Dave de Basque

pollinator
+ Follow
since May 08, 2015
Merit badge: bb list bbv list
For More
Basque Country, Spain-43N lat-Köppen Cfb-Zone 9a-1035mm/41" rain
Apples and Likes
Apples
Total received
In last 30 days
1
Forums and Threads

Recent posts by Dave de Basque

Here is the test of the moment

When not logged in, go to https://permies.com/wiki/279979/garden-master-affiliate-info

In step 1, it will say something about logging in.  Click on the link within step 1 (do not click on the login button at the top of the page - outside of "step 1").  The link within step 1 has magic sauce that should bring you back to the affiliate thread.

The test right now is:  if you click on the link within step 1, and then follow the log in stuff, does it automatically take you back to the affiliate thread, or to the main forum page?



Took me back to the main forum page, not the aff page.

Dave de Basque wrote:

paul wheaton wrote:Gurk.  I can't make it do that.  Any hints how i might be able to reproduce this?



Try installing add-ons EFF Privacy Badger and Ghostery and see what happens.



I disabled these add-ons and still got redirected to the home page after login. No idea what might be causing that.

Anyway, I went back to the process in the other tab and got an f-code. It was easy (despite the hiccup of the redirect to the home page after login, I thought that was default behavior because it happens to me every time). So no worries from my end.

The first post says I'm logged in and shows my new f-code, yea!

paul wheaton wrote:Gurk.  I can't make it do that.  Any hints how i might be able to reproduce this?



Try installing add-ons EFF Privacy Badger and Ghostery and see what happens.

paul wheaton wrote:

That sounds like our system failed.  The "step 1" login should bring you back to that page.  

....   found the problem and i think i fixed it ...



OK, trying again to see if it’s fixed.
- Not logged in, no f-code.
- Pressed Second Test link
- Logged in
- Got redirected to Forum main page again
Second test

Here’s the scoop on my end

Mac OS 13, Firefox 138 with some privacy add-ons

Started as not logged in.

Clicked on link above, went to GMC affiliate info wiki page

Step 1: Clicked link, took me to login page

Logged in, got redirected to Forums home page in a new tab (Special wish upon a star: That after logging in, I would always be magically redirected to the page I was on before logging in.)

Try my usual trick of using the back button to navigate back to the page I was on before. Doesn’t work because it’s a new tab. Go to previous tab where the GMCAI page is and continue from there.

I do not refresh my page bacause I need another cup of coffee and I’m confused what to do next because I see (image below) -- same as before logging in. It seems I didn’t complete Step 1 when clicking on the link as I did before because it seems I should have an f-code now and I don’t, I only got logged in. So I continue in my non-coffee brain haze and click the same Step 1 link again. It opens another tab and invites me to log in again even though I am already logged in with my name at upper right.

I think some users might abandon here.

I go back to the GMCAI tab, refresh the page and Step 1 changes, asking me how I’d like to be paid.

I go back to the tab for this thread (t/279835) and refresh it too. It now says
- you do not have an f-code (no change)
- you are currently logged in (changed)

Back to GMCAI, I enter fake payment details as I don’t like the available options*. This takes me to my Ledger page. Lots of things to do there as I’m not set up as an affiliate, but I’m not sure if this is of any value. If anyone wants me to continue to see if I eventually get an f-code, let me know and I will.
(*Second wish upon a star: I would love Permies to have a Wise account and I’d take affiliate money there via easy-peasy super-fast transfer.)

Questions:
Did it work? I would say not yet. Maybe if I filled in the affiliate details it would eventually give me an f-code.
Was it super easy? No. (It was until it wasn’t, but I was making things complicated a bit on purpose to kick the tires.)

Looks like we’re very close to victory but I would say there are some loose ends to tie up maybe.
There are many choices for windbreaks, but I personally like Eastern Red Cedar, see the pic below. It grows really dense almost ground to top and is of course evergreen. The pic is from a site I hadn't come across before, Windbreak Trees. It seems like a really useful site regarding how to design and plant etc., and of course, they're glad to sell you the trees. White pine is on their species list too!

Anyway, back to the cedar, I might plant a double or triple row with an eye to progressively logging as they grow for the lovely rot-resistant wood, very handy for all kinds of things on the farm. Windbreaks are more effective if they're not just a vertical wall, I might plant some dense, low bush or shrub at the base of the windward side and also the leeward side of your cedars.

If your prevailing wind is from the southwest, then, I'd plant maybe some berries on the sun-facing side, and a shade-loving bush if you can find something appropriate, on the NE side. Planting something at the base of the windward side is more important to sculpt your windbreak than  the leeward side, but both are helpful.

In addition to the Windbreak Trees website I just came across, the Plants for a Future website is really great to search for plants with specific characteristics you might need on a permie property, it's great for stacking functions and idea generation.

Good luck to you and your chooks!
1 month ago
Hey I'm here to talk about the "new 54 page PDF about hugelkultur" offer from yesterday's dailyish.

I already have access to the 133 hr. PDC and maybe I'm a dufus but I can't seem to find where the hugelkultur PDF was hung for a few days so I can go nab it. Can anyone help?

Edit: OK, so I am the test dufus for this and will leave this post up in case it helps anyone else. It is right where you would expect it to be (and where I looked but did not see), in the "133 hours..." thread, where those who are logged in will see the links to the content right in the first post, scroll down and there is an option to Upgrade/Buy as a gift, keep scrolling to the very end of the post and you will see the familiar light-blue box with the ginormous "click here to download" text, and the name of the file in small print is, tada, hugelkultur.pdf. I have worked in IT and UX and we users really are stupid, ha ha.
2 months ago
I was reading up on alternatives to the big guys the other day, also partly in response to the increasing irrelevance of DDG results.

After tossing out a lot of alternatives, I settled on Qwant, which I'm pretty happy with.

Different results than others, and relevant. Privacy focused. Based in France and open source I believe.

The French seem to start up a lot of cool alternative software projects, and most of them seem to be unknown outside of France. Worth a look if you want other "alternative" software too.

https://www.qwant.com/
2 months ago
Just saw a post out there on the internet that illustrates one solution to this problem that already exists:

(oops, image link didn't work, see photo below)

source

OK, everything on that website does need to be taken with a grain of salt, but still, the photo shows a beaver dam's ability to hold back silt. Beavers are great topsoil builders and you can see why. I keep getting more and more convinced that nature already solved all our problems ages ago, it's just waiting for us to notice.

In any case, my mind always goes to de-silting ponds on the infeed to avoid silting, so it's nice to have another alternative to explore to help keep your pond water clear.

2 months ago
I think we need to adopt a different frame of mind about these problems.

We've spent a century or two building up a whole society based on short-term thinking (booting the problem to the next generation, i.e. now), enormous scale (sexy and powerful at the beginning but bringing equally enormous problems over time), and concentration -- of wealth, of water, of topsoil, of information systems, of human population, etc.

We are collectively driven to these unsustainable solutions, and because someone finds them economically "efficient" at a given moment we keep on taking this course. Even though the time of reckoning has already arrived, and we are trying to solve the problems created over the last 50 or 100 years with dwindling natural resources, grandiose decaying infrastructure, and decreased knowledge of natural systems as humans are now mostly urbanites who get our information via TikTok rather than our own eyes and hands.

I sometimes think of the mentality of many (or all?) groups of North American Indians by way of contrast. The "seven generations" principle of the Iroquois, the plains Indians carefully managing how many buffalo they harvested at a time in order to keep the herds bountiful, and many more examples. Perhaps because they didn't have a boss worried about quarterly profits telling them what to do and they didn't keep GDP statistics, they made normal, sane decisions that seemed to reflect a deep knowledge of how nature actually works, and complete respect and care for future generations.  They were investing in nature rather than mining it for short-term personal gain or grand visions of empire.

Permaculture, for me, is a way of looking at whole systems and infusing a bit of the spirit of wisdom and sanity of many indigenous cultures into our Western tech-centered mentality. "How does nature solve this problem?" is a great question.

Phil makes a very good point. With people on the land, and being sensitive to it, they can restore water cycles, recharge springs and aquifers, green the desert, restore clear-cut rainforest, etc.

I think in the end we'll have to change our way of thinking and our way of life. Eventually we will need loads of people all over the land taking responsibility for managing their little bit of nature with a view to restoring working natural systems rather than trying to tweak the problematic infrastructure that our old way of thinking created. That's what permaculture thinking has brought me to think, anyway.

For small-scale systems, where possible it's good to design in a de-silting pond or two on the way into a water storage pond. They can be relatively small and dredged frequently, using the fertile topsoil they contain on your farmland. A big dam I wouldn't know what to do with, there are so many big-industrial problems rolled into that dilemma.

I watch the top video and think, what to do with all the glyphosate and other toxic gick in that silt, even if you dredge it? I don't know and personally I'd rather work on creating practical alternatives to that whole dysfuctional system.
2 months ago