stubbed toes and mud pies

[flowerbug]

new camera! finally got the budget to work out. was wanting a good camera for so long as i had been using either borrowed or used cameras or just basic cameras. nice to have one where i can switch a lens out for a change and to also have a zoom lens for close ups of tiny things.

still a lot to learn (good winter projects ).

the basics already work just fine as with any digital camera i've had so far. just need a few accessories yet and i will be back in production.

 

[flowerbug]

can i make a mess or what?

this is the other part of this project, removing drain tubes and pea gravel from the neighboring garden.

but at least i got this garden cleaned up before i started the mess...

do you like our new Road To No Wear?

 

[flowerbug]

mouse is back in the wall again. grr... have been trapping outside along the normal mouse highway now that there was some snow and i could see tracks. so far three mice.

still not sure where the mice are getting into the wall but i suspect it is around or under the AC unit. as around the rest of the house up to the foundation we have the crushed-rinsed limestone mulch over black plastic. perhaps they could also be getting to the walls via under the black plastic.

what i need to do is check out the AC unit and under that to see if there are any nests happening (since it was repaired last summer from the mice chewing the wires in the control unit under a panel held on by screws).

it's raining today so i won't be doing that, but something to ponder.

 

[Trish Stretton]

I now use nasty bait. I'm over rodents.

 

[flowerbug]

I now use nasty bait. I'm over rodents.

i won't use baits/poisons here as i've found out that they can attract and be eaten by other creatures and i also just think it too cruel. i don't think trapping them is much less cruel but at least it is quick. once in a while the raccoons will play with the traps and set them off and rob the peanut butter, but for the most part they learn to leave them alone.

the best solution is to find the gap and get it plugged up because otherwise i don't care if mice are outside or not. that's where they belong i don't find much damage in the gardens from mice - they might chew the end of a bean pod here or there.

 

[flowerbug]

oh, such a nice afternoon out there. about 9C or 48F and best of all no breeze. two days in row, i don't know how to behave! i wasn't really planning on doing this, but two gardens of debris got buried along with some wood ashes.

that means there aren't any big piles of things laying around now and two less buckets of wood ashes, which makes Momma happy and also not much will be needed to be done in there next spring before planting other than light weeding depending upon what comes up this fall/winter/early spring.

there are a few lily tree stems to chop off and some other dead-heading that can be raked up from a few clumps of lillies, but otherwise there's not too much in the fenced gardens to do now. it's so nice when i'm not working with one leg and trying to cope with the rains.

i originally was hoping to bury the garden debris in the two gardens where they were piled (which to me is a common sense return to the earth habit and also a way of keeping certain weed seeds from getting spread around), but with my project being a mess and no real way i could bury things where i wanted in either case i just bit the lip and did it anyways and all this stuff i buried will go a long ways towards improving the garden where i did bury it. i'm glad to say as i was burying them i saw some worms in there. very heavy clay soil as this was one of the least amended gardens inside the fence, but the top six inches of soil are doing well. it's not down a shovel and a half yet like some of the other gardens. so i have a nice raised bed for spring for peas or onions depending upon what i want to put in there. i have plenty of time to ponder this...

 

[flowerbug]

*holds my head* stayed up late poking at a program to help me convert my website from the ancient version to the most recent one. hard to believe it's been a few years already and the developer has made a lot of changes. which leaves me with some 30-something projects to convert and each one has a chunk in the beginning of the file which contains some information that needs to be gotten out and poked into a new format. i have most of it working already which isn't bad because if it does work it will save me having to edit each of those by hand so much. i may have to do some fine tweeking afterwards and a few of them need updating, but just to get the website on the more recent version.

one thing about such a program is that once it works well enough i can post a link to it for others to use who might find themselves in a similar spot in the future and it can be adapted for other parts of the website if needed. i'm already pondering dealing with the posts, but since most of them are old information anyways i may just skip that part for now. still it is a bit of fun to play computer games like this to solve a problem. i like puzzles of this sort and this is a minor example of what can be done easily. if i wanted to get a lot more complete and less hacky i could come up with a complete formal description of the languages and headers in both the old and new formats and then write transformation patterns in yet a third language but that's like taking a shotgun where a butterknife will do, but the result is much more satisfying when it is done. that's the difference between being paid to do something and just whacking at it with a shovel.

as it turned out the first part is done and working so the 30 something projects are done so i went on to the posts (which i only have about 14 to do) and have that mostly working already too. at this rate i may be able to have this done tomorrow or so depending upon how much i get sidetracked by other things... yay!

 

[Trish Stretton]

*holds my head* stayed up late poking at a program to help me convert my website from the ancient version to the most recent one. hard to believe it's been a few years already and the developer has made a lot of changes. which leaves me with some 30-something projects to convert and each one has a chunk in the beginning of the file which contains some information that needs to be gotten out and poked into a new format. i have most of it working already which isn't bad because if it does work it will save me having to edit each of those by hand so much. i may have to do some fine tweeking afterwards and a few of them need updating, but just to get the website on the more recent version.

one thing about such a program is that once it works well enough i can post a link to it for others to use who might find themselves in a similar spot in the future and it can be adapted for other parts of the website if needed. i'm already pondering dealing with the posts, but since most of them are old information anyways i may just skip that part for now. still it is a bit of fun to play computer games like this to solve a problem. i like puzzles of this sort and this is a minor example of what can be done easily. if i wanted to get a lot more complete and less hacky i could come up with a complete formal description of the languages and headers in both the old and new formats and then write transformation patterns in yet a third language but that's like taking a shotgun where a butterknife will do, but the result is much more satisfying when it is done. that's the difference between being paid to do something and just whacking at it with a shovel.

as it turned out the first part is done and working so the 30 something projects are done so i went on to the posts (which i only have about 14 to do) and have that mostly working already too. at this rate i may be able to have this done tomorrow or so depending upon how much i get sidetracked by other things... yay!

I just know you are speaking English, but......
Somehow I think my IT son would know exactly what you are talking about, nodding his head all the while.
Me- I'm glad my smartphone slid off the dash, out the window. Saved me the trouble of throwing it out. Now that my laptop actually turns on and off when it is supposed to, just leaves me in raptures.

 

[flowerbug]

I just know you are speaking English, but......
Somehow I think my IT son would know exactly what you are talking about, nodding his head all the while.
Me- I'm glad my smartphone slid off the dash, out the window. Saved me the trouble of throwing it out. Now that my laptop actually turns on and off when it is supposed to, just leaves me in raptures.

hahaha! in this current age of IT everything is ones and zeroes. so any process in a computer is figuring out just what particular ones and zeroes mean and how to show the results of various operations to someone else (or keeping them as some kind of record).

 

[flowerbug]

and it is done and up and running. that is the website conversion for www.anthive.com is finished. not bad considering i hadn't updated any of the underneath chunks for a few and a half years...