Looney Toones Style Pest Control – Part II

I have been using the Looney Toons method of stopping bugs from attacking my blood orange tree for a few weeks now.  I’m very happy to say that in the time using it, I haven’t had to spray my tree even once!  The bugs seem to be very attracted to the yellow sticky sheets… and less so to my tree.  It doesn’t stop the bugs 100%, but that’s ok.  Proof is in the pudding… just look at the pictures… can you imagine all of these bugs all over the tree?  Well, that’s how it was last year.  I’d even go so far to say as these little sticky sheets are more effective than spray.  The first two shots are after a couple of days… the last two are only after a few hours!  So there is at least a couple of truths to Looney Toones 🙂

Time to vent a little

Another beautiful astromech piece came in the mail and I decided to start on it right away. This piece is the center surrounds and vent internals. Like all the parts I have received, these are again high quality, brilliant bits!

I unfortunately, wasn’t as bright… like a kid at Christmas, I just wanted to dive right in and get them built.  I should have paid a bit more attention, because I did make a mistake.  Here is what I did and I’ll go over what was ok and what wasn’t.

First up, I had to clean up the back of the housing.  This consisted of a bit of sanding.  This, on its own, is fine.  However, I used sandpaper designed for wood.  It “worked” and even though the wrong method, it turned out ok.  It did clean up the surface but left it a bit dull.  Not too bad though as these aren’t really seen.

I only sanded/filed the slats along the edges in order for the super glue to bond to the backplate and each other.  I didn’t want to get rid of the imperfections left behind from machining.  I think this adds to the “machine/robot” weathered look.

The upper vent went very straight forward… not much you could go wrong here.  I likely will need to add a bead of silicon or hot glue though to the slats behind the visible areas to give that added extra surface area, just in case the super glue bond breaks.  I don’t want to lose any of these slats.

The lower vent is where I needed to pay more attention.  There is an “Up” and a “Down” to this vent housing, and I flipped it around.  I started filing the piece to fit in that configuration.  It then dawned on me that I could be doing it wrong.  So, I did what I should have done before starting… check the blue prints from the online repository and be sure that I am doing it right… and sure enough, I did have it flipped around.  When I flipped it back to the correct way, I noticed all my previous filing didn’t help… I needed to do essentially the same style filing as before, but just opposite.  This is ok, but the previous filed areas now leave gaps in the the overall venting area.  😦  well, it will serve as a reminder to me to read up first before assembly.  Maybe in the future, I will get new internals slats and fix this, but not now… it’s a good reminder.  And who knows, when the droid is completed, it may “fit” and be not so noticeable.  Time will tell.

sanded piece next to raw piece

Assembling

Final set – One set of center vents for R2 🙂

Lucky Horseshoes

It was only about a day before the next part arrived. I was monitoring the tracking and it would have been great to get all in the same day, but the postman works in mysterious ways.

The horseshoes I ordered arrived and they are absolutely great! I do feel very luck with them! My son was also very please with them and decided to model them. They will unfortunately sit off to the side until the legs arrive… and that will be awhile I think. At the moment, the astromech club isn’t making any legs… so it may be a few months before these get actually attached to R2. In the mean time, I will likely take a month or two break from getting parts other than what is already on order (unless something really cool comes up of course) 😉

I’ve been framed! Com8-B Astromech Frame Arrived!

Today was a welcome day when the post man came… instead of his usual bills and junk mail, he brought an astromech frame!  This was a great piece of work by Commando8.  Dubbed the Com-8B frame, this one is supposed to be budget… but let me say, there is nothing budget about this frame… it is a top notch piece of quality work!  Here’s the unboxing of it in all its glory… it’s just so hard to believe that the end product fit into that pizza box!  What an unboxing… and the little droid builders were here to help me and get everything unpacked and framed up.

Looney Toons Style Pest Control

Oh cartoons… how they affect technology and what we have today.  Just like when the coyote tried to catch the road runner with sticky tape, this comes to the world of fighting the bugs that nearly killed my tree last year.  Well, I don’t know if the coyote ever tried this, but I am… and it seems to be working.  I picked up some sticky tape deigned to catch bugs for just this purpose.  It is supposed coloured to attract the bugs that ate most of the leaves.  This all lets me use less (or no) spray 🙂  My goal for this year isn’t to get any fruit from this tree… just to build up a nice canopy of leaves to sustain itself.  After a couple of days, there were already lots of bugs stuck to it (some pretty big), so it seems to be working!  May I have more success than the coyote did!

Insert Coin

 

Last night the first bits of my R2-D2 build arrived.  How appropriate too the first part to arrive was the coin slot… because this R2 unit will be demanding a lot of coin!

Another awesome part that arrived were the holoprojectors.  The workmanship on both parts is just amazing!  I am looking forward to other bits arriving so this R2 unit can come alive.

Signs of life

Last summer, my blood orange tree was viciously attacked by bugs…. aphids, leaf miner, mites….. it seemed no end.  All of this left it in a sorry state.  I did some prep work in late fall and early winter to hopefully help it gain some strength over the winter.  However, we had a terrible winter.  Normally, where we are, there isn’t snow… if it does snow, it is a light dusting that melts as fast as it falls.  Not so this year… it snowed a lot and the snow stayed around much much longer.  Not good for a blood orange tree, especially one that isn’t exactly healthy.

Well, now it is spring, and I’m happy to say that while the snow did kill almost every leaf that was left on the tree, the tree still has signs of life and is creating lots of new leaves, and in clusters!  Now, I will have to monitor a lot this year so the bugs don’t get at them.  I don’t like to use sprays or insecticides, but I might resort to a bit of that this year, just to get the tree into a state where leaves are plentiful, green and healthy (as healthy as can be, being sprayed) 🙂   So… here’s hoping!

Drunken Fish & Chips

Had an urge for fish & chips, so decided to make my own. Turned out well. Potatoes are straight forward… wash, wedge, fry, cool a bit and refry at higher temp for crispiness.

Fish was black cod. Batter as below.

400 g of flour
1 tsp baking powder
300 ml vodka
300 ml beer

lightly dust the fish, batter up and fry. while frying, drizzle with some batter.

What are these weeds? How do I get rid of them?

Can anyone help me identify these weeds and good ways to get rid of them?

The weed in the first photo is very spidery, very low to the ground and spreads easily even if rip out by hand.

The second one seems to be coming more and more, but not many yet

The third is almost like a clover… not many of these.

The forth I think is crab grass.

Spidery like weed (normally green and purplish in summer)

not sure

clover?

Crab grass?

Update:  Photo 1, the spidery like weed… well, it’s not really a weed.  It’s a part of the grass itself.  I can’t recall the name of it that the guy at the garden center told me, but it is essentially like a stalk.  If left untouched, they would shoot upwards (and still continue to spider out).  These are common grass types on golf courses.  There is no apparent real way to get rid of them… the shop advised me to rip out what I see, then re-seed that area.   A strong herbicide might help too they said (if do that, then can’t reseed for about a week afterwards).

English Lemon Curd

I had a urge for some lemon curd.

This again is one of those things that if you can’t buy, just make… (or make it, even if you can buy it, because it is so much better home-made).  The recipe is super simple as well and as I can’t buy it, I make it 🙂

200g of castor sugar
150g of unsalted butter
6 freshly squeezed lemons (equals about 250ml)
4 whole eggs
4 egg yolks

(hint on the sugar, if you don’t have castor sugar, you can use regular granulated white sugar… just pitch it into a blender and flash a few times until slightly powdery, but be careful not to go too far, or you’ll have powdered/confectioners sugar)

What I do to avoid lumps and having to strain is pre-mix all ingredients together, likely baking a cake.

Get your butter to room temp, so it nice and soft.
Put the sugar in a bowl and add the butter.  Cream it all together as best you can.  Mine was a little too cold still, so very lumpy as you’ll see in the pics.
Add the whole eggs one by one… mixing  each time you add one.
Add the egg yolks and mix in.
Add the lemon juice and mix in.
Use a hand mixer to get it mixed well.  Depending on how soft the butter was, you might have chunks, you might have just small chunks.  It’s fine though.
Whatever you do though, DO NOT use melted butter… the melted butter will start to cook the eggs and then you have a mess.

Have jam jars ready (be sure they are sterile).  I reuse my old jam jars.  Just get an oven nice and warm (turn off), boil the jars in a pot, then put in the warm oven to dry.

Now onto to curd.

Put the mix in a sauce pan.
Start the heat at the lowest set and continously stir.  You do not want to stop stirring or it will burn.  You’ll see in the pic below that even with continous stirring it burned a bit on the bottom.
After a few minutes, you’ll notice the butter chunks melt away and it will become smooth but watery.  Keep stirring.  Eventually it will thicken up a bit.  Once it is thick enough, remove from heat and put in jars.

How thick is thick enough?  Well, that’s up to you!… (you could use this for a lemon pie, so maybe want it thicker?).    For me, I use the spatula test… dip a spatula in just enough to coat the spatula a bit… run a finger through the coating.  If the result is a smooth path and the remaining spread doesn’t “spread” into the path, then it is done 🙂

This is great on toast… cookies… pies… ice cream…  or even on its own (by the spoon full!)

chowdery goodness

smoothing out

smoothing out more

some burn

smooth lemony goodness

lemony mouse