i was able to finish asphalting my deck this month, among other things. now the asphalt+underlayment reaches all the way to the outer edge so it should be basically rain/snow-proof at this point. there are potentially still some touch-up and revision spots, though i think it should be good to go now for this winter. last night i got to cosplay as a developer while trying to build libaacs from source to play a blu-ray on my linux machine(posted in tempasta). I was ultimately not successful and time got away from me a bit. Still, i'm thinking this might be a smart capability to have, and i plane to work on it more. I find fewer and fewer devs support my old machines as time goes on, not to mention i've had trouble with libs from official releases and package-managers not working for me in the past, and it has become sort of a recurring theme in my life over the past 10 years. i wish time wasn't always so scrunched. hopefully i can get it done. i still have some more work i need to finish on my building before chestnuts and the weather gets cold. btw, i did get the chance to mow the orchard. i'm planning to have the grass nice and short this season. note, some of the leaves on the trees were kind of brown. rain has been a bit scarce the past month. we will see if it affects the harvest.
I am very happy to see that Sam Soghor has published a campaign website for this years delegates race in my district: . It is nice to finally have an easy way to learn more about him, since i'm not on Social-Media so much these days. Sam's top issues(Education, Healthcare, & Environment) seem smart and straightforward. I am very curious to listen to his radio show - i didn't know he had one().
Here are some more pics from various times this summer. First, here is one from a dog walking excursion on a local trail. Then one of me when i helped my sister with some potted plants on her deck. The last is from a visit in July from a college friend of mine. The pic is from hiking Crabtree Falls. It is most important to stay behind the rock wall. Most fatalities there are from people who go over the wall and then slip on the wet rocks and slide over the edge. It happens more than you think. Look it up. And stay behind the wall if you ever go up there.
I fee like i should post some progress shots from earlier this month on the new metal-barn construction project. Big Thanks to Carter's Concrete and J.D. Pippin Excavator for an excellent job on the pad. Concrete was supplied by Lynchburg Ready Mix. Next step is the big day whenever Alan’s Factory Outlet gets time for us in their schedule.
So, MIT Technology Review failed to spot the error in Googles latest AI data: As it turns out, Google games numbers to make AI look less thirsty: "...Google's claims are misleading because they draw a false equivalence between onsite and total water consumption... ...Their practice doesn't follow the minimum standard we expect for any paper, let alone one from Google..."
...so real water consumption is probably still somewhere closer to between 7 and 47ml per request, and between 2 and 15 Mega Liters for training. larger models probably require more energy, and thus more water - am i right? ...so Google is just lying about their products these days?
I discovered a little problem today with this years honey. It appears that in my carelessness the water content of the honey ended up being too high, and consequently all the honey is fermenting to some degree, with some jars popping their lids. At this point i have done a basic inspection and taste-test, and it is definitely yeast - i.e. i'm making mead. The process is not that far along and the honey is still sweet, but i am not sure i want to take the time to try and remediate the high water-content issue, since i'm kind of crunched on time now. So, i placed all the jars in the freezer, and will figure out what i want to do with them later. It is very possible i will not be selling honey this year. Hopefully this will be the last year i have this sort of problem, since i believe i have made a lot of progress fixing my frames this last month, and expect a big difference with the bees next year. I probably need to check on the bees now, and install the new frames to give them a head start before winter. we will see if i get time. I am also still hoping to find some time to work more on beeswax, and to make some demonstration candles to advertise my wax. i guess we will also have to wait and see on that too.
I'm sort of dealing with some tendonitis issues in my wrist right now, and so i decided to take a little time this morning and post some more pics from this past month's progress. It is not everything, but i'm hoping to chip away at the backlog. The pictures are in order from my camera-roll, starting with some pics from some sessions with my youth helpers, helping me wire up my beehive frames, as well as pics from various projects making boxes and stands for porch and patio plants. The little strips of wood i was making were for fitting in the grooves of my hive frames, to convert them from groove to wedge-like in hopes that it will help the bees orient themselves better in a foundation-less hive. In case it is not clear from the pics, i started by cutting and ripping 2x4s into small sticks, and then i ripped those sticks into the thin strips on the bandsaw. My bandsaw fence is a DIY job made from plywood and a miter gauge. The bandsaw is sort of antique, and so i found the idea while trying(and failing) to buy a replacement fence for the one i assume is lost. I needed to make these little wood strips because many of my old frames used to have thick plastic foundation in them at one point, and with that foundation now missing, the groove tends to confuse the bees and they have trouble building comb centered on the frames. I'm hoping this and the wire will give the bees the right idea, and things will improve going forward. I'm not sure if i'm going to have time to work on them again before winter, so potentially getting the frames in a hive might wait until next spring. we will see. Next is a pic of the last day working on beehive frames, and a sample of the finished product. FYI, the kids were wearing safety glasses, though i guess it is hard to see in the low-res picture. They did a great job! The last 3 pics are of a weevil i found drilling a hole in a pecan growing near the edge of the chestnut orchard. The weevil looked suspiciously like a chestnut weevil even though i found it doing it's thing on a pecan. i'm not sure exactly the difference between a chestnut weevil and a pecan weevil. i think they are the same genus. maybe i should talk to an entomologist. Whether it's a weevil for chestnut or pecan, i'm not really surprised to find it here, since we do not spray against weevils, and I have observed weevil larva in the chestnuts, usually towards the end of the harvest. I am hoping to make some improvements this season in regards to natural prevention of weevils, which basically involves clearing the orchard of all nuts and processing them in a way that prevents completion of the weevil lifecycle. I still need to make some modifications to my chestnut vacuum prototype i built last year. Hopefully i can get it working and clear the orchard this year. I expect, by improving how we harvest, that quality should improve, especially for nuts falling later in the season, and potentially shelf-life should increase.
Well, last night's sleep on the couch down in my unfinished office was somewhat unpleasant. it was still 80°F inside by the time i went to sleep, and i was sweating all night. I thought about opening a window since the forecast low was for 71°F, though i wasn't sure about rain, and also my windows' design is such that they are fragile when in the open position, and i didn't want to take any chances. this morning it was still 77°F inside, and it got me thinking, that my little ice-box cooling device does make a noticeable difference maybe. The last time i ran it(after i had perfected my original design) we had similar weather(maybe a touch hotter even), and i seem to remember the room held at like 79°F, so that's maybe 1°(maybe 2° max) better, but still a difference. ice-bottles on you neck is not a viable solution. i need to get some sort of jumbo ice-bag to lay on my chest, or set up my ice-box cooler next to my desk blowing directly on me. At this point though I'm hoping the worst is behind me for this season. hopefully by next year i will have the heat-pump installed, and the whole place in much better shape, though I think perhaps there is something to having a portable setup, which cools with ice, and needs only minimal electricity to run a fan. In other news, i managed to get all the large boulders placed for the rock retaining wall around my greenhouse. There was also a whole bunch of other stuff i got done as well, though i don't really have time right now to go into depth on that. Chestnut time is about a month away now, and there is still so much i need to do. i did start mowing the orchard as of the August/2nd. Also, construction is underway for our new metal-barn. Dad wanted a lot of extra options on it, as well as a concrete pad, and so it ended up not being quite as cheap as originally planned, however it looks very nice so far, and i am very excited. At this point we have the concrete poured. Perhaps i'll post more later. we will see how much time i get.
We had a few cool days at the start of the month, but now it is hot again. i've been pretty busy. hopefully i'll have some time soon to post about some of the stuff that has been going on.
