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We’re getting better at attaching  the bush hog (rotary cutter) to the tractor. I think we managed to do it in less then 45 minute yesterday and the includes disconnecting the front end loader (FEL) and the backhoe. There are some tricky turns and space issues involved when doing all that and leaving the equipment in the barn where it is out of the weather. I’ll attribute about 1/2 of the good speed to practice with taking the FEL and backhoe off during the fall, and the other 1/2 to the assistance of epe and her mom, it’s pretty amazing how helpful it is just to have someone hand you a wrench or dropped bolt when you’re holding a 30lb steel three point hitch arm up under the tractor to connect it. After it was all attached we then centered and leveled the deck.

I took it out for the initial run up/down the hill north of the house to make sure it was all working, then epe did a few runs. I finished off the easy parts of that field this afternoon. I have about an hour left on the west side, and then a few more hours on the right side where the trees are more numerous.

Maintaining the field is important to keeping them from overgrowing and undoing all the work we had performed 2 years ago. Wood/brush pressure on idle fields is fairly high in the northeast, it only takes a few years to go from idle hay field to briars/thorns and then more difficult trees like ash and black locust.

Oh and I should mention I like to keep the bucket on the loader down when we’re cutting, as we go along it fills up with several pounds of grass seeds and a fairly huge assortment of crickets/leaf hoppers/bees/spiders and other unidentified bugs ;). It’s pretty disgusting to look at, but when I dump off the crawling pile of seeds near the chickens and guineas the happy noises are wonderful.

I was delighted to find that our new Kodak digicam (Z1015 IS) has a stitching mode. This was something I remember playing with back when I worked at Kodak. It lets you take 3 pictures (with an assist overlay to let you know how far to pan) and then stitches them together into one panoramic picture. Here are a few:

Sorry it’s a mess :)

OK, could be worse…

Out the back door

Front yard

towards the barn

towards Palmyra

Look who’s here! It’s a Flying Devil! Go order your own from Bags that Bite (or their Etsy shop).

• I was an extremely early e-book adopter–Rocket EBook. I bought all sorts of titles for it which I can no longer access, now that the device is a brick; nor could I transport the content elsewhere when they went belly-up. I will never buy another reading device that will not allow me to transfer content easily between either the same type of devices (what if it breaks?), or to a different device should they go out of business.
• I an not a technophobe, but I can’t shake my paranoia about any company holding on their servers the content I’ve bought, such as books and movies. This is why I’m not keen on the idea for video, either; what if they decide to withhold it someday for whatever reason, or if something breaks and they claim I never bought it, or decide they don’t want to offer it anymore (I could easily see a content provider like Disney, with their ridiculous ‘back in the vault’ releases, doing this)? I like having books and DVDs, or even downloaded content that I can back up, because once it’s home I (generally) don’t have this concern.
• Pay 0.99 a month for a freakin’ BLOG subscription? Are you kidding me? They can claim all they want that they’re paying for the wireless, but really you *are* paying for it; that’s why the 0.10 charge for sending FREE content to it, probably. Sure, I could use the usb connection, but there goes the convenience of content anywhere, anytime I want it. I guess only if you’re willing to pay for it. Not to mention having to translate certain content into the proper format.
• E-Ink is really cool and all, but hell, I paid a similar price for a black and white e-reader 10 years ago. I know the technology for color e-ink isn’t there (or cheap enough) yet, but I expect color in an e-reader…especially if I’m thinking of using it to replace magazines.

Bottom line is really the content protection. After being burned once, why would I want to buy a lot of content for a device that might not be around someday, and lose all of it, like I did with the Rocket?

Nerd toy.

-pee

Because I forgot to post it xmas time, our wii code is 3424 4761 2230 8167

I’ve joined the iPod generation. With reservations. Why did it take me so long? Well, a few reasons. One, I’m in the house most of the time, where I can listen to our whole collection of flacs and mp3s over the speakers attached to the server upstairs. Two, I’ve had an mp3 player (a very old Creative 6G hard drive player–one of the first) which I don’t use anymore–mostly because it’s bulky and shaped like a CD player. Three, Paul already has a nice little Rio Karma, which I could technically use if desired. Four, apple players don’t do ogg or flac, which others do, so difficult to justify a purchase I’m not inclined to make anyway. Five, I despise the DRM model used by the Apple Store. Not that I have to use them, but still, it makes me not like Apple so much.

And yet I had nerd wood for the nano ever since they came out. I can’t help it! Apple hardware is so sexy. I love my mom’s Mac mini for the same reason.

So why now? I got a free one from work through our rewards program. :)

I was pleasantly surprised that they sent a 2G silver rather than 1G black nano–looks to be 2nd gen (by color, not black or white). It came with a hard case with integrated JVC speaker. Doesn’t sound much better than you’d expect for a small powered speaker, but a nice idea nonetheless.

I monkeyed around forever getting music to it…had to convert a lot of flacs to mp3, then move assloads of mp3s to my pc off our linux music server so iTunes could sync it. PITA. Inefficient. Plus it took me awhile to figure out the syncing; as I added new songs they weren’t syncing to the iPod…had to wipe out the sync list and copy the music list from the library again. But, it’s working and I’ve filled it to the brim (which seems like not nearly enough…).
Man, nice interface though. Love that click wheel (didn’t know they were touch sensitive); the color screen is nice and crisp. The size is right, too. I already ordered a set of soft covers with lanyards for $9. Now I just need non-earbud headphones…I hate those things…they either hurt my ears or fall out.

Now I must vow never to buy from the Apple store…

Is there anything better than Japanese toys?

This little guy was probably my first such toy. He is Boh, a character from ‘Spirited Away’. I picked him up at the Japanese pavilion in Epcot a couple of years ago.
These are Walkie Bits. I bought these from EBay in April. They’re little robots you can get to walk, sing, race, or move in specified rhythms. As you can see, I swapped the shells on these.

Part of some Star Trek toys collections available only in Japan. I picked these and the next thing up from J-List, which, by the way, has the coolest advertising emails ever–a little bit of Japanese culture in each one.

You can’t start a Japanese toy collection without some Domo-Kun, best known in the U.S. from web humor about spam or various other topics.

Cute Overload has said it, and it bears repeating. The Japanese are handing us our asses when it comes to cuteness.