I made a logo. 

Other than the hints at the two primary letters, the field and diagonal stripes are taken from the Scottish flag, a part of my background.

Tesla Motors just opened their first dealership. 

Their roadster is way beyond what most people could afford, but it gets attention and generates money for a company poised to make an electric car for the masses.  And they're already working on doing that, with the Whitestar sedan.  They even have competition from Fisker, it seems.

Partly out of guilt/altruism, and partly from my sense of geeky novelty, I've been interested in Earth-friendly housing and energy for awhile.  A big part of the opportunity and motivation for my construction project comes from the pursuit of a low-impact home.  Budget permiting, I'd like to include as much of these features as possible in my project:

To make dividing the lot in the future a viable option, this looks like a good way to lay things out. The lines show a 50' x 50' plot with a long driveway. 

This actually forms a bigger, more useful garage than my original plan, and still leaves a respectable yard for both. I won't be legally splitting the lot for this project but someone probably will later, and there's the possibility of making the back lot 56 or 60 feet deep rather than 50.

I found the address of Mr. Radcliffe's container home, and took a look at it after work.

It's an ADU made of two 40-foot containers, really simple. He has direct street access. Lucky. I have his email address, so I'll eventually ask how he wrote it up and what everything cost. It'll be interesting to see how much of it I can legally do myself.

Building a regular house on an empty lot is straightforward enough, relatively speaking. What I'm working toward is something smaller, built from prefabricated parts. I figured I could either pursue it as a manufactured (mobile) home, or as an Accessory Dwelling Unit, which is what the city calls mother-in-law additions.

Beginning in 2008, I am on a mission to build my next home out of shipping containers, in Portland, Oregon. I have access to property to put it on (after demolishing the existing garage), and the same block has seen a lot of in-fill over the last few years. Portland presents both unique advantages and challenges to making this happen. I've already learned a lot and come up with cool ideas. Now you can follow along.