[FM Discuss] proprietary software manuals to soil

[adam hyde]

hi all,

I'm just about to leave NZ for Australia for a day and then on to NYC. I
thought I should perhaps send an update on my holiday activities which
are kind of related to FLOSS Manuals...

Julian Priest, David Merritt and I set up an exhibition in Christchurch
called 'the Geekosystem'. The show was about many things including the
reuse of old computers and electronics - essentially it was a walk-in
workshop with a lot more to boot.

One component of the show was a corner where Dave had set up a shredder.
You can see it here:
http://www.geekosystem.org/photos/shredder.jpg

What you see in the picture is a shredder with a lot of books in the
background. These books are all proprietary software manuals. They came
from Daves personal collection of old computer manuals and books. So we
set up the shredder and asked people to come and shred the proprietary
software manuals. It was a very cathartic experience for many people as
you can see from the photos.

There are some pictures here of people shredding (the first being me and
dave):
http://www.geekosystem.org/photos/shred1.jpg
http://www.geekosystem.org/photos/shred2.jpg
http://www.geekosystem.org/photos/shred3.jpg
http://www.geekosystem.org/photos/shred4.jpg
http://www.geekosystem.org/photos/shred6.jpg

The mulch was then added to a box (you can see it on the left of the
shredder in the first picture -
http://www.geekosystem.org/photos/shredder.jpg) and then added to this
was some water (rain water) and used coffee grains from the coffee we
drank during the week doing our geek things. 

This supplies a good deal of nitrogen (from the coffee) and carbon (from
the books). With time this breaks down to compost, and with added worms
it becomes soil.

We will turn the box into a garden over the next weeks (Dave is staying
at the gallery for a while). First however we had to germinate the
seedlings (Spinach) so we have made a glasshouse from an old floppy disk
case, added the coffee and proprietary software manual mulch and started
germinating...:
http://www.geekosystem.org/photos/seedlings.jpg

so...now we have found an excellent use for all those old proprietary
software manuals....turn them into soil :)


adam






 


-- 
Adam Hyde
FLOSS Manuals

http://www.flossmanuals.net