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SitRep

Spring and all that.

  • It’s time to start working on building out the fencing for the backyard. That means renting a machine to drill big fenceposts into the corners, cementing those corners in, and then setting a ton of t-posts and stretching fence. Also building at least three gates. This is a lot of work.
  • We’re expanding the veggie portion of the garden with two new 4×8′ beds. Lots of new flower plantings elsewhere, too, as well as 20-odd planting bags for blue potatoes.
  • The new front-yard border is being wildly expanded. Lots of pollinator-friendly plants and color going in.
  • We got a new electric ride-on mower last year (to replace a very, very dead gas mower), and while it’s better in every single way, it’s… huge. The deck is 54″ wide, and that means it’s difficult to get into anywhere tight- like the orchard. I’m hoping when the yard fence is done, the orchard fencing can come out, and that’ll make it easier to keep things tidy in there.
  • God the studio/office needs an overhaul. Storage, books, gear, and a rack all really need to happen, and it’s high-time I got the circular saw out again.
  • I have, apparently, a new bike incoming. It was a bit of a surprise, and I’ve never owned one like it before- it’s a full suspension mtb. And while those have existed for a long time, I’ve never owned one. It’ll be interesting to see how it folds into my quiver of bikes.

SitRep

Is it Spring yet? No? Sorta?

  • I’ve started work on the garden/yard for the year- pruning the pear tree heavily, setting some spring bulbs in the ground, and cleaning up the crab apple tree and others.
  • I’m almost done with the planning of the new garden enclosure- I’m moving the fence and gate(s) to enclose the orchard area, too, and I’m using the opportunity to create some structure around a patio for outdoor cooking and whatnot.
  • The new camera rig is together. Some old parts (a Canon EOS M at the heart of the thing, with some very old Konica lenses in use), some new parts (a cage and nato-railed handle, modern HDMI out, and a solid-mounted tripod plate), and it’s a pretty cohesive thing to use. I’m just starting to shoot new videos.
  • I finally cleaned the gunk out of the pots on my NAD receiver, and what-do-you-know it sounds nicer.
  • I found an old set of instructions for a DIY low-budget pizza oven, which seems like a good place to start to see if we’d use such a thing enough to justify a larger and more costly solution.

SitRep

Here’s where things stand:

  • School vacation was last week, and so most of my time was put towards cleaning and providing stimulation for the littles. Historic tours, athletic outings, elaborate dinners, etc.
  • Finished a couple of novels (currently trying to burn through the Slow Horse books). Working on Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act.
  • One of those go-back-to-go-forward sort of times- lots of resetting the house to make it ready for the next push forward. Studio rack, art finally getting hung, more book storage, etc etc etc.
  • Starting to bring in Spring supplies- gardening pots, clothing, travel supplies.
  • Building out a camera rig to get back to shooting video again.
  • Investigating a bike rack for my car.

Research List #46

Things I’m researching, currently:

  • Growing Persimmon trees (apparently the Asian varieties are self-fertilizing?)
  • Watching (carefully and closely) the development of Shuttlecraft, a social media server for a single user that Ben Brown has been working on (and that is compatible with the ActivityPub standard)
  • Back to investigating Baofeng radios
  • Sourcing reasonable 10-32 Rack screws (we must be getting closer to the studio rack build)
  • Training and pruning fruit trees
  • Obsidian note software
  • Audio patch bays for studio rack tidiness
  • Back to thinking about building small “cine rig” camera setups
  • Audio streaming via Twitch (and the assorted rules)

SitRep

This is me trying to carry though on doing these posts more often.

  • I’m still on my move towards “old school” internet- less of the big-company managed mess, and more of the ‘ol home grown and home cooked. I’ve not hopped on the Shuttlecraft train just yet- I’m going to need for that to get a bit more mature- but I’ve got my eye on it.
  • My latest (v3!) experiment into a tamper-proof adhesive seal has apparently gone well. I’ve applied it for testing’s sake, and I’ll keep an eye on how it wears/ages. So far so good, though?
  • Deep down the rabbit hole for researching fruit-bearing bushes that I can add to the yard. We already have raspberry, blackberry, strawberry (not a bush, but whatever), and blueberry. I’m for-sure adding more blueberry this year, but I’m also looking at adding honey berry. All this drives the following question: if I’m building an orchard (and I am), should I be planting fruit-bearing bushes interspersed in it? (I think I should)
  • I’m starting to think about modifying the landscape around the house here- adding a Gingko tree (maybe? I’m worried about the allergen load, there), mountain laurel bushes, maybe some crabapple trees, and now I’m seeing golden (and black!) stemmed bamboo, and that seems pretty good (and useful, too).
  • I’m looking at studio upgrades- the new Mac mini M2’s are getting pretty rave reviews, and I’m thinking about replacing both of my aging mini’s with one. That said… I think that should maybe be my reward for building the new gear rack down here and populating it? Maybe that’ll give me the motivation to get that project over the line?
  • I’m increasingly fixated (?) on the idea of quadracycles. They’re kinda Europe’s answer to Kei cars (they have maximum dimensions, weight, power, and speed), and they’re totally not road-legal here. Anyway, they’re really all the car I’d want/need for most of my uses, and they’re just… so fucking practical. I don’t need 5000lbs of car to drive 10 miles to a train station at 35mph. I don’t need 300 miles of electric range and I don’t need autopilot or whatever. Right this minute, the Kilow La Bagnole (https://kilow.com) is tickling my fancy.

SitRep

It’s been a long time. I’d say I’m sorry (I’m not, really), but given the last three years or so, I think it’s reasonable to say that I didn’t have the bandwidth to devote to these. Maybe I do now, but the only way I’ll know is to start. So here we go.

  • Work: Crazy busy. Lots and lots of new projects (some that have been visible over the horizon, others not so much). Getting the allocation of resources sorted has been a lot of work.
  • Playing: I’ve been toying with alternate-internet-protocols. Some of it new (Mastodon, find me @nothingfuture@mastodon.social) some of it very, very old (finger nothingfuture@happynetbox.com), some of it weird (ActivityPub lets you follow people on Mastodon but also follow people on PixelFed and maybe Tumblr and Flickr soon and it all shows up in one unified feed?) I’m looking into Shuttlecraft next.
  • Bikes: Have been slow for the last couple months. Some of that is weather, but most of that is work being too busy and kids being home a lot more than normal. I’ve made some gear updates and whatnot, but what I really need to do is find a bit of time to get back out there.
  • Making: Has been slow as well, but I’m at least having some progress there. I’ve been playing a bit with Kydex (a thermoplastic mostly used for making knife sheaths and whatnot). I also got a teeny bit obsessed with a tamper-proof seal that I saw on a piece of Tom Sachs’ work (here: https://www.instagram.com/avantarteinsiders/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=892cc317-345a-46fd-ba09-219537435c62) that I’ve begun trying to make a version of. Building back to doing new sewing project.
  • Video: I haven’t shot video in a year. I want to, on general principle, but… again, time? And also, I haven’t had much time to think about what I’d like to talk about there- I suppose the most obvious is to respond to what’s going on in that space, but… I dunno. I’m not sure I’m ready for that approach, yet.
  • Food: We’re making an effort as a family to explore new food- we, like lots of other people, tend to make the same ~8 recipes over and over and over, so we sat down with a stack of cookbooks and flagged anything that looked good- again, as a family. We’ve been doing about three new meals/week right now (though I’m sure we won’t sustain that pace), and we’ve found some serious winners. The Sichuan Pork Ragu from the Lucky Peach cookbook is a winner, as was the “Dollar Dumplings” recipe.

Anyway. That’ll do for now, I think.

Research List #45

It’s been a long, long time since I posted one of these, but I’m making something of a concerted effort to update things here more. Actual SitRep post incoming soon.

Things on the list I’m learning about:

  • SDR Antennas, Ham Radio Licenses, and Baofeng radios
  • SDI Video output and convertors
  • rack mount mixers (10 channels (5×2 stereo)?)
  • low profile non-IP enabled analog security camera systems
  • TamperProof seals for authentication and serializing of artwork
  • Growing Mountain Laurel (Kalmia latifolia) and Ginko (Ginkgo biloba)
  • Registration of multi-color silk screen prints
  • German square weave carpet, edging techniques, and how to seal carpet cuts
  • finger nothingfuture@happynetbox.com (god I love me some ancient protocols)
  • large-format (say, 20×28″) printing

SitRep

Christ I haven’t done one of these in a long, long time. Let’s do this thing.

We got a dog. A “Whoodle” (a cross between a Wheaten Terrier and a “Moyen” Poodle). She’s amazing and wonderful and a terror.

No goats yet. The garden and the dog and the transition back to in-person school and work were enough of a change that adding a pile of farm animals to the mix seemed a bit much. Still on the long-term plans, but need to do a shed and pasture fencing and whatnot first.

New garden was good- with more improvements to come. Larger, better use of compost and water, and more variety still. Corn! Herbs! More flowers! More fruit trees! Berries!

“New” bike is excellent. Walt was a pleasure to work with during a very difficult time, and he built a bike that was everything I could ask for. It was built for the type of riding I like, and boy does it excel at that. I’m still learning how to really exploit what it can do on the trail, but I’m also trying to shift to riding in flats on that bike.

I’ve been spending more time listening to music during work, and that means starting to spend time paying attention to the both the music I have and how I listen to that music. Short version: I’m going through my records and I have record players out again.

Gardens.

Alright. Let’s start at the beginning.

Shortly after the lockdown happened, we started trying to spend more and more time outside as a family. We can add to that the initial food-instability we were feeling, and before I knew it my better 3/4 bought a garden-in-a-bag off Amazon. A mylar envelop showed up full of tiny bags of seeds- labeled, sort of. They said things like “Pumpkin” and “Tomato” without any information about type or needs. Ok.

So: We knocked together 3 4′ x 4′ raised beds, filled them mostly from our compost/yard waste pile, and jammed the seeds in. A bit of watering and off we went.

The results were… crazy. Nearly everything came up (minus the Chives and most of the Basil), and we had huge yields. Arugula, lettuces (red, romaine, and butter), peas, broccoli, cauliflower, cucumbers, red cabbage, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, jalapeños, banana peppers,  cayenne peppers, bell peppers, carrots, watermelons, cantaloup, radishes, and pumpkin all came up. And we got results from everything except the brassicas- the cabbage moths got those. All that from three tiny raised beds. Oh, and when we found some sprouted onions and potatoes in the pantry, we planted those, too. And they grew (the onions eventually went into a pot roast we made).

Besides the food, the time in the garden was very good for all our health. There was always something to putter with- weeding, picking, spotting new growth, and watering. It was relaxing and it was outside. It was amazing. It looked and smelled beautiful.

On the heals of that success, we’re ramping up for next year. Here’s the current plan:

  1. New seeds. We’ve bought seeds from a serious supplier, and we’ve picked some stuff we’re really excited to grow. Hopefully better varieties than last year. Plus we’re planning more onions, potatoes, and we’re planting an apple tree too. At least. Maybe a kiwi or fig tree, too.
  2. More beds. We’re upgrading to 6 4′ x 8′ beds. And we’re keeping the original three small beds as an “experimental” area. There are some allium bulbs planted there already, for example. Also, I’m going to rip up 50% of our large front yard. That’ll get seeded with a bunch of native wildflowers and be the space for the pumpkin plants (and maybe the watermelon) to run rampant.
  3. Much earlier indoor seeding for some plants. Tomato, melons, pumpkins, and peppers will all get started much earlier indoors under grow lights. We ran out of season before we got full yields, and this should help with that a lot.
  4. Planting flowers as well- to hopefully attract more pollinators and spice up the joint a little, too.

We’ll see, I suppose, if all these plans work out. It’s a lot (the fencing alone is a project), but I’m hoping the eventual relaxation it affords is worth it.

Holy Hell It’s Been a Year

Look, I’m just going to skip over a bunch of the last year because the last thing I need to is to relive this horror-show. It’s been/is bad, people. Real bad. I’ve tried to make some amount of lemonade out of this truckload of rotten lemons. It’s been hard.

A couple of highlights:

  1. The gravel bike is done- minus maintenance. Tubeless tires, a new Chris King headset, lower gears and a new crank (46/29 chainrings!), and so on. It’s such a fun bike to ride, and I’m super happy I took the time to really build this thing out. I still have a tendency to take it on overly-technical trails, but let’s be honest: I was going to do that on any gravel bike.
  2. I finally sourced a new handlebar and stem combo for my road bike. I needed to shorten the reach and raise the bars a bit (from a hyper-aggressive fit) to ease my aching back. It’ll be the first change I’ve made to that bike in ~20 years (besides consumables).
  3. I ordered a new mountain bike. Fully custom/bespoke, it’s a Waltworks steel hardtail. Custom sizing, custom geometry, custom everything. I’ve built a number of custom bikes over the years- and while I’ve been constrained by budget before, I’ve never been so constrained by availability. Sourcing parts was really difficult on this one. I’m still building it- wheels are backordered and the drivetrain is en-route, but the frame/fork and some parts are here.
  4. We made a makeshift garden last spring that was a massive success- we grew more things in a tiny space with more success than I’d ever imagine. Heck, we grew watermelons and cantaloupes and pumpkins and peppers and greens and all manner of things. So: we’re quintupling the garden size for next year- and we’re getting better seeds and starting things earlier and and and. Pretty excited here. The calming effect of hanging out in the garden cannot be overstated- it’s been a massive benefit for us all.
  5. We’re likely doing a few goats this spring. There are a lot of reasons, and it really deserves it’s own post, so I’ll do that as we get closer. Likewise the garden, really.
  6. More hiking. We’ve been pushing to get outside as often as we can- and walking in the woods has really helped the whole crew here manage some of the stress. We’re looking to keep doing this all through the winter.