Month: May 2008

My first contribution, born out of experience:

4116 Parenting
PROXIMITY AND PLAYGROUND SAFETY
If playground monitors are close enough to have a normal conversation, they are too close together and are not able to adequately supervise their charges. They need to spread out.

[From Rules of Thumb – Rate]

The younger generation has much to teach me:

Cut out the crap. Stop multi-tasking. Make a list of all of the things you do or think about in a day, figure out what is actually important to you, and just dump the junk. [I just checked my email again!] Formulate goals rather than allowing them to remain fuzzy in the mind.

Some things I’ve done so far:

• banned myself from purchasing any new books. I’m on info overload and need to stop adding to queue
• unsubscribed from most of my RSS feeds
• redirected my mailing list subscriptions to folders so they don’t hit my inbox
• set aside the idea of learning or mastering any other programming languages (and frameworks) ‘just because’
• no more video game purchases (I do it rarely, but they are just wasting my time)
• no more soft drinks, as I don’t need the distractions that caffeine withdrawals bring
• no more personal software projects until I finish my adventure game
• no coding on the adventure game engine until I actually develop a story and know where I am going!
• give up the idea of exploring vermiculture this year, and just focus on growing a few basic crops in my containers

[From Examining Yama, The First Limb of Yoga – Styled Bits]

I’m doing some of this already, but not with the same sense of purpose. But at the same time, I have been filled with a nagging sensation that things I really want to get done are being shoved aside by busywork to avoid committing to them.

• I rarely buy books, and only if they can’t be had from the library or are designed to be written in or otherwise interacted with
• I have stopped reading RSS feeds and web sites, pretty much. Too much going on there and it compels me to post something that almost no one will read anyway: do my ±50 subscribers need daily updates on nothing or will weekly ones suffice?
• I have used email filter for years, pretty much as soon as I learned about them. I preach it to others who whine about email overload, but it rarely takes.
• Gave up on learning to code ages ago, and I never got into video/computer games

So a general clearing of the decks is underway, and a growing commitment to Do, not talk, not dream or fantasize, but Do Things is taking hold.
With any luck, I’ll have less to talk about and more to show.

These Cagllari Daytona pocket bikes are the best bang for your buck. Outperforming much more expensive pocket rockets, the Cagllari Daytona bikes feature durable alloy construction and a torquey high output 2-stroke gas motor.

[From Cagllari Pocket Rocket]

These start at $169. A small motorcycle, 2-stroke at that, for a whole lot less than a pedal-powered bike, or at least what a real enthusiast will pay for a bike. This just seems wrong on so many levels.

A little genealogical research turned up this gem:

FREE-WILL OFFERING. – A few days ago “some person or persons unknown,” thought proper to bestow on a worthy parish Priest, the Rev Father MONAGHAN, a very handsome gift, meant we supposed to be a Christmas box, though a little before the time. This was in the shape of a male child, about ten days old, and well stocked with clothing of a decent description, a new single blanket outside, and its bodyclothes of nice swanskin, with a handsome cap on its head. Thus appareled it was placed in the well of his reverence’s jaunting car, where it was found next morning, in the arms of Morpheus, and apparently happy with its cradle. His reverence not accepting the compliment, sent for the police, who searched for an owner but without success, and the “free will offering” has been consigned to Brookeboro “workhouse. We should add that in the bosom of the child was found a slip of paper with his name “JOSEPH KANE” and alleging that it had been baptized by a Priest of the diocese. The writing was evidently the production of a respectable female, as none other could have used the pen to such perfection. – Armagh Guardian.

[From Co. Cavan; Ireland Newspaper Abstracts]

There’s a story in that.

Given:

• 36 inches annual rainfall
• a collecting roof 8 x 8, raised 2 feet on one side/end for a moderate slope (total area 61.9 sq ft)
• 22.32 gallons of water per foot of rained-on area

That all adds up to 1,383.11981 gallons of water annually. That seems like an awful lot of irrigation-quality water from a pretty small system (a simple shed roof, with or without a shed under it).

Check your area here.