Well, it's been a little while since I posted! Anyway, time for a brief update. First, Nick's new toys!

Well, there's the laptop, of course. Been enjoying that. Got a wireless router and put it at my parents' house, taking their wired router to my place to connect my other computer with this one. I'm using the other one mostly for storage these days. I found a USB keyboard that has no hotkeys, nor is it wireless and it did not include a mouse. It was $10.99. I love cheap keyboards but it's a little harder to find this kind with a USB tail instead of PS/2. Now I have a much easier time typing and my legs dont start sweating after long computing sessions. :)

Today I bought a slave unit for my flash. I can now use two flashes on one camera. Mostly this is to help do away with weird shadows you get in a lot of indoor situations when using just one flash. I used the upcoming wedding this weekend as an excuse to get it.

Wedding? Mike Roderick is getting married in Hattiesburg on Saturday. I'm the photographer. Becca and I depart tomorrow morning to Hattiesburg where we will stay with the Lovely Christopher for the weekend. We'll be back home on Monday night. It's nice to have some time off.

So I'll be doing colour, black and white, and some digital photography for the wedding. I have my two cameras and I'll be utilizing becca's little fuji digital.

I also bought a bag of vermiculite today. I didn't know what vermiculite was, exactly, before today other than a foamy substance you can mix with soil to make it drain better. It's an ore like mica that when heated expands to the foamy stuff you use in planting things. Anyway, I got it to germinate seeds in. What kind of seeds you may or may not be asking but will soon know? Coffee seeds.

Yes, I'm going to attempt to grow coffee. I grabbed 50 beans from the shop (brazil cerrado) and put them in some water for a couple of days. They are now in moist vermiculite covered with plastic wrap and under a light. It's really not expected that they will germinate as apparently coffee beans that are sold for consumption are dried mechanically and that makes them unviable. However I figure it's worth a try.

Also I have the name and address of someone who will send me a packet of beans for growing from Hawaii if I send them a SASE. I will be doing so.

Coffee plants apparently do well as house plants (not surprising as they are tropical and most house plants are tropical) and after a few (3-4) years will bloom and grow fruit, though the coffee bean will not be a high quality one because I don't have the altitude to make good coffee. But it'll look neat, and I'll be able to say, "That's coffee there."

Other news in the horticultural world: I have five pots of various herbs growing on the pattio. They are doing much better than the herbs I planted in the ground last year. Actually, the basil did great last year and apparently the mint and the rosemary did well too as those are still alive. They just got eaten a lot on the ground I think. I transplanted them to pots and they have taken off. I need to borrow becca's digital camera to take some pics. Maybe she'll let me keep it a couple of days after our trip.

Yeah, that's about all that's been up these past couple of weeks or so. Tomorrow we hit the road. And I get to take my computer with me, how fun!
- posted by Nick @ 5/25/2005 05:36:00 PM | 0 comments