Jim’s Blog

We got some sprinkler water in the weather station rain cup producing false rain readings.

So I raised the weather station to about eight feet above the ground. This move should also give better wind readings. Although, I did place it a little close to the tree. As the tree grows, I will have to move the weather station farther away from the tree. The weather station information is updated once a minute on line at http://rowlett.ws/
 
 

I filled the bird feeders and cleaned and filled the bird bath this morning. I just looked out the window and saw more birds than ever out back – mostly vesper sparrows and cow birds. They seem to be enjoying themselves in the shade. It is already over 90 degrees F at 10 am. We’re heading for a record breaking high temperature today. The record for this date here is 105° F.

Our new weather station (Davis Wireless Vantage Pro2) arrived at 6 pm yesterday. It took me 45 minutes to get the hardware set up and running. Then another 5 1/2 hrs. work getting the software going. Today I noticed that the anemometer kept reading zero even though I saw the cups turning on the weather station. I thought that I had pressed the wind cups onto their shaft, but apparently not. I went out and loosened the wind cups with the allen wrench that was supplied, pushed them on securely and tightened them back up. Then I re-seated the RJ-11 connector for the wind measurements, came back in the house and I was then getting wind speeds above zero. I am amazed at all the parameters the wview software keeps track of. The weather station is now on line 24/7 Here.

I have had this Linksys (now Cisco) Network Storage Link (NSLU2) sitting around unused for a couple of years. I have read where people have downloaded Linux to it and have done some amazing things. After reading Mark Teel’s article on “wview” in Linux Journal this past week, I decided it was time to put my NSLU2 to work as a weather web server. This NSLU2 runs on 5 volts and only uses 20 watts of power. This could be run from a battery charged with solar cells.

Weather Server Computer

Before I spent money on new weather station equipment I wanted to make sure I could get my NSLU2 up and running as a web server. I saw that wview worked, or was developed using Debian Linux, so that is the Linux distribution I chose to put on my NSLU2. I happened to have a 300 GB USB hard drive sitting here, so I plugged it into the NSLU2 and away I went with the Debian install. This was straight forward and only took about 2 hours. Then I looked around found the wview binary software for the NSLU2 available here (look for “debian lenny”). That took another couple of hours to download, install and configure. I then had a weather webserver up and running. Now, how to put the webserver on the Internet for minimal cost?

I found that with DynDNS.com, you can have a free account and a free URL. This was perfect! This fit my criteria for minimal cost!

Now to order the weather station hardware. After looking at several home weather station sites, reading weather forums, and blogs, I decided to get the Davis Vantage Pro3 Wireless weather station. The only drawback is that the weather station hardware won’t be here for another week or so.

My weather station software is up and running pumping out bogus simulator data until the weather station hardware arrives next week. I live in the Raven’s Nest Subdivision of Rowlett, Texas.

Raven’s Nest Rowlett TX Weather — http://rowlett.dyndns.ws/ served to the Internet by my NSLU2.
[update 28 Aug 10] The weather station now has a shorter URL. To remember it, just think “Rowlett Weather Station” – http://rowlett.ws/

Today there are a lot of cowbirds at the feeders, more than I’ve ever seen at one time. You can also see a few vesper sparrows in the mix.

chigger on the edge of a dime

Original Entry:
In preparation for building a chicken coop in my daughter Lauren’s back yard, I wanted to find a way to get rid of the ever-present chiggers. I have been visiting this property for almost 50 years, and there has always been a problem with chiggers in that yard. I’ve read that chiggers are a real irritant to chickens, and can even kill young chickens. So, something has got to be done about the chigger problem before we build the chicken coop to protect the defenseless chickens. Our baby chicks arrive in 11 days.

In researching what can be done, I ran across an Eco-Friendly organic solution – a pesticide based on clove oil and thyme oil. I found it here on DoMyOwnPestControl.com. It’s not cheap, but hopefully it will do the job.

Follow Up:
After much research and debating on the best and Eco-Friendly way to get rid of the chiggers, we decided that Food Grade Diatomaceous Earth was the best way to go. I found it at Roach Feed and Seed here in Garland, TX. D.E. is good for eradicating all kinds of small bugs including roaches and silver fish. It is good around people and pets. You just don’t want to get it airborne and inhale it. It is really bad for your lungs. You can apply D.E. around your baseboards with a dry paint brush. People and pets can get diatomaceous earth in their mouths with no ill effects. In fact Food Grade D.E. can eliminate worms in pets and humans. We have mixed D.E. with the wood shavings in the chicken coop to keep the chiggers from getting to the chickens. Some precautions in using D.E. can be found Here and Here.
 

We only have had one cardinal at our feeder. He doesn’t come every day. Sometimes he comes with his mate. Today he was here alone.

Since the brood of 3 fledglings flew off the first time we have not had barn swallows roosting overnight over our patio. But, everyday we have a pair of barn swallows checking out the nest. I don’t know if it’s the same pair every time or not. I just looked out the back door while one barn swallow was sitting on the ledge and another (likely the mate) was swooping around under the patio cover.
 

About two years ago, my HP Pavilion model:dv9715nr – 17″ notebook PC started it’s life with a Samsung SATA 250GB hard drive and Windows Vista. I immediately used the disk management app in the Windows Control Panel and shrunk the partition to half the hard drive size and put Fedora Linux on the other half of the drive.

Last year, I got a Western Digital 500GB drive and copied the 250GB to it using the Linux command line:
fdisk   -l <-- this command told me which /dev each drive was on so I didn't copy the bare drive onto the one with the data.
dd   if=/dev/sda   of=/dev/sdb   bs=32256

The copying process took a couple of hours using my desktop PC. The new drive worked fine, but I was stuck with a Windows partition of 121GB. During the year, I upgraded Vista to Windows 7 Home Premium, but still had the small windows partition.

About a week ago, I saw that WD now has a 750GB laptop drive. I also found the price was right for me at NewEgg. So I ordered one and also ordered three 2.5″ drive external enclosures to put the other drives in so I can use them as USB backup drives.

This time I was determined that I was not going to be stuck with the small Windows partition. What to do?

I copied the 500GB drive to the 750GB drive.
I put the drive into the laptop, and using gparted found on the SystemRescueCD, I deleted all the partitions except for the Windows partition.
After booting the Windows 7 Repair disk I created before starting the disk swap, I went to a command prompt and entered the command:
bootsect   /nt60   ALL   /mbr
I did this to write the Master Boot Record on the hard drive.

When I rebooted the machine, I got a black screen with the words “Operating System Not Found”.

Now what? I booted the laptop using the Super Grub Live CD I had created a while back, selected “Find any O/S” and was able to get into and run Windows 7. Now, how do I get the laptop to boot Windows 7? I went into the Windows 7 disk management found in the Control Panel and expanded the Windows partition to 350GB. Then It dawned on me that I had not made the Windows partition “active”.
Once I made the partition active, I was able to reboot the laptop with it booting Windows 7. Everything was intact from my old drive. It took a little while for Windows 7 to come up the first time. I found out it was looking for and installing the new Microsoft driver for the WD 750GB drive.
Finally, I got my Fedora 13 DVD, installed Fedora 13 on the other half of my drive, and restored my files over the network from my desktop Linux PC.

Success! Now my laptop dual-boots in either Windows 7 or Fedora 13 with each occupying about half of the new 750GB hard drive. And, the best part is that I didn’t have to re-install Windows! I also now have three 2.5″ USB external hard drives.

This little cottontail bunny just showed up. By his small size, he looks really young.