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 Still  here  on the ridge....

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How the Camera Got Knocked Down

We went to the first annual Highland County Old Time Fiddlers' Convention last weekend, and left our cherry trees unattended. When we got home, we found the trail camera dangling upside down from its tree. Fortunately, we were able to reconstruct what happened. Bear sees camera....

Bear investigates camera....

Camera gets a tree bark closeup.

This bear visited earlier, but caught wind of the ripe cherries instead of the digital camera.

Bigfoot Enigma Solved

I think this is the solution to our Bigfoot game camera puzzle. Our cherries are ripe, and along with foxes, scarlet tanagers, raccoons, ravens, possums, cedar waxwings, and orchard orioles, bears are dropping by for chow time. This year, we have a sow with a very small, very cute cub. (No photos...yet.)

Check the bad hair day on this fellow's hindquarters, as he bolts past the salt lick.

The deer show no interest in cherries, but this gal seems ready for her close-up.

Latest Bigfoot Sighting on Droop Mountain (Or Is It the Mothman?)

Our game camera pictures have been plentiful, and much alike. These deer visit regularly. However, Monday morning, the camera caught this:

Seconds later, whatever it was, it was gone.

Was it a bear having a bad hair day? Was it the the Mothman? (If so, he's a long way from Point Pleasant.) We decided it was probably Bigfoot. After all, the BFRO's 2006 sighting on the Greenbrier River Trail was so convincing that they mounted a return expedition in 2008. Of course, we can't rule out the possibility that it was the Yayho, as described by Burl Hammons.

Removing a Broken Package in Debian Sid

Recently, my Debian "sid" boxen developed a problem during a routine update/upgrade process. There was some incompatibility among the various programs I'd installed for a local LAMP test kitchen. I'm not using it, so I tried to remove the whole mess, but I kept getting a message like this at the end of every aptitude command, regardless of what programs were involved.

root@britomartis:/home/rebecca# aptitude remove php5-mysqlnd
The following packages will be REMOVED:  
  php5-mysqlnd 
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B of archives. After unpacking 495 kB will be freed.
(Reading database ... 123342 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing php5-mysqlnd ...
/var/lib/dpkg/info/php5-mysqlnd.prerm: 9: /var/lib/dpkg/info/php5-mysqlnd.prerm: php5dismod: not found
dpkg: error processing php5-mysqlnd (--remove):
 subprocess installed pre-removal script returned error exit status 127
Errors were encountered while processing:
 php5-mysqlnd
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
A package failed to install.  Trying to recover:

After a couple of weeks' Googling and reading, I happened on Force Uninstall a package in Debian/Ubuntu:

The solution is to head over to /var/lib/dpkg/info and find the package in question. There should be a file with .prerm at the end of it. In the case of xulrunner-1.9 the file is called xulrunner-1.9.prerm. Edit the file and change it's contents so it just says:

#!/bin/sh
set -e

After that the standard command will work:

I did that--I edited /var/lib/dpkg/info/php5-mysqlnd, so that it had just those two lines, and was rewarded with this:

root@britomartis:~# aptitude remove php5-mysqlnd
The following packages will be REMOVED:  
  php5-mysqlnd 
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B of archives. After unpacking 495 kB will be freed.
(Reading database ... 123342 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing php5-mysqlnd ...
                                         
Current status: 0 broken [-1], 0 updates [-1].

Frequently Interrupted Quilt Finished At Last

I've finished the long-deferred quilt project at last! Here it is quilted but unbound. I hung it on the clothesline where I photographed it in the process of deciding whether to add a border. I decided it looked fine with no border, so I bound it with the same white muslin in the blocks.

This has been an experimental quilt from the start. It was one of my first dyeing projects, and I chose half-square triangles for piecing practice. I experimented sewing the blocks together with the serger when the serger was brand-new, and I also used the serger as part of the "quilt as you go" assembly. Below, I've listed the four websites that helped me the most in understanding how to combine assembly and quilting processes into a manageable method that doesn't involve a quilting frame or a long-arm machine. I must also add that the quilt-as-you-go technique using the serger gave me a neater, more nearly square finished project than my sad attempts at traditional quilting.

• Mama Melino's Lasagna Quilting (pdf file) is subtitled "Gotta Get It Quilted." Most of the "lasagna quilts" the search engine turns up are made of long fabric strips, but Paula Melino shows you how to turn a set of traditionally-pieced blocks into a finished quilt without ever stuffing a big roll of fabric under the arm of your sewing machine. This is where I got the idea to use the serger to assemble the quilt in big chunks. It worked really well on this project, and my quilt ended up much closer to "square" than it ever has assembling by regular sewing machine or by hand.
• Crazy Shortcut Quilts: Marguerita McManus shows you how to quilt individual blocks and then assemble them with narrow strips. This is the process I'm going to try next.
• Marianne, of "The Quilting Edge" offers photo tutorials and text instructions for her own quilt-as-you-go method. It's also a real treat to see her quilts as she builds them.
• Melody Johnson's quilt-as-you-go technique is similar to Marianne's, and her quilts are similarly inspiring.

Of course, having white thread on the serger and sewing machine inspired me to sew up these underbritches and tuck them in my lingerie drawer. More fabric scraps put to good use.

Green Vintage Buttons In the Wild

I was really pleased with this "Vogue 8598" blouse with shoulder-princess seams when I altered it and tested it in blue rayon last winter. I made a simple full-bust adjustment, and liked the pattern very much. Last month, I tried it in a crisp cotton print, keeping the fitting alterations and replacing the pattern's collar and cuffs with those from Kwik-Sew 2777, the standard men's pattern that I usually use for shirts. The crisp fabric stands away from the body, and shows that my alterations have left the pattern slightly over-sized, something I didn't notice with the drapey rayon. I'll wear this shirt and wash it a few times before I decide whether to go for a closer fit. In the meantime, I'm going to sew this pattern in the relatively stiff cotton-linen blend I dyed last summer, and style it as a lightweight jacket. I'm considering a different collar treatment.

This tropical bird print is something I bought 20 years ago for a summer skirt, but mice chewed holes in it, and there was barely enough left for this shirt. I had to piece one of the sleeves, but the wild print obscures that.

I don't wear much green, but it was my mother's favorite, and her button collection reflects this. I spent an evening sorting the green buttons, and selected these interesting flat buttons for the center front. I didn't have quite enough to finish the project, but there were three of these big, gold-framed green cat's eyes, so I used these for the collar stand and cuffs, where they remind me of a cuff links/collar stud set.

A Sewing Novelty--Easy Stitching, Successful Projects

The new clothesline offers an opportunity for displaying my finished projects on hangers. Most of the sewing bloggers I follow have dress forms or nice full-length mirrors for displaying finished projects. I used to take my sewing projects outdoors for photographs because the old house was too dark for interior photos. Now, although I have a (reasonably) clean, well-lighted place to sew, I find I require daylight for photography, even when wind interferes.

I cut out this flannel shirt last fall, using my favorite altered Kwik-Sew 2777 men's dress shirt pattern. I'd finished the collar and cuffs during my shirt pattern testing session, but laid it aside. It was quick to assemble with my serger because I didn't bother with menswear details. It is, after all, simply a flannel shirt.

I used Kwik-Sew 2953 for this 1990's era rayon print, because the pattern works well in rayon (but nothing else, so far) and because the pattern pieces didn't cut the bold floral print into unidentifiable slices. I think it will be fine, and I skipped the mens' wear shirt details here too, telling myself that the serger works best for ravel-y, squirmy rayon.

And, because I had green thread on the serger (for another shirt), I sewed up some underbritches I'd cut out in a scrap-basket emptying frenzy some months ago. The stretch lace embellishments were also scrap-basket denizens.

This was a particularly enjoyable sewing session--no pattern alterations, no muslins, and quick, easy, serging. It's been a long time since I've had this much fun at the sewing machine!

Digikam Failure Fixed With phonon-backend-gstreamer

After the latest Debian sid update, Digikam quit working on one of my machines (but not the other). It would flash the start-up logo, then just disappear. Googling for this didn't turn up an answer, so I tried launching digikam from the command line, which gave me some error messages to search with. I found this discussion in a forum:

For some reason Dolphin (version 1.7) and digikam (version 1.9.0) keep crashing on me. Dolphin will crash on me every time my mouse cursor is over a video file. When I start digikam it will start to load and than disappear. I have just updated to kde 4.7.4 on AMD64 but this issue was happening before the upgrade. I have tried to run both programs from the console and I receive the same error message.

[0x16865a0] main services discovery error: no suitable services discovery module 
digikam: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/qt4/plugins/phonon_backend/phonon_vlc.so: undefined symbol: libvlc_audio_filter_list_get

That's exactly the sort of problem I was having (I don't use Dolphin very often, so I hadn't noticed that issue). Why sound module problems would affect a photo management problem is not obvious to me, but eventually the original poster announced:

I have solved the issue. I removed vlc-data along with it's dependencies which included phonon-backend-vlc. Now dolphin, digikam and system-settings do not crash for me. Now the only backend I have installed is gstreamer. I guess there is just something wrong with the phonon-backend-vlc package.

I immediately added the replacement for phonon-backend-vlc:

aptitude install phonon-backend-gstreamer

And the problem was solved. (I didn't bother to remove phonon-backend-vlc; it seems that phonon-backend-gstreamer just replaced it (and the forum participants indicated that there were problems involved in removing phonon-backend-vlc).

A Joyful Easter, With Catkins

Another holiday postcard from my grandmother's album--an Easter bell with alder catkins and lilies-of-the-valley, postmarked "Prescott, IOWA, MAR 28 ?PM, 1908." It reads:

Dear Florence, How are you getting along? I made garden last week, that is, I planted some lettuce and radishes and raked the yard Saturday. Can't you come down for Easter? We are going to color some eggs Saturday evening after the children go to bed. Good bye. Susie

Early Lettuce--Cute Cotyledons

I planted a little patch of lettuce in early February. Most years, such early plantings are unsuccessful--they sprout and freeze, or get washed away in heavy rain, or they mold. This year, the rain did wash all the seed into low spots, but it looks like I might get a bit of early lettuce. It needs thinning, as soon as the plants are big enough to grab hold of.

Great-Grandmas, Balanced Diets, and Cookies

The whole "If your Great-grandma wouldn't recognize it as food, don't eat it" seems to assume great-grandmas with limited culinary experience. My own great-grandmas grew up during the Irish potato famine, the Prague Upheaval, and the American Civil War. I feel sure that not one of those women was a picky eater. I also know that three of them worked as cooks in rich people's kitchens before they took command of kitchens of their own, and my Prague great-grandma was remembered as a notable cook 40 years after her death in 1938.

In What Would Great-Grandma Eat? - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education, we see some other reasons to wonder about the "great-grandma dictum:"

In 1890, 90 percent of the country's bread was baked in homes. The rest was purchased from tiny neighborhood bakeries. By 1930, this trend had reversed completely: 90 percent of bread was purchased, and purchased from increasingly large, increasingly distant factories. Despite their success, industrial bakers lived in constant fear that bread would lose its place on the nation's tables. Compared with newfangled fruits arriving by refrigerated train from California, or the novelty of modern wonders like Jell-O, bread was just basic. But something remarkable happened during the first three decades of the 20th century. Not only did Americans switch to store-bought bread en masse, but also per-capita bread consumption increased. Modern factory bread wasn't just a more convenient version of the ancient staple; it had taken on new meanings and appeal.

A couple more unrelated food links:

• Five ways to tackle disastrous diets--UN food expert: "The right to food means not only access to an adequate quantity of food, but also the ability to have a balanced and nutritious diet," Mr. De Schutter underlined. "Governments must not abstain from their responsibility to secure this right."
• For those of us fortunate enough to have such things, these should only be consumed following nutritious meals. Coconut Pecan Blondies Recipe | Taste of Home Recipes:

Some Shale Gas Links

• EQT chief speaks on fracking, coal, greenhouse gases at UC   - News - The Charleston Gazette - West Virginia News and Sports -: The question of what chemicals are used in hydraulic fracturing are "overstated," Porges said. Many still ask for companies to reveal them, however, he said they're available on frackfocus.org, which is run by the Groundwater Protection Council.
• Ohio agency says fracking-related activity caused earthquakes | Reuters: An Ohio state agency said on Friday there is evidence that the high-pressure injection of fluid underground related to fracking caused a series of Ohio earthquakes culminating in a New Year's Eve tremor in any area not known for seismic activity.
• Natural born drillers: Why shale gas won't end our energy woes | Grist:
  

  Talk about a dangerous echo chamber: A government agency relies on industry data to calculate "independent" estimates, then industry proponents point to the government figures to bolster their rosy outlook.

  This echo chamber is one powerful explanation for how federal energy officials have, wittingly or unwittingly, become peddlers of the so-called "crack cocaine of the power industry."

  Has the agency cleaned up its act? It has lowered its numbers. But only time will tell whether it has changed how it does its research.

  In the meantime, we'll all have to live with a natural gas boom that may turn out to be a lot more expensive--for both the environment and consumers--than the industry and regulators first believed.

  Drilling Down - Fighting Over Oil and Gas Well Leases - NYTimes.com

  
  

Paleoclimate Links: Atmosphere Evolution, Carboniferous Climate

Some paleoclimate references my environmental science students might find useful:

• Climate during the Carboniferous Period
• Evolution of the Atmosphere

Whose Emancipation Is Next?

Via Northwest History, a selection of negative ads for the presidential race of 1864: The Ads that Could Have Won George McClellan the Presidency. I believe I recognize the organization that paid for this ad in particular.

To Greet You On St. Patrick's Day

"To Greet You On St. Patrick's Day." There's no message or signature on the flip side, just the address: "Miss Florance [sic] Williamson, Prescott, Iowa, RR3" in black ink and the postmark "Des Moines 1912."

phpMyAdmin and MySQL — Drop Tables

phpMyAdmin and MySQL — Drop Tables with Common Prefix | DigitalWindFire: A handy tip for my Wordpress experimentation--this is how I delete the Wordpress portion of my database without touching the Drupal installation:


SELECT * FROM (
SELECT CONCAT('DROP TABLE ', GROUP_CONCAT(table_name) , ';')
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES
WHERE table_name LIKE 'wp_%'
) a INTO @stmt;

PREPARE statement FROM @stmt;
EXECUTE statement;

Wool Double Four-Patch Coverlet--Finished At Last

Here it is, tied, bound, and hung on the clothesline for photographs. This double-bed cover is made from my wardrobe from the 1980's and 1990's, with a few squares from a 1970's era blue wool skirt I wore for band concerts, and a red wool bathrobe of my mom's (circa 1950).

I backed the wool top with a pieced expanse of fleece remnants. This was a tricky procedure, as the fleeces were stretchy, each in its own way. I didn't get it perfectly flat when I tie-tacked it with the sewing machine, but I'm pronouncing it "good enough."

You can see that I couldn't wait for the completion of the new clothesline to photograph my completed project. Clothesline is still under construction.

State launches gas-drilling database for public

State launches gas-drilling database for public  - News - The Charleston Gazette - West Virginia News and Sports -: "CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- West Virginians interested in oil and gas drilling plans can now study permits and get other details online. The Department of Environmental Protection's Office of Oil and Gas has launched a website with information on horizontal drilling operations. The site was mandated under legislation passed in December."

'via Blog this'