Now that we have a garden our thoughts have turned to our ongoing composting needs. We did spend some time looking into the possibility of buying a composting bin but found that these things cost a lot for what is essentially nothing more than a plastic bucket. So, with a little help from Gamma, we built our own.
It took a day to build but, if all goes to plan, we should have a steady stream of soil enrichment available for next years planting season.
Actually, it isn’t. It’s 620 kilos and it looks like this.
Actually, it doesn’t look like this anymore because it’s no longer in the trailer but is spread all over the garden.
Finally, we can plant.
A few weeks ago, Macsen expressed an interest in growing something in the weed patch. Being keen to encourage this sort of thing, Eve and I started talking about how to ensure he saw some speedy success without it becoming an issue if he lost interest. Knowing that there are a few soil literate types on identi.ca, I also asked there for some suggestions and received a lot of genuinely helpful advice. This led me to Gardeners World and an evening spent reading up on the basics of gardening.
Macsen proved to be quite adamant about wanting to grow flowers, so we found a plant pot and gave him a space to start planting. The soil around the pot is Macsen’s as well and the seeds are starting to sprout.
Eve also bought a second pot and convinced Macsen that home grown strawberries might be a tasty treat. This is proving to be even more successful.
So far he’s doing remarkably well. The enthusiasm is up and he is doing an excellent job of making sure the plants are properly watered. He’s not so keen on keeping the area free of weeds but I think there is an element of perception to that – to Macsen, if it’s not a nettle then it’s not a weed.
It is the nature of blogging that all blog posts are, ultimately, about the blogger. And so, to me.
As I was following the easy-gardening discussion on identi.ca and, as I was reading up on the basics, the idea of having a go myself started to become increasingly appealing. Consequently, I have embarked on my own soil literacy project, phase one of which is almost complete.
I’m not planning on pulling up the entire weed bed in one go – it’s big – but we have agreed on a place to start and work is progressing nicely. I didn’t think to take a before photo, but here is the state of the patch as of Saturday lunchtime.
The third photo is indicative of where the weeds were when I started. These weeds will be dealt with, but not in phase one.
Phase two starts this coming Saturday and will involve clearing the last of the in-progress weeds, taking a trailer full of junk to the tip and returning with a trailer full of compost.
And on Sunday, we plant!
This is handy if you find yourself needing to populate a numeric timestamp field (eight digit number, yyyymmdd) with the current date.
update TheFile
set TheDate = Dec(Replace(Char(current date, ISO), '-', ''), 8, 0)
where TheSelection
Obviously, TheFile is the file you are populating, TheDate is the field and TheSelection is whatever selection criteria you happen to be using.
Lexi, a German Shepherd, was born on May 7th 2001 and came into my life eight weeks later. From puppyhood all the way to adulthood, she lived to play. Everything was a potential toy to her (including, once and rather embarrasingly, a mobile phone that had been supplied by work) and everyone she encountered was a potential friend.
She had a good life, one characterised by boundless enthusiasm and endless affection and it was quite a blow when we learned – in January – that she was suffering from lung cancer and an inflamed liver. Because of the extent of the disease and her age, the vet didn’t think that attempting to cure her was a realistic option and she had been on palliative treatements ever since.
She was actually responding very well to these, until Friday when she collapsed. We took her to the vet but, it was too late for her and now there’s a huge gap in our lives that she used to occupy.
It’s a sad time and she will be missed by all of us.
Born May 7th 2001
Died April 12th 2013
She’ll be missed
I’m a little late with this one, but on March 31st, Mozilla turned 15 years old.
Looking back, Mozilla’s plan was as radical as the Web itself: use open source and community to simultaneously create great software and build openness into the key technologies of the Internet itself. This was something commercial vendors weren’t doing and could not do. A non-profit, community-driven organization like Mozilla was needed to step up to the challenge.
When Netscape Navigator came along, it was a piece of software that you were expected to pay for. Microsoft, sensing an opportunity, not only released Internet Explorer but also bundled it – gratis – with Windows. This, in a single step, flattened Netscape’s business and left the way open for Microsoft to start stuffing proprietary technologies into their internet offerings.
If Firefox hadn’t come along when it did, and with the commitment to openness that Mozilla has maintained, we would all now be using Microsoft Internet Explorer to visit sites authored with Microsoft FrontPage and hosted on servers running Microsoft IIS. If that had happened, the web today would be a very different place in which the cost of building a web presence would be a serious barrier to the sorts of innovation we have become used to over the past 15 years.
We all owe Mozilla a debt of gratitude and the future is bright. Firefox 20 is out now and I, for one, am looking forward to seeing what Firefox OS does to the mobile market.
The BBC has carried out a survey and found that we can all be slotted into one of seven social classes.
It says the traditional categories of working, middle and upper class are outdated, fitting 39% of people.
It found a new model of seven social classes ranging from the elite at the top to a “precariat” – the poor, precarious proletariat – at the bottom.
I’m always a bit wary of these attempts to categorise everyone but the survey’s attempt to measure people’s economic, cultural and social capital did strike me as interesting. Also, I can never resist a quiz.
Not surprisingly, the quiz identifies me as being part of the all new Technical Middle Class.
This is a small, distinctive and prosperous new class group:
- People in this group tend to mix socially with people similar to themselves
- They prefer emerging culture, such as using social media, to highbrow culture such as listening to classical music
- Many people in this group work in research, science and technical occupations
- They tend to live in suburban locations, often in the south east of England
- They come from largely middle class backgrounds
Apart from the fact that I don’t live in the south east of England, it is a reasonably accurate description of me. On the other hand, of course, when a quiz asks you if you listen to indie music and use social media, it’s not much of a jump to tell you that you prefer emerging culture and use social media.
Observant readers (both of you) will notice a graphic has just popped up in the sidebar of this blog. This should update automatically to reflect my Project Euler progress.
And, yes, after 16 months I have finally solved the first 50 problems.
I have to admit that some of my solutions are a little slower than they should be, but I am quite pleased to have made it this far and it is quite nice to be able to see the extent to which my Python is improving.
There hasn’t been a Pin-Up Sunday around here for almost a year, but this superbly sexy cosplay brings something to the Star Trek vs. Star Wars debate that simply can’t be ignored.
via io9