I actually do grow a significant portion of my family's food. Maybe one-quarter of the meat and 1/10th the vegetables. We could make that 100% of our meat and maybe one-quarter of our vegetables, but there would be no variety in our diet. Even the small portion of our diet I produce is a lot of work. Why do I bother? Simple: I developed an interest in how my food was produced. Toured a livestock feedlot (ie. finishing), a chicken operation, and a pig operation. Both from an animal suffering and an environmental impact point-of-view, I was...disappointed. Frankly, it is hard for me to imagine a way that these sorts of enterprises could be made acceptable.
Pastured livestock operations, which I've been periferally involved in most of my life, can certainly be done with an arguably positive environmental impact and a minimum of animal suffering. That's what I've been concentrating on. It's work and I've definitely lost a fair bit of money doing it.
One point I've come to realize is that annual crop production (grain, vegetables, and most fruit) is an environmental nightmare. With the exception of tree- and perennial-based production, there simply isn't a way to produce plant food that doesn't involve killing most of the other plant species on your food production plot. Sure you can cover-crop and under-sow, but you still have bare-ground for a significant part of the year. Mulching just smothers all the plants outside your crop rows. Permaculture is interesting, but I'm not sure how realistic it is outside of temperature regions.
It bothers me a lot to think about this, so I try not to.
I received a Mendel90 kit from Nop Head about three weeks ago. (Nop Head has been prolific in the Rep Rap community.) The instructions were very clear and the whole kit went together over the course of about three work-days (mostly done while watching Netflix). The few minor issues I ran into were due to my mis-reading the instructions, or not reading them at all. The kit was lacking on some heat-shrink tubing, but that's the only real criticism I have. Even for someone who hasn't picked up a soldering iron in 15 years, the build procedure was straight-forward.
The Mendel90 design is, IMHO, much better than the Mendel or even the MendelMax. The frame self-aligns to the point that there is no need to square anything up. The ribbon cables are brilliant. Of the Rep Rap variants out there, it's probably the best of the bunch at this moment. Not perfect, but very usable and straight-forward to put together.
As I write this, I'm printing up some parts for my son's worm-bin project out of glow-in-the-dark PLA. (No reason for the glow-in-the-dark other than it was in the printer.) Its been a blast to go from a sketch on paper to a finished part in a couple of hours, if that.
Another year of development on the slicing software, printer firmware/electronics, and the elimination of bridging/over-hang issues by dual-extruders and water-soluble support material will make 3D printing accessible to the masses. It's going to be fun to watch...and participate in.
VMWare works right out of the box with no user manual even needed. That's already more than can be said for any of the competition.
Not so sure about that last sentence there.
I trained a new hire to use VirtualBox on an Ubuntu 12.04 box this week. He had just about zero experience with virtualization. Basically my instructions were to have installation ISOs for whatever OS he wants to run virtualized and to apt-get install virtualbox. He then set everything up on his own and only asked for help when it came to setting up a virtual network. I told him he should first figure out cloning. A few minutes later we were back on the virtual network. My own experience a couple of years ago was similar. In both cases, we had the manual handy, but never used it.
My proficiency with KVM/libvirt took more effort. But virt-manager makes it pretty straight-forward. Our KVM/libvirt virtualization system has several host nodes running a few dozen guests with storage on a SAN/NAS (it does both). This wasn't painful to do at all. An automatic backups/snapshot system has been more challenging, but that's mostly just because we want to minimize interruption of the guest (just suspend the guest, grab an LVM snapshot, wake the guest, copy the snapshot, free the snapshot) and due to our larger guests being about 200GB in size. Storing versions of files that large, and moving them around, requires delta compression. (Hint: Use xdelta3 before copying the data off-site.)
We also played with Proxmox a few months ago. A summer student had all of the above (except for backups) working in two days. Confusion over whether the licensing was really free, the fact that it is its own distribution (a double-edged sword for sure), and the fact that configuration of aggregate network links (LACP) was really goofy, all kept us from adopting it. Too bad, being able to switch a guest from one host to another in real-time while viewing the guest's display with only a tiny pause, was a really neat trick.
If I can do the above mixed in with all of my other responsibilities (as a school authority director of tech), anyone can.
I forgot the PC Engines boxes that we have in a few spots. We use them as the box that monitors the UPS and controlls what gets shut-down when the power goes out and looks like it will be down for a while. Since the box draws about 10 watts, the UPS can run it for days before running out of juice. When the power comes back, the PC Engines box coordinates bringing everything else back up. We haven't found anything else that compares for a low-power box that doesn't have to do much of anything other than run reliably.
It's not rack-mountable. No IPMI either. That should be a deal-breaker for anyplace serious enough to have a rack.
We try to virtualize anything that can be virtualized. But for those few tasks that really need to run on bare metal, we've had good luck with little Atom D525 Supermicro rackmountable boxes. We bought a few complete boxes (minus ram and storage) that Newegg billed as fanless (which was a lie). Those ran hot enough to develope problems after a few months. Ever since we've built ours up from parts (SUPERMICRO CSE-510-200B 1U rackmount server case, SUPERMICRO MBD-X7SPE-HF-D525-O server motherboard, SUPERMICRO MCP-220-00051-0N single 2.5" fixed HDD mounting bracket, GELID Solutions Model CA-PWM 350 mm PWM Y Cable, RAM and storage). About $400 and have been really reliable. Only thing I don't like is that they don't have IPMI on a dedicated port.
But honestly, if there is any virtualization going on, there shouldn't be much need for these.
Not such a crazy idea. Certainly no more than owning a zero-turn mower and spending 3-hours every week-or-so mowing it, optimal mowing pattern or not.
I "mow" about 10 acres of pasture with about 25 sheep of the Jacob breed. This is mostly for fun, to feed my family something less environmentally destructive than store-bought beef, to preserve the genetics of a fairly rare breed, and to keep our land clear where we want it clear.
The idea of a lawn mowing service has bounced around my head for the last five years. Through a bit of experimentation on rare days that I've had too much time on my hands, I've found that one can get something pretty close to a machine cut by getting the density of animals such that they graze to the level you want in under about 2 hours. Ideally, the animals should arrive hungry and graze to the desired level before they fill up and sit down to ruminate. If they lay down on ungrazed grass, there will be long patches. The sheep don't stop grazing when the grass gets to the desired level, so one has to be ready to move them when its time. If they are left graze an area to the ground, both the grass and sheep suffer. (Keep in mind that one of the products of a shepherd is market-weight lambs. Hungry lambs aren't growing.)
The catch is that, in order to keep the sheep happy, the lawn has to start just a bit longer than your average property owner would like: Preferably five inches or more.
The droppings aren't a big deal. A swipe with a rake breaks up any piles that drop too close to the patio. With the lawn starting fairly short, the density of droppings shouldn't make for much of a smell.
Using electric-netting fence, one could break an area into bite-size pieces and move the flock several times a day and even a couple of times during the night on bigger jobs. With a bit of experience I think one could target exurban lots and rural acreages to get income from the mowing service and free grazing for the sheep. Can't see a fellow getting rich, but it might make a good retirement gig.
Isn't that a truism of all television channels and networks? Maybe the BBC could be excluded
Personally, I just go where the S/N ratio is highest and of the five channels I through my antenna, CBC is by *far* the best. Interestingly, the other publicly funded channel I receive (Access) has some really great PBS documentaries...in the wee hours of the morning. (With a four-month-old child, I see more wee-hour television than I need.)
If I want to be stupified with sitcoms or yet another Law & Order or CSI spin-off, I turn to Global or CTV. If I want balanced news or interesting documentaries I turn to CBC.
But generally, I find it best to just leave the TV off.
$600US can buy a lot of books at a used book store. Most of those books will be a lot more compelling than watching some crappy hollywood movie again and again on the bus.
It's not the life changing device most sub-25-year-olds would think it is.
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I actually do grow a significant portion of my family's food. Maybe one-quarter of the meat and 1/10th the vegetables. We could make that 100% of our meat and maybe one-quarter of our vegetables, but there would be no variety in our diet. Even the small portion of our diet I produce is a lot of work. Why do I bother? Simple: I developed an interest in how my food was produced. Toured a livestock feedlot (ie. finishing), a chicken operation, and a pig operation. Both from an animal suffering and an environmental impact point-of-view, I was...disappointed. Frankly, it is hard for me to imagine a way that these sorts of enterprises could be made acceptable.
Pastured livestock operations, which I've been periferally involved in most of my life, can certainly be done with an arguably positive environmental impact and a minimum of animal suffering. That's what I've been concentrating on. It's work and I've definitely lost a fair bit of money doing it.
One point I've come to realize is that annual crop production (grain, vegetables, and most fruit) is an environmental nightmare. With the exception of tree- and perennial-based production, there simply isn't a way to produce plant food that doesn't involve killing most of the other plant species on your food production plot. Sure you can cover-crop and under-sow, but you still have bare-ground for a significant part of the year. Mulching just smothers all the plants outside your crop rows. Permaculture is interesting, but I'm not sure how realistic it is outside of temperature regions.
It bothers me a lot to think about this, so I try not to.
I received a Mendel90 kit from Nop Head about three weeks ago. (Nop Head has been prolific in the Rep Rap community.) The instructions were very clear and the whole kit went together over the course of about three work-days (mostly done while watching Netflix). The few minor issues I ran into were due to my mis-reading the instructions, or not reading them at all. The kit was lacking on some heat-shrink tubing, but that's the only real criticism I have. Even for someone who hasn't picked up a soldering iron in 15 years, the build procedure was straight-forward.
The Mendel90 design is, IMHO, much better than the Mendel or even the MendelMax. The frame self-aligns to the point that there is no need to square anything up. The ribbon cables are brilliant. Of the Rep Rap variants out there, it's probably the best of the bunch at this moment. Not perfect, but very usable and straight-forward to put together.
As I write this, I'm printing up some parts for my son's worm-bin project out of glow-in-the-dark PLA. (No reason for the glow-in-the-dark other than it was in the printer.) Its been a blast to go from a sketch on paper to a finished part in a couple of hours, if that.
Another year of development on the slicing software, printer firmware/electronics, and the elimination of bridging/over-hang issues by dual-extruders and water-soluble support material will make 3D printing accessible to the masses. It's going to be fun to watch...and participate in.
VMWare works right out of the box with no user manual even needed. That's already more than can be said for any of the competition.
Not so sure about that last sentence there.
I trained a new hire to use VirtualBox on an Ubuntu 12.04 box this week. He had just about zero experience with virtualization. Basically my instructions were to have installation ISOs for whatever OS he wants to run virtualized and to apt-get install virtualbox. He then set everything up on his own and only asked for help when it came to setting up a virtual network. I told him he should first figure out cloning. A few minutes later we were back on the virtual network. My own experience a couple of years ago was similar. In both cases, we had the manual handy, but never used it.
My proficiency with KVM/libvirt took more effort. But virt-manager makes it pretty straight-forward. Our KVM/libvirt virtualization system has several host nodes running a few dozen guests with storage on a SAN/NAS (it does both). This wasn't painful to do at all. An automatic backups/snapshot system has been more challenging, but that's mostly just because we want to minimize interruption of the guest (just suspend the guest, grab an LVM snapshot, wake the guest, copy the snapshot, free the snapshot) and due to our larger guests being about 200GB in size. Storing versions of files that large, and moving them around, requires delta compression. (Hint: Use xdelta3 before copying the data off-site.)
We also played with Proxmox a few months ago. A summer student had all of the above (except for backups) working in two days. Confusion over whether the licensing was really free, the fact that it is its own distribution (a double-edged sword for sure), and the fact that configuration of aggregate network links (LACP) was really goofy, all kept us from adopting it. Too bad, being able to switch a guest from one host to another in real-time while viewing the guest's display with only a tiny pause, was a really neat trick.
If I can do the above mixed in with all of my other responsibilities (as a school authority director of tech), anyone can.
I forgot the PC Engines boxes that we have in a few spots. We use them as the box that monitors the UPS and controlls what gets shut-down when the power goes out and looks like it will be down for a while. Since the box draws about 10 watts, the UPS can run it for days before running out of juice. When the power comes back, the PC Engines box coordinates bringing everything else back up. We haven't found anything else that compares for a low-power box that doesn't have to do much of anything other than run reliably.
It's not rack-mountable. No IPMI either. That should be a deal-breaker for anyplace serious enough to have a rack.
We try to virtualize anything that can be virtualized. But for those few tasks that really need to run on bare metal, we've had good luck with little Atom D525 Supermicro rackmountable boxes. We bought a few complete boxes (minus ram and storage) that Newegg billed as fanless (which was a lie). Those ran hot enough to develope problems after a few months. Ever since we've built ours up from parts (SUPERMICRO CSE-510-200B 1U rackmount server case, SUPERMICRO MBD-X7SPE-HF-D525-O server motherboard, SUPERMICRO MCP-220-00051-0N single 2.5" fixed HDD mounting bracket, GELID Solutions Model CA-PWM 350 mm PWM Y Cable, RAM and storage). About $400 and have been really reliable. Only thing I don't like is that they don't have IPMI on a dedicated port.
But honestly, if there is any virtualization going on, there shouldn't be much need for these.
[...]Yes there is warming, but it appears our activities are unrelated.
But then what would he know? He's only the chair of a climatology department...[...]
Wow! You picked a pretty big and ripe cherry there. Are you sure it is indicative of all the cherries on the tree?
Not such a crazy idea. Certainly no more than owning a zero-turn mower and spending 3-hours every week-or-so mowing it, optimal mowing pattern or not.
I "mow" about 10 acres of pasture with about 25 sheep of the Jacob breed. This is mostly for fun, to feed my family something less environmentally destructive than store-bought beef, to preserve the genetics of a fairly rare breed, and to keep our land clear where we want it clear.
The idea of a lawn mowing service has bounced around my head for the last five years. Through a bit of experimentation on rare days that I've had too much time on my hands, I've found that one can get something pretty close to a machine cut by getting the density of animals such that they graze to the level you want in under about 2 hours. Ideally, the animals should arrive hungry and graze to the desired level before they fill up and sit down to ruminate. If they lay down on ungrazed grass, there will be long patches. The sheep don't stop grazing when the grass gets to the desired level, so one has to be ready to move them when its time. If they are left graze an area to the ground, both the grass and sheep suffer. (Keep in mind that one of the products of a shepherd is market-weight lambs. Hungry lambs aren't growing.)
The catch is that, in order to keep the sheep happy, the lawn has to start just a bit longer than your average property owner would like: Preferably five inches or more.
The droppings aren't a big deal. A swipe with a rake breaks up any piles that drop too close to the patio. With the lawn starting fairly short, the density of droppings shouldn't make for much of a smell.
Using electric-netting fence, one could break an area into bite-size pieces and move the flock several times a day and even a couple of times during the night on bigger jobs. With a bit of experience I think one could target exurban lots and rural acreages to get income from the mowing service and free grazing for the sheep. Can't see a fellow getting rich, but it might make a good retirement gig.
Isn't that a truism of all television channels and networks? Maybe the BBC could be excluded
Personally, I just go where the S/N ratio is highest and of the five channels I through my antenna, CBC is by *far* the best. Interestingly, the other publicly funded channel I receive (Access) has some really great PBS documentaries...in the wee hours of the morning. (With a four-month-old child, I see more wee-hour television than I need.)
If I want to be stupified with sitcoms or yet another Law & Order or CSI spin-off, I turn to Global or CTV. If I want balanced news or interesting documentaries I turn to CBC.
But generally, I find it best to just leave the TV off.
Why not just read a book?
$600US can buy a lot of books at a used book store. Most of those books will be a lot more compelling than watching some crappy hollywood movie again and again on the bus.
It's not the life changing device most sub-25-year-olds would think it is.