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.
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.
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.
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
I’ve been helping maintain the village’s rink this year. It’s been fun to learn the ropes and of course, play hockey.
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.
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.
Pretty fun, the result is less compelling than the experience of making them.
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.
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.
Here’s a method for having several browser windows proxying through several countries concurrently.
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Chainsaw
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.
We went to a window store once and were quoted $2200 for a single window. More than we paid for all our windows combined. I really don’t mind paying for nice things but I never understood how windows were so expensive. Also annoying, why I need to deal with catalogs & resellers. I avoid resellers like the plague in any context. Give me a website, I punch in my measurements, pick a few options and click “Go”.
There’s no way we’d pay this much for a window. Thankfully there’s plenty of second-hand ones out there. From recover stores to word-of-mouth. The ones at the recover store are in high demand and fly off the shelves pretty fast. The word-of-mouth ones don’t show up when you need them so you need to store them until you do.
I found this one next to a “free” sign along with 3 others. I pounced on them and they’ve been sitting in storage for a few years until today. Most second hand windows need a little TLC.
Definitely not $2200
Making a hole for another window 
This one only costs ~$100 new, we’ve got several in the house and I really like them. They’re clearly not the nicest looking windows but they’re good bang for the buck weather shielding wise.
We have daylight 🙂 We’re trying to figure out what to do with this little alcove.
This living room is going to be my master piece. The experience I’ve acquired these past few years is starting to show. Our house is a great timeline of my progress working with wood, it’s crazy to think I even got something together with no experience and lack of proper tools. I now possess so many routines, tools, subconscious movements which all add up to perfect walls with no mistakes or swear words. Now I’m sure this will change when I do the ceiling.
I’m pushing hard for a living room. It’ll be a while longer before it’s ready but I can already tell it will signal once and for all the end of tiny living.
I didn’t open the windows or run lights yet, so I’m working with a flashlight. It’s surprisingly a non-issue.
Construction baby doesn’t let a few nails get in a the way of a good nap.
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I finally hooked up the new stove to the chimney. I wanted to have the room finished, the hearth complete; in reality though, the room is dark and the hearth missing finish masonry work. Still it was cause for great joy to give our second stove, the Alpiner, its first firing. Our first cookstove, the Sweetheart, which covered us for 3½ years will be able to take a break. We won’t have to fire it so hot on the really cold days.
It’s a big deal for us, this represents a lifetime of super nice and free heat, hence the celebration.
The Alpiner is a really nice stove, it has a lot of mass. Chimney draft seems to be perfect, we didn’t have to warm it up and the smoke went right where it was supposed to.
