News Archives

June 10, 2007 - You may, or may not have noticed that there is a new navigation point on the menu! It's finally here! The weather station is up and running!!! I was able to get the hardware installed and operational at the beginning of June, so it's been collecting data for a little bit. I've been playing around with some of the software though, so some of the statistical data will be a bit skewed for this month.
Right now, the page is set up as a variant of the default that the software that I'm using has. I will be playing with it a bit more as time goes on to make it a bit more consistent with the layout of the rest of this site. For now, I've included the default web output as an inline frame. It looks a bit clumsy, but at least I'm able to show you how things are going right now.
Over time, the statistical data should even itself out, and by then I should know a bit more about what I'm doing with the software. It's been quite the learning experience so far!

May 19, 2007 - I haven't updated the news in a while, so there's quite a bit to add here. First off, we have been able to get the garden all tilled up and ready to plant. We have also got most of the plantings in as well. We have tomatoes, carrots, onions, broccoli, cauliflower, cucumbers, peas, beans and cabbage. I have been able to add some irrigation via soaker hoses as well, so watering over the summer season should be as easy as dragging the hose over to the garden spot, hooking it up with the quick-connector, and forgetting about it for a few hours. It's amazing just how many linear feet of hose is needed for such a small garden. We used 150 feet so far, and still have another 50 feet to add to the flowers along the back fence!
As far as the front yard goes, it's coming along quite nicely. We added a second flower bed in the front of the house, and added quite a number of perennials, so we shouldn't have to much to do with that in the years to come, other than weeding it if course. Hopefully this weekend, I will be adding some irrigation to both flower beds via some "low flow" sprinklers. They are relatively inexpensive to buy, but make my life a whole lot easier in the long run. With the addition of a timer, I shouldn't have to worry about forgetting to water them for a long time... at least until the batteries on the timer run out.
And now for the major update! I have ordered a weather station, and it's on it's way at this time. With a little bit of luck and some careful planning, I should be able to have it up and running by the end of the month, hopefully serving up weather data on this site soon after. The software that comes with the station is pretty limited, but I'm going to give it a try and see how it goes. If it doesn't live up to expectations, I'm going to have to purchase some other software but only time will tell what's going to happen.

April 15, 2007 - The weekend is upon us, and with it comes yard work. We got quite a bit done this weekend on the outside. Unfortunately there isn't a whole lot that you can see on the cameras. The first thing that finally got accomplished was getting the lawn mowed. Were you watching the cameras when that was going on? Exciting entertainment, isn't it?
For the real work, we were able to get some planters dug in and get about 30 little strawberry plants to have a new home. To go along with those strawberries, we had to plant a couple of clumps of rhubarb. The last big one, was getting our mini-rhododendron into the ground for the second time since we got it. We were able to bring the one from the old house as it hadn't grown to super much.
We also put in an extra little ring planter around one of the tree stumps in the front yard. I haven't found the exact right flower to put in there yet as it has to be pretty hardy due to being right in front of the door.
Next weekend's project should be to finish up the planters. There is a group of three treestumps in the front yard left to deal with. They are to close together to have each one individually covered in, so they are all going to end up being inside one big planter. That will only leave the large tree that needs something done with it.

April 8, 2007 - Well it's Easter again, and man was I busy today! I had to help out my cousin, The Easter Bunny, hiding all of his eggs. It took a long time for us to get them all hidden, but we were able to get the task completed before all of the little kids woke up.

I had the opportunity to watch a few of them (the kids that is) go on their hunting excursions, and it took them almost as long to find as it did to hide, so this is a good thing. I believe there will be a lot of parents with some super hyper kids for a few days. It's a good thing for the schools that there is a holiday on Monday. It should give a little bit of time for some of the sugar effects to wear off slightly.

April 7, 2007 - Mouse has returned home from her trip. She's glad to be home, but at the same time, she's going to be missing where she was at. The rest of the crew seems to be exceedingly happy with her return, and have been sticking to her like glue all day. I think this will likely continue for a few days, and this is OK with me as it will give me some more time to work on the site here! Have to make it all look pretty you know!

April 2, 2007 - If you are viewing this site for the very first time, you won't notice anything new. If however, you are a returning visitor, you'll notice that there are a bunch of things that have changed.

First, depending on when you last visited, you'll notice that the views from the cameras have changed. This is due greatly to our crew relocating to a new home. The move was made necessary for a bunch of reasons, which I won't go into here, but I do believe that this new home will be with us for quite some time. It's big enough for the crew to have some space to grow into, and it's close enough to all the amenities that a family needs.

The second major change is the layout of the site itself. It's original incantation was very basic. I hadn't coded any HTML for such a long time that it was pretty much like starting over again. This new version employs some of the things that I have re-learned, and some that I'm still in the process of learning like CCS.

March 31, 2007 - I had to break down an order a new still digital camera. The old one just ceased to function in the middle of taking some family pictures before Mouse had to go on a trip. Thankfully, I was able to get a couple of snaps before it died, but certainly not enough for what I wanted.

The new camera is a Kodak Z650. It's 6.1MP with 10X optical and 5X digital zoom! This is a far cry better than the old camera that I was using. It was only 2.1MP with 3X optical and 4X digital zoom. From what I've read, the Kodak Z650 will also record some video, complete with audio! This is a new feature that I'm going to have to try out once it gets here!