Finish with happy albeit bittersweet scene remembering those who were lost.

The timer in the upper left is launch time (T+). Notice how the other SRB doesn’t stray too far from the camera and can be seen against the earth. Plus you can see the smoke trailing from the falling boosters and in the far distance the smoke column cause by the initial shuttle launch.

The cool part with sound is you can hear the change in noise as the air thins, plus the rattle of debris impacting on the booster casing, the ‘chutes deployment and inflation, and finally the impact into the water.

The SRB’s are basically giant bottle rockets; once they’re lit the only way to shut them off is to let them burn out or self destruction (which only was used once after the Challenger accident).

The SRBs only burn for about 2 minutes then jettison from the shuttle at approx 27 miles up. Their momentum is so great that they continue up to about 41 miles to the peak of their arc before falling back to the earth.

A small drogue chute orients the SRBs in an upright position and about a mile up the three main chutes open so the 91 ton empty cylinder won’t be damaged on impact. I never knew until now but the chutes are held partially closed (or “reefed”) until a set speed when they can be fully opened; otherwise the sudden full inflation could shred the chute or snap the cables holding it.

The empty booster is only open at the bottom so landing tail first seals air inside the rocket cylinder causing it to float upright sticking about 30ft out of the water.

Roughly 6 minutes and 130 miles off the coast of Florida the boosters end their short trip to the edge of space. In the past they would be recovered and be used 4 or 5 more times but with the close of the shuttle program they’re just collected for scrap now.

One thing I like from the NPR interview is that Chris mentioned that by dead he’s talking about Web transitioning to Mobile. Which in a way is very true. Although he still talks about how applications rule and that they will kill the web.
Here’s an experiment to see if he’s right: Use only apps, no web browser.

Go 2 days without ever opening Firefox, IE, or safari, chrome, etc.
Don’t use Google (it’s a WEB page).
Try getting the things you want done with only dedicated web apps. No diversity of the millions of online web pages, just the 20 or so apps you can load before your phone fills up.
Don’t be fooled by apps that redirect you to a browser, they’re cheating.

Basically Chris’s prediction of the future of the web is where the multiverse of web pages is boiled down to a handful of corporate apps that port and filter the web for you. Much like the archaic AOL days in internet prehistory. And that scares the shit out of me.

Luckily he’s wrong!

Rob Beschizza edited the fact distorting graph used by Chris for the wired article to better fit reality. Pay close attention to the red “web traffic” That is “dying”. This is just the same graph but adjusted using the same data used for Wired’s article to reflect the actual amount of traffic passed in each category.

In Wired’s article it shows web use as a percentage against other high bandwidth internet traffic. Now that we can see the actual amount of web traffic we can see that in the last 5 years the web has almost tripled. Rob summed up Cisco’s data best:

Assuming that this crudely renormalized graph is at all accurate, it doesn’t even seem to be the case that the web’s ongoing growth has slowed. It’s rather been joined by even more explosive growth in file-sharing and video, which is often embedded in the web in any case.

In regards to using “bandwidth” to measure the value of internet traffic.

Does 50MB of YouTube kitteh represent more meaningful growth than a 5MB Wired feature?

It’s worth noting that we’re talking generalized numbers and graphs and that there will be a bit of variation in the data. But the web is still a LONG way from dying. Harry McCracken at Technologizer has another great article pointing out other technologies that have “died” recently (Hint Facebook died 2 years ago but Vinyl is alive and well).

The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet

It’s the same tired argument that has been out since the iPhone and has sped up since the iPad. “Apps” and online video streaming are going to take over the internet and surfing web pages as we know it will cease to exist. Basically Chris is channeling a Steve Jobs presentation (or even plagiarizing one).

As much as we love the open, unfettered Web, we’re abandoning it for simpler, sleeker services that just work. -Chris Anderson

At least he didn’t call the services “magical”.

The graphic showing a shrinking web is hard to ignore, and I heard that 95% of online stats aren’t made up or distorted.

The reasons to scoff at head editor Chris Anderson as a moron?

1. The diagram is from 1995 (i.e. 7 years before most people used the internet), to 2005 (i.e. half a decade ago, 2 years before Job’s iPhone app revolution).
In Chris’s defense, 2005 was before the magical apps and services Chris describes even existed so they wouldn’t show yet.
2. “Web” is used here for a general catch-all that fits alot of very different and dynamic services.
3. Anybody with an office job knows that email rules the word. Even including spam it shows up non-existent on this graph. Pointing to how this graph doesn’t reflect reality of the web.
4. Apps and services are just a frontend to parse web data. The web is still there, you’re just using a very specialized browser to access it. The Facebook app is nothing without the Facebook itself.
5. The MAIN problem with the graph is that it is a measurement of bits of traffic and not representative of the web experience.

Text on the internet is the smallest part of it. This entire article takes up the same space as a 1”x1” image. On a boring static webpage the images take up 90% of the space. To put this in perspective in 2006 Wikipedia (the entire thing) was 1.2 Terabytes in size; the whole thing could fit on one large hard drive (can you say real life HHG2G?).

Videos on the internet take up MUCH more space than anything else, especially if you’re watching a HQ youtube or hulu stream. 10 minutes of HQ youtube will pass as much traffic as all the surfing you’ll do on Wikipedia for the next few months.

Suddenly the above graph makes much more sense. Even if online video made up 90% of web traffic it would still mean that more time online is spent just surfing the web. And this is why it’s shocking the editor of Wired Magazine wrote this article, it horrible mis-represents the data provided by Cisco about web traffic. Much more useful would be how much time people spend on different web sites. However that’s much harder to measure.

Most people in the dark about best ways to save energy

The gap between curtailing inefficient appliances and using efficient ones can be large, so it shocked the researchers how many people underestimated it. An example: a 100-watt bulb that is on for six hours uses 600 watt-hours. By leaving it on for one hour less, you save 100 watt-hours. On the other hand, a 15-watt fluorescent bulb could be left on for all six hours and only use 90 watt-hours, saving 510 watt-hours over the incandescent bulb.

The really good news here is this proves that the key to conserving energy doesn’t lie in cutting conveniences out of your everyday life; it’s just a matter of upgrading your house to more efficient appliances. On a side note CFLs take a few seconds to come to full brightness, pay the extra bucks for the “instant on” CFLs, it’s well worth it.

Still if you don’t have the money to upgrade all our household appliances now it’s still a good idea to cut back on waste.
-Closing the blinds on a window because it’s too bright then turning on the light in a room doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
-If you can remember to make all your trips around town in one big loop rather than 5 individual trips out and back saves a lot of gas (and time in my experience).
-If you have to wrap in a blanket in the summer because the AC is too cold, maybe dial forward the thermostat a few degrees.
-Conversely if you’re in a t-shirt and shorts in winter and complaining of the cold, maybe try putting on pants and a sweatshirt before cranking the heat to 78 degrees.

About a year and a half ago I got a Garmin Nuvi 250, the price on them dropped to $100. You may have noticed on the road that A LOT of people have GPS in their cars now. This recent price drop is why.

Anyway about a week ago it told me to update the maps. Makes sense, there are a lot of places I drive that have new roads not on their maps. I hit cancel and forgot about it. Then today it nagged me again to download maps. So I go online and start the process of updating the GPS.

First off plugging the GPS into USB killed my keyboard. I don’t know why. I had to plug the keyboard into a different port to get it back, at least it didn’t fry it like the external hard drive I had a few years ago.

Then to get the GPS to update you have to goto Garmin’s website and download a browser plugin that detects the GPS. This involves a lengthy registration process I didn’t want to do. Last thing I want to do is give my email address and physical address to YET ANNOTHER company to spam me.

Now I had the plugin running and the GPS plugged in. But it wouldn’t detect the GPS

Shutdown Firefox.
Move the GPS USB to another port.
Keyboard dies again.
Move the Keyboard back to its original port.
Restart Firefox.
3 Minutes later the GPS finally connects.

Finally the GPS is discovered by the browser program.

“Click here to check for updates”
Browser crashes.
Restart firefox.
“Click here to download update.”
Browser crashes.
Restart Firefox.

Finally the update goes through and I check the Maps update. There are two options, first is a lifetime update service that costs $120.
Yes One Hundred and Twenty dollars.
Or a one time update that costs $70.

Keep in mind that Garmin street maps aren’t all that great. When the GPS was new a lot of the streets were already out of date. Plus I’m constantly aggravated by the fact that the maps never start out zoomed to the level where you see surface streets, I always have to zoom in one level.

It also tries to redirect me onto streets that I know are slower. On the way to Bear Lake instead of taking I-15 north and going 75MPH (posted) it wanted me to take a back highway to Brigham City. Admittedly highway 89 is a beautiful drive and lined with fruit stands from all the nearby orchards.
But it’s slower!

All these gripes with the GPS and they want me to pay for a map update that costs the same price as the whole flipping GPS itself. In fact I can just buy the newer model for the same price and I’m sure it would have a more up to date map in it.

Meanwhile my Android phone does all the features the Garmin does. But it also gives me:

Maps that are as upto date as Google’s online database.
An application that updates over the air bi-monthly.
Voice search.
Satellite view of the surrounding area.
Current local traffic conditions.
An ETA adjusted for traffic.
Street view pictures of the intersections I need to turn at.
Current location of any friends and family with Latitude.
The ability to search and route to any nearby business, gas station, or ATM.
And best of all it’s FREE!!!

So as soon as I find a good dashboard car mount for my phone I have a Garmin Nuvi 250 GPS for sale. Then it’s good bye and good riddance to Garmin.

Ed Fries, former VP of Microsoft’s Gaming Division created it as a pet project. You can read more about it here.

Best part of all you can play it now, even if you don’t have an old Atari 2600 hanging around.

Play “Halo 2600″ Now

Thanks Engadget

First you need something to test with. Electric testers are cool but expensive. pH testing solution takes a bit more work but not much, it simply consists of a dropper of solution and a small vial to test with.

Fill the vial half way with the water you want to test. Add 4-5 drops of testing fluid and shake it up.

Compare it to the diagram on the side. This looks to be about 7.5-8 pH, it’s going to have to come down at least a full point.

To actually adjust the pH you need pH adjuster, one up and one down. They come printed with the measurements to adjust the pH, in this case 1 tsp adjusts 4 gallons.
I found using an medicinal dropper is the easiest way to get the right amount, you don’t want to spill and get this stuff on you.

At 10 gallons for the nutrient reservoir it’s 2 tsp to adjust down (better too little than too much). Now another measurement is showing much closer to the ideal 6.5 range.

-Start slow. Work your way up to difficult hikes.
-Let the slowest person in the party set the pace.
-Hike in a group or if you can’t let people know where you’re going and when you’ll be back.
-Plan ahead. Plan for any eventuality.
-Stay on trails. Only bushwhack where it’s allowed and if you’re a good navigator (without resorting to using GPS)
-Drink lots of water.

Here are a few other things to keep in mind that may not be commonly known:

-In addition to drinking lots of water keep in mind that water only helps you if it’s IN you. If you “save” it in your canteen it’s doing no good. Try to keep sipping a small amount of water at regular intervals so you don’t get too much and have to pee it out, but you don’t have too little and start suffering from it.
-Drink a lot of water to pre-hydrate before you hike. Better to have to pee when you get to the trailhead than to drain your canteen in the first 100 yards because you were dehydrated before you started.
-When hiking a strenuous trail try to keep your heart rate at a steady rate as if you were jogging. When it’s flat walk fast, when it’s steep or rocky slow your pace.
-Step over logs and rocks rather then up them and back down. There is no use lifting your body mass up 2 feet only to drop down one stride later. Hiking is all about using your energy in the most efficient way, usually slow and steadily.
-Stop in the shade if you can. Pretty obvious but you’ll cool down much better if you hike just a little further and rest where it will do some good.
-KEEP YOUR FEET DRY! Moisture invites friction, friction causes blisters. I put a ton of baby powder on my feet before a hike, the talcum soaks up sweat and keeps your feet dry and blister free. Keep a pair of clean dry socks and a small bottle of baby powder in your pack incase you step in a puddle or ford a stream.
-Hiking poles help more than you think. A lot of muscles are used just to keep balance, poles allow them to relax a bit and save some energy for the hike. And going downhill with poles is a dream that your knees and shins will thank you for.
-Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. Better to be ready for anything and have nothing happen than to not be ready and have everything happen.

In regards to the last one I’m a bit of a fanatic to when it comes to being prepared, for me half the fun of hiking and camping is preparing your gear and knowing that you’re prepared for any eventuality. In fact even though I always hope for a safe enjoyable trip a part of me is hoping that the weather will turn to a torrential downpour, or I’ll be stranded and have to live 3 days in the mountains till rescuers can get to me. I have the gear to make it, but I’ve never had to test how well prepared I am.

Maybe one of these days I’ll purposefully spend a couple nights in the mountains living off my daypack contents, just to see if I can.

Here’s my pack. I got it for free for test driving a Nissan Xterra back in 2000. I already knew I wanted to buy one, but some friends on an internet message board pointed me to a deal where you print out a flyer, test drive the Xterra, then get your choice between the day pack or a pair of FRS radios.

To this day it’s still the best daypack I’ve ever seen. Although I had to add the Velcro loop to keep the hiking poles strapped in.

It even has this cool rain proof cover that zips up into the bottom of the pack. It keeps the shoulder straps free when it’s on so Cover+Ponco = dry hiker and gear.

Here’s all the gear I carry. In reality all you need to survive is shelter and water (you can go 3 weeks without food*), the rest of the gear is really just enough to keep you comfortable and make the hike pleasant. Obviously the more you carry the more weight you have on your shoulders, all this is 15 pounds; but I carry it on every hiking trip so my body is conditioned to feel that this is a normal amount.

-Tube Tent
-CamelBak
-Spare Pair of dry socks
-Solid Fuel Stove
-Space Blanket (Mylar blanket)
-MRE, one of the best additions I’ve made. Nothing is better than getting a warm meal at the end of your hike. It’s also very good to keep your strength up, see below.
-First-Aid Kit (with extra moleskin)
-Gloves
-Commercial survival kit
-20ft of parachute cord.
-Signal mirror.

-Map and compass
-Aerial Flares (got them at a boat store)
-Rain Poncho
-Flower ID book (My parents know them from memory, I want to learn too)
-headlamp style flashlight
-antihistamine (I get bad allergies)
-Baby Powder
-Suntan lotion
-Bug lotion
-antacid
-Candy for snacking along the way.

The solid fuel stove I got is pretty cool, it all folds up to the size of a deck of cards but I can’t remember where I got it; all the printing on it is in German. The survival kit is the metal tin for boiling or cooking water, remember that you can’t use a stove without a water holding metal cooking container. Canteen cups from the Army/Navy Surplus store would also work well.

The survival kit is pretty cool too, but again I can’t remember where I got it. But I do remember making my own in a wilderness survival class I took in High School.

One very important thing I’m currently missing is iodine tablets to purify water. I usually fill the 1 liter CamelBak up and carry an extra 1 liter bottle for backup. But if you’re isolated from civilization for more than a day you’ll likely use that amount up and will need to purify water from a stream.

More pics here: Flickr Hiking Set.

MRE’s

I want to say a word about MREs. When I was in the Army I lived off them for about 3 months, it wasn’t the best of meals but it was still better than some shitty food I’ve had in the US too.

Real military MRE’s are balanced in their nutrition content. They’re designed so that one MRE a day can keep a man alive indefinitely, and 2-3 a day will provide enough energy for an active soldier that is expected to hike 10+ miles a day. I’m proof that you can live off 2 a day for months, and we had problems where we were actually gaining weight eating more than 2 a day.

The reason why is because the food in the MRE is fortified with vitamins and nutrients. Ironically the main meal isn’t much more than filler carbs for energy, the crackers and peanut butter are like a vitamin pill, the beverage powder has electrolytes like Gatorade. With the Military MREs they recommend that if you can’t eat a full meal that you eat a little bit of everything to get all the vitamins that different parts of the meal are fortified with.

And in the last decade the military has done a good job of making them palatable now; they’re not just emergency rations, they’re shelf stable meals that are actually more balanced an healthy than your standard fast-food fare. Plus the fact that they’re designed to energize highly active soldiers makes them ideal for hiking and camping (the Army word for it is “Force-Multiplier”).

I definitely recommend having one in your pack for when you reach the end of your hike or when you get up to the peak and are taking a break before heading down. You’ll find you recover a lot better when you’re properly nourished throughout your trip. The trick is finding them, the government doesn’t allow sale of them since 1997, the survival stores have civilian versions that are put together using the same components. Luckily they’re common on Ebay if you want the real thing. If not just get the civilian kind, they’re basically the same and for one meal it won’t matter if it’s not as well balanced as the menus for the real ones.

You can find more info here:
www.mreinfo.com

And BTW. Yes the “chicklet gum” is a laxative. And yes you should chew and swallow it.
With the way an MRE diet will back you up you need mild laxatives just to return to normal. Being backed up for a week then finally dropping an MRE brick is one of the most unpleasant experiences you’ll have.

*The rule of threes for survival:
-You can go 3 minutes without air.
-You can go 3 hours without shelter (in extreme conditions).
-You can go 3 days without water.
-You can go 3 weeks without food.
This can help you get your priorities straight.

The biggest question is if the story is compelling or this is just another piece of eye candy. Can’t be any worse than Unobtanium can it?

So while the water may be run through in a couple days, the nutrient lasts a couple weeks.

After a couple weeks the water is no longer providing anything but moisture. Plants will still grow, the majority of their mass actually comes from the CO2 they absorb from the air, but without the extra nutrients the growth is slow and stunted. So we have to dump the old depleted nutrient and put in new.

It’s best to dump out the depleted nutrient rather than keep adding more to the system, some nutrients may have been used less so you could end up with high Phosphorus content or something. Just dump the reservoir out on the lawn or soil garden and mix a fresh batch.

Before I dump out the nutrient I usually turn the system on to get a fresh layer of moisture on the roots. It only takes about 10 minutes to dump and refill everything but I’d rather not run the risk of drying out the roots too much. The more shock and abuse the plants suffer they slower they will grow.

First step is to dump out the old. The problem is that you don’t want the pump to get dirty so I like to put all the gear into a small tray to keep it off the ground. It’s also a good time to back wash any filters you can get to.

I mix the nutrient in a small bucket so I can get it all to dissolve (it’s a solid water soluble fertilizer). The ratio for this is 1tsp fertilizer to 1gallon water.

Get it all dissolved in a small amount of water. Now it’s super concentrated liquid fertilizer; in reality this is probably still more diluted than liquid fertilizer you spray on a normal soil garden.

Then rinse the equipment and reservoir off. And reassemble.

Pour the nutrient in, then fill with water till full. Before leaving it alone I like to check and balance the pH levels since with new nutrient it can be a little off (next blog post we’ll cover that).

Wikipedia

Had a little problem last week. Temperatures in Utah have been reaching triple digits with sunny clear blue skies all day long. I had gotten used to the water requirements of the hydroponic garden being about a loss of 4 gallons every two days or so. However with the days getting hotter and the plants getting larger (more surface area and breathable surfaces), the water requirements have been getting bigger.

The problem was that I let the plants go 3 days without topping off the water supply.

I knew that with the smaller nutrient reservoir watering would be more frequent and even thought I might setup a second reservoir with a siphon of something to double the usable volume. Unfortunately this all came to a head when I checked my plants and they had been basically dry for most of the day.

Everything was extremely wilted looking and a few leaves on the cucumbers had dried up (they feel rough and dry even when healthy so it’s hard to tell). I immediately refilled the water and turned the pump on to wet the plants again. By evening everything was looking better but it was obvious the cucumbers hadn’t weathered the dry spell as well as the peppers.

The cucumbers on the far ends lost the tips of some of the leaves but bounced back really well besides that.

The peppers looked just fine afterward. I can only figure this is because their roots are thicker than the cucumbers which have fine roots. Enough moisture is retained in the plant that the cells didn’t die and when water was brought back they revived like putting a dry sponge in water.

But the cucumbers nearest the drain didn’t do so well. While enough survived that I could probably have kept them alive they weren’t likely to produce much fruit and what they did would likely be at the end of the season. Better to just chuck them and star anew with a late season plant.

So when the weekend came round I got the tallest pre-planted cucumber at the farmers market and swapped it into place.
The first evening was a bit rough, the above picture was taken about 30 minutes after transplant in the middle of the 100F afternoon. In just 30 minutes the plant went from looking normal to looking faint. Obviously the shock of going from soil to liquid + heat + a root system not adapted to the hydro system was a bit of a shock. But although the leaves looked and felt flimsy they were still soft with moisture and not dry like the plants that had been left without water; by the next day they looked vibrant and were already perking up.

Here’s the wilty peppers from the same time. Obviously it’s hard on plants dealing with 100 degree heat just like it is with humans. It’s no wonder they’re going through about 4 gallons a day right now. Luckily I don’t need to re-do the nutrient each day. The plants take what they need from the nutrient and leave the rest, so as the water level goes down it’s mostly H2O being used and the nutrient solution becomes more condensed. Adding water brings the nutrient back to the normal PPM. Although for that reason it’s good not to let the water get too low and the nutrient solution too condensed.

Here’s the cucumber that needed to be removed. A shame to lose it, it was the largest and had already produced 3 cucumbers this year. As you can see one plant was still very green and could have pulled through, however since they’re both in the pot together there is no easy way to separated them and just replace one.

Also notice how dense the root mat had gotten, it actually continued to the right just as far but because of the peppers next door I couldn’t separate the roots and had to cut them off to get the plant out. The ½ to 1 inch thick mat at the bottom of the planter retains a lot of moisture due to wicking action once the pumps go off (or water runs out) which probably helped them survive going a day without water. It would also explain why the plant closest the drain fared the worst, since it drained off quicker than the cucumbers at the other end of the planter.

Here the root cup after the plants had been cut and tossed to the compost. You can see how much the roots come out of the cup in every direction, the cup is held above the bottom root mat so most of these roots are held above the nutrient with the sprayers spraying the sides. But the plant still branches out in every direction to soak up every drop it can.

Something I noticed today. The cucumbers that I planted about two weeks ago in the beans place is just starting to adapt and start growing. But the cucumbers that I planted just a couple days ago have already caught up and might be passing them.

The different was when I planted the first set I just let the roots sit at the bottom of the net pot and put “dirt” on top. With the new ones I cut a small hole in the bottom and threaded some of the roots through.

The result is that the new plants have roots on the bottom of the planter where they can soak up fresh nutrient. The older plants needed to slowly absorb it from the “dirt” and grow their own roots to the bottom; then once on the bottom they started growing quicker.

First the older plant:

When planted they had the two seed leaves (Cotyledon) and one true leaf. During the transition I noticed that the first true leaf (that was grown while in soil) seems to be burned and suffers a bit. Then the second true leaf (grown while in nutrient solution) has adapted and there is less or no damage to it.

Second the 2 week younger plants. These guys replaced the cucumber that was crushed and torn out in the wind storm.

I planted more than what was needed so I can thin the two weaker plants later. As you can see having roots go to the bottom of the planter has given them a good headstart. They were transplanted the same as the others, with the two dicot leaves and one true leaf. They already have a second leaf and their first true leaf didn’t look as poorly as the other plant.

On Wednesday I was sick and didn’t go to work. Outside mirroring my feelings an early summer thunder storm was rolling over making the sky dark even at noon. The only light came in bursts from lightning shortly followed by loud thunder.

The wind was thrashing the trees about, leaves and small branches were rattling off the side of the house. When the small amounts of rain did come down it slapped noisily against the windows.

I laid in bed slowly recovering, wondering why the wind had me so much on edge; something just didn’t seem right but it hid at the back of my brain. It was a whirlwind outside but I was safe indoors buried under a blanket. It not like the wind could knock the house over on top of me, crushing me like a small cucumber plan-

SHIT THE PLANTS!!!

I jumped out of bed, yanked on a pair of shorts and shoes without putting on socks and ran outside to check the hydroponic setup.

The A-frame was really good at keeping things from falling away from the plants so when it collapsed it did right on top of everything, yanking some of the plants out of their positions and knocking one of the planting tubes off to the side.

The pump can pump through the whole reservoir of nutrient in less than the 15 minutes that the timer runs so with the planter knocked off to the side it drained everything out onto the ground leaving the plants dry for however long it had been sitting there. Luckily there was enough humidity in the planter that it kept the roots alive except for the cucumbers on the end which were pulled completely out. Its root mat had gotten big enough that the roots stayed in the planter and ripped apart from the plant itself.

It’s amazing how little you think of being sick when you’ve got something else to worry about. But I didn’t really feel upto rebuilding everything so I pulled the wreckage of the trellis off, put the planter back together and filled the reservoir up with water. That should hold everything until to Friday when I could rebuild everything properly.

Over the next 2 days the cucumber that had been yanked out didn’t fully recover and might as well be replaced. One of the peppers had a lot of its new upper growth smashed off but should be ok. The peas had already been producing but lost a few stems that had to be trimmed.

This weekend I got a replacement cucumber and a bunch of hardware to reinforce the trellis rack to support the plants. Plus the remaining cucumber has gotten large enough it needs some support to grow up so I needed to get some twine for it to hold to and some gardening velco strips that can support the vine.

The reservoir lid was yanked part way off and one of the hoses came off. Now everything is nice and neat again.

Finally all back together and with some good reinforcements to keep it from falling over again.

It never got down to freezing but it did get within a few degrees of freezing; now I know that Beans and Cucumbers hate the cold. The beans (nearly) died and I haven’t found replacements. Luckily cucumbers are plentiful so I just dumped the dead ones, rinsed out their net pots and put in new cucumbers.

The peppers grew slow but they showed new roots growing out of the pots so I knew they would pull through. The Snow peas lived up to their name and did really well in the cold weather and are now in need of support they’ve gotten so big.

I’ve been debating how to create an overhead support for the plants. I’m trying to emulate being on an apartment balcony where they is usually another overhead balcony or cover. In that case it’s a simple matter of screwing a few heavy duty hooks into the above floor and suspending a pole three inches from the top using wire or something.

The south side of the house has no overhead and I don’t want to punch holes in the siding. I need to create something that stands on the ground, is about 7.5 feet tall, will support the weight of the plants hanging off it, and won’t tip or blow over in the wind.

First the plants as they are now. As you can see the peas are looking for something to grow up. The peppers are getting bigger with a blossom here and there (I’m actually clipping them off since I want all energy to grow large plants right now). The 2 new cucumbers are about 7 days old, have gotten over the shock of transplanting out of soil and are starting to get bigger. The poor bean plant that seemed dead actually struggled out a few new leaves but its so far gone I don’t want to wait for it to come back, it will be replaced in a few days.

As it’s been about 3 or so weeks since the last nutrient solution went in. It probably doesn’t need it but since over half of the system got overhauled with new plants I decided to refresh it by dumping the old and mixing a new batch. I found that if I dissolve the solid nutrients by hand in about 4 cups of water then filling up the rest of the water it get much more of it to dissolve (I actually learned it from mixing cornstarch in to foods while cooking).

You can see all the Ph balancing stuff still out from getting the nutrient ready.

I decided an A-Frame setup holding a rod of electrical conduit above the plants is the way to go. It’s very stable front to back but from side to side a baby could knock it over. I had some ideas to stabilize it but figured they could wait till next weekend.

A very costly mistake.

I want to watch the US World Cup game online, BBC streams it but like all BBC stuff it’s UK only. But US isn’t exactly lacking for sports channels and websites, ESPN3 proudly advertises that they’re the home to the World Cup here.

So I goto the live streaming section of their page to watch. I’m willing to put up with all the BS commercials and advertising that I’d get on ESPN TV as well; I’m looking for an illegal download or anything. But ESPN only has deals with certain ISPs so unless you’re with a service provider that has a deal with them you don’t get the game.

When your ISP doesn’t show up or you choose one that isn’t supported they have the gall to tell you that if you want to watch the game to change to somebody that has a deal with them. However it’s not like opening the page in a different browser or going to a different access point, changing ISPs is like changing phone providers only worse. And what about when we’re on a corporate network that doesn’t go through a consumer ISP? Many businesses get their internet from AT&T or Verizon, but they get business connections so they don’t have “V-cast” logins to get to the streaming site.

It creates an environment hostile to small businesses that want to compete with the big players. If I start a small ISP and want to provide for my customers I can’t compete on the same level at AT&T, and if ESPN doesn’t work on my ISP customers will flock to the huge providers (local ISP Xmission wasn’t even listed as an ISP on ESPNs site). So users stay with the big players which consequently are the ones that charge awful rates and use deceptive business practices to bleed their customers dry.

There is a movement in the government to basically level the playing field of the internet by passing laws to guarantee Net Neutrality. The idea is that all traffic is equal for people who pay to be online. ISPs can’t restrict what or where people go online, just like if you have a car and a license you can drive to a different city; companies can’t say, “Sorry, you’re from New York. You can’t drive through Kansas, and if you go through Nebraska you have to stay under 10 MPH.”

Opponents to Net Neutrality say that by putting laws on how internet providers and businesses work will be putting restrictions on internet freedom. This is a red herring, America has freedoms but we need laws to guarantee those freedoms, it’s like saying that making a law that guarantees free speech you’re restricting freedom of speech.

But the ESPN3 issue proves that monopolistic businesses create an environment that restricts business and consumer freedoms when laws don’t exist to guarantee those freedoms. Our internet is getting more and more restricted because the big boys only play with the big boys, and then lobby congress to stop laws that would allow other companies to get a foot in the door.

Anyway I’m pissed that ESPN wouldn’t let me watch the game from their site, not only was I willing to put up with their commercials but the option to watch wasn’t even a possibility since none of the local ISPs had made a deal with them, even Qwest was cut out.

And they wonder why people go to illegal means to get stuff.

-The system NEEDS an air bubbler to airate the water.
-There is about a 1 week adjustment process from transplanting for the roots to start growing in nutrients.
-Many plants die at freezing point.
-Unstable homemade trellises need to be able to hold up to the wind or they’ll smash your plants.

Now the full story, Planting day!

Today the whole setup is going live. I actually purchased the plants about a weeks ago but between work and lazyness didn’t plant them.

First I needed the official place that I could plant everything that was out of the way, had good sunlight, didn’t interfere with the normal garden. The cool thing with hydroponics is all you need is the floor space and you’re good to go, the actual ground can be poor quality, contaminated, or solid asphalt.

South side of the house is where the garbage cans are stored and naturally becomes a storage area for garbage and mostly green trash that is waiting to be fed into the garbage and hauled off. Currently is was about 2 feet deep of bags of landscaping sand covered in 3 feet of dead branches. Once cleared and all the spiders were scared off it left a perfect longs narrow strip just under the garage window so I could feed a power line out to the system.

Next I had to get the plants ready to plant.

Ideally I would be germinating my own seeds straight into hydroponic ready growing media, but that is an experiment for next year. This year is to try to make it as easily accessible to the average person as possible so I’m taking normal potted starter plants and moving them into hydroponic media.

The process isn’t really that hard but it seems weird to people used to normal gardening. Instead of taking a plant out of a plastic tray and moving to the ground we’re going to wash all the dirt off and transfer the bare plant & roots to our own medium.

From right to left the first two buckets are full of water. The third is full of coconut coir and water giving it the consistency of wet potting soil. A few unused but rinsed off plants are on the ground.

1. Start with the plants of choice.
2. Take out of the pot or plastic tray and rinse most of the dirt out of the roots.
Just soak the root ball in the water and alternate between gently massaging the roots and swirling it in the water. All the soil will rinse without needing to be manhandled.

!!!Remember that the roots are the life of the plant, try to keep and protect them as much as possible!!!

3. In the second bucket you can rinse the last of the potting soil off with ease.
4. Then take a plastic 3” net pot and hold the plant in the center with the roots at the bottom.
5. Fill the netpot up with coconut coir, gently packing it down with your fingers till it’s full to the rim. Try to position it so the roots start at .5” to 1” below the rim.
6. Set aside and you’re done. It’s important the roots stay moist so I put them in a container with an inch of water in the bottom. Plus I found it’s good to keep the tags with the plants so you don’t forget what is what later on.

Now the setup need to be put together and filled with fresh nutrient. I found a nice little nylon filter bag at the pet store that I could put on the end of the drain tubes. I rightly figure that for the first few days a lot of coir would wash out of the netpots into the reservoir. Hopefully keeping as little from getting into the pump will limit the lines getting clogged even though the pump has it’s own filter as well.

You can see a little bit of the leftover solid nutrient at the bottom of the reservoir. No matter how hard I try to mix it in some of it never dissolves. Liquid nutrient would obviously not have that problem.

The plug for the pump is outdoors and exposed so I wrapped it with a few overlapping layers of “Stretch and Seal” Tape and a couple layers of electrical tape. Pull the electrical tape tight as you wrap, overlap each row, and make sure your last layer goes from bottom to top to shed water better.

And here is everything planted and running, kind of small and unassuming at this point. I still have on planter empty for something else in the future. Hopefully pole beans.

We all know Hollywood can’t find an original idea to save their lives (or their bottom line for that matter) but do they really need to keep destroying our childhoods by doing crummy remakes?

What’s next, remake “Fievel Goes West: American Tail” with “Fievel Goes East: Fievel explores business outsourcing in China.”? I like my remakes like my socks, old and worn out since the 90’s.

Interesting fact: this near straight to VHS crap starred future Academy Award winner Hillary Swank as the star.

Insp. Geekosystem

One slow day at work we watched a NASA feed of a shuttle launch from T-5mins to fuel tank separation (~+8min). One co-worker is a walking encyclopeida of the shuttle and it’s systems so it was like being on a tour of the launch process.

If you notice at launch, water (350,000 gallons in 41 seconds) floods the pad. It’s not to cool things off, it’s added sound suppression because the shockwaves from the engines were actually damaging the Solid Rocket Boosters and Shuttle wings.

The shuttle is clamped down to the pad and won’t launch until the explosive bolts blow and the clamps let go. Hence the impression that the shuttle leaps off the pad. The Saturn Rockets that flew the Apollo missions worked the same way. Astronauts often have colorful ways to describe the feeling of going from rumbling on the pad to instant high-G acceleration.

The shuttle launches “Downrange”. Although it seems it’s going straight up the shuttle is really rolling onto it’s back as it launches; because it’s lateral speed around the earth that sends it to orbit, not necessarily altitude alone.

At an altitude of about 35,000ft the shuttle hits Max Q which is where the speed and air density create the maximum dynamic pressure and stress on the shuttle. After this point speed increases but due to low air density the stresses on the shuttle lower making it a major milestone in the launch.
The Challenger disaster happened around Max Q; when stress on the structure was at it’s peak the SRB mount broke causing the SRB to turn into the fuel tank. As the fuel tank broke up the orbiter veered out of position and the aerodynamic forces at Max Q caused the orbiter to disintegrate (it didn’t actually “explode”).

As the shuttle launches if you listen to the NASA sound feed you’ll hear Ground Control announce the passing of certain Abort Modes.
-First is Return To Launch Site (RTLS). The shuttle would ride until the SRBs burn out (they’re like bottle rockets and can’t be stopped once they’re lit), then shut off main engines, jettison the 3/4 full fuel tank and glide back to Florida.
-Next is Transoceanic Abort Landing (TAL). Upto about +8mins the shuttle can abort, run out the SRBs and main engines then land in Europe about 25 minutes after launch (beat that Concord!). Weather conditions need to be good at Florida and at least one of the three Europe landing sites. Prep at the sites begins 2 days in advance of launch.
-Abort Once Around (AOA) is rare. It’s when the shuttle has too much speed to make Europe but not enough for a stable orbit. The Shuttle would return to a Florida landing 90mins after launch.
-Last is Abort to Orbit (ATO). Basically orbit can be attained, but possibly not as high as they wanted. But it does give the opportunity to think things through and either come up with a solution or find a way down. It’s only been invoked once, the Challenger had one of it’s main engines shutdown during launch but made it to orbit. The mission was salvaged and it landed safely.

Pac-Man Facts:
Like most games of the time Pac-Man is Japanese, Paku Man. “Paku Paku” is a Japanese mimetic word for the sound of eating, like “Doki Doki” is the sound of a fast beating heart. So the name comes from the act of eating; converted to latin the Japanese name パックマン becomes Pakkuman, which we simplified to Pac-Man.

The ghosts Inky, Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde are of course American names. The ghosts original Japanese names describe their attack personalities; roughly translating to Chaser, Ambusher, Fickle and Stupid.

Pac-Man only has 255 levels, all are the same; but due to a programming issue the game won’t work past 255. Because computers at their core work on binary a certain number of bits is required to represent the data. In binary 8 bits has a maximum number of 255 (this is why IP addresses don’t go over 255 per octet). Pushing for that 9th bit to be able to count to 256 causes Pac-Mac to only render half the screen.
Perhaps this was a deliberate oversight by the programmers, after all who would ever play a game through 255 levels?

Along with the Atari ET game, the port of Pac Man to the Atari 2600 was one of the reasons for the video game crash of 1983. As good developers fled Atari due to publishing rights arguments games with known good potential like Pac Man were cranked out as pieces of garbage and the gamer market responded by abandoning systems. Nintendo would pick up the pieces 2 years later.

“Back in the day” it was common for a game to be produced by only one or two programmers who would get billing on the title screen. One of my favorites was “Floyd of the Jungle” by a certain Sid Meyer in 1982.

Atari wanted all their games to be “by Atari” on the title screen. Hard working programmers felt they didn’t get the recognition they deserved and fled starting up their own programming companies like Activision.

But unfortunately news moves too fast for the comics to be too topical. So these comics will never see the light of day.

I’m sure coming up with hilarious comics every day is pretty taxing, so having a comic that writes itself has to feel great:

Take a moment to marvel at the fact that I didn’t need to add anything to the story as it has been told in the media. All it really needed was Wally. I don’t think any of us will ever know what really happened. I based the comic on the media’s speculation of events. Remember that I’m in the parody business and not the truth business.

Original iPhone story.

There are a few different ways to go about this, the best is to spend the most of your weekend doing an intensive hand wash and wax in your drive-way.
The most expensive is to pay $50 to $100 dollars to have professionals detail the car for you.
The most useless is to pay the local cheerleader squad to clean it for you; too expensive and poor quality. And if you want to look at soaped up girls in bikinis you’re already on the internet; honestly figure it out (but read my blog post first).

Most of us are lucky if we can find time to spend $5 at the local coin-op wash waving a wand over our car and hoping for the best. Here’s how to make the most of that coin-op wash and get results close to what you get after a weekend hand wash. Best of all how to give you car a great wash in 20 minutes and as little as $4 dollars.

What you need before you wash:

-Enough money for two wash cycles, most coin-ops take $2 to get started.
-A Chamois (check the local auto parts stores)
-A clean rag or towel you don’t mind getting dirty.
-A decent coin-op wash
-*Optional* Rose Royce – “Car Wash” on your iPod while you wash

As for finding a good place there are a few things that you want, first is a “Foam Brush” option.
This is a must!
Second is just simple quality, some car washes don’t mix much “product” in their systems; also look for a wash that has a “Spot Free Rinse” option. You can only find this by trying different car washes and shopping around; some places recycle water without properly cleaning it so the rinse cycle leaves spots.
Optionally look for a wash that has a wringer for removing the excess water from your Chamiois.

Rules to keep in mind:

-Check the local weather report (if it’s raining tomorrow you may want to wait).
-Keep moving, keep things wet. Dry soap leaves spots.
-Use Gravity. Wash and rinse from the top down.
-It takes about 10-15 seconds for the sprayer wand to change modes.
-The best clean comes from physically touching the car, avoid “touchless” washing.
-Every time the hose slaps the side of your car it’s a potential scratch. It can’t be avoided but try to minimize it. NEVER use a carwash that has metal connectors midway on the hose where they may hit your car.
-Most selections on the dial can be skipped. All you really need are “High Pressure Wash”, “Foam Brush”, “High Pressure Rinse”, and “Spotless Rinse” in that order.
-Best time to wash is just after sundown. Drying off in the hot sun can lead to waterspots if you’re not quick.

How to wash your car at the coin-op

1. Before you put in any money get everything prepped.
Lift Windshield wipers into the upright position. Have your change ready, usually two stacks of quarters for two separate cycles. Make sure your car is centered in the bay and you can easily get around with the wand and brush. Check the Foam Brush is relatively clean. The last guy may have been scrubbing mud off his ATV’s and you don’t want to smear that into your paint. If it’s dirty remember to give a quick spray from the wand in the next step.

2. Set the dial to rinse. Put your money in and wet the car down, if you have any extra change you want to use it in this first cycle. Since you usually use $5 in the change machine I use $3 for the first cycle, $2 for the second. Don’t wait until it beeps, put the extra in now.

*****Important*****
The trick to a quick cheap wash is knowing how to get the most out of your limited time. Try to divide the car into quadrants and constantly walk around the car washing those quadrants. A simple car will be:
Top, Front, Driver Side, Back, Passenger Side, Underside&Wheels, usually in that order.
Some cars will have hard to reach areas, you’ll get a feel what places you need to focus on.

3. Once you’ve gone through all quadrants wetting down the car switch to “wash” to cover it in some soap. Again you’re not looking to scrub anything off yet, just cover everything in soapy water. Remember the 15 second delay, switch to “wash” about 10 seconds before you need it.

4. By now you should only be about a minute into your allotted time (usually 4-5 minutes); switch to the foam brush. Spend the remaining time covering the car in a good lather; let the timer run out without putting in more money. Even after the time runs out there should be plenty of suds to scrub around and the brush still works without the timer running.

Make sure that when your time runs out you’ve at least covered the car in suds. Once it’s covered you can take any extra time you need to scrub bad spots. I like to make one quick trip around to cover the car in suds and a second to really scrub it down. The timer runs out on the second pass but there is plenty of soap on the car by then.

5. Try to leave scrubbing the wheels, underside, and wheel wells to the end since they will have the most dirt and you don’t want to spread that onto the rest of the car.

6. Once the car has been scrubbed but before the foam starts to dry put in the rest of your money and switch to the “High Pressure Rinse” mode. Make one quick pass over the whole car to keep it wet and keep the foam from drying.

<7. Now start at the top and rinse everything down. Soap likes to hide in cracks and seams, spray parallel to the seam to get it out. Work as quickly as possible but be thorough; try to spray soap down and off, not from one side to the other.

8. Once you’re confident you got the soap off switch to “Spotless Rinse” and finish rinsing the car down until time runs out. “Spotless Rinse” is kind of optional; it’s better to get all the soap off than it is to make it to the “Spotless Rinse” step (using a chamois will get all the spots anyway).

8.5 If you want to use a spray-on “wax while you dry” product, now is the time to put it on. They aren’t a substitute for a proper wax job but they do maintain an existing wax job pretty well. I prefer Meguiar’s version of the stuff.

9. Once you’re out of time get the chamois and dry off the car. The coin-op “code of conduct” is that if people are waiting that you vacate the wash bay and dry off in the vacuum area. However if it’s a hot sunny day and nobody else is waiting feel free to make use of the shade to dry off. Otherwise the sun will dry the car before you can, leaving water spots.

10. Wring the chamois out often. Don’t worry about the windows too much, there will be spots on them no matter how hard you try to get them, you’ll have to Windex them when you get home.
For the underside of the running boards, bumpers, and wheels use the rag/towel. They never seem to get 100% clean and will dirty up your chamois.

11. Now you can head home but when you get home check the back of the car, around the gas cap cover, and handles for more water to wipe up. The eddy-currents caused while driving will suck water and soap out of cracks you didn’t know you had and will streak if you don’t dry them now. Wipe off and polish any chrome and your automotive badges so they have that extra shine.

12. Finally Windex and Rain-X your windows. Then step back and admire your handy-work because if Murphy’s Law has anything to do with it it’s going to rain tomorrow.

I recently lost my job; it’s no big deal, I was already looking for a new one because I felt underutilized and under recognized but having the NEED to go find a new job is never fun.

I worked for AT&T on the EVEN turn-up team; basically that means when a big company gets a new T1 or DS3 line to connect their main an remote offices together, I’m the guy who sets up the routers so they work. So a technician onsite plugs everything in then I remotely connect and configure the device to work as the gateway between the customer LAN and AT&T’s backbone with VPN tunnels to other sites belonging to the company.

Already this leads to a job that is very much in danger of being outsourced since I don’t have to actually be anywhere near the equipment; from Orem I was connecting to devices all over the US setting them up. If you can connect in from 1000 miles away why not just do it from 2000 miles away, thus to save money the company decided it would be better to have people in Slovakia do the job. Many other tech companies have already sent their services overseas, I’m sure that most people have talked with a representative from overseas, the tech industry is no different.

Obviously there are issues with having your talent located thousands of miles away from your companies’ equipment. In fact one time it became very apparent the problems with having people remotely configure systems.

One night I was migrating a customer site from their old routers to a new high-speed connection that required new equipment. The AT&T equipment was already setup and running but the customer LAN hadn’t been moved over from the old equipment to the new. To make the change we had to changes it over when everybody had gone home so as not to disrupt the network during business hours.

I was in a conference call with the customer’s LAN technician who himself was an outsourced tech working in India. His accent was thick but bad and he was a very friendly guy; while we waited for the customer’s onsite tech to arrive we chatted for a while. It was evening for me and pre-dawn for him so being away from home on the odd shift.

The problem is that the tech never showed. So what we had was an unmanned datacenter in the New England area in a remote locked building without so much as a night security guard to help us. Since the two routers involved were mounted right on top of each other all we needed was a person to move a yellow wire from one connector to the identical connector 2 inches above it.

Both me and the Indian tech were helpless to do anything, each remotely connected in from two opposite points on the globe to two devices humming along next to each other, two inches from a job well done. All we needed was any flesh and blood human onsite to perform a task that required absolutely no technical knowledge whatsoever.

Outsourcing had affected the Company in question so much that there was nobody left to perform the most simplest of tasks. Of course we were able to reschedule the switchover for a couple weeks later (we were always booked up for about 8 business days) and the customer finally had some intern go make the switch late one night. Who knows what was lost in money having to depend on their oversubscribed line for a few extra weeks (they were already paying for our highspeed connection since it was their fault the ball was dropped). Imagine having your business stuck on the equivalent of dialup while paying for a DSL connection that you can’t use. Except in this case the unused DSL was over 20 times the cost of the connection you were stuck maintaining.

For me that highlighted one problem with sending all knowledgeable people away from the company; the next big problem is the communication barrier and how it affects your service.

There are many extremely good bilingual techs outside of the US but there a lot more who don’t have a great of hang of the language; and since you’re already outsourcing so you can pay people a fraction of the low US wages chances are you’re going to get the ones with language issues. Dell computers has been struggling with this issue directly from many years.

When I first got a Dell laptop about a decade ago Dell was lauded for some of the greatest customer service in the business. I even had to deal with them a few times myself and had nothing but praise about my experience. But then around 2002-2003 they outsourced everything to India and their reputation for service dropped to the bottom and Dell customer service became a joke synonymous with uselessness. I found it was better to ignore the call in service and use email or just try fixing the issue myself without their help.

For my job moving to Slovakia I already know our US onsite techs, the guys that actually physically install the equipment, are already dreading the changeover. I was told many times how relieved a tech was to be talking to somebody in the US and how it was much easier to get a job done in 30 minutes through good communication rather than taking 2 hours to struggle through a foreign language barrier.

Most companies don’t see these secondary issues that arise. Sure it looks great on paper that you’re spending $20,000 less a week on online techs, but they don’t notice that the pay for onsite techs jumps up $20,000 because they have to be onsite longer for a job that isn’t done as quickly. You also can’t resolve customer issues as quickly, there may be greater frustration on the customer’s end with the delays and that can cost a contract. And just one lost contract of the size we dealt with would immediately counter any monetary gain from outsourcing.

Lost customer loyalty can be so bad that many businesses that outsourced in the early 2000’s have already brought back their customer facing divisions so that when customer’s call in they get somebody speaking the same language.

The sad reality is that it will continue to happen and there is nothing any of us involved can do; it’s not even a South Park “They took our jobs!” issue. Businesses go where they can charge less to boost profits and hopefully pass savings onto the customer. It’s be nice if customers rose up and fought back against the trend of outsourcing but the lure of just slightly cheaper prices are too great.

And so I move to a different job, hopefully it will be a while before that one is sent overseas.

BTW: I know the guys in Slovakia are good guys, the picture at the top is a joke.

I didn’t like the drains on the end caps. It worked great at first but it was too easy to bump the drain hose and dislodge the end cap; then they leaked. So I went back to the original method, just drill a hole in the bottom, beneath the drain access hole. This is also where the feeder lines will come out since the caps will be on both ends.

Then I glued a garden hose adapter to the bottom to attach the drain lines to. You don’t really need that but I thought it would allow a bit more flexibility in how the planters can be placed. The alternative is to just glue a PVC piece over the hole, drill a hole in the top of the reservoir and drop line up the PVC pipe over the hole (that’s how I did it last time).

A bead of plumbers putty will be used to seal the end caps. Just pretend you’re in kindergarten making snakes.

Then put the bead in the bottom of the cap. It doesn’t need to go all around because the nutrient level will never be more than a quarter of an inch up.

Here’s what it looks like on the inside when the caps are pushed on.

Filtering was a problem on the last attempt. Here I have a simple aquarium pump and a cheap aquarium bio-filter from the pet store.

Carve a hole halfway into the filter so it can go over the intake.

Here it is fitted on.

And you can see it inside when all bottled up.

Here are all the components for the manifold that will split the pump into the 4 feeder lines.

And again all glued together. The black end pieces were just screwed on so that they can be disassembled to get to the filters inside.

Now we can immerse the pump in water, position the drains over the reservoir and give it all a test. Looking straight down you can see how holes sprat at the planter positions.

It’s a bit hard to see but on the right of the netpot you can see the stream of water spraying in.

And the view looking down the whole system. The streams may not spray with much force but they don’t need to. As it is they already pump much more solution into the system than they need. But unlike a drip garden this will drain out one end and be recycled back into the lines.

We finally had some sunny weather to go outside and show everything in action. The system is complete setup and running, the only thing missing was the cover to a the reservoir and some plants to start growing.

The planters can be doubled up if length is an issue.

It can even be bent to go on the corner of a balcony. The PVC legs are handmade, more professional looking ones can be bought online or like I did last year you can just flip over buckets or use cinderblocks. The important part is that one be at least an inch taller than the other so nutrient drains easily and not pool (which can cause rot).

When hauling this out of the garage and onto the back deck I realized how well it all packs up. The legs, pump, drain hoses, and end caps fit in the reservoir with room to spare. The small tote on top has the nutrient fertilizers and pH balance solutions in it. All of this can easily be carried around and stashed in any storage space for the winter.

Although it snowed here for the last 3 days it’s the last snow of the year and next week I should be able to clean up a space outside to put this and get a few plants in it.

I’m going to round up all the receipts I have and figure exactly what the costs was for this. I’m estimating about $100-$120, and that’s only because of the $40 pump and $30 for the 8ft vinyl post.

So how come Stephen Fry already got one? Looks like he just picked it up at the Apple store too.

The New Adventures of Mr Stephen Fry

He did interview Steve Jobs so maybe this was a parting gift for such a nice interview. If you’re in the US and you want it you’re going to have to wait another 2 days.

Treehugger has a cool concept from a green design challenge. It’s a clip on shed for apartments; although I prefer the term one of the comments used, “Parasitic Architechture.” I have to say it’s a great idea, I just posted on my own desire for the same thing.

Those of us lucky enough to have yards can consider a garden shed as way of getting a little more space. But what about those in apartments and condominiums? They don’t have basements or spare rooms or space for a shed.

The Plant Room solves this problem. It is a “a prefabricated room that bolts-on to a variety of existing apartment types, improving the quality of living, reducing energy and water use, and generally making the building more sustainable.”

I still like my idea more: It’s not a concept. The price is so affordable anybody can do it. It doesn’t violate any building codes. Somebody can make their own over the weekend.

But a clip on shed is still a cool idea. If properly built it could allow for some extra features, although it seems like it requires alot of materials to create a small area. I like using a handful of easy access materials to make better use of existing space and resources.

Wozniak in a recent interview:

Woz: By the way, I solved the problem of battery life and [the lack of] multitasking on the iPhone.

Lyons: Really?

Woz: Yeah. I just have two iPhones, so if the battery runs down on the first one, I can use the other. And if I’m talking on one, I can use the other one to look something up. You would not believe how much use I get out of that.

That’s not really solving the multitasking problem. If this was anybody else I’m think it was a joke and they were making fun of the fact that the iPhone is only half capable. As it is I think he’s partially joking anyway but it still highlights an unsolved problem.

Not all of us want to carry two phones with their own service plans to solve the problem multitasking. AT&T even made one of their lame commercials making fun of that. As out of touch as they are, if even they think it’s a joke then it’s probably pretty bad.

My phone is 2 years old now but I’ve already solved Wozniak’s problem with one device. First off I didn’t get an iPhone. Second I got a bluetooth headset so I can talk while I hold the phone in my hands and make notes.

…Relax, I’m not a douche that wears the headset all the time. I only pull it out of my pocket to answer phone calls. Kind of like most people do with a regular phone only I don’t have to hold a brick to the side of my head.

Wozniak says he’s getting two iPads as well; not sure if that’s also to solve a multitasking issue.

The Next Web

The drawback is that it’s not as simple as pouring dirt in a pot, adding a plant and watering daily. A hydroponic system needs a bit of forethought and planning. Luckily it’s easier than it first looks, and using commonly available components for your local hardware store it’s not as expensive as one might think.

I really wanted this to fit the typical urban living space so the idea I came up with was a long narrow growing area; 8ft long, and about 1 foot wide. Since most apartments have another apartment overhead there would be a place to dangle supporting wires to clip the growing plants to as they got bigger. That way you wouldn’t have to worry about wind knocking the plants over or the narrow hydroponic trays having to support the plants. I also decided that by splitting the system into two halves you can adjust the footprint from 8×1ft, to 4×2ft and have some flexibility in the configuration (like bending it around a corner, 4ft per side).

Last year I tested out the basic idea, seeing if an NFT setup would even work outside in a non-greenhouse setting. It worked and was spectacular, outperforming the regular soil garden many times over. The main lessons I learned is that external plant support is a must, plants “drink” more water out in the heat, and even though soil-borne pests are eliminated it can be harder to manage pests that can climb easily (no slugs or snails but earwigs were awful).

So this year I’m making the “production” model of the 8×1ft hydroponic garden. I’m going to try tracking resource usage a bit closer; I tracked electricity usage last year but water was just estimated. Electricity usage was quite minor (only $30 for all summer), less than leaving a porch light on at night. Water usage was MUCH less than a traditional garden. In fact Lifehacker linked how to make a window garden; the comment “…let’s mother nature take care of the feeding and watering.” really caught my eye. Obviously these people don’t live in the western US, if you want fruit bearing plants you have to add massive amounts of water here. Which isn’t good because we’re already technically a desert, we’re told to conserve all that water so it can go downstream to California so they can grow produce there, or to Las Vegas to be used in the Belagio fountains.

Hydroponics simply means using water to add nutrients rather than soil, there are many different methods to actually carry that out. However with size being an issue the best solution in my eyes was the “Nutrient Film Technique”. DIY guides has some excellent articles on this and other hydroponic methods.

The way NFT hydroponics works is by running a small amount of nutrient solution over the roots, allowing oxygen to still reach the roots rather than complete immersion.

Contrary to what many believe the roots of a plant also need to breathe just as much as the leaves. In fact the more moist air around the roots the better. Some hydroponic systems completely immerse plant roots in water but use air bubblers to introduce oxygen to the nutrient solution so the roots don’t suffocate. Aeroponics takes this to the extreme by spraying the nutrient solution into the air as a mist to maximize the roots ability to absorb water, nutrients, and oxygen.

Our NFT method will run nutrient over the roots for 15 minutes, then shut off for 15; a more ideal ratio would be 5 minutes on, 10 minutes off, but getting a more specialize timer costs more (maybe later). The idea is that fresh nutrient is sprayed on the roots then given a chance to be absorbed along with oxygen from the air. The risk is that if the roots dry up the plant dies. The closed nature of our setup will allow some lag time if the power goes out, or a sprayer gets clogged but be aware that on a hot day if you lose power for 12 hours you may lose plants if you don’t water them. You’ll also want to check the plants once a day, if there is improper filtering and debris clogs a sprayer you’ll notice the plant looking wilted.

The cool thing about NFT hydroponics is that it’s very easy to scale up the size and capacity of your system. Many commercial hydroponics users make use of this to create huge deployments with the same basic equipment we’ll be using.

Also the system is a closed system, in that virtually nothing gets in or out including light, keeping things as dark as possible reduces algae buildup in the system. Properly sealed there will be little to no evaporation of water, and very little water or debris will get in (but some always does). So everything is used by the plants, if there is excess it runs back into the system and is used again. Again this means that you do have to keep an eye on things. It’s amazing how much water plants will drink up and evaporate off their leaves on a hot day.

I found that topping of the water supply needed to be done about 3 times every 2 weeks on average. On hot weeks water needed to be added about every 3 days. Nutrient are only absorbed as needed so as water levels fall the nutrient solution gets more concentrated, but so long as more water is added it should never be too much of a problem.

About every 2-3 weeks it’s good to dump the nutrient solution and mix up some more. Since nutrient solution is just a very diluted fertilizer (and most the nutrient is absorbed by the plants when you change it) you can dump in any growing soil area, it will just help the plants there. Use it to water your potted plants, pour it out on the grass, in your soil garden, or in flower planters by your door. Avoid dumping it directly in the water supply down a drain; even though the fertilizer in it is negligible the ocean doesn’t need any help with all the crop runoff there already is.

Building the system

Last year’s test was a bit unwieldy. With apartment dwellers in mind I want this one to be small and manageable. I started by getting a8 foot long 4” diameter vinyl fencepost from the local home and garden shop. Then cut it in half.

I just used a simple hacksaw and it was done in about 3 minutes. I marked straight lines but the bit at the top wasn’t perfectly straight, nor does it need to be. When the caps finally go on we’ll put plumbers putty on the seam and it will fill any imperfections.

Some quick work with a file to get rid of the burrs.

Now it’s time to mark where the planting stations will go. I used the complex method of scribbling on the back of an envelope to plan the positions. As an experiment I’m putting 4 plants on one section and 5 on the other. They start 4” from the end of the tube, and stop 7” short of the hole drilled for access to the drain. The hole for the drain is 3” from the other end of the tube. This is to give enough distance from the last plant so that it’s roots won’t clog up the drain. As you can see in this shot of last year’s system the root systems will fill up the tube quite alot.

Once you know the correct distances between holes mark them along a measuring tape along the length of the tube. Then mark the center point horizontally for each position. Measure twice, cut once.

To drill the hole I just used a 3” hole drill bit from the hardware store. However using it with a handheld drill is a bit tricky. Make sure the fence post is properly secured and you have a very firm grip on the drill. Start slow. After the sawtooth part of the hole saw has started into the post you can speed up the drill. Don’t apply much pressure, just let the teeth slowly cut their way in. Once the first few teeth cut all the way through the drill will try to wrench itself out of your hand so be VERY CAUTIOUS!!!!

It’s better to damage and replace the post or the drill than to slice, gouge, or destroy part of your body.
If this seems a bit out of hand for you don’t be afraid to give up and have a professional with a drill press do it for you.

All sites drilled. On the far right are the drain access holes. Notice the spacing to fit 5 planters on one and 4 on the other.

Here’s the netpot in the hole after drilling and de-burring with a file.

Clearance is pretty good.

Just like the planting locations the holes for the feeder lines need to be positioned correctly so they will spray into the planters. So figure out where the holes in the feeder lines will be then drill corresponding holes in the vinyl tube a couple inches down so they don’t overlap.

The hole in the feeder will be two inches to the right of the dot marking the mounting hole in the vinyl so it will spray onto the rear of the netpot, drip down, and flow to the drain (to the left in thie shot).

The hole is as wide as the zip tie but smaller than the head of the zip tie, so it goes in the hole, around the feeder line, back out the same hole, then through the head of the zip tie. This way you can pull it tight and not worry about drilling two holes.

Finished mounting the feeder lines. This tube has two feeder lines as an experiment but last year worked fine with one. The higher line on the right will spray onto the netpot to keep it wet. The lower line on the right is positioned to spray directly onto the roots “upstream” of the netpots.

And what the feeder lines look like on the inside.

Final setup and working system in part 2.

This trumps my “Geeks attend electronics conventions, Nerds attend Star Trek conventions.” definition of geek and nerd.

I realize there is a lot to go over so I will break this into three main parts:
Why, What, and How.
First today I’ll break down the Why I’m doing this and why I think it will appeal to others, next I’ll show exactly what I’m making and what it takes to get it done, then finally over the summer I’ll post updates on how to do it and how it’s all going.

Why?

I’ve always had a general interest in hydroponics; it’s just an interesting science to grow plants without needing a big open piece of land to put them. And growing up in an arid climate it was even more amazing that not only did it only use water, but it used less water than traditional gardening. This month’s National Geographic Magazine is dedicated to the limited resource of fresh water; while studying at University my geological professor (and the state’s scientific adviser to geologic water issues) pressed upon us the importance of fresh water, and the fact that it’s already in greater scarcity than oil (run out of oil no cars, run out of water, no food or drink). Although the only people feeling the pressure now are farmers if the Geographic is right you and me will see stresses all too soon.

The second interest of mine is in general gardening itself. I grew up in the suburbs and my family had a decent garden in the backyard, some years it was a great source of vegetables, others it was a giant neglected patch of weeds. One thing that the family always agreed on was that it was much more satisfying when we had a nice garden going full of plants.

There’s just something about growing things that appeals to people, whether it’s your own home garden or just a tiny plant brightening up your cubicle in the office. I think the appeal is that you made something live; maybe one part god complex of sustaining life, and another part knowing that for whatever negative impact you’ve had at least there’s something that you’ve made a little greener and a little more alive. Being surrounded by growth and life at your own hand is a very satisfying thing.

There’s also the appeal of creating something useful from the empty dirt. While growing flowers is nice it’s especially nice to grow vegetables that you can eat yourself. And the effect of making virtually free food isn’t imaginary. JD Roth and his wife over at Get Rich Slowly always document their garden and quantify it into actual money saved by having his own fresh vegetables and not buying imported stuff from the store. This effect is such a big deal that there is a term for it, a “Victory Garden”. Coined during World War 2 a victory garden was encouraged by the government as a way to help the war effort. By converting your yard into a garden you could supply your own vegetables and fruit, thus commercial produce could be shipped to the troops fighting overseas. Check this old war era government PSA, 20min so I won’t embed it. These days the reasons are more conservational and economic but the idea remains the same.

Home gardening is all nice but for anybody living in the city it’s just a dream, and with housing prices constantly getting further out of reach less of us have the ability to get the house in the ‘burbs with the white picket fence and room for a victory garden. In a world of concrete and asphalt there isn’t space to put a garden to augment your groceries. A few lucky communities may be able to convert rooftop space or setup a community garden in an abandoned lot. But all it takes is some quick rezoning or a jerkhole landlord to end it all.

I came up with the solution while in Japan. I was walking past a large apartment complex and looked up wondering how anybody could make use of the tiny balcony space each apartment had. Some people had set out chairs to sit and look out at the city after work, some had equipment for outdoor cooking, many used it simply to store junk. But one apartment had filled every square inch with plants. There were easily 20 large potted plants in an 8×3ft area creating a tiny bright green forest in the middle of a wall of concrete. And as a nice side benefit the plants blocked the view into their apartment and kept the hot summer sun from streaming into their window.

I thought what greater way to make the most of the small space given than to turn it into something pleasant and less sterile than the rest of the city. While thinking of how many pots it would take to create a green barrier between your home and the rest of the city I thought of the hydroponic setups I’d seen. It would be perfect, a small self-watering system that didn’t need any soil and made use of the fact that you didn’t need a large flat space to work.

Now the idea isn’t really that new, others have done similar things before. But almost everything I’ve seen is small and not productive enough to be of any interest to me. Either the system is a tiny window full of plants no bigger than a foot, or it’s simply a potted plant like Ficus that is self watering. I want a “Pocket Victory Garden” that will grow me vegetables at a rate that I can actually plan more than one meal a month with my produce.

I had a decent knowledge of hydroponic methods so I figured what would work best in the small narrow space of an apartment balcony. After all you still need to be able to go out on the balcony to harvest and monitor the plants. Even better if the garden grew vertical to create a green summer sunshade while you relaxed in a chair on the balcony with a nice cool drink.

I figured the best method is a Nutrient Film Technique (NFT) hydroponic setup. Not only did it look coolest and fit most closely with what people picture as hydroponic but except for the nutrient reservoir nothing is wider than 4-5 inches. The plants will be wider than the growing area. So you can save as much floor space as possible while still having a nice little garden to call your own and even provide you with some fresh home grown ingredients to go with your home cooking.

Click here part two, how to setup and build of the hydroponic planter.

I was looking up the Street Dogs entry in last.fm and keyed the entry into Bing. Front page bottom of the page links to my Last.fm tag directory (which happens to contain Street Dogs).

Although it’s the German version It seems my opinion of punk music is closely related enough to Street Dogs and Last.fm that Bing’s algorithms tie the pages together.

click for larger

I frankly find this hard to believe (I’m awesome but not that awesome) and suspect that Bing must have some tracker cookie influencing their results to make them a bit more customized to the place I goto. But even if THAT is true it’s still amazing that Bing could make such an amazing connection.

Still maybe I am influential enough that I’m front page news for Bing’s search.

@victorchamp According to publishers, the iPad will revolutionize magazines by turning them into websites, or CD-ROMs from the 90’s.

Twitter

Watch it when you get the chance.

Obviously the problem comes from the fact that some programming is in 4:3 (standard) and some is in 16:9 (widescreen). Old programming will always be 4:3 even if everybody gets widescreens, but as long as the height is the same this isn’t a problem there will just be black on the left and right of the image like vertical letterboxing. The problem is when widescreen programming is converted to 4:3 then played on a 16:9 screen; usually some local station is still doing this to appease people who don’t have widescreen TVs yet. Now you have letterboxing all around.

These days TVs should be able to recognize that 40% of the screen is black and zoom into the screen at the center.

Instead they have the option to “zoom” on the remote. This is nice but the cropping always happens in the same place so even the simplest software would recognize it. It seems that it should do this on the fly for you and the zoom button should just be the option to turn it off if it’s malfunctioning.

Some TVs have this auto crop feature but the dang thing never works so you’re always left to zoom anyway. This is probably because the black regions have slightly different levels of contrast but why not put a slider where you can adjust the sensitivity of black detection. Again even the simplest software can tell the difference between pixels that stay the same level of 95% black for the whole program and moving active color pixels.

They’ve made up these authentic NASA mission posters for various missions. Some are pretty average but others look like they belong as movie posters for a Hollywood Summer blockbuster.

It’s good to know that NASA isn’t the stuffy government organization that many assume and that beyond expanding human understanding they know how to have some fun (and are pretty good at photoshop).

Thanks to Gizmodo for the link.