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Not Quite Normal

Vegetable garden June 22

Out first attempt at growing vegetables in our garden is starting to show signs of fruition (vegition?). After starting by digging over a big garden border over in January and planting seedlings as early as February in a heated propagator we've gradually moved things outside and into the ground.

We've planted lots of things, battled slugs, put up two mini greenhouses, and erected structures to support beans.

Here are the best bits of where we are today:


Potatoes

Beetroot

Carrots

Broad Beans

Runner Beans

Tomatoes

Strawberries

Peppers

We've also got salad onions which are doing well and celery which isn't doing so well, as well as many pots of herbs.

We dug up the first second early potatoes last night - they were tasty. Still to come are courgettes, radishes, chilis and hopefully watermelons. :)

CATaLOG enclosure complete June 18

Finally finished machining the enclosure for CATaLOG. Here it is:

catalog-exterior  catalog-interior

The Arduino is mounted onto the stripboard with a simple velcro pad (hence it being at a slight angle) so it can be removed for working on / debugging or moved slightly when inserting the ethernet cable etc. 

The posts to support the lcd were made with the help of my Dad and his lathe.  I'll document the process over on the project pages when I get the chance.

Home brewing June 8

I've been busy lately making the equipment needed to start All Grain Brewing. 

    

On the left is the boiler (or kettle) which will be used to heat the 'liquor' for mashing and sparging as well as boiling the wort, in the middle is the mash tun and on the right is the wort chiller, used to cool the wort down after boiling so the yeast can be pitched.

I've created a new project page and have written up how I went about constructing each bit of equipment. I'll also be putting brewday reports on there in the near future :)

Adding an external antenna to CATaLOG May 11

I made a new antenna this weekend for the RFID reader used in CATaLOG.  The old coil is on the left, and the new one on right.

new antenna

The system is more reliable now but could still be improved.  I've documented how I added the external antenna and made the new coil over on the project pages.

HTC Magic Android phone May 5

My HTC Magic phone arrived the other day, running Android 1.5.

myhtcmagic_320

I'm currently waiting for my number to be ported from my old network before I can actually use it as a phone (no reviews I've read actually review how it performs as one).  In the meantime I've been playing around with the other stuff it does.  The current likes and dislikes:

Likes

  • The screen is very nice - easily readable on 20% brightness, touch responsiveness is good. Probably not quite a smooth as the glassy iphone / ipod touch surface.
  • The size - smaller than an ipod touch. A lot thinner / smaller than the G1 from what I've seen.
  • On screen keyboard rotates with the screen - makes typing a bit easier.
  • Battery life - seems adequate for a device with this much crammed in. Turning off wifi overnight means the battery drops by only a couple of %.
  • Wifi connectivity - Stays connected and reconnects fine to my WEP network (needed for the CATaLOG bridge) - something my girlfriend's ipod touch seems unable to manage.

Dislikes

  • Being unable to send files over Bluetooth. Seriously. WTF.
  • The built in browser is a bit clunky - fit webpage to screen is badly implemented.  Opera Mini doesn't seem to know about the onscreen keyboard in Android 1.5 yet and so is unusable.
  • No multi-touch due to Apple patents.
  • The mechanical rollerball a) feels like a deodorant bottle b) is not really needed and c) is just waiting to fill up with pocket fluff, etc.

Also managed to install ScummVM and now have The Curse of Monkey Island on my phone...

curseofmonkeyisland_320


The IMAP email client seems to have improved since the G1 firmware but I still get connection errors every few minutes. I'll be interested to see what calling people and messaging them via SMS is like once the number gets ported.

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