
Some modest, late season catnip blossoms, to break up my lists of computer project resources. (And I have more...much more.)
Observations on Appalachia, knitting, sewing, fiber distractions, natural history, literature, Old-Time music, and Linux.
Some modest, late season catnip blossoms, to break up my lists of computer project resources. (And I have more...much more.)
I continue to shop around, kicking the tires on content management systems for Web sites and software for digital collections libraries. I'm planning to download Drupal (digital content management for Web sites) and experiment with it. As for Digital Collection management, I'm leaning strongly toward Archon, and have downloaded and started to play with it as a tool in managing the historical society's cataloging project.
However, all this shopping is a recursive project. As I've tried to understand the tools I've selected, I keep finding more tools that also deserve a look. The essay Drupal as a digital library content management system pointed me to these interesting applications:
Here are some links and references about libraries, digital archives, and software designed to store and share collections data. There is an immense amount of information about these topics, and this is just a sample of things I found that look promising for our county history project.
Case Studies: Library Archives and Web Sites
Software Tools for Libraries
Library Weblogs Addressing Digital Collections and Web Presence
To make up for recent computational excesses, here are more photos from Seneca State Forest the last week in July. I always prefer to use natural light for my pictures, but these are some dark hollers where the sun refuse to shine. The flash gives dramatic results, and I should learn to use it more effectively, but there's something special about the colors you see in the dim light.
I'm hand-coding Web sites now, which means static (and faster loading) pages for the short term. Of course, nothing works the way I expect it to, so I've had to brush up on my HTML and CSS skills. Here are some of the free resources I've been using.
Web Design Tutorials and Resources
CSS Layouts: Fixed versus Fluid
Another aspect of my recent Linux Geekfest has had me studying and trying out different "web development tools." My tool of choice for Web work has been Emacs, the One True Editor, but I'm looking at tracking some larger, more complex projects, and possibly training someone else to work on the Website someday. Strangely, I've never successfully converted anyone to the Church of Emacs, so it seems prudent to add some easier-to-adopt tools to my kit.
Several years ago, I used Bluefish Editor, (native to the Gnome desktop environment) but I became frustrated with all the mouse-clicking it required, and, after I discovered html-helper-mode for Emacs, I abandoned it. I did miss the colorful way it displayed html-markup, but I got over it.
Since then, I have switched from Gnome to KDE because I didn't like the new Gnome screensaver program. (I had originally adopted Gnome for an equally trivial reason, back in 2002.) The html-editor of choice for KDE is Quanta-Plus, so I thought I'd give it a whirl. In fact, because I have both Gnome and KDE desktops installed, I can use either Quanta-Plus or Bluefish, or both.
These editors do the same things equally well--I can't really say one is better than the other, but I have spent more time using Quanta Plus. Actually, I still write the html in Emacs, then open it in the fancy editor, check for errors, use the project management tools, and generally fine-tune the pages.
The tools I have found most useful are Firefox add-ons and extensions, and small utilities. Here is my list of favorites:
Web Editors For Linux-Land
More Linux geekery: What tools to use in planning, developing, and maintaining my own Web site and the one I'm developing for a county historical preservation project? Should I have static Web pages? PHP and MySQL? Could I get by with Perl (which I already know how to use)?
I'm not very knowledgeable in Web 2.0 database driven stuff, but I'm going to need a photo gallery, thumbnails, and a database for the county Web site. That's why I've been reading up on "Content Management Systems." Here's a list of links showing what I've learned about so far.
Lest the weblog gets too Linux-geeky, here's another, different coral fungus from Seneca State Park.
I've been spending most of my computer time lately on "web development" for a new project. One aspect of this has been selecting appropriate software. Lest I mislay this knowledge, I'm posting it here, in my virtual junk drawer. I'll be able to find it again, and you never know who might want to rummage through my collection of good junk someday.
There are many, many interesting Open Source tools for building and maintaining Web sites, and I've been making lists of things that might solve some of my problems. Here are some .deb packages (available from Debian sources) for programs new to me.
Earlier this summer, we camped overnight at Seneca State Forest. (We don't have to leave the county to find cooler breezes.) I found some interesting fungi, including this little coral on a bed of moss. When I got home, I discovered that I had captured some tiny springtails as well. If I had been trying to get this chubby little collembolan in focus, I couldn't have done it, but here he is, a photographic bonus.
Burdock is a powerful plant. It will grow where it wants, and you'll be hard-pressed to root it out. It will send out its stickery seed heads on any passing pedestrian, especially on wooly sheep. And if there is nothing else for it to grab, it will stick to itself and tumble through the woods!
While my vision was messed up last month by a string of migraines, I had a chance to do a little spinning. This is the "troublesome local fleece" I've been working on for the last year. The end of it is now in sight; I'm currently spinning the last dye batch. I'm trying something different with the unspinnable bits (burdock tangles, short cuts, neps) this time--I'm throwing them in the compost. Some people use bad fleeces as garden mulch, and my own experience shows me it rots away pretty quickly outdoors. Now, my compost has surprising bits of heliotrope and teal, and will soon have some deep rose. The acid dyes are chemically similar to food colorings, and I used food-grade vinegar as a fixative, so this shouldn't poison us when it goes on the garden.
The yarn-display case is this winter's growing wood pile. It's that time of year.
Earlier this year, we dug a big hole in the ground, breaking through and turning over a layer of shale sandwiched between layers of clay. . Here are some fragments of that rock layer, hidden until recently. It won't be long before we cover them up again, but we'll never get them back the way they were.
In observance of International Rock Flipping Day, here's a list of links to rock flippers from around the world. There are all sorts of rocks, and all sorts of rock-flippers. I haven't read them all--yet!
Anticipatory posts (a selection)
Marcia Bonta — Rock-Flipping (summary of IRFD 2007)
fish without faces — the tanager and the scorpion (poem)
Fragments from Floyd — Today is Rock Flipping Day: Get Out There!
Going Like Sixty — International Rock Flipping Day: the First Sunday in September
* * *
Pohanginapete (Pohangina Valley, Aotearoa/New Zealand)
Blaugustine (London, England)
Nature Remains (Ohio, USA)
Pensacola Daily Photo (Florida, USA)
KatDoc’s World (Ohio, USA)
Notes from the Cloud Messenger (Ontario, Canada)
Brittle Road (Dallas, Texas)
Sherry Chandler (Kentucky, USA)
osage + orange (Illinois, USA)
Rock Paper Lizard (British Columbia, Canada)
The Crafty H (Virginia, USA)
Chicken Spaghetti (Connecticut, USA)
A Passion for Nature (New York, USA)
The Dog Geek (Virginia, USA)
Blue Ridge blog (North Carolina, USA)
Bug Girl’s Blog (Michigan, USA)
chatoyance (Austin, Texas)
Riverside Rambles (Missouri, USA)
Pines Above Snow(Maryland, USA)
Beth’s stories (Maine, USA)
A Honey of an Anklet (Virginia, USA)
Wanderin’ Weeta (British Columbia, Canada)
Fate, Felicity, or Fluke (Oregon, USA)
The Northwest Nature Nut (Oregon, USA)
Roundrock Journal (Missouri, USA)
The New Dharma Bums (California, USA)
The Marvelous in Nature (Ontario, Canada)
Via Negativa (Pennsylvania, USA)
Mrs. Gray’s class, Beatty-Warren Middle School (Pennsylvania, USA)
Cicero Sings (British Columbia, Canada)
Let’s Paint Nature (Illinois, USA)
* * *
Photos
Yesterday was International Rock Flipping Day, and, close to sunset, I remembered to join the fun. Technical difficulties with my camera batteries postponed my report until today.
In contrast to last year, there was much more moisture in the ground, so this time I found a "fish worm." Last year, I found more interesting things on rocks and in rocks than under them. There is plenty of biodiversity within the rocks here on Droop Mountain, as you can see in these photos.
What's in the rocks is the Pocahontas County topic of the day, because, like much of Appalachian Pennsylvania and New York state, the Marcellus shale underlies us. There is renewed interest in drilling and extracting natural gas from this very deep layer, and speculators are contacting people here, offering to buy or lease mineral rights.
Our ridge lacks enough level ground to make drilling here feasible, so no one is trying to get us to sell anything; however, it concerns us because the extraction process for these deep gas deposits involves forcing vast quantities of water into and then out of the wells. Water is a limited resource, and disposal of the contaminated water can be a problem.
I've been reading as much as I can about the issue, and I have here my usual list of links in case you want to read further. Whether or not Pocahontas land owners decide to sell or lease, most of the mineral rights in our county are already controlled by forces outside the County. Monongahela National Forest is administered by the U.S. Forest Service, but the federal government only owns part of those mineral rights. Some of the early 20th century logging companies retained their mineral rights when they sold the government their land.
The aster family's inflorescences are called "capitula." Sunflowers, daisies, dandilions--their "flowers" are really clusters of little flowers, each one making its own little seed, except for the "petals," ("ray flowers") which children use for divination. "He loves me, he loves me not...."
"Capitulum" is "little head" in Latin. (This innocent observation will probably attract all sorts of nasty spam.) After several weeks of learning about all sorts of new computer skills, my own head is very tired, and needs to spend more time among the late summer asters.
This spring's cool, wet weather caused many of our garden seeds to rot in the ground. We replanted, but had some space left over. These sunflowers grew from the contents of our bird feeder.