Pepper Sauce

So, with many peppers around, we decided to try a new recipe. The recipe for pepper sauce, found here, only takes a few minutes. Put a handful of peppers, some peppercorns, garlic, and a pinch of salt in a jar, and cover in warm apple cider vinegar. Allow to cool, stopper, and keep in the fridge. In a few days the vinegar absorbs all the flavors and is ready for use.

We'll let you know how it turns out.

Spider project

I pulled the gutter worms ( a leaf blocking system similar to large pipe cleaners) that I used to have in my gutters when we had our new gutter covers installed. The left overs made nice spider legs. I attached them to a cloth-covered octagon. The body mounts on a small detachable post. The LEDs from an old solar spot light got rewired into the ping-pong ball eyes so they solar charge during the day and glow at night.

I am hoping to augment the scariness of the project by building a remote controlled spider on top of a radio controlled car. Chasing trick-or-treaters with a spider on Halloween should be great fun. :-)

Little Workers

The girls are in the shop today repairing their wagon.  I guess it is contagious.

Treasure Chest

I grabbed an armload of cutoff lumber at Menard's for $4, combined it with some old hardware salvaged from a dresser, and built a treasure chest.

It still needs some sanding and maybe a coat of stain, but not bad for a first attempt.

Now I just need some treasure to put in it.

EeeServer

So my old Celeron clunker pretty well died, leaving me without a server for music and internal web stuff. During an OpenSuSE 10.3 update, something bad happened, and ls started returning seg faults. Bad, bad, bad. And this was after rebooting it every few days for months due to hardware glitches. The machine was never stable. I think the motherboard had developed an intermittent short.

Luckily all my data was intact on external drives and in a couple of config files. I justed needed a new home for it.

So, I decided to sacrifice the little EeePC 900A I had picked up. For my personal netbook, I was strongly considering switching to another machine anyway, so it was a cheap option (< $200).

First of all, the default EeePC Linux OS sucks. It is clunky and slow. I figured I could live with that on a server, but there was no way I could install all my server software on it. So I searched around and settled on EeeBuntu as my server OS.

Making a bootable USB stick for a live test and eventual install was a snap. I chose the base install, since I only have a 4GB SSD on the system, and I didn't need all the user apps.

I was very impressed with performance and ease of installation. It was everything I expected from Ubuntu. I turned off X, added my planet install, samba config, and my external drives and it runs beautifully. Best server ever: low power; fast; easy to maintain; built-in keyboard, LCD, and touchpad; built-in UPS; cheap.

Bird House

I have some old lumber leftover from some palettes for materials I had delivered last summer. The wood is tough stuff and has a few mail heads stuck in it here and there from where I cut the palettes apart with a sawzall. I finally decided to use the lumber to make bird houses and feeders to put in the flower gardens and to give away. My wife agreed to paint the bird houses and feeders.The first attempt only took about twenty minutes to build. I cut the 4 sides out (two rectangles, two rectangles with triangles on top) using my compound miter saw. I lucked out in that the left over piece was the right side for the bottom. I then cut two rectangles out of another board for the roof. All cuts were square (no angles). I used a hole saw on my drill press to cut out the entry hole and a bit to make a hole for the dowel perch.

Assembly was done using an air nailer. I glued the perch in with wood glue.


I chose rustic looking wood for the whole project. The nail heads and mishapen edges seemed to add to the character. Some of the wood was slightly different sizes, but the small gaps (less than 1/4 inch) only seemed to add to the rustic feel of the project.


My wife painted flowers and a "Home Sweet Home" sign on the birdhouse.


More to come later as I try new designs.

Recycled Wood Rack

We had an old dining room table with a glass top that broke. I decided to reuse the frame to make a wood rack for my garage.

The frame had the legs removed. I drilled four holes through the ceiling in my garage, making sure to go through one of the 2x4s lined up with the outline of the frame. I drilled matching holes on the frame. I put threaded rods down, putting a large washer and 2 nuts above and a washer, nut, and codder key below to hold the frame.




Obviously with an aluminum frame, the key thing for use will be not to overload it. Still, it should be able to hold a fair amount of lumber up and out of the way.

G1 Cupcake and Stereo Bluetooth Headphones

I picked up a set of bluetooth headphones (Motorola S805 Bluetooth 2.0 DJ Style Stereo Headphones) off of Amazon and waited patiently for Cupcake to Arrive on the TMobile G1 Android phone. After much waiting, I finally got the update and voila: Cupcake (technically Android 1.5) was installed.

I had already added a 16 GB microSD card and loaded all of my music collection. With the new headphones I was ready to try out the music and headphone functions. Boy, was I amazed.

The sound is good (DJ style headphones almost always sound good after listening to earbuds). The range is decent (across a room). And, most surprisingly, the volume and controls on the headphones work as advertised. The next track, previous track work fine. The headphones also allow me magically answer and hang up on phone calls all without ever touching my G1.

This is a sweet setup and just had to share my good first impressions. I'll post more in the weeks ahead as I get more time on the setup. Now this is true wireless bliss.

---

Update:

Well, I have had the setup working for a while now and I am ready to add some new info.

Ok, first up, it appears that my Cupcake G1 will skip music once in a while. It seems to happen primarily when I have wifi enabled. Under normal operation (not on wifi) it seems to work great.

The sound quality, which I have to assume is influenced by the MP3 quality, headphone quality, and playback under the G1, is not as good as I would like sometimes. I think I miss having the typical equalizer settings on my PC which probably compensated for some of the limits of the MP3 quality and headphone quality. The MP3s sometimes sound a bit flat. The beat/bass sounds a bit off sometimes too, which is a little disappointing with such large headphones, though I am betting the source is probably the MP3 quality.

The headphone battery life seems good. I have noticed that low batteries reduce the range of the bluetooth. The other day I had a problem with bluetooth cutting out with the headphones on my head and the phone in my pocket. I charged the headphones for a bit and they worked flawlessly again.

Overall, my experience is still very positive. I love the wireless setup. It is true music freedom.

---

Update (Jan. 2010)

I've had my headphones for several months. I had just a few more notes:

• Pandora is really awesome with these headphones on the G1. I definitely recommend using 3G if possible. The G1 seems pretty maxed out while playing Pandora, but less so on 3G.
• Headphone controls don't work completely properly with Pandora. Volume works.
• An extended life battery for the G1 really makes the music player more useful. If you don't have one, a USB charger near where you use it most can be helpful.
• I wish there were a way in Android to send only media to the headphones. Sometimes I don't want to use the headphones to answer the phone. Maybe Android 2.x will add this -- no idea.
• Overall, I am still very pleased with the G1 with Motorola headphones.

Horizontal Tomato Cages

For years, I have been wanting to install horizontal tomato cages, but I never got around to it until now. The basic idea behind horizontal tomato cages is that you place the wire mesh horizontally so you don't have to reach through it to get tomatoes. It also features mesh that can be easily moved for tilling and dead plant removal at the end of the season.

The design is fairly straight-forward. You need a minimum of four posts. Each of the posts should be placed in the ground deep enough to secure them. You can set them in concrete if you so desire. The width should be matched to your tomato plants at full size or to whatever is convenient. I chose a couple inches wider than my rototiller, so I could fit it between the posts. The posts have small pieces of wood screwed on as ledges at each mesh height.

The mesh is put onto frames. I used pressure-treated 2x2s for my frames. Vinyl-coated mesh also is a nice feature.

The frames set on the ledges on the posts and can be secured in place by 4 screws (1 into each ledge on each post). To remove the mesh and till between the posts, you only need to remove these 4 screws in each mesh frame.

Here are some views of the finished product:

Fig. 1 A view of the mesh frame sitting on the post ledge.

Fig 2. A side view of the cage.

Fig. 3. The finished product.

$4 Charging Station

To make an effective charging station@for only $4, I used an outlet strip ($3) and a basket ($1).  The outlet strip was plugged in behind and chargers into it.  The strip was held in place with double-sided tape.  Cords were threaded through the weave of the basket and labeled with a labelmaker.  Phones can sit in the basket or be clipped to the side.  I also plan to add a homemade bean bag pillow to weight down the basket and to cushion the phones.

Recycled Plant "Boxes"

I had someold palettes that I decided to recycle into small boxes to go around my plants to keep the rock mulch off of them.

Small Table

So, we needed a small table to go under a mirror in the master bedroom to hold the alarm clock and other miscellaneous stuff. Trying to find a table the right size was impossible. So today, we decided to try to build one.

We settled on the dimensions of 10 inches deep, 32 inches long, and 27 inches high. That placed it directly below the mirror with the same width as the mirror. It also wouldn't stick out to far as to be bumping into it.

For lumber I got one 72 inch by 16 inch end glued pine board about 5/8 inch thick. At Menards it was less than $10.

To keep with the style of the shelves in the room, we decided to go with a simple design. Simple legs, simple curves, and a simple front.


I cut all the pieces to size. My wife wanted a full set of 4 legs. So the side boards got a hole saw hole drilled into them. I used my table saw to cut up to the hole. I finished the hole on the jig saw.

I routed the top on 3 sides, since it would be against the wall. The bottom on the front board got router, but not the sides, since they were going to rest against the legs. All the edges except the top and bottom on the legs got routed. In all cases I used a round over bit.

There was a lot of sanding. I decided to use 1 inch screws to assemble it. I cut small blocks of wood out and we drilled starter holes and counter sinks for the screws.

Assembly consisted of attaching mounting blocks to the legs and front board. All were put in place and screwed to the top. I also glued all the joints for extra strength.


The table is a little wobbly due to the shoice of materials and general dimensions, so we will probably screw it to the wall after it is painted.

Replacement Bird Feeder Perch

Our squirrels are fat, happy sumo squirrels that love to practice their sumo moves on our bird feeder. As a result, the plastic perches were all broken off. We decided to replace them.

Materials

• Long drywall screws
• Packing tape

Directions

• Wrap each screw in packing tape several times. Make sure the tape is well secured.
• Screw the screws into the points where their used to be perches.
  
• Voila. Birdies have a new perch and the squirrels have a new challenge.

Tiki Torch Snuffer

We use tiki torches to bugs away. Putting out a tiki torch now is easier with our handy-dandy tiki torch snuffer.

Materials:

• Empty clean soda or beer can
• Knife, snips, or large scissors
• Wooden handle
• Screw and screwdriver

Directions

• Carefully, using a knife, snips, or large scissors, cut off the bottom of the can. Be very careful that you don't cut yourself. Try to make the edge 'curve in' to the can so there are no exposed sharp edges.
• Use the screw to attach the can to the handle.
• Snuff tiki torches to your delight. Both the top and bottom of the snuffer work effectively, depending on the size of tiki torch.
  

Herb Garden

There is an awkward spot between the stairs to my deck and our house. We decided to use this space for our new herb garden.



Materials:

• 1 inch drywall screws and large washers for them
• Wooden crates (I picked mine up for $10 at a craft store)
• Water proofing sealer
• Landscape fabric or other outdoor fabric
• Soil or soil mix
• Herbs
• Staple gun and staples
  

First I waterproofed the wooden crates thoroughly. My crates weren't exactly designed for the elements, so I gave them several coats. You might want to avoid wooden crates that are treated or that have cedar wood, as they usually aren't recommended for growing edibles.

I then lined the crates with landscape fabric with the help of my wife and stapled them in place. I left the fabric down a bit from the top so I could mostly cover it.

My wife then held the crates in place while I screwed them to the deck stairs. Use as many screws and attachments points as you need. I had to add a couple more after filling with soil since they were sagging a bit.



Fill with soil or soil mix. I prefer to use composted manure.

Add herbs. Lavender, sage, parsley, chives, rosemary, etc. I also planted onions sets between the plants.




Keep watered well. Because of the use of porous fabric and light soil mix, they will needed watered frequently during hot weather. A drip irrigation system will be attached to mine soon.

The Power Sprayer Myth

If you think you need a power sprayer, you probably don't. I made the mistake of assuming that since power sprayers have been popular for many years now, that they must be an effective means of cleaning stuff.

I bought a power sprayer.

I bought the gallon of cleaning gunk.

I power sprayed my deck.

It looks cleaner when I wash it with soap and water and a brush and rinse it with a garden hose.

The settings and attachments and knobs are all total crap. The thing randomly fluctuates pressure. It is impossible to use.

Anyone want to buy a power sprayer? I'll sell it cheap.

And for the informative part:

How to clean your Deck

Step 1: Sweep the deck to get off all the leaves and such.

Step 2: Rinse the entire deck with a garden hose.

Step 3: Fill a five gallon bucket with a little dish washing detergent and water. In the case of really wanting to get the deck super clean, substitute a cup of bleach for the dishwashing detergent.

Step 4: With all your safety gear (goggles, gloves, long pants, good boots, gloves, etc), scrub the deck down with a scrub brush on a long handle. Allow the cleaning mixture to soak a bit. Do only a section at a time. During this and future steps avoid getting the cleaning solution on or near landscaping or plants.

Step 5: Rinse and repeat on the other sections.

Step 6: Rinse the entire deck.

Tada... a clean deck. Then consider adding a coat of your favorite deck sealer, water proofer, or stain, as needed and desired.

Handy Tool

The fact that there are 'hidden windows' is enough to make me paranoid. The fact that a windows-crash can hide all of you windows is pretty annoying too. For just these reasons, you need unhider.

It lists hidden windows and allows you to unhide them.

Planet Spoon

My Planet Feed Aggregator is done!!!



See the how-to here.

Finally Fixed the Disappearing USB Hard Drive

Under openSuSE 10.3 on the new server, the following fix appears to address my disappearing USB hard drive:

http://forums.suselinuxsupport.de/index.php?showtopic=61388

Simple Monitoring

Sometimes you just need a simple monitor to verify when machines and protocols go down. Enter nefu from University of Michigan. It is a simple compiled program that generates syslog and html reports from simple pings and port tests. You can point it at a bunch of nodes on the network and give it dependencies and it magically keeps track of everything.

I like it because it gives me a report that allows me in a matter of seconds to diagnose a number of potential problems.