I have waited a long time to get to this point, and at the same time a bit wary, not knowing what to say, though from experience I know that I will say something. It is a good point to be at because it means that a lot has been done; it is all behind me and this newsletter will wrap it up. Then I can lay back, relax and do nothing – until the next cycle begins when I return to Joshua Tree, California, which will be about 3 weeks from now.

As usual, many things have occurred in the past year and some I have extensively documented on the web site – extensive in their creation, which you don't see, but hopefully simple, relatively short and casual in their viewing, which is where you come in, along with anybody else that needs to know about those particular subjects in the future as Google and the others make that info available to those who seek this information. They are:

1. A Gallery of photos that I find interesting;
2. The Grey Water Pond that automatically waters our plants; waste not; want not;
3. The various water sources and how they were captured and directed to the pond;
4. The new Plants, in addition to last year's Eucalyptus that is dying and rebirthing, and other plants that are being eaten by evil mammals;
5. A Better Bedroom, relighted and partially repainted, and with new construction that makes room for a brand new real bed;
6. A pair of network cameras that allow me to spend the rest of the year watching everything.

There is much I don't mention in this journal because they are covered in those articles.

I generally return from Joshua Tree to our home on the East coast in May, the day before Eileen's birthday, by executive order.


Taxing:
Completing our taxes is the first order of business because I cannot really think straight until that is done. I had begun working on them casually on February 15 when I purchased and downloaded TurboTax 2010. By March 10, I had received all the 1090's and other IRS forms and was working hard and heavy on the process. However, at some point days or weeks down the line I had to stop because I was missing essential details needed to complete Eileen's Twin Gables Schedule C. I have learned over the years that it will be nearly impossible to complete the taxes by April 15, so I automatically apply for the Federal and State extensions of time. I have already paid the quarterly estimates and I almost always get refunds, so no hurry.

As you may have noticed, that was written in the first person singular. The second person singular pays no taxes – None! Zip! Nada! Somehow, that got covered in my quarterly estimates, but then the refunds go straight into my bank account. She does begrudgingly supply me with most of her financial info, and in fact it took a lot of years to get to where that could occur throughout the year for regular entry into Quicken without too much of a hassle. She is a very private person. She still has not completely mastered the skill of setting aside each and every receipt, but she is getting better at it. Thank God those plastic bags don't get thrown out, since she will need them in her shop. There have been times where I have had to pull them out of their storage bins and dig through them for the missing receipts – and I absolutely never pass by trash baskets without glancing down into them.

Some call me obsessive. I am not obsessive; I just need the books to balance – to the penny. And, we all know that one day Uncle Sam is probably going to come around and demand to see those receipts sometime within the succeeding 7 years. She may be able to feign ignorance and get away with it – good looking woman can do that – but I don't think that would work for me. I completed the taxes on May 28, about 2½ weeks after my return from Joshua Tree.

On June 2, I went to work on this year's web site. That means taking each project that I have worked on in Joshua Tree and describing it in detail, along with enough pictures to show how it was done, mistakes and all.


Insulating Ordeal:
One reason I do this is because I forget how it was done. There have been times when I have come back to something years or just months later, needing to know how I did it.

For instance, at our east coast home during the summer of 2010 I designed and built a somewhat complicated insulating block for our cottage crawlspace entry, though simple to install if you know how. It is made of 3 layers of 2" thick foam insulation sandwiched between sheets of plywood and glued together into 2 blocks which are then bolted to each other. That was mistake #1. I had begun gluing them together with generous applications of contact cement. When I picked that block up later on, it fell apart, which is when I discovered deep caverns in the foam where I had applied the cement. Then I ran a proper research online and learned about Loctite's PL Premium Polyurethane Construction Adhesive. That worked.

Basically, the blocks are assembled within the crawlspace opening such that they pull together, tight against the inside concrete wall, and lock into place. The trick is getting the top of the inner unit to fit up into the narrow gap between the pipes and the wall, without itself breaking. I had puzzled over various ideas for a number of years until this one kind of assembled itself.

Before I came along, there was no insulation there; just the wooden crawlspace door. Eileen would tell the tenant to leave the water dripping on freezing nights and hit the pipes under the kitchen sink with a blow dryer if the water stopped flowing.

In 1996 I began stacking a number of thick fiberglass batts on top of each other inside the wall around the opening, pushing them up into the pipes, screwing the door tight and hoping for the best. As they sat there absorbing moisture and dirt, they would settle, forming an air gap here and there so that some section of pipe would inevitably become exposed. The cottage still proved to be a bit drafty in the dead of winter. Some tenants would secretly wrap the floor vents with plastic bags, losing the ventilation required for the floor furnace to function properly, and thereby inviting mold. Each Spring I would reach under and carefully move the batts out of the way, one at a time, opening it up to the fresh air, and then open the shutoff valve to the outside faucet.

In 2001, I attached a pair of electrical heat tapes to the endangered pipes, which immediately removed the risk of their freezing. However, I first had to install an electrical outlet to plug them into. This turned out to be an old 2-wire system with no 3rd wire to properly ground the tapes. I connected 2 wires of a new line to the existing system and clamped the 3rd wire to a section of cleaned pipe which will serve as an excellent ground. The latter was actually done in the attic so that I could first drop a 3&45;wire line down to a new kitchen outlet for microwave and computer use, and then down to the heat tape outlet in the crawlspace.

In 2004 I replaced the rotted wood around the crawlspace entry with a new frame of solid pressure treated wood and blew foam into all of the gaps and holes around it and everywhere else.

This new method of assembling blocks of solid foam is much easier and cleaner to work with than stacked batts. It is certainly faster and works better. Best of all, I don't have to take an immediate shower to wash off and out the dust, mold and fiberglass particles that are covering my body and filling my lungs.

By the following spring I was totally unable to recall which butterfly nut or which hook to remove first, or whether to push the unit in or pull it out. Logically, it appeared as though I should undo the nuts and push it inward. This was dead wrong. Thank God I had the sense to stop what I was doing and go back to my computer to study the pics I had taken when I installed it.

That was another thing I worked on before I got to this newsletter/journal. I processed and printed the 12 pictures that show how it is done, for binding and hanging inside the door to the crawlspace. I then used them to create another web page for future reference by me or anybody else that needs to know.

The above is kind of out of place since it is not about Joshua Tree. It began as a single small paragraph to explain why I need these web page reminders. It expanded to nearly 8 hours of research through old photos and expense records and retyping as I pulled the info together and attempted to get it right, for the record. At some point I will probably copy it over to the Cape web page that pictorially depicts assembly of the insulation unit. I envy those who clearly remember things as they really occurred. I do not have that gift; never have.


The Subjects That Fill The Continuum:
These subject specific web pages can be very useful to me, mine, and a whole world full of others. The article I wrote in 2002 about using my cell phone to connect my computer to the internet has received 3,668 visitors to date. The solar collection that I put together in 2008 will top that in a while. Others have received very few visitors, primarily because very few people have typed the relative terms into their search engines.

Here's the general layout, or tree, of our entire web site and the Joshua Tree branch:

1. The main home page with links to everything we have created: Joshua Tree, Cape Cod, family pages, jobs, USMC, etc.. There are over 400 of those.
       2. The current Joshua Tree page with links to the various subjects selected for the most recent year. There are 10 of these Joshua Tree pages to date (2010).
               3. A subject page with a series of side by side images that tell the story, possibly with text. This year there are 5 subjects, plus this Journal and the Gallery.
                       4. A collection of full screen image pages that link back to the subject page and to each other. This year there are a total of 247 image pages.

After doing the Gallery page, I dove into the first and most compelling subject: Page 1 of the 4 part Grey Water Pond series.

Each subject matter begins with a careful selection and arrangement of the photos that tell the story. Then each photo is processed in Photoshop, with 2 enhanced copies saved for use by the web page, one full screen stand–alone image and one small image for side by side display within the story. A click on the small image will open up the large one. For each of the full screen images, a web page is created.

There were a total of 89 photos processed for The Pond story, so 89 web pages were created to display them, each with arrows that take one to the previous or the next image page, and a third arrow that takes one back to the home page of the smaller side by side images. Each image page gets a descriptive title that the search engine spiders will discover and parse into meaningful words and phrases. So they have to be meaningful.

It is a very repetitive, tedious and time–consuming endeavor and it has to be done right. Invariably some arrow somewhere will point the wrong way so all of these have to be carefully reviewed. Also, the titles always need a second look to make sure that they make sense.

Then the home page is created and if it is too large, it will be broken up into smaller pages linked to each other by additional buttons, as I did in this Journal.

When I began doing this 10 years ago, it could take me weeks or even a month just to do one subject's web page. By now I have worked out methods that get a big job like the above down to about 5 or 6 intensive days, give or take. A small job, maybe 3 days.

Keep in mind that typing and editing the text itself, like the document in front of you, can take a day or it can take weeks. Then another day or 3 to add live links and insert live images within the text, if not side by side.

The standard web page for an average subject might require the following approximations:

By "day", I mean all morning, evening and half the night. In the afternoon I nap about 2 hours and then work until dinner at preserving our home (painting the trim, stripping a floor to its 200 year old original, installing a skylight, covering or uncovering the pool for the season, transplanting volunteer trees away from the foundation to where they can be useful, rebuilding the chicken house roof and frame, etc.). After dinner I usually watch the small TV on my desk as I continue with my computer project. I really do enjoy watching such shows as Hawaii Five-O, the NCIS's and Charley Rose. During the ads, I mute and type. At about 1 or 2 AM, I sleep another 5 or 6 hours. In Joshua Tree, it works about the same, except there is no TV; I read some good books instead. Eileen and I interact throughout all of this, by one means or another.

By the time that I had completed Page 1 of The Pond story, it began to dawn on me that there could be a better way. It might be possible to automate the repetitive stuff.

For much of my life, I was a computer programmer. I loved programming. My last job was with The Emotion Mining Company, an innovative marketing firm in Wellesley, MA. The programming aspect of that 8 year contract was successfully completed in 1994, though I continued to service the software and process its data for another 6 years. I still own a small part of that company. At the same time I began private tutoring. During the latter 4 of those years, using Microsoft Access and Excel, I developed a membership database for The Heritage Plantation, now known as Heritage Museums And Gardens. I also began creating professional web sites which included setting one client up on Amazon and eBay, though they ultimately went under during the recent recession. In 2010 I stopped advertising.

Since 1994, I have noticed that the advances in programming languages were leaving my knowledge of the art buried deep in the dust of the past. I was afraid that I would never have the opportunity to experience that deep quiet excitement of a working creation again. Then, in June of this year, I began to rethink this.

A search online led me to a programming package called AutoHotkey, a sophisticated system that does far more than its name implies. I spent the next 2 months simultaneously learning this program and creating the software that now automates the entire web page creation aspect of this endeavor.

Now let's get real here. This is a very top level relatively simple package that does not even come close to the complexities of the C++ language that I used in the `90s, nor the lower level assembly languages and others that I programmed with from the late `60s through the `80s. However, it does allow me to design and create software that does what I want it to do. In the beginning, I named it "Parse". As it turned out, the end product does not really parse anything; in fact it kind of does the reverse, but I like the name.

After the image selection and Photoshopping are complete, I run my new software. Parse opens a new window in the center of the screen containing a menu of 6 steps. These steps take me through the entire web page creation process and leave me with a display of the final web page. This final page I can then fine–tune and/or rearrange, as needed, before I upload the whole batch to the web site. If no text needed to be typed in, the entire web page creation would take a matter of minutes.

First it allows me to type the web page titles in one place, where I can see (revise and copy) them relative to each other, and it shows me the relative image as I type. That can take a few casual hours. The multiple web page creation that took me 1 to 3 days (including titles) now takes me another 30 seconds, give or take. The home page creation then takes less than an hour, plus the time it takes to type the text, if any, and then captions, or none, for each of the small images on the home page.

One of the beauties of this is that there is no time wasted testing all of the interrelationships for the inevitable mistakes; the software gets it right the first time. Not so good is that it kind of makes them all look the same, though it does allow specification of background and text color on the home page. Next year, I will probably revisit the software and add further options. On the other hand, the story is what matters. Visitors sent to a specific page by the search engines probably won't care.


IP Cameras And Videos:
The Eucalyptus Tree that I described in detail last year died. My cables somehow managed to slip down the trunk bending the restraining branches downward until they reached near bottom. In heavy winds from different directions the tree bent one way, then the opposite way, then in the third direction it snapped. Attempts to mend the tree ultimately failed. However, it is sending up a whole new batch of saplings from the base and when I return, I will thin them down to one strong replacement.

I know this because I have been watching everything on my two IP cameras.

All of this is detailed on this year's Joshua Tree web page, so feel free to go there, look around, and let me know what you think.

BTW, I have discovered YouTube and have placed a few mediocre slide shows and videos there. Also Facebook. I spent a lot of years ignoring video cameras because I knew they could grab me, and I have enough going on. Unfortunately, the digital cameras that live in my back pocket now have a video function and from being in my pocket the dials get turned now and then so that when I think I am snapping a picture, I discover that I am creating a video. Enough said, except that it has not really grabbed me the way I thought it would.

I have not made too many videos worth keeping and have not really tried too hard. My first real video, of a spontaneous waterfall at our place, I put on my Facebook page.

I like pics that stay still so that I can look at them, think about them, and see all that they have to say. Things that keep moving disturb the heck out of me, especially those web sites that subject you to distracting and annoying things that move around when you are trying to read something. I stay away from those places. When I do watch a video on purpose, I give it my full attention, and then leave and probably never go back.

The videos that I put on YouTube were created by my IP cameras capturing a night-time mouse on my desk and another of a Lynx family getting a drink at our pond.

Also, somebody's cat, or a stray. It was one of the first nighttime captures that occurred after I put that camera up. He visited a couple times while I was asleep inside. I was concerned; coyote bait. I grabbed a couple of snapshots from the recordings and emailed them around to various neighbors and Eileen, back east by then. Nobody knew the cat, but they all gave me my instructions. I said NO; absolutely not; if you feed it, it will adopt you. They reiterated their instructions and one promised that she would care for the cat after I depart for the summer. I went to the nearest convenience store, bought 2 cans of cat food, dumped one into Molly's bowl and set it out on the deck. It sat there for about a week until I threw it away. I never saw the cat again.