Holy Yellow Tomatos Batman!

Oh yah! My first harvest of yellow canaries! Small sweet and bite sized. Yummmm. Over the next couple weeks I look forward to having them fresh off the vine. I have about 3-4 plants and I think I have 2 red robins, but I'm not sure anymore because I was lazy with the labeling. The seeds came from Caseys Heirloom Tomatoes and I was very impressed with the health of the plants considering this is my first season growing anything at all. Thanks Casey!

Next year I plan on having some non-dwarf varieties and grow the big ones. There's nothing like fresh tomatoes I have to say. What you get at the grocery store is 'good enough' but for real mouth watering goodness, grow your own! Think of it this way; it's like the difference between good home cooking and McDonalds. Sure Rotten Ronnies will fill you up, taste pretty good and is quick and cheap but nothing beats a good home cooked meal.

The Great Adventure Begins!

Okay so I did my first plantings today (okay I actually planted my Lemon Balm on Sunday but it was well established in a pot so it's nothing to write home about). I planted my first radish seedlings today (just 3) and I will continue plant them as the sprout because technically you should plant them in the ground to avoid damaging the main root but I am experimenting with sprouting them in my germination kit and planting them as soon as they break ground. I also planted a tomato plant. It probably won't survive any cold snaps (tomato's are not very cold hardy) but I'm not happy with it because I started it way too early before I had my germination kit, and it got way too tall and thin (that's what happens to plants apparently when they don't get enough light). So if it stays warm and it survives, cool. If not, well it was not meant to be.

So what's this germination kit I'm talking about? It looks like this:

Now this may not look like much, but it's a start and when I buy 2 more lamps for the bottom 2 racks, I will be able to start 296 seedlings at a time from this tiny little setup.

The mini-greenhouse cost me $32 with tax.  There are two square 40mm x 25 Jiffy greenhouses ($20) and one long 35mm x 24 Jiffy greenhouse ($8) on each shelf. I also bought two 2 foot full spectrum T5 fluorescent lightsfor $25 each. So total my set up (once I buy my two lower lights) will cost just under $250. Now as I said, this will start 296 seedlings at a time so that's not bad (under a dollar per seedling). The peat pellets cost roughly 13 cents each and each bulb consumes 24 watts. So once you get the gear, starting seeds will be CHEAP each subsequent year.

So here is a little picture of the set up. You can see the two square mini-greenhouses in the front and the longer one behind. Even though the rack is technically a greenhouse itself, I choose to buy the mini-greenhouses instead of open trays to allow me to plant/water/thin one set of seedlings without disturbing the temperature and humidity of another. Don't know if that's necessary but hey, never hurts to be careful. Oh this whole set up is in my condo right next to my balcony door, so that's why I was worried about temperature.

Now I think my lights are too far away from the greenhouses because as you can see in this picture, my seedlings are really long and spindly. They were about one foot away from the surface of the peat, but looks like they should have been closer. Right now my lights are fixed in place, but I'm going to modify them this weekend to be adjustable up and down to hopefully avoid this in the future.

Alright already, so what am I planting already? Well, since I'm worried about the cold I'm planting things that will hopefully take temperatures near freezing. I have already started radishes, broccoli, asian mustard, onion, spinach, parsnip, a lettuce mix and Rocket (Wild Grazia). I will be planting the radishes and parsnips as soon as they break ground to avoid damaging the tap root. I have yet to start my Snow wind sugar peas, sputnik Arugula and Parmex Carrots. Also, I bought a $10 thermometer/hygrometer with a hi/low memory and put it in the hoophouse near the seedlings. I'm going to track and post the hi/low temps as often as I can to see what my seedlings are going through. Another little experiment is I planted a wack of swiss chard just outside my raise bed to see what happens to seeds that aren't in the hoophouse. Now swiss chard is supposed to be one of the most hardy lettuce like plants so we'll see what happens.

So what's the plan with the Dirt?

Okay so we have a place where we can potentially keep the frost and cold off of our plants but is a thin sheet of plastic really enough if the temperature drops to -5 °C (23 °F) for a few days? Well no and that is a concern here because in our area, Calgary especially, there are wild swings of temperature in spring and fall. For those not from here, we are talking temperatures like 8°C-20°C (46°F-68°F) for two or three weeks where you start to think that you won't have any more cold weather, and then all of a sudden you get snow and 3-5 days of -2°C-14°C (28°F-57°F). This is why most people don't garden in early spring, it can be quite an emotional roller coaster ending with loosing your entire garden if you screw up.

But no matter, I'm a gardening newb. I have no pride or grand expectations of success. This year is purely about learning. So in the spirit of learning what is the plan to deal with mother natures mood swings? Well there are two things I want to try.

1) Heavy straw mulch.

2) Milk jugs filled with water as heat sinks.

The heavy straw mulch will act two fold. First to keep the baking heat of midday off the soil should we have some warmer weather and to trap moisture near the soil (rather than creating a wet sauna inside the hoophouse). Second, to insulate the ground and trap the heat that is radiating from the soil nearer the surface where the young plants need it most. Now this isn't like a warm blanket, it may only change the microclimate around the seedlings by 1°C or maybe half a degree, but when you are talking about frost that may be the difference between life and death.

Second is to fill 4L milk jugs with water, paint them black and use them in place of rocks to pin down the plastic and to place amongst the seedlings. What does this do? Hopefully it will act as a heat sink. During the hot day, the water will absorb heat from inside the hoophouse and from the sun, keeping the inside cooler than it otherwise would be. Then during the night the water will slowly release the heat warming the air slightly. Again, the effect may only be 1°C but this combined with the mulch and hardy plants (more on those in the next post) will hopefully keep me growing until the weather evens out around early summer.

Wish me luck!

The beginnings of a green thumb

So for those of you who know me, no this does not mean I have had an unfortunate case of leprosy. I am actually planting a garden this year. Where might this fateful land come from considering I live in a high-rise condo? Well my friend Mike and I have decided to get a plot at his local community garden and share it. Unfortunately the community garden in down town is located in a spot that is surrounded by high-rises and right next to a busy road; not exactly my idea of a zen location. It works out well this way because now there will be 2 people caring for the spot which increases the likelihood that it will not remain a barren patch of dirt. We wanted to start planting right away but since here in Calgary we live in zone 3a/b, normally you don't see any growing until at least mid-late May. Well I am impatient and I want to start now! So I convinced Mike to help me try what's called a Cold-Frame hoophouse. Essentially it's something like a mini-greenhouse. It looks like this:

Now how much money/time does this little gem take to make? Until today I could confidently say "I have absolutely no idea. My guess would be $75 and a couple of hours." If you listened to me then, you would be wrong on both accounts. The cost depends on the size of your plot. Obviously the larger it is, the more materials you need and the more sturdy your materials need to be. But for this roughly 4 foot by 8 foot plot (thats 122cm by 239cm) all you need is some vinyl siding strips (they are roughly 2 inches wide, I think they are used to finish off the end of the vinyl siding on houses), some painters plastic, some garden twist ties (the kind that come in a spool that you can cut to the length you want) and some rocks. The rocks we got from the river (price = free) and the rest of the materials cost just under $60 with Tax at our hardware store. It took 45 min to cut and assemble (yes we kept track of time).

The beauty of this design over others I've seen on the net using PVC pipe or wood is two fold:

1) It's cheaper

2) Requires less tools to assemble

3) It's fast and super easy to erect. (lol, I got to use erect in a sentence!)

The vinyl siding comes with holes down the length of one side so no need for drilling holes (like in wood/pvc). The vinyl is much lighter than the other two materials so you don't need nails, screws or heavy wire to hold it together. The gardeners twist ties are more than enough to lash everything together and it's easier to work with on a cooler day in spring than string/twine. Essentially the only tool you need is a sturdy pair of scissors (preferably tin snips, it will make cutting the vinyl a breeze). Once you have cut the vinyl to the right length (in our case it was 90 inches or 230cm) you push one end into the ground, bend the other end over and push it into the ground. You do this for all of the curved ribs, then you attach the horizontal stabilizing bars using the gardening wire. Then you cut a length of painters clear plastic (it comes in thin, medium and heavy thickness; we used medium.) and cover the frame pinning it down with rocks. Now you have a mini non-permanent greenhouse over your garden that you can remove once you are sure you are past the last frost date. This will keep cold wind and light frost off your hardy early spring plants. I have some further ideas about what to do on this plot and what to plant but that will be for another post.

Happy Growing!

New York... Too much of everything.

My first impressions of New York were wow! But the more time I spent there, the more I came to a sad realisation. Unless you´re rich, New York is not for you. Everything that is good is in a boutique or some other rediculously overpriced place. There are few exceptions to this rule, and you pretty much have to grow up in NY to know where to go to get decent clothes/food at a reasonable price. Everything else, that is intended for the common person, is crap by my standards. Also, NY feels very frantic. Everyone is in a hurry to get somewhere and because of this no one pays any attention to the common curtosies that I am accustomed to in Calgary. Example, if you hold the door/elevator for someone in Calgary... they say thanks (even if they´re talking on their cell); don´t even expect eye contact and a nod in aknowledgement of your effort in NY. Don´t get me wrong, NY has amazing things to see and it is an experience to go there that should not be missed. But to live their would be hell by my standards. As far as standard and quality of living goes (for the average person) New York is WAY below my standards.

They Can't hurt me if I shoot them first?

After reading this article off Digg I started to wonder about people's logic these days. The conservative U.S. talk radio hosts who suggested that if everyone carried a gun, they might have been able to kill the Virginia tech shooter before he had a chance to hurt anyone... really? So it's gonna be like that?

Ignoring for a minute the deep social, mental, and possibly economic problems that the shooter may have had and how this tragedy reflects a failure of the US society as a whole to foster an environment where at LEAST people don't go on suicide killing sprees to vent there anger; yeah lets ignore that and analyze the conservative U.S. talk radio hosts suggestion. Let all students bring guns to school to protect themselves from suicidal mass murderers. [sarcasm] Okay so we know that youth, in any part of the world, are ALL responsible, well educated and diligent people who will properly maintain their lethal weapons [end sarcasm]. How many kids do you think would die from someone forgetting to put on their safety and their gun going off when they toss their backpack in their locker? How about poor gun maintenance causing the gun to go off despite the safety being on? How about Dee Dee Dee Joe DarwinAward blowing his face off while looking down the barrel of a loaded weapon while cleaning it? What about kids who are struggling financially and can't afford a gun; who will protect them against all the gun toting bullies? You will have created a black market for gun sales to these poor kids who won't know the first thing about gun mechanics and whether or not they are getting a 'safe' gun. There are a whole lot of problems being introduced here to solve the relativity infrequent (for now anyway) incidents of suicidal mass shootings in the US.

But lets say you somehow waved your magic wand and solved all those problems. You still have an even bigger problem. The people doing these crimes are suicidal... for those not quite on board with what that means, we're talking about people ready, willing and looking for Death. Remember 9-11? According to the conservative U.S. talk radio hosts we should be putting stinger missiles on every building. Terrorists will be as happy to kill all the people on a plane and send burning shrapnel flying into an unsuspecting populace as they would be to actually hit a building. Both instill a sense of terror into people. Suicidal missions are funny that way, as long as you and a bunch of innocent people are dead, they're considered a success.

By the same token, just because you gave everyone a gun doesn't mean that the suicidal mass murderers will call it a day, go home and settle for hanging themselves. They want their departure to be an event. They still want to die, you just made it more of a challenge for them to pull it off. Now if you raise the stakes, so will they. Bullet resistant gear, home made pipe bombs, automatic weapons, poison gases, whatever it takes. They will still die but the carnage will just be that much more horrific.

Wouldn't it be better to start addressing the issues that caused the shooters to get to that point in the first place? I'm not going to start on the causes in this post because, like global warming, it's not a simple point-the-finger-at-a-scapegoat and solve the problem kind of issue. There is a web of interconnected problems in the US causing this phenomenon and it will take the communal acknowledgment of the US citizens as a whole to say "We screwed something up. We're sick of our children dieing and we need to figure out how to fix it.". But it's not as easy as blaming it on Violent Movies, Video Games, Drugs, Bad Parenting, Alcohol, Poverty, Poor Education, Social Isolation, Negativity in the Media, whatever. As you can see, off the top of my head I've come up with 9 issues, none of which (in isolation) are the cause of the Virginia Tech tragedy. However, if you stack all of those problems (combined with many others I haven't thought of) on a person and sprinkle in a little bit of psychosis... well who knows what can happen. You wanna fight a war on terror? How about starting with your own children.

Truely Amazing...

If you've ever wondered why you'd ever want to learn gymnastics and martial arts when you live in an Urban Jungle... wonder no more. If you did this stuff for fun I don't think you'd ever need to go to the gym to 'work out'.

Parkour Check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlSOzbFes3s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jquXcwooV6A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfZaQFCHWkI&NR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkgPTMMO9gc&NR

Another kewl combination of gymnastics, hip hop and martial arts:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6YvF0LUWKM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa34SrRy6qo

Long awaited uptdate

No more polyphasic sleeping... Since the reason my girlfriend has taken a break from University to come live with me and work in my city for a year was to be WITH me; I decided it would not be beneficial for our relationship if she was stuck going to bed and waking up by herself since my sleep cycles would be completely out of synch with hers. So for now this project is on hold.

Next exciting piece of news... My girlfriend and I are going to CUBA!!! 2 weeks from March 30th to April 13 in sunny all-expense paid paradise. I can't wait. Sun, sand, heat, drinking, diving and dancing for 14 days. I don't know if I will want to come back. I will probably be posting some pictures and write a little piece when I get back.

In the mean time, .NET is taking over at work. Java and the hand full of other open source languages we were using has proven to be increasingly difficult to manage not to mention find/train new indivduals to step in and be productive. Now we will be stuck with what we've built for a little while but in the long run will will be building only .NET based apps in the future. Open Source may you Rest in Piece.

Day ONE

Okay so I made it all the way to 2am following the cycle but then I crashed. The problem is I used my cell phone as an alarm clock and I kept it by the bed. When I woke up, or should I say my girlfriend woke me up, for work the next morning at 8:30am it became clear that I must have turned off the alarm in my sleep. Oh well, I was prepared for some set backs... tonight the alarm will be far enough away that I will have to get up to turn it off ;-) So the quest continues...

Not Enough Hours in the Day...

Okay, so I've come to the conclusion that there is just not enough time in the day for work, fitness, thesis, personal interests and sleep. So I'm taking some drastic measures to increase productivity.
Step 1 : Try to implement a Polyphasic Sleep Cycle
If this works I will have an extra 5 hours in my day.

Step 2 : Try to learn to speed read.
If this works, I can maximize the time available.

Step 3 : Perform memory impovement exercises
If this works I will be able to make better use of
what I read and I won't have to re-read.

I think I will use the blog to record my progress. My sleep schedule will be as follows:
2am - 20mins
6:40am - 40mins
Noon - 40mins
5:20pm - 40mins
9:40pm - 20mins

So how do I plan to sleep at lunch? Well my appartment is conveniently located on the same block as the tower I work in, so in short I will go home for both lunch and rest. Why did I put 40mins of sleep at the times that I did? 2 reasons:
1) Maximize awake time during the night where distractions will be at a minimum.
2) Since I have 2 long awake times between 7:20am-Noon and 12:40pm-5:20pm I chose to surround those times with longer sleep times at first to compensate.

Cross your fingers... hopefully I will still be concious in two weeks ;-)

Obey your Master!

Ah! Working and doing your Masters Thesis at the same time is NOT fun. Especially when you are trying to keep fit and attempt some semblance of a social life as well. That is essentially what I've been up to for the past few weeks. Before that I was preparing for and welcoming Tatjana to my home... Yes she is now in Calgary! She has taken a year off school to come and work for my company and live with me. This is the long overdue quality time that we haven't had for the last 3-years! Anyway, that's pretty much all the big news that's happened lately. Oh, for those of you who didn't go to the Taboo show this year, plan for it next year. It's definitely an 'interesting' experience. We (Tatjana and I) were there this year performing salsa and let's say we were probably the most PG act available that weekend.

Quote of the Day:
Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.
- Ellen Goodman

Everything in MODERATION

Wow, I haven't posted in a while. I have just started reading more about nutrition. Thinking of jumping on the bandwagon and replacing your dairy with soy? Read some of this before you go off the deep end. Now I'm still going to drink my soy milk, but I think that's where I'm going to draw the line.

Concerts and Shopping

So what's going on in Filips world lately? This weekend I blew around $2000 on shopping for things for my new place. Everything from shelves to a big screen TV. How big is the screen you ask? I bought a 3 year old 50 inch Toshiba for 900 bucks. Now as soon as I get a dvd player it will be difficult to justify going out to the movies! I've spent much of the time in the past two weeks buying and installing stuff into my new appartment. Unfortunately, today I blew out a ceiling light when trying to install a new one... so how did it happen? Well when I took down the old light fixture I noticed a mess of wires underneath. They all looked shielded so I didn't think much of it. However, when I went to install the new fixture, one of the screws went deep into the mess of wires and must have hit an exposed wire. After a brief explosion, some black smoke and a slew of black dust that stained the cieling, I thought to myself "I should have turned off the circuit breaker". Anyway, I'm alive and un-charred so after the building comes and fixes the mess I made life should be back to normal.

In other news, I went to the Tea Party concert at Cowboys on monday. I can't put into words how truely inspired these performers are. All I have to say is that to truely appreciate their talent you MUST see them live. The recorded versions of their music does not do them justice. After the show I felt like what the hippy generation must have felt like after a Led Zeppelin concert... honestly, I think they are the modern equivalent. In the end, I caught a towel from the bassist and a Drumstick. Good times, great memories!

Tragedy strikes... Again :-(

Well, if it wasn't enough that in February my brand new PDA was stolen along with my walet containing NO money but all of my personal ID type documents (citizenship, health care card, etc...) AND in March all of my investments went down; now I've lost my real wallet with all of my day-to-day important stuff. Sometimes lifes a bitch... and then that bitch slaps you again and again and again.

What do I do?

I figured I'd post this section because I wanted some spot on my blog that mentions a kewl new technology called xTile. But before we get to that, what do I do and what am I working on? Well right now I am working for an Engineering, Procurement and Construction Management (EPCM) Company doing Automation and Integration as well as some web application development. So what does that mean? It means I work on building macro's for people to get stuff in and out of databases (MSSQL and mySql) and massaging data into desireable and meaningful form. As part of the in/out database task, we are building a web based manhour forecasting tool. We have been using Java with help from Cayenne as our ORM (object/relational mapping) tool and Tapestry as our MVC (model-view-controller) web application framework. Now to most of you who know me (other than kozmo with whom I work) all of this means little or nothing to you. Which is fine... at least you know I do something with software :-D However, those of you who are interested in the above, I would like to introduce xTile. This little marvel component uses the xmlhttprequest (aka Ajax) to allow components to directly interact with tapestry without the need to refresh the webpage. What does this mean in lamance terms? It means the web application can have a more 'desktop application' feel instead of a typical submit/refresh web feel. Now I haven't actually used the xTile library yet but it sure sounds snazzy. Stay tuned for updates on how I like it.

As a development environment we use Eclipse with the Spindle and Tomcat plugin. Today I also came across the Tapestry Palette plugin for eclipse which adds another layer of coolness for those developing Tapestry apps. I will keep you posted on how that works out.

News

This section I'm going to dedicate to posting only the cream of the crop, IMHO, of news that I come accross. No particular restrictions on the topic of the news, but I always find I like to know where I get interesting tidbits and this will be my log. We'll start with this:

Research that may lead to humans re-growing body parts! This could mean no more scars, no more amputees and potentially no more paralytics!

How about randomly generating your next university paper? You could get an 'A' considering that one of these randomly generated papers got accepted to a conference. Hmmm... I wonder if they'd make a 'randomly generated thesis' for me?

Life Just keeps getting better...

I started to move into my new place this weekend and I have to say it Rocks! And to make things better my company has just announced that it will be moving its office even closer to where I live. Now how can you possibly be closer than accross the street you ask? Well they are moving to a building that is directly beside of my building to the south. This means to get to work I can just go down to the 4th floor of my building, go across a little patio section between the two buildings and go up to my office. I don't even have to cross the street anymore to get to work! Now that's what I call convenience. Now if only they would build a grocery store into TD square I would be the happiest man on the planet.

Unlimited Email Storage!

Google is offering infinity+1 storage. My Gmail account has 2060 megabytes of storage and it's increasing. Say what!?! - you say. That's right, Google's gmail accounts have ever increasing storage space. Don't believe me? Check out thier counter at Gmail and you can see what the current storage limit is. Yet another reason why Google is great! Again, if you don't have a gmail account, you're silly. If you want one, email me and I can refer you :-D

Moving Soon!

Very exciting news in the life of Filip. I will be moving! If you want to know where, sign up at Bebo and become one of my contacts. If you don't already have this service, you are silly. It's like an address book that updates itself! Anyway, my new place will be downtown so I will be right accross the street from where I work, a stones throw from Eau Claire and Prince's Island and the YMCA, a few plus-15's from TD square and a 6min walk from SOHO and a 10min walk from the safeway. Muahahaha no need to get a car now! All you friends who were waiting to cash in on my IOU's for rides will have to wait a few more years :-( My new place will have a salt water pool and squash courts, so I offer those in return to all of you who trucked my ass around town when I needed it.

Posting VIA Email!

If you are reading this that means I have successfully posted a message to my blog using an email. This is the kewlest thing since sliced bread!! I just send an email to my blog and it automagically posts it for me. Oh the wonders of modern technology.