Keeping up with the news can be a full time job. thanks to trump, soon we may not have to anymore. until then: trump wants $25 million and an apology from 60-minutes trump continues his attack on the courts trump invests in crypto while trying to tank the dollar In lighter news, Stephen Wolfram posted an article(and video)last week about AI and his trademark, irreducible complexity. here is the HN post: What If We Had Bigger Brains? Imagining Minds Beyond Ours(stephenwolfram.com) I probably don't have time, or enough neurons, to study it properly. I think Stephen's brain is bigger than mine. ;) ...it looks like we will get more rain here today. it sort of spoils my outdoor plans, but the plants like it.
Well, Trump is doing more questionable pardoning again today: Trump's pardons highlight Justice Department's pullback from public corruption cases Trump pardons former sheriff convicted of bribery Ex-U.S. attorney says he fears Culpeper pardon by Trump sends ‘get-out-of-jail-free' message Trump pardons Virginia ex-sheriff convicted in bribery scheme "...Jenkins’ co-defendants all pleaded guilty, and jurors didn't take long to convict Jenkins last year, deliberating for around two hours before they found him guilty on all counts..." It's a kind of worrisome headline. What could be the reason for pardoning someone like this?
The Contractors from the James River Association stream buffer program are pretty good: They pushed over and sprayed what i later found out was an invasive autumn olive, and left the poplar standing. Tulip Poplar(Liriodendron tulipifera) native Autumn olive(Elaeagnus umbellata) invasive It appears that i have had some mortality amongst my melons and cantaloupes. I think being in such a hot greenhouse, and then moving out into the cold outdoors probably played a major roll. I do however seem to have some pretty healthy looking survivors, though they are still small. The shorter maturing sugar-cube and sugar-baby seem to be doing the best. They were started later, and did not get toasted as badly in the hot greenhouse. Also, it looks like my flax might have simple gotten too much heat as well. They have been transplanted now for awhile, and there has been rain, and they seem to be hanging in there but still somewhat yellow. Also, all my flax seems to be flowing early. I blame the stress of being the hot greenhouse for too long. I'm pretty sure they will be stunted. Hopefully i will get some seeds to increase my stock and try again next year. I will have to transplant them earlier, or prepare a little patch to seed directly. It appears my sunflowers and tomatoes have had some high mortality. These were the last to be transplanted this season, and I think they simply did not get enough water during their first weeks out in the open(there are a few survivors still amongst the smaller tomatoes). Anyway, I am trying to improve the farm business here, and actually make a profit for a change. With all the endless Trump Shenanigans these days, this seems more imperative than usual. Perhaps a troublesome indicator, the Russell 2000 is still down 15% since December, and i kind of get the feeling the trend is worse for actual small-businesses(i.e. small businesses not listed on an exchange). Anyway, the strategy I have come up with is basically offer more products(diversify). It seems however that farming is a bit of a tricky endeavor though, and I'm probably still at the low end of the curve as far as having it all figured out. I like the idea of early-melons and doing some sort of farm-to-textiles business, as well as continuing with the chestnuts and bees. The farm has also always been a forestry operation, and i think long term i would like to explore more of the possibilities in respect to wood-products. Time is limited though, and there are numerous repair jobs still yet to be done around here, as well finding some time to build my custom chestnut harvester this Summer. So, at this point, I'm probably just going to wait and see if the rain will sustain my melons and flax, otherwise I think i am moving on to other projects that need to be done now.
Spotted Knapweed(invasive)! this stuff grows quickly and is very hard to trim when it gets big!
I did a little plant identification in the tree-line on the side of the lawn the other day: Albizia julibrissin (mimosa tree) invasive Vitis vulpina (wild grape vine) native to north america Juglans nigra (American black walnut) native Cercis canadensis (eastern redbud) native Lindera benzoin (spicebush) native Celtis occidentalis (hackberry) native Ulmus rubra (slippery elm) native Fraxinus americana (white ash) native Carya illinoinensis (pecan) southern USA Lonicera maackii (bush/amur honeysuckle) invasive here are some sites that helped me with identification: ...stinging nettles is listed as invasive - also thistle. also, i have definitely seen a lot of japanese honeysuckle around the farm. Also, multiflora Rose, though currently no bad kudzu infestations.
Well the big news on google today seems to be Trump Big Tax Bill. It looks like it won't really affect my LLC, but i guess i don't make any significant money there anyway so whatever. ...I don't have time to become an expert on all this, plus it could all change at some future date anyway, but here are some good articles i found. TLDR, it looks like it does lower taxes, though it seems the general consensus is that this comes at the price of a more complicated tax code, along with trump's personal touch[Money Account for Growth Advancement (“MAGA”) accounts], and with a skew towards helping the rich more than people in lower brackets: btw, i was having some computer issues and ended up making another neocities site for my temporary remote office location. it's actually sort of been temporary for awhile now - i think there is a saying about this phenomenon. It's not my intention to proliferate multiple accounts, though for various reasons, i'm not setup on on there with all my accounts i have on my main machine. perhaps i will fix this some time. I have experimented in the past with various accounts for my collection of test machines, though most of these are inactive or deleted at this point. I'm not really sure my plan for this new account yet, though for the moment it kind of just a bucket for various notes and unfinished project stuff which i don't think is ready for this blog. We will see maybe it will become something more over time: Wow! 12:40pm! Today is moving by fast!
Rather than making a whole new blog post, i thought i would just do small update here on the various progress made over this last 2/3 weeks. As of today i have gotten all my Spring garden planted. Here is a pic of it all in back of the truck when i initially loaded it up to plant most of it. There are watermelons, cantaloupes, flax and tomatoes - i just finished planting the tomatoes today. Yesterday I checked on the melons, and I was happy to see some of them seemed to be doing pretty well. I sprinkled some urea around each plant while i was doing my check. Also, I struggled a bit in finding time to prepare my garden sites, so hopefully i can manage all the weeds - we will see. I also had some fun one day replacing a busted hydrant. There was also some tractor and mower repair i had to do, but it looks like i didn't document any of that. I also cleared the edge of the hayfield of fallen trees. There is too much ailanthus and vines; i have a lot of work ahead of me. The picture shows a wild cherry tree which fell down. There is definitely some variety in the woods here, and certainly some valuable trees, though there is definitely also a lot of junk. It looks like i have my work cut out for myself. I have noticed the snapping turtles have been crawling around out of the water lately. Still working on my rock wall(i still need to put the second layer on the greenhouse).
So apparently Starlink is now aiding the guidance of russian shahed drones in Ukraine: ...and apparently this has actually been going on since September of last year: here is a list of the current starlink competitors: from the starlink competitors list: 1. (still waiting on Gen-5 after 1st launch deployment problem) 2. (are they working on improving their network?) 3. Amazon’s Project Kuiper(preliminary launch: ) 4. OneWeb(by Eutelsat, not sure how to get this, it looks like they are prioritizing commercial operators for now: ) 5. Telesat(don't know much about this: ) 6. SES S.A(dont know much about this: ) 7. Inmarsat(viasat subsidiary: ) 8. NBN Sky Muster(???) 9. EchoStar Mobile(???) 10. Telstra(???) and now Spinlaunch is joining the LEO race:
Having a slow morning today. the forecast is for a relatively nice day today, and i'm planning to do some more work outside later, but at this moment i'm still vegging out on my laptop. i thought maybe i should share acouple references i used for the design of this site(in addition to various examples from SO and w3schools): This first site is for the scottish Sci-Fi author Charlie Stross, who's books i read a lot during my extended college years. At some point I started reading other authors(as far as fiction goes) and for awhile i was reading mostly PKD, so I can't say i am too familiar with his more recent books. I would love to find the time to read, but i don't really read fiction these days - just the news. :-( This second site is just a random site i found here on neocities as i was looking around trying to make a template for my own page here, and it's how i got the basic design of this miniblog page(navigate at your own peril). Also, Russell is not rebounding so well compared to S&P. will there be a recession? is it curtains small business?
here are some 1-2 months old articles:
Also, it's kind of a rainy day today, but there were some developments as well as progress made recently in respect to the garden, and i will probably be making another blog post about that soon. I also need to add some links between some of the posts below on this page and their corresponding blog posts to which they reference. Otherwise, in the future, this is not a page i intend to edit after the fact. That is all for now. here is a pic:
What a headache today trying to fix up this mini-blog. i think maybe it is finally working the way i want - no thanks to mozilla's buggy webpage with examples that don't display and w3schools who make my computer fans go crazy. in the end i started dragging the examples from mozilla into the test page on w3: , and i was able to figure it out. I shouldn't beat them up though. Almost every other website is trying to kill my computer these days. I hope i can make it until my next big upgrade - we will see.
Anyway, It looks like i figured out how to get iframes displaying properly the way i want, and with ::pseudo-elements for hyperlinks within posts(source code should be available via right-click in your browser).
here are some links i found helpful in my work today:
...look at all those SO links - i'm kind of embarrassed.
I should probably stop writing about the dog. It looks like he is maybe not all that great. Today while i was mowing, to prepare a place for a potential garden, i found the remains of what i presume was the opossum i had found him cuddling a couple months back. At the time i thought it was just playing possum, but i guess it was dead - or maybe he killed it later. It's basically exactly in the same spot, just hidden under some tall grass. I guess he's got those carnivore instincts after all. I probably need to set some ground rules with myself going forward to prevent going on tangents like this. I didn't start this site for my dog, and it seems like the more i talk about him the worse his story gets. Besides, it's sort of getting outside of the scope of what i really want to talk about on this site. Anyway, lot's still to do, but rome wasn't built in a day. i need my beauty rest.
I feel like i need to make a correction about the dog: i don't think he is actually killing anything at this point. The last corpse turned out to be rabbit, which i'm pretty sure is too fast for him to catch, and also it had been decapitated, though there was no blood on Apolo. He does like to chase quirrels and deer though but i have never actually seen him catch one. And he does like to bring home "trophies", but at this point all i have ever seen him do to a critter he catches is wrap his paws around it and play keep away(I thought i had a picture of this but i guess not, oh well). So, at this point i don't believe i have any reason to think he is a killer. He's just a big friendly. He does bark at stuff though, which i guess is admirable in a dog.
A small note about my dehumidifier mentioned in the 2025-Apr-25th post about my crawlspace repair job: I said it removes about 1 pint per day, but a more accurate number is probably closer to 1 quart per day, running about 16 hours per day. it runs on a timer - definitely well worth the money!(edit: link: ) Also, i felt like i should include some small notes(in the style i like to keep them) about my latest job with the bees. See below: (edit: link: )
Saturday Apr/26/2025
The following is the configuration of my live hives after splitting(by the box).
Note, the 3 box tall hives contain the top box from the parent over 2 empty boxes.
The 2 box tall hives are the remainder from the parent, and at this moment contain
a box with comb over an empty box. Also, all upper entrances are now converted to
be open inside to promote burr-comb.
west
_ _____________ _____________ _
| ||_____________||_____________|| |
| | | |
[2] | |
s [3] | | n
o |_| |_| o
u _ _ r
t | | | | t
h | | | | h
| | [3]
| | [2]
|_| |_|
_ _
| | | |
[3] | |
[2] | |
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|_| |_|
east
[3] = 1x comb over 2x empty
[2] = 1x comb over 1x empty
Sunday May/4/2025
I placed out my oldest most chewed up empty hive bodies(mostly containing frames
with some amount of wiring)as catch boxes for any potential swarms that may come
by this month. Also, I finished installing my little multi-entrance reducers where
i had removed the feeders from winter. The idea behind the special reducers is that
the bees will propolize the little entrance holes in Fall and clear them themselves
in Spring, hopefully saving me some work.
west
_ _____________ _____________ _
| ||__[e]________||_____________|| |
| | | |
[2] [e]
s [3] | | n
o |_| |_| o
u _ _ r
t | | | | t
h | | | | h
[e] [3]
| | [2]
|_| |_|
_ _
| | | |
[3] | |
[2] [e]
| | | |
|_| |_|
east
e = empty/catch-box
On a tangent, the dog seems to be killing groundhogs now? i have found 2 dead ground hogs laying in the yard now over the past week. he is a good working dog! I think that is it for now. small edit(~8:15): it looks like i was doing html wrong, but hey i found some reference that doesn't kill my computer fans!:
Ok, so it all looks good so here we go. ...that took all day, but i guess it was a learning experience. oh and here is some cruddy test code:
<div id="destination" style="min-width:420px; max-width:50%; border: 1px solid grey; margin: 4px; padding: 4px; overflow-x: scroll; overflow-y: scroll;"></div>
<iframe id="contentiframe" src="../miniblog/2025/05may/content.html" width="100%" height="100%" style="display: hidden;"></iframe>
<script>
/*
window.addEventListener("load", (event) => {
console.log("page is fully loaded");
});
window.onload = (event) => {
console.log("page is fully loaded");
displaymycontent();
};
*/
function displaymycontent() {
console.log("in function displaymycontent");
var myiframe = document.getElementById("contentiframe");
var mydiv = document.getElementById("destination");
mydiv.innerHTML = myiframe.contentWindow.document.getElementById("target").innerHTML;
//document.getElementById('destination').innerHTML = document.getElementById('contentiframe').document.getElementById('target').innerHTML;
}
</script>
<button onclick="displaymycontent();">click me </button>
Well it looks like iframes makes rel-links for resources like images problematic. maybe i just need to bust out the PHP if i want it to look like twitter. i'm going to have to figure something out. current solution will be... ...i don't know yet. actually i'm posting this now the way it is. i'll figure it out later. most likely i will not be using iframes.
Well i guess it is working now mostly the way i want it to for starters. I think getting it displaying right on the main page is probably the hardest part, and now that that is done, it shouldn't be too bad to get the archive organized as things go along.
Anyway, I got the urge last night to do some GIMPing and couldn't resist, so here is a little trump doodle i made;
The full size is over here(in addition to some other stuff):
Looks like MAMP will allow me to test iframes locally. It's a good thing i still have it on my computer. note to self: i need to figure out a way to efficiently copy in code into these posts. that is without having to type "<" and ">" a whole bunch
It looks like i cannot test iframes on my local mac. "Uncaught TypeError:" iframe "contentWindow.document.getElementById(...) is null" eventually, after i made a little button to update the page, i was able to make it give me a cross-origin error: "Uncaught DOMException: Permission denied to access property "document" on cross-origin object"
I decided to start a mini-blog as part of the site. Often there are topics that come up in my day to day, as well as potential small corrections i want to make and notes i want to add related to some of my blog posts without having to make a new blog entry each time. here is the place where you will find small updates as well as short posts about a range of topics.
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here is a dummy image file:
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