And in sports news today...

From today's NYTimes:

N.F.L. Sets New Guidelines on Concussions

A new rule will bar pro football players who show major signs of head injuries from returning to games. [...]

Wait -- what?

They're just now figuring this out?

And they have to make a rule about it?

Just because you can doesn't mean you should

From Scott Berkun, on the use of animations in PowerPoint:

Animations are almost always a distraction If I’m telling a story you care about, I don’t need to animate a thing, the story animates enough. When you asked your spouse to marry you, did you need flyouts and animations? No. The content was interesting enough all on its own.

'Nuff said.

Chickens in the NYT

See, I told you -- everybody's doing it now.

In September, she began selling some of the eggs and started keeping track of her income and expenses. [...] She has taken in $457 from egg sales and spent $428, mostly on feed. That left $29 in the Mason jar where she keeps her earnings, to spend the next time she buys feed. But that accounting does not include [...] the $1,500 she spent converting the old shed in her yard to a henhouse.

Emphasis added. Welcome to the club.

What I Did on My Summer Vacation

GeoWeb trip report published here.

Building the Run

Thumb, toe, and pride having sufficiently healed, the "run" was built in late May /early June.

A few 4x4 posts were sunk in concrete to form the south (front) wall. They were capped with a spanning 4x4, on top of which some long 2x4 rafters were laid across to the rafters of the coop roof.

Our spec called for serious anti-predation measures, so the top, bottom, and sides are all covered with "hardware cloth" -- essentially a more highly evolved form of chicken wire which uses something like 10 gauge wire to for 1/2" meshing.

View of east side:

View of west side:
(Note custom Straw Bale Holding Bin in background at right.)

Architectural detail of uprights, spanning beam, rafters, and meshing:
(Yes, still a lot of trim and finish work to do on the mesh.)

Detail of door and latch to the run:

Distance view of east side - this is what the neighbors see:

Distance view of above - this is what we see from the living room:

And as a final touch, one more anti-predation measure:


Still needs some days of trim work and painting, but it's fully functional and in production use at this point. And the gals will soon be old enough to start laying, so we'll also have to get to building the nesting box to go inside the coop.