Kengara

Pollyanna

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 03:03:04 GMT

Well, I finished Pollyanna today. Man, that was a good book. Better than I expected. It was almost too sweet at points, though not quite. The rest of the time, it alternated between really funny and really touching... I guess about what I would expect when a bunch of grumpy adults meet with a mature, innocent child, the kind that I call an angel-child. But for once, the angel-child doesn't die :O And there's a sequel in which she purportedly grows up! So I'm listening to that next.

Anyway, I recommend it. The only problem is that the narrator, who is generally good, is not good at acting grumpy/cross.

Two Items on the Agenda

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 02:35:34 GMT

I guess I've learned one thing from being in a community garden plot: if a pest or disease exists for a given plant, it will show up in your garden. It's mostly true, anyway. On the other hand, good bugs like bees and ladybugs are quite present too! And probably good fungi, though they're not as visible, usually.

For the past few days, we've been finding just about no late blight on our tomatoes, so I reluctantly conclude that we're safe. Safe :D On the other hand, the bad bugs seem to be increasing. Examples:

-One of our spaghetti squash plants got vine borer larvae in it. They dig into the stem and hollow it out, killing the whole plant sometimes. It's especially bad since we built a trellis for our vines, so if they lose that one stem they have no other roots. Fortunately I think we caught it in time; I removed the larvae, packed dirt around the hole so it can make new roots, and the plant seems to be doing just fine.

-I had been noticing that our kale leaves were getting lots of little holes all over it, but I didn't think I could identify a cause, so I didn't investigate. However, when we were harvesting it today, Roz noticed a bunch of little green caterpillars on the underside :/ Culprit identified! It is diamondback moth larvae. They're supposed to be the most destructive of the mustard pests, but they haven't really done much damage to our plants, so it's good.

Overall feeling: Positive!

Secondly, ...oh yeah. When Roz and I go on trips to visit family, we've begun to like listening to audiobooks while driving. However, since our audiobooks are in digital format and I don't want to use up lots of CDs burning them to disk, and our car doesn't have an aux jack, we can't easily put them on the car speakers. We did have a workaround by getting a car-outlet-to-building-type-outlet adapter thing (like this), into which we could plug some computer speakers, but it still wasn't loud enough sometimes and it's kinda inconvenient.

So I was like, "I know!" And I went to dealextreme.com and ordered another headphone extension cable and an audio cable splitter, so we can just each plug our headphones into the mp3 player with plenty of cable length for both of us. Bam! Problem solved. And it's only like $3 :O I like dealextreme.com.

Overall feeling: Positive! Of course.

Victory!

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 21:30:13 GMT

The pickled watermelon turned out to be a success! After I finished, I wasn't sure what to think of it... it wasn't what I expected. It reminded me of dried pineapple; more like candy than pickles. So I wasn't sure I had done it right. But then I gave some to some of Roz's Hebrew students, and one of them had had it before, and she said it was good! So I was happy. Roz liked it too. I don't plan to make much more of it, at least not until we run out of this. Maybe if we ever grow our own watermelons. Anyway, it's cool.

From the Archives

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 02:59:37 GMT

I didn't realize how much fun chat bots could be.

Virga

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 03:52:27 GMT

Well, I finished Sun of Suns, and I counted that it's my 29th book for the year. It was a pretty good book. I might want to read the sequel sometime.

I wasn't sure about it at first, but it grew on me pretty well. For one thing, the universe is interesting. The story takes place in Virga, which is a giant man-made balloon floating in space. People live in the air-filled interior, which is lit and heated by small artificial suns. Since there's not much mass, there's hardly any gravity, so people either make their own by having spinning circular towns, or do without.

Their ships are made of wood partly, they use gas lamps for light, they fight with guns and swords, but they live in a man-made planet. It's a strange contrast. It seems that outside Virga, there is extremely advanced technology though. I won't say too much about that.

I would say there aren't really any characters I don't like, unless they're intended to be unlikeable, and then they're still interesting. They develop and the story is good. It's very non-linear and unpredictable: you think it will go one direction, but then it suddenly doesn't, which I'd say is good.

As for cleanness, there is swearing and romance, but the former is rare enough that it's jarring when it happens (about three times, I think), and the latter doesn't go into much detail, so it's good. Hm, I haven't had to think about that with audiobooks much :O

The narrator is pretty good too. All in all, I would recommend the book.

So I guess after I'm caught up with science podcasts, I'll listen to Pollyanna.

Stuff

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 04:59:31 GMT

I sorta feel like we got a lot done today. A lot other than garden stuff, cos for once the garden work didn't take up the whole day (though it probably could have). We've lost three tomato plants so far, but I think we might not lose more than a couple more, because the number of infected spots we're finding is decreasing daily, almost. We found maybe... four? today total, when at first there were maybe four per plant. So it's good. Roz isn't as optimistic though, but the lack of rain really helps. Our plants look really good, even though we've been chopping off leaves and branches indiscriminately sorta, especially compared to the plants in some of the plots around us, which have brown leaves and big brown spots on their branches and stuff :/

So other than gardening, we... went shopping, and even got Roz some new shoes and t-shirts. For food we decided to get a watermelon, because they're awesome, and then we got a couple heirloom tomatoes to see if we could get seeds from them and use them to grow some weird tomatoes of our own.

Two different kinds: one looked very much like a bell pepper, outside and inside: when cut open, there was a wall of flesh on the outside and clumps of seeds all bunched in the middle. The wall wasn't very tasty, but the seeds were quite flavorful. Apparently it is a kind that is designed for stuffing. Stuffed tomatoes! Cool!
The other was kinda crinkly and pink, and was really tasty.

In the bread section of the store, we found some strange contraption that turned out to be a rice cake-making robot thing. It put in whatever it is that rice cakes are made out of, incubated for a short time, and then *POP* out flew a rice cake XD I couldn't help snickering every time that happened. We bought a package of the cakes, and they were tastier than the normal kind.

After we got home, we started doing stuff: we cut up half the watermelon, half of that for eating and the other half I sentenced to dehydration! Dehydrating watermelon is such an interesting idea. I would recommend that one NOT do it in the oven on a summer day with no AC though. Fortunately it wasn't that hot outside. It does take a while on low heat though, and it's hard to get it to the proper dryness; I burned some of the slices, and I think the rest weren't dry enough. A dehydrator would probably be easier. But it's so tasty! Like candy!

The other quarter melon we just ate straight, and then I took the rinds for pickling :D Sounds intriguing! I have a recipe but I am not sure about all the details. I guess I will experiment.

Other than that, we made a tasty dinner of udon with broccoli and ginger peanut sauce. Mmm. We also made a couple of stir-fries: one with some tiny broccoli leaves and a bunch of swiss chard leaves, and the other with swiss chard stems, snow peas, green beans, and some red bell pepper. Most of it was from our garden :O Man our chard is good.

Um. Yeah. I sense that this post is not as articulate as it could be, but whatever. I'm going to bed, anyway. Here is a picture of flowering milkweed. I can't wait for it to fruit so I can eat the stuff inside! Bwahahaha! Meanwhile, it's pretty.

Photography Feature, July 11th

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 20:16:48 GMT

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Feline Profile

Test your science knowledge!

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:11:17 GMT

See how you compare to the average American! Just for fun. It's short, too. And no math.

Productive Produce

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 03:22:18 GMT

Man, basil just went from third to first in most productive stuff from our garden. Productive in a financial sense, that is. For pure volume, swiss chard is definitely winning. Chard is second to basil money-wise though, since it's so cheap at the store, and snow peas are third.

We've made decent "money" so far from the garden, though a lot less than we've spent on it so far :/ But there's still a lot to come. Hopefully a lot of tomatoes, if we can keep them from dying of late blight, the fungus that caused the Irish Potato Famine :/ It's all over plants in the plots all around us. But I think we're doing well controlling it. Ah yeah!

If they don't survive, we might do broccoli. I didn't realize what it was like! But a bunch of people around us are growing it, and seems like they're letting it go to flower a lot XD One person has a plant that's all exploded in yellow blossoms XD But apparently the leaves are edible, so it's not just good for a single veggie. Also apparently they make flowers more than once.

Did you realize that broccoli is probably the only vegetable in most grocery stores that's a flower? :O Though of course there are lots of edible flowers in nature. Milkweed has good flower buds.

Interesting Question

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 03:18:05 GMT

Hey, I recently thought of an interesting possibility for science fiction, or perhaps even nonfiction:

In a civilization that has technology for space travel and wormholes/teleportation portals, what would happen if someone pointed one end of a portal toward the Earth's surface and the other end somewhere on a spaceship? Would people on the ship get the effects of Earth's gravity when in front of the portal?

Seems like it could be one way to generate gravity on a ship. Just put a layer of portals on the bottom of a ship, pointing up, and put the other end in one place on Earth :D

Photography Feature, July 9th

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 03:13:20 GMT

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Twisted Dreams

Photography Feature, July 8th

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 21:10:29 GMT

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Soaring Light

Oh and, happy birthday sontres!

Green and Growing

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:38:28 GMT

It's been raining like crazy! Sun and heavy thunderstorms alternating. Pretty annoying; I wish things would dry out so I don't have to wade through a stream to get to the plot :/ Anyway, stuff.

Half of our squash! The bushy dark green in the middle is the mini-butternut, and the yellowy ones on the right are full-size. Then there are spaghetti on the other side. They might not be doing too well, but they're making flowers and tendrils and grabbing themselves. Silly things. Haven't seen any squash bugs recently, at least. Still plenty of cucumber beetles though.

The left row our peppers! They're looking well producing flowers.

Chard! Less bushy than it used to be, because of it. Got like 3 pounds :o Let me show you with some crappy cell phone pictures: Before and After.

Right is the kale. We harvested that a lot too, but not as much. Made soup out of it. Left is some peppers we started from seed. I wonder what colors they are!

Some basil! It's bushy cos I harvested from the top. Got a decent amount.

The dill bed! It's doing well, but I think it's shaded by weeds so not as good as it could do.

One of the three dill plants that we didn't plant. It's actually the biggest dill plant in the plot XD

Parsnip bed! They're actually the biggest plants in the bed now, since we kept weeding it XD

Under the trellis we planted spinach and lettuce. It's looking good and tasty.

Tomatoes! This is about half of our plants. We have lots of tomatoes. Hopefully they won't all die from late blight :/ They're looking really good right now though. I think some actually have tiny tomatoes now.

And here's the tomatillo corner. There's definitely a lot of fruit growing on these :O And potato beetles like them. They make funny squeaking noises when I pick them off XD

Those tomato cages mark our cucumber plants. They're doing pretty well now that the cucumber beetles are leaving them alone. Behind them is the snowpea jungle and the pole beans, to the right. We're getting to harvest snowpeas now; it's nice :D

I harvested some thyme from the potted plant we have at home, and am trying to dry it by taping it to the dehumidifier vent XD

I guess it's drying, but I don't know how to tell when it's done... It looks less green than the fresh stuff... It'd be faster if I could run the machine all the time, but then the apartment would be way too hot.

So that's it, for now.

Internet Wisdom

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:32:34 GMT

This isn't related to anything in particular; it's just something I've learned from my time here on the internets that I wanted to share.

Whenever you put words onto the internet, you should make sure that you wouldn't mind if everyone in the world read them, especially the person you're talking badly of. There are ways to keep people from reading what you write, but in general this is a good practice.

It probably applies offline too.

Audiobooks Now!

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:49:24 GMT

Well, I finished Plague Ship, and then the sequel, Voodoo Planet. That one was kinda weird: short, involving sorta magic and stuff, but not bad. I guess it could be said to be more scientifically accurate, except there was this weird stuff that might cause racial tension these days, or something. "Racial memory"? /:I (<-that's a unibrow guy raising one eyebrow, I guess.)

After that, A Letter Concerning Toleration by John Locke. Oh this was good stuff. Almost everything made such crystal clear sense. I love listening to stuff like that. It was all about how churches and civil governments have no right to impose or forbid religious practices as long as they don't affect people's civil rights and stuff. Good writing.

Next I plan to listen to some sci-fi novel I got for free from Audible.com somehow: Sun of Suns: Book One of Virga, by Karl Schroeder, apparently. Cos it was free.

Photography Feature, June 26th

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 17:47:19 GMT

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Nature's Pattern

Something Cool

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 02:04:43 GMT

Generally I'm not that interested in prehistoric human history, but this caught my attention, especially the audio:

Archaeologists found a flute that seems to be 35,000 years old in a cave in Germany. Listen to this musician playing a reconstruction of it.

A fuller story is here.

Books again

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 20:39:51 GMT

I've finally finished my backlog of science podcasts, so I have been listening to Plague Ship by Andre Norton. It's good old-school sci-fi, entertaining, and with a good reader. The science and technology is a little sketchy, which isn't surprising since it was written in the 50s, but the story is good.

Some examples:
-Pretty much every alien can interact in meaningful ways with humans. So germs can infect them and such. And cat aliens like catnip. Implausible, but not impossible.

-I'm not sure exactly, but the spaceship's records seem to be stored on magnetic tape.

-There is a big crater on Earth caused by atomic explosives, and no one knows what the middle of it is like, even though they have spaceships that can travel to other solar systems. No Google Earth, I guess.

-They have space armor with metal claws for hands XD

But like I said, the story is good. It's just interesting to see what people though about the future 50 years ago.

Answer to the thing

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 20:32:37 GMT

1. This is true. It could mean that Americans are actually exercising more than they used to!

2. This is also true. At least in the conditions of the study, burning plant material to produce electricity to run electric vehicles was more efficient than converting the plants to ethanol. Which might make corn-based ethanol an even worse idea.

3. This one was false. The lead actually helps clouds form, reflecting back sunlight and cooling the ground.

Fact or Fiction: Another one!

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 04:15:44 GMT

1. The increase in the amount of food Americans eat now as compared to a while ago more than accounts for Americans' collective weight gain.

2. Burning plant material to produce electricity is a more efficient way to power vehicles than converting the plant material to liquid fuel such as ethanol.

3. The lead that used to be in gasoline is now in the atmosphere inhibiting cloud formation, contributing to global warming and such.

Which one is false!

Wow, gardens!

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 04:12:33 GMT

We got veggies!

Our one bush bean plant is producing like crazy: we've gotten six beans from it so far.

And our swiss chard and kale are giant, so we finally decided to take some leaves: got about five kale and a whole bunch of chard!

I think some of our peppers are getting flowers, and the tomatillos are like huge with so many flowers, and the tomatoes are getting huge too, with flowers. The snowpeas have flowers too! The squash is growing like crazy, and hopefully it won't get diseased.

The basil is growing great too, and we harvested some today to freeze for later. We also discovered that we have some dill plants that we didn't plant! XD One in the parsnip bed and one next to the basil row.

What else... oh, I picked a cluster of milkweed flower buds from a plant near the garden.

Then we cut all the stuff up and Roz stir-fried it and it all tasted great.

Photography Feature, June 22nd

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 01:58:20 GMT

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Amethyst Orbs

Science quiz: Answer

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 03:21:39 GMT

1. True. Crazy!

2. False. Actually what the study found was that amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, aggravated pre-diabetes the most! So maybe, in addition to too much sugar and fat, people are eating too much protein.

3. True. It's pretty clever.

Congratulations to all those who got it right, and thanks to all who participated :D

Growing Stuff

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 03:07:46 GMT

Yeah, Roz and I have been gardening recently. More than anything else outdoorsy, anyway. Our experiences and plants are varied, but almost all doing well. Our worst area of success is in herbs, for some reason: our chives and parsley both didn't come up. But the seeds were both pretty old and of mysterious origin, so it's not too surprising I guess, nor too disappointing. Hopefully the dill works though. No reason it shouldn't.

First, the greens:

Swiss chard, with the red-type stems cos they're really pretty, and

Kale! Dinosaur kale, specifically, which is like twice as awesome. These are only a few of our plants. They're really good looking, except that bugs keep chewing on them and stuff :/

The sole herb so far:

This is sorta an old picture. By now there is row cover over the space around the plants to keep light away from the weeds, and the basil has grown a lot. It smells and looks tasty! It's doing well because we started it indoors.

Oh yeah! There's also:

Thyme! There's our bush bean plant on the far left, which started out as a seedling a friend gave us and we nurtured it in a milk jug pot into a nice plant, and now it even has beans growing on it! Our first fruits! And then the three weird plants to the right of it are orange thyme, which we bought as plants from a place. Mmmm thyme. The fourth one we're keeping at home. This is the bed where the parsley and chives didn't grow :/

Other fruit-bearing plants:

Cucumber seedlings! This is one of four cucumber mounds, and two of the others have seedlings too. So exciting! I love cucumbers. Maybe we'll make lots of pickles.

Our bell pepper row! Those tall ones are red pepper plants we bought because some of the ones we started ourselves weren't too good.

Here are some of our best that we started. Their pepper color is unknown! It could be red, orange, yellow, purple, or white. Awesome! And those feet are keeping the weeds down. Temporarily.

One of four tomatillo plants! They're flowering already: almost 7 flowers now! And freaking potato beetles tried to chew on them >:I We had to buy these because our gardening partner tried starting some from seeds, but a slug or something ate all of them except one, and you can't just grow one tomatillo. Need at least two to pollinate each other.

Two of our tomato plants! I'm not sure what kinds they are: we have a least three different varieties of tomato in the ground right now (Early Girl, cherry, and roma tomatoes), and are considering another two kinds. We bought the early girls as plants, but I think the ones we started from seed look better! Sorta.

We're planting three kinds of squash too: spaghetti, butternut, and mini-butternut (our partner wanted that because she can't use the bigger butternut kind all at once I guess). So it wouldn't take over the garden, we built this awesome trellis out of branches for it.

Awesome trellis! Look close and you can see the mini squash in the middle of each row.

Closer view of the mini-squash. By now we have the other kinds coming up from the ground too! And under the trellis we have a row of spinach and some lettuce things. Efficiency!

Besides that bush bean plant, we also have Kentucky wonder beans and snow peas on another trellis.

Here it is, with the young snowpeas lining it. This was a couple weeks ago.

More recent picture of the snow peas, from last Sunday. But by today they've grown a lot more, even reaching that second level of string! They're trying to take over the KY bean area too :O Yay snowpeas!

And here are the beans. They're a lot younger than the snowpeas. But just as cool.

The final exhibit is the one that took the most work, probably:

Parsnips! They're so cute. I bet their taproots are already like 2 feet long heh. Mmmm parsnips. So many vegetables I like.

And finally, a panorama of the garden from this past Sunday, with some manner of beautiful woman standing in it:

I'm standing in the tomatillo corner so you can see almost everything but that. And all the pretty yellow flowery weeds in the untended plots! XD They're good for attracting bees though, at least. If you go over in the midst of them, you can just hear this ambient loud buzzing.

Roz and I determined that we're not doing this to save money on our food bill so much as to be able to eat delicious vegetables a whole lot more XD We can just eat a tomato, instead of having to use it for something! Though we probably will save a lot of money, especially on the greens and the peppers. And herbs. Things we buy despite their cost.

Science Fact or Not Quiz #3: Biology!

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 04:14:16 GMT

Same deal as before: three science news items, you guess the one that's not true, and I'll reveal the answer in a couple days.

1. Rooks, a type of bird related to crows, have been found to be able to use tools, such as bending a piece of wire into a hook which they use to pull food out of a hole.

2. A study to determine which components of food contribute the most to insulin resistance (aka pre-diabetes) found that fats and fatty acids contributed the most.

3. Scientists have developed a new way of tracking Empire penguin populations using satellite imagines to see where the birds have pooped.

Okay now guess :D