!Offline life
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agk's diary
24 January 2022 @ 13:30
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written on GPD Win 1
at kitchen table with hot coffee and radio
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A couple geminauts are writing about offline-first
computing. I'm into it. This is me throwing my own
dead cat over that fence: Anna's thoughts on stuff
for quality offline solarpunk living.
1. Water
Running out of water's the worst. In residential
and industrial ruins, I loved my three 5-gallon
plastic jugs. Restaurants use fryer oil, and
toss the jugs. Fifteen gallons is plenty for a
week if you live alone or have guests over a
few times a week.
I lived with a family in a modern house with the
water off. We caught buckets of roof rain run-
off to do dishes, bathe, and flush the toilet.
Friends from the hills get water from a spring.
Some filter it through a big Burkee.
It's nice to have something with a tap to keep
full of water. I had a 4-gallon collapsible
plastic cube from Campmor. Burkees have a tap.
So do hot water samovars.
2. Heat and light
I cooked on a one-burner propane hotplate. Pro-
pane cost more a week than the hotplate. I
might have done better with a heavy-duty char-
coal-burning rocket stove. It would have set me
back more than $100, though.
A burner, teakettle, and iron skillet make a
fine kitchen. If life's about not running out
of fuel, my fav additional gadgets are a 2-
liter hard-anodized Hawkins pressure cooker and
1.5-liter Thermos non-electric slow-cooker.
I saved for them. They're worth every penny.
The little pressure cooker makes it easy to live
off dry beans with limited fuel. It sterilized
my surgical instruments and rendered safe meat
that went 'off'. The vacuum-bottle cooks food
for 12 hours after it comes off the burner.
Heating your body's easier than the room. Tea,
hot cocoa, hot water bottles everywhere, warm
clothes, and blankets make life nice. Hot cocoa
with butter or coconut oil warms thermally and
metabolically (sugar 'kindling'; saturated fat
'logs').
I had stoves homemade of 55-gallon drums twice.
Bricks in the firebox store heat. I put plastic
over windows; insulated drafty old floors with
corrugated cardboard and plastic covered with
curb-scored old Persian rugs.
On a hot day nothing beats sitting on the roof
under shadecloth. Drink mint water. Mist with a
spraybottle. Let it evaporate in the breeze.
Coal oil (kerosene) lamps are easy to come by
but dim, and burn expensive coal oil. Fumes
gave me headaches. Better are d.Light's $18
solar LED lanterns. Mine withstood 10 years of
heavy use so far.
3. Sanitation
A washbasin and pitcher are essential for baths.
Washboard makes it easier to get clothes clean
in the basin. I poured scalding water from my
kettle, cooler hot water from the pitcher.
5-gallon bucket toilet under a bedside commode
seat. Sawdust or woodchips to dump on it. Cat-
food or sidewalk salt container to pee in
(dump pee down a drain or outside).
4. Happiness
Wristwatch. Calendar. Books for slow learning.
The kind you read for years: Readers Digest Do-
It-Yourself Manual, Soncino Chumash and Cotton
Patch Version of the gospel, a few volumes of
the Cambridge History of Africa, a good dict-
ionary, Common Simple Emergencies, meteorology
textbook, the Muqadimmah.
I loved my battery-powered worldband radio. I
listened to music, BBC World Service, Fidel
Castro's long speeches, and Chinese "learn
English" programs. I sang a lot. Still do.
Lots of happiness happens over tea or dinner,
while keeping warm, cooling off, helping each
other with practicalities of life.
A library card. Paper, pen, envelopes, postage
stamps. Cut wildflowers in a vase. Bright paint
for murals. Friends. A little garden. Chickens
and ducks. A diary. Comfy walking shoes.
What's so solarpunk about plastic, coal oil, and
propane? Nothing if they're cheap and unlimited.
For me solarpunk and intentionally offline life are
about bringing physical constraints home.
Compare a book to a feed. The book ends. You see
its end approach. After the last page, if it was
good, you sit and savor it. Offline and solarpunk
are about repairing, maintaining, and running out;
the pleasure and richness of less, slower.
