The Design for Life blog posted absolutely brilliant, simple instructions for creating your own yard torches. Say goodbye to all those crappy tikis stuck in the mud. Just be careful you don’t burn your house down…

I’m absolutely going to make a few of these for my lil’ backyard patio. Yay, fun house project!

My friend Lance Weiler has been working hard on a new project where creative people meetup and discuss the future of multi-platform story telling, open-source media making and cutting-edge technologies in the creative industries.

DIY Days will be in Philadelphia, happening on August 1st at University of the Arts. But if you’d like to get a jump start on the action, there will be a pre-party and creative meetup on July 8th.

The pre-party details:

Wednesday, July 8 :: 7-11pm @ Johnny Brenda’s
Presented by the WorkBook Project and PIFVA
$5 at the door or FREE for PIFVA members

Special performances by
* SCIENTISTS ARE THE NEW ROCKSTARS

* CHIEF WRECKEM’s ORGANS vs TURNTABLES

* Speed power points presentations about
the FUTURES OF ENTERTAINMENT.

* PLUS a number of targeted NETWORKING SESSIONS to help you meet others who are making creative work in PHILLY.

My friend Hudson and his brother Michael are making a documentary film about their 93-year-old grandfather Alva B. Lines. Here’s a bit of their first trailer the put together based on interviews they filmed with him recently.

I’m certainly intrigued by the film, but I’m equally interested in the way that these fellas are promoting the project using social media marketing tactics (posting updates to a Twitter account, maintaining a production blog in lieu of a ‘coming soon’ splash page, etc). I’ve long been a proponent of indie artists taking full advantage of the tools the web has to offer in building your own audience by keeping them in the loop throughout the entire creative process. I love pointing out projects that ‘get it’ and are doing it right. Another documentary that has been really hitting home runs in this realm is my friends at Project Pedal and their film For Thousands of Miles.

Thought we’re only a few steps into producing our own documentary, Mable’s Murder (working title), Audrey and I certainly aim to do the same kind of audience building and promotion once we’re further along into production. By the way, it’s a pleasent coincidence that Hud and Michael are also exploring stories from our grandparent’s generation. We hope to follow their project closely and share their successes with you in the coming months.

My pal Jay at Arthur Magazine recently mentioned a book that’s being passed around amongst my friends here in Philly recently (indeed, I picked up a copy for Audrey’s birthday just last week).

It’s called The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-sufficient Living in the Heart of the City. Though we don’t have a lot of free space to plant a big garden at our place, we’re very interested in finding better ways to live both here in Philly and wherever the future might take us. I feel like this book will be a good guide with some enlightened ideas for better living.

Oh, and as any good author team worth their salt, Erik Knutzen and Kelly Coyne are blogging about urban sustainability issues topics, too. One recent post gives some resources on creating your own self-irrigating planters.

Might be a good buy for all ye urban dwellers out there, especially in places like Detroit where things are getting so bad, people seem to be buying abandon houses for $100 a pop! Sounds like it’s time for some ‘recolonization’ up that way, huh?

Bright Bike from Michael Mandiberg on Vimeo.

Bright Bike is a Retroreflective Vinyl coated bike. It is like coating your bike with a big sticker that turns ultra-brite in headlights. Right now we are in the prototyping stages, and hope to offer a DIY Kit soon. If you can’t wait that long, contact Beacon Graphics in NJ for Scotchlight 680.

[Thanks, Rocketboom!]

Longtime readers will know that I day dream a lot about long distance bike adventures, but it’s been a while since I wrote about one.

At MountainFilm in Telluride this year, we had the pleasure of catching this amazing film made by two young French Canadians called Asiemut. The courageous and adventuresome couple, Olivier Higgins and Mélanie Carrier (heros!), bike their way across a significant portion of the Asian continent completely on their own. It’s an amazing film, truly one that inspired me in my own dreams of documenting such an adventure. It’s one of those films that makes you think, ‘damn, you can do anything if you stick your mind to it!’

If you’re planning on doing a trip like this (who isn’t?) they’ve got some great tips on how and where and when to travel on their website. I’m bummed they don’t have a full trailer up on YouTube, though they do have this short clip to give you a sense of the tone of the film:

Asiemut certainly reminded me of my blog buddies, Project Pedal. I’m sure they’ll dig this. Maybe you guys would like to do a bike trip with Audrey and me next? Haha. I can’t wait to see their film!

Since I’m a video nerd, statements like this make me drool (over the possibilities):

We filmed the whole documentary film with a semi-professional camera, mini-dv Sony pdx10, 16:9 format. We traveled with seventy mini-dv tapes and two 360 minutes lithium batteries. We also had one charger, a stool, and a laptop. We took ourselves every single images of our film!

As you can see on the picture below, we had a camera mount that permitted us to film and to speak to the camera as we biked. We created it ourselves in the north of China with the help of two amazing chinese welders. It was attached at the front of our luggage support and was also attached to our handlebar. It was a homemade camera mount, quite heavy, but worked very well!

The good people of P’unk Ave and The Hacktory are putting together a free event called Ignite Philly on Wednesday June 11th at Johnny Brenda’s at 6:00pm. I’ll be there!

The basic premise of the thing is to ask some local innovators to get up on stage and give a talk about what they do. The catch? They can’t speak for more than 5 minutes and their powerpoint slides will only stay up 15 seconds max. Should be an excellent time for all us nerdz and non-nerdz alike.

You won’t want to miss the awesomeness of featured speakers like:

Hope to see you there!

Long time readers of my blog know that I love train hopping stories!

From the site:

Filmmaker Alison Murray drops out of the rat race, grabs a camera, and hits the rails with some other punk kids on a trans-continental freight train hopping epic. On their odyssey they encounter a cast of hobos and runaways, scallywags and castaways, finding adventure at every turn. Amidst run-ins with the law, and surviving the perils of the elements, Alison weaves an epic narration over beautifully shot film and video with an old-time soundtrack by Beck (think Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly). Train On The Brain was originally produced for Channel 4 UK by MJW Productions, and was Alison Murray’s first documentary film before directing Mouth to Mouth starring Ellen Page. Train On The Brain is hollywoodcansuckit.com’s first film release.

Episode Seven: 64 Days – Part 2 from mike ambs on Vimeo.

Arthur Magazine’s blog Magpie has been fantastic reading for the past few months. At least once a week I find something fascinating being delved into with reckless abandon. It’s fresh and interesting. I highly recommend you checking it out if the mystical, the psychedelic, the musical, the dreamy, the progressive political strike your fancy.

Today, they post about The Miss Rockaway Armada a group of self-made Mississippi River pirates floating downstream from end to end on a crazy raft made of recycled, reused and repurposed materials. Fun! Here’s a quote from the gang:

We want to create: to invent a new sustainable way to travel, to demonstrate different ways of living and moving that are friendlier to the environment and to each other, to indulge in that essential urge to make something out of nothing. We want to meet people: to learn from new folks along the way, to teach what we know, to share our art, our music and our performance, and to make new friends. Finally, for adventure: to reclaim and reinvent the old American urge to strike out and discover the vast, mysterious land we inhabit and see it for ourselves.

I love adventure, but I really love cool weirdo stuff like this. Living passionately is the only way to be!

Today, I found one of the best shows I have ever seen on my beloved sport of thrifting. I’m now a huge fan of the awesome, amazing and fabulous ThreadBangers Show! See for yourself how these kids are doing it oh-so-right:

Last weekend, at a very chill backyard hangout party, I made some hilarious and excellent new friends. Beth and Maureen are two super cool women, lifelong friends, who create an art comic called The 3:00 Book. It’s all based on notes that the two wrote back and forth to each other in high school. Raw, funny and flamboyant. They saved the notes and channeled their energies into this killer, tongue-in-cheek retrospective of the life of girls on the fringe. Them against the world. Believe me, these girls make you laugh.

Word has it, too, that they’re starting a video blog of their antics and adventures with one Pumpkinhead Head (a scary character from the comic). Can’t wait to see more!

If you’re nearby on Friday (Sept 7th) at 5pm, head over to their book signing to meet them and grab your own awesome signed copy! From the invitation:

Come see and purchase your very own 3:00 book! This is the first edition photocopied and bound with love for you! All the piss, blood and hair dye is hand colored by the artists, Maureen Cummings and Beth Heinly. A very special deification will take place at 7 p.m. with the 3:00 book’s own Pumpkinhead! I’m sorry I meant defication. Come and play and see!

Vagabond Boutique / 37 N. 3rd St. / Philadelphia, PA 19106

I had the fabulous experience a couple weeks ago of shooting video at very close up at a demolition derby in the Poconos. I was right above the action, on the infield, in the middle of the mud. The producers parked a big truck for me to set up a tripod just ten feet from the edge of the dirt pit where the hulking skeleton cars were smashing each other up. Pure awesomeness! No, I won’t be videoblogging it, unfortunately. It was a gig for an ESPN show.

One of the most interesting thing about a demo derby is the people involved, of course. First of all, what would possess a person to spend untold hours modding an old car just to trash it in the matter of minutes? The prize money for this event was like $1000 for first place. I can’t imagine after buying the car, fixing it up, flatbedding it to the event, the gas, the food, etc. they’d even break even.

I guess that’s what makes it a uniquely American affair. Cars. Crashing. Loudness. Mud. Lots of mud. All because, well, it’s fun.

Technorati Tags: driving, cars, americana, demolition derby, hobbies

[thanks BoingBoing]

Technorati Tags: sustainability, city life, strawbale, boingboing, diy, freedom, housing, howto, art, offthegrid

Technorati Tags: idea, lo-fi, projecting, homebrew, gadgets, motorcycles, film, filmfestival, art

Technorati Tags: blip.tv, blogging, diy, news, philebrity, Philly, povertyjetset, television, video, videoblog

Technorati Tags: povertyjetset, parties, art, goldenball, psychedelic, music

I feel like it’s time to comment on a predicament I constantly find myself in. I’m not sure if this is just me or if other people feel the same about it. That is, I am insanely busy, days cram-packed with awesome things happening all the time but don’t seem to make any money.

I love to dig into the things. I fill my days with juicy bits of life that interest me, that challenge me, the things that make this whole crapshoot worth a damn and make every day somehow more exciting than the last. Live deep and suck the marrow out of life, a wise teacher once said. Funny how deep livin’ don’t necessarily pay. What’s up with that? How do I cross the lovely yet somewhat mythical bridge to the Land of Living the Dream (that is: of doing what one is passionate about and getting paid a decent livable wage for it)?

Take this blog, for example. Surely fun. Very satisfying. Interesting to the nth degree. And yet, my blinged-out embedded Google Ads have yielded a whopping $11.06 to date. That’s a pretty poor wage for hundreds of hours of work over many months. Oh, and see that Amazon ad over on the sidebar? $0.00. Yup.

Ah, blogging. And how! I have let you take over my life so completely – I’ve even used that deplorable, awkward and ugly word “blogger” (sounds like bugger) when people ask what I do! – and you have yet to make me enough to even buy a friggin’ sandwich and chips at the deli down the street.

And so I think to myself, start this video blogging thing. Also, deeply satisfying, (yes, as some detractors have pointed out, a bit self-indulgent to some degree… though in my defense, the road trip blog is merely the “tester” series to get into the swing of things and learn how to use it as a tool). Hell, my video hosting site even sells ads on my behalf. Payoff to date: $0.

So what’s this game all about people? What are we in it for?

I don’t know. But watch out sucka! cuz I’m gonna be videobloggin’ some crazy s**t at Sundance, and it’ll be one hell of a funny story to tell my kids and grandkids. That’s valuable, right?

[PS - anyone want to hire me to build them a blog or teach them how to video podcast???]

Technorati Tags: blogging, diy, howto, money, povertyjetset, technology, trends, videoblogging, web2.0

I’ve met a couple long-distance bicyclists in my day. An interesting lot, to be sure. I’ve always day dreamed about biking across America (Paul, are you reading this?). Just for kicks.

One time, I had a conversation with this guy Dieter, the owner of a youth hostel in Dawson City, Yukon Territory that I was staying at. Dieter had this world map on his office wall with a thin, black line snaking its way up and down the continents of the earth, ending in that far, far corner of Western Canada. I asked him is those were his travels. “Yep,” he said. “My travels on my bike.”

If you ever find yourself in Dawson City, go say hello to him and stay at his hand-made youth hostel. It’s one of the finest hostels I’ve ever been to. Complete with Yukon-style “showers”, log cabins and super excellent international vibe. Not to mention near 24-hour daylight in the summer. You’d have to be pretty hardy to get up there in winter. Tends to be like 30-below most of the time.

Here’s a photo of Dieter, lookin’ fabulous in 1980 in the mountains of Columbia:

But I’m getting side-tracked. What was I was going to post about was another intrepid traveler, Tim Harvey. I was just reading about Tim, who just completed an entirely human-powered expedition to circumnavigate the planet that took him over two years. So awesome. That’s a photo of Tim at the top of the post. I wanted to share Tim’s story with you because this morning I saw a really inspiring interview with him during his last days on his trek. Unfortunately, I can’t embed the video, but you should really have a look. Click this link to watch it. Super, super stuff.

Technorati Tags: heros, concept, freedom, bikes, environment, inspiration, povertyjetset, travel, biking, adventure, escape, nomad, dawsoncity, timharvey, canada, video, radical

I just read about these couple guys (in Vagabonding) who’ve taken it upon themselves to hitchhike to all 50 state capitals within 50 days. Now that’s the kind of adventure I can get behind. Total pointless, totally cool, totally Poverty Jet Set. And fun as hell. Not only that, but they’re promoting themselves in an entertaining and oh-so-Web-2.0 manner — Flickr photos, YouTube videos, a MySpace profile and more.

Too bad they won’t be through Philly. Only Harrisburg, I suppose. Yuck! Oh, all right, Harrisburg isn’t ALL bad.

Hey guys, do you know about CouchSurfing.com already? Surely…

Technorati Tags: concept, hitchhiking, magdalenus, driving, povertyjetset, adventure, travel, blogging, ontheroad