Today was demolition day for the inside of the shed. The previous owner had housed a great many birds in there in a complicated series of hand-built cages, all containing the remains of the seed, bedding, feathers and excrement of their former inhabitants. The stench was unbelievable. I lost count of the bird boxes I pulled out, quite spectacularly, when one of them proved to be current housing for a family of mice. Each cage had to be pried out and then swept out. Luckily, the previous owner also left us a pry bar and a sledge hammer. Very handy and very satisfying to wield when things proved stubbornly attached to the wall.

Eventually, with Bob going back and forth loading up the stuff I threw out on the lawn into piles for the dump, we were rewarded with a more or less empty shed and two shed doors that actually open and close. There is much more to be done, of course, but we already have a shed we can put stuff into -- woohoo!

Posted by lynda at 08:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

When I came home from Toronto on Tuesday I was very pleased to see the tulips, primroses and assorted other spring blooms in the garden. It's an ongoing surprise here finding out what we have. But the best surprise came after sunset. The woods and marshy areas around us were alive with spring peepers. The first evening, the chorus came from the fields across the road, but by the next night, the tiny amphibians in our own back yard had taken over.

Posted by lynda at 04:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Just listened to the best session so far - Karen Gillan told the tech story of the Bar 5 cattle company, an international breeding and sales operation. You can't call this a farm, it's more of a conglomerate of farming enterprises, doing business all over the world in sales of semen, embryos, live cattle and meat. She talked about some of the challenges of using technology in a rural area, not least of which is the uncertainty and speed of internet access. At their Markdale location, she has high speed satellite service, except when the hay wagon is parked between the house and the barn.

Richard Weait spoke with passion on the magic of mapping, featuring OpenStreetMap. This free mapping software effort is just gaining a foothold in parts of Canada, but many kilometers of the UK and Europe have been mapped by volunteers tracking their neighbourhoods with GPS units. Contributors working alone or in teams upload their data to be shared by the rest of the mapping community using the open source tool. Owen Sound is still a blank -- lots of opportunities to make your mark if you're into self-made mapping.

Posted by lynda at 01:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

HICKTEch got off to a fine start this morning with Ann-Marie Collins talking about managing the digital assets at the Bruce County Museum and Cultural Centre. She noted that the museum and archives is gradually moving into the 21st century but has a backlog of about 45 years of material and objects to catalog and organize into their asset management databases. This centre needs an archivist, says Ann-Marie, herself an archive assistant, but to me she has the passion and intelligence that make her an excellent candidate for the job.

Posted by lynda at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)