Aeries are cropping up on America’s skylines, filled with the promise of juicy tomatoes, tiny Alpine strawberries and the heady perfume of basil and lavender. High above the noise and grime of urban streets, gardeners are raising fruits and vegetables. Some are simply finding the joys of backyard gardens several stories up, others are doing it for the environment and some because they know local food sells well. City dwellers have long cultivated pots of tomatoes on top of their buildings. But farming in the sky is a fairly recent development in the green roof movement, in which owners have been encouraged to replace blacktop with plants, often just carpets of succulents, to cut down on storm runoff, insulate buildings and moderate urban heat.

What Ubuntu Server *could* be

Ubuntu Server should be a product that delivers a cool, integrated, sysadmin-friendly server experience. I want us to innovate. I want us to boldly go where nobody has gone before. I want Ubuntu Server to be something, rather than be anything. We should have a product that implements industry best practices, rather than just making them possible. Having configuration files under a revision control system, users always defined in a local or distant LDAP directory, screen on network shells, LVM always configured… We should deliver and integrate the right software solutions rather than just making all options available.

Looking for another reason why growing some of your own food makes sense? Here's one you might not have considered: nutritional content. While the washed and waxed produce at your local grocery store might look chock full of vitamins and minerals, a recent report in the Journal of HortScience finds otherwise. These findings follow on the heels of others that suggest that supplementing your store-bought veggies with store-bought vitamins and minerals might not be the solution either. When in doubt, grow your own and, if you can't do that, buy from farmers who are taking good care of their soil.

I’m happy to introduce a guest post from Doug Ireton, who’s written a fantastic guide to Getting Things Done with RTM. Doug is a Sr. Platform Engineer on the Windows Server team at Nordstrom, a luxury clothing retailer based in Seattle, Washington. He is an avid Remember The Milk user, and after almost a year has finally stopped fiddling with his RTM setup (mostly). Using RTM for work and personal tasks and projects, he has achieved Inbox Zero (at least at work…). He lives in a small Craftsman-style house in Seattle with his wife and two kids. Thanks for sharing your insights, Doug!