Käsefondue

Serves 4 a lot of cheese for dinner, or 6-8 an appetizer

1. Chop up or tear the bread into 1/2 inch cubes.

2. Rub interior of a medium stainless-steel pot with garlic clove, then discard garlic. Add white wine and bring to a simmer over medium heat.

3. Combine grated cheeses in a bowl and toss with cornstarch and dry mustard. Add a little black pepper.

4. Transfer the hot wine to a fondue pot or chafing dish set over a flame. Add cheese mixture a handful at a time, stirring until fondue is smoothly melted and beginning to bubble. Add the kirsch and sprinkle fondue with nutmeg and a little more pepper.

5. To eat, spear bread pieces with fondue forks and dip in cheese, continuing to stir with forks as you dip.

If you use a chafing dish or a ceramic fondue pot with a diffuser, the cheese will stay pretty consistent throughout. If you use a metal fondue pot with no diffuser, you'll have cheese crust in the bottom center of the pan that you can scrape out and eat as a special treat.

I think if you add the cornstarch after the cheese is melted and then cook it for 5 minutes, it will probably come out thicker. I suggest trying this if you prefer a thicker cheese. If it gets too thick, I recommend adding extra wine!

FondueRecipes

Rosemary Lemonade

From "The Cafe Flora Cookbook".
Makes 2 quarts

1 1-ounce bunch of rosemary, about 8 6-inch sprigs
4 cups water, plus more as needed
1 cup sugar

In a saucepan, cover the rosemary with the water. Bring to a boil and simmer for 20 minutes. Strain the rosemary water into a 2-quart pitcher, and dissolve the sugar in the hot rosemary water. Set aside to cool.

When the rosemary tea is cool, add:

1 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (about 6 lemons)
Enough water to make 2 quarts

Serve chilled.

Note: This recipe is awesome with limes as well. Even better: Rosemary limeade with whiskey.
DrinksRecipes

Triple-Chocolate Cake with Chocolate-Peppermint Filling

From A Suite of Sweets: a collection of delectable dessert recipes, by Janice Gockel.

Chocolate Mint Cake

Ingredients

Filling
8oz Imported milk chocolate
1/2 cup Whipping cream
1 tbsp Light corn syrup
1/2 tsp Peppermint extract

Cake
1 cup Flour
1/3 cup Unsweetened cocoa powder, such as Scharffen Berger
1/2 tsp Salt
1/4 tsp Baking powder
1/4 tsp Baking soda
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) Room temperature unsalted butter
1 cup Sugar
1/3 cup Dark brown sugar
2 tsp Vanilla extract
3 Large eggs (room temperature)
1/2 cup Buttermilk
1 1/2 cups Semisweet chocolate chips

Chocolate glaze
8 oz finely chopped Bittersweet (not unsweetened) or semisweet chocolate (I suggest 70%)
1/2 cup (1 stick) Unsalted butter, cut into pieces
3/4 tsp Peppermint extract
1 tbsp Light corn syrup

Garnish
12 chopped Peppermint candies (I like to have a nice variety of sizes--completely smashed to 1/4 round)
Fresh mint leaves (peppermint probably makes the most sense)

Directions

Filling
1. Place chocolate in medium bowl. Heat cream and corn syrup in small pan until nearly boiling. Pour hot mixture over chocolate; add extract and let stand 1 minute. Whisk until smooth.

Cake
1. Preheat oven to 350° F. Butter one 9-inch diameter cake pan. Line bottom with buttered parchment paper. Dust with flour.
2. Mix first 5 ingredients in medium bowl.
3. Using electric mixer, beat butter in large bowl until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in both sugars, then vanilla. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in dry ingredients alternately with buttermilk in 2 additions each. Mix in chocolate chips.
4. Transfer batter to prepared pan. Bake cake until tester comes out clean, about 1 hour 5 minutes. Place the cake, in its pan, on rack for 5 minutes. Turn cake onto rack. Cool.
5. After the cake is cool, using electric mixer, beat filling until fluffy, 30 seconds. Using a serrated knife, cut the cake horizontally in half. Put a cooling rack on top of a baking sheet (a place for chocolate to drip on). Place 1 cake layer, cut side up, on rack. Spread filling over cake layer. Top with second layer cut side down, then chill the filled cake 20 minutes. While it's cooling, prepare the glaze:

Glaze
1. Stir chocolate, butter and corn syrup in heavy pan over low heat until melted and smooth. Mix in extract. Cool until lukewarm but pourable, about 20 minutes.

Assembly
1. Pour 1/2 cup of the glaze over the center of the cake. Spread that over the top and sides of the cake. Chill until glaze sets. Pour remaining glaze over center of cake, then spread quickly over top and side. Chill again until glaze sets. Sprinkle candies around top edge of cake, then garnish with fresh mint leaves.

CakesRecipes

Here's a short video of Simon and Oliver together. Simon's very enthusiastic about being a big brother. He couldn't remember all the words to Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, but his improvisation was also pretty cute ;)
Tags >> Blog - Simon - Oliver

Here's the recipe.

Green Rice with Chard (Arroz verde con acelga)

Adapted from Saveur

1 small white onion, peeled and quartered
3 cloves garlic, peeled
1 1/2 cups fresh swiss chard, chopped
2 cups chicken or vegetable stock
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 cup long-grain white rice
2 tbsp. vegetable oil

1. Place onions, garlic, chard, and 1 cup stock in a food processor. Process to a fine paste. Season with salt and pepper.

2. Rinse and drain rice. Heat oil in a heavy pot over medium-low heat. Add rice and sauté, stirring constantly, for 2 minutes. Add sauce and remaining 1 cup stock. Bring to a low boil, cover and simmer for 15 minutes. Remove pot from heat, but keep covered, allowing rice to cook for another 10 minutes. Fluff and serve.
Recipes

Today I was messing around with the two, and I've decided that one way that Last.fm might actually do a better job of playing like music, stylistically speaking, is by genre. So, I wanted to listen to Hawaiian music. If you want to try to build a genre station using Pandora, you have to simply add artists that make sense given what you want, and then listen to it for a while, thumbing songs up or down depending on whether it sounds Hawaiian or not. Pandora wasn't very good at this, and one reason appeared to be that the kinds of things that make Hawaiian music Hawaiian weren't really counted as "stylistic" characteristics (for example, use of slack key guitar). As such, my attempt at adding a bunch of slack-key guitar artists to a station resulted in tracks being chosen because they had, for example, "folk influences, great musicianship, acoustic sonority, demanding instrumental part writing and major key tonality." Obviously a lot of music that is not Hawaiian will fit that bill.

On the other hand, I thought, Last.fm gives you the option of playing tag radio, that is, a radio station put together of tracks, artists, and albums that have been tagged a certain way. So, I tried the "Hawaiian" tag radio, with far greater success. While the music definitely didn't always match stylistically, all of it was definitely Hawaiian, with no exceptions. I got, for example, ska and reggae, hip hop, Britney-esque, and ambient psychedelic techno sort of stuff, but all with a Hawaiian flair--along with a good deal of traditional Hawaiian slack-key guitar, hula music, and Don Ho.

Techcrunch has more on Last.fm and Pandora. Note that Pandora has attempted to create special genre stations--probably because of this very problem.

It was a fascinating comparison, and I think I'll play around with it a bit more. What genre next?
MusicMLA

Speaking of our Hawaii trip, there are a ton of photos.
TripsPizza

Simon thought this program music was so hilarious, he wanted to try it himself. This is what came of that attempt:

It's a little gruesome, but a pretty good story nonetheless. The music's not bad, either...

SimonVideo

Well, anyway... I'm sorta glad that the walls aren't white, but the two-tone thing is pretty annoying about now. At least they left the paint chips.

Update 3/27/08: alright, a heck of a lot of people are finding this page because they actually wanted to know about two-tone paint schemes. What can I say? Well... if you own your own place, and you are thinking about doing a two-tone paint scheme:

1. Please pick paints that're easy to purchase more of later.
2. Please keep the paint chips. Even if you are repainting later, it'll be a lot easier.
3. If you do leave the place, any amount of explanation you can offer the next owners will be a major boon.
4. If you really want to be nice, leave a little bit of the actual paint there. We bought some small canisters of the stuff, both colors, and left it there for the new owners.

Also:

• When you're testing, try painting two boards, one of each color, then you can hold them up and see what it looks like.
• You'll find this out for yourself, but mostly you're going to find random articles about this on the web and not a whole lot of helpful articles. However, there are definitely some random tips.
• There is a lot more information on the web about car colors than house colors.

If you came here looking for useful tips and all you got was my useless drivel, sorry to hear that. Good luck!

House

If all that weren't enough, we're also expecting another child in May. Yes, Simon's finally going to have a sibling. It's all a bit of a blur, but that's nothing new. Please buy our house! ;)

BlogTripsSimon

1997

Jon had just moved to Lincoln; we went to Noral and Cindy's place in Omaha. Finding some family nearby is really nice when you're new to an area!

1998

Back in Seattle after all the weddings, we had Thanksgiving dinner at Ron & Dianne's, and Rachel & Mike were there and she brought a beet for supper. We also went to Cindy & Brian's for dessert. I recall there was a pumpkin cheesecake involved.

1999

Back in Nebraska, We went to Fremont, Nebraska at Susan Kiesling's house. We were asked to bring a cake, so we brought a black forest torte. It turned out that cakes were actually for after supper (read: leftovers, in the form of turkey sandwiches et al.) and we were having pies after dinner... and this was normal. That was a ton of food... although, there were a ton of people there. There was also a mandatory walk around the neighborhood in between meals.

2000

We had Thanksgiving dinner at George Ritchie's house. Admired his built-in organ and incredible speaker system; found that we all agreed on nearly every political subject. I'm pretty sure it was this year, but I'm having a hard time remembering... good thing I'm writing this now, otherwise I'd probably have forgotten everything!
Had dinner with Ben Carlisle and Kelly Grey at Ben's place a couple of days after Thanksgiving? I sort of don't remember exactly when. I don't remember everything we had either, but there was definitely a ton of butter involved (a stick of butter per potato, I recall...?!) and a game of mah jongg maybe, and we watched Fantasia 2000 for sure.

2001

Back in Seattle, we went to Janice & Tim's new house. There was a brouhaha over the number of chairs available and the possibility of inviting certain individuals, but we had a good time anyway. It was amazing that they managed to get their house ready for Thanksgiving dinner so quickly.

2002

Still in Seattle... went to Janice & Tim's again, I think. For some reason, I get 2002 and 2003 mixed up, but I'm pretty sure we all went over to the Brandts this year. I sort of recall Grandma Herr getting driven around to various locations... but maybe that was the previous year.

2003

Assuming I'm remembering correctly, we had dinner at Ron & Dianne's place this year and again a great time was had by all.

2004

First year in Ames. Went to Peggy Earnshaw's house with 6-month old Simon. They were very generous! Played with the harpsichord a bit, and listened to some fine trumpet playing.

2005

Went to Dick & Jan Harken's place in Boone. We enjoyed ourselves a lot and had a good time with them and Dick's mother. Simon had a good time too although I recall it was bitterly cold and windy outside.

2006

Dick & Jan's again, this time with Leigh Anna & Andy as well... visiting from Chicago. They announced that they were going to become vegan as of Jan. 1, 2007. We argued a little about orthorexia, philosophies of nutrition, and how to deal with the problem of capitalist food supplies, and generally had a good time.

2007

We're at home! And having a ton of turkey and other fun dishes. Our house is on the market (more on that later) so we have to keep it clean. There's snow on the ground... and we had to borrow a roasting pan because a) we don't have one and b) if we did, I don't think it would've been big enough for this bird!

Blog Trips

Edit: nope, wasn't the del.icio.us links. It did seem to get faster when I simply removed all the content from that sub-content area though, hmm.

I'm working on a way to clear the absolutely positioned elements (the text at left and this note) with the footer at the bottom without worrying which one is longer, and this is a good method, but I don't like the way it makes the screen appear to blink every time you load a page. I am going to have to try something else, I think.

  $FoxFilterFunctions['smiley'] = 'FoxSmileyFilter';
  function FoxSmileyFilter($pagename, $fields) {
    $fields = preg_replace('/\(:/', '(:', $fields);
    $fields = preg_replace('/:\)/', ':)', $fields);
    return $fields;
  }

What this does, in (more) plain English, is tell Fox to look and see if anyone has typed a smiley in any form field, and if so, to replace the parentheses used with their special character code equivalents. The regular expressions are used in the middle of the lines. Basically the 'single quotes' tell it I'm going to type a character string, putting things /in forward slashes/ tells it where the thing I'm looking for begins and ends, and then it's just (: and :)--but wait! Parentheses are special characters, so you have to escape them by putting a backslash in front so PHP won't try to interpret them as having some kind of deep meaning.

Anyhow, that was extremely simple in the grand scheme of things, so I have a lot to learn. ;)

In the middle of moving, unfortunately I decided that trying to keep the comments that were still around was too much of a burden and I decided to get rid of them. Sorry! You can always, eh... write the comment again?

Also, I think for now I'm happy with where the design has gone here. I'm thinking about adding something cool looking to the side of the page where there's never-ending whitespace, but I don't know what to use yet, so for now, it stays white. I guess on a lot of screens you probably don't even see a whole lot of whitespace anyway.

I almost decided to switch back to using Wordpress. It's pretty cool, does all the blogging stuff easily and automatically, etc. But hey, I've grown quite fond of PmWiki, so I guess I'm sticking with that for now.

I particularly like the little "recent posts" widget thing down below, very snazzy. I am also keen on the lack of sidebar, at least for the time being. I was going to make use of nifty corners to make these pretty corners, but the javascript seemed too slow and it didn't really work with IE so I'm not sure how long I'll stick with that. Then again, the current corners only work with Mozilla or Safari Beta 3 or, theoretically, another browser which is compliant with CSS3 to this extent (which I don't think exists at this time).

Update 9/11: obviously, I'm not done with this yet.
Design

design

This recipe allows you to incorporate Last.fm widgets into your PmWiki installation.

To install, place lastfm.php in your cookbook directory, then add the following to config.php or another local configuration file:

  include_once("$FarmD/cookbook/lastfm.php");

You can embed radio players, playlist players, quilts, or charts.

For more information, see http://last.fm/widgets.

The recipe enables the (:lastfm:) markup. You add arguments to customize the widget.

Here are the arguments:

  type (chart, radio, playlist, quilt)
  user 
  color/colour (red, blue, black, grey)
  chart (recent, topartists, toptracks, weeklyartists, weeklytracks)
  quilt (album, artist)
  orient (horizontal, vertical)
  size (small, medium, large for quilts; regular, mini for radios)
  autostart ( 1 for an autostarting radio )

If you just put in a username and nothing else, you will get, by default, a red medium-sized chart of recent tracks played.

Tags >> PmWiki Music

tags >> Simon Books

The new version relies on Page Text Variables instead of categories for the blog to work. Instead of [[!Blog]] in the page, you need to have (:Blog:1:). In addition, in order to execute a pagelist, you need to use $:Blog=1 instead of link=Category.Blog. For example, the following would produce the latest 5 entries in reverse chrono order:

  (:pagelist $:Blog=1 list=blog order=-ctime fmt=#recentblog count=5:)

The new version features some useful changes.

Previously, the page viewed in a pagelist looked quite different from one viewed directly. Now, by using Site.SiteHeader and SiteFooter and Site.BlogMeta, the page template will be the same whether you're viewing the blog using #recentblog pagelist or viewing an individual post. This means that the posts will be styled the same either way, which is a big advantage.

In addition, comments are added on the page itself instead of going to the PostComments page. This seems far less confusing. The comments themselves are still actually stored in the connected PostComments page.

When implementing this new beta version, don't forget to delete former versions of any of the pages in wikilib.d, in particular Site.BlogListTemplates, Site.SiteHeader and Site.SiteFooter, but potentially any of the included pages--otherwise you won't realize the new changes.

Note that I have styled my version such that the metadata appears to the left of the main content. In addition, I am working on a Social Bookmarks list recipe, thus all the little icons (this is not included in the blogsimple2 recipe).

tags >> PmWiki

http://pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/BlogSimple2

The new version requires at least PmWiki 2.1.27, as it includes nested divs and {*$Variable} variables.

There are several changes to the structure. Please be aware of these when updating from a previous version--some of them require modification of existing pages and style sheets.

1. The main template for displaying blog posts, #recentblog, has been updated to use semantic naming of divs (.blogpost, .blogpost-title, .blogpost-content, etc.) and some of the classes have changed. This will need to be addressed in styling of the list.
2. The wikilib.d pages have been updated to the new {*$Variable} standard.
3. A special {$BlogTimeOfDay} page variable has been added. This allows the post to state in natural language the time of day of its posting. The recipe already features pre-set language, but these can be overruled easily in config.php.

A little note: my pages are not consistent with this recipe, because I have been playing with social bookmarks and the like. More about that later.

tags >> Blog PmWiki

The only part that took a bit of thinking was how to include the title of the page. It wouldn't seem to be an issue, except I want it to be dynamically added to the URL, and these bookmarking sites prefer plusses instead of spaces in the urls, etc. Basically you have to make the urls valid. So I had to come up with a way to do that.

First, you need to provide the engine with the right tools to construct useful URLs for this thing. With some help from the PmWiki users list, I was able to create some custom markup to urlencode the necessary text. Now you can urlencode any text with (:urlencode whatever:).

Second, you need to create a page in PmWiki that has all of the links/images that you want/need, that will be included on any page that you want this clickable list to appear. I've included a page called Site.SocialBookmarkIcons which you can use. As well, you'll have to upload the images for the various sites you want.

Third, you have to somehow style the list. That's accomplished in my recipe by placing a css file in the /pub folder and adding that via $HTMLFooterFmt (or $HTMLHeaderFmt).

Now the most important thing: I have made it easy for you. Just download the zip file Δ. After unzipping this, you'll find the following:

  /social-bookmark-icons
    social-bookmark-icons.php
    social-bookmark-icons.css
    /wikilib.d
      Site.SocialBookmarkIcons
    /uploads/Site
      (numerous image files)

put this folder in your Cookbook folder, and put this line in config.php:

  include_once("$FarmD/cookbook/social-bookmark-icons/social-bookmark-icons.php")

Leave the /wikilib.d folder where it is. Move social-bookmark-icons.css to your pub/css folder. Move the image files to your /uploads/Site folder.

Finally, whenever you want to have this list in your page, you just do this:

  (:include Site.Social:)

And that's all!
In order to include this in a pagelist, as I've done here using BlogSimple2, you have to use another scheme, because page variables (such as {$TitleSpaced} will refer to either the page being browsed {*$Titlespaced} or the original page, but not a page that included the original page and then was displayed using a pagelist. So you have to make sure that you're using something like (:urlencode {=$Titlespaced}:) when you want the title of your post, for example.

Note: This post was updated after I figured out how to really do the url encoding bit.

tags >> PmWiki Recipes Blog

tags >> Simon

After we figured everything out, then we had the problem of getting time to work on the deck; however, we certainly had several weekends that would've worked. But then it rained... every weekend!

We just couldn't believe it.... the entire summer, it was awesome weather during the week, followed by rain on the weekend.

So we finally hired someone to do it so it could get done before it just got too cold. It still didn't get done until after a few days of very cold weather, but nonetheless, it's finished! (or... refinished...)

Even that was a pain because the contractor decided to try to swindle us out of some money. When they arrived, they tried to say that the amount we agreed on was just for the screen porch (um, I don't think so).

Luckily, Laura had photocopied the agreement, so she just showed it to them and said "well, this really couldn't be any clearer..." and they just said "okay, well, we'll just do it anyway." Whatever.

tags >> House Blog

Simon likes a lot of random food. Here he's chowing down on some raw broccoli. He seems to think it's pretty yummy!

Tags >> Photos Simon Blog

This is another movie from a few weeks ago in which Simon shows off his mad crayon skillz. It's much more fun, apparently, to draw on the paper only a little bit, throw it up in the air, and then go and get another crayon from several feet away, than it is to use them for longer stretches of time or bring them closer to the paper.

tags >> Simon Crayons Movies Blog

Simon really likes cars. So here's a video of him taking his cars and driving them around, parking them, backing them up, etc. Take careful note of how he arranges them in spectrum order.

tags >> Simon Movies Blog

Voilà! I could've blogged about this a while ago, but Simon's moved from his old crib into this new (as of a few weeks ago, and actually it's used) bed. He started climbing in and out of his crib as though it was easy as pie, and sleeping in random places on the floor of his room, so we figured it was time for some kind of new arrangement. We didn't really want to pay full price for one of these puppies, as they're quite expensive and we have no idea how long he'll fit in it but it's not going to be 10 years, so we had figured we'd just throw the mattress on the floor and call it good.

But lo and behold, a pristine toddler bed appeared in the consignment shop, for a fair price, so we caved and bought this. It's very nice, and we're actually quite glad to have it. Simon wanted to go to bed immediately after seeing it, and still really likes it weeks later; plus, we can sit down and tell stories, read books, or sing. What's become of it in the last few weeks? Well, Simon fills it regularly with books and all of his "animal friends." It is also inhabited nearly round-the-clock by a 3-foot long stuffed tiger. So, all in all we're fairly convinced it was a good purchase...

tags >> Simon Blog

I've also dramatically changed the look of my site, as you can probably tell. It's rather simpler than the old one. The sidebar and navigation functions have moved up to the top left under "Navigate".

Update 6/4/06: This weekend, I added commenting; feel free to comment away. For anybody who's interested, I based my setup on Hans Bracker's BlogSimple recipe, but his requires that all posts be put in the same group, and I wanted to make it possible to list blog posts from various groups. This makes the linkage quite a bit more complex, but the concepts are essentially the same.

Blog design

Simon playing on the quilt Δ

tags >> Simon Podcast Movies Blog

Simon playing with his blocks Δ

tags >> Simon Movies Blog

The first one is a bookmarklet that works in any browser and generally from any book searching site, like Amazon, isbn.nu, Borders, etc. The bookmarklet can be found here.

The second is adapted from the Seattle Public Library Greasemonkey user script, which was adapted from another library, etc., because the libraries all use Horizon OPACs it's no big deal to alter the script to work for your library. For this, you'll need Firefox with the Greasemonkey extension installed. Then all you need to do is click on this script and then add the script to your Greasemonkey scripts.

The linky is here: amazon-isulib.user.js Δ

tags >> Library Scripts Blog

The attached mp3 features Simon and I singing Skip to my Lou, I Had a Rooster, and The Wheels on the Bus. If you pick a song that he likes, he'll just sing a verse or two now and then. And randomly he'll just start singing a song.

Here's the file (mp3) Δ (approx. 6 MB)

I took this photo roughly at the same time I recorded the singing. Actually there's a moment in the recording when he starts talking about pictures, and I think he wanted me to take another photo.
tags >> Simon Photos Podcast Blog

I recorded some of Simon doing a variety of things, and here's a short clip of him saying his name. He also apparently knows that he is "me".

Here is the file (mp3) Δ

tags >> Simon Podcast Blog

I see books as yet another instance in our society of a technology that is used in documents, beginning say with stone tablets, going to papyrus, vellum scrolls, books, etc. Each technology has had its "day", and yet we still use all of these technologies in one way or another - think of a plaque, isn't it a kind of stone tablet?

Documents have three aspects: technology, form, and use. A novel, for example, is meant to be a long work of prose that is leisure reading material; as such, the novel arose around the same time as the book technology, because that technology is a great and efficient way of holding a whole bunch of pages together, which none of the previous technologies really excelled at. It wouldn't work in stone tablet form, or at least it'd be prohibitively expensive to produce. Take receipts as another example: Does a cashier receipt from the convenience store really need to be verbose? No! You know what you're looking at because it always uses the same form, so it might as well use a kind of shorthand for efficiency. Same with the technology; people complain that the ink disappears, but really, do you need to keep a receipt from a convenience store for that long?

Attach:Books/Books/scrolling.jpg Δ
I take many of my ideas from this book, which I highly recommend: Scrolling Forward by David M. Levy. I also highly recommend on this topic his talk at the Library of Congress (he's currently the holder of the Harissios Papamarkou Chair in Education and Technology at the Kluge Center) called Reading: from the Fixed Page to Movable Electrons.

So, I don't think that books will disappear, because I think they will continue to be a useful technology with certain forms and uses, in the creation of certain kinds of documents. Take the novel, for example; while e-Books definitely have their place, a novel isn't the same presented as a digital copy as it is in print. It is just a different experience to read something on a screen. I do think that less books will be printed as people realize that they can create a different kind of document digitally, one that is equally satisfying; but I think novels and books are intertwined in a way that you can't pick apart. You can't change the technology in a vacuum; once you change the technology, you've effected the use and the form as well.

Well, that's all for now. What do you think?
tags >> Books Issues Blog

I decided that I liked the original photo so much that I wanted to play around with it a little. So I made it black-and-white, then warmed the colors somewhat to make it a little brown. Then I used a tool to make Simon turn out clear, but the area around the outside of the image a little fuzzy. I think it’s very nice.

In other news, it’s been rather snowy out here:

tags >> Simon Iowa Blog

Prior to Amy's visit, we had several problems with the layout of our backyard. Our house sits on a hill; the grade is approximately 30 degrees down in the backyard. The previous owners had installed two terraces below the deck, resulting in essentially three sections in the backyard: the top section, with a flat grassy space, a deck, and a gravel-covered spot; a middle terrace; and the lower grassy area (still on a 30 degree angle) with some bushes and trees.

Here are some "before" photos:

Clearly some things needed to be done. Obviously the gravelly area was a little uninteresting, even drab; also, the upper terrace could be considered dangerous for a toddler, especially a fearless one that runs around like a little madman. The middle portion just needs something done to it, and the lower section still requires mowing, which is not good given the angle of the hill and the difficulty in getting down there. As well, that section gets a lot of water, and it grows massive 6 or 7 foot weeds. So, our plan was to build a fence, then have Amy design and install plants, trees, and shrubs, etc., and any necessary agricultural infrastructure for moving water around.

First we worked on the fence. It was a challenge even deciding what kind of fence to use, and beyond that, exactly where to put it. We bantered about with the ideas of putting in chain-link fencing or wood, whether or not to use treated wood or cedar, etc., and eventually decided that we liked best the idea of using all cedar fencing. Although treated lumber no longer includes arsenic, it still contains a number of chemicals that may be harmful, including "inert" chemicals that bioaccumulate as they are fat soluble. Anyway, that was the primary reasoning for not using treated lumber. It's a little bit of a gamble, admittedly, but it's really nice wood, and cedar withstands rot very well comparatively.

The weather was unkind to us:

Installing the fence was another matter. We initially marked out the fence with stakes, lines, and the like, and rented a hand-powered post hole auger, one of the type you twist, not the clamshell variety (neither of us liked the idea of using that). We had a lot of trouble digging these holes. Not only is the mulberry nearby a big problem with an extensive root system, but we have a hardpan about 6" into the ground that is all clay - really hard stuff, and we just didn't think we could handle it after trying one hole. So, we decided to go rent a power auger.

The aforementioned rain did clue Amy in to a problem we were having with water near where we wanted that fence. Right where I took that picture, you can see that there is a lot of water building up on the concrete patio. Unfortunately, there wasn't really anywhere for it to drain, so it was building up next to the house and probably just seeping down underneath. That's really not a good thing, so Amy decided to install a French drain system, in this case by digging trenches and filling them with the aforementioned gravel.

What you see in the picture at left (underneath the stakes) is an abandoned gas pipe. While Amy was digging, she inexplicably ran into a pipe and smelt gas. Believe me, we had called to have our pipes marked, and there wasn't supposed to be a gas line there, so we were rather confused. I shut off the gas line, and we called the gas company.... they came out and said it was abandoned and probably originally powered somebody's outdoor gas grill. Much ado about nothing, but it could have been messy.

Anyhow, back to the fence. How did the power auger work? Well, the photo can do the talking.

After a couple of holes, we still were having a ton of problems with the clay and the tree roots. The auger eventually got stuck in it all here on this hole, and it took us several hours to get it out. Usually you can take the top off the auger, get out a pipe wrench, and turn the threads back counter-clockwise to get it out, but as it turned out, the root it was stuck in managed to get lodged both above and below the thread, and it wasn't going to move. Instead, I had to dig a 3-foot hole next to the first hole, break the root, and then take it out. It was a big pain, and we had so much else to do, we just gave up. We decided to take the auger back, and get to work on the other stuff--have somebody else install the fence later.

Another thing that Amy noticed is that on one side of the house, we actually had three different water sources all sending water down the same pathway... one from our neighbors' drainage system, one from our roof, and now our new French drain system. So, to take advantage of some of that water and help with erosion, she installed a small set of swales. Installing a swale system involves digging a trench on contour with the hill and building a berm, or hill, on the downhill side of the swale. Since the trench is on contour, the water has nowhere to travel but into the soil, and you plant things in the berm to take advantage of the water that is taken in. Here's Amy using an A-frame device to place markers on contour.

After it was done, the swale system & plants looked like this.

The next thing was to do something with the gravelly area on the South side of the deck. Amy put in trees, perennial herbs, and the like, and discovered an interesting way to use the gravel to our (and the plants') advantage.

The gravel was shaped into one side of a mound system for the perennials around the trees, providing space for a walkway while also providing a little protection for the tree and a little "found" radiant heat for the small plants. It was nice to think that the gravel that seemed to annoying could actually come in to good use.

Next we set about sheet-mulching the second terrace. We had a ton of cardboard boxes sitting around attracting mice in our garage, so that came in handy.

After mulching, it ended up looking like this.

We also started building a large swale across the lower section below the terraces, but weren't able to finish it before Amy left, so we'll have to figure out how to get that in sometime. We had more rain (did I mention the rain?) but we felt we got a lot done despite all of the little problems. Interestingly, we had a frost the night before Amy left, but it looks like the plants and trees did okay. Now we just have to figure out how to get that fence in!

tags >> Photos Iowa Blog

Total volume of music files on my computer: I will count my iPod as a computer, and use that... I have about 5 G on it so far, I believe. I just got this device about a month ago, though.

Last CD I bought was . . .: Well, this is getting out of date, because I've bought music by downloading it recently instead of buying CDs. The last music I bought was some Jean Bosco Mwenda. The last time I bought I CD was a while ago now (months) but I think it was probably Corelli, op. 5, played by Manze and Egarr.

Song playing right now: I'm actually listening to "My Experimental Phase," an episode of This American Life. I guess there has been a bunch of music by Vic Thrill with Curly Oxide. I guess Tina Fey is writing a movie on it.

Five songs I listen to a lot these days:

Matteo Salvatore - Il Pescivendolo
Sarah Vaughan - I've Got the World on a String
Jean Bosco Mwenda - Masanga
Niall Keegan - Jig Jazz/A Fig for a Kiss
Tom and Mark Wisner - Dredgin' is my Drudgery

I know, that's eclectic.

You’re it:

La Concierge du Monde
The Theoretical Librarian

Thanks to C-Squared for tagging me.

I'm going to add my own list:

5 CDs I have checked out of the library right now:

Joshua Bell - Gershwin Fantasy, etc.
Luiz Bonfá - Solo in Rio 1959
Kings of Convenience - Riot on an Empty Street
New York City: Global Beat of the Boroughs
Prokofiev Piano Concertos Nos. 2 & 4 - Yefim Bronfman, Zubin Mehta

tags >> Music Blog

One particularly interesting point in the first chapter concerns doctors, whose likelihood of being sued in a malpractice suit can be deduced in a few seconds of looking at him/her talking. Essentially, the difference between doctors who get sued and those who don't is not what they say but how they talk to their patients, and we can identify their style very quickly, even at a first glance.

It is suggested (by me) that another possible approach to rising costs of malpractice suits might be improving doctors' ability to spend quality time with their patients. Patients who like their doctors will not sue them, another point made in this chapter. Hmm.....

tags >> Books Blog

tags >> Simon Photos Blog

tags >> Simon Photos Blog

tags >> Simon Photos Blog

tags >> Photos Iowa Blog

tags >> Simon Photos Blog

tags >> Flowers Photos Blog

tags >> Flowers Photos Blog