Drone Flyover of the Root Simple Compound

...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SplvON5R_Nk Many thanks to Steve Rowell for dropping by last week with his drone and shooting our humble compound. I cobbled together a rough cut of some of the shots that show our house and the neighborhood. Look carefully and you’ll see our chicken coop, adobe oven, the small but growing new planting in our front yard and more. Plus those 100 foot Mexican Fan Palms!...

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Meet the Amazing Sierra Newt

...was surprised to see Mr. or Ms. Newt jump up all affronted and wander off under water. He (I’m going to call him he) didn’t swim. He walked. He had no gills. He released no air bubbles. He just wandered around under water like it was no big thing. Call me naive, but for me, this was shocking. Miraculous. I had no idea these guys were aquatic. It was like seeing a human friend casually take flight and flap away. I watched him for a few minutes wit...

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Restoring the Original Black Box: Our Western Electric 534A Subset

...ere owned by the phone company, solidly built and meant to be fixed (unlike the cheap crap we buy these days) all of the adjustments to the ringer were relatively easy to make. For your listening pleasure I posted a video of the interior of our ringer box in action. This, ladies and gentlemen, is what it sounded like when the phone rang in 1920s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2VHhmKTFsQ And, yes, I will be making this available as a ringtone in...

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SolSource Review Part I: Assembly

...using the the provided Ikea-like pictographic instructions. The SolSource comes with two wrenches and no additional tools are needed. If I wanted to take the SolSource on the road for a picnic or solar tailgate party I would probably not fully disassemble it. The disc and the grill assembly come apart easily into two parts and that’s how I would stash it into my chariot to go on the road. Los Angeles’ usual June cloud cover has suddenly vanished...

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