Author Archives: W. Donald Orkoskey - Pittsburgh Social Media Professional
Certified Permaculture Designer
Phipps Permaculture Design Course I did it – I’ve been certified through Phipps Permaculture Design Course. What is a Permaculture Design Course? In a nutshell permaculture design is a set of principals that apply ecological methodology to solve problems in a less energy intensive ways through finding and replicating natural patterns, creating feedback loops, reducing [...]
Straw Bale & Cob House An’at
Our latest natural building design So in an effort to make our house both affordable and ecologically sound we’ve tried our best to shrink it down to a comfy size. The smaller the house the easier it is to manage and pay for up front and over the long haul. Remember that the more [...]
The Sustainability of City Living
Feed the City The city I live in, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has in it 300,000 people (give or take a few thousand) and while we have an amazing market area – a hub – for produce, meats, dairy products, and event flowers in the Strip District much of that food is brought in from far away [...]
House update – Jan 2012
So Teresa and I have been shopping for a truck. There is one that I want to buy and I think we’re ready to do so but she needs a bit more convincing because of the width of the beast. We’ve also made a few design tweaks in the past few weeks so I wanted [...]
Laundry Hamper
Teresa and I have these mesh laundry bags that sit on a PVC frame (actually we have two). This set up has served us well but since we got Dobby (the cat) back in the Spring we’ve had issues with him shredding the mesh bags, climbing in them, and breaking them. We’ve talked about ways [...]
Latest House Ideas
So Teresa and I have done a lot of work studying housing layouts and we decided that the roundhouse design that we liked won’t be the most comfortable or economical. We also decided that since most of the house will be straw-bale and not cob (as we had planned) that it makes sense to square [...]
Wattle Fence
In our continuing effort to cut cost, lower embodied energy, and use waste or otherwise unused and abundant materials we’ve stumbled on the idea of fencing our yard with a wattle fence. Why are we even going to build a fence? We have a dog and a cat and they both love to be outside. [...]
Energy Loan Program
If I told you I had an idea that would reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, would create good paying jobs, would help spur innovation, would reduce individual families energy bills, and wouldn’t cost the tax payers anything would you want to know more about it? Well the White House apparently didn’t. I shared the following idea with [...]
PJ O’Rourke is an Idiot
I know it’s not a breaking news headline but PJ O’Rourke is an idiot I was listening to Marketplace last night while waiting for my wife to finish work when they played the following: (embed removed because it auto-played and there was no way to shut it up). If the embed doesn’t load you can [...]
The Occupy Movement: One Half of the Equation
Freeing the country from corporate influence is one half of the equation freeing ourselves is the other. The Occupy Wall Street Movement is awesome and I support and stand with my fellow 99%ers and the 1%ers that have joined in the cause because they realize that things must become more balanced either for altruistic or [...]
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