It all started back on 5/4/08 when I received the following email:

“Hello Rob,I stole your idea and took it on one stage… hope you like it!  Check out Sid, he’s just doing his job… that’s all!Cheers for the inspiration”Attached was the following video:

I was blown away at the design!   I promptly asked for more a few picture of the mechanism which I received (click thumbnail for larger image):

I also received a little more info:  “I used some old drawer runners for the carriage to slide smoothly and the spinning crank bit is an old component from some office furniture, I think it is a bracket that you bolt a leg onto and then screwed the plate onto the underside of a table/desk top.  Quite good as it has a “Hex” shape recess to take an M10 bolt, so the shaft can’t wear out and start spinning around.”

My only question / suggestion to this amazing design was, “Any thoughts on how to make this so you don’t have to dump out the contents?   I’ve wondered if a gravity fed system with an agitator would work.”

The reply came: “You were so right about the - having to stop every 4 shovels to take out the stones!  A radical free think was required this morning and now Sid sieves, sorts and spits without the need to stop… ever!  I end up with rocks over 1 inch in the barrow and stones between 1/2 - 1 inch in the blue box which I recycle to create the walking areas between the raised beds!”

Here’s an updated video:

WOW, no more shoveling. But it got even better with the next design that did 3 individual sortings at once!!!:

Well, just when I thought I had seen it all, the design got even better:

Just amazing!!!    This beautiful contraption makes my little manual compost sifter look like a couple of dumb boards nailed together.

If you have any comments on this design or would like to share your own version please comment below!

A month ago I discovered my niece has 7 sheep and she needs to get rid of a couple.  I contacted the owner of the property behind our place and the said we were welcome to try out sheep weed abatement, but if the neighbors complained we’d have to get rid of them.

So, here are the new editions to our urban farm:

St. Croix Sheep: Maggie (dark brown) and her son Joey and Leo in the back

We had to separate Maggie from one of her other children and she’s not happy about it.  Her bleating for her other son is not making the neighbors happy (we live in a pretty urban area… there just happens to be an empty lot here) and we’re hoping she’ll calm down soon.

Here’s the “pre sheep” lot (click for larger version)

I’ll continue to take pictures as things progress… that is assuming the neighbors don’t call the animal cops on us.

Anybody bets on how long it will take these sheep to clear the weeds in the 1.5 acre lot?

Basically my idea is to create a simple system that is a “safety net” in case we don’t remember to lock our girls in at night.  I have no problems letting the girls out in the morning, but I want to ensure they are closed up safe in the evening.   I learned my lesson the hard way one night when I got home late from a party and a coon had killed my favorite hen.

Rest In Peace Grey Chicken!

Some have commented ”What if all the girls don’t get in the coop in time, or get caught in the guillotine door as it closes?”   My response: I don’t think I’ve ever found my girls outside of the coop when it is dark.   For my auto coop door I’d set the timer to go off an hour after dark to ensure they are all in.  Remember, my design is more of a fail-safe than a system to 100% rely on, I don’t know if any auto system is.

I’m always worried that I’ll forget to lock up the girls, this auto close system at least give me some insurance just in case we forget.   If it works really well then you only need to check in occasionally to verify the girls are always getting in and that the door is closing properly and at the right time.

In my opinion, I’d rather risk loosing one hen that didn’t get into the coop in time instead of loosing all my girls because I forgot to lock them up.

The Design:

My first auto coop door design called for an electromagnet holding the door open.  At night I’d cut the power and the door would fall.  I found problems very quickly with this design, mostly heat, energy loss, etc.   I then moved to a different electromagnet, a type of ”pull solenoid” to pull a pin to release the door.   There were problems with that design too, it required too much power to move a solenoid strong enough to pull a pin.

So far, the best thing I’ve played with is a car lock actuator I bought on ebay ($11 shipped for two).   My basic design is simple,  I’m thinking about using only three parts:

1. A $5 wall adapter
2. A $5 lamp timer
3. A $5 car lock actuator

Below is a sketch of the design.   Here is how it works:

At night the timer hits the pre-set ”on” time and sends power through the adapter and turns on the actuator
The actuator pulls a pin which releases the coop door
The door falls and covers up the coop access
The “door latch” (in red) is an “L” shaped piece of metal with a pin in the top which allows it to swing.  Once the door passes the bottom of the latch it swings to the right (gravity wants to center the metal) and the latch locks the door into place.

In the morning I simply move the latch to the left, raise the door, and hook the pin.

My biggest problem with this design is this:

The shortest amount of time I can set on this type of timer is 30 minutes.  This would mean the actuator would be trying to “run” for the whole 30 minutes and would probably burn out the tiny geared motor.  The resolutions to this could be:

• A digital lamp timer that allows you to set much smaller increments of time.  I think as low as 1 minute of “on”.
• Create a switch activated by the door, so either it powers the actuator when the door is up, or cuts power to the actuator when it falls.

I should also mention that my situation is a bit different than most because my girls have a small run they can access during the day.  The coop door I’ll be opening is actually the door that goes from this small chicken run out to the open backyard.  Opening the door to “the great outside” is the one I want to automatically close.

So, what do you think of this design?  What would you add or change?   I’d love some feedback, especially from the engineering / tinkering types that read this website!!!

Update, 5/7/06:   Alison sent me some great pics of her simple but effective technique (click for larger)

I needed a process that would help me sleep peacefully at night.  As mentioned twice before on this site I’m pretty diligent about computer backups.  In my opinion it is exponentially important to backup the constantly changing information on my sites.  Just a single day’s loss of data could be a huge problem.  For example, on one of my sites, http://www.backyardchickens.com/ there are about 20 new members signing up per day and members are posting about 1,200 new posts per day.  Imagine loosing a week or a month’s worth of members and posts!!!

My Database Backup Process & Software:

1. After trying a few different MySQL backup scripts I found a gem hidden within a blog.  Ameir’s MySQL Backup to FTP and Email script works flawlessly and does everything I need.
2. I have the script setup to run every morning around 3:00 AM EST to do a full backup of about 7 MySQL Databases.
3. The last 3 days worth of backups are kept on one of my secure folders on the server.
4. Each day’s backup is also sent to a completely different web host and server in a different state.
5. Each day I synchronize my desktop computer with this second web host server and download each days backup files.
6. Every month I burn all the backups to a DVD and put them into a fire safe.

 If you’ve been counting that is 3-5 copies of my databases that are backed up in different locations throughout the US.  If you count the daily backups my hosting company provides that bumps the number up to about 7 copies of each day’s DB backups!

Database Backup - Only Half The Battle: 

Well, the process above sounds very impressive, but about a year ago I made an almost fatal mistake.  Learn from my experience and know that your backups are only as reliable as the last time you attempted to restore one of the backups.  

Prior to using Ameir’s MySQL Backup to FTP and Email script I was using an application that had been working fine for me for the previous 2 years.  I hadn’t needed a DB restore for about 10 months when I had someone come in and hack one of my forums.   I attempted to restore my most recent DB backup file and got errors.   I tried to restore one that was 2 days old… same errors.   After trying 2 more backup files I gave up and called my server admin to have them restore their backup… phew!   After this fire drill I discovered that my backup script has stopped working about 4 months prior!!!   I don’t know if it was a change in my hosting environment, the size of the DB’s or some other odd problem, but that’s when I abandoned that application for something new.   Since then I’ve been using Ameir’s script without fail.   BUT, the moral of this story:

1. Backup soon and backup often
2. Frequently try to restore your DB backups to ensure all your hard work and preparation is paying off.

• Adding gutters to the house
• Plugging holes in the wall with hydraulic cement
• Using 4″ irrigation draining pipes to pull the water as far from the house as possible
• Cleaning up existing irrigation drains and water paths to make a clean exit for the water
• Making some small changes to the grade of the landscape to encourage water away from the house
• Addition of a large sump pit and pump to the basement.

Last year I was unable to fully test the combination of all my efforts because it was a really dry year… well, California (specifically the Bay Area) got slammed over the past 48 hours by one of the worst storms in the last 10 years.

First thing I did when I got home from work was head down into the basement to survey the damage and take some pictures.  Here is what I found (click thumbnail for larger image):

When I got down there I noticed that even though the floor was a little wet, it wasn’t flooded (thank goodness).  I then noticed that the pit was about half full of water and that the water was relatively clear and not completely muddy like it was in the past.  I attribute this to the filter fabric and then gravel I put in around the pit.

Next I noticed where the water was coming from.   On the west side of the basement where I had chiseled out some cracks I never got around to plugging any of them.  In the picture below you can see why the floor is wet in places.  The water is coming through some cracks (about 4 feet high), then running down the wall, then travelling in a “ditch” along the side of the wall and onto the floor.   My thought all along was if I couldn’t plug all the holes adequately I could just channel all the water along the perimeter and into the sump pit:

This is the best picture of all.  This section of the basement was by far the worst.  Water was POURING through the walls and I’ve even got a video of water pouring over the top of the walls.  Well, click on the image below to check out how dry this portion of the basement is:

Things I still need to do:

1. Plug the holes in the west wall.  There are still holes / cracks where the foundation meets the wall, but I’m hoping those are minor
2. Cut a hole in the cap of the pit basin to accommodate the pipe from the pit
3. Finish the plumbing from the pit to the pipe in the wall
4. Pour cement around the outside of the sump pit to clean up the rough edges
5. Continuously monitor for new leaks and plug them
6. Add an emergency water level alarm that will notify me if the sump pit fails
7. Continue to change the grade outside of the basement to take even more water away from the perimeter
8. Possibly adding french drains around the perimeter of the house to remove even more water

I’m really excited about how things have been progressing.  I’d actually like to see the torrential floods continue so I can really put these changes to the test.

One item that is still puzzling me is the whole question around the “water table” around the basement.  My dad never wanted a real pit dug into the floor of the basement because he was worried that once we had one that the water would just come in quicker and we’d be constantly pumping out water until we lowered the local water table.   I’m not totally sure what to be looking for, but so far it hasn’t seemed like the pump is constantly on.

If you know about water tables or have any thoughts / comments on the above please add your comments below!

1. Install a 400 GB SATA drive I got from the Staples ”Black Friday” sale ($59 after rebate)
2. Partition the drive into 2 partitions, one NTFS and one FAT32 (seems easier to work with Ghost using a FAT32 drive).
3. Installed Windows XP onto the NTFS partition of the new drive.
4. Create a full Ghost Image of the brand new XP install AND another Image of the original hard drive from DELL with the Vista OS (just in case I ever want to give Vista a try).
5. Wipe Vista off the original hard drive giving me another 320 GB of storage.

Well, my plan came to a screeching halt at step 4 when my Version of Ghost (which I’ve been using since 1999) kept freezing at the intro screen.  I couldn’t figure out if it was a problem with the SATA drive or something else with the new system… bottom line:  Ghost wouldn’t work. 

What to do, what to do…  I had the choice to try a new version of Ghost or a different solution all together.   I’ve been speaking with my brother and reading some articles on the new versions of Ghost and I wasn’t too impressed.  To the Internet I went and searched for the term “alternatives to ghost” and found a GREAT resource: http://ghost.radified.com/ghost_alternatives.htm.  This is where I found the $19 program “Image For Dos” that offered a free trial.   Well, I loaded it up and it worked like a charm!  I was able to fully backup AND restore my whole hard drive partition data.

Being all about simplicity I decided to try to find a way to automate my backup process.  Here’s what I did:

1. Created a bootable CD using a modified Autoexec.bat file that would automatically run the batch file below on my FAT32 drive (c:/)
2. Used the Batch File Sample for Maintaining a Rotating Backup designed by “Image For Dos” -  This runs the backup script automatically and rotates the backups through the letters A, B, C then back to A.  I edited the script so that it will go through the whole alphabet before it overwrites A again.

So, all I have to do is pop the bootable CD into my computer, reboot, go get some ice cream and by the time I’m back there is a shinny new backup image file waiting for me.

In my original backup procedures article I mentioned that I try to do monthly Images of my hard drive and then use an application to do automated weekly backups of all my important documents and email.   I’ve moved from using “backer” as my synchronizing application to a really great application called SyncBackSE.  I use SyncBackSE to automatically do the following:

Backup all my important files and email to another hard drive / partition

1. Synchronize all the images (and we have a lot) between my computer and my wife’s computer.  This allows both of us to edit the pictures and provides a backup of all our important stuff in case one PC / hard drive fails.
2. Download the daily database files from my websites to my local computer
3. Upload about five VERY important documents (financial info, passwords, etc.) to a secure server that I can access from any PC.
4. Synchronize all my files, pictures, backups to an external hard drive.  This is great because only edited files are changed or added.

Well, I’m pretty happy about how simple and clean my new backup process is.  If you have any comments or suggestions on the applications or the process I’m using please comment below.

Here’s how it plays out about every 6 months:

1) I get tired of creating pages in Dreamweaver and then shooting everything over to the server.
2) I start researching CMS’s (back in the day when I first did this the big ones were Xoops and PhpNuke)
3) I find and install one I think I like
4) I decide it is more hassle than it’s worth (keeping it updated, hacker safe, etc.)

Well, over the past year I’ve been becoming more and more drawn to wards CMS’s for different reasons than pure functionality / tools for me, the publisher. Most of the new reasons have to do with 3 relatively new points of consideration:

1) Blog based systems (see WordPress): SE’s LOVE blogs
2) RSS: It would be great to have readers subscribe to new posts on my site. The old school way of doing this was using a newsletter to tell people there are new articles… what a pain.
3) Comments: I’d love to enable my visitors to add comments to the stuff posted.

Found myself asking the following:

“Do I finally take the big plunge and go all out CMS? Convert all my pages and copy all the data into individual blog posts?

If yes, then which system do I use? Here are my two main contenders: Drupal & WordPress (I know, WP is not a traditional CMS, but you get the point).

For the most part I’m 85% converted to using WordPress. It’s clean, user friendly, has a great community with tons of plugins, SE’s love it, etc. My main problem. I just don’t like the chronologically sorted post structure of Blogs. I’m just not totally sold that a blog format matches my hobby site. This could just be legacy thinking.”

Well, after a few months of going back and forth I decided the pros outweigh the cons.  I paid someone to help me move every page, one at a time into WordPress.  There are still quite a few bugs and kinks to work out, but my main questions / issues were resolved. 

The biggest issue: keeping existing PageRank and back links to the pages without having to create 100 redirects.  WordPress allowed me to use “Custom Permalinks” to have all my posts look like php pages.  Naming the post the same as the file name resulted in a perfect (90% of the time) match up between the old file url and the new blog post url.

This is a refill method suggested by our forum member pharmacist.  I haven’t had a chance to test this method yet, but it does look interesting!   NOTE: This has only been tested with refilling Canon OEM Canon cartridges.  I’m of course concerned about ink leaking out and/or air leaking in.   I’m also wondering if this only works with carts that have a specific design and/or specific type of lower sponge.  Canon carts have a tight sponge where some of the non OEM carts have a very loose / porous sponge.

Below are pharmacist’s comments and images regarding this method:

“It really works great and I already refilled my PM cartridge for the 6^th time now (the cartridge you are seeing on the pictures I made). So far: not a single drop of ink is coming out of the refill hole (maybe some staining on the plastic back of the printhead, but this is negligible). I have to say: this method is only thoroughly tested on original Canon carts (BCI-6/CLI-8).

The first time I did this I was amazed that not a single ink is coming out (I was afraid too like you !) of the refill ink: but I was concluding if ink would come out of this hole then it would be also from the ink outlet beneath it, and we all know -with sealed carts- it won’t. But I cannot guarantee it will work with aftermarket carts. I do not experience with air leaking at all when printing sudden large area’s with the same colour whatsoever. It works great with original Canon carts.”

View larger versions of the images and discuss this method on our forum here.

I took about a cubic yard of compost (yard clippings, kitchen scraps, chicken litter), screened it, and sifted it onto my lawn with a shovel and then used the back of a garden rake to distribute it evenly over a few of the areas that were brown.  I had also read that you can use 1 part compost and 1 part sand as a top dressing to help even out dipped areas in a lawn (slowly adding 1/4 - 1/2 inch of material until it evens out the dip).  Well, I have an area around my water meter that is sunk down a little and I’d like to raise it up.  I mixed the compost with some sand and spread 1/2 inch in a foot radius around the water meter.

Well, about a week and a half later I couldn’t believe my eyes.  The 1 foot radius area around the water meter has sprung to life.  The grass was lush green and had grown about 1/3 as high as the surrounding grass!  You may not be able to see it in the picture, but the transformation was extremely obvious.  Unfortunately I didn’t see the same results in the other areas of the lawn.  The only differences between the two applications were:

1. This area tends to get more water than the other areas I applied the top dressing.

2. The other areas didn’t include any sand.
3. I applied considerably more top dressing to this area (to build up / level the ground) than in the other areas.

So, now I’m here scratching my head.  What was it that caused the transformation?  I’ve discussed this with many people and it comes down to two items:

1. Water retention:  The compost / sand mixture acted as a mulch and kept the water in the soil longer. 
2. Nutrient Addition: I didn’t think compost could deposit nutrients very quickly, but a friend who spend their professional life working for the agriculture department suggested that the nitrogen in the chicken manure could have given the plants a boost.

Maybe I should try a controlled experiment and have marked sections of my lawn setup with areas such as a control section, chicken manure section, fine mulch section, etc.

Post your thoughts & comments on my gardening forum.