Apocalyptic Homesteading (Day 1117)
Hello Everyone!
A sluggish start, Back at it again, Displacing the fretting, Avoiding the windchill & Bug patrol at the chicken coop!
Ah... the days are really flying by lately. Time seems to be getting more difficult to keep track of the more that I focus on my coding projects... which I guess is a good sign of how much I enjoy the activity. It is also a very 'time consuming' activity... and one that thankfully I have had the time to devote to in such a way that I can achieve my goals.
It is kind of related but earlier this evening (about an hour after sunset) I made the file for this entry and then never started writing anything in it. Then about twenty minutes later (when my espresso was finished brewing) I was ready to dive in... but when I opened the text editor... I noticed that my computer was a bit on the sluggish side... and I realized that I had nearly filled the hard drive up with all my recent coding activities.
So technically, I was a good bit closer to starting the evening writing 'on time' than I am now... but in order to free up some hard drive space I had to do a bunch of organizing... and figure out what was 'worth keeping' and what was useless. Which yeah, pushed my starting time even further back... because of course I got sidetracked dozens of times while sorting through all the files and folders.
None of that stuff was all that big of a hassle or anything... and I was long past the point of needing to do it anyway... given just how many hours I have spent mucking about with various projects. By and large I do pretty good at keeping the folder that I am currently 'working in' uncluttered... but beyond that things sure can get messy.
Anyways, today was a bit wonky but I managed to grapple back some control over my sleep cycle by making myself fall asleep 'early' which turned out to be around four in the morning... which was at least much earlier than the previous few nights. Somehow, I even mustered the wherewithal (a mere six hours later) to wake back up again (after sleep walking to let the dogs in and out twice) so all in all... I 'mostly' got a good night's rest.
Once I was up and about for the day... most of the mental 'fog' lifted but I still felt like I was in some weird 'fugue' state... except now the bulk of my thoughts (swirling at the edge of the fugue) are centered around some abstract technical stuff... that I am unsure that I can word out. All of which is probably why it is 'swirling' there in the first place... in an effort to get my attention... or just examine it more!
Honestly, it is refreshing to have my mind filled with a bunch of technological stuff... and not either be obsessing over world events, tuning into the regional news, fretting about finances... or any number of things that stress me out... but that I do regardless. In other words it is nice to have something to 'displace' all my more worrisome (and albeit depressing) thoughts... which yeah is a massive boon for my mental well-being.
I have really been trying to pull myself up by my proverbial bootstraps over the last many months... and making these entries has played an important role in all of it. That said though, I have also been attempting to keep things more concise and do less 'tangent surfing' because of how over involved I wind up becoming.
In other words there is a big difference in spending a few hours on an entry... and spending five to six hours on just the writing portion... then have to battle through the fatigue to edit and post whatever resulting lengthy material turns out to be. So, in an effort to curb that particular cycle (and writing style) I have been trying to keep things simpler... and also making those other separate posts where I can 'distill' some of the tangents into something substantial!
All in all, things have gone well and I have kept the writing and sharing 'going' each day for long enough... to be able to say that I am truly 'back at it again' with making some kind of daily entry. At this point the days really blur together (especially in the broader timeline of days) but even on my most insecure (or anxious) days... I can look at the daily number... and tell myself 'you have done it all these days before so do not fret over it... just start by typing a single word' which yup still does the trick to get me writing!
On a different note. In yesterday's entry I had mentioned needing to go hike out into the cold to double check the water system before the freezing temperatures arrived. Well, it is always good to double check... but I had already done it correctly the first time... so I got to 'pat myself on the back' for having done so... while I made my way through the dewy night back to the warmth of the cabin.
I did not even bother to bring the water system back online today because although the forecast is not calling for a freeze... the temperature is going to hover close enough to freezing that I am not going to risk it. Mostly it is the windchill that I am concerned about with the water system. There are many places where a strong enough, cold enough and sustained enough wind... would easy freeze a component or at the bare minimum cause stuff to fracture as the water expands.
Another thing that I did not bother with today was letting the chickens out. Which was largely due to not only the cold wind (I did not want their combs to get frost burn) but also having heard a good bit of wildlife activity roaming about the woods the last few days... and I had no idea how my sleep cycle was going to turn out.
They do not seem to mind being 'cooped' up like that... and I often view it as a good way to get them to focus on any bugs living in (or visiting) the coop itself. With the way that I have the floor of the coop raised slightly less than 'knee high' off the ground... I get a good bit of chicken feed (or whatever I am feeding them) that falls out between the cracks and attracts bugs (and vermin) if the chickens do not find it first.
The hens tend to scavenge under the coop a good bit this time of the year... and in doing so they not only keep it clean... but they get the bug population reigned in from whatever 'heights' it reached during the warmer months. The only areas that they cannot easily get to... is between the laying boxes and the exterior tarps... so once in a while I drop the tarp, open the box... and let the door for it hang there (with the bugs on it) until the chickens spot them.
I more or less do the same thing with the tarps and blankets... by first shaking them out with the chickens nearby... and then letting them lay in such a way that nothing can hide on the interior side of things. Most of the time the tarps and blankets themselves do not yield many bugs... but they do often have various types of egg sacks, webs, cocoons and whatnot attached to them... which yup the chickens make quick work of when they spot them.
Alright, the hour is growing late here and I need to wrap this entry up and get on with the editing and posting portion of things. As a final note for this entry I would like to say that during today's coding foray... I managed to do the same thing with video files that I managed to do with that hive-fc-linux project that I mentioned in yesterday's entry.
It was pretty cool getting it all to work and being able to now move on to storing audio files in a similar manner. To be clear I have not begun writing anything (any files) to the Hive blockchain itself... and am not going to move on to testing that phase of things until I can add another layer of compression for smaller file sizes. Running simple small operating systems like FreeDOS that takes up eight blocks... or some very small Linux variants that only require sixty blocks... is already pretty small as far as footprints go... but I think that I can get it smaller... by applying more compression.
Well, on that note I really do need to get on with the editing! I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice time!
https://peakd.com/c/hive-114308/created
It's really cool you have something to keep your brain focussed. I've been reading far too much about world events as a way of diverting thoughts away from my father's illness (please no sympathy), which is dumbass, as I'm moving from one horror show to another. Then I get paralysed. So a lesson today when I stubbed my foot so hard on some plywood that I bled like a mofo. Time to pay attention to something important, like the garden, or meditation, or photography, or something good.
Yup!
Something good!
I am glad to hear that your coding is helping to keep your mind off of world events.
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