A Use for Surplus Technology

A little while ago Barnes and Noble realised that nobody was buying their ereaders and so they went on an aggressive price-cutting spree in an attempt to get people to buy them and then spend money in their ebook shop. Their basic model (Nook Simple Touch) was cut to £29 and as it had physical buttons and an SD slot I impulse-bought one after a rapid lunchtime run to John Lewis.

It's nice enough and all, but the physical buttons aren't really clicky enough for me. Better than nothing, of course, but really a bit of a let-down. As was the B&N shop itself, it's not particularly easy to find much, pretty ropey set of freebies on there and so I ended up not really using it as a book reader - possibly due to already owning two other ereaders. Oh well, c'est la vie.

Of course, that's not the whole story. NO WAY.

You see, it turns out that the Nook Simple Touch runs Android - the famous mobile operating system. One of the defining aspects of this operating system is its openness and ability to be customised fully. This is typically done via 'root' access which grants access to the deeper recesses of the file system and lets you do special stuff (including breaking it but I'm not going to do that).

So, it's runs Android and can be rooted. This required further investigation. Following this guide here:

http://www.babblingengineer.com/how-to/how-i-turned-my-nook-into-an-e-reader-monster/

I installed root access, a fresh launcher to bypass the Nook software and the Google Play Market to get at my Android apps. Basically the process is:

• Download a thing.
• Write an image of that thing onto a microSD card.
• Put card in Nook.
• Boot.
• Press the button which says 'Root'.

In a nutshell. That was all fine and snazzy and fully engaged me for a good chunk of evening but then I put it in my bag and did very little else with it. A couple of weeks later, an idea occurred to me:

WHAT ABOUT MAKING IT INTO A KITCHEN COMPUTER AND FRIDGE AND FREEZER AND OTHER SUPPLIES MONITOR

With wifi connectivity at home and certain Android apps ability to sync with each other I could have it next to the fridge with a list of general supplies which could be ticked off when we need to buy more. Then when we are in a shop we could consult our phones and see what we need to pick up. But then, even better,

WHAT ABOUT MOUNTING IT ON THE FRIDGE WITH MAGNETS

Even better indeed. So, after some reading it looks like 'rare earth' neodymium magnets are the way to go as they are extremely strong for their size. There's not all that many sources for these but the Magnet Expert sells on Amazon and I got these:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0022BPXES/ref=pe_217191_31005151_M3T1_dp_1

They are 20x6x1.5mm magnets with a sticky backing. Just the thing for sticking a Nook on the fridge.

They arrived promptly and even had a safety leaflet inside. This also mentioned that you shouldn't let them go to snap together with force, snap and then return them claiming they were broken in the post which seems fair enough.

I first tried to cut a slit into the Nook cover to insert the magnets inside it but I was foiled by the inverse square law - they were too far from the from the surface to have enough pull. So I stuck a load around the outside of it:

You can see that the left edge has two. The inner one is to solve the problem of the crappy case not holding the Nook very well - it flops about. I stuck two magnets to the back of it as a brace and that inner-left magnet provides enough force to keep it more securely stuck. It's also extra force for on the fridge and it sticks very securely now.

That's as far as I've gotten for now. Stay tuned for more.

Garden Adventure - a never-ending tale

Of course, it'd never be as simple as doing a bit of gardening and it being done. No, there's more to do.

Today I've been trying to clean out the gap between our extension and our garden. The garden as a whole is effectively on a huge 'raised bed' that it about five foot higher than the house. The extension was built to approach this but with about a 75cm gap. ie; too large to ignore completely, too small to be genuinely useful. During the tidying up of the rest of the garden this became full of crap like mud, bags, gravel, bramble root-nodes flung away in fury. Enoiugh organic matter had gathered down there to become true soil and it's been a bastard to clear. I tried some today by sort of sweeping and spraying with the hose but to minimal effect. Lots of it is flowing into great big holes into the underneath of the house. This needs patching up but that's a job for another day. I've given up on tidying this nook for the moment.

The rest of the garden is coming along though. The upper left area (zone 2 as dubbed on my sketched garden plan) has gotten a bamboo border put in and has been trawled, turned over, raked, picked over and all sorts. I've removed a ton of stone from there but lots remains. I decided that good enough is good enough and began planting:

This first involved an Asda bag of bulbs from last year, half of which were mush and the other half probably killed off by the winter spent outside in my storage box. Then some random sweet pea seeds went into the earth, a pack of 'wildflowers' and a load of GrowSure 'Easy Flowers'. These are big bags of flower seeds mixed in with feed and compost etc that you can throw about and hope they grow. I suspect they will be special infertile versions to stop me harvesting seeds from them for next year, but we'll see.

Over on the left there you can see Rockery 2. I decided that a way to use up the even greather quantity of loose stone would be to have a second rockery. This also breaks up that bit of garden, smooths out the gradients and hides a pointless step. It has been planted with a mix of things.

The crowning glory is this euphorbia something or other. It's tall and has interesting leaves:

Two pieris things - silver flame (top) and little heath (other). One was bought because of the excellent leaves and the other due to buy-one-get-one-free:

I can't really remember what this one is called but it's 'Jack Frost' as a subtype:

Not that the rest of the garden is being totally ignored. The right-hand-side (zone 1) has had things happen and now looks like this:

That probably represents its final state. Rockery, some tubs, slate. The rockery has some new additions:

Above is a skimmia japonica 'Bronze Knight', sitting proudly at the top of the whole thing:

The one on the left could probably use some careful pruning. A bit of other stuff is provided by these:

One is a saxifrage, one a thyme variant and one a black viola.

I think the path needs some work:

It's ended up messy due to the poor seating of cobbles and the gravel. I'm going to have to bite the bullet and mortar them down, do it properly.

Other tubs include;

Garlic!

Nasturtiums and cornflowers!

Cayenne!

Oh and I put some stones on some trees/herbs to keep water in. There's some bark too which I was worried about using due to soil depletion but it'll come good in the end.

Finally:

Some more sweet peas planted from seed and some cuttings that have been soaked, dipped in rooting gel and planted. These were mostly gathered from parks and so on. See if any of them work..

And now I am sore and tired.