Life has been keeping me quite busy as of late so I have not posted
as frequently as I would have liked (probably all three of my
readers were becoming weary of the blather), but today I thought I
should subject everyone to another post.
The garden is more or less on hold until the weather breaks. In
between rainy spells, I have been keeping the weeds cut down with
the scythe and a newly acquired weed whip:
https://tinyurl.com/y9uhvxgx
Although the scythe slices through the grass quite well on a
relatively level area, the steep hills around the house were a
challenge. The weed whip does an admirable job on the hills and
with surprisingly little effort. In addition, the serrated blade
appears to do a better job dealing with the dry old growth grass
and weeds. In light of the devasting fires that ravaged northern
and southern California, I feel I should make a special effort to
keep the defensible space around the house cut low as possible.
I hope to be able to dispense with the motorized weed eater
altogether. The added bonus is fresh air and exercise.
In these times of energy scarcity, there seems to raging debates
on energy policy, and based on this article by Kris De Decker,
policy makers may be taking a totally wrong approach to energy
efficiency:
https://tinyurl.com/ybyq2alx
Ultimately, the energy market is going to dictate energy policy.
As energy prices continue to inch upward, not only will household
energy expenditures will climb (forcing consumers to conserve),
but manufacturing costs will rise. I tend to find myself in the
conservation mode more than efficiency. I am writing this while
logged in to my Raspberry Pi Zero:
https://tinyurl.com/yb2d8sds
That's right, this computer set me back $5 USD. Obviously this
system on a chip (soc) is very spartan on the power consumption
front, but there are some sacrifices. There is not enough horse
power to play youtube videos from the browser, but I can download
and play the videos locally. Admittedly, it is a bit slower,
but it is significantly faster than my 20 year old Toshiba
laptop...which I still use by the way. Also the power
consumption required to serve up a document on a gopher server is
a tiny fraction of the power required to serve a web page that is
choked up with ads, compiled java script, and other fluff. No
mega server farms required to Run a gopher server. It can even
be done from this Pi Zero. The gopher protocol will never
replace the web, but I suspect as energy costs continue to climb,
gopher will become a more appealing option particularly for large
enterprises.
Back at the ranch, I have been doing some preliminary research on
getting the road finished out to the back side of the property
where the third well head is. The goal is to get some
infrastructure back there to have power and plumbing to have this
well operating. Water was a bit tight last summer and fall so if
we can get this well worked into the existing lines, we should be
in much better shape. This well is much more productive at 7.5
gpm. Once the weather stabilizes, we'll get to work on that one.
