Peter's stuff.
At work, my new fellow employees are finding out a little of my logic. Only a little, as there is little logic. Somedays I find something that is entirely unwinnable. In a no win situation, I change the situation.
Had Gathering Fingers by Stolen Babies stuck in my head.
Maybe tomorrow.
No. I can do this. Something of this at least.
In my new focusing I’ve been doing pretty well. All of the pants ate being watered a minimum of every other day, unless rainfall made that excessive. I think I should clean up the garden a bit tonight and start prepping the soil for my garden box. Next planting will be radishes probably, though I did get seeds for some peppers.
Last night, while watching True Detective, I began reverse engineering a pair of trousers. I have a hard time understanding the placement of the seams. While these were corduroy, they are an incredibly light cord. I might try to finish the deconstruction tonight.
Speaking of tonight, I should finally bottle my beer. Tonight will just be making room and lifting the fermenter onto my work table. I think I’ll let it settle for a day or two, and then on the actual bottling day, transfer to my bucket which has a valve. Thereby, when it gets time to do the detail work, I just open a valve and let it fill.
This is all tentative plans though.
I have a townhouse with a pit style “yard”. It’s a tiny thing. For the small space, I’m trying to get a decent amount of growing going on. There are challenges though.
(As an aside, there’s is a crap contraction. Worthless.)
Light:
I don’t get a lot, on the fence is some but squat for room. Thinking I might get some tomatoes rocking a planter box on the inside south end, but otherwise, based on our current luck, I need to switch to low light plants. The Wif wants hops so I’m looking into that. Maybe cabbage seeing as how that’s a winter veggie.
Security: what little veggies we did have grow successfully involved them being eaten by not us. Nothing says disheartened like a half eaten half grown tomato; potatos also. I’m starting to get all broken crockery on the local mouse runs, but no real plan after that. I believe in discouraging rather than murder. If nothing else, I should do a motion activated camera to figure out who’s doing the deed. I wonder if a paste with cayenne could be successfully painted on like apple wax. That’s an idea.
Water:
I suck at watering gardens. I just planted a rose, a hydrangea and something else. I hope any of them survives a year. Doing good so far, but a better solution would be better. This involves irrigation. Automatic irrigation.
This is where I’m researching the most right now.
Step one: I need to start logging data. Temperature, soil moisture, light exposure. The works. Seen a couple write-ups on moisture so that’ll be easy. Temperature and light are relatively cheap off the shelf. Now I need to look at powering the device and transmitting/storing data.
Right Amazon. Either they need better search results, I need better terminology, or I need to roll my own. I’m voting roll my own.
Because that’s the way I roll.
First, I want to build an auto-roller for thermal printed labels. It’s a long story where I, due to my sense of discretion, must be vague. I’m thinking an Arduino, probably swapped with a smaller sibling after proof of concept. Add a small servo or stepper motor, dowel with a slot to put the head into, a start-stop switch, and a contact switch to tell it to advance. I might need to look at tensioners but still, better than the current setup.
Secondly, an immersion cooler. I watched the Brewing TV episodes with Wil Wheaton, and I knew I waited a lot of water when I need but watching them talk about it to was revealing. I guess that beer making can be bad as 20 gallons or something of water to a gallon of beer. I don’t think I was that bad, but still, even five to one isn’t chill.
So, immersion chiller. Copper coils of pipe circulating cold water, but what then. I’m thinking of building a (Derp… little pump thing, no contact with liquid…) pump to circulate the water in a closed loop, on the opposite side of the system from the beer, use a peltier element with all my heat sinks I have from scavenging. For proof of concept, I could skip the pump and just manually do it with a bucket… I do need () pumps anyway though for other projects. Whatever.
Oh yeah. I also want to build a mostly scavenged cold coffee thing. Make had a write-up from Instructables on one that was hilariously over done. Why the () do I need to buy laboratory grade glass or carefully cut and sharpen copper pipe. The only two things I need to buy are two stopcocks. Maybe a bit of rubber.
An after-action report is often handy, I did perpetrate quite a few actions this weekend. I got a lot done, but nearly everything I want to and not to my standards at times.
When I’m downtiming and watching a show, I need busy work. Tonight, or soon, I should reverse engineer a pair of pants and make a pattern.
Speaking of pants, I need to fire up ye olde sewing machine. I’ll start with hemming the one pair of trousers and work from there. Later practice will probably be on my spare canvas.
Should I call them trousers, slacks or pants. I know there is probably a difference between the three, just not sure what.
Do I have a linoleum block that’s unused? If so, I need get my logo carved and start printing; if not, maybe I’ll start looking more closely at my rubber rollers. Or should I look at the rollers first?
I need groceries tonight. I’ve now managed to burn myself out on frozen foods to the point that I want to cook. Note to self: eggs, potatoes, cheddar for a start.
I should recreate the pictures of Patient 98 last night with the Nikon. While it seemed like a good idea to use my phone for those pictures, it means that the resolution and image noise is horrendous. Since I’m using imagemagick after the fact to reduce and colour, I should be going with maximum resolution in case I ever decide to do more. I should probably mange a better template with slugs our whatever they’re referred to in the picture world. Also, why doesn’t imagemagick like to do batches? I threw in the towel far to early on that last night.
I got a lot of dishes, laundry and other cleaning done, unfortunately I have a lot more to do. During quite hours I need to get the rest done. I got an itinerary after all.
Patient came to me as a John Doe. The only identification that I’m able to do is the prominent 98 on the front and rear of his shirt, and the word Lions on the front. It is assumed that he was formerly part of a paramilitary organization.
His helmet, while superficially damaged, appears intact. Any loss of brain function is most likely due to blood loss or concussion.
Torso on left side has a gaping wound, either from a large beast or explosion.
Right torso has a large glistening growth. Upon further examination, it appears the growth has formed some form of parasitic bond entering the region of the patients liver.
While removing it should be a simple cut, there remains to many questions on its purpose. Possibly the growth is the only reason Patient 98 is any shape to enter the program rather than an incinerator. Further research will be necessary.
A rubbery paralysis currently reigns throughout the body, with all limbs attempting to return to their extended configuration, though no bone mass is evident anymore, leaving no leverage for 98 to exert the leverage to enforce the body’s will.
I woke up so rested I figured it was noon. It was only 8:45, which meant it would be three hours until Don Lucho would be across the street with Peruvian sandwiches. I decided to use this time well.
Totally not sarcasm. I drink beer; I get sleepy. I drink whiskey; I’m doing.
Dick neighbor busts your fence.
Bam.
Weeds overtake everything.
Weeded.
Den looks like a war zone.
Well. Progress. Iterative improvements and stuff.
I have a floor. That’s a start.
Every time the Wif is away, and I do mean every time, I lose all self motivation. I have plans, but then I sleep a lot and play video games and watch tv. This weekend was no different.
This time though, I almost feel like I’ve already burnt out on that. While I don’t have motivation, I might have rampant boredom. Now it just waits to be seen if my boredom outweighs my demotivation.