Cemetery
Ever since I saw it on the survey map, I’ve been curious to find this cemetery. It’s not on our land but right next to it.
It’s tricky to find as it doesn’t stand out much from the rest of the forest. Lots of graves from the early 1800s, cool stuff!
Soap boxes & soap
Soapmaking is Nicole’s project but she doesn’t post anything about it. As this settles into an acquired skill, it’s time to build some proper boxes.
A few two-bys
Watch your fingers, arms; pretty much any protuberance
Assembly required
Reminiscent of Breaking Bad
Curing
8 weeks curing time, I’ll post the soaps when they are done. We’ve been using them for a while now and they are my absolute favorite. They are made with our wax & honey, tallow from friends’ animals and sometimes goat milk. They last forever unlike the shit you buy in stores. Nicole is experimenting with a recipe that does not include coconut oil or olive oil, this way we’ll be able to source all ingredients locally.
Fun fact: soap is thought to have originated on sacrificial altars when rain mixed with ashes and fat made a suspicious substance someone decided to take a shower with. Sacrifices & dumb luck created one of the biggest advancement in chemistry. Maybe we could sacrifice our way to Mars?
Hunting
And the unusual places & times it takes you to.
This is the main field of our land at dusk, a great reward after hiking through rough terrain. I still find many new and interesting places in the forest.
Honey
All in all this has been a pretty weird bee season. Between the swarms, the bear attacks, the drone baby-boom and the lack of reserves; I lamented that no sweetness would be gained from the hard work.
To my good surprise however, the bees finally adjusted to all this and got in a decent amount of honey. It probably helps that they already kicked out all these freeloader males.
Lot of activity but they remained super friendly throughout my extraction of a few frames
I only pulled 6 frames, I want to leave enough food behind for the cold days ahead
The cells are packed!
The frames gotten from the Top Bar Hive are all used, the wax is saved for soap & lip balm making.
Sticky business
While the frams of the Langstroth Hive are spun in an extractor in an effort to save the wax (saving bees the costly work of making more wax if you’re only interested in the honey).
As I said, not a great year but happy to have gotten some loot
Looks great, tastes great
If the public school would stop sending scammy crap through my kid that'd be lovely
Nothing says “fuck you” like the use of the imperative to imply the inability to opt-out.
Whore out your friend & family’s information in exchange for garbage!
Hurray! More plastic for your trash!
Win a playground that’ll make you want to stab your eyes to replace the one the school already has.
Use kids to guilt trip friends & family into buying shit they don’t need to make a company profit; a side-effect of which will be raising pennies on the dollar for the school (but who knows that information is nowhere to be found).
Make sure to read the “Tips for successful selling” so you can be a great sales drone, this is how you do fundraising in la la land.
Grab the deluxe package & teeth whitening from a company in Minnesota, that’s the school picture spirit!
Asking concerned parents to chip in, hiring a local photographer to take pictures of all the kids. Nah.
The marketing dickweeds in action
Making every effort to not lie while leaving enough ambiguity for your brain to read what it wants to read. But maybe what irritates me more is their implying that healthy food doesn’t taste delicious initially.
DID YOU KNOW? When combined with actual healthy food, Skippy can help it not taste like shit while associating itself with its health benefits.
Cool Duplo Project #16 – Frame of reference swapping
Gotta mess with their minds early.
[mejsvideo mp4=”http://ben.akrin.com/videos/IMG_5224.MOV.mp4″ ogg=”http://ben.akrin.com/videos/IMG_5224.MOV.ogv” webm=”http://ben.akrin.com/videos/IMG_5224.MOV.webm” poster=”http://ben.akrin.com/videos/IMG_5224.MOV.jpg” width=”640″ height=”360″]
Mysqldump only certain fields of a table
The trick here is to not use mysqldump
[code]mysql -u root -p -e “SELECT `field_01` AS ‘new_name_01`,`field_02` as `new_name_02` FROM database.schema” -X > /tmp/output.xml[/code]
And to load it back into the new table which exists and has the fields new_name_01 & new_name_02:
[code]mysql -u root -p –local-infile -e “LOAD XML LOCAL INFILE ‘/tmp/output.xml’ INTO TABLE database.new_schema ROWS IDENTIFIED BY ‘<row>’;”[/code]
Doomsday Preppers caters to opposing audiences
X-Factor: your ability to pack explosives into dead racoons will be a valuable asset when the city folks come steal your shit.
Cool Duplo Project #14 – Train Induced Weight Shifting Train Track
[mejsvideo mp4=”http://ben.akrin.com/videos/IMG_5040.MOV.mp4″ ogg=”http://ben.akrin.com/videos/IMG_5040.MOV.ogv” webm=”http://ben.akrin.com/videos/IMG_5040.MOV.webm” poster=”http://ben.akrin.com/videos/IMG_5040.MOV.jpg” width=”640″ height=”360″]
Cool Duplo Project #10 – Falling Dominoes
[mejsvideo mp4=”http://ben.akrin.com/videos/IMG_5031.MOV.mp4″ ogg=”http://ben.akrin.com/videos/IMG_5031.MOV.ogv” webm=”http://ben.akrin.com/videos/IMG_5031.MOV.webm” poster=”http://ben.akrin.com/videos/IMG_5031.MOV.jpg” width=”640″ height=”360″]
Cool Duplo Project #08 – Robots
Waldo
Fat Head
Mechwarrior
Pincher
Nanobot
Macrobot
Words English speakers confuse frequently
You’re your
Than then
duel dual
Their They’re There
course coarse
affect effect
bare bear
principal principle
capital capitol
hanger hangar
complement compliment
advice advise
waste waist
allusive elusive
sight site
roll role
peddle pedal
will grow as I find more…
Crazy Swarmy Week-End
I missed swarms so far because the hives are far from the house and so I only see them every few days. This week end was a trial by fire when it comes to swarming.
Finally, the neighbors spotted a swarm. It landed on a hemlock branch 40′ high. I tried everything to get to the branch including a 32′ extension ladder to no avail. So we put swarm catching box nearby and I kept a very close eye on them hoping to catch them on their take off to their new chosen home. Except one hour they’re on the branch doing nothing unusual and the next, gone! All gone, except for a couple of trailing bees seeming as lost as I was; the whole thing just vanished.
Up
Well that was a waste of time and efforts. Especially considering they took almost a 24h to figure out where to go. The next morning, the neighbors tell me that the buzzing is back… That can’t be, whether the swarm is confused or I have a new one on my hands.
Can you see them?
They are on a hop hornbeam this time, same height but an easy fell. And we proceed to do just that. We tie it to another tree to ease the sucker down with friction and it all works beautifully for the first 45 degrees but it all came crashing down for the remaining 45. The bees were not happy about that. They flew back to where the tree initially stood, I was afraid they would find another high branch nearby; but they eventually flew back to their branch of origin which was now very accessible to me.
Settling down after the ride (make sure to turn the volume up)
Definitely a foreign feeling to have your hand in there
I inspected the other 2 hives to see what they were up to and heard a piping queen in both! Meaning these were indeed 2 different swarms.
Piping queen, tried to find her but time ran short as the other bees were starting to dislike my intrusion
Lesson learned: tall trees are a bad idea around hives. I’m going to have to find a better spot for them.
All of this wouldn’t have been possible without awesome people like Nina who lent me a swarm catching box and good advice, and Peter who is always ready for an adventure. I wouldn’t have been able to catch my first swarm without their help.
