Aquaponics Cucumber

Cucumber.

Strange word.

Anyway, Ive been getting good results with hand pollination. For some reason the female flowers (the ones with the fruit attached to the back of them, open well, but the males dont.

I thought bees were supposed to do this work. There are no bees anywhere doing anything. Is there a strike or something. Perhaps people are talking about it on TV. Maybe there is a reason to watch TV after all.

I planted my four cucumber plants in the corner of the growbed nearest the door. The door stays open for summer, so I trained the plants to grow outside.

Actually it doesnt really matter if the door was open or closed, they could be made to grow under the door with a little pruning.






Ive been using a small, soft artists paint brush to tickle all the flowers on my plants and do the bees work for them.

Every female flower Ive hand pollinated has produced a very tasty fruit, but none of those that I left for the bees have manage to set fruit.

There seems to be a lot of fruit. More than we could use, but they are finding good homes with friends and relatives.

One even went to a friendly relative.





120 Things in 20 years - Cucumber is still a funny word.

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Electronics Inverter repair

An inverter is a useful thing. It takes a stack of electrons from a 12 volt battery, and makes them look like the stuff that comes out of your wall, in my case at 240 volts.

How it does it is anyones guess.

In my case it doesnt actually do that. In fact all it does, is take a stack of electrons from a 12 volt battery, and turn them into the smell of melting value.

I couldnt understand why a perfectly interesting looking device should fail.

Here it is pictured after it was repaired, but it also looked pretty much like that when it didnt work, but now Ive given away the ending to this tale.

I fixed something - a first.

Note the total absence of left over bits - also a first.


Normally, the plan of attack is to open the device up, then put all the left over bits in the bin next to the now slightly more hollow, and slightly lighter device.

But this time was different.

To begin with I already knew why it was making all that melting plastic smell.

It was over heating.

The thing has a fan that is presumably meant to spin around a lot. At least I hope its meant to spin around a lot. If it isnt meant to, it does now.

Perhaps I just invented something....

To make an artificial breeze, simply take a normal fan, and make it spin.

So...

The point is the fan wasnt spinning. I have a few fans that Ive pulled out of junked computers, so I figured Id just replace it. I can solder a bit now as well, so I figured it should be easy.

There were even some obvious screws to undo.

I used the electric screwdriver my mum bought me as part of a present.

Thanks mums everywhere. It even has a torch built in and you can never own enough torches, even when you will never use them.

I always thought electric screwdrivers were a bit pointless, but it turns out they are excellent. Ive just never actually needed one before.

Unlike this project, my last had a few bits left over, and this was where the electric driver was really useful. It turns out there are a zillion screws inside stuff.

Pictured is all the leftover bits not including all the gears and shafts and all kinds of springs and stuff that might come in handy one day.

"What are the chances of any of it coming in handy?", I hear you ask.



But thats what they said about the 200 short lengths of black poly irrigation pipe I still have in the shed.

This thing used to be one of those fax, copier, printer combo devices that wasnt working any more. A friend was throwing it away, and thought my car was as good a place as any to throw it. It turns out there are some good motors and gears inside. I think there were five motors in there. Thats them on the right. Maybe six motors. Im planning on needing some motors, gears, and some shafts for making my solar tracking heliostat. There are also a stack of salvaged components used for tracking the placement of motors. The motor on the bottom right has a spoked arrangement that passes between a censor that detects light, and a light. The shadows cast by the spokes allow the system to track where the print head is. Or so Ive read.

So much to learn. So much time. If you just stop watching TV.

Anyway, Ive drifted off what pretends to be this posts topic...

Ok, so the fan wasnt spinning.

None of the fans I had would fit exactly, and would have to be trimmed (hacked and snapped with a pair of pliers) until they could be coaxed into duty.

I looked under that foil label and found the exposed end of the shaft.

I thought Id drop in some oil before I replaced the fan to see if thats all it needed. It was.




The black, and off white cylinder in the front with the brown stain at the base is a capacitor.

Im guessing it was also the source of the burnt plastic smell.

So that had to go. Luckily I have stacks of different capacitors from pulling apart some stuff, and had a duplicate.

A big component with large nicely spaced pins that proved easy to solder.

The thing went back together with no left over bits, and no spilt coffee added.

I realise this was a very simple repair, but it is something I would have sent to landfill before learning a bit of electronics over these last few months.

Here is a terrible photo of it charging a phone through its transformer, and maybe a bit of Bigfoots leg. Who can tell.



A 12v car battery supplying an inverter outputting 240v, then through the iPhone transformer to bring it back down to 5v.

Ok its slightly inefficient, but the phone was the smallest thing I could take to the car to test it.

I rate this a total success.

Which is nice.




120 Things in 20 years - Bringing me one step closer each day to being able to take down a Terminator. Or repair an inverter. I need to win a 3D printer.

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Epic adventurer Bread Every day fresh loaf for one

One of the things Id like to be able to enjoy on my planned epic River Murray adventure, is fresh bread.

I can make bread due to a previous enjoyed "Thing", but I cant make a small loaf for one on an open fire. Or at least I couldnt until today.

Every couple of years I get to hang out with two of the most interesting people I know, and at some point each time, we try to make bread on a camp fire.

It almost works a bit.

Sometimes.

Almost.

But not quite.

They tend toward atemptedbread made with chocolate, marshmallows, and M&Ms.

I tend toward trying to talk them out of it.

Sadly, and most enjoyably, neither approach seems to work better than the other.

In fact, I think the only loaf to have worked so far was an M&M/marshmallow concoction that tasted a bit like a bee rolled in flour might.

With this in mind I thought I should try a stack of different approaches to try to make a functional camp loaf for one.

I think I succeeded, and found a half decent way to make a reliable mini-loaf that can be easily made over an open fire.

I started with some salt.

Salt is really, really important. You really cant make bread without it. If you try, what you get is glue.

Im making a small loaf so Im using a small amount of salt.

Exactly one small amount.




I also added a small amount of sugar. Perhaps a 1/4 of a teaspoon.

I add some flour.

Around a third of a cup.

Next time I do this I will try a half a cup, because the loaf didnt quite fill my container.

And some water.

Also around a third of a cup.

And this much dry yeast.

I mixed it with the spoon handle in a way that I thought looked a bit like an automatic bread maker doing its thing.

Basically I gripped the spoon in my fist, and forced the dough around a small bowl in a circular manner until it seemed a bit like dough.







I went with a very wet dough that I would only mix with a stick (in this case a spoon handle) rather than needing to knead. Kneading is way too tricky in a world without kitchen benches, and everything made in a camp kitchen, needs to be made in a single bowl to be practical.

Stir it like crazy, and it will work a treat.

I covered it with some plastic wrap, and waited until it doubled in size.

"Doubled in size" is a thing you hear a lot when youre learning to make bread.









Its a very difficult thing to gauge. In my experence  most people (me included) tend to wait far too long, and end up having their loaf rise way too much. The best way to get the hang of this doubling business, is to leave the dough to rise in a tall thin container. Perhaps something like a spaghetti jar, or a measuring jug.  In a tall thin container, the only way for the dough to go is up, and as a result, its very easy to see when a loaf has doubled in size.

Trying to determine when a loaf has doubled in size in a normal bowl is very hit and miss.

I quite like hit and miss, but if you want a good loaf, use a tall thin container to check the loaf has risen to double its volume before you move to the next step.

Anyway...

After the correct amount of wait, the dough has risen what looks like only a tiny bit.

This tiny bit is really double its original volume.

A cup 1cm wider than a different cup has a MUCH greater volume.

Doubled in volume looks like "a bit wider, and a bit taller"

If you can notice the dough is bigger, its probably doubled.

Next, I rubbed butter all over the surfaces that the dough would come in contact with.

This cooking ... thing is something thats been in my family since I was a toddler.

I dont know what its called, but Im guessing the world knows it as a "waffle iron" or something like that.





Its normal use is to cook stuff between two slices of bread, buttered on the outside to stop sticking and burning.  Fillings include stuff with cheese, cheese, and more cheese.

I added the once risen dough, and searched around for a warm spot to set it for its final rise.

The best spot is always a place that is wasting heat. In my home thats the wireless router.

Its always just lurking there bleeding heat out into the universe.

There always seem to be a lot of wires in the proximity of wireless things. And there always seems to be a lot of wasted heat as well.

Useful heat.



Bread rising heat.

It looked like this when it had doubled in volume again.

Most of the visual doubling is due to my moving the camera closer, but really, this has risen a lot.

Although Its possible I got the photos around the wrong way.

Just remember that doubling in volume doesnt look like much has happened.



If it looks like a lot has happened, its probably too much.

So now its time to cook the thing.

It looked like this after a few minutes.

And this after a few more.













It sounded hollow when it was tapped, so I figured it was probably cooked.

It looked like this when it was cut in half, and it tasted just like bread.

A totally successful method of creating a mini loaf for one on an open fire.

The openness of my un-open fire is obviously something Ill need to deal with, but with a bit of practice, this system will definitely work in the real world on a real open fire.




Im calling this a total success, and over the next few months, Ill be perfecting this method to the point where I can rely on my ability to make a perfect(ish) fresh mini-loaf of bread every day with only minimal effort.

Next time we make camp bread, we might actually get to eat some.

Perhaps now, the haunting, ethereal voice I heard at the last camp, wafting over the bread/chocolate/marshmallow smoke filled site, and endlessly in my nightmares, ...

"Dont pay attention to [Bullwinkle]"
"He knows nothing"
"He doesnt care"

Can finally be put to rest.

The next time I share a camp-site with these young bakers will see real M&M, marshmallow, and chocolate bread, baked in the waffle irons they forced their parents to buy.

It will be a truly great day for bee flavoured bread.




120 Things in 20 years - Reinventing ancient technology again and again in spite

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Aquaponics Cucumber and baby rockmelon

The title gives it away a bit, but today I thought I found a new wacky variety of cucumber.

It looks like this.

In the background is a regular cucumber. In the foreground  is what I thought was a cucumber.

I picked it and ate a bit. It tasted like the opposite of a cucumber.

Anti-cucumber.

I didnt even realise anti-cucumber was a flavour until today.


But it is.

After I picked it and ate a bit, I figured I should look up my new variety of cucumber, and discovered its commonly called rock melon. Or perhaps "cantaloupe", dependant upon which oceans your country currently floats.

I probably got the "pick it, and then google it"  bits back to front. Next time I might look it up first.

So, on the downside, I wasted what looks like may have turned into an excellent fruit.

On the upside, I picked my first rock melon today!

I didnt even know I had them growing.

I remember planting them, but I dont remember seeing them grow.





120 Things in 20 years - Sometimes rocks taste better than rock melon, but cucumber always tastes pretty much like cucumber.
 

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