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Tools for Actions

Canadian Centre for Architecture's Tools for Actions website

I saw an ad for CCA‘s Actions: What You Can Do With the City exhibition in the current issue of Border Crossings and the title got the best of me. I quickly flipped through the rest of the magazine, then went about exploring the Tools for Actions website.

On the site, you’ll find 99 actions, ranging from a seed bomb missile launcher to the Institute of Applied Autonomy‘s Map of Least Surveillance. There’s a lot to look at and ideas abound, feel free to note any particularly interesting projects in the comments.

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2009 Strategic Plan

Planning out the next year's worth of repairs for this broken city

We spent last night sketching out all of the repairs we could think of for the coming year (a Broken City Lab strategic plan of sorts). It took a couple of hours, 15 markers, and about 30 square feet of paper (see the whole image), but we came up with some very exciting ideas. Among them:

Broken City Symposium, Leddy Microfiche Exhibition, (Gallery) Slumber Parties, Parking Garage Rooftop Screenings,Telephone Pole Suggestion Boxes, Handcrafted “Parking Tickets”, Small-Scale Exhibitions in Cars, A Parade

We’ll have office hours again in the new year. In the meantime, we’re working on LED signs and Ice Block texts (more soon).

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Learning Electricity

trying to figure out how much resistance 200 10mm LEDs might need

Spent last night around the table with my brother, the high school physics teacher, trying to figure out how one might calculate the resistors and type of battery that would be needed in a circuit powering 200 LEDs.

I know there are some calculators online, as Mike had suggested earlier, but because I really don’t know the first thing about electricity, I think I was probably confusing the problem… as well, our Internet connection was down, so we were googless. However, as you can see above, we eventually came out with the right number.

Then I found this formula earlier tonight… 
(SupplyVoltage – LEDForwardVoltage)/ NominalLEDCurrent = ResitorValue

Then I ordered a whole bunch of 270 ohm resistors and a 9v wallwart from Jameco to hopefully get these LED projects moving forward.

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Community coloring

I’ll write a full post when it isn’t nearly three in the morning, but I just wanted to toss out this thing that I started working on tonight.

A couple of us are trying to come up with any number of actions that might serve the dual purpose of helping to stave off (or at least forestall) the proposed closure of one of Windsor’s only two independent urban post offices, while at the same time gathering primary sources concerning the makeup, operation and needs of the Sandwich neighborhood.

I think a coloring contest may be somehow involved.

Possibly. Or not. We’ll see.

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Mapping Windsor, Round 1

Mapping Windsor via Google Maps

We spent a couple hours last night highlighting areas in Windsor that are of interest to us, either as potential research sites, potential exploration sites, or places in need of further examination. If you have anything that should be added to the map, please do so, but in order to edit it, I think you need a Google account. In particular, it would be good to build a better directory of places for rent in the downtown core. I also tried to make a screencast of the discussion and mapping, but having some difficulty getting it to export—I’ll post it when/if I can get it to work.

Photo by Darren.