Christoph's blog

Eclectic Bedside Table

Christoph — Sun, 03 Jan 2016 23:12:47 +0000

Pia inherited a small antique file cabinet piece from a friend and immediately knew she wanted it to be a bedside table. Just the right size, and two small drawers with a sliding divider inside, make it the perfect fit next to her bed. But how to attach legs without having to make extensive changes to the old piece? Turns out the bottom of the cabinet is inset about 3/8" from the bottom of the sides. Inspiration struck: We can loosely rest the cabinet on a 3/8" plywood platform.

Run Your Drupal Site over HTTP/2 in 3 Easy Steps

Christoph — Sun, 13 Dec 2015 01:16:10 +0000

Earlier this year the HTTP/2 protocol was ratified, and by now all major browsers are supporting it. HTTP/2 promises to speed up page load time by 12% to 47%, and has thus generated quite a bit of buzz in the web community. Most browsers will only support HTTP/2 over TLS, which makes encryption de facto mandatory, although the HTTP/2 standard itself does not require encryption. This raises the concern that implementing HTTP/2 is an exercise best left to highly technical folks.

Getting to know Drupal

Christoph — Thu, 26 Feb 2015 17:54:18 +0000

Here are the presentation slides for my SANDcamp 2015 session Getting to know Drupal.

My site is slow - now what?

Christoph — Thu, 26 Feb 2015 17:48:10 +0000

Here are the presentation slides for my SANDcamp 2015 session My Site is Slow - Now What?.

Choose your food wisely

Christoph — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 20:12:38 +0000

Even though California voters decided that they don't want labeling of food sourced from genetically modified organisms, you can still tell. Just learn the codes on the standard produce stickers and choose wisely.

A 5 digit code starting with 8 is GMO food - avoid. A 4 digit code is conventionally grown produce - keep moving. A 5 digit code starting with 9 is organic produce - bingo! It's as easy as that. I may just learn to love those stickers after all. (I have a long standing hatred of stickers on food and in my compost.)

Summer Garden Bounty

Christoph — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 21:37:21 +0000

Pia is so psyched that this year we get a real bounty of summer squash from our own garden. For some reason this never worked well for us in previous years, even though summer squashes are supposedly very easy to grow. Regardless, it is such a pleasure to harvest today's dinner in your own garden and eat it as fresh as can be. Tomorrow there will be more, and the day after even more. Come for dinner!

Tangelo Tree Blessings

Christoph — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 02:59:53 +0000

This year our little 4 ft Tangelo tree didn't just have lots of sweet smelling flowers - next to Jasmine, this tree has the most amazing scent of all plants in our garden! After flowering the tree set a load of fruit and the little green balls kept on growing. Usually, most of its fruit shrivel and fall off in short order, but not this time! By mid May we knew we'd have some nice Tangelos come Fall. Around Thanksgiving the little tree was laden with fruit and we anxiously kept checking whether they were ripe enough.

Apples fresh from the tree

Christoph — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 03:24:20 +0000

Today we drove up to Wynola, a small cluster of shops and homes just below Julian, to pick apples and pears. Calico Ranch has their orchard right off Hwy 78 and allows people to pick their own fruit. If it weren't for the scenery on the drive, and the absolutely brilliant, warm weather, we could have imagined to be back home in Switzerland, where we have picked plenty of apples and pears in our youth. Here in San Diego, as city folk in a subtropical climate we don't get to do this anymore.

Christmas tree shopping by bike

Christoph — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 22:47:40 +0000

Pia mentioned as a joke sometime last week at the dinner table that we should go buy our Christmas tree by bike. Everybody laughed, and went "why not?". Pia immediately texted Thomas about the crazy idea, who responded he wanted to be part, and so we were committed. Today around lunch time Thomas arrived and we took off for Miramar Nursery despite a light drizzle.