Why yes, I Did Buy a new iTouch

Ok, it may be hype. It may be just a toy. But yes, I do have an an iTouch. I’m still learning the interface but it seems pretty slick. The keyboard takes a bit getting used to and I’m using the backspace a LOT.

 

Happy Birthday Ray Bradbury

For those of you not familiar with this man’s works, where have you been?  My favorites from this author include

• Fahrenheit 451
• Something Wicked This Way Comes

And the man is just a creative whirlwind.  When he was 80 he said the following:

“The feeling I have every day is very much the same as it was when I was twelve. In any event, here I am, eighty years old, feeling no different, full of a great sense of joy, and glad for the long life that has been allowed me. I have good plans for the next ten or twenty years, and I hope you’ll come along.”

At the same time, he’s like the original punk, out to do his own thing and comfortable with having that outsider status.

I don’t need to be vindicated, and I don’t want attention.  I never question. I never ask anyone else’s opinion. They don’t count.

Rock on Mr. Bradbury!  And congratulations on you newly published book Now and Forever: Somewhere a Band is Playing & Leviathan ‘99 (July 2008).

 

Solar Powered Chicken Coop – Update

Just a quick update on my project to take my chickens into the sustainable future of solar power.  The basic premise of solar energy is that you can take energy from the sun, store it and use if for later.

 

I’ve been wanting to experiment with solar for a while and I was at Fry’s Electronics the other day and they had just what I was looking for to get started.  A completely weatherproof, 12 volt, 5amp battery trickle charger, which just screamed “Put me on the chicken coop roof!”.

 

 

When I have my weekend free (hah!), I’ll be mounting this to a couple of 2×4’s on the coop roof.  What I like about it is that besides the compact nature, it also has a built in blocking diode to keep it from discharging the batter at night and, although it doesn’t really say, I assume a build in voltage regulator as it’s meant to charge a car battery.

The solar charger has 10 feet of wire and a pair of battery clamps, so it should be easy to run the wire down into a weatherproof box and clamp the leads to a car battery inside.

The car battery is in turn hooked into a small 140 watt power inverter inside the battery enclosure and a pair of 12 volt computer power supply fans.  Between the battery and these components I have two light switches so I can turn on either the AC power outlet or the DC fans.

 

The light switches are encased in weatherproof switches, and I have an old extension cord plug plugged into the inverter with the other end wired into a weatherproof outlet box.

Assuming this goes well, I’ll be adding a floodlight on top of the coop as well to be powered by the inverter so that I can have lights running in my side garden at night.  No more weeding by moonlight!

I’m hoping to have everything assembled and installed in the chicken coop by August.  Based on a 5 amp power supply from the solar panel, I figure I can run my .16 amp fans all day long and keep my chickens cool while I also charge up the battery.

It’s a fun experiment with solar power, I’ve got most of the components assembled and now it’s just a matter of putting all the pieces together and keeping my fingers crossed.  Assuming it all goes well, I’ll probably move my automatic watering timer onto the 12 volt circuit as well.

And while my daughter may only be four, I think this would be a great way to introduce her to the basics of solar power and DC current theory.  I also found a great web site at opamp-electronics.com with a section on various tutorials and experiments, absolutely great for the the beginning hobbyist who wants to do a little experimentation

 

New Indiana Jones coming out May 22nd

In a recent article by USA Today George Lucas says:

“When you do a movie like this, a sequel that’s very, very anticipated, people anticipate ultimately that it’s going to be the Second Coming,” Lucas says. “And it’s not. It’s just a movie. Just like the other movies. You probably have fond memories of the other movies. But if you went back and looked at them, they might not hold up the same way your memory holds up.”

And I have to wonder is he knows that his last couple of movies have really sucked, and it was only the name “Star Wars” that kept them from bombing.

Now, I do have fond memories of the original Star Wars series.  My wife on the other hand wasn’t much into Sci-Fi.  So when we rented Phantom Menace, it was with two different points of view. 

I’ve seen some bad movies in the past, but Phantom Menace was pretty much unmatchable and Attack of the Clones even more so.  Special effects can’t really make up for bad acting and bad dialogue.  My wife was in complete agreement that sitting there watching the horrid acting was like watching a giant hand scrape fingernails across a chalk board for 2 hours.

Am I looking forward to Indy 4?  Heck yes.  Are my expectations low?  About as low as they can go.  This may be a movie that I have to go see alone just so I don’t die in shame that I dragged my wife to a suck-a-thon (much like when I took her to see Starship Troopers after reading the novel – I do believe that Heinlein was spinning in his grave over that debacle) .  My one hope is that Spielberg can bring this baby home.

 

A New Favorite Site: ActivityTV.com

So I recently wrote about Virtual Gardening Video Games in my quest to find fun things to do with my daughter and newborn son.  I recently came across this site and I have to say I’m quite impressed.  It houses a plethora of fun ideas- like being in a smorgasbord  of kid friendly activities.

 

Crafts, Cooking, Room Projects and Science are my favorite sections so far.  Though I have to admit, LegoTV with their Star Wars theme videos does my geek-dad heart good.  I think this quote from their parents & teachers page does a good job of summing up what you’ll find here.

This programming is intended for you to participate with your children in all of the activities. Some of the activities require the use of materials that require adult supervision.
We encourage that Activity TV be used as an opportunity to spend quality time with your child or student. Creating or learning something together can be a positive rewarding experience for both of you.
You may notice that activities are scheduled to appear on digital cable ON DEMAND for a period of time, and are then updated with other new activities each month. You can always find, and view, all the activities that have ever appeared right here on the website.

I would encourage everyone to go check out this site and all it has to offer.

 

Virtual Gardening Video Games

I’m a big fantasy and sci-fi geek.  Slowly but surely my four year old daughter is becoming one too.  We have a Star Wars piggy bank, she asked for a dragon sword for Christmas last year, and she loves dressing up as a princess.  She’s also becoming very good with the computer.  She plays games like Elmo’s keyboard-o-rama, watches online movies from netflicks, and enjoys crawling into my lap while I’m working on the computer.

We’re also setting up home-schooling lessons for her as she expresses an interest in various things.  This has involved building a chicken coop, getting an ant farm (more about that later – let’s just say it didn’t turn out well), and our most recent purchase was a butterfly farm with 10 baby caterpillars that will hopefully become beautiful butterflies.

So, I recently started my garden seeds for the spring.  I was really excited about going to the store with her and picking out seeds and getting them started in a little seedling greenhouse.  She was excited about getting the seeds – and I also picked up a 72 disk seed starting kit greenhouse for around $7.

The concept is pretty simple – you have bunch of compressed disks of peat in a plastic container.  You pour water in, plant the seeds and put the cover on.  Seeds sprout in a couple of weeks and you put it in sunlight until they are big enough to plant outside.

Unfortunately, her interest in planting seedlings got about as far as opening the seed packets and discovering that the seeds inside looked nothing like the picture on the outside of the packet.

She loves the garden – loves to pick tomatoes straight off the vine in the spring and summer and helps pick peas and beans in the fall.  But I think there was just too much disconnect between the seeds and having them grow into plants for a 4 year old.  So I was left at the kitchen table finishing up the planting while she wandered off.

It got me to thinking about how I could teach her about the planting process and gardening and somehow compress the time-to-gratification into something more manageable for a 4 year old.  And as a computer geek, my mind naturally turned to computers.

With all the simulation games out there – maybe there was something I could use to help teach her the fun and exciting world of essentially watching grass grow.  I vaguely recalled a SimFarm game from years ago.  With a little digging, I even found a site where abandoned titles go to have a second life.  You can download the game here.  Unfortunately, it’s probably a bit much for a 4 year old to handle screens like these…

 

 

So – What else is out there?  I have to say that it was a little difficult to find kid friendly games about gardening, composting, and plants.  Guess there’s not that much money in making things you can’t blow up.  However, here’s a short list of games I thought were interesting and kid-friendly:

• Compost 4 Fun : Bravekidgames.com is a great website for kid friendly games.  This particular game is a bit hard to control with the mouse (the screen sort of bounces around) but it’s a great way to start a dialogue about what can be composted.
• Garden Dreams : Well, I wasn’t able to get the online version to work for me because I’m behind a firewall – but it looks like fun.
• Alice Greenfingers: Graphics aren’t great and you only get an hour of free play before you have to purchase it, but what it lacks in graphics it makes up for in playability.
• Garden War: Ok, it is a war/strategy game – but it’s with garden gnomes.  Doesn’t use timers and teaches strategy so kids can probably get the hang of it pretty quickly.  Don’t know how kid-friendly tanks are though.

I’m going to have to try a couple of these over the weekend with my daughter and see if they’re really as kid friendly and interesting as I think they are.  I liked them and I thought they were fun, but as they say the proof is in the pudding…

 

Online Game: Get The Glass

Get the Glass takes a great idea of board game, puts it online and throws in some amazing graphics and sound.  Very impressive and even throws in an educational twist.

Fun game to play when you have a spare 15 minutes at work (Actually, it took me about 17 minutes)

 

New Blog Widget

How readable is my blog? Apparently good enough for junior high…

 

According to www.informatics-review.com/FAQ/reading.html:

Research tells us that to communicate effectively with a general audience in the U.S., we need to write at a 6th-8th grade reading level.

So I guess I am readable to the general masses… now they just have to come and read my incredibly interesting materials…

 

Sentimental Software Textbooks

As the baby’s arrival draws closer, I’ve been making an effort to clear out our guest room, organizing my old books and baseball cards, putting them up on Amazon.com for sale, and clearing out the junk. Or as my wife likes to call it, the “crap reduction program”

I ran across some of my old VB 4.0 books… Ahh, the memories.

VB was my first “real” programming language after going through my Pascal and Assembly classes in college. These were books from my first days as a professional programmer! Today I can sell each of them on Amazon for $.01

So I can’t really sell them and I have a hard time just tossing these in the trash. And yet, what else can I do with them? The local library won’t take donations, and all they would do is take up shelf space anyway as we roll into VB.NET 2005 with Orcas right around the corner.

They don’t really make good building blocks, I don’t think I can compost them, I really don’t want to give them to my daughter to draw in since I don’t want her to think she can draw in books. I guess I could cut them up and make kindling for the fire.

I would be willing to turn these all into BookCrossings books. Another option is Freecycle, but again, these are technical books that are 12 years old, for a version of a language that almost nobody uses today as we are now…5.0, 6.0, .NET, .NET 2005, Orcas… 5 versions removed.

Since we’re really trying to live a sustainable lifestyle and leave as little a footprint on the environment and our landfills as possible, what is the best way to reuse these books that have outlived their usefulness?

I found a pretty good resource talking about how to reuse or recycle used textbooks at this link: www.ciwmb.ca.gov/schools/wastereduce/UsedText.htm

Now, the city I live in has a recycling program, so all I need to do is drop these books into the big blue recycle-can and they’ll go off to Mission Recycling, but I can’t help but feel like a small part of me is going with it.

 

Comet Holmes Explodes, Visible to the Naked Eye

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Just saw this on MSNBC.

A comet that has unexpectedly brightened in the past couple of weeks and now is visible to the naked eye is attracting professional and amateur interest.

In order to find the comet, which is currently bigger than the planet Jupiter in the night sky, you’ll want to face the Northeast at around 8pm. Comet Holmes will be in the Perseus constellation just below the bright star called Mirfak.

You can find Comet Holmes by using the “W” of Cassiopeia as your guide. The five stars in a conspicuous zigzag pattern are high in the northeast sky during midevening.

Draw an imaginary line from the star Gamma Cass down to Delta Cass (known also as Ruchbah). Extend the line downward about five times the distance between these two stars and you’ll come very close to where Comet Holmes is. The comet itself forms a triangle with Alpha Persei (known also as “Mirfak”) and Delta Persei.

 

The comet Holmes was first seen in November, 1892 by the British astronomer Edwin Holmes and has made 16 circuits around the sun. The common speculation is that the comet is honey-combed and that as it is approaching the sun, there was a sinkhole that was created by the solar warming. It has increased its brightness about a million fold and is currently between a magnitude 2 and 3 (about the brightness of the stars that make up the Big Dipper).

You can guess what I’ll be doing tonight with my family!