It’s been out for a few months, but if you can find Issue 4 of Manzine, I got an article about being a rugby fan in the United States. For those, not in the know, Manzine is “a publication about the male phenomenon.” Produced out of the UK, the magazine is an ingenuous take on men’s magazines.

On a freezing 11 degree day, (January 22, 2011 to be precise) the Gowanus Grassroot Mapping crew hiked out to Gowanus Canal to document the Superfund site. These balloons were made out of Mylar emergency blankets, and filled with helium that a local welder graciously donated to us. More photos can be found on my flickr photo set.

I’m admittedly way behind on my grassroots mapping updates… but here some more photos from our grassroots mapping excursions.

In our March 27th excursion, we also got immensely helpful assistance from Charles Stewart, who is a kite enthusiast / expert / entrepreneur.  I was pretty psyched with my first experience with kite photography, rather than balloons.

Mathew Lippincott also gave a super interesting demonstration of his solar balloon technique, using thin plastic which is heat sealed, and dyed with pigment. It uses the sun to heat, and the sunny but still cold weather was great for getting the temperature differential to get lift. It is also super cheap to make, and eliminates the biggest expense of our Mylar balloon design, which is helium. It was great to finally meet him and some other of the Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science,  PLOTS, founding members.

We got good photos that I haven’t seen yet, but when they get stitched together, I’ll update with a link.