It’s April now, and spring is just starting. The forsythia is blooming, always a spectacular sight. The tulips are about to bloom as well, and I look forward to the St. Luke’s sidewalk tulip extravaganza. They have about 10,000 yellow and red bulbs planted. Amy and I spent the last week of March on spring break, but it has been cold and rainy until this weekend. We started our little vacation with a drive through Canyon County looking at land – namely 20 acres with water, preferably along the Snake. The area has potential for wind and solar power generation, and it has a great growing climate. We didn’t have high hopes, being as it’s Canyon County, shithead capital of Idaho. We were not disappointed. We drove through west Ada County, which has some great farmland but is exceedingly expensive because of the sprawl overtaking everything, and along the Snake in Owyhee County to Homedale. What a dump. Although there is some potential around Caldwell, most water has to be pumped and the place reeks of right wing knuckle draggers, armed and dangerous. Tough place to live.
After that, I just laid around while Amy graded. I priced out a fireplace (too expensive) and instead designed a closet/bookshelf addition to our living room. I ordered some beautiful vertical grain fir, and it came last week. I’ve started in on the construction, so I’ll send photos when it’s complete. Meanwhile, here’s one of the living room before it all goes in.
I did a bit of hiking. I could have gone skiing, seeing as the snow was great, but don’t really have the motivation much anymore. I like hiking immensely, as does Addie. I also find it harder to drive 50 miles for a day of hiking or skiing these days. Part of it is the cost, both monetarily and ecologically, but there’s something else that I can’t put my finger on. I just don’t enjoy driving. I’d rather stay at home and listen to the neighborhood or see a movie than get in a car and drive for an hour just to hike. Am I getting old or just realizing the extravagance of the modern American lifestyle? I did, however, still manage to get out, close to town, despite it all and it was a lot of fun. I saw a great horned owl and a lot of deer. I found a pair of old traps on a chain, but left them somewhere by accident after hauling them around for a mile or two. Here are a couple of shots from southwest Ada county.
Next years house
I finished a design for next year’s house, which I have in case the 3 students who are attempting to design one fall short. I suspect they will. They only came out once, for 15 minutes, a couple of weeks ago. Here is an elevation pic. I saved it as a JPEG, and it’s small, but you should be able to get an idea. I’d save a floor plan but it’s so small that it’d be hard to see. This leads me into a topic I want to spend a little time on – digital photos.
Digital Photos
Adobe has announced that it is going to a free online version of Photoshop. I have not seen it, but it would be good news if it were true. There is no longer any excuse for anyone not to correctly size their photos. Did you know that a computer screen can only display photos at 75 pixels per inch (ppi)? A pixel is one dot of color, the number of ppi is the resolution. If you send electronic photos that are larger than 75 ppi, the file is larger than it needs to be and will take longer to load. Most cameras have various resolution settings. The problem is that if you set a camera to take photos for computer screen display, you will not be able to print them. Printing pictures requires a minimum of 150 ppi, 300 is better. What to do? I recommend the following – Take pictures at a high resolution. Save the ones you might print at that high resolution. If you are going to send some or just want them to view on your computer, re-save them at a lower (75) resolution. When you resize photos, you need to pay attention to both the resolution and the size in inches. Sizing a picture down is easy, sizing it up leads to pixelation and poor image quality. How’s that for the worlds shortest photo lesson?
Back to the house. We finished trimming this week and will move onto the bamboo floor soon, after it’s been painted. Then it’s some outside stone work, setting cabinets, and the myriad little details needed to finish. Here are a couple photos of the place as is.
Skills USA
I have waited to publish this until this weekend because I wanted to include a little about the SkillsUSA competition 3 of my students just completed. SkillsUSA is a national vocational skills organization that sponsors skills contests in all vocational fields. The carpentry competition involves bulding a floor/wall/rafter/steel stud/drywall mockup in 7 hours, all in a 10’x10’ square. All students have the same tools. There are judges from industry and the unions looking over everything and scoring at the end. The winner is eligible to compete nationally in June. It’s really quite an event, and the kids who compete get a lot out if it, I think. I haven’t heard if my students won, but I suspect that a kid from Kimberly won, since he was done first and it looked pretty good.
This picture shows the carpentry students in the foreground and the cabinetry students in the background.
There you have it. Looking forward to being 43 soon. Amy and I hope to take the day off and, wait for it, go hiking. Probably drive for an hour first. What a hypocrite. Later, Scott
P.S. – I couldn’t leave without passing on the cool link Rachel sent around, seeing as how it is a critique of Empire - Howard Zinn’s animated history of the American version. Awesome. http://www.tomdispatch.com/p/zinn
