Curious Creature

This is unconscionable. Drill for oil anywhere we want and forget the consequences but damn we really need to make sure those solar installations don’t degrade the environment.

On the one hand I can understand this. I’d rather have good studies done for sighting and placement purposes but 2 years??? And in the meantime they don’t want to apply the same standards to say, ANWR. It’s nuts.

Songs because the video is multiple songs sung by Frank Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim but the song I want to bring attention to is the “Girl From Ipanema”.  This is a clip from Sinatra’s 1967 television special A Man and His Music + Ella + Jobim when the Bossa nova craze in the United States was going full-tilt.

Sublime is too simple of a word to describe this music.   Sinatra’s crooning combined with Jobim’s guitar work and Portugese vocals on “Girl from Ipanema”  just ooze style and class. The tuxedos certainly add to the atmosphere. Just amazing stuff.

I have to say though that it’s still shocking to see Sintra dragging on a cigarette right on stage

“Girl from Ipanema” kicks in at about 4:40 (total length of about 6:30).

I completely forgot to write about the second garden plot I put in. I planted three kinds of corn with seed from Vermont Bean Seed Company. My daughter and I planted:

• Silver King Hybrid white sweet corn
• Incredible Hybrid yellow sweet corn
• Seneca Dancer Hybrid bicolor sweet corn

We also planted three different kinds of beans from Cooks Garden:

• Emerite pole beans
• Royal Burgundy Bush beans
• Filet Nickel bush beans

I also planted the Cook’s Custom carrot blend and yellow sweet spanish hybrid onions from Vermont Bean Seed.

Thats it for the garden this year. I’ve had enough planting fun for one year

We didn’t get Indianapolis-level rains this past weekend but we did end up having about 3 inches fall over the weekend with nary a break for things to dry out a bit. It really had me thinking about how I would cope if I was utterly dependent on those vegetables to make it through the year.

For all the complaining the local foods people (and I consider myself one) do about the industrialized food system and it’s impact on the way people live their lives the rains gave me something to think about. I’ve had great expectations for the garden this year, maybe expectations that are far too large given my greenhorn gardener status. As the water was slowly creeping up on my garden plots I was getting pretty upset and in a proportion far greater than the real importance of that food to my life.

I want to be more responsible for what goes on my table. I want to know the place it comes from. I don’t want it to have lots of mileage on it before it hits my table. I want my kids to know where their food is coming from and have a hand in actually providing it for themselves. The reality though is that these are all the thoughts of someone who can afford to have such ideals because in reality my life, nor the life of my family, is dependent on that food. What if it were though?

If that water would have come up just a bit further the ground where the plants were growing would have been over-saturated. That soil doesn’t drain all that well (one of the things I’m hoping to change over the next several years) and based on my experience with the large amount of rain that fell in the Fall of last year it would have killed the plants. If I were relying on that food to eat soon, as well as to have something to put up for the Winter, I’d be in real trouble. Simply put it would have been devastating.

Maybe I’m not dependent on that food but I do have even more respect now for the people that grow the food that I am dependent on. And I’ve thought a lot the last few days about the people who are dependent on the food they grow and how such times have destroyed people’s live. It was only three inches of rain but it certainly provided a lot of food for thought.

…feel like complete shit when I get home from work every day?

Just asking…

All I gotta do.  Move the personal projects along one step at a time.

A creation a day keeps the doldrums away.

Want to be an artiste you gotta do the art.

Strawberries, rhubarb in full effect at the market this week and asparagus still around in profusion. Nichol’s Farm had the first sugar snap peas of the season. They also had some salad greens.

Slowly we’re getting there…it’s going to be a great summer.

If my garden survives all of the rain we’ve had this weekend it will be a miracle. Too much standing water and some of it I just planted so those parts haven’t had a chance to take root yet.

Keeping my fingers crossed….

Maybe I’m blind but I’ve looked all over the Eclipse help files and there are references to both the “vertical ruler” and the “overview ruler” yet there isn’t an explanation as to what those terms mean.  Similar searches on Google don’t turn up anything other than Eclipse API references and the Platform programming documentation.  Those do explain what these items are but I think its kind of crazy that there isn’t an explanation right in the Workbench (or Java Editor) docs.  Here is what they mean:

• Vertical Ruler – the vertical space on the far left of an editor window (next to the gutter that shows line numbers if you have them enabled) that area scrolls along with the content of the editor.  Markers placed here aren’t in view if the line they’re on isn’t in view.    For example: debugger breakpoint indicators are set here and scroll in and out of view as you scroll the editor.
• Overview Ruler – the vertical space on the far right side of an editor window (to the right of the editor scrollbar). This area shows markers for the whole file being edited and it does not scroll along with the editor window.   This area is used to place markers for such things as errors and occurrences of methods, etc.  For example: this allows you to see approximately where all errors occur in a file.  If you click on one of the indicators it will move the editor to that specific line.

Not earth-shattering information but useful nonetheless

Enjoy!