Mark Rose

paul wheaton wrote:The tricky part of this is that I'm used to going to restaurants two or three times per week.  And now it is a hard zero.

Combine that with extreme food limitations and being a sub-mediocre cook (and a bucket of crazy that blocks building new skills in this space) and the food gets pretty boring.

Paul, I know how that is. I haven't been around here much because I figured out I'm allergic to most commonly eaten plants and have become almost a carnivore. My dining out options quickly dropped to almost none, except sushi. Even places like steakhouses often marinate their meat in problematic ingredients. So I cook almost all my own food, mainly eat beef and chicken (organic), and supplement with other (non-organic) meats on occasion for variety (mammals, molluscs, fish). I also had to give up eggs for a few years before successfully reintroducing them. Thankfully I have no issue with real dairy (a lot of processed dairy has garbage ingredients).

I don't know what restrictive eating you are following, but you certainly have my sympathy when it comes to a lack of flavour variety.

In my case, with meat, I cannot wait to get a barbecue going again, because some things just taste better that way. Cooking methods can alter the taste of food, so it's something to experiment with.

Not restricting myself from the foods I can eat has been helpful. If I'm craving anything off menu, I eat my favourite stuff that's on menu until I'm full even if I'm not particularly hungry. Eventually the body learns.

When I stopped eating gluten 15 years ago, it took 6 months for the wheat cravings to go away, but they did. Gluten, specifically the gliadin component, can degrade into exorphins, which are exogenous opiod peptides. Yep, gluten is basically an opiate with addictive properties. It is likely celiac disease is what lead to my becoming allergic to so many plants.

I get the frustration of "helpful" suggestions as well. Many people will suggest things like ginger for stomach problems when I have an anaphylactic reaction to it. They still mean well.

You can get through this.

My plans changed and I didn't end up in southern Alberta.

From my reading of dealing with chinooks, the trick is keeping the roots cold to prevent the trees from waking up prematurely. In other words, don't let the snow melt. Methinks the solution is thick bushes to help block the wind. As you are already setting up a wind block with pine trees, I would also consider planting blueberries in front of them. Blueberries love the acidity pine trees provide, and should help slow down the low-down winds from reaching the maples in behind.

Being in growing zone 2, and on a north-facing slope, you may not have much success with fruit trees, walnuts, or oak. I know there are some trying to grow fruit trees around Grande Prairie, and that my be your best source for seeds that will survive. Prairie Gardens farm may be able to help you out.

One idea is to use infrared heat instead of heating the whole space.

But even more clever is to have the infrared heat follow you.

I've wanted to see a video like that for years. I bet it would get tons of views on YouTube.

paul wheaton wrote:
-  another "controversial" one on Software Engineering  (not sure what we might do there; lots to say about SE, just nothing worth putting behind a paywall)

- Religion (I do have some things to say about this)

As long as you use Allman indentation and vi, what is there to talk about?

In the winter, I simply open the windows to cool it down. I never use the heat, since the surrounding units prefer it warmer than me.

In the warm months, I just accept that I'm going to spend an extra $70 on AC. That's only problematic when the building hasn't turned on the compressors (April) or has shut them off (October).

I did find one thing that greatly improved the efficiency of the AC: when they constructed my unit, they failed to properly tape some of the duct work, so cold air would recirculate inside the HVAC unit instead of being pushed out. A little bit of aluminum tape later and now the place stays much cooler.

I like the eastern sun first thing in the morning, so I don't close the blinds, but in a previous place facing west I found that blocking out the sun made an immense difference.

Another thing to consider is nearly every bit of electricity used by a device will end up as heat. If you're using AC, saving a watt saves you roughly double.

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:I think of allergies as being a dose dependent condition...

If I get a little bit of maple pollen, then no big deal. But, if I get a little bit of maple pollen, and a little bit of dust blown in from the badlands, and a bit of dust from the neighbor's mowing their lawn, and a bit of dander from my woman's dogs and cats that are allowed to sleep on the bed during the day, and a little dust from the carpets in the house, then pretty soon, all those little insults have added up to a big insult. Then there are the things that are big insults all by themselves: mowing the lawn, the yearly flowering of the cedars, a desert dust storm.

I think of allergies as also being an inflammation condition...

So if I get a little bit inflamed from drinking a glass of milk, then no big deal. But if I get a little bit inflamed from drinking milk, and a little bit from eating wheat, and a little bit from soybean oil, and a little bit from too little water, and a little bit from an artificial sweetener, then pretty soon, all those little insults have added up to a big insult. I can eat a single helping of wheat any time I want without it causing noticeable problems for me, but if I eat is routinely, I get inflamed and sick.

So by the time I combine a big insult from the things I breathe, with another big insult from the things I eat, it's pretty easy to get into trouble with allergies.

Exactly this. I used to have to stay indoors May through September during pollen season.

For me, my allergen elimination has included gluten (and oats), soy (horrendous headaches), msg (bad headaches), tartrazine (aka FD&C#5; headaches, stuffiness), and aspartame (headaches). I now never eat any of those. Ironically, Claritin contains tartrazine... so the medicine was fighting its poison.

I still have severe/anaphylactic reactions to ginger, pine, nitrile, and methacrylates, but I can now spend all the time outdoors I want. Pollen can still bother me if there's a lot of it, but my eyes no longer swell up and my nose no longer runs the moment I go outdoors. I still get stuffy on smoggy days, and if someone uses Pinesol I have to leave the building before my trachea swells shut, but day-to-day, eliminating allergens from my diet made an incredible difference.

I'm impartial to the wood, but what's missing is some green! Permies is about permaculture, which is about growies, and they're missing!

My other thought is that the forum view is cluttered and very not mobile friendly (which is also bad for SEO).

One solution that may solve both issues is to put the "best of" stuff below the left hand menu. That would declutter the forum to focus on the thread titles, reduce the minimum width needed (allowing for easier zooming on phones), and having the "best of" on the thread view will give people who come from search engines something else to click on to. Make it randomly pick best of this year or month, and then maybe only show five things to make it less overwhelming. The pictures would add the missing growies/colour and lessen the darkness of the plain wood in the thread view.

Overall, the feel is much more modern, which is nice.

Michael Cox wrote:Paul - you might also consider "outsourcing" the creating. I'm thinking much as Cassie is doing many of the dailyish emails. If you want a video on the wofatis for example you could give a bounty to one of the ants to do the shooting and editing, then publish it under your patreon. You are still responsible getting it out there and driving it forward, but are not necessarily doing all the nitty gritty.

I think this is an excellent idea.

paul wheaton wrote:The goal stuff feels a bit like an obligation. So if I were to say that if I hit $10,000 then I will build a freezer wofati, then I would worry about the obligation of building it - even if I already spent all that money on other stuff.

The goals are monthly goals. If you hit $10k/month, I think you're doing pretty awesome. They're just pledges on your part with no obligation. You don't have to have them.

On the other hand, if there was a list of projects and people listed out that they would put up $5 for a freezer wofati (with video), $10 for an 100 page ebook on hugelkultur, $1 for a youtube video about chickens, etc. Then the idea is that all those smaller amounts might add up over the years. And then there might be $10,000 waiting on me if I create a freezer wofati and make a video. So then I build the freezer wofati and make the video, and put the video up and collect the $10,000!

I like what you've done with the different "rewards" so people can indicate what they like. I don't think you should make it any more complicated than that. People like me will support you for all the awesome things you do. Just keep doing more in whatever order you want.

You should write a description for your Patreon much like you do for Kickstarters, but instead of having one goal, just showcase all the things you do with lots of links and pictures. Having an introduction video is a good idea.