Greg Nilsen

Building A Raised Bed Garden

Greg Nilsen — Sat, 12 May 2012 04:19:16 +0000

Since we purchased our first home several years ago, my wife has had an interest in starting a garden. However, we don’t have a very large plot of land, and much of it was covered with trees and shrubs. I had wanted to take out a bunch of the trees and shrubs, but it had been low on our priority list of projects around the house.

So, last year we tried a community garden. It started out well, but combination of it’s distance from the house, the fact that we are a one car family, and having two very young boys to take care of lead to it’s unseemly demise.

This year, we had to have some work done to the house that resulted in the removal of my targeted trees and shrubs, and we now had someplace reasonable to have a garden, with the convenience of it being at home. After looking into garden options, my wife settled on a raised bed garden for our yard, and gave me my assignment.

I started with four 4″x1″x16′ cedar boards that I had the lumber yard cut down to 8′ lengths (to fit in my sedan) to build the frame of our foot deep 4′x8′ garden. The cedar is good for outdoor projects here in Pennsylvania, as it is naturally moisture and rot resistant, and won’t seep anything into the soil.

I then built a simple staggered 4′x8′ box out of them, using stair brackets to secure the corners:

I then leveled the ground where we were going to put the garden (with a little help):

Next, I put down some chicken wire to help keep out the diggers…

…and then to protect from above, I secured 1″ PVC pipe segments on the inside of the garden, which I would be sliding a 1/2″ pipe frame for holding bird netting and other covers.

Next, on top of the chicken wire, I added layers of pea gravel and sand to help with drainage from the garden:

With the base complete, it was time to get filling the garden. We used Mel’s Mix for Square Foot Gardening, which was equal parts Peat Moss, Vermiculite and Compost. I ended up mixing it in three batches to fill the garden, and here’s one of them:

After everything was filled in, it was time to build the frame for the netting/covers. As I mentioned, I just got 1/2″ PVC pipe segments and the connectors, and assembled them. I did not glue the pipes in case changes were needed down the line, and they didn’t appear to need to be that secured. (Oh, and my son was insistent that we added flamingos to the garden at this point as well.)

Since my wife wanted to try the Square Foot Gardening method, she needed her plots laid out, which I made with hooks and twine. This worked out well as the hooks could also be used to help secure the netting.

And, finally, the garden was ready for planting, which I let my wife take care of:

All-in-all, it was a fun project that became much more than “build a box for some dirt”, and we added most of the bells and whistles, as we are hoping to use it for many years.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to post an update in a few months with some of our bounty!

No related posts.

GitHub + Node.js + turntable.fm = Funbot!

Greg Nilsen — Tue, 01 May 2012 03:48:22 +0000

About 7 months ago, I stumbled across turntable.fm, a social music website where people can take turns DJing in a round-robin format, and people can share their music among listeners. After bouncing between several rooms, I had settled into the All Music Mix room, which was being governed by a bot that had been created by user “dj mikeb”. This bot uses an API to collect data on the room and enforce play limits and other rules within the room (which I found to be much of the appeal of the room). As I saw other bots pop up in this and other rooms, I began to look into how to create my own.

I ended up chatting with another user “PodcastMike”, who had created a bot of his own that watched the same room and gathered data, and he pointed me to a GitHub repository (https://github.com/MikeWills/ttModeratorBot) as a place to start off. Well, the only problem I ran into was that this ran on Node.js, which I had never used before. I had heard of it a few times among those I follow on twitter, but I really knew nothing about it.

In addition, I’m almost embarrassed to say, I had never used Git and GitHub to grab a project, let alone fork and update it. However, after some experimentation and trial and error, I was able to get the project onto my computer and found that Node.js was pretty easy to work with (at least when having experience with JavaScript and sample code to work with). While the bot I had downloaded had some of the functionality I wanted, there were a number of changes I wanted to make.

A few days later, Funbot was born (he’s the little redhead in the spotlight). I had tweaked the database setup to allow for remote databases, adjusted the database table structure to capture more of the data I wanted to gather, added the ability to tweed to it’s @TTFunbot, and made some other DJ management changes to fit the room I wanted to run. And rather than keep it to myself, I forked the MikeWills project, which resulted in my own version (https://github.com/GuruGreg/ttModeratorBot), which is also the first GitHub repository to my name.

If you’re interested in checking out Funbot in action, or just spinning some good tunes, you can head on over to Funbot’s Musical Wonderland (I may or may not be there, but Funbot will keep you company).

And stay tuned as well, because I’ve got a lot more planned for the little guy!

My Top 5 2012 Grammys Moments

Greg Nilsen — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 23:06:05 +0000

1. Putting my kids to bed instead of watching the Grammys.
2. Eating Sprees instead of watching the Grammys.
3. Watching “Worst Cooks In America” instead of watching the Grammys.
4. Cleaning the kitched instead of watching the Grammys.
5. Picking up the living room instead of watching the Grammys.

From my experience, the most you can get out of the Grammys is by doing something else besides watching the Grammys. It’s the Egg McMuffin of awards shows, which means I have not intrest in consuming it at all.

Kicking Off A New Year In 2012

Greg Nilsen — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 01:54:23 +0000

Well, a new year is upon us, and it’s time to look at what we want to accomplish in the coming year…

That’s right, the dreaded NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS!

I’m keeping mine pretty simple this year, though that doesn’t mean that they won’t be challenging:

#1 – Lose 30 Pounds

Yes, I spend a lot of time between work and taking care of my boys, but in the past few years I definitely haven’t taken care of myself the way I need to. It’s time to change my routines and diet, and take care of myself for the long term. It’s going to be a lot of hard work, but it’s a change I need to make.

I weighed myself this morning, and I checked in at 267.6 after the holidays, so I’m shooting for 237 by the end of 2012. I’ll be posting updates throughout the year, both to share what has and hasn’t been working, and to help hold myself accountable to my goals.

#2 – Run Four 5k Races

In 2010, I started running over the summer and managed to complete two 5k races by the end of the year. Then in 2011, I didn’t stick with that effort, instead dedicating my time to our boys. In 2012, I want to get back to that level of training and getting that sense of accomplishment from finishing the races.

That’s going to be it for this year. There will still be plenty of my time focusing on my boys and spending quality time with my wife, but this year I need to make sure I take care of myself as well.

My First Gluten-Free Cupcake

Greg Nilsen — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 13:42:36 +0000

Last night I made my first gluten-free cupcakes. It had never been a thought of mine to try before, because nobody in my family has a gluten allergy. However, I wanted to take cupcakes to daycare for my son’s first birthday, so I wanted to be as as possible. Hence was born my gluten-free maple banana cupcake:

I made mini cupcakes for the kids and topped them with a brown sugar frosting tinted red and topped with yellow sugar and a fruit candy dot.

They tasted good to me, though I did notice the flavors of the gluten-free flour, and they baked just fine. We’ll see the reaction from the kids when my wife picks them up tonight!

5 Reasons Google Music Drives Me Crazy…But I Use It Anyway

Greg Nilsen — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 01:34:53 +0000

While Google Music Beta debuted almost six months ago, I played around with it initially and didn’t find many practical uses for it. I had all of my music locally at home, had a solid MP3 player, and my employer didn’t allow for streaming video or music on a regular basis. So, I pushed it over in a corner and left it alone for a while.

Recently, some of that changed. My MP3 player died on me, and I changed jobs, and my new employer does allow for streaming music. So, I started checking out several online services, which I will write about later. At the moment I have come back to Google Music, mostly because it gives me access to my entire music collection.

That said, there are some things that drive me crazy when I try to use it:

A Lack of Song Information – You’d think that a company like Google, whose entire business depends on amassing information, would provide you with plenty of song information. Nope. You just get Song Name, Artist, Album, Time, Plays (aka Playcount), and Rating. That’s it! And Time is almost useless from my perspective. In a large collection, that’s often not enough to satisfy picky listeners like myself. If I want to groove to “90′s Alternative” music, I’ve got to dig through my library and add the songs to playlists individually. That really doesn’t work for me. At minimum, I’d expect the following fields to be included in order to sufficiently manage my collection:
- Year
- Genre
- Track Number
- Date/Time Added
- Date/Time Last Played
No Way To Exchange Playlists – If I have local playlists set up on my computer, there’s no way to import them into Google Music, or vice versa. So, this means that if I want to recreate them, I have to spend my time doing it manually. Is it that hard to import or export *.m3u playlists.
A Lack of “Smart” Playlists – Part of this comes from the limited song information that is available on Google Music, but even with the information available, there is no way to create “smart” playlists where my music library can basically be searched for matching criteria (again, search is one of Google’s key businesses, so this should be relatively easy to implement). So, even with the information available, I can’t create a playlist like “Top 10 Most Played”, “Unplayed Songs” or “Songs In Playlists A,B and C” to listen to. As someone who likes to keep things mixed up (and I do thanks to the features of MediaMonkey on my local computer) and cycle through my collection on a regular basis, these kinds of playlists are a key part of my listening experience.
Insufficient Rating System – “Thumbs Up” and “Thumbs Down” is pretty much the bare minimum for a ratings system. I’m not even sure that the “Thumbs Down” makes sense…would I really have the song in my collection if I didn’t like it? It’s not like it’s playing me new music and trying to gauge my tastes, like Pandora. I already own the song and had to upload my music, and if I didn’t like it I would have deleted it. Anyway, the bare minimum I’d expect to see would be a 5-star system, so I can differentiate between my favorite songs and ones I like but are not at the same tier. Even better would be the old Yahoo! Music system where for each song I could give the Song, Album and Artist a seperate 5-star rating. That way, I could indicate if I liked a song but thought the rest of the album was garbage. It’s simply more infomation that can be used to better create “smart” playlists or Instant Mixes and a better listening experience.
A Lack of Queuing – This is a Spotify feature that I’d love to see carried over to Google Music, but since you can’t even see the upcoming song order when you’re on suffle in Google Music, there’s no way you can simulate it either. Basically, sometimes you’re listening to a playlist or shuffle, but you just want to listen to one or two songs that don’t fit that playlist, but you’d like to go back to your playlist. Well, it would be great if you could queue up songs like this in Google Music instead of having to completely switch playlists and go back each time you wanted to do this, and only on an individual song basis.

Yes, there are some great things about having your entire music collection available online to listen to as needed on other computers or your cell phone, but that doesn’t mean that the player website needs to be crippled the way it currently is. If Google could add these features to Google Music, they may actually have the killer app that music players like myself are looking for. Until then, it’s little more than a remote storage drive with a basic media player built in.

Pink For October – 2011

Greg Nilsen — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 02:25:46 +0000

Once again, I’ve made my blog these pink-based for October to bring attention to Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

As you probably know, this is still a personal thing for me, and I want to show our support for all those struggling with this impediment in their lives.

Please support the efforts of the Komen Foundation to help make a brighter future for all those who have to deal with breast cancer in their lives.

Thank you.

Album Review: Hard-Fi – Killer Sounds

Greg Nilsen — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 01:43:26 +0000

I’ve had my finger on the pulse of the English band Hard-Fi for several years now, having stumbled across Cash Machine from 2005′s “Stars Of CCTV“, and the entire album quickly became part of my regular playlists. The combination of great beats and insightful/moving lyrics made it a great album from front to back.

Their sophomore effort, 2007′s “Once Upon A Time In The West“, was a minor disappointment, but still a very good album. However, it just didn’t have the same staying power with fewer catchy beats and strayed a bit from the counterculture vibes of their debut album in favor of a more introspective approach overall.

Last month, after 4 seemingly very long years, Hard-Fi has returned with “Killer Sounds“, which is a very welcome return to the roots that made them a hit in my book, and is one of the best complete albums I’ve come across in the last few years. From the tone-setting Good For Nothing (“Bueno Para Nada!”), the album gets off to a running start, and doesn’t stop until you get through the final title track, Killer Sounds. In between, you get flares of different cultural influences that the album cover suggests, from the Spanish tossed into Good For Nothing to the Asian influences in Feel Good to the European electronica undertones of Excitement, Love Song and Sweat. And let’s not leave out Fire In The House, the second single released off the album, which is a great, powerful and passionate song that should get the blood flowing.

This is an album which I want to put on and just set it to repeat, which is a rather rare occurrence for me to say. Not many artists will give you this kind of bang for your buck. So, if you enjoy alternative or indie rock music, then you’ll want to do yourself a big favor and pick up a copy of Killer Sounds (since it isn’t even avaliable on Amazon MP3s in the U.S. yet).

Greg’s Rating:

9/10

01189998819991197253

Greg Nilsen — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 03:46:25 +0000

If this doesn’t make you laugh at least once:

Then either you haven’t watched The IT Crowd (for shame), missed this clip, or have absolutely no sense of humor.

You’re welcome!

If You Thought Lady Gaga Was Out There…

Greg Nilsen — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 01:28:22 +0000

Here is something that she is likely to never top:

Seriously??? If I were to assemble 254 random pictures and show them each for one second to that song, it might make more sense than that video.

And if Jen at EPBOT is right, and it is a Kraft Macaroni & Cheese commercial…well, it doesn’t make me hungry.

Just confused, and slightly concerned…