DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

So, I spent the entire day turning this into this. I knew I had a yard out there somewhere, buried under the weeds. It only took four hours with a “high-weed mower” to find it.

It’s not likely to rain until the Fall, and the weeds won’t grow back until next Spring, which is about when this wicked farmer tan will finally fade.

I kept the “grass” shorter last year — spent a half-day every second weekend wrestling my little suburban lawnmower up and down 30° hills and over foot-deep gopher holes. I wiped out a couple times, when my feet lost traction and I’d do a face-plant on the hill, the mower rolling backwards towards me as I fell.

By May, I’d given up; the weeds were waist-high. The mower couldn’t cope, and for that matter neither could I. I called for professional help in June, after most everything had turned brown. A landscaper sent out a crew of four. A half-day and $250 later, our yard looked great.

The drive gear on the lawnmower had expired during one of our wrestling matches, so I knew I wouldn’t be able to do any mowing this year. I was all broken up about that, you can be sure. I figured I’d just let the weeds grow until mid-summer (when everything that doesn’t get watered dies), then get them cut once by the landscaping crew. That’s apparently a pretty typical approach to lawn care around here.

The problem is, it means living with a crappy overgrown yard for the entire summer.

I finally decided to do something about it. I rented a fancy mower from the local tractor repair shop. “This thing will run through four-foot-high weeds,” exclaimed the salesperson.

Well, my yard proved to be more than a match for this mower’s admittedly prodigious power. On flat ground it might beat you in a 60-yard dash, while simultaneously chopping your grass into a fine mulch. But on my two-plus acres of weed preservation area, it managed only a brisk walk.

Otherwise, it coped admirably with the challenge, which is more than I can say for myself — four hours in the dust and sun, struggling to guide this heavy machine around trees, bushes, spigots, fences, etc., provided more workout for my shoulders than two weeks of hindu pushups. I mowed right through a couple of the shrubs, because that was easier than steering around them. In fact I took out one of the septic cleanout pipes too — an 18-inch piece of PVC sticking up from the ground. (The weeds are especially thick over the leach lines.)

I took a short hike through Golden Gate Park a few weeks ago. There is an amazing tropical garden there, filled with unfamiliar plants. Some of them look prehistoric, like the ferns with leaves five feet across.

I know almost nothing about trees, except that they always fall down on my fence, but a moment’s research indicates that the pictured trees are Australian Tree Ferns.

We continued down the path to the Lily Pond. The ducks are ubiquitous.

Here’s a neat interactive map of the gardens at the east end of Golden Gate Park.

So much for “99¢ per song.” How about a penny per megabyte? That comes to about a nickel per song… maybe $0.70 per album.

AllOfMp3.com is a Russian company that sells music in bulk. You can choose MP3, AAC (for iPod), and even FLAC in some cases. If you download at a low bitrate, you’ll pay less per song… if you download at a high bitrate (or FLAC), you’ll pay more per song but get higher quality.

The question burning in your mind, especially those of you who have not purchased a CD in three years, is of course “is it legal?” As far as I can tell, the answer is: it’s legal for them to provide the service, but it may not be legal for you to use it.

The site’s FAQ answers the first question, “Is it legally to download music from site AllOFMP3.com?”

All the materials in the MediaServices projects are available for distribution through Internet according to license # LS-3-03-79 of the Russian Multimedia and Internet Society. Under the license terms, MediaServices pays license fees for all the materials subject to the Law of the Russian Federation “On Copyright and Related Rights”. All the materials are available solely for personal use and must not be used for further distribution, resale or broadcasting.

The Terms of Service page contains this disclaimer:

You agree with the fact that you are not able to use and even to download audio and video materials from Allofmp3.com catalogue if it is in the conflict with legislation of your country.

I learned about this from a friend who was raving about it. I won’t name him here in case the RIAA comes kicking down doors. He says the hip way to do this is to pay via PayPal, so you don’t need to send your credit card info to Russia. But there’s a $10 mininum purchase, because nobody is going to make money selling 5¢ worth of music at a time.

Personally I haven’t tried the new service yet, because — this sounds dumb — I can’t come up with a 10 gigs of music I want that I don’t already own. Maybe I should organize a group music buy… get all my neighbors together, order 300 songs, then have them each write me a check for, like, $1.50.

I became fanatical about baking in 1998. I was buying flour in 50 lbs. sacks from the local bakery. I was making Pain sur Poolish three days a week.

Even though I used only a pinch at a time, I was consuming yeast like, err, Monistat. I needed to buy in bulk.

Cool bakers all over the planet rely on SAF brand yeast. It’s an “instant” yeast, which among other things means the yeast need not be hydrated in warm water prior to mixing — simply measure it dry and mix it into the flour. Also, the product is sold as a 500g vacuum-packed brick that made a really neat whooshing noise when the package is cut open.

The first place I ordered the yeast from told me it would be a year before they could ship it. A year! Their explanation: they catered to survivalists, and had a 14-month backorder due to the impending Y2K disaster. You remember Y2K — the world was supposed to end, causing a dramatic drop in the availability of leavened grain products. Apparently this vendor’s entire customer base had ordered lifetime supplies of yeast and dried beans and bottled water and so on.

Anyway, I found another place to purchase the yeast. I’ve been keeping it in the freezer, using a tiny bit at a time for focaccias and ciabattas and pizzas and the occasional sweet baguette. My 500g stash is down to about 150g — another year’s worth, for sure. I realized today that I’ve been using it for 65 months, a good four years past its official expiration.

My laptop is nearly two years old. It has held up remarkably well; the main symptom of age is the presence of scuff marks on the screen.

It’s a symptom of Titanium Powerbooks — the screen housing is so thin, it can be compressed when packed in a briefcase, forcing the screen to rub against the keyboard. Any dust on either exacerbates the abrasion.

I tried to clean the marks off with Klear Screen products. The marks were more stubborn than I was. I assumed they were permanent.

But then I discovered ScreensavRz. I was at MacWorld Expo last January, and I caught the tail end of a product demo at the RadTech booth. The vendor claimed that most screen scuffs can be polished out with their “Optex™” cloth. The polishing cloth doubles as an insert to prevent future scuffing — just fold the laptop closed around it. The cloth rides between the keyboard and screen.

Today I finally took the time to test the vendor’s claim. I wiped down the screen with the supplied alcohol swab (hey, it’s this week’s theme) then rubbed vigorously with the polishing cloth. It worked! The keycap scuffs are gone. So are six months’ worth of spatter from reading online news at breakfast.

I’m so jaded by modern marketing (overpromise, underdeliver) that I felt compelled to write about it: here’s a product that actually does what the manufacturer claims. Kudos to RadTech. It’s no surprise they had a big crowd at their booth at the Expo.