The Window Cleaners Who Turn Their Hand

After four months of construction, Brush resident Virgil Roberts has completed an approximate 85-square foot 'miniature home.' The project also included an outhouse.

Brush resident builds 'miniature home' - After years in the janitorial business, washing windows for companies and building furniture, one Brush resident decided to take his knowledge of construction and build a ‘miniature home.’ Brush resident Virgil Roberts recently completed construction of an 8x10 home with approximately 85-square feet inside, a front porch and an outhouse. “Actually, I wanted to see if I could do it,” Roberts said of the part that he enjoyed the most about building the home. “It’s like a hunting cabin or you could use it for a mother-in-law cabin. It looks nice enough that if someone wants a little office in their backyard (it would work, too). Nobody has anything like this.”

The home includes electricity, a variety of small appliances, a bunk bed and a large window designed to allow sunlight into the home in-order to heat it through a ‘passive solar’ window. In addition, the entire building is wrapped in ‘reflective insulation.’ “It’s supposed to reflect the heat,” Roberts said of the insulation he used. “It’s about the same as regular insulation.” The outhouse was built to allow Roberts a break from constructing the building. “I got bored one day, so I made an outside john,” he said. Construction began in April and came to an end in late July.

According to Roberts, the  building  was built on railroad ties and only worked on it part-time in-between  other projects around his main house.  “I didn’t put in over two hours a day,” he said adding that his son-in-law helped with installing the rafters. A building permit was not required since the unit was smaller than 120-square feet. All of the material was bought locally. With the project complete, Roberts is now interested in selling it. “I’d like to make a few extra bucks,” he said.

Roberts is asking $7,000 for the building. Included in the price is all of the brand-new appliances with their original boxes, a bunk bed, porch, outhouse and a never been used generator. After he sells the home, Roberts plans to build a similar one. The second building will include a regular size front door; however, it will be located on the side of the house to allow for additional square-feet, detachable solar panels on the end of the unit and a larger front porch.

Aussie Window Cleaner turned inventor Ric Richardson.

The beautiful mind of the Aussie who beat Microsoft: Inventor Ric Richardson is a no-bull, unassuming Aussie, but when Microsoft pinched his big idea, he took on the software behemoth ... and won. Jane Cadzow meets an unlikely giant-slayer. The phone rang early, rousing Ric Richardson from a fitful sleep. As the sun rose over the northern NSW coast, he sat on his verandah and absorbed the news that a jury on the other side of the world had awarded him half a billion dollars. "I didn't really feel like celebrating," he remembers. "I just felt like breathing for a while."

Richardson is the Australian inventor who took on Microsoft and won. In April 2009, a United States court found the giant software corporation had used his technology without his knowledge or permission, and ordered Microsoft to pay compensation of $US388 million (then worth more than $530 million). The award was one of the highest in US patent history. As it turned out, Richardson was right to keep the cork in the champagne bottle - the verdict was overturned five months later. But early this year, an appeals court upheld the original jury's decision that Microsoft had infringed his patent. He was vindicated, though still didn't feel like throwing a party. "I was just very relieved," he says.

Richardson, 49, has a friendly, round face, dark-rimmed glasses and blue eyes. Friends and colleagues speak in awe of his prodigious intelligence but the sheer size of him is what you notice first - his nimble brain is trapped inside a lumbering body that tips the scales at close to 180 kilograms. When we meet at a smart Byron Bay resort, he is wearing a navy T-shirt so enormous it could probably accommodate Bill Gates and the entire Microsoft board. While he talks, he perches on the edge of his seat, as if afraid his full weight might be too much for it. Though gregarious and good-humoured, he has the slightly apologetic air of one who knows he takes up more space than he should.

The innovation that prompted the legal battle is an elegant method of deterring software piracy - essentially, a system of locking software titles to individual machines so they can't be illegally copied. But Richardson isn't just a computer geek: over the years, he has produced blueprints for everything from optical-fibre fingerprinting to a home-based hydro-electric scheme and a toothpaste tube that can be squeezed to the last drop. A problem-solver, he likes to call himself. "Because that's what invention is. Solving a problem before everybody else." The Microsoft saga isn't over yet. The appeals court ruled that the jury had erred in calculating the damages payment, so a new trial will decide the amount due to Richardson and Uniloc, the company he founded. But he says he isn't hanging on that result. "The fact that they have been found guilty is the most important thing from my perspective. A lot of people think this is all about some big settlement, but no, it isn't. This case was about a lot more than money."

For much of Richardson's youth, he basically wanted to be Jimi Hendrix. Years of obsessive practice turned him into a more than competent electric guitarist - but "I could never get his loosey-goosey feel", he says, still a bit crestfallen. "I was too uptight and Caucasian for that." Since he couldn't be a thin, black rock god and had no alternative career in mind, nor any interest in going to university, he spent a while drifting between casual jobs: window washing, garbage collecting, guitar teaching. Then in 1982, when he was 20, he got his hands on a Commodore 64, one of the newfangled home computers. And everything fell into place. He already had two inventions under his belt: the Shadesavers sunglasses cord, dreamed up and sold by him and his brother, and an extendable pole for washing apartment-block windows. Read more.