When my friend got her chickens last summer, I wondered when they were likly to start laying eggs. My friend said that although they might start laying at five months or so, she thought that the short days of winter would prevent them from doing so. One of them proved her wrong last week. So far, all the eggs (nine so far) seem to come from one hen, since they are uniform in size and color.
…for the sunrise fans.
I was using markup languages for documents when html was just a gleam in Berner-Lee’s eye. I couldn’t remember when I first saw html or a browser, so I found A Little History of the World Wide Web. Odd to think that it has just been fourteen years since he coined the name World Wide Web.
I remember my first impression of html: “hmm…how limited.” (I was used to a rather fabulous markup language called Bookmaster, which was used by IBM to produce documentation.) This was when Jack first showed me a browser running on our XT machine here at home, not too long after we moved to Colorado. “Boy…this is sure going to suck up a lot of bandwidth.”
I was right on both accounts.
I am posting this via mozex, which is a hard to configure put powerful Firefox extension that allows you to choose an editor for Firefox (and Mozilla) textareas. Browser support for editing textareas is usually quite poor, so it is nice to have the ability to specify a “real” editor. This NewsForge article explains how to set it up.
I am using Quanta as my editor, since it allows me to preview pages easily.
We occasionally have a weather pattern here in Colorado where it will snow for a day or two without significant accumulation. When this happens, it is usually quite cold and not very windy. We have had this sort of weather since yesterday, and it makes for good conditions to stay inside and eat corn bread and potato soup.
The horses are NOT happy, and feel that in a well-regulated universe, the feeders would do something about it.
Another not particularly obvious feature of Firefox is the ability to use Ctrl and the plus and minus keys from the numeric keypad to make the text bigger (in the case of Ctrl-+) or smaller (in the case of Ctrl–). This is probably the feature I miss the most when using Internet Explorer, because I don’t usually even notice when I resize the text at a site. This tip only works for text, not images.
You can also use the pulldown menu View->Text Size->Increase or View->Text Size->Decrease, but the Ctrl keys are much faster.
One Firefox feature that I am starting to like a lot is the ability to type a few words in the address line at the top of the browser and having Firefox go to the most appropriate site for that combination of words. For example, typing the words “amazon joe haldeman” turns up “Forever War” by COSine 2005 guest of honor Joe Haldeman. Firefox uses the Google “get lucky” search to perform this function. And yes, typing in my name brings up Five Acres with a View. As another example, “imdb The Lion in Winter” brings up the entry at IMDB for the 1968 movie starring Peter O’Toole and Katharine Hepburn.
To get to the address line quickly and clear it, use Ctrl-L and then the delete key.
About a month ago, I exclaimed to my trainer “I can ride!” This should not have come as a surprise since we have had horses for eleven years and I had been taking lessons before that, but I was beginning to wonder.
Looking back, I stopped riding consistently enough when I came off Lily in early June. I didn’t get back on a horse for two or three weeks, and then Lily injured herself immediately thereafter. Caring for her injury and rehabilitation took up most of my horse time, and I only occasionally rode Hap or my trainer’s horse Havoc. By the time I was ready to move Lily home to exchange with Hap, I had become very unfit.
However, with Hap back at my trainer’s, I have been riding more consistently. I was rather discouraged at first, since I always felt so weak while I rode, and very stiff and sore afterward. For me, balance on a horse is a given after all these years, and the muscle memory remains, but balance and memory need some strength to back them up, and I just didn’t have it. I tried to avoid thinking about what would happen if Hap performed one of his big spooks, which involves dropping his shoulder, pivoting and trying to bolt, because I knew there would be no chance of me staying on. Fortunately, Hap has been particularly lamblike this autumn, and his biggest spook has been an occasional flinch.
Today was the last nice day before a threatening storm front, and I decided to enjoy the mild autumn day by riding bareback. I rode Hap twice this week, so I decided to ride Havoc. From the bareback point of view Havoc is a wonderful horse because he is so well-trained, but he is a big mover, which makes it a bit of a challenge. And like many Thoroughbreds, he has a back bone that puts one strongly in mind of a stegasaurus.
I rode Havoc longer than I would have predicted, feeling the my muscles stretch and relax as I rode him. Havoc thought he was getting a good deal, because on my best day with the bareback pad, I ask for less from the horse than I do on my worst day with a saddle. I refused to think about how much this is going to hurt tomorrow, because even when I am in good shape, I get really sore after I ride a horse bareback.
I’ll pay tomorrow, but I had a great time today.
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Today, Hap did something that I have only once or twice observed before in our eleven years together. While he was rolling in the sand of the arena, he rolled completely over and did the other side. He has the sharp, high withers typical of many Thoroughbreds, and I have always supposed that they get in the way of turning completely over. However, the arena was damp and very soft after the precipitation a few days ago, and Hap had picked a deep area for his roll.
Usually, I turn him loose to roll, so I don’t have to follow him around for five minutes while he picks his place, but there were people handling other horses in the arena. Hap is very particular about where he rolls. He is even slow when he is at liberty to pick a place, but seems to spend far longer when he is on a lead rope. Perhaps he enjoys leading me for a change.
At least, in his comparatively sober old age, he no longer springs up from his roll ready to buck and bolt. In his early years, he was so explosive after he rolled that I wouldn’t let him do it if there was anyone else in the arena.