I went for a walk today and decided to turn it into a sampling of all tree species in the ravine and the northern slope above. I was surprised at the number of different species, many of the sample leaves I collected as ‘duplicates’ turned out to be different species. So for the Schmidt Coulee […]
Informal Tree Survey Read More »
It has been roughly a month since wearing a jacket became unnecessary on most outdoor excursions. In that time, helped by ample rain, the ground has gone from barren to jungle-thick vegetation. The biggest change, of course, is the new driveway. There has been a fair amount of rain and wind, together they are responsible
Farm Early Summer Check-in Read More »
Sewing has never been a particularly strong hobby of mine. The actual sewing is easy enough, but all the other parts – sizing, cutting fabric, and so on, make it all terribly difficult. Still, here we have me investing a few hours after which I felt immensely satisfied. Something broken was made a useful tool
A Little Patchwork Read More »
This release represents several months of fairly hard work for me. It even has a pretty, if simple documentation website that you can check out here. It features quite a number of bug fixes, including several rather critical ones that fixed cross validation not actually cross validating. As always, my biggest focus was on data
AutoTS 0.2.0 Release Read More »
I was very excited for A Memory Called Empire when I purchased it last Winter. I was, of course, in the middle of a vowed non-stop reading of the Wheel of Time, so I didn’t let myself read it then. Yet the excitement remained. A space opera based on Roman (or perhaps more Byzantine, if
A Memory Called Empire Read More »
Ages come and go… reading Robert Jordan’s fourteen books of the Wheel of Time, at not quite four and a half million words. My overall evaluation is that I liked it well enough to consider it time well spent reading. The entire series is very ambitious in its scope, which brings with it both pros
The Wheel of Time – Reflections on 14 Books Read More »
Spring rain finally came. Almost four inches of it in a day. Let me show you why erosion control is import here. The gravel driveway didn’t erode anywhere, despite the enormous amount of rain. You know what that is? That is the sweet taste of victory. Pond, upper rain garden, and the catch basins are
Water Water Everywhere Read More »
Concrete is a strange thing. Magic rock goo. You will be unsurprised to learn that I used the concrete to build another dam. This one is much smaller, about a foot and a half high, and five feet long, with the purpose of slowing water descending the trough into the ravine, and catching some in
Thoughts on Pouring Concrete Read More »
My largest and grandest outdoor project to date, I give you: a dam! Now, first, let’s be clear. This is a check dam. So not Hoover Dam, but something smaller meant for water to go over. The general purpose is to slow the water. In low water flow, water will pool behind and gradually be
Taking fresh fruit and turning it into jelly takes rather a long time. Is it worth the time? Yes, I believe so since I generally enjoy the process and the end product. But this time around I was curious what the value of the time was, financially. Comparative Cost of Store-Bought Jelly 1 cup of
The Value of all that Jelly Read More »
