Last night, I learned that Scribus has some nice extra features like a font preview to help you select good fonts and a color wheel.
Of special interest (to me) is the color wheel. It’s like Agave for linux, but with an extra vision-defect preview. You can see what your chosen colors look like to people with varying degrees of color blindness. Awesome.
I kill plants.
I don’t mean to, but I didn’t inherit my grandmother’s green thumb gene. Seriously, though, I can’t even grow grass on my lawn. It’s all clovers.
On a positive note: I’m really good at growing clovers.
A little over a year and a half ago, I had seen video of Epcot’s hydroponic & aeroponic garden, I’d heard about aeroponics in Star Trek: Voyager, and had even read several blog posts about it. I was hooked obsessed.
So, with my wife’s blessing, I started my own hydroponic garden. I gathered whatever materials I could get for free and then ran over to Jolly Green Hydroponics off of Midway & 635.
The Original Setup:
Hydroponic Coffee Can, net pot, and air stone.
Super simple setup. There’s not much to it, other than this.
Sprouting through the rockwool.
It’s Alive!!! The roots were down through the bottom of the rockwool cube at this stage. I really should have removed the plastic wrapper on it. I believe I did finally remove it one day, but it was a mess.
Hydroponic Habanero Pepper after 2 months of growth.
The Habanero plant didn’t grow very fast. It took about 2 months to get it to this point. I think it needed more light than it was getting in the window and from the plant light. I also didn’t have the most optimal nutrient solution.
Really big leaves!
The leaves grew much larger and healthier than they ever got with the Habaneros I was growing in the dirt in 2008. A couple of them were about the size of my hand. Note: I didn’t get the nutrient mix quite right at first. I was experimenting with different things. One thing I learned is that Miracle Grow makes lots of bubbles and overflows the whole apparatus. At the same time, though, the roots were really happy with the oxygen from the bubbles.
New apparatus with a 5-gallon Home Depot bucket.
It also grew larger and produced more than the old fashioned (dirt grown) habaneros did. It grew so large that I had to buy a new bucket for it. Yes, I need to sweep under my plants. Thanks. It might grow better if I paint the bucket black, so less light gets inside.
The roots of the hydroponic habanero plant.
Lots of roots! Note: roots don’t like light… so don’t pull them up into the light and take flash photos!
The Final Product: Habanero Peppers!!!
Produce. It makes very yummy hot salsa. I freeze them so they last longer. It produces WAY more habaneros than I need. This is why they look fuzzy… It’s the condensation forming on the peppers because they’re so cold.
Check out my “Super Awesome Hot Salsa recipe.” It goes well with the habaneros.
Lessons Learned:
More Variables that need testing:
Please add North Pointe Baptist Church to your prayer list. There was an assault at their church today. The pastor was killed and the secretary is wounded.
[Please add North Pointe Baptist Church to your prayer list. There was an assault at their church today. The pastor was killed and the secretary is wounded.
]1
The pastor is in heaven rejoicing, but please pray for his family (and the church family) as they are grieving.
I lost my iPod touch last year.
So I had to use a paper planner since my todo lists, project lists, and miscellaneous info was on the iPod. I didn’t like the ones at Wal-Mart, Staples, or anywhere else, so I opted to make my own. I found an article on binding my own books and created a Week-at-a-glance planner template, printed it, and bound it. I make one every quarter and they all have 13 weeks in them.
Each quarter has a different cover. I really like making fun covers. It fits just right in the back cover of my notebook – an AMPAD Project notebook. I’m very particular about my paper.
Pro’s:
Con’s:
I found my iPod touch, so I don’t use this anymore, but if anybody else wants to use it, here you go!
Stats:
Matt’s Super Awesome GTD Planner Page
Matt’s Super Awesome GTD Planner Page by Matt Horne is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Life’s Tough and Then You Die – my struggle with our miscarriage
Carrying Super Rachel – An article I wrote for Rest Ministries about the logistics of caring for a Chronically Ill wife
How a Husband Can Encourage a Chronially Ill Wife – the Spiritual and Emotional Stuff – My second article on caring for a chronically ill wife, but about her mental / spiritual well being
31 Reasons to Study Biblical Hermeneutics
Church isn’t a Building. It’s a people.