Watching a bewildering world from the middle of nowhere
Self-portrait: Ken Ilgunas in the Dan River
Quite a lot of work has gotten done at Acorn Abbey this summer. But Ken still has time to go on five-mile runs (2.5 miles each way) to the Dan River. There’s a swimming spot. Yesterday, Ken went on a hike in which he followed the little stream that crosses Acorn Abbey all the way to the river. Below are some of his photos from yesterday’s hike.
Once upon a time, in the innocent early days of Web browsing, it was pop-up ads that drove us crazy. Browsers responded by including built-in pop-up blockers. That helped, for a while.
But advertising fiends are always going to find new ways of annoying us with ads we don’t want to see, trying to sell us stuff that we have absolutely no interest in. Pop-up blockers are unable to block pop-up ads created by embedding Javascript in the HTML. And for a truly annoying Web-browsing experience, there’s nothing quite so annoying as a Javascript pop-up containing a Flash ad. I call these ads “stomp-overs.”
What’s Flash? Adobe Flash is used by Web designers to create ads and web pages that are much fancier than what one can do in plain old HTML. For example, Flash ads may contain animations, or video. Flash ads also burn up your bandwidth while this unwanted video is downloaded, and they keep your computer’s processor busy rendering the Flash. Flash also consumes a good bit of your computer’s available memory.
Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple, hates Flash and refused to support it on the iPad. Way to go! Jobs even took the unusual step of posting an essay on the Apple web site explaining his arguments against Flash.
Luckily, there are ways to block Flash. There’s Flashblock for the Firefox family and ClickToFlash for Apple’s Safari. For Internet Explorer, I believe it’s possible to disable Flash by changing some browser settings. I have not tested this in Internet Explorer.
Some advice to other Macintosh users: I have had more memory problems since upgrading to OS X 10.6.3 (Snow Leopard). The new Safari 5 also seems to be a bit of a memory hog. I’ve decided I’m going to have to add memory to my iMac to take it from 1GB to 4GB.
Stomp-over No. 1: This type of evil ad, common at Salon, throws up a Flash ad and grays out the rest of the page. You can’t proceed until you click the close box. In this example, the content of the Flash ad is being suppressed by Flashblock in the Google Chrome browser.
Stomp-over No. 2: This annoying little ad slides down onto the middle of the page. You have to find and click the close box to make it go away.
A deer hides in the woods and watches. Ken just happened to have his camera ready.
Ken Ilgunas posted an item on his blog today with lots of photos, with the title “The Animals of Acorn Abbey.” There’s also a video of Ken chasing a groundhog out of the sweet potato patch.
I suppose I had started taking for granted the constant entanglement with animals here. They provide almost all the drama to be found at Acorn Abbey.
Ken catches a groundhog in the sweet potatoes, in flagrante delicto.
Run groundhog run.
Portrait of Ruth by Ken Ilgunas
Ken took a lot of chicken pictures today. Here are a couple of them.
Ruth, by the way, is a Golden Comet chicken, and Chastity is a Barred Rock. Ruth seems to have the most personality. She was the dominant chicken in the pecking order for a long time, but Chastity has now pecked her way into this role. The other Barred Rock, Patience, has not been out and about much lately. She’s in a setting mood. We have to push her off the nest from time to time to make sure she eats and drinks.
Ruth and Chastity
Front to back: Ruth, Chastity, and Ken. Ken is watering a young blueberry bush.
From the road
Recently a reader asked for more pictures of the grounds of Acorn Abbey. I admit that I’m stingy with such photos. This is because it will be years before the abbey looks the way I want it to look — overgrown and blooming. Ken and I have planted a lot of stuff this summer, but it’s never enough. And, once planted, a few years of patience is required to see the result. But seeing as how the abbey grounds are pretty green right now with the generous amount of rain we’ve had in the past week, I went out and took some pictures this morning.
You can see the tops of the garden fence uphill from the abbey.
The downhill side
From the top of the garden, looking down
From behind the house looking toward the opposite ridge
From across the road
The chickens’ view
Looking into the garden fence, toward what I hope to call an orchard someday
Baby figs on a baby fig tree. You also can see a newly planted peach tree and newly planted grapevines.
Mornin’, girls…
Abelia under the bay window. Can you espy the bug? Abelia is a member of the honeysuckle family.
Hydrangea under the back porch
Grass grows under Ken Ilgunas’ famous van, parked for the summer.
From the upstairs abbey window
A screen shot from the web site of Orange SA, a French telecom company
Periodically I check broadband costs in France, just to see how badly we have fallen behind in the United States. In France, you can get a package that includes Internet service, television, and telephone for 34.90 euros — about $45 — no contract required. For this money, you get up to 20 megabits download speed on your Internet connection, up to 100 television channels, and unlimited domestic and international calling on your telephone. Why is this?
Most Americans know very little about other countries and are conditioned to think that the United States is ahead of the rest of the world in technology. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In addition, Americans preach the virtues of competition, but we don’t practice what we preach. In France, rates are lower and service is better because of intense competition. In the United States, the rules are set by a Congress that is in the pockets of the big Telecom companies (not to mention the banks). Though the FCC is just now finally getting around to developing a national broadband policy, for the last 10 years nothing has happened except that the telecom corporations cooperated with government to exploit consumers and make the telecoms rich.
If Americans were better informed, I have no doubt that they’d be pretty angry. For 10 years they’ve been kicked around by the cable companies and telecoms. Everyone complains, but few realize that it didn’t have to be that way. Next time you hear someone use the words “business friendly,” ask them if that doesn’t translate to “friendly to the ripping off of the American population.”
By some odd irony, as I was researching French telecom costs this afternoon, my cell phone rang. It was Verizon, wondering why I haven’t “upgraded” my telephone. They want to give me a cheap new phone to get me to sign a two-year contract. Ha! I’ve never had a contract with Verizon, either on my cell phone or on my Internet service. These contracts are a major way that American telecoms prevent people from taking advantage of what little competition there is. I steadfastly refuse to sign a contract. And besides, why would I want a cheap, flashy phone when my three-year-old Motorola M800 works just fine. My Motorola phone is a serious phone with a serious antenna (hear that, iPhone?) that retailed for about $700, though I bought mine cheap on eBay. There’s no way I’d trade that phone for a new piece-of-junk phone (even if my Motorola M800 does weigh 10 pounds.)
Clearly Verizon is making a push right now to try to lure people into renewing their contracts. I’ve had several pieces of junk mail about that, and today there was the sales call. As the sales person gave me her pitch, I could hear a chorus of people in the background also making pitches. If Verizon is making a big push to lock people into contracts, what does that tell us?
It tells us that Verizon is expecting some kind of competition in the next two years that threatens to cut into their profits. Verizon has a gross profit margin of 60.18 percent. That’s predatory, and that’s what happens when corporations control a “business friendly” Congress and write their own regulations.
Ken’s first taste of Bunny bread
Once upon a time, when you grew up in the South, tomato sandwiches were what you had for lunch. For a proper Southern tomato sandwich, the whitest, fluffiest bread you can find is in order. Here at the abbey, I bake all the bread, whether it’s biscuits, sourdough loaves, rolls, pizza crusts or whatever. But, ever since I moved back to North Carolina from California, once a summer I buy a loaf of Bunny bread, the whitest, fluffiest bread that can be bought around here. I also leave my high-end organic mayonnaises bought at Whole Foods in the fridge and use a common grocery store mayonnaise. Of these low-end mayonnaises, Duke’s is my favorite.
Tomato sandwiches are an important tradition. That’s a recipe I’d never mess with.
What you need
I passed this sign in front of a church on a trip to the Yadkin Valley and back today. The church is on a country road between Siloam and Pinnacle.
I finally got my bat houses put up yesterday. There were carpenters here to work on making Acorn Abbey more waterproof, and while they were here I asked them to use their ladder to put up the bat houses. I bought the bat houses from the Organization for Bat Conservation. The bat houses are at the edge of the woods behind the house, above the new fire pit.
I do have bats here. They can be seen any evening at dusk, dive-bombing for insects. I’ve learned that I don’t even have to go outdoors to watch them. If at dusk I stand upstairs in front of the gothic windows and turn on the outdoor floodlights, soon the bats will come, chasing the bugs drawn by the lights (there are two big floodlights mounted under the eaves on each corner of the house). Sometimes the bats will dive-bomb straight for the windows. This gives an effect that is both gothic and a bit techie. It reminds me of the scenes in Star Wars in which the evil emperor sits in his big chair facing a big window looking out on a space battle, with the fighter craft swarming. The bats’ dives sometimes come quite close to the gothic windows, then they make steep turns to avoid the windows. You can see the underbellies of the bats.
The carpenters, actually, were my nephew, Russ, and his helper. They caulked around all the windows, installed metal flashing at the bottom of each window to deflect the water that runs down to the window sill, installed metal flashing around all the eaves to keep runoff from the roof from hitting the wood facia, and installed a large attic vent so that when I turn on my attic fan there’s enough vent space for the exhaust to escape. Though I do use air conditioning at Acorn Abbey, I also tried to build the house so that it’s livable without air conditioning. If I open north-facing downstairs windows and turn on the attic fan, strong breezes from the cool side of the house pour in. The fan is huge and has the capacity to change all the air in the house every few minutes. The fan is mounted in the living room ceiling, 21 feet up from the floor.