pcplantdb

["John Howe" <warlock@arashi.com>]

> John H., have you been following Z3 any more closely than me?

Hey All,

Got got back from a weekend course on the Bullock's site on Orcas Island,
WA. What an awesome site! Learned a lot about grafting fruit trees to
native stocks ( apples to native cranapples, plums to hawthorns ) and
learned a bit more about Guilds from Toby Hemenway ( who just recently
moved to Portland, OR ).

Zope: I haven't been tracking Z3 development that closely, though I tend
to prefer more stable releases for production server reasons.

There was a whirlwind of activity on this list and say my name mentioned a
couple of times, specifically to defining ongoing roles.

I am currently working full time+, so my active bandwidth is limited at
times. However, I do run a production service and can offer sysadmin
guidance, software engineering/release feedback ( I have done very complex
Linux installers in the past ), Q/A, design review, performance analysis,
and provide software engineering support services such as bug tracking,
project tracking, Zope, LAMP, and CVS/Subversion if needed. I am very
interested in this project and would like to be part of the loop.

I see that there is effort to get the code to ibiblio a/o sourceforge. You
may also want to check out http://savannah.gnu.org/ is advert banners are
a bother. I was evaluating a PHP based Scrum PM software set, though it
doesn't seem to be production grade yet. There are a couple others I am
reviewing, though they require Tomcat backend and I need some free time to
get that set up.

One thing from the Guild presentation I will share is that Guild mapping
comes from functional analysis of elements, and lots of natural
observation. Toby relanguaged this a bit, since functional analysis can be
a mouthful to something more elegant and accessible:

Needs -> Element -> Provides

Part of the Guild mapping comes from matching the "provides" of one
element to the "needs" of another. It would be interesting to add a type
of search feature into HG that one could search on "provides" or "needs"
as potential matches for Guild memberships.

For instance, a simple example:

Needs                  Element               Provides

Predator Protection    Cherry Tree Start     Fruit ( after maturing )


                       Wild Rock Rose        Predator Protection ( Deers )

The Bullock's observed that over time, the birds will seed out fruit trees
into Wild Rock Rose thickets, which allow fruit trees to mature without
being munched to death by deers. As the tree matures, the thicket can be
removed and replaced by dynamic accumalators such as
comfrey/lovage/horseradish, etc ( see also:
http://homepage.powerup.com.au/~1earth/guilds.html ).

The change of the guild characters over time is an interesting dynamic to
consider for HG ( the needs of a fledgling tree change over time once it's
branches are above human head level, beyond the reach of grazing deers )
and then require others needs ( such as pruning/grafting to maximize fruit
bearing ). Maybe something to keep on the radar as the project moves
forward.

Another lesson that was of interest is that certains plants change
behaviour as latitude changes. For instance, one plant is evergreen down
south ( relative to the Pacific NW ), however, changes to deciduous up
here.

I guess I am looking ahead in the project where HG can be used as a
what-if/what-can-I-match design tool in a sense as well as tracking
natural observations in relation to geo-climate-locality. ( And still
mulling over new inspirations from the course ).

Mulch on,

John Howe