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A Tale of Two Projects
by Raymond M. Coulombe

The Internet changes everything. The web is uncut heroin for information junkies.

It used to be hard to get cool and interesting information. Today, there are any number of interesting and useful bits of information. The web is full of innovative ideas.

Back in the seventies, I came across a magazine article about dome homes. It interested me, so I sought out books and other magazine articles. Back in those days, that involved haunting book stands and libraries. Since my hometown doesn't even have a bookstore, that took a fair amount of time and effort.

I liked the dome home concept. A dome is an efficient use of building materials, enclosing more volume with less surface area. The very geometry made it stronger and more efficient than the boxes most people live in. Even back then I thought outside the box.

One of those magazine articles had a listing of every dome home designer and manufacturer in North America. I wrote letters, on actual paper, to twenty seven companies. I received replies from about eight of them. Narrowing my search further, I wrote letters to three of those. From their replies, I selected a single company. From that company I bought detailed plans, a book, and a cutting kit. The kit consisted of three pieces of 2 X 6 lumber that had been cut to the proper angles. The idea was to use those pieces of wood set up a radial arm saw to cut the major triangles of the dome.

As clunky as all this sounds, it worked. I'm currently living in a dome home of my own construction.

Fast forward to the present. I read an article on-line in the NY Times about converting a diesel engine to run on waste vegetable oil. I like what I saw and went to the conversion company's web site. Later, I downloaded a PDF file of Homepower magazine that had another article about veggie oil conversions. From there, I culled a listing of conversion kit manufacturers.

These conversion kits allow vehicles with diesel engines to run on straight vegetable oil. The car starts on regular diesel, or even biodiesel. Veggie oil is heated, to lower its viscosity, a switch is flipped, activating a valve that transfers over to veggie. Before shut down, the vehicle is switched back to diesel to allow a cold start. The exhaust is much cleaner and smells a lot like French fries. (Not Freedom Fries -FRENCH Fries! Dammit!)

Using the net, I searched out a car suitable for the conversion. I found an older Mercedes Benz diesel in the next state. I called the people on the phone, drove over, liked the car, bought it and drove it home. Soon after, once again using the net, I ordered a conversion kit out of Canada.

During the conversion, I noticed I was missing some diagrams from the instructions. I e-mailed the company and the guy got back to me right away, sending the missing diagrams as attachments. The conversion was a success.

Since I use waste oil picked up from restaurants, it has to be filtered before use. I bought collection pumps and filters on-line. Checked out forums and web sites for more information. I've added an additional, heavy duty filtration system that allows me to use unfilted waste oil directly. I can pull up behind a restaurant, fill up the car's tank, and drive off. Restaurants have to pay to get the stuff hauled away, so most are more than happy to give it to me. I'm driving on almost free fuel.

Now back to the dome project. It took years from concept to day one of construction. Information gathering was slow. I had to buy most of my informational material. To communicate with other dome home builders, I had to find them somehow, then either call or talk with them in person. Even postage added up. The best thing that can be said about the whole process is that it did eventually work.

The veggie conversion project used the net. All my information was free and much faster. I could even order everything I needed without ever leaving my computer. So far, I've ordered the kit and accessories from four different companies. From concept to completion took weeks, not years.

I want people to truly appreciate the Internet. It's easy to do interesting things. It's easy to meet others doing the same. It's easy to locate the resources. It's easy to go "outside the box." My big question to all you readers is: Are you using this wonderful tool to its full potential, or are you out of gas on the information superhighway?

In days of yore, say, the 40's - 70's, readers of Science Fiction magazines were often experimenters and tinkerers. Hell, back then, engineers wrote most of those stories. They built things like rockets and submarines. They took a few fanciful ideas from a story and were inspired to do real things. Sure, they set a lot of garages on fire in the process, but at least they did stuff.

What I want to know is, are our readers using this wonderful tool, the Internet, to do cool and interesting projects? Are they inspired or has the spark of invention gone dead?

E-mail and let me know: ray@quantummuse.com

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