Aaron Lint and I decided we should dress up for Halloween. Best costume idea... ever.

After only getting 1 of 9 Naga Jolokias germinating, I've decided to start a second batch going this morning. They are being started in the same manner as the sweet peppers which had a better germination rate.

I've purchased a new light that appears to be working well. It's a 2 foot shop light that has 2 17W bulbs in it. Meijer had them on clearance for $4 so it was hard to pass up. We'll see if these lights help out.

Significant growth over the weekend:

Here's a picture of some developing fruit

Hand-pollination:


Watching the development of fruit:


Up close and personal:

Front row seats:

We use Twiki at work and I frequently use PolyCaps class names that turn out to be wikiwords. Too often I find my self having to write:

!PolyCaps

Granted WikiWords are a fun feature but sometimes I get really tired of all the PolyCaps? links that surface.

To turn off auto linking of WikiWords in a TWiki topic try:

<!--
   * Set NOAUTOLINK = on
-->

More pepper goodness:

Good news, we've got some flower buds developing.

The Naga Jolokias have been planted for nearly two weeks now and no sign of germination, however germination may take up to five weeks for Capscicum Chinense. More videos to come...

The ultimate goal is to grow at least one Naga Jolokia at the office. What you see above is an initial proof of concept from 09/01/2007 demonstrating that we can at least germinate sweet peppers indoors. The sweet pepper plants are quite a bit larger now.



I'll discuss more later.

I just found out today that my gallery was the source of comment graffiti. Lots of comments used to no doubt boost a page rank of some site. Most of them had words interesting words. Regardless, I tried to delete them using gallery2's interface, but there were so many it was time consuming.. so I whipped up an SQL delete query. It's pretty safe as long as noone comments with urls:


delete from g2_comment WHERE g_comment ~ '.*url.*';


TODO: post pic of positive pregnancy test.

Like many of my co-workers, I jumped on the Wii bandwagon. I've been able to enjoy many of the classic games again. Last night I started playing Kirby's Adventure when I noticed that Kirby started moving for me without any intervention. He kept squatting and moving right. I could move the D-Pad or analog stick on the classic controller or the Wii Remote up and left and that would keep him still. Let's try Legend of Zelda, surely the problem isn't across all games. Yikes! Link is moving down and to the right as well!

Batteries, surely this must be it. Even though the Wii home menu showed full power I figured maybe this would fix it. I couldn't figure out why a controller would drift on low batteries, but maybe this would help. Nope.

Restart the game. Maybe because the virtual console allows it to suspend, the down-right got locked in to the emulator. Nope, restarting the game changed nothing.

Resync the controller! Yes, maybe? Now Link is moving only to the right! Uh resync again. Now he's moving down and to the right again. Yarr.

Check the forums. Aha, someone else has had a similar problem, but didn't post a solution.

What then what is the problem?

My Wii is nestled between the 5-disc DVD changer and has about 5 inches of clearance to the edge of the entertainment cabinet. My co-worker Dan Noland let me borrow a gamecube controller. When I packed the controller away last night, the gamecube controller's analog stick was pressed down and to the right. The gamecube controller, classic controller, and Wii Remote were all fighting for Player 1. When I resynced the Wii Remote that inadvertently mildly bumped the controller. When I resynced the Wii Remote again that bumped the stick a bit more.

Lesson learned. Keep the gamecube controller unplugged, or keep the gamecube controller from leaning against the analog stick!

Rick writes:

This is AWESOME!! The power that is Google has brought this page and I together. Do you think a USB -> Serial adapter would work on the same code?

As long as the adapter pinouts supply enough voltage to switch the relay (and current for that matter) it should "Just Work TM".

Paul writes:

Hi Joe
Have just come accross your page on how to control a relay via the serial port. I am doing a small project that controls a relay using 3rd party software but looking at your solution I would love to let the computer control it. All i have to do is turn on the relay for 1 sec every time a program is run. I have looked at your code but cant understand it as I have very little experience. My software allows me to run .exe files so it would be neat if it your code could be compiled into an .exe file, can this be done.
Many Thanks
Paul

Pending his response I'll probably be posting a binary soon that toggles the serial port on/off for a given amount of time.

Sebastian just demonstrated proficiency in using a mouse. Not bad for a two year old.

I'm back at work finally. I'll expand days 7-13 when I'm not at work. It's good to be back, and there is still much to do. That being said... back to work!

Tuesday - Unpack and Rest

Monday - Drive back to NC

Sunday - Visit with Christine, and head back to Charlotte, Celebrate New Year's Eve with Stephanie & Stephen and friends.

Saturday - What should have been 6 hours of travel became 12 hours

Friday - Travelling to FL and Bowl game

Thursday - Travelling to SC

Wednesday - Taking care of the kiddos

Tuesday -

Monday - Christmas morning started with Sebastian at 6am on the dime. Since all the presents had been open prior to the day intended, it looked like it might be a slow day. As it turns out, it was very eventful.

At 6:10am, Sebastian and I went downstairs to begin breakfast. He was hungry. A bowl of frosted mini-wheats later, Nana came downstairs to begin preparation of the annual Biscuits and Gravy, and Toast and Creamed Eggs. Sebastian enjoyed second breakfast and soon the whole house was active preparing for 9am mass.

The rest of the day was consumed with games and eating.