One is almost impossible to find.
Smells like Spring Cleaning
Everything looks miserable when the snow melts. We can’t quite tidy up all this with the remaining snow and mud but we’re itching to.
The Porcupine is dead, long live the Porcupine!
Dead animal warning.
Robin stumbled upon our much cherished porcupine in the woods… It was the land’s mascot, had just come out of one more tough Winter, we thought it was made of steel, and that it would outlive us all. Tough to tell what happened to it, I’m not even sure what porcupines can die of besides old age.
We’ll set the trail cam back on it’s house to see what’s going on there now.
Done for the season
We pulled the plug on the sugaring operation after a small but satisfying season.
We boiled for 4 days and made 5.25 gallons. Enough for our needs and some padding.
Sap started flowing a full month later than what we’re used to. For a moment we were worried the season wouldn’t even happen in the first place.
As always, early flow is clearer
This is the last year we are boiling outside. This Summer we will be building a proper Sugar House. I suspect our production will drastically increase once we don’t need to spend days outside.
A Sugar House will also make things easier logistically, we will be able to let half boiled sap sit a night not worrying about bears, we will be able to can on the spot, raise the tank to gravity feed into the evaporator.
A Sugar House will prevent the much dreaded nightly walk carrying 5 gallons of steaming hot almost syrup back home through the mud, snow and ice. Nicole took a picture to celebrate my last such walk.
Boil baby boil
The snow is still way too deep for the ATV, so this is a sled year.
30 gallons of sap is almost impossible to pull by hand on anything but snow, so the ATV takes over on the plowed paths.
Mound of snow = easy gravity transfer
Vermont can use a little more humidity.
The end of 2 days boiling, pulling at night right before it’s at syrup density. We filter at every transfer.
Finishing inside on the stove, this allows for finer control of the evaporation and the mason jars are right there for when it’s ready.
I just have to post
This Dragon which found its way into the Mandalagaba digest. I haven’t seen anyone really touch recursion yet, and then this shows up.
This is my absolute favorite thing about adding features to Mandalagaba: seeing them used in ways I didn’t even realize were possible. Here recursion is used to create ethereal traits. Of course mirror symmetry is used for the face too but that I had seen before :). The hours spent hammering out recursion are all of a sudden, absolutely worth it.
The artist is here: https://www.instagram.com/laralaubert
Making Ice
I’ve been helping maintain the village’s rink this year. It’s been fun to learn the ropes and of course, play hockey.
Recursive Drawing is out
It’s only available on the “pro” facet of Mandalagaba. Oh yeah, Mandalagaba has been broken down into several facets for the purpose of simplifying and focusing activities. The facet where all the brain hurting stuff goes is the pro one. Pro is where one can draw a “radially symmetrical tessellation recursively”.
I tried to keep the menu simple and icon based but it’s still the most complex. Thankfully we have words to describe all that these things do.
Along with recursion, https://plant.mandalagaba.com is out too, using recursion, symmetries and a newly developed center placement to create plants & trees. This one still needs a bit of polish but the main idea is working. I touched a lot of the core engine of Mandagaba to introduce all this, development went pretty well. It was nice to test the flexibility I gave myself during last Winter’s rewrite for a major feature add.
Quails & Masks
The porcupine is still alive and kicking, its tracks are in the usual spots on the land. It picked a new pine tree to spend the night feeding in this Winter, very much in the same area as last year’s. Definitely a creature of habit, it’s been living in the same house, following the same habits for as long as we started paying attention 5 years ago.
We set the trail cam at the entrance of the collapsed barn where it lives.
The poor fellow wasn’t expecting my deep track on its usual path and stumbled into it 🙂
5 minutes later… Really cool animals.
A couple more for the road
Pretty fun, the result is less compelling than the experience of making them.
Getting there on recursion, there on recursion, on recursion, recursion
I still have a lot of details to figure out but I almost have recursion nailed. It’s a pretty brutal mental exercise to combine it with the existing radial symmetry & tessellations. As I’ve said before, one of the effects I seek in particular is that of a growing plant. In fact, I plan on dedicating a facet of Mandalagaba to guided drawing for just that. The adjustment of parameters which is very specific for getting a plant will be taken care of, and only the fun parts will remain. A perfect tool for the slacktivists who wants to feel like they’re helping greening up the world while staying glued to their screen.
I sometimes feel bad that so many people find stress, anxiety and even depression relief drawing mandalas on Mandalagaba. I feel like an enabler for giving them such a meaningless escape valve, on a screen at that. As much as I love a plant growing effect, I’m worried people will use it to get their virtual green fix while further removing themselves from nature. Get off your screens, grow an actual plant if you want to grow a virtual one.
Thermosiphon Butterflies
The thermosiphon has been proving itself this whole Winter. It’s quickly becoming one of the best features of our house design and it’s not hard to imagine why. 100% passive & efficient air circulation taking heat from the stove to every nook and cranny of the house. No power, no fan, no duct.
As a bonus, it animates decorative butterflies. Now I don’t really care about the butterflies; I only like seeing them as an indicator of the free work our house is giving us. They’re a great analog anemometer.
Web Omnipresence with Docker, VPN & Squid proxying
Here’s a method for having several browser windows proxying through several countries concurrently.
Demo
[mejsvideo mp4=”http://ben.akrin.com/videos/omnipresence.mov.mp4″ ogg=”http://ben.akrin.com/videos/omnipresence.mov.ogv” webm=”http://ben.akrin.com/videos/omnipresence.mov.webm” poster=”http://ben.akrin.com/videos/omnipresence.mov.jpg” width=”640″ height=”360″]
Working Principle
Requirements
- a VPN service supporting OpenVPN as a client (this example uses vpntunnel)
- Docker
- Firefox
- MacOS isn’t a requirement per se but this guide & accompanying scripts are written for it.
Setup Steps
- Download this package containing Dockerfile build instructions & some scripts.
- Populate the directory “openvpn_config_files/” with the ovpn files from the VPN service you use.
- Edit the script called “vpn” and replace <VPN_SERVICE_USERNAME> and <VPN_SERVICE_PASSWORD> with your username and password.
- Run with “./omnipresence.sh <name_of_ovpn_file>”
What’s for breakfast?
Chainsaw
Recursive Drawing Sneak Peek
I’ve been working on implementing recursive drawing into Mandalagaba. There are many, many tunables which can be implemented to facilitate recursive drawing. It’s tricky to pick the ones which make for a fun drawing experience. One of the effects that I seek in particular is that of a growing plant.
