Chris Gulker: Garden

Thu, 26 Feb 2004 16:48:39 GMT

A President Bush knowledge navigator: a Java applet written by Jeffrey Ventrella. Decidedly one-sided :-)...

Thu, 24 Jul 2003 21:54:55 GMT

"Dotcom Garden" blogged by Providence Journal's Sheila Lennon. Thank you, Sheila... and you, too, Google Alert...

Tue, 17 Jun 2003 17:22:25 GMT

Full wireless mode: we're blogging live from the gulker.com patio this A.M. thanks to our Wi Fi network. It's a pleasant morning, and I've got a mix of chores in garden, patio and cyberspace. Note faithful helper, Cassie, the Australian Shepherd. The coffee pot is a bit of a walk... but we'll adjust...

Mon, 16 Jun 2003 16:00:05 GMT

AlwaysOn Network is linking to this 'blog. Just noticed... we're flattered...

Wed, 30 Apr 2003 19:31:34 GMT

"Dotcom Garden" update: since Bernie mentions it, Dotcom Garden is doing fine, making the winter to spring transition. We are currently eating spring onions (very sweet and tender), chard and herbs (rosemary, cilantro, thyme), our 'bistro lettuce' (4 kinds of leaf lettuce) patch is just about ready, and the tomatoes have their first blossoms. Updated the garden's home page just for fun... garden cam needs fixing, BTW...

Tue, 29 Apr 2003 20:49:35 GMT

Bernie's Back: thank goodness... and he says his garden is greener than mine... I think the RSS feed and archive links need work... but good to have Bernie back on the air...

Tue, 08 Oct 2002 04:21:44 GMT

Two firsts this weekend: I planted tulips and daffodils (spouse claims she's wanted them for 22 years, but I don't remember any 'lobbying') and I put winter vegetables - peas, lettuce and onions - into "dotcom garden". Winter vegetables grow slowly thanks to short days: it's a different feel altogether from the bursting-with-life spring and summer garden...

Fri, 19 Jul 2002 18:58:46 GMT

'Dotcom Garden' has been feeding us for over a month now. Snow peas, bush beans (purple, green and yellow), tomaoes (including heirloom), lemon cucumbers, beats, chard, peppers and eggplant. It's been wonderful to come home, step into the garden and pick dinner.

Tue, 04 Jun 2002 05:47:38 GMT

Cached photo of the garden from April 6.. was sitting on a page I don't often look at, which supposedly shows the current garden cam. So now it's on the virtual serentity page.. a before and after, with haiku... We need to get the haiku thing fixed to offer a new haiku every page laod... and maybe a time lapse movie of the garden growing...

Mon, 03 Jun 2002 04:18:39 GMT

Prospective new perspective for garden cam... you take your basic 14-foot pole, figure out how to anchor it, figure out how to get the serial port cam on the top, protected from weather, and where to position the computer so the cord reaches... This snap was done with a digital camera, hail-mary style while I perched atop a saw-horse. Piece 'o cake, sort of...

Mon, 03 Jun 2002 00:51:50 GMT

New "Dotcom Garden" cam uses the trial version of CoolCam 2.3. So far much better: Oculus caused the PowerBook 2400 to immediately begin issuing Finder 'out of memory' errors (again, not a standard machine at all), and wouldn't go very long without bombing, freezing the machine or uploading 0 KB files (that drive IE browsers nuts...). Little trick config'ing the FTP, but otherwise OK for the moment...If it's stable, the next trick will be putting the cam on a 14-foot pole for an 'aerial' view...

Sun, 02 Jun 2002 23:51:16 GMT

"Dotcom Garden" view shows how nicely it's grown up. Spent time removing my leaf-miner infestation (beets and chard), putting up supports for tomatoes and the usual maintenance. Really determined to fix garden.cam: Oculus just won't stay up for more than a few hours on the (admittedly) non-standard PowerBook 2400 that runs it (it has an early NewerTech G3 card in it). So, I'm trying to get CoolCam to run... but it's unhappy with a missing QuickTime Lib... if I can find a reliable software package, I think I'll try to move the cam to a more interesting, possibly aerial, view. Sigh, so much to do...

Sat, 01 Jun 2002 00:50:00 GMT

"Dotcom Garden" makes progress: lots of budding eggplants, peppers, tomatoes, beets... we have a problem with something eating the chard, and I can't keep the snails out of the Bibb lettuce, but AOK otherwise. Herbs have been tough this year for some reason...

Fri, 17 May 2002 22:06:49 GMT

Handwatering: while "Dotcom garden" was set up with pipes and valves for automated drip watering, I'm having a ball watering by hand. This morning a butterfly visited while I watered, and I often see dragonflies among other wildlife. Standing in the garden is calming: a great place to reflect...

Mon, 13 May 2002 23:05:26 GMT

Baby tomatoes (yay!) are starting to show up all over "Dotcom Garden"'s early, hybrid tomato vines. The heirloom tomatoes are growing much more slowly. If you've never eaten a fresh, ripe tomato from a garden, you've never tasted a real tomato... grocery store tomatoes are never ripe

Sat, 04 May 2002 23:20:55 GMT

Life is good: it's a beautiful day in Menlo Park... Linda and I ran 6 miles and then she headed off to the Giants game while I planted Impatiens in the patio containers. Now I'm sitting in "Dotcom Garden" with my wireless laptop, dog and cat snoozing in the sun by my side, looking over this pleasant green corner. A very pretty dragon fly has taken up residence - he (she?) is irridescent blue, and is frequently seen fliting from plant to plant. Local public radio station KPFA is playing '23 hours of James Brown music', in honor of the singer's 69th birthday. I've been watching a bird build a nest on top of one of the outdoor speakers - drawn by the funk of the Godfather of soul? I could sit here all day...

Fri, 03 May 2002 23:56:41 GMT

"Dotcom Garden" is growing up nicely. We are eating lettuce, radishes and herbs from it almost nightly, and the chard is almost ready. Spouse Linda was my guest for Dotcom Garden Luncheon today...

Fri, 26 Apr 2002 21:06:39 GMT

No "Dotcom Garden" Lunch today: instead, we're having dotcom dinner with friends Barb Slaton and Jeff Baruh. We'll be publishing a schedule of upcoming dotcom garden lunches in a bit...

Wed, 24 Apr 2002 21:30:12 GMT

"Dotcom Garden" update: we had our first full salad from the garden lettuce patch, and bunches of baby radishes have made very nice hostess/host presents for a couple weeks now. There are flowers on the early tomatoes, and our raised-from-seed heirloom tomatoes, beans and beets are all up and doing nicely. Tomatoes, beets, kholrabi in a month I think...

Sat, 13 Apr 2002 22:36:42 GMT

Produce from "Dotcom Garden", baby radishes destined for Kevin and Pam McKean, whom we'll be dining with this PM. Garden is starting to produce...

Sat, 13 Apr 2002 00:33:08 GMT

New fence in "Dotcom Garden" looks very nice. The style is called board-on-board with a piano-key top...

Fri, 12 Apr 2002 17:24:19 GMT

Dotcom Garden gets a new fence this morning... I moved the Garden Cam so we can watch the progress as Fernando, Pedro and the crew from AllFence in Redwood City put up a new redwood fence. Father-in-law John Hubbard, neighbor Al Williams and I built the old fence, which lasted 12 years. These guys are faster, and the fence looks a lot more substantial...

Fri, 12 Apr 2002 01:02:25 GMT

"Dotcom Garden" Cam is fixed, I hope. Previously, a PowerBook 2400 tried to save a picture every few minutes over a Wi-Fi connection via AppleShare IP. It's pretty far from the AirPort 802.11 hub, and the QuickCam software would stall with a modal error dialog box when it lost the Wi-Fi connection, which it did virtually hourly as people and pets walked around the house. The new setup uses Oculus software that uses FTP ... if it can't log on because of a link problem, it just waits and tries again. So far, so good. The Virtual Serenity page is back...

Wed, 10 Apr 2002 23:14:10 GMT

'Telemetry' upgrade for "Dotcom Garden": the clock I ordered, a twin to the inexpensive thermometer, arrived yesterday.. so now garden cam could give you a quick and dirty basic weather report. If the cam was working more reliably, and if it were closer to the clock and thermometer...

Tue, 09 Apr 2002 21:14:04 GMT

Beans went in to Dotcom Garden this morning. Yellow, purple and green bush beans from Renee's Seeds...