TerrieMiller.com

• Sexing chicks (plumage differences)
  Discusses how to tell male from female chicks, but all by plumage differences.
  (tags: chickens)
• HenCondo
  Stealth condo for urban chickens. Looks crowded for the hens to me, but many things about the design are very clever.
  (tags: chickens coop)

• Helmut Wimmer, 80, Painter With Planetarium for a Canvas, Dies - New York Times
  I worked with Helmut for the short time I was an intern at the planetarium. He was retiring that year and not around every day, but he was an interesting fellow when you did have the chance to sit with him for a while. I just found a print of a painting of a black hole he gave me back then.
  (tags: artists space planetarium smartfolks)

• Common fonts to all versions of Windows & Mac equivalents (Browser safe fonts) - Web design tips & tricks
  Very useful guide to fonts that you can use on web pages for both Mac and Windows users.
  (tags: fonts design webdesign typography)

• Crockpot Beef Brisket Recipe - Slow Cooker Hanukkah Beef Brisket Entrees Recipes - Beef Roast Recipes
  This came out pretty nice…would try it again.
  (tags: recipe beef brisket)

Back in prehistoric email times…say, oh, 1995 or thereabouts…many of us (well, Steve and I and at least a few others) peppered our emails with an emoticon for “grin”: <g>.

It was extraordinarily useful for avoiding miscommunication and indicating when we were were being facetious or sarcastic. And it didn’t have the cloying cuteness of the colon-parenthesis smiley face that I can’t even bring myself to type here.

Recently, I’ve started introducing <g> to people who’ve never seen it. My friend Jo made a fantastic suggestion to add <f> as a complementary “frown” (or perhaps another f-word), but let’s start simple. I’d like to issue a call for bringing back the <g>. And it even has it’s own facebook page.

Of course, the angle brackets may give web developers fits. But who cares about them anyway <g>.

Yesterday I was thinking about some books from my childhood that I might like to re-read now, and realized that they all had quite similar themes.

• The Swiss Family Robinson — we owned a copy of this and I must have read it ten times; I really wanted to be shipwrecked with an entire ship full of interesting stuff and have a complete natural history library and museum in my cave.

• My Side of the Mountain — kid runs away from home and survives in the wilds of the Catskills, even teaching himself falconry with the help of the local librarian. I really want to read it again now, but am a little worried that I’ll spoil it by reading it as an adult. The memory might be better.

• Island of the Blue Dolphins — I didn’t realize that this was based on a true story about a woman surviving by herself on an island off the coast of California, so I guess I need to read this one again, too. Devil fish!

• Robinson Crusoe — we owned a copy of this also; I’m not sure I ever got through the entire thing, but I started it several times, hoping for some of the same entertainment that Swiss Family Robinson offered. In that sense, it seemed to grow tedious as I recall.

Geoff and Nadia Lawton have done extraordinary permaculture work, and Bay Area permies have the chance to hear them speak this Thursday evening. An Evening with Permaculture Designers Geoff Lawton and Nadia Lawton is sponsored by Solstice Grove Institute, Urban Permaculture Guild and Commonvision.

Geoff Lawton might be most famous for the “Greening the Dessert” video on YouTube:

It’s a remarkable story of how a flat, salt-ridden dessert was transformed into a food-producing area using permaculture principles and some fantastic (and unexpected?) mycoremediation.

Laika loves to pick and eat the blackberries that are so abundant this time of year…

Once again, everybody’s copying Steve and Terrie. I’ll bet someone got this idea after standing outside our house some evening years ago listening to us performing the B-side of Abbey Road.

Bring your voices and be ready for a one-of-a-kind fun-filled evening. All Together Now: A Fabulous Beatles Sing-Along features local tribute band Beatlesque leading the way through some of the greatest pop songs ever written. Lyrics will be provided, so everyone can sing along, right from their seats. It’s like one of those seasonal Singa-along Messiah’s, only groovier.

I’ve always wanted to get to know draft horses better, and maybe learn how to work with them. After a lot of searching, I found a farm just down the road from us in Sebastopol where one can actually take lessons in driving draft horses. I got up the nerve to contact them and see if I could come for a visit — and they said yes!

Stone Horse Far, is a beautiful place, and I’m grateful to Stuart Schroeder and Rosalie for showing me around. Not only did I enjoy seeing the horses and hearing about how they were trained and used, but I really enjoyed meeting some like-hearted folks who share many of our interests and enthusiasm for a life in harmony with nature. And the idea of working with this enormous, friendly, sweet-smelling critters is really appealing. Here’s some photos from my visit (or jump to the set on Flickr):

Here’s an article from 2002 about the farm: Plowing Forward: At Stone Horse Farm, the tractor gathers dust.

Justin might ask, “Where is it all leading?”, and I still don’t know. But I’m certainly enjoying the trip there! I have a couple more permaculture-type field trips planned for this week, and the big Convergence this weekend — fun stuff! Oh, and this week we’re going to celebrate Fridaday, too!