago MCC switched to the partner model in Bangladesh, the budget remained the same, but staff contracted. National staff was reduced to more like 80 and the Bideshi group shrank to less than 10. One of the side effects was that a lot of the research MCC was dried up. The reason my position was created was to restart the appropriate technology program and is part of a larger agenda of trying new ideas. At this point, officially my language study is over, and officially I’ve started my work. The reality is that I still have a lot of Bangla to learn and I’m living in the office infested with mosquitos while building a place to work and live.

In the last year REAP has moved from Jolchatro to Bogra, and in the process gone from a small office to taking over a 4 story apartment building which they added a classroom on the top of. There isn’t a workshop here though and as a result the decision was made to rent some land in a village about 9km from the Main office, this would become the site for Adarsho Kamar Bari (adarsho – ideal, kamar bari – farm), a sustainable technology workshop and some Bideshi housing. I mentioned before how I ended up designing it as a result I have been throw into making a lot of decisions very quickly. This month was broken up by a retreat amidst the tea farms Srimongol and an unexpected tool buying trip in Dhaka, but now most days I ride out by motorcycle to go supervise and spend time with the workers. This is a stretch for my Bangla, but I can generally get my point across and understand the questions I’m asked. There are a few people who can speak English in the office but I’ve found that but for a few exceptions I’m generally defaulting into Bangla. Still not having a permanent residence after 6 months of transition might seem like a stressful situation and it is, but so far I’m really enjoying what we’re doing and that helps. The new buildings use hollow block make with a form of green cement which unlike portland cement doesn’t need to fired. Our roofing tiles are made from the same material. We’ve built a ginourmous rainwater collection tank and right now I’m working to nail down the details of an artificial wetland or “living machine” to purify our blackwater. Adarsho Kamar Bari has a biogas digestor captures methane from cow manure and while possibly a little large, but will hopefully give us biogas for cooking. We’ve probably made some mistakes in the process, but we’ve tried a lot of innovative ideas for our own way of living and some just might translate into village life. Kemon Achen? Ekano ami besto. – _Still_ I am busy.

I haven’t posted anything for a little while, that’s not to say that there’s been nothing to say. Life has been rather frenetic and the BDR mutiny was added turmoil. Before things got too crazy though, I wrote an article for Able Magazine which just came out titled “People in Space“. Hope you enjoy it.