The snow has stopped falling. The sun is out. The walks and porch have been shoveled clean. It’s time for some fun in the snow – as I have often said, "I hate snow but Zen loves it so much, I tolerate it." I can add to that, that it makes for a rare photo opportunity for this neck of the woods …

snow on the holly ………………. and in stereo

it’s not the Christmas card, but it is real

Zen really does enjoy the snow !

This bread used the basic strait dough method I previously described. The recipe diverges from the herb bread by first omitting the 2 tablespoons of herbs and adding about 4-6 table spoons of sun dried tomatoes diced very fine with about 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil (or in my case, I just threw those together in a food processor and pulsed until they were chopped enough). The baking time was very close to 40 minutes at 375 on a cast iron griddle pan.

Thanks to Nicole for the suggestion of drying all the extra grape tomatoes that were left over this season!

My eye doctor told me that one day, my near sightedness would have it’s up-side. She was referring to the aging process of the human eye and that at some point (when many people are considering bifocals) my nearsightedness would start to shift. It’s started.

While this could be a bummer, I’ve found a distinct opportunity – stereoscopy.

It turns out that the iPod is a great platform for viewing stereo images because of its horizontal size when in landscape mode. For a very nearsighted person, just take off your glasses, let your eyes relax, and you will be able to focus on the image without converging your eye’s sight lines. I use a free app called ColorIris for finding images and viewing them on the full screen.

Here are some good examples that work well on the iPhone (and iPod Touch) … architecture, woman with mirrors, Edison, ISU, path in the woods, boy and the rooster.

image credit: The grammar of graphics (L. Wilkinson)

What’s with all the cryptic Facebook posts and tweets ?! The short answer is that the farmhouse is finally getting it’s large spiral staircase.

The staircase arrived in pieces back in May – primarily because a deal is a deal and I had to order it back in February and I could not delay delivery any longer. So, it has sat on a pallet in the workshop for 6 months … all 1100 lbs of it !

The entire process started with finding an automotive restoration shop to find where they get their shop supplies. As luck would have it, I found a hot rod shop that branched out to sell the paints they used on their projects.

They matched the color chip I brought in and worked with me for the other supplies – white primer, catalyst, hardener, strainers, mixing cups, bonding agent, and other incidental supplies.

For the uninitiated, let’s just say a gallon of automotive paint runs about $100 and by the time you add a gallon of primer and the necessary additives, the materials swelled past $350. To be honest, that’s actually a pretty good deal but it’s still a bit of sticker shock when you have not done it for a while.

I planned to start over my end-of-year holiday break. But I got sick, then the weather turned too cold to paint, then I had business travel. Finally, this week I was home, healthy, and warm (well, warm enough).

I prep over my lunch break and shoot primer just before dinner. I have just enough time to shoot the finish color and let it harden before the shop drops below the safe temperature.

Another note for the uninitiated, these paint systems have "windows" of time between coats. Where as your typical house paint has minimum drying times, automotive epoxies and enamels have maximum times. If you cant get the finish color over the primer before the allotted time, you have to shoot primer again to reset the clock.

Anyway, over the past few evenings, I’ve managed all of the risers and the top platform along with the base plate, top cap, and one section of the top rail. I still have the 270 degree radius perimeter rail at the top of the stairs, all 52 balusters, and the hand rail. … the fun never ends here on the Salmon Farm !

UPDATE: In a prior post I mentioned this blog uses WordPress with the WPTouch plugin for great mobile device support (iPhone & Touch, Blackberry, Android, etc.) and the WP-Hashcash anti-spam plugin.

Things were not as "plug-and-play" as I would like. Well, with the 1.9.7.7 update to WPTouch, life is much happier.

Now, if you simply turn off AJAX comments in WPTouch, everything plays well together. No code changes required !

Thanks BraveNewCode ! … look for a little something in your beer fund