Epic adventurer - The plan

I have a boat.

It's called Bulwinkle III.

Bullwinkle I was the same boat, but was a 4.3m Sundance sailing catamaran.

Bullwinkle II had the sail removed, and an electric outboard motor fitted. I ran it from my large deep cycle battery, and could cruise at walking pace for 5 hours or so.

Bullwinkle III has a 3.5 HP two stroke petrol motor, a sheet of plywood across the hulls where the trampoline used to be, and can do 17kph flat out with a stack of noise.

Bullwinkle IV will have the original electric outboard, but will be solar powered. It will also have a greenhouse. The plywood floor from memory is 1.8m square, which happens to be the same size as my original growhouse.

The plan, if I can call it a plan, is to drop a clear plastic growhouse over the top of the plywood floor, mount the solar panel over the the front section where there is no floor, rig some steering control to an office chair mounted up the front somewhere, and and run a veggie garden in NFT tubes that pull nutrient rich Murray River water directly from the river into the tubes as I cruise from the mouth in South Australia, through desert, to somewhere else.

Then come back.

At walking pace.

When doing 120 Things in 20 years it pays not to get too bogged down with specifics when planning an epic adventure.

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Aquaponics - Constant flood growth

My new constant flood grow beds seem to be working.

And my new constant flood grow bed plants seem to be flourishing.

The spinach has gone crazy.

At least I think the spinach has gone crazy.

It might be silver beet.

But suddenly the words "Silver beet" don't seem to mean anything, so I might be me that's gone crazy.

I think I've thought those words too often during the construction of this post.


I'll stop.

And move on to whatever this is.

This has gone crazy as well.

It's either cucumber or rock melon.

The lettuce in the original grow bed (planted from seedlings) looked like this at various stages of its life, and also seem to be enjoying a good growth rate.

Perhaps the tomato plants were eating all the nutrient. I still have it in a bucket, but it's growth has slowed since being ripped up and cut back to just a few stems.

That blue thing on the left is the bucket with the tomato plants in it.

 All the water for this grow bed goes through the tomato bucket first until I find a proper home for my hacked tomatoes.

I also added two algae eating fish that like to suck onto the side of fish tanks, and eat whatever grows on them. These I put in the old fish tank (now a sump tank) to keep the algae down.

I haven't seen them since.

For some strange reason I didn't take any photo's of them.

As far as I know they are doing fine, but these days there is a stack of plumbing going into and out of the little sump tank, so there are plenty of places for a tiny pair of fish to hide.

I was promised they would love their new home, and grow to be around 10cm long, but I have also been told that there are no cold water varieties of this kind of fish.

Both pieces of advice came from the same aquarium shop.




120 Things in 20 years. Crazy? Growth from my new constant flood aquaponics grow bed? Sucky fish? Only time will tell.

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Aquaponics - In grow bed media washing

Rather than washing my media before adding it to the system, I thought I wouldn't.

So I didn't.

I know it wont work as well as washing it properly, but I haven't felt so good this last week, so I thought I'd just drop all the new media into the grow bed and wash it in situ.

I have in fact done this to some extent with my second system when I filled the 2500L or 3500L or (whatever it was) grow bed, but that one was never used due to having to move house.

I've never written "in situ" before.

I made a media screen, and siliconed it in upside down yesterday.

I suspect it will come back to hurt me at some time in the future, but I might get away with it.

The standpipe has been removed and the elbow turned down in this picture, because I'm rinsing the media with chlorinated tap water, and I want to get as much of the water out before I connect it to the fish tank.

I cranked up the garden tap and tried my best to gig the hose around and move all the dust out.

And just dump the dirty water onto the garden via the driveway.

It started like this...

and ended up running pretty clear.













I'll give it a day or so to let the chlorine out of the remaining water within the grow bed before connecting it to the system.

I also flushed it a bit with some de-chlorinated water, from my top-up container, so I doubt there will be any issues, especially with the new 1000L fish tank ready to dilute any remaining chlorine.




120 things in 20 years. Taking shortcuts and often striving for second best practice when it comes to aquaponics, and washing grow bed media.

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Aquaponics - Silver Silver Perch

My silver perch are going silver.

I'm not really sure what that means.

Perhaps it's a sign that I should eat them and get some trout for winter.

Pictured here in this very poorly composed photo, is my bigger angry one.

The smaller one is hiding.

I made the smaller one a small hide from a sliced down length of 90mm PVC so the ceiling is too low for the big one to enter. It seems to have created at least a bit of peace in the system.


One slightly interesting thing of note, is that the overall calm in the tank rises considerably at night.

More and more, I'm convinced that the angry fish is being a bully because it's scared. Perhaps if you feel a predator is near, chasing a smaller fish out into the open is a good way to distract the predator from eating you, because it becomes too busy munching on your old buddy that you've know since delivery day in the plastic bag.

We can all learn something from that.




120 Things in 20 years teaches us that not only do Silver Perch sometimes turn silver, but that if you think a lion is going to attack you, it pays to help a tourist to the front so they can get a better look.

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Electronics - Week 2

Calculus???

What on earth is calculus?

I cant learn calculus this week as this week is already partly gone.

I still haven't slept enough since algebra.

I'm officially out of my league.






120 things in 20 years, and my electronics education sees me asking "What was I thinking" at week two. I guess they were correct when they said I would need a strong foundation in maths and physics. 

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Electronics - My education - week 1

I received an A for my assignments.

I've never received an A before.

In fact I'm not sure if I ever handed anything up before.

Now I need a week of sleep, but it seems I have to do it again this week as well.

That's poor planing on their part if you ask me.

Be really, really nice to that student in your life. Most of them are kids and, for some reason we see fit to put them through more stress than most of their grownups have to deal with.

Or perhaps I should rephrase that, and say we ask them to run closer to their personal limits as dictated by their experience and abilities than we ask of their grownups.

Either way, be nice to a student today.

If they are your kids, and you've done your job right, they already know better than you, so make them a coffee and treat them with the respect they are due.

Go.

Make them a coffee, or buy them a pet iguana or something.

But be nice to them.




And thanks to MIT for the opportunity, but mostly, thanks Mrs 120 Things in 20 years who had to teach an angry, stressed, frustrated, lunatic of a student algebra in a weekend to get me through week one of my electronics education. I'm not sure it's for me, but I guess I'll have a look at week two. Actually I learnt everything I'd hoped to get from the course in week one already. But that could just be sleep talking. Sleep talks now.

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Electronics - My education - week 1

If you know a student, be really nice to them.

It's really hard.

I just finished my first weeks work, and learned algebra this week as well.

My self hurts.

People should have to solve this stuff. This is computer work.

I handed up my work at 2:15am local time in South Australia, on the 19th of March.

It was due on the 18th, and I cant do the sums to figure out if my time zone has bought me a few more hours or not.

I don't even know which way the world spins.

It seems to be spinning about an axis made of me.




120 Things in 20 years is going to have a little lie down after completing week one of my electronics education.

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