It has been a cool start to September. Mornings begin at around 40ºF and the day heats up to near 80ºF. It is a time of campfires and canning projects.
Eliza does far more canning than I am able to do. She’s canned lots of candied jalapeños, sauces and salsas, peppers, and today she’s making a batch of apple butter. I’m very pleased that one of her hobbies is canning. I’m definitely a benefactor.
This past weekend, though, we were able to spend some time together picking our grapes, making jelly and canning it. It was a lot of fun.
We have a single, 3-year old grape vine that we planted not too long after we moved into this home. It was just a tiny thing when it started and Eliza bought it at Sam’s Club. Our main reason for planting it was to create a privacy barrier on the outside of our pavilion. Our yield this year was 6 pounds of usable grapes which made about 19 small jars of jelly.
The home addition I mentioned in Diversions #3 is a go. All the proper paperwork has been completed, plans approved, contractor contracted, financing secured, etc. It was a process that I do not think can be rushed or done any quicker. But it can certainly be improved. I think there is room for disruption for someone that wants to come in and provide an experience for people doing this sort of work to make it much easier. We break ground in about a month.
I recently connected my site to the fediverse via the ActivityPub WordPress plugin. What does this mean? Why am I doing it? Should you consider doing it too? I think I’m going to write a post to specifically address this. So stay subscribed for that.
I briefly mentioned our trip to Virginia by sharing Jacobsen’s mirrored tomb. We had a wonderful trip with two of our best travel friends and visited some caverns, wineries, and had a great cabin on the Shenandoah. I should probably develop those rolls of film.
You’re probably here for the links, so why make you wait any longer?
- Crazy-Horse Key Organizer – This bit of EDC kit is tempting.
- Simon Collison’s Journal – Back in late-August (I’m catching up on my RSS feeds) Colly wrote up how he refactored his Stream and Articles into a single Journal feed. I love his website.
- Chemvert – An $89USD app that helps you edit your negative scans. I’ve just downloaded the demo, so I can’t give a review yet, but I’m glad there are more apps trying to help us analog shooters. via Dmitri
- Japan’s last sign painters – Typographer Shoko Mugikura interviewed them for FontStand News.
- Dynamicland’s new website – Bret Victor announced the new site on Mastodon. The amount of work that has gone into these real world interactions can not likely be overstated. I hope some of this work trickles out into products we’ll all use every day.