This is the weblog of Intrepid Wanderer. You never know what you
might find here;
graphic descriptions of bodily functions, computer programming secrets,
proselytizing for the antichrist, miscellaneous ranting and kvetching,
valuable information on living off the land...
if you don't share my rather weird interests you may want to try
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2025-12-04-1154Z
In the last dream before I woke up, there were minimalist trucks built mostly of 4x8 foot plywood sheets dumpster-dived from construction projects where they had been used as concrete forms, held together with angle and flat steel stock and rivets made from discarded nails. I took a photo of the construction details but unfortunately iCloud doesn't yet extend to dreamland.
Then I just lay there pondering things for a while. I've seen these reels of vehicles in some poorer Asian countries with many wheels, and it hit me that maybe those aren't full wheels, only discarded tires, and they need so many to hold the weight of passengers and cargo, since there's no compressed air, only the sidewalls supporting the whole contraption.
Which then got me thinking about bombing across the desert on similar platforms, powered by wind and/or pedaling and/or solar-electric motors and/or gas engines. And then, why not water too? You'd have to have some way of preventing splashes from getting into the empty tires and sinking your craft. Does anybody make closed-cell foam round stock of various sizes, like pool noodles but bigger? How about some type of papercrete, or structural mycelium like was used to make a kayak a few years back? Which got me thinking about these 3D-printed houses, and how inexpensive life would be in a world where government regulations are minimal and/or unenforced. One person could build a simple hovel in a few weeks using scrounged materials like the above. The more artistically-inclined could form more ambitious, whimsical, structures using similar methods and materials. [comment]
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