San Cristobal de la Casas, in Chiapas, in the south of Mexico. Nice town - quite modern compared to most of the places I saw in Central America. I'm wondering whether Mexico is more developed mainly because it hasn't had to deal with civil wars in recent decades.

I'm staying with Kjell Kuhne, who founded Hospitality Club with his brother back in 2000 (several years before CouchSurfing started). Great guy, and it's interesting talking with him about sustainability and appropriate technology. Turns out he recently went to a national Mexican convention on appropriate technology - I'll be going over that material with him tonight, and talking about how to make connections between this knowledge and these people and Appropedia's appropriate technology base.

Finding street food without meat is a challenge though.

I take my first trip to Latin America on Oct 28. I'll be there for several months, but beyond a bunch of contacts in Guatemala (where I begin) I have little concrete planned. 

If you know anywhere in Latin America that's good and affordable for spending time writing and working on Appropedia, with broadband, friendly locals and preferably lots of dancing, then please let me know.

Or possibly appropriate technology villages or eco-villages that would welcome a traveler for a short visit (or a long visit if there's a broadband and we can come to an arrangement).

The Appropedia Blogs are now active - so most of my development, sustainability and appropriate technology related  blogging will be there from now on.

There's still some tweaking to do, though - putting in the open license notices, and making the layout of links more like the Appropedia wiki.  Then to make the Appropedia wiki's skin more like the blog.

I swam in Lake Ontario today. Good time of year for it - while the water is in liquid form.

Beautiful spot here in Kingston. It's good meeting Joshua Pearce (who teaches at Queens University) face-to-face at last, and talking about sustainability, appropriate technology and all that, and ways to get collaboration happening in a much bigger way. And tinkering with his clever piece of solar water disinfection equipment - but I'm not allowed to share details of his specific design, just yet.

I mentioned to an Indonesian friend by email that I was going to Ontario - she said watch out, maybe there's lots of onta (camels) there :-).

Appropedia made it to semi-finalist in the Buckminster Fuller Challenge. (Yay, recognition! Sob, no cash prize.) From our entry:

Difficulties in tracking down existing solutions to appropriate technology problems has led to engineers and fieldworkers wasting time, energy, and resources solving the same problems over and over again. A single shared infrastructure is needed so that the existing disjoint community of appropriate technologists can more easily and openly collaborate on their projects.

...and that's exactly what we're doing, in appropriate technology and many related areas.

How to fix the developing world for sixty million dollars - based on the Open University model. Another provocative post from Vinay Gupta, the Hexyurt guy.

Green home designs that cost less than traditional housing - simple changes make such a difference. Especially passive solar design, which also makes for a much more pleasant and comfortable place to live in.

That's real sustainability.

One challenge with making an Appropriate technology portal on Appropedia is that so much of our content is about appropriate technology. Can't have a portal about everything - that's what the front page is for. But recently I bit the bullet, did some categorization, and it was actually a lot clearer than I expected. The technology is different from, say Green living which is more about lifestyle and practices; Principles of development which is one of the categories that deals with the "software" of changing the world;  Organizations and Programs, just to name a few.

About time, too - Appropedia is the major appropriate technology wiki, so having a portal to the subject makes sense. This new version is looking okay. It needs more work, but it's a useful page.

Thanks to all those who make this work possible - all the students and passionate believers in free content, wikis, green living and practical justice, that have given the portal all this content to point to. And to all the programmers - MediaWiki is awesome, as are some of the extensions. I love the category tree function, which helps the portal stay up to date with relatively light maintenance.

Crazy to flush with fresh, clean water, right? Use the water from washing your hands: Wash n Flush. (Huggs, and Stumbles welcome!)