jimmygo.com

OK. 12 days since my last update and everything is progressing nicely. I started some radishes, lettuce, squash, and tomatoes around 12 March. Everything except the tomatoes have grown enough that I have put them in the system. See Pictures

The red stemmed plants here are radishes. Also growing is chives (look close) and salad bowl lettuce. The lettuce is acting a little wilty… maybe it is getting too much water?

This is the best of my three squashes. You can see the rockwool cube I started it in. It is really leaning toward the window, but I don’t think that will be too much of a problem.

This last picture shows the whole system. There are two squash plants on the window side and one one the other. The real leggy viney looking plants on the non-window side nearest the camera are (I presume) morning glory (which will get killed if/when it starts grabbing anything). You can also see the basil on the window side is doing really well.

I have been trying to think of a good reason to play with the newly released Google Maps API, but I couldn’t motivate myself to sit down and learn it without a project in mind. I actually have some “kind of good” projects that I COULD do, but nothing too neat.

Nothing too neat until my brother called a few days ago and asked if I could do something for him. He works for the Coast Guard on a buoy tender. They have a hundred (or so) channel markers (buoys) that they take care of. Right now they keep the data on them in an Excel “spreadsheet”, which can be rather tedious. He asked for a way to put them on a map and display info on whatever one is clicked. My moment had arrived! His request was screaming for a Google Map implementation.

I took his spreadsheet converted the relevant information into an xml file. Then I made a little Java/HTML page to display the dang thing on a browser. Only hitch I ran into was making the sidebar load properly in Internet Explorer. For whatever reason the Coast Guard won’t let people install Firefox… whatever. What I should have done was make a two column CSS layout. But I didn’t. I’m stubborn. It SHOULD work with tables in an elegant fashion (in both IE and Firefox at the same time). I spent hours fiddling with different “overflow” options, and IE just never worked right (without making it not work in Firefox). As an interim fix, I think I’ll make a drop-down box style page. I’d be happy to hear anyone’s work around on the IE table overflow issue though.

In the mean time… this is what I have so far:

• USCGC’s Buoy Map Thing for Firefox
• USCGC’s Buoy Map Thing for IE
• USCGC’s Buoy Map Thing as a drop down wussy compromise. (actually I think this looks better, but I couldn’t get it how I ORIGINALLY intended)

My friend Gary gave me a good idea for a “friend monitor”. It’d be easy to make a site just like the above that keeps track of people with whom we are cool. I can’t think of any particularly good uses for the thing… would just be neat. Especially if everyone had a personalized icon.

ANYWAY… say what you will about Google mining all of our personal data. They are giving us some fun free functional toys to play with.

UPDATE: 03 April 2007. I was asked if I could make the markers appear as their appropriate color (usually red or blue but some are striped). This was a relatively easy task with the API. I had to add a “color” field to the xml data and draw the funny striped “buoys”. The result is here.

It has only been two days since I pointed out what looked like a rock growing (see previous post). The below picture shows the same two plants after they rifled up at around 2 inches per day. I don’t even have any nutrients in the water tank yet (just tap water). I need to get to it I suppose.

When reading up on how to actually plant plants in the hydroponic system… I couldn’t find anything hard and fast. Many people said that you should start seeds in rockwool, and leave them in a darkish area until they are hearty enough to be tossed in amongst the hydro system.

So I hunted down some rockwool (I actually had to find a hydroponics store… Lowes didn’t have it), and started some plants in there. The whole idea of starting plants in rockwool struck me as silly though - so I decided to try a few just in the pea gravel with the system turned on. Its a little early to declare complete victory, but putting the seeds directly in the operating system (no rockwool) seems to work just fine for all of the larger seeds.

Well, its not exactly aesthetic or at all sturdy (and it is certainly against many many OSHA regulations), but the thing is functional and it holds the weight of the girlfriend, the hydroponics system, and myself.

Unfortunately I didn’t take many pictures of the process, but basically I made a frame from 2×4’s and put a sheet of plywood on top. We cut and drilled some holes through the top for power cords, hydroponic tubing, and for air flow (we covered the space heater that serves our room - which could be bad). We covered the whole thing with carpet which we are currently letting drape over the front to the floor to serve as a curtain.

Now that we’re done I’d like to remove the crummy venetian blinds by the window and put in a curtain that will separate our room from the loft. That will allow us to have a sunny little nook to hang out in, and we also won’t have to worry about opening the blinds every day for the plants.

Update: I never put up a picture of the system. This picture was taken later, but they show what I did. You can kind of see how I just made a rectangle out of PVC and filled it with pea gravel. The grey thing that the system is sitting on is the loft that we built. You can’t see the tube near the back corner where water is pumped up through. There is also a drain on the far side that allows the system to slowly leak water back into the tank. The loft itself hides the five gallon buckets and acts as a neat way to add a lot of storage to our apartment and a comfy place to sit in the sun.

Last night I finally finished the bare bones of my loft thing. After I get it padded and carpeted tonight, I can finally get back to the business of hydroponicing. (click the image for larger view)

My pump and timer have arrived. I’m going to grab some five gallon buckets on the way home. I’ll be able to run the system without plants or growing medium to flush out any remaining PVC and whatnot. Also I’ll make sure there are no leaks, and I’ll be able to see how long it takes my drain to empty flush the system.

I’ve been trying to find some rockwool for the past few days at local garden centers and the like. I really need to get some seeds germinating. I almost broke down and used peat moss, but I’ve heard such good things about the rockwool. I didn’t want to order the junk online, but I may have to. Anyway, germinating seeds are priority: next.