One Week Website

ow, in all fairness, this was a very optimistic concept on my part. I can put together a decent looking personal website in a week, no problem. Getting through the entire process I've outlined below, blogging and documenting each step, including research, references, background, backend, comparison shopping, self-analysis and content transfer? Not so easy.

The idea, however, in documenting the entire process is that I, and anyone else who cares to poke around, can review my notes and see the progress I've made and the time/effort I put in to doing a relatively thorough job. Thoroughness might actually be a fault of mine. I have a need to understand everything about a topic, to understand how the wheel works before I drive the car, etc. I can't just install WordPress (WP) and go with it, I need to understand how the backend works, how my data and files are structured, how I can query that database, and why that form is the right choice for me.

This means my initial process is slower than would be ideal, but I think the payoff in the long run will be greater. I have learned to let some things slide for the time being, marking them to revisit later when I have enough background to understand them better.

First, I need to figure out how to track this list. Do I want to Gitify (version track) it? repost at the end of each sub-post? certainly link back to the original list with each execution of a list item. It seems like a version-tracked version I can update and reference would be best... without having to republish every time I make a change. So I'll have to embed the list (published github page) itself:

ps. Yes, this looks ghastly. I need to publish and then iterate. I hear this is a thing you do.
pps. I see the embed doesn't work in Google Reader. Will have to figure that out, too.

From the archives: Moose!

pulled onto Jenne road at 8:15, a left turn. As I advanced down the narrow dirt path at perhaps 10 or 15 mph, something moved in my left peripheral. I slammed on the brakes, stopping Gemma (my car) in her tracks. At the same moment, the poor moose I had startled walked out of the bushes to the side of the car, just a foot from my front bumper. I sat very still, being slightly worried that the moose would get the idea that I was trouble and should be trompled.  

The moose had other plans. He (I’m assuming it’s a he. It was a moose of moderate size without antlers) started ambling down the center of the road in front of me, completely blocking passage by any way.

So I waited. And I waited. The moose butt in front of me continued to mosey and generally take its time getting down the road ahead. When it was a moose butt in the distance, I started scootching up, revving my engine a little to let him know I was there. 

Two big moose eyes and ears turned to look at me in a vague, moose-like approximation of indignation. I stopped and went back to staring at moose-butt. Finally he decided, of his own accord, mind you, to get off the road, and stepped delicately into some shrubs. 

As I pulled past the spot where he had disappeared I muttered under my breath in mild frustration: Meese.

Originally posted to a previous (now defunct) blog on August 28th, 2006. One of two moose-sightings I had while living in Vermont!

New Year, New Garden

fter a relatively successful summer of vegetables last year, this year I think I'll take a more studied approach. Well, somewhat more studied, really just building slowly on the last go-round and adding a few things. Mostly, I now have a large enough crop of compost to use for a bed or two, and I know how big those dang zucchini will get.

Unfortunately, this means I do need to dig a few new beds, possibly three or four. I already have a satellite view of the house to transform into a (to scale) chart of the yard in order to keep track of what was where which year. As most gardeners these days know, it's best to rotate which crop goes in what bed each year, so any pests don't get too cozy and the soil isn't depleted (can't find a good reference right now). I've heard lots of advice on keeping a garden journal of notes about each step of the process, how different plants fared, etc. Frankly, I didn't, it seemed like one more thing to do and for the first year, fine-tuning was not a big concern.

So, mapping aside, that leaves us with planning what plants and when. I'm still looking for a source for hops, sage and tarragon, seed or seedling, if anyone in the DC area wants to trade (I get most of my seeds from Johnny's Selected Seeds).

As you'll see below, quite a few things need to germinate indoors as long as eight weeks before the last frost (early April in Alexandria). My google calendar is now laden with "PLANT CANTALOUPE" and such. I'm going to try out a grow light this time as my seedlings got a little too sperky* last year, even on a South-facing windowsill. This does mean that I'll also need some sort of heat source underneath my seedling trays. Although the basement is a pretty regular temperature, it's only around 65F and seeds prefer something more like 68 or 70.

Anywho, I've put together this little chart for my own benefit, but thought it might be of use to some other backyard gardener. Feel free to copy the format or just get inspiration. Click the chart to see it full-size in google drive and to copy or peruse further.

*I grew up using this word and only recently encountered several people who said "What?! 'Sperky'??" It means what it sounds like. Don't suppose anyone else uses it?

Frustrated Ramblings

his is not my usual style, and I don't like posting things like this, but I've spent too much of today irked with various Google products. Below is a version of a post I made to a Gmail Google Group. I could go into more detail and try to get across how frustrated I am that Google is making it more and more difficult to do simple things simply, rather than the other way around. I can't even easily find a basic "feedback on our new product" option anymore, which is pretty disappointing.

Google, what happened? Back in 2004 when we all got Gmail for the first time everything was so friendly and thoughtful, and now I get the sinking feeling that users are being left behind in the interest of a shiny new future. Stop pushing so hard.

So here's a couple thoughts on the trial version of the new compose setup for gmail:

1) I've seen way, way too many people saying "whelp, guess I'll get used to it" about this and other gmail/google changes. This seems wrong: the UI should conform to user needs, not the user to the UI. While some people may prefer this new layout, it's not right for everyone. Which brings me to:

2) Not all messages are going to be short little snippets that should be composed in a mini window, tucked over the inbox, or even popped out. Many people compose complex, lengthy emails and require the space both physically on the screen and mentally by having the new message be the only thing visible.

On top of that, hiding all the controls makes it much more difficult to see what's available at a glance, remember to add links or formatting, and as other users have said, to glance at the send list to make sure a recipients work/home email has been selected.

Therefore, perhaps the new compose could be implemented more like the priority inboxes, as a choice that each user can make and switch between based on actual, personal needs.


More from WebMonkey.com, ParisLemon (who wants still less), GHacks (which refers to people like me as "advanced users") and some snarky people over here. You get the idea.

Orwellian syntax

he title of this post is a little iffy, but I think it works in a couple of ways. First, the content here is by George Orwell, therefore is by definition Orwellian, right? Secondly, his proposed overhaul of the English language (which we'll get to as soon as I'm done justifying and rationalising) is a bit on the totalitarian side, ergo, Orwellian. And uh, Thirdly... thirdly... oh yes, his criticism of the current state of prose essentially compares it to the sort of meaningless catchphrases found in 1984, where words cease to have any relation to their meaning and generally cause the downfall of civilisation as we know it.

That pretty much sums it up, actually, but a little context: I've just read George Orwell's essay on Politics and the English Language. The essay alternates between lambasting several samples of [truly lousy] writing and prescribing a few guidelines to avoid further transgressions. It was written in 1946, so we can only imagine how pained Orwell would be to see the current state of the written word (probably including my own. erk.). I bet he and Hemingway would've gotten along in some ways...

And now, for my own reference and for yours, George Orwell's basic rules for passable writing:

(i) Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
(ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.
(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.
(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Taken from the essay Politics and the English Language, 1946, page 156 of George Orwell, A Collection of Essays, Harcourt Brace, 1981. 

A Bountiful Update

gnoring the many iterations of the issues mentioned in the previous post that came up in the process of attempting to put together this post, here's a few more recent photos of one part of my garden. Somewhat recent. A few are from as early as March, when the bulbs had just started blooming, others are from mid-June, when the veg really started getting bushy.

I may regret hosting these photos on my own domain in a week or two when I find a longterm solution, but heck, I wanted to get posts up. The next post might just go back to using Picasa for sanity's sake. The entire blog may move as well, to make it easier to reference various directories.

...But this is a gardening post, and I digress.

These are dated photos, so just know there's more growth, plus a second bed of veg not to mention a third bed of herbs. As soon as it's not so terribly hot the stack of bricks (all found in the yard) will become a small patio...

Technical Testing Tribulations

ay back in November I finally staked my claim on a corner of the internet by registering and hosting a website under my name. I had stalled for almost a full year, thinking there was too much I would want to research before pinning down a registrar/host. Turns out that was the easy part (once I realised I didn't need a slew of dedicated servers in the former Soviet Bloc).

After choosing DreamHost at the recommendation of a friend and a popular website (Lifehacker, who recently re-affirmed DreamHost's dominance), all I had to do was learn how to code an entire website. And not just any website, one that would display a photographic portfolio dynamically and interactively and [buzzword] and [so on]. Ok, so I haven't quite gotten to that part yet, but the site exists and is a decent placeholder.

The holdup is that I'm the sort of person who can't just throw up something pre-fabricated and call it a day, I have to learn how to code the entire thing myself, learn databases and cascading stylesheets, from scratch. Maybe once I've done that I could take an easier route, but without understanding the background it seems too much like cheating. Besides, most of the point was giving myself opportunity to learn, given that my photos probably aren't going to start flying off the shelves (there are some up, but they, too, are placeholders).

So in the meantime I've just been using the web export feature in Adobe Lightroom (a god-send for those of us who like cataloging, integration with other applications and services and powerful but simple tools). The problem I'm leading up to is that I'd like to stop hosting the photos I use in blog posts on Picasa and move them all over to a dedicated storage folder on my website. Heck, someday I should move this blog there, too.

The problem is that to use a photo in a post, I need to have a link to the .jpg file that will never change, or at least use a relative link to just "/kitten.jpg" rather than "http:// blah/folderA/section56/kitten.jpg" and so on. So that's one solution. But I also need the photo to link to a gallery view on my website, so that the clicker can browse through other photos from my blog, and also use spiffy navigation controls to browse by keyword or just mosey back through other parts of my portfolio.

I'm not going to list how much of that I have no idea how to accomplish, because it's too overwhelming. But, I've written an entire blogpost about it now, so that will hopefully motivate me.

Oh, and the reason there are random photos of pie here is because they're hosted on my website, just... not very sophisticatedly.

Progress report (somewhat redundant)

Here's a better look at the before and after of the yard. The "before" is from September 2011, the "after" from May 2012. It still has a long way to go, but it's starting to emerge. The current goal is just to get a visible, mostly grass filled lawn with beds along the fences. Once that's finished I can worry about perennials, edging, and so forth.





Photos are in two columns here, left column is old yard, right column is new yard.





In the process of going through the overgrowth, I've found quite a few established plants hidden in various places, some of which had clearly spread themselves from their original locations (irises, daylilies, butterfly bush?, daisies, periwinkle, lemon balm, mint, hot pepper bush, daffodils, crocuses, several rose varieties...). So far, I've also dug up around 50 bricks, which will hopefully become a small patio on which the firepit can live for the moment. Sometime in the future, the patio can expand and accomodate furniture, too. All of which necessitates my tearing up a mediocre patch of grass, leveling, laying bricks, tamping, filling... hopefully with a really cool pattern.

The left side still needs a lot of work, but at least there's some yard on the right side now. There's a grape vine over the bed in the back that I'd like to train up to replace some of the mulberry that's sneaking up the fence back there. And last week I took out the spare wild rose bush that was crowding the raspberries. Oh and one neighbor put up a nice privacy fence, too, so that looks better than the chain-link and provides well, privacy.

How inner conflict makes dullards of us all

r something like that. Having never read Chekov previously and also having no historical context for his writing, what follows is an entirely off-the-cuff stream of thoughts relating to the short novel, The Duel (translated by Constance Garnett, as recommended by Hemingway).

On the surface, this seems to be a story about a bunch of locals with nothing better to do than squabble and moralise at each other. Since all they have are their own experiences and opinions and lack much depth, they are not terribly interesting or sustainable characters, but their observations of each other carry some weight to the reader.

Instead of just taking the situation at face value, it's also possible to see the conflict as a metaphor for the conflict within an individual. In particular, the two gentlemen who wind up dueling, Laevsky and Von Koren, might be representative of the conflicting aspects of a personality, two ways in which to react to the surrounding world. Both consider society to be broken and useless. Laevksy chooses to spend his life full of apathy and regret, avoiding engagement, while Von Koren displays aggression towards others in a misconstrued attempt to bring them around to his philosophy, and also toward himself in order to maintain his prescription of action.

By the time the characters reach the grounds of the duel, they have both lost their motivation and aggression and decide not to follow through. They are the dueling aspects of a personality: at great odds with each other right up until the critical point, when nothing comes of the whole business (and the deacon steps in! Don't get me started on spirituality). They continue on their paths and gradually make some changes in their lives, but the grand, driving force of pure dogmatism has disappeared.

So I suppose the lesson I took from this was that holding your ground and acting on/being true to your character is important to maintaining an identity and strong progression through life. Don't stand still or get lost in internal debate, but use conflict to come to new places in thought and in life. Or something like that.

Garden Variety Anxiety

uch to my dismay, Twitter has trained me to only have witty, entertaining thoughts in 140 character spans. This makes writing blog posts a humorless and rambly process, especially if I don't crank out a post immediately when inspiration strikes (whaBAM).

So now here I am, three weeks after starting an ambitious yard rehabilitation project (it's impossible to phrase that in any clever or alliterative manner. Cookie to anyone who can) trying to remember what I wanted to say about it.

I guess the first thing would be "hire a dang landscaper with a backhoe," if you can. The yard I'm working with is (according to Zillow.com) 0.13 acres, maybe half of it taken up by the house, but with a good sized front yard and considerable backyard. When we moved in, all but maybe, maybe 20% of the backyard was either underwater or overgrown. I wouldn't want to lose the topsoil by having heavy machinery rip out the overgrowth, but regrading would be easier, nay-doable with something more efficient than a shovel.




Anyway, having thrown my back out doing too much of that by hand (and the upcoming birthday doesn't make me feel younger, either), I'm going to wait for it to actually rain again before reevaluating the drainage situation. I improvised a rain garden with existing daylilies and added irises, bee balm and a willow stick which will hopefully sprout (they always do when I don't want them to...) and a little slope and dip for water to accumulate in.





Mostly, the rest of the work is ripping out vines (english ivy, poison ivy, virginia creeper, roses, that variegated purple flowering thing and whatever else) and hopefully getting grass to grow. The new lawn needs to be tilled and aerated, but there are so many roots and bricks (which is great, I'm planning a patio, too, but at 30+ bricks randomly strewn around the yard under the grass...) I'm not sure a rototiller is a good idea.  So for the moment, turning over a new garden bed, an existing one and getting my seedlings in will take top priority.



After all of that, I'm (understandably, I hope) anxious about getting everything to grow. The addition of (free!) composted horse manure that I lugged up from Lorton (yes, by myself, in contractor bags, in my little honda) should be enough to improve the soil and feed the plants. For exciting realtime updates, just follow the hashtag: #gardenvarietyanxiety. ¹

1. Note that because twitter is stupid, the hashtag isn't searchable. Yet.