The Antstand

The comfort of a laptop stand without the bulk

I have been working with my laptop all around Melbourne for sometime and this year I got tennis elbow. The reason for this is that working directly from a laptop is pretty bad for your body. Ideally you want to raise the screen and use a separate keyboard and mouse. Laptop stands are available but most are bulky and therefore not good for my mobile working.

Hence the Antstand. A laptop stand that is tiny and strong, like an ant.

I origonally built it in cardboard and have been prototyping designs based on the original since October 2015. Now I have had a new prototype version build in metal. Below are pictures of the metal stand, you can see that in my slimline laptop case I can fit my macbook air, mousemat and Antstand. I have a stand for my mac without any noticeable extra bulk in my bag.

: Laptop, Antstand & Mousmat in my Thule case

: Antstand, Laptop and mousmat

: Anstand in use

There is a website now up together with plans for the forthcomming crowdfunding campaign – see www.theantstand.com

Mathamagicland

Mickey mouse used to be Smart

The film Mathamagicland from 1959 stars Mickey mouse and is very insightful about the relationship, context and history of mathematics, explaining how maths has been used to identify patterns for beauty , music and life through history. It is worth a view if you have not seen it before.

As I venture into the world of older cinema I find a trend proven by many examples where the media in the past containing a higher level of intelligence than today. I have written about how the media along with schooling are being used to dumb generations around the world. This can be found on the now defunct website called usethetrivium.com (a previous project of mine). Below is one of the many promotional videos that explains what that project was about.

Permaculture Update from Aylston

March 2014 Update

Its been all go at the house recently. In September 2013 I planted up the entertainment area in front of the house. Recently I completed a new part of the garden which is uphill from the house. We planted a range of bushes and plants aimed at increasing shade and penetration on the subsoil and adding lushness. Plants include

Agapanthus (love em – a friend got about 50 that the neighbour was chucking out)
Birds of paradise
Pumpkin – organic matter
Horseradish & Comfrey to break up the soil and provide organic matter
Oak – For shade and mulch
Wisteria – to climb the fence and provide a foliage backdrop
and a lot of other things I cant remember

The plants were planted in trenches off contour that followed the water lines as they seep from the irrigation pipe on the fence. In the video I give a tour of the new area along with some of my ideas for the new water feature and grape trellis that should cool down the north face of the house.

At Christmas I bought mulch

and this is what I did with it

A fortnight ago I wrote another post on the the estatae here

Hipster scum get nothing done

This weekend I built a new business

A clothing brand inspired by some graffiti “Hipster scum get nothing done” on a shop in Brunswick. see below

New garden beds above the house

I have been doing alot at the Estate recently and I thought readers might appreciate an update
Below is a view of the property – 20 acres in country Victoria of regrowth gum forrest (formally gold mined). Its heavily damaged withlittle top soil and although its a forresst the gums offer very little shade.

The videos below show a quick walkaround of the property showing the 20 fruit trees I planted in September, and the new area I have planted on the inside of the fenceline and the plan I have for a fountain and water feature that I hope will cool down the house when it is hot.

The fruit trees were hit hard but look like they will still survive by the unprecedently hot week we had about a month ago (where the whole week was around 40 degrees).

There is also now a new area of planting that we put in the previous week that I hope will start improving the soil and water retention.

Taking back government

Governments are out of control

With the bail outs and quantitative easing governments are successfully keeping up the illusion of prosperity at the cost of impoverishing future generations. This will effect all of us in one way or another (that includes Australia). I have written on this at length in a previous article entitle unfolding economic shift. Whilst spending vast amounts of money many governments are also eroding personal liberties, conducting illegal activities, vote rigging and working in increasing secrecy whilst intruding more and more onto our own privacy.

The recent evidence brought out by Edward Snowden highlighting the widespread government secret surveillance to people around the world shows how this is becoming routine in some countries. Privacy International recently published the a study that showed how endemic this is becoming (see below).

How to open a can without an opener!

Imagine the cliche

Disaster strikes, people are starving but you have prepared. You have a room filled of canned food but your tin openers break.

Being prepared for life’s curve balls is way more compolicated than a cupboard of canned food but there could be a time in your life when you are hungry and have a can you want to open. All you need now to get your food from the can is a slab of concrete. Watch the video below its quite ingenious.

This video is from the self proclaimed “Crazy Russian Hacker”. On the same channel I also found another video which was truly amazing. Eight guys that made 16 coke bottle rockets and threw them in the air causing 10 seconds of rocket fueled mayhem. This was filmed with very, very high speed cameras in high definition. What was produced was a remarkable, beautiful, slow motion video that looks amazing on my home theater.

So what was I doing on youtube anyway?

Well I was investigating a news story about a guy who created an invention to assist with childbirth based on a youtube video. After watching it I then linked found the other videos above. The man invented the item in the picture below

The video that inspired him is below

Money Creation – Do banks create money out of thin air?

When a bank “loans” money to buy a house the bank uses your promise to pay them as backing to create new money.

……This means that although this arrangement is known as a “bank loan” this arrangement is not a loan.

Personal Productivity – Setting up your day for success

Making change requires work, work requires time and time is limited.

I am writing this post primarily to assist my friend Michael (who is new to personal productivity) but I also hope it will be useful for many people working on improving personal resilience in their lives. I’ve been a practitioner of “Getting Things Done”, a method of personal productivity from the book of the same name for about 4 years now. I have written on this subject before on my page on personal productivity but this time I thought it might be useful to publish how I set myself up to have a good productive day. The post will be brief as I have time boxed this activity to 30 minutes.

STEP 1 Review my todo lists

For personal todos I use and application called “Things”
For Shared todo’s I use “Remember the milk”
For work todo’s (which I use an A4 spiral bound book)

I’m at home and working on Personal todos. I review my todos in “Things” and write out the ones I want to do onto post its

Mind Control

We are all under mind control

The only thing that varies from person to person is how much control we are under. The confused overwhelmed state of most people indicates that there is more mind control happening than we realize. As a result many poor decisions are made that are not in our own best interests. We are bombarded daily with a birage of mind control techniques which makes it difficult to be immune to their effect.

There are practical steps however you can take to defend yourself from mind control and I will cover this in more depth in a future post. In the mean time a good first step would be to download and read the mental antivirus PDF which is a brief overview of common methods used to deceive. Then turn on the TV and see how many fallacies you can identify. If your feeling keen then try the mental antivirus on your own views on a particular issue and see if you can identify fallacies in your own thinking (I think you’ll be surprised).

Mind control techniques have been around since the birth of language. Language is at the center of mind control which is why many great thinkers also study linguistics and and the history and derivation of language. It was after the first world war, however, that mind control as it is today was really perfected. Edward Bernays is looked as as being the father of PR (modern mind control) and responsible for many of the more sophisticated methods of mind control in use today.

The Stanley Parable is genius. It is a game but not really, more like an artwork adventure through mind control. I have never experienced anything like it. I was sick recently and played the game inspired me to write this post. Enjoy the trailer – I recommend the game it is very,very clever ………and so is mind control

Paul Ayling.me

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