Some other good news though is that the jalapeño pepper plants that all died have come back to life. I went in to check on the plants one day and the apparently dead plants had tiny leaves growing out of them so it seems they were just sleeping. I am going to keep track of their grown and see if this little experiment can’t get me a tiny jalapeño pepper too.

More to come (with pics) once I have something else to report.

Next time i’ll buy actual hydroponic nutrients and do it the “right” way but this was a good learning experience and a fun experiment.

Also! I have launched a new site that will be specifically for the Bent River Pinball League. I am still working on design and since I have been swamped the past couple of weeks it has to wait. Anyhow, you can CLICK HERE to see the new Bent River Pinball site.

Heelys!
Our first project is for a new sport gaining popularity all over the US - Heelys (or Heeling I guess). Aaron is putting together a Santa Cruz Team and wants to build not only a site to support his local teams but to create a massive community involving anything and everything Heely related.

I would post more about the projects but I don’t want to go giving away all of Aaron’s secrets just yet. I will keep the site updated with them as we start to promote some of the sites currently in development to beta.

Thank You to Aaron and Sumerly
For having me out, taking me around, and most of all for giving me the chance to get in and work with you on this great set of projects. You two have been awesome to work with so far and I look forward to a very prosperous relationship for us all.

My materials consist of:

• One large rubbermade tub with the top 2/3 cut off. This will be filled with water.
• Two smaller rubbermaid tubs that fit inside the larger tub with some room to spare. These tubs have 12 holes drilled in the bottoms of them to allow the water inside.
• One small fish tank air pump, tubing, and air stone
• One bag of Perlite for use as a growth medium.
• One jug of fish emulsion fertilizer
• One package cherry tomato seeds
• One package jalapeño pepper seeds

The assembled hydroponic setup looks like this:

Not pictured is the aquarium air pump which is off to the side but I assure you it’s there.

Total cost to setup: right around $30. I say right around $30 because I didn’t keep very good track and I already had some of the parts. It should be about $30 to setup from scratch though.

Progress

The seeds were planted in the perlite on 4/4/2007. I leave the air pump on 24/7 and change the water every other week or so. I should do it more I am told but I’m rather lazy. I pour a couple tablespoons of fertilizer in every time I change the water but otherwise I leave it alone.

4/16/2007

By now the Cherry Tomatoes have sprouted but there is no sign of the peppers. I was getting worried but the peppers came up in force just a few days later.

Here is a picture of the tomatoes so far. I didn’t include one of the peppers because it looks exactly like it did on planting day.

5/16/2007

I have some kind of a severe algae problem going on here it seems. I am going to try adding some algae killer that I have for my fish tank and see what happens. Stupid Algae.

As you can see the plants have grown quite a lot in the past month and appear to be doing well (aside from the algae). The pictures below are tomatoes above and peppers below that. Click the images for giant sized ones.

I will post more progress and pictures in the coming days. Any feedback, tips, questions, or suggestions will be appreciated.

Moral of the story: Don’t leave your heating pad on all the time no matter how cold your lizard is.

Click the images below for GIANT! versions

]]> http://www.noahhinrichs.com/heating-pads-are-dangerous/feed/ http://www.noahhinrichs.com/baby-vs-cobra-round-1/ http://www.noahhinrichs.com/baby-vs-cobra-round-1/#comments Thu, 10 May 2007 19:18:52 +0000 Noah http://www.noahhinrichs.com/baby-vs-cobra-round-1/ These parents are a few bricks shy of a load I think.

And you thought your parents were hard on you when you pissed them off…

Ball Pressure applied pressure to the league leading Badger Berserkers beating the first place team13-10. There were several “acts of God” where the “Pirate of the Caribbean” machine went into the 4 multiple ball mode which benefited the Ball Pressure group. The Berserkers were down 11-6 going into the final round, but finished strong to save face and come out smelling like a rose.

The final night of the spring Bent River Pin Ball League will be on Sunday, April 29 @ 6 pm. The fall session will start after Labor Day.

Bent River Pin Ball League Standings-4/15/2007

1) BADGE BERSERKERS 68 POINTS

2) BALL PRESSURE 56 POINTS

3) ONE GOOD BALL 53 POINTS

4) FLIP N BALLS 48 POINTS

FINAL LEAGUE NIGHT: APRIL 15 @ 6 PM

WEEK 6: MACHINE 1: 4X1 MACHINE 2: 2X3

The 2nd place Ball Pressure took on Flip N Balls in a tightly contested battle. The team members from Flip N Balls picked up the tempo in the 4th round of competition to oust Ball Pressure 11-7 points. The super sub Aaron, closed very hard with successful flippin of those steel balls to seal the victory for the Flip N Balls.

The next night of competition is April 15. Make sure your taxes are done. The matches for the next night of pin ball action is”

Machine #1- 4×2 Machine #2-1×3

Remember “it takes steel balls to play pin ball”.

League Standings-4/1/2007

1) BADGE BERSEKERS 58 POINTS

2) BALL PRESSURE 43 POINTS

3) ONE GOOD BALL 42 POINTS

4) FLIP N BALLS 41 POINTS

UPCOMING TOURNAMENT: 2nd Weekend in November-”Kaaba Shriners Classic”

The Tournament will start at noon. 3 Divisions including adult Major, Minor, and Senior (55 and up). Trophies will be awarded for the top 4 positions in each division. Entry fee $50 ($25 for player and $25 from business sponsor) All competitors will receive a tournament T-Shirt. More details to follow in upcoming Bent River Pin Ball League Updates.

The final results for the month are:

Page Impressions: 164
Clicks: 46
CTR: 28.05%
Earnings: $43.97

The sites were starting to gain some decent ranks for some higher paying keywords which is how I was $10 ahead of last month with half the clicks. The sites were only live for the first week or so of the month so this month would have followed the trend of the site’s income doubling every month since the beginning of the experiment.

I will chronicle the next experiment I do as well.

You need to pass it in a list of keywords (or phrases) and a list of “mix-in” words that it can use to build new phrases. It will default to a maximum of 5 word long phrases but you can override that by passing in another number.

<cfcomponent output="no">
	<cffunction name="init" access="public" returntype="string">
		<cfargument name="Keys" type="string" required="yes">
		<cfargument name="MixerList" type="string" required="yes">
                <cfargument name="NumberToGen" type="numeric" required="yes">
		<cfargument name="MaxWordsInKey" default="5" required="yes" type="numeric">
 
		<cfset var NewKeys = "">
 
			<cfscript>
				//we want to use the original list first then mix new words in
				origLen = Listlen(arguments.keys);
				numToMix = 1; //start with one mix word then we will add more and more as needed
				maxToMix = arguments.MaxWordsInKey; //this will tell the script how many mix words to use max.  afterwards it will start splitting up the original words
				counter = 1; //start the counter for iterations
				listPos = 1;
 
				for(i = 1; i LTE arguments.NumberToGen; i = i + 1) {
					useKey = ListGetAt(Keys,listPos);
					MixedKey = MixKey(numToMix,arguments.MixerList,useKey);
						if (NOT ListFindNoCase(NewKeys,MixedKey)){
							NewKeys = ListAppend(NewKeys,MixedKey);
							counter = counter + 1;
						}
 
					//end of the list?
					if (listPos EQ origLen){
						listPos = 1; //start again at the beginning
 
						if (numToMix LT maxToMix){
							numToMix = numToMix + 1;
						}
					}
					listpos = listpos + 1;	
				} 
			</cfscript>
 
		<cfreturn NewKeys>
	</cffunction>
 
	<!--- this method will get all keywords in a given category --->
	<cffunction name="MixKey" returntype="string">
		<cfargument name="Mixers" type="numeric" default="1" required="yes">
		<cfargument name="MixList" required="yes" type="string">
		<cfargument name="keyToMix" required="yes">
		<cfargument name="SplitKeys" required="no" default="0">
 
		<cfset var Append = RandRange(0,1)>
		<cfset var MixIn = "">
 
		<cfloop from="1" to="#arguments.mixers#" index="x">
			<cfset MixIn = MixIn & ' ' & ListGetAt(arguments.mixList,RandRange(1,ListLen(arguments.mixList)))>
		</cfloop>
 
		<cfif Append>
			<cfset returnThis = MixIn & ' ' & arguments.keyToMix >
		<cfelse>
			<cfset returnThis =  arguments.keyToMix & ' ' & MixIn>
		</cfif>
		<!--- trim just in case --->
		<cfset ReturnThis = TRIM(returnThis)>
 
		<cfreturn returnThis>
 
	</cffunction>
</cfcomponent>

Enjoy.