Aron 2 Blue

First fruiting of Shitake mushrooms from a workshop I did in April, with 12-20 plugs per log. The smaller log has the two clusters and one more mushroom in back, but the big log only has one mushroom so far. The smaller log has been soaked twice, though.

Sitting on our window after a rainstorm.

I just solved a problem with some prompting from ladyada, so I thought I'd post: http://forums.ladyada.net/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=12012 Isn't it great when site admins participate in the site? I soldered up my adafruit Motor Shield Kit v1.0, for use with my Arduino Decimila. Plugged it in, nothing. But wait! Remember that the motor shield needs external power. So I soldered on the 'pwr' jumper header that I forgot before, found a 9V wall-wort, and plugged it in. Now the power LED on the motor shield lights up. Great! Twisted a few wires to my Solarbotics Gear Motor GM2, and tried the example DC motor program - forward 1 sec, reverse 1 sec, stop 1 sec. It does something, but it doesn't seem to really 'turn-on', it just jumps or pulses in the correct direction, and then sits. I hook the GM2 to some batteries, and it turns nice and strong, about 0.5 rev/sec. So something is wrong. I found a forum post that described the problem beautifully, but with no soluti...

At least until they got mowed! We saw several big clumps of a leafy clustered mushroom, a polypore, a foot or so in diameter, like Hen of the Woods. However, I think it's too hot and too early for hen-of-the-woods, so this must be a look alike. They are scattered through the lawn in a vacant lot, and the day after we saw them, the lawn got mowed! I think they are eating the roots of two huge oak trees that fell down and had their stumps removed. I think it's been four years or so since those trees fell.

We've been on a mushroom kick recently. We've ordered at least twice from Fungi Perfecti , 8 mushroom kits at 600 plug spawn. I attended a workshop on April 4 at the Abundance Foundation in Pittsboro, to get me started. I came home with three logs with plugs from Shitake and Oyster mushrooms. It turned out the instructor, Bob Armantrout, had attended a workshop from the man behind Fungi Perfecti, Paul Stamets. We've now got two of his books , Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save The World and Growing Gourmet & Medicinal Mushrooms . I've mostly looked at the pictures, and read small sections, but Alexa has read most of them. I intend to post much more about mushrooms, and show results.

Can you get SLR performance in a smaller camera? The 'micro four-thirds' camera has the same sensor as some models of the Olympus DSLR, but sacrifices the view finder and mirror to put it in a smaller body. Initial impressions are good: Olympus E-P1 Hands-on Preview It has a focal-length multiplier of 2x, compared to 1.6x for a Cannon Dig Rebel, so it has a smaller sensor. A co-worker looked at the compact super-zoom category and decided on the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS1 based on the strong review. I can see the attraction. Especially for photographing wildlife, as he hopes to do.

I can't quite believe the pictures, which makes me really want to try it. Rock Stacking | GeekDad