Work

WANTED: DESIGNER TO REWRITE THIS SITE

Off-Grid.net has been going five years and in that time has helped build the global off-grid community and provided a valuable information service.  We need to keep on developing a range of services for off-grid people, and those who are thinking about changing their lives to a more sustainable form of existence.

We are looking for a committed all-rounder who shares our values, and can take us to the next level and stay with us, developing the site for years to come (paid of course).…

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Community

Homesteading-book review

Homesteading, it’s a buzzword that means different things to different people, back in the day, it meant getting land for free as long as you lived on it and improved it for x number of years. It was a way to get people to move west (in the USA), back when travel was slow and painful, even dangerous.…

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Data management and other off-grid technologies

Going off-grid sounds exciting.
Many people approach it with a sense of  adventure as if they were living in a camper van,  trailer or small cabin.  The high tech aspect consist of  adding a small  solar photo voltaic  panel to power  a set of LED lights and maybe a laptop computer.
I have seen people express  the sentiment that going off-grid was a way to get away from  other people, society and the evils of modern technology.
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Robin hood tax pressure grows

Thom Yorke - payback time

Ewan McGregor, Radiohead and Bill Nighy are the latest to join the campaign for a Robin Hood Tax on the financial sector.
McGregor and Radiohead created a Youtube video.
The movement has been growing since the credit crunch first hit, demanding that bankers and hedgies should repay the vast amounts plundered from the global economy. Off-Grid.net has been calling for a “Pay it Back tax.” A powerful new coalition of charities, trade unions and church groups argue that a Robin Hood tax could generate $700bn (£450bn) worldwide. The tax would see 0.05% levied on each bank and hedge fund trade ,ranging from shares to foreign exchange and derivatives, creating a cash pile to be spent on measures to combat domestic and international poverty as well as fight climate change.
The Guardian and comedian Bill Nighy have just released this video

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Land prices set to collapse

Be prepared for the next phase of the recession and keep watching land prices – if you are nimble, there will be an affordable moment to pick up prime land for your bug-out location.

“I recently spent a week sailing in the warm and sunny waters of the Caribbean on a FORBES investor cruise,” reports one of the magazine’s overpaid columnists in the latest issue.

“Instead of being refreshed by the calming sea air and restful floating digs I came back even more stressed about the market than I was before I left.”

Poor dear. He is right to be stressed.  …

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India’s cleantech start-ups

We all know that China is the world leader in relatively low-tech solar panels.  Now a clutch of tiny Indian start-ups  are proving  that global warming’s business opportunities  will not be the exclusive preserve of  the developed nations.

EnNatura of Dehli has developed washable,bio-degradable printing ink from vegetable oil.The offset printing industry in India alone consumes one million tonnes of petroleum products and emits 500,000 tonnes of volatile organic compounds every year.
“I can see a company like this growing into a billion dollar global business,” says Vivek Wadhwa of Duke University, who studies entrepreneurs.
Solar-based LED lighting start-up Pegasus Semiconductor of Rajasthan makes off-grid home and street lighting systems using LED lights and solar for the power. It has done about 1,200 installations in Rajasthan and about 35 with companies and government and is expecting to reach revenues of $250,000 by the end of fiscal 2009.…

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Tough Times Survival Guide vol 1 – book review

1192_1459_largeReading, learning, it’s what I enjoy doing. Before the internet, I would go to the three local libraries in my hometown, I would check out as many books as each on would allow, take them all home, read-read-read until I had gotten through all of them, then I return the books to their respective homes and start all over again. I tended to read non-fiction, I preferred them over fiction most of the time. With the exception of a few notable authors such as Stephen King, Jean M. Auel, and such…

With the advent of the internet and ebooks, I mostly read what I can get in digital format, including audiobooks. So these last couple of books I’ve read, I have held in my hand, turned pages, it was quite old-school for me. J I love it. Now, on to the book review.…

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