Rumblings from Nifty Galoot

I went for a walk yesterday morning after having a couple of icky days with rain and snow. What a change from a while ago when it was so nice and warm. It got was cold that morning… 20 degrees when I got up. I enjoy the water and like looking at how it flows in the river and ditches. Guess I’m still a little kid at heart, wading in the water and trying not to overtop the rubber boots, while seeing how close to the top the water can get.

Anyway… I had the camera and took some pics. Here’s one of water flowing from a culvert under the road on it’s way to the river. There was a layer of ice on the rocks and bank with a few green spears waving in the flowing water. The bubbles created by the splashing water created an interesting ebb and flow.

Today is the day of the Township Annual meeting so I was to the town hall this morning and started a fire in the wood stove so it’d be warm and comfy for the meeting. Have the coffee pot out and all ready to go.

Here are a couple of pictures of our little town hall:

The hall was built about 30 years ago by a long time township resident who also served as clerk for 48 years before retiring.

I’ve written a plugin that makes it easy for Wordpress bloggers to show Imagekind member galleries in their blogs.

Images can be displayed in a number of sizes and are clickable. Links are converted to affiliate links that can open in a new window.

Custom tracking code can be set for each gallery displayed.

Defaults can be set for site wide display, but can be over ridden in individual posts if desired.

Go to the ShowIKRSS plugin home page to download a copy.

The plugin comes with ‘Purple Crayon Instructions’ for using it, you can read the ‘Purple Crayon Instructions’ online if you wish.

You can see how the plugin shows my IK galleries by clicking one of the gallery pages in the sidebar.

The tractor that was split is back together and looking good!

Here are pictures from before, during, and after. You can click on a picture for a larger view:

It took some time to round up parts and find a day to put the pieces back together. John and I spent about a day putting on the new parts and getting everything ready for putting the two halves back together.

Once everything was ready it only took about 20 minutes to roll the back half of the tractor up to the front half and get the bolts in. I did take video of putting the halves together. Now I’ll have to learn how to edit it and post it sometime.

After getting the halves bolted together it took the rest of the morning to finish putting on more stuff and connecting up all the things that were disconnected. After lunch we got the fuel lines hooked up, connected the battery and got it started. It’s always nice to hear it run again.

There were some adjustments to make plus a few more odds and ends to take care of, like put the hood back on. It was looking a lot better by the time ‘Mom and kids’ got home.

Kyle sits on the tractor and is ready to go while sister and mom look on. He was real happy to see the tractor all together.

Over the next couple of weeks John ordered a new seat and repainted the hood and fenders after cleaning things up and giving it a pressure wash.

Oh Boy! Doesn’t the new seat, new paint, and wash job make the tractor look spiffy?

Found a wonderful artist the other day… An alert for ‘Imagekind’ led to a blog post announcing her art gallery on Imagekind. I was blown away by it!

The cute illustrations made me smile and amazed me with the life and energy in them. The bright colors, expressions, and details are wonderful.

Okay… Maybe I’m getting a bit carried away with the superlatives… But, then again… It’s hard not to praise such beautiful work.

Cuddly Friends by Rachelle Anne Miller — View Larger

One of the great things about the Imagekind affiliate program is that I get to find, promote, and write about great art. This is one of those times when I absolutely love the opportunity!

Today is a double feature for Rachelle… I featured another of her works at my Nifty Piks - Photos and Art blog. ‘Storytime with Grandma’

Rachelle’s blog also has more of her work and some great tutorials on how to do illustrations. Makes me really wish I could draw.

Tags: Rachelle Anne Miller, Cuddly Friends, Illustration, Cute, Drawing, Imagekind,

In the last few days I’ve been exploring the web and learning about comments and plugins for Wordpress. What have I learned? I’ve learned that the default for most blogs is to have nofollow set for an author’s website, or links in comments.

There were a quite a bunch of plugins I found to remove nofollow from comments.  The ones mentioned most often were:  LinkLove, DoFollow, and NoFollow Free.

They all looked like good choices, with DoFollow the simplest if someone wants to remove nofollow from all links in comments. Just install it, activate the plugin, and you’re done.

By default, LinkLove leaves the nofollow set until a comment author reaches 10 posts. That could be a good choice for some folks. There are instructions for how to change the number of posts to something other than 10, if a different number is desired.

I decided to use NoFollow Free. It takes a tiny bit more time setting up, since you’ll likely go to the options page and customize the settings, but you have options for whose posts you want to remove nofollow from, and the number of posts before it will do so. It also allows removing nofollow from a author’s website, links in comment contents, or both. Plus… There’s a built in option to put back nofollow if blacklist words are matched.

CommentLuv is a plugin that will go to a comment author’s website (if they fill it in) and posts a link to their last post at the time of the comment. A fun way to share a little luv by making it easy for readers to check out a commenter’s site. It may also encourage folks to comment on your site.

And lastly…  You may have wondered about the… U Comment - I Follow design:

You can find one for your blog in a number of colors or a css version  from Randa Clay Design.

A friend mentioned she was going to do Tuesdays Topic (traveling) on her Blog, that got me to thinking about traveling. I have some fond memories related to travel.

My Grandpa lived with us when I was a kid, way back when. He loved to travel. He’d get the 60 days for 60 dollars bus passes and travel all over the country. I have a scrapbook filled with postcards sent from all the places he stopped. Grandpa was a neat guy to send me so many postcards.

Even when he wasn’t traveling, he still loved travel. In those days, the Minneapolis public library had a movie theater and would show a travelog film on Wednesdays. Sometimes he’d take me along, we’d catch a bus and go downtown, it was so cool. The library also had a museum in the basement, what a fun place to explore. It was always a great day to go downtown with Grandpa.

More thoughts of travel, caused me to dig out a photo album and look through it…

I found a photo of me with my first bicycle, it was brand new to me, a freshly repainted 20 incher.

1964 was a good year…  Cowboy boots and shirt plus a bicycle!  Oh…  The good memories.  I did lots of traveling and put many miles on that bicycle!

Thank you Jen for bringing up Tuesdays Topic and giving me a smile with fond memories!

I helped a neighbor split a tractor yesterday. The clutch was bad and in order to be able to repair it, the tractor needed to be split right behind the motor. The first picture is a before shot, with the hood removed, but not much else.

You can click on the pictures for a larger view.

On this side we needed to remove the air cleaner, exhaust pipe and muffler, oil filter bracket and filter, throttle linkage, fuel shut-off linkage and a few wires. Underneath the tractor, the shields and drive shaft for the front wheels needs to be disconnected and removed.

John is just getting started figuring out what all has to be disconnected. We didn’t have a book or manual so had to figure things out as we went along. The air filter is sitting on top of the fuel tank at the front of the tractor.

Moving on, the tractor’s still in one piece with some stuff disconnected. On the left side, we needed to disconnect the steering arm, remove the starter, battery, oil cooler, and disconnect some hydraulic pipes.

Close up of where the split is going to happen. A jack is under the front half. It will be split right in the middle of the picture with back half on the left side and the motor and front half on the right side of the picture.

Now to get the hoist into position and support the back half. Then we’ll be ready to remove the last few bolts and split the tractor.

The tractor is split. The back half of the tractor is hanging from the hoist. The area right above the bucket shows the shafts going into the transmission where two clutch bearing are located. One bearing for the transmission clutch and one for the PTO. (Power Take Off - that’s a shaft that comes out the back of the tractor that can provide power to equipment the tractor pulls.)

The back of the tractor where the bearings have to come out of, on the left side of the picture. The motor and front of the tractor is on the right side. The clutch is on the back of the motor.

Front of the tractor. You can see the clutch on the back of it. The back of the tractor is on the right side of the picture. You can see it hanging from the chain.

The tractor after it’s been split with the back half hanging from the hoist. There’s room enough in the middle to easily work between the front and back parts.

The clutch parts are off of the motor. the disk on the floor under the front half needs to be replaced.

Made a ‘World’s Best Mother-in-law’ design for NiftyWares shop:

Best Mother-in-law

There are lots of great Mother-in-laws and Valentine’s day is a good time to let them know it.  So…  The heart design seemed like a nice way to do it.  The design is on adult shirts and gifts.

I also blogged the design at Nifty Wares Shop News.

Another photo of Monday’s sunset.  This one captured more of the sky and some of the snow in the field was cropped.  I’m often amazed at the colors during sunset.