There are never enough soft cushions to lay on.
And there is never enough food for Dora, here asking “you gots foods for me?”
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Summer gardens
Jul08
This is the last of the mini-garden tie constructed raised beds. This is all we have built since the early 2000’s but in the end analysis, they are not deep enough for many crops, do not last very long before rotting out (16 years?), and are actually more expensive then dimensional lumber for deeper beds.
This is the newest bed, made from three layers of 2″x6″ x8′ lumber (depth of 17″). It is protected with a layer of weedcloth between the earth and the wood and was built in 2018. We will see how long it lasts!
Going forward each year, we will replace one of the older minitie beds and replace it with three layers of 2″x8″ lumber.
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The Tomatos are In!
Jun10
on June 10, 2019
at 09:32
and modified on June 10, 2019. at 12:05
Posted In: gardening, Heirloom & Heritage Tomatos
It was a great last few days to be gardening.
We started transplanting Tomatos from the greenhouse stands outside (hardening them off the last few days) into the grounds of VegBeds 4 and 5.
Friday for 2 hours, Saturday for 6 hours and Sunday the last of the work was completed.
Some planting notes from 2019:
We have approximately 135 heirloom tomato plants of approx 60 types.
We plant them in rows running north south approx 1 3/4 to 2′ apart in the row.
Rows are 3′ apart.
We use 2×2 stakes that are at least 3′ tall (or at least started that way).
Each 2×2 stake/plant gets its own sign. We print off in alphabetical order, all of the Tomatos in 14 point font on 8.5″ x11″ paper and then have it laminated at the local Staples shop for approx $3 each. Then they get separated with scissors and then stapled onto the stake, on the north side of the stake.
The 2×2 stakes last at least 5 seasons. The laminated signage, at least 3-4 years.
Once in the ground, their small popsicle stick name from seed planting, is also put into the ground as a backup. Then we also add a sharp skewer stick about 6-10″ tall, right up against the plant stalk. This prevents cutworms from popping up in the night, wrapping around the talk and cutting it, killing the plant.
Lastly we heavily water them with a watering can. This is supposed to help reduce transplant shock.
We lost two plants the first night, even with the sticks. These were replanted with other types.
In general the plants are smaller and spindlier than we would like, but the weather is good and they should survive the first week no problem.
We have several experiments this year. One is to use two TPosts and run bailer twine inbetween them in a Florida Weave style, supporting the plants as they grow taller. If this works out, it will replace a lot of 2×2 staking and tieing up later on.
We are also letting an indeterminate type, a Sunrise Bumblebee, climb up a 7′ post, tying it up as it goes, to see if it will make the top. This will help keep the fruit off the ground and let it get more light.
One other experiment is to use 5-7-7 fertilizer . We chose one Russian Peasant tomato plant to receive an initial 2 tablespoons of fertilizer mixed into the soil, then the plant, then 4 more tablespoons sprinkled on the ground surface. Two other Russian Peasant of similar size and health act as the controls.
Typically we have never used after planting fertilizer on any veg plant… only compost and composted manure in the soil tilled in before planting.
Interspersed with the tomatos plants are more than a few basil herbs… something about eating fresh tomatos and basil.. perhaps even on a pizza! MMmmmmmm.
Marigold flowers were also put in with the tomatos.
A partial list of the tomatos:
SCGO Tomato Acadian Cherry
SCGO Tomato Alacrity
SCGO Tomato Amish Paste
SCGO Tomato Anna Russian
SCGO Tomato Ashleigh
SCGO Tomato Azoychka
SCGO Tomato Berkley Tie Dye
SCGO Tomato Bonny Best
SCGO Tomato Brandywine
SCGO Tomato Buckeye State
SCGO Tomato Burpee’s Dwarf Giant
SCGO Tomato Cleota Pink
SCGO Tomato Dandy
SCGO Tomato Earliana
SCGO Tomato Earliest & Best
SCGO Tomato Elbe
SCGO Tomato Eros aka Red Eros
SCGO Tomato Fargo Yellow Pear
SCGO Tomato Garden Peach
SCGO Tomato Georgia Streak
SCGO Tomato Golden Delight
SCGO Tomato Green Grape
SCGO Tomato Green Zebra
SCGO Tomato Ground Cherry
SCGO Tomato Honey
SCGO Tomato Hotset
SCGO Tomato Hungarian Pink Heart
SCGO Tomato Jaune Flamme
SCGO Tomato Jefferson Giant 1880
SCGO Tomato Jersey Devil
SCGO Tomato Lava Flow
SCGO Tomato Ledoux Special
SCGO Tomato Lemon Drop
SCGO Tomato Livingston Buckeye State
SCGO Tomato Livingston Globe 1905
SCGO Tomato Livingston Gold Ball 1892
SCGO Tomato Livingston Honor Bright 1897
SCGO Tomato Livingston Magnus 1900
SCGO Tomato Livingston Main Crop (post 1905)
SCGO Tomato Livingston Stone
SCGO Tomato Manitoba
SCGO Tomato Margaret Olson
SCGO Tomato Moscow
SCGO Tomato Mr Griffiths florida cherry
SCGO Tomato Mr Griffiths Lynda Silver
SCGO Tomato Napoli Paste
SCGO Tomato Nile River Egyptian
SCGO Tomato Oxheart
SCGO Tomato Peasant Russian
SCGO Tomato Pink Bumble Bee
SCGO Tomato Polish Giant Paste
SCGO Tomato Purple Yellow Bumblebee
SCGO Tomato Red Deborah Barr-Mom
SCGO Tomato Russian Saskatchewan
SCGO Tomato Sams Small Paste
SCGO Tomato Scarlet Beefsteak
SCGO Tomato Schellenburgs Favourite
SCGO Tomato Scotia
SCGO Tomato Sunrise Bumblebee
SCGO Tomato Tigerella
SCGO Tomato Yellow Brandywine
Because we are in this for seed-saving, record keeping is critical. After the plants are in, the signs are up, the notes are taken, transcribed and backed up, the maps are drawn, we also take a video camera and walk the gardens, reading out loud the row numbers, the plant names and other information.
This has saved our **ses more than a few times as one set of records gets lost, destroyed, or just fades away…
Moving forward every few weeks, we will support them trunks with velcro ties against the 2×2 stake.
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Time, spring, summer
Jun04
on June 4, 2019
at 09:47
and modified on June 4, 2019. at 09:48
Posted In: life the universe and everything
Time has been slipping away of late. Spring was late, summer will be late and there are still so many things to do.
There is still a pile (smaller) of earth in the driveway, waiting to go into beds. There is still a lot of grass in the flower beds, waiting to come out. There is still a lot of planetary imaging to be done, especially as there has not been any in two years really.
So.. the next few days will be a trifle busy…
The strawberries have been covered to protect them from the ravages of the evil chipmunks… we hope to transplant all of the heirloom veg into the ground over the next 5 days. That will then free up time to move the rest of the dirt and pull the rest of the grass. Which then leads to cutting the lawn.. again.
Which then… finally! leads to mounting an old in storage 15cm newtonian optical tube on a bracket to attached to another optical tube on a mount. If the ZWO ASI 290MC camera then can come to focus.. presto! we may be doing some imaging again… before Jupiter gets too far around the sky.
This image of Jupiter was two years ago to this day. We now have a better camera and will be using a slightly smaller telescope… will see what happens!
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WHERE: Conservation Park, (south side Napanee River) Napanee Ontario
WHEN: Saturday 2019 June 01 from 09:00am-2:00pm
Lennox & Addington Horticultural Society is once again holding its annual fundraising plant sale, June 1st from 9.00 am 2.00 pm, in Conservation Park in Greater Napanee, in conjunction with the Greater Napanee Hometown Market opening day. We will have a variety of perennial plants for sun and shade, vegetables, herbs, all grown by our members. This years feature plant is “Asclepias Tuberosa” orange butterfly weed-great for butterflies. We will also have gardening books for sale. Along with knowledgeable people to answer your gardening questions. Please come out and support this not for profit organization. New members are always welcome.
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Fedora 30 Linux is out
May02
https://www.zdnet.com/article/fedora-30-linux-rolls-out/
It’s here! And not delayed as much as previous releases.
Ran over the procedure to upgrade from fedora 29 linux to 30 on the command line as most of the machines in use are servers without a graphical interface.
start at 11:41
1. sudo dnf upgrade –refresh
2. sudo dnf install dnf-plugin-system-upgrade
at 11:42
3. sudo dnf system-upgrade download –releasever=30
Transaction Summary
================================================================================
Install 47 Packages
Upgrade 790 Packages
Remove 3 Packages
Downgrade 18 Packages
Total download size: 515 MB
done at 11:45
4. sudo dnf system-upgrade reboot
completed by 11:59 or 18 minutes total
Wow.. 18 minutes total upgrade time… and it worked!…. and there were no issues (at least none discovered yet) !
That went so well that I did the 2nd least critical server as well. That one took a little longer .. but within 30 minutes it too was completed, restarted and in operational condition.
The initial kernel is: Linux version 5.0.9-301.fc30.x86_64
Today we look at the next least critical server and see how it goes.
***30 minutes later***
And another server has completed.. in only 30 minutes. There were a couple of glitches on this one, some non-standard packages had to be removed. After that the upgrade went fast and smooth. Now we’ll try reinstalling the removed packages and see how that goes!
** a few days later**
so far so good. Nothing bad at all. Nothing broken, no noticeable slowdowns, problems or anything else for that matter.
Completed the first graphical workstation upgrade and it too is working fine.
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Spring has sprung
Apr26
You know spring has sprung when you plant peas and clean out eavestroughs… well at least the planting peas part.
Seeds from 2013, 2015 and 2017? or 2018? were planted into our Vegbed #4 alongside a shed that will shade them in the afternoon and evening.
The ground is still cold, and in places still frozen only 6″ down. Even the garlic raised beds seem to be frozen 6-10″ down.
The eavestroughs had to be cleaned out as we are supposed to be getting 25-50mm of rain today and into Saturday morning. They were pretty packed solid of detritus. The Davis Vantage Vue weather station is down again and for the foreseeable future, as yet another brand new lithium 3vdc battery went dead, within just a few days. We are now looking to connect and external power supply to it and see if it is working at all anymore.
Getting a replacement Davis Vantage Vue is out of the question, mainly because of the outrageous prices.
as seen on amazon.ca
Davis Instruments 6250 Vantage Vue Wireless Weather Station with LCD Console by Davis Instruments
Price: CDN$ 529.20 FREE SHIPPING.
Well at least there is free shipping!
But wait.. there’s more! This model does not connect to a PC for data logging purposes. For that you need
Davis Instruments WeatherLinkIP Data Logger and Software for Vantage Weather Stations by Davis Instruments
Price: CDN$ 329.58 & FREE Shipping. Details
Well at least there is free shipping!
This is unbelievable in this day and age of microelectronics and USB everywhere.
There are alternatives out there and if the external power supply repair does not work out, those alternatives will be closely looked at.
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Another Imac Transplant
Apr26
Just completed a second Spinning hard drive (Seagate 500GB 7200rpm) to Solid State Drive transplant in an older Imac. This time it was a 21.5″ mid2011 Imac, and it was different from the 21.5″ late2015 model I did first.
All in all it took about 35 minutes and the next one will go faster.
The machine was powered down, unplugged and left to cool for a time. The screen cover was attached by magnets this time, not double sided adhesive… so it came off quite quickly. The screen itself had nine Torx10 screws holding it in. I had only a Torx9 bit but it worked well. The supermagnets that held the screen cover on did attract both bit and screw a lot.
The display came out of the case enough to start disconnecting four ribbon cables, only one of which had a latch mechanism. The Drive itself came out with only two torx8 screws, the sata power and data cables removed.
The 240GB SSD went in, connected to the cables and just left in the cavity unsecured and with no special temperature sensor for fan control that many articlse write about.
The four ribbon cables went back in without issue, the display reinserted and screwed in and the screen cover clipped on without issue.
Power up ran normally if maybe just a little faster.
Previously the 240GB SSD drive was in an external USB3 case (upto 5Gbps), now it is connected internally to a SATA3 connection (upto 6Gbps)… so if anything, it might be just a little bit faster.
powerup sound to logo 20seconds
powerup sound to login 30 seconds.
Not bad at all.
This should give the Imac a longer life, especially since it will now run cooler without the spinning drive inside, and use less power.
Now we can start looking at another half dozen machines in the near future.
* updated 2019 May 02 * completed two more mid-2011 21.5″ Imacs with the magnets without any issues, both in under 30 minutes each.
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cloudy april
Apr25
So far this April, we have managed only 9 days out of 25 to do some type of astronomy related activities.
This image is of the moon and Jupiter two mornings ago and helps to illustrate why… CLOUD!
In general we have windows of opportunity of about 1 hour in the morning, maybe a 1/2 hour after work and then maybe 2 hours in the evening. Funny how the cloud seems to follow a lot of that same pattern!
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windows 10 bah!
Apr19
I installed this 120GB SSD in place of the older larger spinning harddrive in my primary laptop workstation some time ago. 120GB is a little tight for space so I uninstalled all of the Crapware that Microsoft brings along with windows 10.
Today I was particularly low on space and decided to dig a little deeper… and found several more GB of files that were supposed to have been gone. Namely the Candy Crush Saga game located in c:\program files\windowsapps\
wow. Hard to get to.. had to take onwership of the files, change permissions and propogate those down. but it is paying off.. 5GB of files gone so far.
Amazing how much space those programs have, and even more so.. that they were not deleted when told to do so.
Zune. Xbox, solitare, and many many more. Looks like about 7GB in all.
Now using the disk cleanup tool in win10.. another 10GB in the update cleanup!
Now we are talking about serious disk space recovery!
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Another big wind storm went through over the weekend… and this fairly new Lee Valley hoop house had it grommet tore out of the structure, picked up and tossed against the fence.
We managed to put it back together and recover up the lettuces, radishes, etc, hopefully without any harm.
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supersid operational
Apr14
SuperSID receiver
supersid receiver, basically just an RF preamp
Our supersid system has been operating at the edge of the property for 3 years now, mainly to get as faraway from any house generated RFI as we can. Too bad the wifi was intermittent, even with a relay. The netbook itself also suffered from some issues, like locking up or rebooting and not finding its boot drive.
So we made the decision to bring in the netbook, move the antenna over closer to some other computers with wired connections. The antenna was mounted on a 4×4 post in concrete and after a lot of digging then dragging, the antenna and mount were in their new location.
Attempts to get the supersid receiver working on a windows 10 laptop totally failed. All it required was a 5vdc power supply which it got through a usb jack, and the audio output from the receiver into the laptop. We tried various usb sound adapters, the original multiport audio jack and everything else we could think of. All of it came up with was no audio input.. ever.
So this afternoon, the old netbook came back into service, this time on a wired network, and all is working well. If the netbook itself behaves, we should have the first results sometime after 20:00 EDT tomorrow.
The long term plan remains to replace the data logging netbook with a raspberry pi and some python code. Less power, more reliable…
new location of loop antenna for supersid, aimed east
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