I have joked with co-workers about giving up programming and going into a profession that doesn't involve technology at all.  Usually, the profession is farming, selected because it's so far removed from technology, and obviously - literally - fruitful.  

But the reality is that I would not make a good farmer. The hours are long and bad.  The money is not good.  I'm actually not good at growing things, in general.  So while saying "I'm giving up all this web insanity and becoming a farmer" makes the point easily, it's not really practical.

Instead, I've decided to choose a practical fallback profession:  Bread making.

It's probably a little strange to say, but I do like making bread.  It's something you can do with your hands that produces an obvious useful output - food.  There's enough science involved to make it interesting to experiment with.  Altogether, it's a significant improvement over farming.

I also have some great ideas about how to improve the production and distribution of bread in general.  The type of shop I would work from would produce small loaves of bread for use in sandwiches.  The story I usually tell about how this idea came to me involves the loaves of sandwich bread you get from the store.

Have you ever noticed how supermarket-bought commercial bread can sit on the counter for weeks and not get moldy?  Yet if you buy fresh bread from a bakery, it'll go bad after a couple days?  You have to wonder what chemicals are in that commercial bread to keep the mold away for so long, and whether that's a good thing to be eating.

I want to make small loaves, and deliver them to homes on a schedule.  You'll never run out of bread that you have to buy loaves at the grocery store, and the bread will be fresh within a couple of days.  You can select the type of grain you like, and get artisan-quality bread instead of pre-packaged, mass-market, big-label brands.  Overall, I think people will like this idea, and I will like making it.

Anyway, that's the "plan" if all else fails.  Or working as a fry cook at McDonalds.  Who knows at this point.

An automated domain name renewal tripped today, reminding me of yet another project I had intended to work on, but haven't had the time to start abandoned.

The idea started - and forgive me if I've written about this before, but I can't find it in the archives - when thinking about my old Bytes Brothers books.  The Bytes Brothers mysteries were a series of books with short "mysteries" that the brothers solve using the family computer and some BASIC programming.  The stories present a problem (usually quite fabricated) and usually a short program listing as part of the solution.  By following along with the story, readers get interested in solving the mystery and can try to solve them on their own by writing their own versions of the programs, or expanding on the ones provided.

What interests me about the book is that while it's geared toward kids who are beginners, it requires a minimal knowledge of BASIC to get going.  You can probably figure out the code if you read through it, and it's explained well in the examples, but you need to know how to, for example, run BASIC programs in advance of applying any of this knowledge.  So what is this book?

It's directed practice.  Each story presents an interesting puzzle that can be solved by practicing programming.  The fun part of these books is that the exercises are not pointless drills.  This is unlike most classroom learning, where a concept is discussed, a set of meaningless data is provided, and the solution must be found.  It's practice, but it's not compelling.

But this is just an example of one practice domain.  I think it would be useful to have a self-directed library of practice materials for many domains.  If you wanted to learn woodworking, for example, a set of practice routines could be available that would give you mastery over specific woodworking techniques while also completing useful projects.  This way, you may end up with a birdhouse (or hopefully something more useful) or two, rather than just a bunch of wood with dovetail joints cut into them.

Anyway, this was the plan for the domain that renewed today.  A website to allow people to produce and access these practice materials.  I'm not sure where the materials would come from, although my initial plans had something to do with getting the kids off the couch for the summer to have fun and/or make money while gaining some practical skills.  But that's yet another plan for yet another day...

Microsoft killed Zune, and now I'm using WinAmp... again.  I'm not surprised.  I suppose that somewhere deep in their accounting department they were showing losses, or maybe not enough gains, and word worked its way out of Accounting and up to Management and eventually down to the users.  Canceled.

It's not really canceled.  You can still use it.  You can still pay them.  But they're not bothering to update the Zune software, which is what made paying them worthwhile.  I should explain.

There are a handful of things that made Zune appealing to me over other, "similar", services.  When you pay for Zune, you have DRM'ed access to the entire Zune library of music.  This means you can not only stream, but also download and transport your music with you wherever you go, without an internet connection required.  With my Zune player, this is easy.  Obviously, I don't do a lot of that, but that's what made the other property of the Zune service good for me -- If you like a track, your monthly subscription gives you an allotment of credits you can use to remove the DRM from files, leaving plain MP3s.  And my other devices use MP3s.

The software itself had some flaws.  Yeah, serious flaws.  But it worked.  And it wasn't that ugly iTunes-looking business.  The Zune player was actually... pretty.  Maybe I'm weird, but I like the album and photo visualizations.  Getting to certain tracks shouldn't have been so difficult, and the software was often slow.  This is still a problem in other software.  iTunes is crap in this regard, too.  But Zune was no worse to navigate than the others.

I thought I would try the XBox Music app that is in Windows 8.  I can't stand it.  Like the revelation I've had with the XBox, I'm tired of buying software that then tries to sell me things I don't want.  Why XBox Music thinks I want to hear Kenny Chesney, given my complete lack of Country music in my inventory, I can't tell you.  With all of the upsell on the main interface, it's impossibly hard to get to my own music.  Even when I remember, the search feature is stuffed in a Windows 8 "charm" instead of being a primary UI feature, which is simply wrong.

The straw that broke the camels back alighted this morning when I realized that not all of my music was listed in the player.  I looked at the instructions the XBox Music app provided for getting music into it.  I observed that my music was already in the required location, and yet only some of the tracks were present.  When I tried to drag the track I wanted to play onto the XBox Music app, it didn't work.  Ah yes, Windows 8/Metro and cross-app interactivity is non-existent.  So I gave up and went back to WinAmp.

I know I'm missing out on all of the streaming services.  I don't care too much.  Maybe I'm "getting old", but the pop/house garbage that is the bulk of streamed new music these days doesn't do it for me.  There's only so much of that genre I can endure.  Usually about 2 seconds worth.  I don't feel like I'm missing much ignoring Spotify's crappy app interface, either, and I simply can't be bothered with a web interface to music, since my job would have me rebooting my music when I'd most enjoy listening to it (ie "while my web browser is restarting").

So it's back to WinAmp for me.  Look at it, sitting "quietly" at the top of the screen, doing it's thing.  Playing music.  Just like I told it to.  Imagine that.

A couple of years ago, we assembled a raised-bed garden in the back yard, and we've been planting in it with varying levels of commitment year-to-year.  Last year, we planted a bunch of interesting items, but most of our crop was eaten by deer.  Hopefully we won't have the same problem this year.

We stopped by Pickering Valley Feed and Farm Store to select our plants.  They tend to have a better selection and variety of vegetables than you can usually find  at big stores like Lowes.  Our selection of veggies included corn, string beans, broccoli, tomatoes, and green bell peppers.

We didn't get cucumbers this year.  I'm not sure why; maybe last year's weird cucumbers were a bit of a turn-off.  We also didn't get any melons, because in years past they never got enough water (my guess), and never grew beyond a couple of inches in diameter.

Our cool pick of the season this year is a peanut bush!  Peanuts grow under ground, so it's hard to see if they're creating fruit.  But they're supposed to grow all summer and into the fall.  When the first frost comes, you pull the whole plant out of the ground, and the peanuts are in the roots!  You hang the plant up to let the peanuts dry, and then you can eat them.  I'm excited about the peanut plant, because it's unique and reminds me of planting/harvesting the peanut plants at the bay when I was a kid.

We also got a few plants for my office planter.  There are three basil and four jalapeno plants.  I think I've given up on growing the exotic peppers for now.  The jalapenos should be enough.  I planted them all yesterday and re-filled the planter with water, which it was desperately in need of.  The special soil in the planter is very water-absorbent so that you can leave plants in it un-watered for a while and the plants will survive.  I will be using the new watering can (which has this very cool detachable head) that Abby got me for Christmas to regularly water the plants, which was the problem last year -- the watering can leaked like a sieve and couldn't be used.

Also to be noted is that the hops are once again growing in the back yard.  I fed them some plant food last night just before the rain, and this morning they are about six inches taller than they were yesterday.  These things grow fast!  Hopefully this year we'll see some healthy vines and some cones, which didn't appear at all last year.  I'll have to keep watering them to make sure they stay healthy, which I think was last year's issue.

Today was Abby's second soccer game.  Ever.  She's almost 12 (her next soccer game is next week, on her birthday) and she's not played any organized team sports before this year.

The league is organized through Glenmoore Eagle Youth Association (GEYA) which offers a bunch of sports in our area, similar to LYA when I was a kid.  The league is for girls in grades 6-8, at which Abby is in the lower end.  The coaches are very friendly, and they've been very supportive of Abby and all the girls playing on her team who are not as experienced as some of the other players.

Abby's first game was after school last week.  The team was a bit disorganized because they only had three scheduled practices prior to the game day, and the last of those practices was rained out.  As a result, the girls didn't really know anything about field positions or where they would be playing.  It was a little chaotic, but they took it in stride.

Abby's team scored one goal early on, but the other team - made up of more 8th graders - was able to come back and score three goals by the end of the game.  Abby seemed a bit bewildered by the rules of the game, and the effort required to play well.  I think she enjoyed it, nonetheless.

We've started interval training in the early mornings to get her endurance up.  "No more couch potato," as she says.  We've been running/walking around the development before school, and now even having only done the interval twice (prior to that, I was sick and we only walked), it seems to be making a difference.  If we keep it up, we should be able to run the 5k at Good Neighbor Day this year without embarrassing ourselves too much.

In today's game, Abby was keeping up with the other girls and playing less afraid of the ball.  She still has some work to do in figuring out how to best position herself when she doesn't have the ball, but she's getting better at it.  By the end of the season, I think she'll have a good idea of how the game is played and what she needs to do it well.

Plus, they won today, 2 to 0.