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probe prototype Sunday, June 16 2013
Not unexpectedly, I had a hangover for much of the day. It certainly helped that I walked the dogs in the forest and drank a french press of coffee all by myself, but later in the day I felt pretty bad at times. This time, though, instead of toughing it out, I'd make myself a drink every time I was feeling especially bad. It's amazing what that can do for a hangover. In the end I only needed three drinks to have a pain-free evening.
After much fiddling with the settings, I managed to get the Raspberry Pi taking pictures every ten minutes and storing them locally on its SD card. I then set it up with a high quality webcam in the garlic patch to produce a timelapse sequence of beans coming out of the ground and growing. I know it's a garlic patch, but not all the garlic bulbs have done all the well, and so I've planted a few beans and a sunflower in its northeast corner. To protect the Raspberry Pi and the camera, I have them sheltered beneath an overturned five gallon bucket on a stake (something I would not have attempted had I used a laptop instead of a Raspberry Pi). And to power everything, I've run a 120 volt extension cord across the driveway. The Raspberry Pi communicates with the household network via WiFi, so I can SSH into it and do all the usual Linux maintenance things, including the installation of software. I love communicating with distant devices in a way that resembles communication to rovers on the surface of Mars.
I also did some more work on the new firewood cart, adding some steel to better hold the wood and stiffen the frame and also cutting off metal that was catching on things. Evidently I'd failed to take adequate precautions against the welding arc, because later when I went to take a bath, I saw that I had something resembling a sunburn around my neck in the places that hadn't been shielded by either my welding mask or my teeshirt.
Gretchen called from the road on her way back from the City and told me to make dinner. So I started a pot of rice, gathered a salad from the garden, and heated various pre-made Indian foods from Trader Joe's in the microwave. In the end it wasn't a bad meal.
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