These sweet peas turned out to be real stubborn. Despite having been inside a damp paper towel for the better part of a week, some a fair number of seeds failed to swell up. Particularly from the Fire and Ice variety. Positively impossible to make them budge. Had to chip the seeds with a nail clipper for them to complete the transition. And even so, I will be very lucky if I can break 50% germination. And I only have twelve seeds … Cupani on the other hand is already up to 75%. For the record, just soaking the Cupani seeds in water overnight (and watching them all swell before planting) yielded no better than 40% germination.
Borage germinated at 100% without any special measures. Thank god for weeds eh. Nemesia seedlings are actually becoming quite large and have all been transplanted once now. Quite frankly, they show a tremendous increase in the number of leaves. Could get sticky if
Planted a few Zucchini seeds the other day after subjecting them to the paper towel treatment. Worked like a charm. Basically, I’ve gone through the almost entire list of seeds by now. All that is left is sowing Dill in situ. And starting the suger snaps and climbing beans. Next week perhaps.
Still no luck with the sweet peas. Had to employ the old wet paper towel and bag trick. We’ll see how it goes.
Also, despite lots of light, some seedlings from the Umbelliferae family have developed annoyingly long root collars. Fennel for instance. Perhaps it is foolish to pre-cultivate these things but I will nevertheless transplant and bury most of the collar. Should have grown them in bigger, and deeper cells at any rate. Fennel in particular doesn’t transplant well because of its tap root. But I have a couple of different fennel experiments going now so we’ll see how it turns out.
Filed under Garden by admin1 month, 2 weeks ago | 27 views
Nearly everything is going according to plan. The only unknown variable is the timing of course. But spring is bound to come eventually.
The only slight hiccup would be the sweet pea seeds I did a test run with. Five seeds soaked in water, planted, and only two germinated (so far). Didn’t know what to expect but clearly at the rate they’re growing I started too early. And I need more ideas on how to properly wake the seeds from their dormant state. I wonder if simply cutting the seeds in addition to soaking will be enough. Temperature recommendations were followed to the letter. Had no issues with the equally sturdy coriander seeds. Irregardless of whether I crushed the outer container or not (I tried both) they all germinated on time. First world problem if I ever saw one though.
Also, I ran out of planting containers so I ordered some more online. Just some cheap, thin substitutes until I can find the plug trays (like QuickPot) that I want. These trays are the smartest thing ever. I mean, why bother transplanting plants to new pots when you can get things right from the beginning.
Filed under Garden by admin1 month, 3 weeks ago | 42 views
So far so good. The first seeds germinated in only 7 days. Was able to keep the temperature around 17 degrees Celsius, well within the specified tolerance. Planted the microscopic seeds one at time in the “pluggbox” I got last year at a sale. I’ve been a bit skeptical when it comes to these boxes and root trainers and whatnot but I’m going to give it another shot. If nothing else it saves a lot of space and postpones the repotting a bit, not to mention that it shouldn’t disturb the roots as much. If you can get the plants out of the box that is. Didn’t really work last year. This year I compacted the soil at the very bottom of the “plugs” and I’m hoping for better root development thanks to the artificial lighting.
So far I’ve kept the seedlings a good distance from the fluorescent tubes but I plan to move them closer in the next day or so. Even though the tubes aren’t that hot, they will most likely ruin any chances of germinating the few Nemesia seeds that remain. Another 10 cm closer to the tubes increases the air temperature by 2 degrees or so and brings it up to around 22. So far I’ve had a germination rate of perhaps 75%. Another thing that bothers me is that I don’t have heating mats and at the same time increase the air temperature, possibly hampering root development. The fluorescent fixture I’m using isn’t very well ventilated (a DIY project perhaps) and keeps a lot of heat trapped under the hood. An even better solution would be to have fans move the air around, while also promoting stronger plants. It should ideally be some sort of oscillating fan though, which I do no have and probably wont be willing to buy or supply the extra power to run. All I have to work with are a bunch of 120mm computer fans and a 230V to 12V molex power adapter. Sometimes it feels like I just overcomplicate things though.
Filed under Garden by admin1 month, 4 weeks ago | 59 views
So it turns out you can purchase seeds on Ebay a lot cheaper than in Sweden. And get access to a much wider variety as well. I wish I had discovered this years ago. I’m never buying another overpriced bag of seeds at the local garden center that’s for sure.
Here is what I’ve picked up so far:
Sweet Pea: “Cupani” and “Fire and Ice”.
Coriander “Topf”
Dill: “Bouquet” and “Dukat”
Zucchini “Black Beauty”
Pea “Sugar Snap”
Fennel “Zefa Fino”
Borage
Nemesia: “K.L.M.” and “Danish Flag”
French Bean “Blue Lake”
At a pound per bag I’m calling this a steal. We’ll see how the actual seeds work out though. Never grown fennel for instance. I hear it’s a menace that wont work with pretty much any other plants (allelopathy) on top of the fact that it cross pollinates with any and all members of the same family (like dill obviously). I also need to get together some real sturdy bean “wigwams” for the french beans, sugar snaps and sweet peas. This is also the first year that I am trying anything but the old fashioned (crown) dill variety and I hope it will be an improvement. Hopefully I can grow “Bouquet” in smaller containers with fresh soil, pots even, just as a precaution to avoid the problems that usually befall dill. People like to talk about how easy it is to grown dill, but in my experience it is one of the most difficult herbs to grow successfully.
I’m a bit unsure about the Nemesia seeds as I have never germinated this plant myself. I did however buy plants two years ago and they did turn out to be some of the most resilient and impressive flowers I’ve ever come across. No downsides whatsoever, just keep adding fertilizer and these remarkable plants will literally keep going until the first frost.
Originally I had also wanted some Nasturtium “Crimson Emperor” but they proved a little trickier to find, at least from the two sellers I had picked out. Perhaps I look into this later. Nasturtium can hardly be described as a difficult plant that needs to be pre-cultivated anyway.
Filed under Garden by admin2 months, 3 weeks ago | 86 views
(Really can’t be bothered to update this blog regularly anymore. God knows I tried)
Seeing as I still have free train rides for a little while longer, I went to IKEA and finished off an old project (I hope). Using two Tertial desk lamps I will finally be able to not only see what I am doing around the workshop but also set up a sort of rudimentary light tent solution for product photography. We’ll see how it goes. The Tertial lamp is incredibly cheap (and flimsy with a sort of limited flexibility) but it is all I am willing to spend on this. I might have to get a third lamp in the future to balance things out a bit but for now I’ll see if I can find a light source that is powerful enough and yet will stay suspended.
Also got some more boxes and storage fixes.
Filed under Interior Design by admin3 months ago | 103 views
So I have been in the Planetside 2 beta for some time now. And I hate every minute of it. With just two weeks to go before the official release I can safely say that this has been the biggest gaming disappointment for me in quite some time. You’d be a fool to invest any money in this game before you’ve had time to fully come to terms with its inner workings. And just for the record, I did play the Planetside 1 beta back in the day as well. Not that I remember a damn thing about it.
Now, where to start with the griping? Lets just the many problems of the game fall into two categories – more or less intentional design decisions (or omissions) on the one hand and bugs on the other. Bugs in this context being deep-rooted, broad and confusingly similar to design decisions.
In terms of design decisions we have a gameplay mechanic that seems more “Battlefield 2/3” than “Unreal Tournament/Tribes Ascend/Other fun games”. Not much to say here other than that I’d rather stab myself in the eye with a dull pencil than play Battlefield (I admit I did get some satisfaction out of Battlefield 1942 back in the day but that is about it).
And what about pay to win? Money will make your “leveling” faster and give you easy access to weapons without grinding from what I can tell. The whole cert mechanic seems to be a state of flux more than anything in the beta. So I don’t know where it’ll end up. But I will say this: Acquiring certs takes an awful long time. And so far they can not be un-learned and redistributed. All in all it could have been worse, but for people like me who can’t stomach grinding through this game in the first place it becomes a problem.
Performance is beyond ludicrous. Initial loading time is long considering the textures are terribly low res and the game looks pretty much awful. Especially on low settings where I am forces to reside in order to make the game reasonably fluid at all times.
Furthermore, the net code is a complete joke. Jumpy and laggy. The way it looks when people move around is terribly unsynchronized and wonky. Physics seem to have been set up by a fifth grader. Do you like figure skating? Good, because that is just about how the Flash ATV handles. Tanks seem to have rubber band suspension. Firing while driving? No, better stop for lunch while the gun levels off. And don’t try to ram an ATV or get rammed by one or else you’ll flip over and explode. Oh, and jumping off a crate damn near kills you. Future tech indeed. No fun allowed.
I wont even elaborate on the campy startup screen, the useless character creation process, the lack of proper instructions, a demo mode for certs before unlocking or the UI. Everything about it screams alpha rather than release candidate. Either that or a real low budget bargain bin title.
Filed under Games by admin6 months, 3 weeks ago | 459 views
Good things come to those who wait I suppose. I’ve had the Zalman GPU cooler in my personal list over at Prisjakt for years, waiting for the price to drop. And now it finally did (€6 + shipping). While it has its share of drawbacks, it it still one of the best aftermarket solutions for the 5850 cards. And I’m not ready to part with that card quite yet. In fact it has stood up relatively well, and a new cooler and quieter solution will enable me to move the card to other computers in the future. Maybe not the HTPC setup, but Workstation 2 probably wouldn’t mind a beefier card that is also able to do hardware video acceleration and run Sketchup a little better.
I’ve certainly been looking a lot at the Nvidia Kepler line-up lately and I do like what I see. Sure wouldn’t mind a 650 Ti for the HTPC and a 660 Ti or 670 for the main setup. The 650 is pretty much on par with the 5850 if I understand things correctly, and a 670 is on average almost twice as fast. But the main thing is the power consumption on these cards. Idle as well as multi-monitor and video acceleration figures are simply amazing. On my 5850 I have about 20W idle consumption and about 42W with more than one monitor attached. Not that I currently have multiple monitors but it is an upgrade I’ve been wanting to do for some time. As soon as I can find an acceptable LCD model that isn’t rife with banding, bleeding and ghosting and whatnot. There is obviously a reason I’m still clinging to an old CRT monitor.
Thought I’d take another crack at this blog. Had some downtime due to apathy and Windows Live Writer acting up. Well, at least with WLW the problem could be fixed.
I will probably add missing posts retroactively. Also thinking about scrapping the other blog and just keeping this one.
Filed under Site by admin6 months, 3 weeks ago | 409 views
All in all I have to say the snow blower overhaul went better than expected. Better in the sense that it now starts and runs properly and doesn’t leak fuel on either end of the fuel line (carb or the fuel valve). I have had some fun times this winter clearing snow that’s for sure.
The carburetor turned out to be tricky. Perhaps I should have left it alone to begin with and just played with the adjustment screws. In retrospect I don’t have a clue. I just know that the needle had to be replaced to keep the carb from overflowing. Don’t recall that problem before I started. Also, producing a good seal proved more than a challenge. The upper half of the carb had been bent out of shape ever so slightly (a common problem I understand and one reason never to dismantle an older flojet carb unless you have to). I hear there are carb sealant you could use, but I just used double gaskets (the new and the old broken one!) and it seems to work.
A few things still bug me though. (1) The engine does vibrate a lot, to the point where things start falling off the machine. Not sure about this. Perhaps the engine isn’t bolted down properly. Also, some sort of idling guard / mechanism for the auger belt broke off. Can’t fix that as it would require welding, but is seems alright as long as you always keep the auger belt engaged when starting the engine. (2) The noise level is pretty unbearable but I don’t think I’m willing to pay for a new muffler. (3) The fuel consumption is also higher than I had anticipated. I guess I was naïve regarding an older 8hp engine. The point here is that you can’t be dawdling and need to attack the snow with determination. You need to choose your battles and may need to give up if you face too much snow mixed with road salt or accept that you might need a refill. Generally I never fill up the tank more than a third at a time.
But what I really need to focus on now is grease and oil. Specifically getting a grease gun so I can apply the stuff to the right places.
For the next season I’ll also try to smooth out and paint the chute. It can go a long way towards improving the throwing distance and prevent clogging (not really an issue in this type of wider chute). I saw someone recommended ski wax inside the chute as well as on the auger and impeller so perhaps I’ll look into that. Or the lithium grease I’ve been hearing so much about.
Filed under Garden by admin7 months, 3 weeks ago | 68 views
This journal covers the personal side of things. That is my normal daily life and stuff. At least what little there is left that hasn't been completely politicized. And what little I am comfortable sharing. Hence so far it has been rather shallow and tedious.
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