Rob the Fiddler

Had a great run with the garden early in the spring.  Tons of radishes and lettuce plants.  I have a habit of not thinning things out enough though and there still was some crowding .

Its a strange year though.  Going back on pictures of previous years, this year bites. Usually I have sunflowers growing at waist height and tons of stuff growing.  This year I have like two sunflowers and nothing else on the side of the house.  Even the Queen Anns Lace (Wild Carrots!!!!)  did not come up. Ive read that these are good for tomatoes too.

The one wildflower (perennial of some kind) that shows up every year by my mailbox did come out again. I started to mow my lawn and the neighbor across the street came over with a shovel and a pot thinking she was going to save that feller. Bless her heart. I assured her that it comes up every year and was practically family. Heck…I saved seeds from the patio of a Taco Cabana using those very handy salsa containers. I’m not mowing over a perfectly awesome plant.

Im cool with digging up stuff thats going to get mowed. I had a verbena last year that really wished survived the cold. (not good in pots.)

Turned out well with the lettuce. I had thick clumps of greens that survived over the summer so I broke them up and planted them in the spring. Still, I didn’t spread them out enough. I had lettuce growing in every corner of the yard.  Now the temps have risen and they have all bolted.  Was sweet at the time.

This year I ended up eating pounds of beet greens (yum), radish greens (meh), and chard (sweet!).
The chard were survivors from the fall garden that never really took off until spring.

Lessons learned: Lettuce grows fine in Dallas. Plant in the ground in fall and if it never really takes off, let it be. With all the freezes and snows, they still did fine. Chard grows great in pots.

I hope this Tomatillo produces.

Had great luck with Rosa Radishes.  (Chinese rose??)  I found the seeds at North Haven Gardens I think. Check these one out.

French Breakfast were good until they turned woody.  Beets worked out great too.

Tomatoes are coming in iffy as are everything else. They had a good start with lots of love and Highwood Worm Farm compost.  My special mix of worm casings, egg shells and beard clippings assured plenty of nitrogen. Still, they could e growing better. They sell nice size early girls at the farmers market.  Been thinking about doing that.

Dang birds love tomato juice. Poor Patio tomatoes never really look good. They put out some fruit and lose all their leaves.  I gave them generous pots too. (From the hydroponics store cuz they know pots!)

Here is a great example of bad patio tomato plants. These look like something out of a Dr. Seuss book! (note the mosaic virus on the beans behind..more on that to come)

First BLT

Why, yes that is a big bowl of bacon.  I also made Rice Krispy Treats with Bacon for a work themed event. They turned out ok but they would have been better if I

• didn’t burn the heck out of the bacon
• had used bacon grease rather than butter

Now for the bad news. It appears that I have some kind of mosaic virus in just about everything. The tomatoes appear OS, but those always are susceptible. Ill post some pics later, but its EVERYWHERE. You can see it in the pic with the green tomatoes.

This means I really have to rip out everything that is affected (and aphid friendly). Its a shame because the Morning Glories were going to rule!.

So, this weekend I clear cut all legumes and Squash. Bites! Guess the remaining growing season is just maters n taters.

So I came across the circuit for the Joule Thief on Evil Mad Scientist. Such a fun website. Its amazing how much a YouTube video and a little hand waving can get you excited over an academic topic. Bill Nye, your the guy. SCIENCE!

The name is a fun play on words an another example that a catchy name will sell just about anything. The purpose of the circuit is that you can drive an LED on a 1.5 AA battery to the point where the battery is incredibly dead. (Jewel - Joule).

This is pretty cool because already takes more than 1.5 volts to make just about any color of  LED light up.  You cant light a blue LED with a AA because LEDs are diodes and require a minimum voltage to light it up.  1.5 volts will not do it.  Just break open any blinky shamrock or pumpkin you get with a Coors or Bud logo on it and you will see it takes TWO button batterys to operate. (most all button batterys are 1.5 volts.)  Ok thats a strange example, but not for me considering that I smash every blinky alcohol-ad related widget I come across just…well..because…..umm…..SCIENCE!

So it takes more than what a AA can provide to to see an LED light up. How does it work and what kinda science can I walk away from this post with?

Its all about inductors.  Ever wonder how a “converter” can plug into the wall and drop 120 volts AC to the 9 volts that you can charge your ipod works?  Inductors!  You take  a piece of metal (or metal like substance) and wrap wire around it.  Bill Nye would show that this makes an electromagnet..but it also can be used to bring up or drop down a voltage swing.

Take a ring of metal and wrap a pair of wires around it. If the number of loops of the “primary” outnumber the “secondary” you will drop down the voltage swing. Likewise, if the secondary loops outnumber the primary, you will step up the voltage.

This works well with Sine waves which are the “Steady Eddys” of nature. Its a nice ebb and flow. It ramps up and ramps down and all is good. Its the delta in the voltage that translates to higher voltages.

With the Joule Thief, the oscillations are a bit more spikey.  With fast spikes (fast deltas) come wider voltage swings and the ability to step up voltages to the point where you can light up the LEDS.

Anyways, this little circuit was the focus of my amusement over Christmas vacation.

I found it interesting because I have never really dealt with inductors outside of power supply applications.  In the old days, capacitors and inductors were kinda the Yin and Yang of electronics. Transformers are still around, but most filters are constructed as active filters. Capacitors are cheaper to make and op amps have eliminated the need for inductors. I never dealt with them in College and I graduated with a EE degree!

I had a blast rooting around the garage with my dad over Christmas looking for torrids to play with this circuit.  Pretty educational.

Back to the circuit.

This guy seems to claim to have coined the term, but the circuit is nothing new.   Here is a  guy has a blog that deals with the circuit at an obsessive level.  Another website here does a pretty good job of explaining the whole thing as well.

Of course…its not any fun without pictures.  Here are my completed circuits.

OK, its been forever since I updated my site. I suppose Ive been kinda busy with work and work. Its been nice to have projects that keep my mind running in overdrive.

I’m currently working at a company called Interlegis doing Java programming. I hope to post examples of things I have learned, but I’ll do that soon after our next release. (Strategic information for now…hush hush).

What I can share is my new found study of visualizations. There are tons of neat projects that focus on Data_visualizations. Basically, I was already fascinated with blinky lights, buttons, colors, charts and the like. This just formalizes into a paying job.  Nice.

In short, data visualization takes a LOT of information and puts it into a graphic from which you can derive useful conclusions. Neat stuff. The nickle tour is Jeffs website.  And by nickle I mean you can take his entire course (Stanford) online by just browsing his site.

Here are some sweet platforms that do this.

Prefuse

Axiis

So Ive sold you on pretty charts…but your asking, how can I use this in my day to day life?

Here is a great example of data visualization. Check out these Wurdle visualizations of my site and JDs and ask yourself….which blogger studied more Math versus English.
(hint…my word cloud is big on “one” and “good”.  Wait..I meant to call it an excellent example)

ME

versus JD

The fall garden has been touch and go it seems. Dallas has had a ton of rain, so too much water has been actually a problem. I think its a combination of that and some kinda bug (and aphids) that have killed off just about everything that resembles a winter squash.   Cucumbers and summer squash just seem to be battling the aphids.  I now see why they say you should plant squash on hills now.  Cucurbits hate wet feet

I have one lone cantaloupe. Creatures seem to take them in the night. The basil is going crazy and the green beans are rocking.

I planted several purple beans this time. These are pretty fun to cook because they turn from purple to green when cooked. Its explained here.

Purple bush beans in a pot.

Sliced and ready to cook (with a regular one too)

In under a minute, they turn all green. I usually just cook them enough to be crunchy and then finish them in a pan with a bit of olive oil and black pepper.

Little lettuce….heartbreaking to have to thin them out.

8 ball squash - its ready to eat.

Cantaloupe with bite marks.  Hope this does not get taken by the creatures.  Kinda strange looking fruit huh?

bns

we had our CD release party last weekend and it was blast. Thanks to everybody that came out and thanks to the King Bucks for playing with us at the Sons of Hermann Hall. After hitting the stage, we just found the zone and played until we were told to  stop. None of us realized until the next day that we played a two hour+ set.

The CD is doing pretty well and some of the reviews are coming in.  I never really know what to make of them all the time…but here are a few:

(Special thats to Casey who seems to have gotten zero photo credit!!)

Dallas Quick - ok not a review..more of an interview…but sweet

Subservient Experiment

Dallas Observer link to mp3!

Left of the Dial - cool

Ghost of Blind lemon - HA…..funny thing is that snakebite always does NOT jokes too! Thanks.

Quick Blurb on Quick - another mp3!

I have the fall garden pretty much all planted.  Its still too hot for lettuce and radishes so those go in next month.  Texas has two growing seasons. The summer is so hot that the window to get a good crop smaller than you think. Your fighting between the heat and the impending frost.

This is my first real fall garden.  Usually I have a good start in the spring with a  focus on tomatoes, peppers and basil.   Come around mid July, its just too hot for anything to grow.  I generally leave it alone and if Im lucky, anything that survived yields a little bit in the fall. Mostly its weeds and bermuda though.

JD had a good run last year using the square foot method. Unfortunately, the only real good piece of yard that gets full sun is unsuitable to put even a raised bed on.  Ive tried containers (15 gal totes) but they crack after one season in Texas.

I figured that planters were the way to go. I figured the best way to do this was to just
build one and see how it turned out.  From there, I could adapt the plans to boxes that
I found more suitable. The first one I built was this.

Seemed simple enough.  Just 2×4s and some 2×2.   After getting started I realized it was going to be heavy. Each square is 16.5 inches and its 6 layers deep.  Thats 33 feet of 2×4. Its easily 40 to 50 lbs without the dirt!

But it does look nice.

Next I built a much bigger 3×3 foot planter. I still used 2×4s but only for the framing.
The siding is old fence wood and the bottom was some scrap I found.

I built one more for good measure.  The one in the back is the nice one (heavy).  The one in the front was put together a bit more…um…hastily. They should last several years. I did cut a few corners on the growing medium as far as square foot gardening is concerned. I have TONS of compost. That was free. Instead of spending $12 for 2CU of potting soil, I cut it down with cedar and pine mulch.  it might be too acid..we will see. The beauty of mulch is that its $3 for 2cu.   Il see if that was a good idea.  The vermiculite seemed like a waste.

So the fall crops will be between the new containers…some old pots and the usual beds.

Fall will be

• Green Beans (Contender and pole)
• Tomatoes (natch)
• Beets!  Gonna try it.
• Chard
• Lettuce
• Squash(Patty Pan, Hubbard, Cream of the Crop)
• Cantaloupe (watch out for cantalopracabras!)
• Cucumbers.

This is my first year for  squash and cukes.  I did plant one in the spring but it never grew until July.  Kinda a runt! After I ripped out the radishes and weeds, the poor guy took off!! It actually has a small fruit growing now. I had to perform a little veggie husbandry with a q-tip to get it started.

I hope its a little more productive this time around.

Here are some pics from the Spring.

They look better than they were. Avoid the white ones….too bitter.

Sunflowers were a bit crazy

Kinda surprised the city didn’t call me up on this growth.

The fun suprise was a potato that I just put in a pot. It had sprouted in the kitchen and it
was obvious that it wanted to grow up more than I wanted to eat it.  I just put it in a pot
and in july I had a bunch of baby potatoes Yum.

Best pic of the spring