Get Democracy

I ran across a cool tool in Wired the other day. Democracy is an open-source Internet TV platform. In other words, it's a video player that will download videos from the web. Recently a whole slew of people (how many people are a slew anyway???) have been creating videos and video blogs (vlogs). For example, Rocketboom is a vlog that covers news of interest to technology lovers the world over. Democracy is a fantastically simple video player that will, if you wish, automatically download new episodes of vlogs that you're interested in. Users can setup channels which other users can then subscribe to. If you're looking for comedy, politics, cooking, or a host of other topics then Democracy may be a good way to find it.

Democracy can, with a little work, also be used with TvRSS and FeedReader to automatically download shows of interest via BitTorrent. Obviously this poses some copyright questions; however, it provides an Internet based DVR without having to subscribe to a cable service. I certainly wouldn't advocate dumping cable just yet but this is certainly an exciting use of existing technologies that may pave the way to the future of television.

The Day the Rain Came

The landscaping that was done in the front yard looked great (see my previous post if you don't know what I'm talking about). Everything was in good shape. I had some concern about rain since I tend to get some runoff from the road so I cobbled together some foam tubing and weights to divert/slow water which might wash out the nice dirt, seed, and fertilizer. All was good and right with the world... until the day the rain came.

When the rain came it did so with a vengeance. It was a deluge, possibly even a flood. Soil was washed away and upon my return home I was saddened and more than a bit frustrated. Things were said... and it was probably good that I was home alone. The picture (click it for a bigger picture) shows the overall image upon returning home. Note the dirt in the driveway. That dirt was supposed to be on the lawn. Why the dirt didn't like the lawn area I do not know. I know only that it felt the need to leave.

The next two pictures show the damage done in a bit more detail. The blue/green stuff you see is a mulch that was supposed to prevent runoff. The places you don't see it had all the seed, fertilizer, and mulch swept away.


It's certainly not the end of the world. Most of the work that went in was in digging out the area. Filling it again and levelling the soil isn't going to be a huge undertaking. Nonetheless, I'm left with a conundrum. How do I prevent this from happening again? I could wait until August when the odds of rain are lower but even then I'm in trouble. Grass seed doesn't do well in August and there's always the chance of a storm. My mother had the best suggestion... sod. I'll be calling around tomorrow to see if I can get a small amount of sod delivered. I can then lay it down and have near instant erosion control. If the rains come again I will be prepared. I will beat nature or, failing that, will battle to a draw.

Landscaping

Last weekend my father came down to Kalamazoo to visit and to help me out with some landscaping work. I have to give my folks credit... for people that have said they don't help out with yard work, they've certainly helped me out quite a bit.

Much of our work was in my backyard and centered around the area around my patio and under my deck. This picture shows the finished product. To the left you see a short retaining wall by the deck. We raised the wall one block, filled with topsoil, planted some Oregano and Rosemary, and mulched with Cedar chips. To the right you can see the beginnings of a small herb garden. The rosemary is planted but I'm waiting for seedlings to get a bit larger before planting the rest of the herbs. You can't see it in the picture but we also did quite a bit of work to clean up a large tree stump that had become overgrown. The plan is to grind out the stump and then place some sort of decorative piece surrounded by more mulch.

Next you see a close up view of the area under the deck. I'm very happy with how the cedar chips worked out and I'm looking forward to getting the stump ground out so I can finish off that area. Note the attractive plantings at the closest edge.

The final portion of the landscaping work involved quite a bit of work to dig out weedy, sandy, gravelly junk in the front yard and to fill it back in with good topsoil. The area we were working on was to both sides of the driveway. This turned out quite well and we were able to use much of the stuff we took out to fill a valley in the side yard and to bury a drainage pipe. There's a bit of work yet to do in the side yard but the front yard was looking very good.

Beer Additives

My beer brewing friends out there may be interested in this article. It describes some of the additives that are frequently added to beer to speed the brewing process or stabilize the head. It seems that the European Commission is considering new food labelling laws which might require brewers to notify their drinkers of the additives that are included in their brew. Until then, the Germans are the only ones I'm aware of that have passed any beer purity laws...

Changing Jobs

A short while back I decided to take a new position at work. I've been managing a group of software developers for some time now and I enjoy what I do. Despite my happiness with my current job, I decided to throw my hat in the ring when one of my coworkers who manages our Network Systems group announced that he'd be leaving to move to another division. The new job is still in the Information Systems area but is focused more on the daily operations of the business as opposed to software development projects.

Overall I'm very excited by the move. I do have some mixed emotions since software development is something I have great interest in but the good certainly outweighs the bad. I'm really looking forward to the challenge of a completely new position. The experience will be great, it'll give me a chance to try something new and outside my comfort zone, and I'll get to meet a bunch of new people.

I'll start in the new job in a couple weeks and I'm spending quite a bit of my time talking to the guy I'm replacing so that I can be somewhat up to speed with what's going on. Until we find someone to replace me I'll be keeping my current job as well but I hope to find someone for that position in the not too distant future. In the interim, I expect I'll be doing a bit more running around than normal. Should be fun...