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Comments on Setting Type on the Web to a Baseline Grid
by Wilson Miner
51 Reader CommentsBack to the Article
Great article, Wilson. Love it.
I will add one point: if you take the time to get all this working one, you should be able to reuse it over and over again. Yes, getting the baseline grid right on the web is a bit tricker than it should be, but once you'd done it, it's pretty easy to maintain.
Consider building a CSS typography framework that you can reuse from project to project. We've recently done this at my day job, and it's been really, really handy. Every project overrides certain aspects of the framework, but having a great starting point that already establishes a nice baseline grid is a huge time saver.
Great work, my friend.
Thank you for another few reasons to use pixels instead of EMs or percents. It is very interesting question: should we use pixels or not.
My opinion: using EM - it is not so complicated as it seems. You can compose vertical rythm with assimetric margins (real beaty!) and it will work even in IE6 (with JS of course). Calculating - it is not real problem for real typography fanatic :-)
Please check this test page:
But one BIG PROBLEM: round-up errors in… Opera. Even in the last version. Test pages for Opera:
So, this is the only reason why I think about using pixels in the future works.
I have used EMs on my site and it can get quite complicated; however, if you do most of the maths before hand it doesn't have to be. I.e. know your base font size, margins and padding with borders and without, etc.
On some project, it might a good thing not to clear out the grid. Meaning, keep—some of—it visible.
Having a thin, barely visible but there, line under each line of a long and complex text help some people to read it, and to do so faster and more easily. It might even be an Accessibility improvement.
Steve Marshall has used the idea of a baseline grid to good effect on a "recent redesign of his site":http://nascentguruism.com/?show=baselines which also includes optional visible baseline and layout grids.
Sidebars shouldn't really be set on the same line height as body text. They should be set with the same 'color', that is their line height should be calculated using the same multiplier as body text. Then the first line of the sidebar should be aligned to the baseline grid with the rest hanging. How easy this is to do in html I'm not sure.
Perfect example of poor supporting of CSS by IE6. There is no vertical rythm in IE6!
Of course, we can "fix it":http://warmrobot.com/lab/vertical_rythm/test7.html by JS. But there still problem with Opera and round-up errors.
I don't want to use em, but I have to, if I think about IE6 and IE7
Speaking of EM, great little site for pixel to em sizes. Really handy if you know your base font size.
Peter is totally right saying the sidebar does not have to be vertical aligned to the main text. If you do so you are implementing a connection that is not there. Things are different htough in a multi column layout with equal columns, e.g. the main text is in columns (not readable in the web, but it's just an example). There between equals the alignment is good, as you will also have everything else the same (text height and so on). But a sidebar can have different text shapes and therefore should be unaligned.
Peter and Handy Andy have a point, but it's not always the case.
If the copy in a sidebar is disconnected from the flow of text, then there is good reason, if the type was smaller, then you probably shouldn't align it to the baseline grid. However, if the copy in the sidebar were a caption to an image which is in the main content area, then aligning to the baseline grid is probably the way to go in order for that copy to feel like it belongs to the main content. It depends on the implementation of columns within the grid.
You both have a good point, but it's not quite as cut and dry as you suggest.
bq. One final note on font sizing: I'm using pixels instead of ems in this example for one reason: it makes everything simpler.
True, but—you knew it was coming—where does that leave Internet Explorer?
Great article,
but I like to use the reset.css distributed by Yahoo! to handle fonts and default values for certain html tags.
It leaves the miniscule percentage of IE6 users who really need to resezie their text to either upgrade to IE7 or turn on the "Ignore font sizes…" option in their browser so IE6 will resize text sized in pixels. That IE6 can't resize text set in pixels is a myth. I can, it jus requires you to change a setting in the options. Personally, I think if you have this unique need to resize text, then it's your responsibility to either use a browser that supports it by default or take the time to set your up to deal with it.
Come on now, Jeff. That's the idealist in you speaking :D
Unfortunately, most of web design needs to accommodate realists. We comprise not only people who use the web, but people who "get" the web. Screwing with our settings is easy and commonplace for us. The staunch majority of web users likely don't know about settings like that, or can't find them (due to awesome MS UI design). The plain fact remains that we are designing for realistic scenarios and not always ideal ones. We can't always take the stance of withholding information or capabilities until users meet our requirements. Remember the days of separate site versions for IE and Netscape? We now have many capabilities to make these decisions seamless, or completely agnostic, for our visitors. Let's make a kinder, gentler web! Wanna hold hands?
Let's talk about the real world for a second.
I have neck and back problems, myself. Because of that, I have to buy a decent chair and take the time to configure it for the optimal support. If I don't, I'll end up in pain when I'm reading a book at my desk. If I choose to sit in a crappy chair, or I choose not to configure my chair the way that is best for me, or I simply don't learn how my chair works — whose fault is that?
I'd say it's my fault. You can maybe make an argument that it's the chair manufacturer's fault, because they didn't make it easy enough for me to use my chair properly. But I don't see any way in hell you can blame it on the book I'm reading. Do you?
But anyone who says the web designer is at fault for a user not being able to resize text set in pixels in Internet Explorer is basically blaming the book, rather than the chair or the person sitting in it.
The web designer has some degree of responsibility to ensure their site is accessible to the greatest amount of people possible. But, so does the browser maker and the hardware maker. And, most importantly, so does the user bear some responsibility for understanding how to use their tools.
I'm sort of playing devil's advocate here, and not necessarily saying I believe all of this explicitly—but it's worth talking about. Doesn't the user, especially one with unique needs, bear some responsibility for knowing how to use their tools?
Sorry man, still not sold. We aren't necessarily even talking about dire needs here, like pain. There is something still inherently technical for people about the internet, or computers, that they will not or choose not to overcome. I often think of some of my professors at school in this position; crazy smart people that are just set in their ways. There are tons of people, not even among the disabled or special needs areas, that use the internet we thrust upon them. It's just not a fair comparison to make (chair-to-internet) because the barrier to entry is considerably more technical.
"It's just not a fair comparison to make (chair-to-internet) because the barrier to entry is considerably more technical."
Apparently you haven't seen all the levers and dials on my Aeron chair. :)
Great article,
encouraged by reading this and some other sources related to web typography in the last few weeks I created a little tool to calculate ems, px and the margins.
It isn´t finally ready, but it works well if you already selected your set of font sizes—just give it a try.
The author justifying pixels instead of ems seems to be unaware of the "unitless line heights possibility":http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2006/02/08/unitless-line-heights/
Having worked with Wilson for the better part of a year, and as someone who has to maintain a lot of the CSS he wrote, I can assure you he knows about unitless line lengths.
I wrote a javascript-powered baseline calculator that uses ems and does the math for you:
In use here:
Mandy, the history of the "origin of the baseline":http://www.alistapart.com/comments/settingtypeontheweb?page=1#10 is interesting but it does not account for its importance in modern graphic design. Just like the convention of paragraph indentation survives the practice of hand-painting initials (or printing red pilcrows, depending who you ask), the baseline grid found a use as a structuring device, even for cases when paper transparency is not an issue.
Nothing to add except to comment that I really loved the article (and many of the comments. Loved the history of the baseline). Got me thinking about typography in a new way, which I always appreciate. Thanks.
I do not know if it is just me(Firefox2@Ubuntu), but the lines in the callout does not line up with the basegrid. Should there not be the following in the embedded CSS:
.callout img {
Nice article though!
When speaking of "average users"? using IE as is, IE's inability to scale pixels is not akin to our sites being the book and the browser an uncomfortable chair that the user deliberately chose and choses to leave as is. Metaphorically, I think it's more like we're building drive-through windows that can only accommodate the shortest, most-eco-friendly cars, even though most of the public drives gas-guzzling SUVs that cannot match up to the drive-through window. Sure, they're not responsible in their actions; but they don't care (or more-likely aren't aware) and will pass right by our (to them) ugly, inaccessible window.
If we want to make a difference or a paycheck or otherwise be heard, we should make things pleasant to that majority as well. This includes drawing them in and telling them to trade in their "SUVs."?
So you're saying that "most of the public" needs to resize their text in IE6 and can't? I disagree. Yes, a lot of people still use IE6 (about 35%, according to the stats of our newspaper sites), but very, very few of those actually need to resize text.
First of all, I apologize for turning this into a "how should I size text?" thread. While it's related to the article, it's not really the main premise. That being said, I think there is definitely a great discussion happening.
bq. Every project has different requirements and different constraints. Ems are a great tool for dealing with relative sizing, but I honestly don't think it's sustainable to use them as a universal measure.
Right on. I agree that sizing text in pixels _should_ be the way to go. However, the web is about the people that use it. Although it _is_ the responsibility of the browser makers, the fact is that we should accomodate the browsers' shortcomings for the greater good of making web sites as usable as they can be to people of various capacities.
All that isn't to say that I disagree with you; I totally support your point and think that it can't be emphasized enough.
bq. Incidentally Dan, I like your technique of using pixels for browsers that can handle them responsibly, and giving IE a relative font size so users can still resize the text.
Aw, shucks.
bq. I just wish it didn't have to come to maintaining two separate type scales, especially when the main benefit I get out of using pixels in the first place is simplicity.
Too true. However, until a version of IE supports scaling pixels (and not this wannabe page zoom thing), it's a fallback method that will have to stay.
bq. Yes, a lot of people still use IE6"¦ but very, very few of those actually need to resize text.
Really? I'd love to see some stats on that"¦ :)
I certainly don't have the luxury of IE<7 users representing anything less than the majority of users for my employer's site. Even if it was only 35%, that could be an awful lot of users to turn away just because they are unable to easily customize the display.
I hear what you're saying though when it comes to most of them not wanting or needing to change the font-size. You're absolutely right there. To back you up even further: for those that do want to scale using IE 6 or below, odds say that the majority of them have no clue how to do that. Even when the font is scalable (with ems and the like), many aren't aware that changing "View > Text Size" will have any effect (especially if they've tried it on the average site that uses pixels).
So you're right in that there's less need than usually stated to support text scalability in IE<7—but I still find it lazy (personally) to not put forth a little effort that could benefit those users and earn their undying affection and loyalty.
Disclaimer: My views are for commercial or public-need sites. For personal sites, I'm getting more and more of the view that I want to be deliberately exclusive of IE including 7. I agree that browser-makers own some of the responsibility and IE 7 with it's hasLayout component is still doing things that are holding back the status quo of the Web.
bq. Really? I'd love to see some stats on that"¦ :)
Heh. I wish. I admit that I'm just making an edcated guess. We have no way of now how many of those IE6 users actually need to resize their text. But, it's safe to assume it's a pretty small number, isn't it? If we, as good designers, are choosing reasonable font sizes to begin with, then it ought to only be people with low vision and no glasses to accomodate for it that really *need* to resize text, right?
I have no supporting stats, but I can't see how this could possibly be a very big number.
John, I basically agree with everything yo've said. The bototm line on text resizing is that it boils down to the same thing every design decision does: know your audience, know your product, and know it's goals. Not every site *needs* perfect text resizing. Not every site has only about 35% of it's users on IE6 (although, our newspaper sites serve a very general audience, so I'd expect that's a typical-ish number). And so forth.
To prove that I believe that it depends on the siuation, i'd point to BoomerGirl.com, a site I recently designed using all ems (both for type and layout) to ensure great text resizability. Why? Because that site is aimed at an older user, who is more likely to have low vision.
"Lazy" is a pretty touchy word to use, though. It's not about personal work eithic, it's about business decisions. If I decide that text resizability it's a priority, it's because the extra time put into making it happen doesn't warrant the benefit. There are only so many resources to go around, and if it's determined by the project manager than there's a minimal need for text resizing, and a very large need for some whizzy flash widget that is going to directly bring in dollars, then the flash widget will oten win. This is pure business. It's not personal, it's not lazy, it's not insensitive. It's just about business. For that reason, I'd avoid calling any web designer "lazy" when you don't know what the limitations and demands they were working under was.
But, overall, I agree with you. :)
Kevin's illustration for this piece is freaking awesome. Great work, Cornell.
I sort of hate to admit it, but I like the way IE handles text sizing. Since IE will resize text set in EMs and not in PX, it allows the savvy designer to make some text on the page resizable by the user, and force other text to remain fixed.
This allows you to let the user scale up the body copy to a more readable size without blowing out your navigation or causing fragile UI elements to look broken. If a user absolutely has to resize all the text on the screen they can do that (as mentioned in comment #14).
Because it is much easier to set fonts in pixels, it would be ideal if IE would allow fonts set in pixels to be resized AND there were also a CSS property that would dis-allow font resizing when and where the designer desires it.
Great article. It helped me a lot. Designing in pixels helps maintain the baseline grid. As a matter of which measuring unit to use for font-size, it is what works well for the design. Accessibility can be achieved in many ways. Every project does not have to be px the same goes for ems. I agree with Jeff Croft. Good lesson Wilson, Thanks.
I think giving the text sizes in pixels is just OK. Anyway when designing a layout for the web i design in pixels (photoshop, fireworks), i set up rules in pixels.
Unless i design something really basic that does not get messed up when scaling, i think using pixels for text sizing is just better (and easier) to get closer to that layout i designed in photoshop. If you don't use stylsheets you don't use font sizes, so it doesn't matter if you gave them in ems or pxs.
I think in some way a layout is about pixelperfection, when designing you have to make decisions, it is all about decisions. You put down exact sizes, spaces etc. and you design to see exactly the same - as much as possible - result in the browser. So why not use pixels?
But maybe i am not right.
Hey, thanks for the great article. It inspired me to write "TypoGridder", it's a little javascript you can use on your sites to display a grid overlay.
Have a look on: http://milianw.de/projects/typogridder
Also note that I wrote a bookmarklet version (see link above).
Hope it helps the one or the other of you.
Is it fair to suggest that for some sites its reasonable that anything less than modern will not have the same quality of typographical rhythms as those that are modern? At what point does settiing our type to the grid become a point of usability (readability) that might appeal to accessability (I'm going bility bility bility crazy!). Progressive enhancement right? I'm still working out where to draw the line on these things - which of course is always dependent on a myriad of other factors, but nonetheless, what thinks you folks?
Matthew, I think your question is a good one. For those that are in IE-mac or IE-5.5 or lower, I think they are used to a less than stellar experience online (not that they are necessarily even aware of it). The extra mile of adjusting the baseline can be appreciated by those with more modern browsers, and for the time-being also for the 800-pound (but shrinking) gorilla, IE6. For older browser users, I think they're happy if a site doesn't have a broken layout; but they're certainly used to many visual quirks and shortcoming in their browsers. A baseline grid is probably the last thing to worry about in those browsers to get perfect.
I find that typographers look at me with a certain kind of hatred.
I annoy them be telling them they can't use the Font they want to and that because of flexible font sizes the can't position every word exactly where they want it. I now _finally_ have something I can offer them as a token of peace :)
Thanks for a good read Wilson, and an eminently useful technique. Good stuff.
I've been out of the web design loop for a while, having been mired in programming work, but I'm surprised how much debate can flare up over the simple use of @px@ units. Wilson predicted it and took measures to head it off right in the article, but still people obsess over it.
I'll be honest here. I use px quite a bit. I'm lazy, I admit it. There are a lot of CSS techniques I want to develop and work with, but in the world of client work most of these ideas go on the extremely long list of nice-to-haves. Even clueful clients are not likely to be impressed by immaculate code. They would rather have their project done a week sooner and $1000 cheaper.
So even though @em@ over a bit clearer advantage than other types of pedantry (think @b@ vs @strong@), I'm not interested in using it as some kind of litmus test. This article was interesting to me because it's a novel idea (on the web anyway). I welcome discussion of the merits of the article, but I could do without the endless debates over a tangential issue.
I'm a very occasional css user (thank God) and tried to use this design for a banal little site I'm working on. I have a list that wraps round a callout box and it won't align in IE. If anybody's got a solution to this I'd be pleased to hear it, but meanwhile can someone tell my why CSS has to be so hard? Every time I come back to it I seem to waste a day trying to do something that any reasonable person would consider trivial…
1. That person you're shutting out of your site is one of the biggest taggers on del.icio.us, and their personal blog has a high Google page rank. Wouldn't you like a link from them?
2. Your competition doesn't use px on their site.
Actually, I note the example page in this article with the grid showing doesn't line up on the grid once you get a certain part of the way down the page. Firefox 184.108.40.206, default font Verdana 16, minimum font Verdana 14.
I wrote some "Javascript":http://societe-electronique.de/javascripts/theme/setting_type_on_the_web_to_a_baseline_grid.js to auto-adjust image padding to fit the image to the grid. Adding some background and border; viola. (No example though; that blog is to new..)
I have been working with a baseline grid ever since I read this article. I have found a few things I don't care about, and have had some problems finding a work-a-round, but all that aside, I like the way it looks on a page, and have kept it.
I'm still new to the EM world, so I have been using pixels for a long time now.
One question… why can't font sizes in px be resized? And why can't the line-height be adjusted upon resizing on of the text?
I don't have IE6 installed these days, so I have no idea of the problems px fonts cause. I guess I should up my reading knowledge!
Anyways, great work. It was a good read!
Nice article, but thought I'd mention that there's a small but almost humorous spelling error in the title tag for the link to "Compose to a Vertical Rhythm". The title tag says "Compost to a Vertical Rhythm". I hope the author of that article is not offended. :o)
i am trying to set up a baseline grid for myself. i have to say it's pretty easy if you take only block elements like headings and paragraphs into account, and if you don't care if at some font-size/font-family combinations you won't get a pixel-precise baseline grid. what really gives me headaches are forms and tables. is there any example of anybody doing this pixel-perfect?
I do agree with Mandy, the sidebar type should be set to a leading that is appropriate to it's size and face and this can vary on each page, not the size and face of the paragraph it sits next to. This is a common mistake I have seen.
You could add the gridbg.gif to all your pages, or make custom ones if your baseline is not always 18px—OR you could try this handy JavaScript bookmark link (follow url below to find it) and have it dynamically overlay grids for you on top of any page you visit:
Enjoy! :)
As much as the choice of type is important, the appropriate use of typographic measurements and white-space is an important tool of the trade when "setting type for the web":http://www.sccc.premiumdw.com/web112/setting-type-for-the-web/.
Thanks for bringing a favorite print topic of mine to the web design table!
To help with the calculation of baselines, and picture heights, I use InDesign to do my early mockups. It might seem unheard of in the web world, but I have found that it helps me test the look and feel of my grids in advance before committing to a single grid, and the time and investment needed to calculate each individual piece of the site.
And once I'm in the implementation phase, I always keep a post-it note full of grid multiples (18, 36, 54, ... and way up) on my screen for resizing pictures, and setting CSS info on the fly.


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Frances and Mary Allen were photographers of Deerfield, Massachusetts, and they often used their relatives in their photographic illustrations. This is Barbara Allen, one of their nieces. Her sister, Eunice, also a frequent model in their photographs, helped at the shop the sisters ran to sell prints of their photographs. One day in 1917 when Barbara chose to help--a rare event, since she preferred to play outside--they sold, according to one sister's diary, "nearly $25 of small prints, which is more than we have done for a year." Barbara is dressed as a young girl of the Puritan era, a theme the Allens commonly used in their photographs. They were very aware of the history of Deerfield and used it, not only as inspiration for their photographs, but to help sell them to the many visitors the town attracted.
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graham christian
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Re: How to Turn
Thanks Niall.
Turning with feet 'gliding' like an ice skater who can stop and start at any moment, from stillness to grace.
Times when turning 'from' heel and hips, times when turning from ball of foot and centre, as put.....all ways fit various situations.
I say with regards to 'gliding' that it has nothing to do with the terrain but more to do with learning how to on any terrain.
If I was to look at turning and basics then I would look at all kinds of turning and this includes ukemi for that too is turning and turning through the air as well as on the ground. Thus I see the most important factors, the ones which apply to all types of turning, the ones which are always there.
Centre is always involved but of equal importance on this subject is centre line. For what is a centre line but an axis be it vertical or horizontal etc. Everything turns around an axis.
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Unless otherwise noted, information contained in each edition of the Kansas School Naturalist reflects the knowledge of the subject as of the original date of publication.
Volume 39, Number 2 - March 1993
Prairie Fires
by Jim Hoy
Published by EMPORIA STATE UNIVERSITY
Prepared and Issued by THE DIVISION OF BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
Editorial Committee: DAVID EDDS, TOM EDDY, GAYLEN NEUFELD
Editors Emeritus: ROBERT BOLES, JOHN BREUKELMAN, ROBERT F. CLARKE
Typist: NANCY GULICK
Circulation and Mailing: ROGER FERGUSON
Circulation (this issue): 5700
Printed by: ESU Press
Online edition by: TERRI WEAST
The Kansas School Naturalist is sent free of charge and upon request to teachers, school administrators, public and school librarians, youth leaders, conservationists, and others interested in natural history and nature education. In-print back issues are sent free as long as supply lasts. Out-of-print back issues are sent for one dollar photocopy and postage/handling charge per issue. A back issue list is sent free upon request. The Kansas School Naturalist is sent free by third class mail to all U.S. zipcodes, first class to Mexico and Canada, and surface mail overseas. Overseas subscribers who wish to receive it by airmail should remit US $5.00 per year (four issues) airmail and handling. The Kansas School Naturalist is edited and published by the Division of Biological Sciences, Emporia State University, Emporia, Kansas. Editor: John Richard Schrock, Division of Biological Sciences. Third class postage paid at Emporia, Kansas. Address all correspondence to Kansas School Naturalist, Division of Biological Sciences, Box 4050, Emporia State University, Emporia, KS 66801-5087. Opinions and perspectives expressed are those of the author(s) and/or editor and do not reflect the official position or endorsement of ESU.
PHOTO CREDITS: The photographs in this issue were taken by Larry W. Schwarm, Assistant Professor of Art at Emporia State University. The images were made in Lyon and Chase Counties, Kansas, from 1990 to 1992. They document aspects of day and night burns, of shortgrass fires that barely simmer and the wildness and violence of the tallgrass fires, and they capture the aura and beauty of the spring ritual of pasture burning.
This issue of The Kansas School Naturalist derives from "Fire in the Flint Hills," a multidisciplinary colloquium held at Emporia State University in April 1991.
This issue of The Kansas School Naturalist is underwritten by The Bay Foundation, New York, NY.
Dr. James F. Hoy, Professor of English at Emporia State University, teaches a course on the folklife of the Flint Hills.
Elmer J. Finck is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Biological Sciences at Emporia State University. He has extensive experience with fire in the tallgrass prairie and its effects on mammals and birds.
Prairie Fires: Pasture Burning in the Flint Hills
by Jim Hoy
A prairie fire, burning uncontrolled and undirected in the wrong place at the wrong time, can be extremely destructive. A spark from a locomotive, a lightening bolt striking the ground, a match or cigarette tossed from a car window can cause many thousands of dollars worth of damage to livestock and property - not to mention severe damage to the environment. During the dry, windy summer of 1984, for instance, accidental fires broke out in Butler, Chase, and Marion counties, destroying the forage on nearly half a million acres of pastureland before they were extinguished. Small wonder that most people automatically assume that prairie fires are bad.
And yet every spring since the days of early settlement farmers and ranchers in the Flint Hills of Kansas have, in opposition to popular opinion and, until a couple of decades ago, in defiance of scientific advice, deliberately set the prairies ablaze, burning off the old grass so that cattle could have easy access to the new growth. In recent years the efficacy of this folk practice has been vindicated by the experiments of rangeland scientists, who have shown that controlled pasture burning, particularly if conducted in mid to late spring, is an efficient and economic way to maintain a tallgrass prairie. It keeps the pastures relatively free of trees and brush while at the same time promoting better weight gains in livestock.
In fact, there would be no tallgrass prairie without a fire, at least not in the Flint Hills, where the annual rainfall is high enough to support relatively dense stands of trees. Poorly managed pastures, suffering the effects of overuse, soon become overrun with trees - elm and hedge in the southern Flint Hills, red cedar to the north. One defense of fire given by ranchers is that an overgrazed pasture can't be burned. If there is no grass left at the end of the pasture season, there won't be enough for a fire in the spring: graze half, leave half is the rule of thumb. So for well over a century and a quarter blazing pastures, hazy skies, and the faint, sweet smell of grass smoke have been a hallmark of spring on the tallgrass prairie.
Pasture burning as a springtime ritual in the Flint Hills predates white settlement. Early explorers noted the burned prairies and the proclivity of the Osage and the Kansa Indians to fire the dead grass in order to lure bison, antelope, elk, and deer onto the newly greening hillsides - and into range of their arrows and spears. Folk memory among Flint Hills ranchers records that the Native Americans would set the prairie afire by wrapping rawhide around a big ball of dead grass, lighting it, then pulling it behind a running horse. Back then, and in pioneer times as well, with no roads, highways, or large expanses of plowed fields to slow the headfire, a prairie fire would burn from river to river, keeping the Flint Hills free of trees.
Early Euro-American pioneers in the Flint Hills, whether learning from the aboriginal inhabitants or perhaps bringing them with the practice of agricultural burning, soon settled into the custom of a spring burn. Elisha Mardin, for instance, one of the early settlers in the area, who first came to Bloody Creek (now Chase County) in 1858, records in his 1863 diary the deliberate burning of various of his pastures during March (once) and April (five times). Within a dozen years burning was so common in the Flint Hills that the editor of El Dorado's Walnut Valley Times (Butler County) railed against the practice, echoing popular sentiment in blaming prairie fires for drought, scorching winds, grasshopper infestations, failed springs and creeks, and ruined crops. But where members of the general public saw only the devastating effects of prairie fires (particularly if they had lost houses, outbuildings, crops, livestock, or even family members to an uncontrolled fire), Flint Hills graziers saw fresh grass, lush pastures, and contented cattle. By the end of the century many grazing contracts specified that pastures were to be burned so that the new grass would be ready when the Texas cattle arrive in mid-April for the beginning of grazing season.
Today, now that range scientists and ranchers have come to terms on the general efficacy of burning, the major contention between the two groups concerns the appropriate time of year for fires. Some Flint Hills operators still burn in March, a carry-over from the days when aged Texas steers filled Flint Hills pastures. Others, however, follow modern scientific advice in burning from mid-April to mid-May for maximum weed control and forage growth and minimum erosion damage. Also, whereas some ranchers will burn their pastures nearly every year, many others are more likely to skip a year or more between burns. Thus in earlier years someone might set a fire that would burn uncontrolled, and unremarked, throughout many pastures in an entire watershed, say from the Southfork and Verdigris Rivers, to the Cottonwood. However, today, some pasture owners want their land burned early, some want it burned late, and some not at all. Pasture burning has become a more precise and a more time-consuming job. Many ranchers, in fact, consider it the hardest of their various chores, including building fence and making hay.
A typical pasture burn is often a cooperative venture, with workers from two or more ranches involved. One crew will be from the ranch whose pastures are to be burned. The others are from bordering spreads and there to trade work ("neighboring," it is called) or to protect pastures that are not to be burned at this particular time. After listening to the weather forecast, the rancher organizing the burn will notify the others as to the day, place, and time. Ideal burning conditions include warm temperatures and a recent rain (so the new grass will spring up quickly) with a mild to moderate wind blowing in the right direction. Wind coming from the wrong sector or at too great a speed will occasion a postponement, whereas no wind at all, especially when combined with overly dry conditions, will result in a slow burn that can cause damage to both grass and fence posts.
In earlier years equipment consisted primarily of matches to start a fire, a steel-handled rake to spread the fire by dragging burning dead grass, buckets of water, and gunny sacks or old overalls to soak in the water and beat out the fire. Beginning about the time of World War Two, mechanical sprayers became available. Today burning crews are usually outfitted with at least one mechanical sprayer and water tank mounted on a four-wheel-drive pickup or on a trailer pulled by a tractor and some kind of mechanical fire starter (propane torch, drip torch, or firestick). Crews will also carry gunny sacks and water buckets, to put out small fires. Experienced pasture burners carry matches at all times so that, should they be caught in the open prairie with a headfire bearing down upon them, they can start another fire and then step into the burned area and thus escape the main blaze.
When the crews have assembled, the first order of business is usually to set fireguards, thus creating a barrier between the pasture to be burned and adjoining grass that will not be burned that particular day. Typically this barrier is created by setting backfires, unless there is a road or a plowed field to form a natural barrier. If the wind is from the south, for instance, the workers will create fireguards on the east, north, and west sides of the pasture. To create a fireguard in the open prairie or along a fence row, a worker operating a cattle sprayer will lay down a heavy strip of water. Following close behind on the upwind side of this strip will be another worker setting the grass afire. The dry grass will burn into the wet area, then usually go out. To insure that it does, another cattle sprayer or some workers with wet sacks will follow the fire setter, paying special attention to smoldering cow chips that might later rekindle the fire. In the meantime the fire setter has gone back and forth on the upwind side, lighting small strips of grass so that the fireguard is widened beyond the point where the backfire, which is left to burn, can jump the burned area. Once the fireguards are large enough so that a headfire will not jump them, a fire will be set on the upwind side. The headfire will travel quickly throughout the rest of the pasture, until it burns into the fireguards and goes out. Occasionally there will be small patches inside a large pasture that don't burn, protected from the headfire by cattle trails or short grass. These spots are usually fired with matches a day or two later, a practice known as "patching."
Starting a prairie fire is not difficult, but building a proper set of fireguards, and keeping them from escaping into areas not to be burned, requires great mental and physical effort. And luck - a sudden gust of wind or an unexpected change in wind direction has more than once resulted in an escaped fire that has burned not only an unintended pastureland but barns and haysheds as well. Another hazard of pasture burning is getting a vehicle stuck in a mud hole or high centered in a ditch and having to abandon it to the flames.
Pasture-burning equipment and techniques have become more sophisticated over the years, but the results are the same now as they have been since the settlement of Kansas, and for thousands of years before that: a tallgrass prairie that blankets the Flint Hills with a rich variety of grasses and wildflowers.
by Jim Hoy
Pasture burners in the Flint Hills have employed a variety of techniques and folk devices for setting fires. Some ranchers, in a manner related to the Indian method of dragging a burning ball of dead grass across the prairie, have wrapped a log chain around a kerosene-soaked bale of hay (or an old tire) and pulled it behind a pickup. Others have wrapped burlap into a tightly twisted ball, soaked it with kerosene, attached it to a length of heavy wire, then tied the wire to a lariat rope and ragged it behind a horse. A more physically demanding method involves using a rake (often with a metal pipe substituting for its wooden handle) or a pitchfork to pull clumps of burning dead grass along the edge of the pasture to be set ablaze. Regular wooden kitchen matches, broken in half before striking, are often thrown into the grass from the window of a pickup or the back of a horse. (Only half a match is used because a whole match will more often than not lie on top of the grass and go out whereas a broken match will more easily drop down into a clump grass.) One Flint Hills rancher orders special matches with wax-coated oversized heads from a maritime supply house for use during pasture-burning season. Other ranchers have become more mechanized, adapting to their own use such commercially manufactured devices as kerosene weed burners, propane branding-iron torches, and army-surplus flame throwers.
Undoubtedly the most striking bit of folk technology to have emerged from the annual burning of the Flint Hills is a fire starter called variously a firestick, a firepipe, or a firesetter. This device, simple in construction and appearance, is easy to use and effective, although somewhat forbidding, even frightening, to the uninitiated in its makeup: it is nothing more than a length of ordinary pipe filled with gasoline, one end sealed, the other plugged, with a small hole in the removable plug so that the gasoline can drip out and catch fire. To use a firestick, one sets fire to a clump of grass with a match, then drops the plugged end of the firestick into the fire. The gasoline ignites and, as the pipe is dragged along (whether on foot or from the rear of a four-wheeler or the bed of a pickup), the gasoline dribbles and bounces out, setting grass ablaze in a continuous string of fire. To extinguish the firestick, the operator simply turns the drip end skyward and it will soon blaze out, or he can harmlessly smother the flame with a gloved hand.
What keeps a firestick from blowing up? Operators say that for an explosion to occur, air would have to get into the pipe, which it cannot do. Admittedly the device has every appearance of a bomb, but not a single one of the hundreds that are or have been in use has ever been known to have exploded. One rancher, in fact, lost his firestick when it bounced off his flatbed pickup. When he went back to look for it, the prairie fire had burned over it and the heat had caused the gasoline inside to expand and squirt out the drip hole like a geyser. Flames were shooting ten to fifteen feet in the air, but the firestick did not explode.
This record of safety, however, has not induced extension service personnel or university researchers to adopt the firestick. Instead, most of them use the commercially manufactured drip torch for lighting fires. This device is comprised of a canister with handles on the side and a stem extending from the top. A coil in the stem at its base keeps air from getting into the canister, while a wick at the end of the stem drips the burning fuel, a mixture of gasoline and diesel fuel. Drip torches, developed from kerosene flame torches, were first introduced in the early 1950s.
Firesticks came into widespread use in the Flint Hills during the 1970s, but oral tradition records their use back into the 1950s and even beyond. The earliest, in use before World War Two, seem to have been made of kerosene- or gasoline-filled three-quarter-inch pipe with a corncob or rags stuffed in one end for a wick and a thumb held onto the other end. Today all Flint Hills firesticks are homemade, perhaps because the potential market is too small to support commercial manufacture. They come in many different sizes and lengths, with variations reflecting the individuality of their makers - a ring welded onto the sealed end for attachment to a four-wheeler, a shovel-like handle built into the sealed end for easy handling, a cage of iron rod build around the drip end to hold it up and out of the mud or wet cow chips, an upper end of plastic pipe and the lower fourth of metal to reduce the weight.
Pasture burning may be the hardest part of a Flint Hills rancher's job, but the firestick has helped to make it easier.
by Elmer J. Finck
The aftermath of a fire looks very devastating with the blackened ash and the landscape apparently void of vegetation. However, within a few days the green sprouts of plants begin to appear. The question is what has happened to the animals? Have they been destroyed by the fire? Is the fire as good for them as it is for plants such as the warm season grasses?
Answers to these questions have been sought over the past ten years on the Konza Prairie Research Natural Area, which is in the northern Flint Hills of Kansas within the tallgrass prairie ecosystem. The fires, which occurred in April, were controlled burns on areas not grazed by cattle (Bos taurus). The animals investigated from the population biology perspective include below ground macroinvertebrates, grasshoppers, earthworms, birds and mammals.
There are three categories of response to fire by a species: 1) fire neutral, 2) fire positive, and 3) fire negative. Whether a species is in one of these three categories depends on the time of the fire within the season, the frequency of fires over time, the extent of the fire, and the intensity of the fire relative to the life history of the animal under study.
Fire neutral species are species that do not show a change in population after the fire relative to population size before the fire, or they show no differences on burned areas relative to unburned areas. Fire positive species show an increase in population size after a fire relative to population size before the fire or higher populations on burned areas than on unburned areas. Fire negative species show a decrease in population size after a fire relative to population size before the fire and have lower populations on burned areas than on unburned areas.
In general those small mammal species that eat leafy materials (folivores) and typically have nests made of leafy material at the soil surface, such as prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster) and hispid cotton rats (Sigmodon hispidus) are fire negative. Species, such as the western harvest mouse (Reithrodontomys megalotis), that have leafy nests at the surface and are more omnivorous (i.e., eating both seeds and invertebrates) are also fire negative. Fire positive species, such as the deer mouse (Peromyscus maniculatus), hispid pocket mouse (Chaetodipus hispidus), meadow jumping mouse (Zapus hudsonius), and the thirteen lined ground squirrel (Spermophilus tridecemlineatus), eat primarily seeds and insects in habitats that have little cover and nest in burrows under the ground. The diversity of small mammals is highest with an intermediate frequency of fire because both fire positive and fire negative species are present.
Among grasshoppers, fire positive species forage on grasses, while fire negative species are species that forage on forbs. Both of these patterns are modified by the way the grasshoppers overwinter (i.e., as eggs or larvae and where these eggs or larvae are located during the fire). Those species that have eggs or larvae in litter or on vegetation are typically fire negative, while those species with eggs or larvae at or below the soil surface are fire positive. Fire frequency seems to set broad limits to the assemblage of grasshopper species within a local community. The diversity of grasshoppers is highest with an intermediate frequency of fire.
Among grassland nesting birds the only species found to be strongly fire negative is the Henslow's sparrow (Ammodramus henslowii). Some species such as the greater prairie chicken (Tympanuchus cupido) and upland sandpiper (Bartramia longicauda) are fire negative early in the nesting cycle and fire positive later in the nesting cycle (i.e., they rarely nest in burned areas) but take their precocial young to the recently burned areas. Greater prairie chickens will move their lekking ground a few meters to be on recently burned areas. Dickcissels (Spiza americana) are fire neutral because some of the forbs in which they nest are negatively affected by fire and some of the forbs are positively affected by fire. Birds that are nesting during the time of the fire have their nest destroyed, but all renest including greater prairie chicken, ring-necked pheasant (Phasianus colchicus), mourning doves (Zenaida macroura), and northern bobwhite quail (Colinus virginianus). Mourning doves show a negative response to fire early in the breeding season by not nesting on burned areas, but show a positive response later in the breeding season.
Three species of large mammals - the white tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), bison (Bos bison), and pronghorn (Antilocapra americana) - can all run from the fire. None of them typically have their young during the spring burning season. All have been shown to prefer foraging in recently burned areas in late spring and early summer and thus are fire positive.
In general, the biomass of below ground invertebrates increases with fire for those groups studied. Below ground macroinvertebrates are more numerous in annually burned areas than unburned areas. Biomass of the native earthworms Diplocardia smithii and D. verrucosa increases with burning, while the biomass of an introduced European species Aporrectodea turgida decreases with fire. This difference in responses may reflect the evolution of the native species and its interactions with fire as compared to the European species.
Fire obviously kills those individuals that are caught in the fire and cannot escape, and slow moving animals are more susceptible to being burned (e.g., turtles and snakes). There are some reports of many individuals killed by fire, but remember that most prairie animals have evolved with these periodic events we call fire and have adapted to the presence of fire. How a species is affected depends on the life history of the animal, the time and intensity of the fire, and the frequency of the fires.
|The Kansas School Naturalist
|Department of Biology
|College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
|Send questions / comments to
Kansas School Naturalist.
|Emporia State University


text:
Eat local or eat smart
I love food. I'm a happy eater, and a less-than-happy yet genuinely enthusiastic cook. Only recently, though, have I started gaining a sort of food conscience. Food conscience growing up was more about knowing how to hold up my chopsticks properly, or being able to recognize a shallot, or learning to enjoy gross stuff like ants eggs (yes, we eat ants eggs in Mexico. We call them escamoles, and they're positively buttery and delicious). In any case, conscience was more of a snob thing than an actual curiosity or desire for knowledge about the stuff I was being fed.
Now that I'm older, though, not only do I care about what I cook or eat; I also try to worry about what goes onto my plate and how it gets there. I've tried to go organic, but in Spain it's still virtually impossible (organic food stores or markets rare here, and the prices are simply insane). I've tried to buy fresh produce in markets instead of supermarkets. Barcelona has wonderful food markets. But most of the tomatoes in the markets are also grown in those massive plastic-covered freak farms in Almería, and many of the fruits are imported from Brazil or India and the fish is sometimes frozen. I've begun to wonder how far a conscientious eater can really go, particularly in an urban setting.
Apparently pretty far. Take locavores, or local eaters. Yes, it's a proper word. But what does eating locally actually mean? Originally, it seems locavores should only eat food produced within a 100-mile radius of their home. Details and hidden agendas aside, a very good case has been made against this hardcore notion of eating local, in its own terms. It turns out that eating local can actually be less sustainable than eating food from the other side of the equator (click to read why).
Again, we're faced with one of the distortions of the localist rhetoric. It's one thing to support locally-oriented farmers markets or wanting to eat something that hasn't been radiated and tastes like plastic. I think initiatives like Fritz Haeg's Edible Estates or the various urban-farming movements taking over empty lots and fighting underemployement are great. But this sort of initiative can only cover a fraction of our needs, and can only work under very specific conditions. Why not make a call for eating consciously instead of only locally?
6 comments:
- Daniel Nairn said...
"Eating consciously" is pretty vague. If you took a poll of whether people consider themselves conscious of what they eat, you'd probably be close to 100%.
On the other hand, 100 miles is an unavoidable fact, and I think that is why some have set this forth as a laudible goal. Nobody believes a carrot from 99 miles away is that much more sustainable than one from 101 miles. It's an objective benchmark, an anchor point in a world in which "natural" and "healthy" and "humane" and even "organic" are pretty much broken language.
- November 19, 2008 at 1:00 PM
- rob said...
More on why food localism is not important for the reasons typically given (reducing carbon emissions) at gristmill:
That is to say: Eating local out of concern over carbon emissions is misguided. Food travel is not a big part of America's collective emissions or most individuals' emissions. And miles traveled is not always a reliable indicator of emissions -- hothouse vegetables grown locally may be responsible for more emissions than traditionally grown veggies flown overseas.
Ezra Klein also had a good post on the topic recently, complete with chart illustrating the relative unimportance of transport in making food unsustainable.
That said, it remains true that both foodie reasons ("Local food tastes better") as well as Wendell Berry-ish reasons ("I enjoy eating locally because it connects me to the seasonal rhythms of the place I live in" or "I think constructing a more localized economy is vital to the health and well-being of my community") for food localism remain (at least potentially) valid.
- November 19, 2008 at 2:02 PM
- Daniel Nairn said...
I agree that the emissions calculations are dicey. I read somewhere that carting small amounts of food around in pick-up trucks isn't that much different from aggregating large amounts of food into 18-wheelers and sending it across the country.
But I also agree that the Wendell Berry "know your farmer" angle is important here. Food can be an entry point into an alternative worldview from the global consumer capitalism evident in the supermarket (branding everywhere, value-added processing, no connection to place or time, etc.). To the extent that buying locally grounds us in the land (and not just land in the abstract, but this land) and a community of people we know in reality, it can lead to lifestyle changes that do have an impact on the environment and health.
- November 20, 2008 at 7:06 AM
- Daniel Nairn said...
oh yeah. Almost forgot. Local food has positive land use implications. Farms would be encouraged to occupy land around metro regions, making it easier to curb sprawl through an urban growth boundary greenbelt. Easier than with giant monoculture farms in Nebraska.
Also, localism would encourage smaller-scale farms, which lead to better production practices. The movement toward chemical farming was driven by the economy of scale, not so much technological advances. And the closer connection allows consumers more transparency to aid their food choices.
- November 20, 2008 at 7:19 AM
- Mario Ballesteros said...
Thanks for the comments guys.
I think "eating consciously" should be understood as wanting to know more about what we actually eat, regardless of where it comes from.
I agree that one of the virtues of the eat local movement is that it has gotten people to actually take a moment to think about what they put in their mouths, and understand how its tied to both local and faraway economies (as opposed to the eat-healthy or calorie count fads of earlier decades).
I think that demanding clear information on what we consume should become a sort of prerogative, and that the eat local movement definitely deserves some points for putting this on the agenda.
I like the idea of food connecting to place and community, but again, with the global piercing the local constantly. Some locavores mention immigrant farmers bringing in "exotic" produce to the local arena. I love that New York now has a "local" Poblano cuisine scene. But what if you can't grow chiles in upstate New York? Maybe the inflexible 100-mile radius could be broadened to some specific farming community in southern Mexico, tied to the local food producers. I don't know.
The thing I'm not totally convinced of is this idea of the self-sufficient, isolated nuclei.
I just remembered this really cool project I read about, called Background Stories by graphic designer Arlene Birt. She proposes to include simple diagrams or illustrations on product packaging that trace the "journey" of a product from the farm or wherever to the counter. Check it out:
- November 20, 2008 at 12:14 PM
- Daniel Nairn said...
The thing I'm not totally convinced of is this idea of the self-sufficient, isolated nuclei"
Yeah, I hear you on that.
- November 20, 2008 at 9:04 PM


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Divine Chocolate
Friday, March 23, 2012
Divine Milk Chocolate Praline Mini Eggs
In the past five years it's gotten a little easier to find ethically sourced candies for the holidays.
Divine Chocolate makes Fair Trade certified chocolate using cocoa from the Kuapa Kokoo cooperative in Ghana. For the most part in the United States we just get their bars, but for the past two or three years, I've seen some of their holiday items at stores like Whole Foods.
The Divine Milk Chocolate Praline Mini Eggs are described as milk chocolate eggs with hazelnut praline filling. The upright box comes in the palest pearl blue color with some very light icons in the background in the same style as their bars. The box only holds 3.5 ounces, which is about 8 foil wrapped praline filled eggs. At Whole Foods they cost $4.49 per package.
These remind me an awful lot of the fair trade Tony's Chocolonely Easter Eggs available in Europe. So much that I'm wondering if there's a common production facility in common.
The eggs are 1.5 inches long and about an inch at the widest. They come in two different foil colors: gold and pale blue. Inside the foil the eggs have an interesting shell pattern that reminds me of crocodile.
Each egg is about 13 grams or .46 ounces, so they're quite a little morsel. The suggested serving is three eggs and I calculated that they're about 70 calories each, which means 153 calories per ounce ... a rather fatty little chocolate egg. But there is one gram of protein per egg. The ingredients say that the chocolate is 27% cocoa solids and 20% milk solids. Also, the entire candy is 19% hazelnuts. The chocolate is fair trade certified, but that only makes up 67% of the ingredients.
The milk chocolate shell is filled with a thick and dense milk chocolately hazelnut cream. They smell deeply toasty and nutty. The milk chocolate is sweet and sticky and tastes pretty much the same as the filling. It's soft and rib-sticking with a good mouthfeel and melt. It's a little on the fudgy side, but barely grainy (the particles from the hazelnut). They're really filling and though very sweet, it's not to the point that it burns my throat.
Many fair trade sweets are more for adults, this one would definitely please children. It's attractive, filling and well made. The price is a bit dear, but that's what happens when you pay everyone involved a decent wage.
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POSTED BY Cybele AT 3:26 pm All Natural • Candy • Review • Easter • Divine Chocolate • Chocolate • Ethically Sourced • Nuts • 7-Worth It • Belgium • Whole Foods •
Monday, November 21, 2011
Divine 70% Ginger & Orange Dark Chocolate
In the world of fair trade chocolate, it's hard to find a balance between the ethical sourcing of the ingredients and the actual likeability of the finished product. One brand that has struck a good, mass appeal approach is Divine Chocolate. They're based in the United Kingdom, but the chocolate is made in Germany.
Their product range in the United States is primarily 3.5 ounce tablet bars, with a few holiday items each year. The ingredients are Fair Trade certified as much as possible.
I picked up the Divine 70% Dark Chocolate with Ginger & Orange at Cost Plus World Market. I like the idea of a chocolate bar with a little bit of flavor and maybe even a candy-like flair to it.
I really like their new bar mold. The old one was simple and generic. The new one is the same format, but with little icons in each of the pieces. I like the thickness of the bar and the divisions - easy to snap apart and ideally sized for a bite.
The bar has an excellent and crisp snap. The scent is a bit woodsy, mostly from the ginger but with a well rounded cocoa note to it. The ingredients were not simply candied orange and candied ginger though. Instead it was something called Orange Granules which were made from orange juice, apples, sugar, rice flour, fructose, pectin, citric acid and orange flavor. Seems odd to make something that's normally considered garbage (orange peels). The ginger is also just natural ginger flavor, no actual pieces.
The result are little sticky, slightly tacky orange bits. They're good in the sense that they taste fruity, a little zesty and tangy with a lot more juice taste than orange peel. They're not at all fibery, though they did get stuck in my teeth.
The dark chocolate is smooth with a silky melt and well rounded flavor. There's a little hint of bitterness to it, but it's tempered by the woodsy but slightly drying ginger. I was hoping for a little warm kick from the ginger, but that never really formed.
Overall, it's a very good bar, it's also a crowd pleaser, in the sense that most folks will go for a fruity bar over a straight 70%. I like the package design and the added design elements on the bar mold now. It would be nice to see fewer ingredients on the list, but at least they're all real things.
Though the bar gets high marks for being fair trade, Kosher, non-GMO and vegan, it is made on shared equipment with wheat, milk, almonds and hazelnuts.
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POSTED BY Cybele AT 3:29 pm Candy • Review • Divine Chocolate • Ethically Sourced • Ginger • Kosher • 7-Worth It • Germany • Cost Plus •
Friday, December 17, 2010
Divine Milk Chocolate with Spiced Cookies
I found the Divine Milk Chocolate with Spiced Cookies while in San Francisco last month. It seemed like the perfect place to pick up a limited edition bar for the winter season, as San Francisco always seems to be cold when I'm there.
I usually like the Divine packages; I like the simplicity and flexibility of the icons on the solid color field. The designs are color coded so it's easy to pick out your favorite on a crowded shelf at the store. This breaks with that tradition and the wrapper sports a shiny red ribbon and bow. Not a pretty hand tied bow, but one of those cheap stick on bows. The design is done with a bit of tromp l'oiel that just ruins it because of the violation of scale.
The bar is made of mostly fair trade ingredients (the chocolate and the sugar) and is all natural though not organic.
The bar is soft, both because the cookies are crumbly and the milk chocolate isn't quite as crisp as some. The chocolate has a very strong yogurty-dairy flavor to it, a little on the side of cheese even. I'm not keep on this more earthy and grassy flavor of milk chocolate. The chocolate melt is also a bit thick and sticky but very smooth. The cookies are quite good and have a well rounded flavor profile with a hint of ginger, black pepper, a graham cracker base and a hint of salt.
I liked it and eventually finished the bar (with a little help) but I don't think this is quite for me. It's a good candy bar that uses fair trade chocolate, but it's not what I'd consider a good chocolate bar. The spiced cookies are a nice change from crisped rice and plain ginger, but not quite enough for me to wish that they'd make this bar all year round.
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POSTED BY Cybele AT 10:55 am All Natural • Candy • Christmas • Divine Chocolate • Chocolate • Cookie • Ethically Sourced • Limited Edition • 7-Worth It • Germany •
Friday, April 2, 2010
An Easter Dash - Reviews in Short
Easter Dots come in one of the happiest looking boxes I've seen in a long time.
They're also crazy cheap, most of the time a theater box like this that holds 7 ounces is just a buck. When I looked at the flavors on this box I was a little confused about what made these an Easter version besides the box (Mike and Ike come in holiday boxes that are the exact same candy). The flavors are Blueberry, Lemon, Lime, Cherry and Orange. The flavors of the classic Dots box are Strawberry, Lemon, Lime, Cherry and Orange. So in this version the Strawberry has been swapped for Blueberry.
These were very fresh. Tootsie does a good job of sealing up the boxes well and Dots have a clear cellophane overwrap.
Once I opened the box I found out the big difference, it's the color. Easter Dots are bright and opaque little nubbins.
Well, maybe there was another difference. These seem to be just as smooth but have a "shorter" chew to them, so they didn't stick to my teeth like Dots usually do. I liked the freshness of the flavors, though it's a little bland it's also soothing. The blueberry was pretty convincing though I wish that one replaced the cherry instead of the strawberry.
Rating: 6 out of 10
I've been searching all over for these for the past month and finally found them at Whole Foods yesterday ... not with the candy but at the end of the cereal aisle.
Divine Milk Chocolate Speckled Eggs are all natural and fair trade milk chocolate eggs with a candy shell.
They're freakishly expensive at $4.99 for 3.5 ounces, far more than I'd be willing to pay on a regular basis. I really only bought them because I'd been searching so hard for them it seemed weird to find them and then get decide they were too expensive. The chocolate is made from beans from the Kuapa Kokoo cocoa cooperative in Ghana. Seems like Easter is one of those holidays where folks may want to pay more attention to the social responsibility behind the treats.
The stand up box is charming. Inside is a little clear cellophane bag with a little more than a handful of eggs.
They're very similar to Cadbury Mini Eggs. The shape is more football than pear. They beautiful muted colors and a matte finish.
The shell is smooth and softly decorated. The shell is quite thick and crunchy. The chocolate inside has a silky melt, a little sticky with a good caramelized dairy note. I liked them a lot and will probably buy them again next year. Hopefully they can be found in larger packages for better value. (Also, Whole Foods could do a better job of putting them where people can find them. I went to three different stores and it wasn't until the fourth circuit of the one at 3rd & Fairfax that I found them - even after asking a stockperson.)
Rating: 7 out of 10
The Sour Patch Bunnies are like many other Easter versions of regular candies. As you can imagine these are little bunny shaped candies instead of being shaped like spiky haired children.
I liked the box a lot, it was easy to tell apart from the regular Sour Patch offerings. The only quibble is really the packaging. Like many theater box candies, inside the box the candy is inside a plain cellophane bag. As I mentioned above, the Dots are just tumbling around in the box and there's a cellophane seal on the outside. For this version I have to open the box top completely to get the bag out, dump the candy into the box and then I'm faced with an opening that is really too large for dispensing.
They're a little lighter in color compared to the Sour Patch Kids. Honestly, I prefer this. They're colored enough that I can tell them apart and guess the flavor and that's really all I need. Other than that, the shape was so vague, unless you told me these were bunnies I wouldn't have known. Pink is the classic Swedish Fish flavor with a tangy coating. Green is lime, yellow is lemon and orange is orange. A biting sour coating, a chewy sweet jelly candy in the center ... they're great.
Rating: 7 out of 10
I bought this Russell Stover Peanut Butter Pastelle Rabbit online from Russell Stover. I just couldn't find it in the stores and thought it was a unique product.
The rabbit is similar to the white chocolate one I tried last year (and didn't like that much, so I wonder why I was curious about this one). It's a peanut butter coating (like peanut butter baking chips) with a peanut butter filling.
The three ounce flat rabbit is nicely molded. The butterscotch color is also really appealing. It smells like vanilla pudding and peanut butter. The coating though is a bit waxy and stiff, it melts but not in a dreamy way that good white chocolate does. But it's not too sweet, which is a relief as well. The filling is a crumbly peanut butter with a salty note and a dry grainy crunch. I kind of got into it. I'd prefer it in a smaller format though, maybe one of the smaller eggs they do.
Rating: 6 out of 10.
Brach's Classic Jelly Bird Eggs are cheap jelly beans. I don't know what classic is, the package gives no indication what the flavors are.
They're only 99 cents for a generous 9 ounce bag. Even at that bargain price, they're not much of a deal. They're pretty enough to look at and probably decorate with, but they're inconsistent in flavor and execution. I also resent not knowing what's inside. It's not like the bag is tiny and has no room for information like the flavor array.
White is pineapple. It's sweet and floral but bland. Green is lime and rather strong but lacking zest. Purple is grape and is utterly stupid ... seriously, it tastes like sweet stupidity. Black is licorice. All of the black ones seemed to be smaller than the other jelly beans. Still, they were tasty and well done. Pink is bitter and just dreadful. Perhaps it's strawberry. Red is not as bitter but still dreadful. Orange is sweet and empty. Finally there's yellow, which is actually pretty good, it's like a sugared lemon peel.
Rating: 4 out of 10
So as annoying as I found the Classic beans, you'd think I would be happy with the Brach's Spiced Jelly Bird Eggs which are quite clear on the front that they feature spice flavors.
I was hoping for rich flavors, but of course I know Brach's well enough that I really won't be getting much more than a decent looking product. The bag doesn't promise much more than a good value, so I should probably adjust my expectations.
Red is a mild cinnamon, not as good as Hot Tamales and kind of tinged with some of the mint notes, but still pleasant like a cup of spiced chai. White is peppermint. I have to say that a peppermint jelly bean is a little odd especially since it's so grainy but still fresh tasting. Pink is wintergreen which I really love except when there's too much food dye like this one that has a weird bitter clove & plastic aftertaste - but at moments it's kind of like root beer. Purple is clove and is actually mild enough for me to enjoy though true clove lovers will probably be disappointed. Orange is sweet and again lacking in any pizazz. Black is again licorice and pretty good (though it makes my tongue dark green).
I think the problem is that I've already had some pretty good spice jelly beans from Hot Tamales (Just Born) and there's really no need to switch brands, the price is comparable, availability is the only issue.
Rating: 5 out of 10
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POSTED BY Cybele AT 1:17 pm All Natural • Candy • Review • Easter • Brach's • Cadbury • Divine Chocolate • Farley's & Sathers • Russell Stover • Tootsie • Chocolate • Ethically Sourced • Jelly Candy • Licorice Candy • Peanuts • Sour • 4-Benign • 5-Pleasant • 6-Tempting • 7-Worth It • Canada • United Kingdom • United States • Rite Aid • Target • Walgreen's •
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Divine 70% Dark Chocolate with Raspberries
One of the newest bars from Divine, a fair trade chocolate maker, is 70% Dark Chocolate with Raspberries.
The packaging is another iteration of their West African iconography in gold and red on a black background. The bars is 3.5 ounces (not available in a single serve size at this time) and is wrapped well inside the paper overwrap with a textured medium grade foil.
Divine bills itself as Heavenly Chocolate with a heart. They use mostly fair trade ingredients (in this case it was the sugar, vanilla and the cacao), are all natural and use non-GMO soy lecithin. Their dark bars do not use any dairy products and are considered vegan though are produced on shared equipment with milk, wheat and tree nuts.
The construction of the bar is simple. Dark chocolate with a layer of freeze dried raspberries sprinkled on the bottom.
Flipped over, the bar is quite beautiful, like all the Divine bars I've had. Nice gloss and snap, a rather red hue to it; I wasn't sure if it was from the raspberry inclusions or just the natural state of the chocolate. It's a moderately thick bar, thicker than a Lindt Excellence bar, but not as thick as something like Ritter Sport. The sections are 4 by 6 and pretty easy to snap apart.
It absolutely smells like raspberries with some woodsy and seed notes. The dark chocolate is strong, dark and slightly bitter. I was expecting a fruity chocolate, instead it had strong coffee and charcoal notes. The texture is silky with a dry finish and of course the raspberry bits created some texture. The raspberries are freeze dried bits, with lots of seeds. Chewing the seeds gives off grassy and sesame flavors while the pulp part is quite tangy and has great natural raspberry flavors.
Overall I liked the bold combination of flavors - this was not a timid bar. It was not a bar that I could munch on forever though. I had two pieces, then needed to rest for a while until I was interested in having some more. It wasn't something I was craving at any point though. If they could do the same bar without the seeds, I think I'd prefer it.
Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 12:25 pm
Friday, December 19, 2008
Christmas Mint Round Up
I'm buried in mints! So here's a huge roundup of all the mint items in my queue that I wanted to get through before Christmas.
Like the Trader Joe's Espresso Pillows I picked up a few months ago, Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Mints come in a cute round tin and hold 2.45 ounces. Unlike the Espresso Pillows, these are not a very original product.
Inside the tin is a fluted liner that holds a large handful of soft, white candy-shelled mints. Each is about the size of a kidney bean. The tin says that there are no artificial flavors or preservatives. I think they shy from the "all natural" part because the white shell is created with titanium dioxide.
They reminded me of the classic Dutch Mints and luckily I had some of those around for comparison.
Jelly Belly makes a large variety of Dutch Mints. They come in different colors, these are all hot pink and individually wrapped, though you can also get them in the stark white, pastel mint colors or right now in the Christmas assortment of red, green and white. (And they're Kosher.)
The Dutch Mint is the size of a garbanzo bean but my guess is the same mass as the TJ's.
They're both the same construction, a soft mint fondant with a thin layer or dark chocolate then a crispy candy shell.
Both are lovely and addictive. The Trader Joe's retails for $1.22 an ounce. The Jelly Belly can go for anywhere from $.70 an ounce for the small 2.9 ounce bag to $.56 for a one pound tub (check out Cost Plus World Market).
Jelly Belly Dutch Mints get a rating of: 8 out of 10
These also closely resemble the York Mints that also come in a tin.
The previous are great for toting around and especially nice if a restaurant gives you a few with the check. But if you're entertaining, you might want to provide some other more chocolatey mint morsels.
I've always loved After Eight Mints, which are a flowing mint fondant in an ultra thin square. I used to love how they came in individual glassine envelopes, like a little file box of deliciousness.
Of course After Eights are made by Nestle now and not nearly as good as I remember them on top of the controversies that they're made from questionably sourced chocolate. The Fair Trade movement has been working to bring families and communities out of poverty through fair payment for goods & services.
Divine Chocolate has been doing this since 1998 in the United Kingdom and recently expanded into the United States. Not only do they have tasty bars they also have addition treats like these Divine After Dinner Mints.
The mints are nicely sized for two bites at about 1.5" square. The mild semi-sweet chocolate is crisp and cracks well. The mint fondant center is creamy and minted only slightly so as not to overpower the chocolate. The dark chocolate has some berry and fruity tones that combine well with the cool peppermint flavors.
I've seen these at Whole Foods (at an endcap display for hostess giving), so they should be pretty widely available this season.
Divine After Dinner Mints get a rating of 7 out of 10.
Creme de Menthe Altoids have been out for a few months, though it took me a while to find the variety that isn't covered in chocolate. I realized that I might have seen them before, the green of the package is only slightly lighter than the Spearmint boxes. These were on sale for $1.50 to boot!
Basically the flavor of these is like a Peppermint TicTac. It has a powdery vanilla scent, softer than a harsh peppermint and perhaps just a hint of licorice.
But these are Altoids. Though they might start out mild, they do pack a much stronger kick later on. I like the flavor a bit better than the straight Peppermint if only because of the mix of aromas.
Creme de Menthe Altoids get a rating of 8 out of 10.
Quite a few folks have been lamenting that Trader Joe's discontinued their English Soft Peppermints. I'm pretty keen on the generic & mild butter mints I find at the drug store, but those were some pretty good mints.
Around this time of year, however, I see a lot of these See's Peppermint Twists in candy dishes around the office. It took me a while, but I think I found out who makes them. There were two contenders: King Leo Soft Peppermint Candy or Bob's Sweet Stripes.
I saw this box of King Leo Soft Peppermint Candy at the 99 Cent Only Store and thought I'd give them a whirl. They were a dollar for 3.5 ounces.
I thought they were "butter mints" and read through this to see how I came to that conclusion:
So I was expecting a soft mint. Either crumbly soft or mushy soft.
These were neither. They're soft as in rounded and smooth, but after that they were not butter mints until I sucked on them for a while. Which is kind of the opposite of "soft from the moment you open the box". Annoyance aside, they're peppermint candies. They are airy and dissolve nicely and of course none of those hard candy sharp edges. They're sweet and a bit less intense than a starlight mint and really pretty to look at. Like those English Soft Peppermints that were really made in the Netherlands, King Leo are made in Mexico. Kosher.
King Leo Soft Peppermint Candy gets a 6 out of 10.
POSTED BY Cybele AT 9:23 am Candy • Review • Christmas • Divine Chocolate • Jelly Belly • Trader Joe's • Wrigley's • Chocolate • Ethically Sourced • Fondant • Kosher • Mints • 6-Tempting • 7-Worth It • 8-Tasty • Mexico • United Kingdom • United States • 99 Cent Only Store • Ralph's •
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Divine Fair Trade Chocolate
October is Fair Trade Month, which makes sense since Halloween is the number one candy holiday. A few years ago I'm pretty sure few people, especially candy fans even know what that meant, happily much of that has changed, both through education efforts and the simple ubiquity of the products displaying the logos. Fair Trade guarantees the growers of raw materials & makers of products a fair and liveable wage for their products, you can read more about it here. Luckily all sorts of fair trade products are becoming more available to regular consumers, even at big box stores like Target, grocery & drug store chains.
I've tried quite a few fair trade candies over the years, including Divine Chocolate. Divine is expanding more in the United States and has a broader range of products now than ever before. One of their representatives sent me a nice sampling of their products, so I'll be reviewing them over the next month or so. The motto is Heavenly chocolate with a heart.
First, their standard 3.5 ounce chocolate bars. While fair trade chocolate isn't hard to find, fair trade candy bars are. Yes a nice dark bar is all well and good, but sometimes I want a little more in my decadent treat (without enslaving any children in Africa for it either). With a retail price of about $3 a bar, it's certainly no hardship for the chocolate aficionado. But of course the larger question is, how do they taste?
I'm starting with the Divine 70% Dark Chocolate.
I tried this chocolate back in 2005 and while I can't say whether they've changed the formula or way that they're making the bar, I like it much better than I did then.
The packaging is lovely. Before it was a simple black wrap with their logo. The new package is a matte paper with a foil inner wrap. The decorative icons are fun and attractive, I spotted hearts, turtles, geese and something that's either a comb or a Menorah.
The bar inside is wonderfully tempered. Shiny, even and no hint of bubbles or bloom. I like the thickness of the pieces and that the bar snaps easily into the little portions.
The scent is a little grassy and fruity.
On the tongue the cocoa butter melts quickly into a silky puddle. Flavors are middle of the road, there's nothing difficult or loud about this bar. I get a little bit of coffee, cherries, olives, woodsy eucalyptus and very little acid. The finish is smooth and with only a slight bitter note but no dryness.
The high fat content makes this very munchable. I like that in a chocolate bar, though I know that some fans prefer a more intense concentration cacao.
99% of the ingredients are fair trade certified for this bar (this includes the sugar, vanilla and cocoa products - only the non-GMO soy lecithin is not).
Rating: 8 out of 10
The Divine Hazelnut Milk Chocolate is completely new to me. I tried the 27% cocoa plain milk chocolate and was struck by how the milky flavors reflected the European-style.
I think this package is the prettiest of the three. I liked the brown wrapper with gold and cream colored icons, it feels elegant, playful and subtly conveys that this is a milk chocolate product.
The ingredients in this bar, like the dark one go for fair trade when possible, though this one only clocks in at 69% with the cream, soy lecithin and chopped hazelnuts as traditionally sourced.
The bar is softer than its dark counterpart. Snapping it in half it's clear that part of the reason is the plethora of crushed hazelnuts.
The bar smells milky, a little nutty and a little cheesy.
On the tongue it melts quickly but is a little sweet and sticky at first. Then come the flavors, the dairy flavors lean towards powdered milk, have a great smoky cocoa flavor and of course the hazelnut.
It's not quite giaunduia, but it's close. The bar overall is a bit sweet for me but fills that gaping hole out there for fair price fair trade candy bars that are more than straight chocolate.
Rating: 7 out of 10.
I've fallen in love with real white chocolate. The Divine White Chocolate with Strawberries bar provides an additional confectionery twist. It has little "strawberry crisps" mixed in.
The cocoa content on this bar is a staggering 25%, which means it's one quarter cocoa butter. Milk solids make up another 26%. (And the fair trade percentage here is 71%.)
Strangely enough the calcium content on a single serving is 16% of your RDA and 4 grams of protein. I wouldn't call it a full serving of dairy, but it's certainly not completely junk food.
The bar smells like Frankenberry cereal.
The little berry crisps dot the bar and look to be evenly distributed.
The melt of the white chocolate isn't quite as even as the other two bars, it has a slightly fudgier grain to it, but it is smooth. The strawberry crisps are more than just little dried bits. They're crunchy and tangy, with the floral scent of berries along with the high pitched tartness. But the tangy part isn't intergrated into the white chocolate like the Meiji bar I tried recently.
If you have a soft spot for white chocolate and strawberries, I'd suggest giving this bar a try. I enjoyed it a lot more than the Frey but the Green & Black's White Chocolate (plain) is still the gold standard for me.
Rating: 7 out of 10.
All of the bars are Kosher. I don't know the full distribution of the bars but you can find some of them places like Whole Foods and other stores that carry natural products. Look for wider distribution soon as well as new products from Divine for the holidays. I saw some little foil wrapped milk chocolates themed for Halloween (available web only) on their site.
Related Candies
POSTED BY Cybele AT 10:19 am
Wednesday, November 9, 2005
Divine Chocolate: Fair Trade
Name: Divine Chocolate
These little 45 gram bars are a wonderful example of how a niche product can break out big in the wide candy world. Made in the UK from fair trade cocoa beans, these bars come not only in the familiar milk and dark varieties, but also an orange flavored bar and they've also introduced a smaller bar for kids called Dubble.
The dark chocolate bar is smoky and rich and has a good, complex flavor to it. Very woodsy with a slight dry finish. The chocolate is smooth but a little waxy at first as it warms up on the tongue, but there's no hint of grain at all. At 70% cocoa solids, this is a very chocolatey bar but doesn't have that crumbly feel that some have. The snap was good and personally, I prefer a chunky bar to a flat one.
The milk chocolate bar is very European, with a strong dried milk component to it. It's very sweet but has a good chocolate taste and is smooth and rich on the tongue. AT 27% cocoa solids, this is a very milky bar (using both dried milk and dried cream).
Again, you're probably asking, why pay a bit more for the same quality? Well, in this case more money is going directly to the farmers who produce the cocoa beans. Farmers (by this I mean the folks who actually tend the plants, harvest the beans and prepare them for shipping) not only get a decent wage, they are guaranteed income through long-term contracts and the company supports education for children in the area. Economic stability provides political stability which in turn helps to turn the African economy to a more sustainable one not based on government aid where communities build themselves through their agriculture and small industry.
One note about how Divine and Equal Exchange differ - Divine is NOT organic. If you're looking for a bottom-to-top socially responsible chocolate, go with Equal Exchange because its cocoa farming is organic and is working with cooperatives in multiple locations as well as using organic, unprocessed sugar. If you're looking for a move in the right direction (or don't have access to EE), then go Divine and support the widest possible marketing efforts (hey, buy some from both and help farmers in Peru, Dominican Republic and Ghana!).
Rating - 7 out of 10
POSTED BY Cybele AT 7:57 am Candy • Review • Divine Chocolate • Chocolate • Ethically Sourced • 7-Worth It • United Kingdom •
Meticulously photographed and documented reviews of candy from around the world. And the occasional other sweet adventures. Open your mouth, expand your mind.


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I feel like this question still deals with Arch largely, so I hope it is considered acceptable by the mods. If they feel it's too far off topic, I apologize and I'll happily delete it and repost to a more general forum.
I love Arch - it's been my primary distro for a while now, and I've fallen in love with both the minimalism, documentation, and the package system (easy to create new packages or modify existing ones). So when I decided to create a bootable USB with Linux, Arch seemed like an good choice.
The problem I have with Arch on a flash drive is that, by its nature (since Arch is rolling), if I only use my flash drive once a month, there are an enormous number of updates that all wear on the finite read/writes of the flash drive (and are time consuming on the slow media).
Therefore, I wanted to ask, does anyone have any recommendations for an Arch-like distribution (minimalist, easy-to-modify packages, well documented) that's isn't rolling? Right now, I'm leaning towards trying BSD, but I'm concerned about potential driver problems (since it appears there are few proprietary drivers available for BSD). Does anyone have any other ideas?
Thanks for any help in this matter.
Perhaps my experirence with Compact Flash devices is of interst to you.
I have had CF devices running in Raid arrays for several years...many dd operations on the devices to modify the raid arrays.
At present have a three device raid0 bootable partitioned grub2 and a four device array of the same type as well as a single raid0 device all running and upgrading daily.
It is my belief that a large capacity device utilizing CF card algorithms has a long life because the cells are constantly being changed to eliminate repeated calls to the same cell for read or write.
Therefore, a generality concerning the use of flash doesn't necessarily apply to all types of flash devices.
I have had no failure of any CF device in several years.
My wife has lost her windows HDD after two years.
I have recently utilized the same CF cards previously in raid0 arrays in archlinux. and have built the four device raid0 array cited above. This involved dd to clear the devices and then install arch to a raid0 partition on the four devices.
All this activity has not reduced the capacity of the devices nor the speed. The devices are mounted in a sata/IDE adapter to provide maximum UDMA performance. A pcie/sata card provide two sata ports to my mobo two primary sata ports to provide the needed four ports.
EDIT: With four devices of 16GB each, the available capacity ensures fewer writes to a given cell suing striping.
FWIW EDit: Everything in my raid0 is written to root!
Last edited by lilsirecho (2012-09-07 22:43:12)
Prediction...This year will be a very odd year!
Hard work does not kill people but why risk it: Charlie Mccarthy
A man is not complete until he is married..then..he is finished.
When ALL is lost, what can be found? Even bytes get lonely for a little bit! X-ray confirms Iam spineless!
I'd be interested in the answer to this question for a different reason. I need to install an OS on my work computer. For that, I don't really want a rolling release because I don't want to have to think about keeping two computers up to date all the time. Also, I'm likely to keep using my laptop most days whereas there will be times when I probably don't use the work machine for a while. So updates on my laptop aren't a huge deal but on the work machine they may well be.
My work machine is not as fast as my laptop. (They gave my i3 to my office mate and gave me an older core duo.) I don't think this is a big deal.
I'd really like something where I don't have to think completely differently to configure the work machine from my laptop. (Though something Darwin-like might also be OK.)
IT don't care much what I use so long as I don't turn the machine into a server and bring down the network. (Apparently, somebody did this... EDIT: I doubt they were using Linux.)
I'm puzzled as to why they've offered to let me do this, actually. Usually all machines have standard XP images. I didn't even ask - they offered to let me.
EDIT: On second thoughts, they did specify "Linux" so I should probably stick to that.
Last edited by cfr (2012-09-08 02:29:54)
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Therefore, I wanted to ask, does anyone have any recommendations for an Arch-like distribution (minimalist, easy-to-modify packages, well documented) that's isn't rolling? Right now, I'm leaning towards trying BSD, but I'm concerned about potential driver problems (since it appears there are few proprietary drivers available for BSD). Does anyone have any other ideas?
I 've tried using FreeBSD. FreeBSD has lost performance in recent years and you need a lot of workarounds for a working Desktop. FreeBSD is not rolling by any means. The update mechanism of FreeBSD 9.0 is ancient as it have been so for a long time. The Binary apps are out of date, as the repos are frozen after a release. The ports are reasonably upto date, but updating a system is too much pain, at least for me.
Last edited by hadrons123 (2012-09-08 11:00:25)
Unix is user-friendly. It just isn't promiscuous about which users it's friendly with. - Steven King
I wanted to ask, does anyone have any recommendations for an Arch-like distribution
You can start with the list of arch-based distributions.
They will naturally be arch-like .
You should try Porteus http://porteus.org/ or even Puppy http://www.puppylinux.com/ they are designed to work fine and FAST on USB sticks.
I'm a bit confused by this. Just because arch is a rolling release doesn't mean you are *required* to update frequently. Put an up-to-date arch system on the usb drive, then don't update it for 6 months. It will probably still be more "up to date" than many release based distros. So if the only limitation of arch is that you don't want to update all the time, then use arch, and just don't update all the time.
If there are other factors, though, I often recommend slitaz as a *very* lightweight yet full featured distro. Slitaz's tazpkg is a pretty nice package manager too - it's certainly no pacman but it was my favorite package manager before I found arch+pacman.
"UNIX is simple and coherent..." - Dennis Ritchie, "GNU's Not UNIX" - Richard Stallman
then don't update it for 6 months
I'd probably shoot for something more like "every time an update makes the site News" if you don't want to update often, otherwise the major ones start to add up
.....does anyone have any recommendations for an Arch-like distribution (minimalist, easy-to-modify packages, well documented) that's isn't rolling? Right now, I'm leaning towards trying BSD, but I'm concerned about potential driver problems (since it appears there are few proprietary drivers available for BSD). Does anyone have any other ideas?
Thanks for any help in this matter.
Calculate Linux Scratch is a bit like what you're looking for. I would describe it as a binary distro, like Arch, but is semi-rolling. They have periodic point releases, currently at 12.03 with 13.0 due in December. It is very flexible like Arch because it is built on Gentoo and uses portage. I installed the Calculate Linux Desktop 12.03 (has KDE 4.9) recently alongside my Archlinux. The gui installer was very flexible and worked well. Calculate looks pretty, nice boot splash , runs well, and can be maintained as a binary distro. In a week's use it looks like package updates are much less frequent than in Arch. It could be a suitable choice for you.
I think the forum auto-mailer may have failed me... Regardless, thanks for the suggestions, everyone!
The main reason I was concerned about keeping Arch and simply not updating is that, when I did that over this past summer, I got hit with several "intervention required" updates all at once. However, I think if I do as ZekeSulastin suggested and simply update on major news updates, I think I can probably stick with Arch.
That being said, I'm definitely going to look into both slitaz and Calculate Linux - slitaz definitely seems the most "pacman-like" of the package managers I've seen (especially in regard to package generation) and Calculate just strikes me as interesting (Gentoo without compiling everything).
Thanks again!
I think the forum auto-mailer may have failed me...
* Check your forum profile options, maybe you were not automatically subscribed.
* Check the spam folder in your e-mail client.
IIRC slitaz has the option of using the distro as a liveUSB with persistent changes stored separately - the edited configs and new data is nicely compressed and saved to your pendrive. It sounds even better than saving thousands of files every major Arch update, the downside being older package versions, unless you want to "cook" new ones yourself.


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Raven Squad: Operation Hidden Dagger (Xbox 360) review
"Its a shame in many ways, because the idea the entire game heavily relies upon is so simplistically brilliant that Ive no idea how no ones made a killer video game from it before. Imagine your average RTS, then imagine that, instead of watching your controllable troops duke it out in static battles via a camera fitted high up in the sky, you could instead jump into their very heads and take the fight on yourself. Thats the big idea behind Atomic Motions new multi-talented squad based shooter but, unfortunately, all the brave idea has given rise to is the ability to drop the ball on two separate fronts."
Staff review by Gary Hartley (October 19, 2009)
Gary Hartley arbitrarily arrives, leaves a review for a game no one has heard of, then retreats to his 17th century castle in rural England to feed whatever lives in the moat and complain about you.
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