Home Grown Corn
Sarah and I tried to grow corn this year in a 3 sisters setup. The squash was completely destroyed by squash borers, and then the beans pulled all the corn over. At least we got a bunch of beans.
As the beans have begun to lose their leaves we found two tiny dent corn cobs.
I don’t really have a good way to grind corn, but I found one of the measuring cups fit the immersion blender almost exactly.
After a fair number of grindings and siftings I was left with a little cup of cornmeal. I hope to make one beautiful corn muffin.
Fuji Rensha Cardia
I’ve been looking at weird cameras on Ebay for 15+ years and I’m always amazed there are cameras I’ve never seen or heard of.
This camera will take 8 photos across two 35mm frames in quick secession. I assume it’s original purpose was for analyzing your running gait or golf swing. There are several settings for photos from left to right or right to left and how much time there is between the photos.
It looks like my camera doesn’t work though. The camera looks nearly new, but the Ebay listing said that it was untested and sold as parts only. Which makes me suspicious that they did test it, and it didn’t work. That’s Ebay, but the camera was really cheap in any case.
I checked the battery voltage, and it seemed ok. I took the case off of the camera and nothing looked mechanically broken, shorting the power switch did not make the camera turn on. I’ll have to dig a bit deeper.
I haven’t take the shutter apart yet, but it looks like the whole camera is run off of a single 6 wire stepper motor. It looks like there’s a switch below and to the right of the stepper; I assume that gives the stepper some positional feedback on where the shutters are. I guess if the electronics are blown I could probably build something myself since it really only looks like I’d need a stepper driver, and a couple of switch inputs. I hope though that I can get it working without too much fiddling around.
Fuji Rensha Cardia disassembly / teardown:
- Open the back door
- Remove three screws from the left side film canister area
- Remove two screws from the right side film take up area
- Remove one screw on the bottom of the camera to the right
- On the top of the camera flip the film rewind handle open, and remove one screw
- Gently flex the camera case and slide it off
Nishika N8000
One of my buddies gave me two Nishika N8000 cameras. These are odd cameras with four plastic lenses that shoot four small portrait images spread across two 35mm frames.
Each of the four images is taken from a slightly different position creating a little bit of parallax between the images.
When the images are split apart and aligned you can create GIFs with some fun movement.
The camera has three aperture settings f/8, f/11, and f/19 and one shutter speed — 1/60th. I don’t really trust either of those numbers. At some point I’ll measure the shutter speed to make sure it’s not way off. I might also try and rig up something to see about the aperture, but that’s a lot harder.
Saffron Bulbs
Sarah and I planted 100 saffron bulbs. We’re hoping to have at least a small saffron crop this year, though, it’s hard to say how much we’ll get.
We laid out the bulbs on the surface of the soil to make sure they’d all fit. I followed spacing information from the information sheet that came with the bulbs.
The bulbs are supposed to flower this fall, which seems pretty surprising– we just planted them a couple weeks back.
I’ll make another post when we get to the harvest. Briefly, it looks like you cut the flowers off, pull the three stamen from each flower, and then gently dry the stamens. The foliage left is allowed to stay on the plant as long as it lasts.
Running Cable
I’ve been running a lot of cable lately, and until today had never thought about zip tying a flashlight to the end of my fish tape. It made figuring out exactly where the tape was under the house much easier!
I am still learning learning the best way to pull cable. I’m just starting to figure out how to use my new 5′ long drill bit 😐
1/4