for FILETOADD in `svn stat | awk '{ print $2 }'`; do svn add $FILETOADD; done

Cathie had called them up to see if we could have a small birthday visit given how much the kids love the show. Whilst we don’t have a TV they do get to watch the odd DVD and S always reaches for either the Victorian Farm or Tales from a Green Valley (the earlier incarnation).

Unfortunately the visit wasn’t to be as they don’t open to the public until April which was a little disappointing to the birthday girl but that’s all forgotten now as the parcel contained a few goodies and a nice covering letter wishing S a happy brithday.

A round of applause to Shropshire CC (who run the farm), it was a very nice touch.

* note: DVD already ours and book was another birthday present for S courtesy of a local charity shop.

For various reasons (including our moving around the country) the project got shelved but I’ve decided to dust it off and give it another go.

What’s particularly surprising is that nothing has come along to fill the gap. Maybe that’s a sign that there’s no requirement for a tool like this? Maybe, but I think there is so I’m giving it a shot.

If you’re interested then I’ve put a blog post up on the sw0p site giving further information.

Below I document the steps I followed as it turned out to be slightly more taxing than the usual apt-get install bitcoind

Step 1) Get server

This is obviously optional depending on where it’s going but as I wanted it on a public facing machine and I’ve got a few projects where I need to using it soon I installed a new Debian image on the Rackspace cloud.

The newest version of Debian is ‘squeeze’ so I chose that and as for now this is for testing I chose the cheapest instance, 256MB RAM/10GB space for 24p a day (!) but can change this later if I need more grunt.

Step 2) apt-get install fail

It turns out that bitcoind isn’t in the standard package list for squeeze so you need to install it via back-ports. To do so add the following to your /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://backports.debian.org/debian-backports squeeze-backports main contrib
 deb-src http://backports.debian.org/debian-backports squeeze-backports main contrib

Save, then run:

apt-get update
apt-get install bitcoind

Step 3 ) Install start-up & config scripts

Again, surprisingly for a debian package, there’s no start-up or config installed for you. So you’re going to have to do it yourself.

I took the script found on this forum and edited it as per the thread recommendations with a few tiny mods of my own:

#! /bin/sh
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          bitcoind
# Required-Start:    $remote_fs
# Required-Stop:     $remote_fs
# Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:      0 1 6
# Short-Description: bitcoind daemon startup script
# Description:       bitcoind daemon startup script
### END INIT INFO

# Author: Pavel A. Karoukin
#

# Do NOT "set -e"

# PATH should only include /usr/* if it runs after the mountnfs.sh script
PATH=/sbin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin
DESC="BitCoin Daemon"
NAME=bitcoind
DAEMON=/usr/bin/$NAME
PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
SCRIPTNAME=/etc/init.d/$NAME
CHUID=user:group

# Exit if the package is not installed
[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0

# Read configuration variable file if it is present
[ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME

# Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
. /lib/init/vars.sh

# Define LSB log_* functions.
# Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.0-6) to ensure that this file is present.
. /lib/lsb/init-functions

#
# Function that starts the daemon/service
#
do_start()
{
   # Return
   #   0 if daemon has been started
   #   1 if daemon was already running
   #   2 if daemon could not be started
   start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
      || return 1
   start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --chuid $CHUID --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
      $DAEMON_ARGS \
      || return 2
}

#
# Function that stops the daemon/serv
do_stop()
{
   # Return
   #   0 if daemon has been stopped
   #   1 if daemon was already stopped
   #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
   #   other if a failure occurred
   $DAEMON stop
   start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME

   RETVAL="$?"
   [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
   # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
   # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
   # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
   # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
   # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
   # sleep for some time.
   start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
   [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
   # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
   rm -f $PIDFILE
   return "$RETVAL"
}

#
# Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
#
do_reload() {
   #
   # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
   # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
   # then implement that here.
   #
   start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
   return 0
}

case "$1" in
  start)
   [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
   do_start
   case "$?" in
      0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
      2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
   esac
   ;;
  stop)
   [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
   do_stop
   case "$?" in
      0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
      2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
   esac
   ;;
  #reload|force-reload)
   #
   # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
   # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
   #
   #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
   #do_reload
   #log_end_msg $?
   #;;
  restart|force-reload)
   #
   # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
   # 'force-reload' alias
   #
   log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
   do_stop
   case "$?" in
     0|1)
      do_start
      case "$?" in
         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
      esac
      ;;
     *)
        # Failed to stop
      log_end_msg 1
      ;;
   esac
   ;;
  *)
   #echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|restart|reload|force-reload}" >&2
   echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|restart|force-reload}" >&2
   exit 3
   ;;
esac

:

Note: items in the script above that may (or will definitely) need changing depending upon your environment are in bold.

Save it as /etc/init.d/bitcoind then run:

chmod +x /etc/init.d/bitcoind
update-rc.d bitcoind defaults

Now you need a config file, I got an example one here. Paste it into /home/[user script will run as]/.bitcoin/bitcoin.conf

# bitcoin.conf configuration file. Lines beginning with # are comments.
# Network-related settings:
# Run on the test network instead of the real bitcoin network.
#testnet=1

# Connect via a socks4 proxy
#proxy=127.0.0.1:9050
# Use as many addnode= settings as you like to connect to specific peers
#addnode=69.164.218.197
#addnode=10.0.0.2:8333
# . or use as many connect= settings as you like to connect ONLY
# to specific peers:
#connect=69.164.218.197
#connect=10.0.0.1:8333

# Do not use Internet Relay Chat (irc.lfnet.org #bitcoin channel) to
# find other peers.
#noirc=1

# Maximum number of inbound+outbound connections.
#maxconnections=
# JSON-RPC options (for controlling a running Bitcoin/bitcoind process)
# server=1 tells Bitcoin to accept JSON-RPC commands.
#server=1

# You must set rpcuser and rpcpassword to secure the JSON-RPC api
#rpcuser=foo
#rpcpassword=bar

# How many seconds bitcoin will wait for a complete RPC HTTP request.
# after the HTTP connection is established.
rpctimeout=30

# By default, only RPC connections from localhost are allowed. Specify
# as many rpcallowip= settings as you like to allow connections from
# other hosts (and you may use * as a wildcard character):
#rpcallowip=10.1.1.34
#rpcallowip=192.168.1.*
# Listen for RPC connections on this TCP port:
rpcport=8332
# You can use Bitcoin or bitcoind to send commands to Bitcoin/bitcoind
# running on another host using this option:
rpcconnect=127.0.0.1

# Use Secure Sockets Layer (also known as TLS or HTTPS) to communicate
# with Bitcoin -server or bitcoind
#rpcssl=1
# OpenSSL settings used when rpcssl=1
rpcsslciphers=TLSv1+HIGH:!SSLv2:!aNULL:!eNULL:!AH:!3DES:@STRENGTH
rpcsslcertificatechainfile=server.cert
rpcsslprivatekeyfile=server.pem

# Miscellaneous options
# Set gen=1 to attempt to generate bitcoins
gen=0

# Use SSE instructions to try to generate bitcoins faster. For muliple core processors.
#4way=1
# Pre-generate this many public/private key pairs, so wallet backups will be valid for
# both prior transactions and several dozen future transactions.
keypool=100
# Pay an optional transaction fee every time you send bitcoins. Transactions with fees
# are more likely than free transactions to be included in generated blocks, so may
# be validated sooner.
paytxfee=0.00

# Allow direct connections for the .pay via IP address. feature.
#allowreceivebyip=1
# User interface options
# Start Bitcoin minimized
#min=1

# Minimize to the system tray
#minimizetotray=1

4) Run

You can just run the init.d script now, but to be 100% sure that it’ll start on boot I simply rebooted.

On startup I could see a bitcoind process running and in my ~/.bitcoin/ folder I ran

watch ls -alh

I could see these two files slowly increasing in size, as the complete block chain was being synchronised:

-rw------- 1 bealers bealers 151M Jan 22 10:36 blk0001.dat
-rw------- 1 bealers bealers 90M Jan 22 10:36 blkindex.dat

You can get more info by running:

bitcoind getinfo

{
 "version" : 32400,
 "balance" : 0.00000000,
 "blocks" : 135450,
 "connections" : 114,
 "proxy" : "",
 "generate" : false,
 "genproclimit" : -1,
 "difficulty" : 1563027.99611622,
 "hashespersec" : 0,
 "testnet" : false,
 "keypoololdest" : 1327245731,
 "paytxfee" : 0.00000000,
 "errors" : ""
}

From this I could see that blocks was under the current count.

I started with two bits of larch taken from the woodpile, this cross piece:

and this base:

I took the bark off the cross piece with a debarking spade.

Then cut a suitable chunk from the top of the stump with a chainsaw.

For the pivot I recycled this hazel curtain rail I’d made for our last home.

The base’s edges have been rounded off with the chainsaw and an angle of around 35 degrees cut in from the middle on both sides to allow the top piece to touch the ground when seeing or sawing.

Place the cross piece on the base so that it balances to find the natural centre and mark it.

Then drill hole for pivot constantly sighting to ensure it’s going through the log’s centre point.

Does the curtain pole fit?

Drill the base in the same way, getting the line right is doubly important here, note the markings.

Shove the curtain pole in and allow kids to play.

Bury base in-situ and job done.

My kids are loving it but their feedback is that they’d like handles and a seat!

It’s Mitsubishi 180D 4×4 compact tractor with rear digger attachment and a front loader.

I’m getting it to replace the quad which whilst useful at pulling a trailer through the woods isn’t man enough to skid trees as I’d hoped. I also want a PTO and the loader/digger attachments are going to be invaluable for woodland management (digging ponds and drainage) as well as the house build.

It needs some TLC and is rather raggedy around the edges but everything on it (mostly) works OK.

Previously I’d already invested in a second ‘big’ (75cc) saw to help with some of the larger felling and because as a rule it’s a good idea to have second saw when doing forestry related activities (e.g. your saw getting stuck). When I purchased it I had my eye on milling at some point. The recommended size saw for milling is one of the huge 120cc beasts but as I’m not planning to do this professionally and I can’t justify a dedicated milling saw I took the middle ground with this one.

Here it is with a new 28″ bar and a ripping chain. For scale I’ve put against my ‘little’ day-to-day saw with 15″ bar.

This is the mill. I bought a 36″ unit so if I do ever need to mill larger diameters I just need to get a larger bar/chain.

Saw clamped to the mill.

No drilling needed. It just clamps to the bar.

My first subject, a lovely Oak that had the bough split on it and had to be felled as it was in a dangerous position. It has been raised (with some difficulty!) onto two railway sleepers. The piece is 2.7m long and around 500mm diameter at its widest.

The first cut requires a level surface to lean on. I used these optional rails but a jig made from straight timber or an old ladder would work just as well.

Before the first cut.

During the first cut, note how I’ve used felling wedges to avoid the (heavy) upper piece pinching the bar.

The top piece removed.

First plank.

Once the top piece is removed the rails can be discarded and the flat top used as the guide for further cuts.

The processed log, held apart with some brash.

Given this is my first attempt I’m amazed that the actual job of ripping the log only took a few hours. The mill is really portable and it lends itself well to being used in-situ. Though getting the planks home again to start their lengthy seasoning process was quite mission as each piece is *really* heavy.

The mill was easy to use and I’m glad I had the extra horsepower, it did struggle a bit at times but it was manageable.

I really look forward to using this timber to make a long table top as a centrepiece for our new home, should we ever get to build it.

Whilst I need to wait until autumn proper to kick off the program of works that is rapidly forming in my head, I am slowly racheting my time up at the woods which is no hardship.

Today I attacked the most dangerous tree that we have, part of a rotten Silver Birch that is hanging over the main access space near the entrance.

I converted this:

Into this:
(healthy parts of the tree have been left well alone)

Next on the list is to salvage this Oak bough: