Gill of Wine

Each time I install/setup this system, I learn a little more. Biggest lesson learned: keep better notes! And thus this blog entry.

So, from the top, this install is on kT’s old laptop, a Dell Lattitude CPi with only 500 mGhz power and 128 MB ram. Running WinXp (sorry Linuxers, but I still need win on this system for a servo project in progress, but I am learning Linux) which is about obsolete for any other use around here, but seems to be suited for my Cellar control system. I did put a new 40 Gig drive in, which will not only help it last, but also provide plenty of area to collect data for years to come. One of the nicer features, beyond just being compact and low energy usage, is the battery system on it is fairly decent, and can house two batteries, providing almost 8 hours of backup time if/WHEN the power goes out.

I’m using an old pcmcia ethernet card to connect to the network, and a new usb>serial converter to connect the X10a CM11 controller for the actual fan switching. This leaves the built in serial port open for the temperature sensors (digitemp did not seem to like the usb adapter setup).

Pretty much the same list of software being used as before with special attention paid to versions (specifically the perl version had to be 5.8 to accommodate Misterhouse. The full version of MH has some perl with it, as well as the XAMPP system, but it seems like I had trouble setting this up previously, and found that it worked to download my own activestate. Maybe someday I’ll try this again and condense everything [next install!!!]) php 5 is being used (default in xampp), as jpgraph now has a stable version for this.

Cygwin
Perl Activestate 5.8
digitemp
1-wire Drivers
Misterhouse
Xampp
JpGraph

I also used:

Real VNC (to access from other pc’s)
TweakUI (to bypass the XP login; surely there’s another way!?)
7zip (to unzip gztar)

And a few more preferential software installed on this flatbox:

HTML Kit (color coded and line numbers)
Firefox
CCleaner To keep it clean. defrag once in awhile helps too.

The system will restart on reboot by placing three files in the startup folder of xp (start>all programs>startup [right-click and explore]):

1) xampp control
2) bat file that sets where mh.private.ini is located and starts mh
3) web browser with graph for refreshing values

These last two are included in the package of files used for the current system.

digitemp needs to be run to set a configuration file in the digi/win directory:
from command prompt (start>run>command)
c:\digi\win digitemp_ds9097u -s /dev/ttyS0 -i -u digitemp.conf
(it might be possible to just copy the conf file [included in files] but I’m not sure… always assumed it needed to be run for each system setup)

The following are directory names and hierarchy for file locations:

Cygwin: cygwin
Digitemp:
digi\php.php
digi\fanOn.jpg
digi\fanOff.jpg
digi\ftp_off.pl
digi\ftp_on.pl
digi\ftp_htm.pl
digi\temptable.txt
digi\win\digitemp.conf
Jpgraph: jp
Misterhouse:
misterhouse\mh
misterhouse\mycode\fan.pl
misterhouse\mycode\mh.private.ini
Xampp:
xampp\htdocs\mc\line3.php
xampp\htdocs\mc\b.htm
Perl: perl

There are a few things that require changing for other’s system(s), namely passwords, which i’ve simply replaced in these archived files with typical Password, username. Obviously if you name your db’s or tables differently, do so appropriately in these files, and the websites and online directories would also need to be changed:

fan.pl needs password changed on line 27
ftp_htm.pl and ftp_off.pl and ftp_on.pl need these lines customized: 7, 10, 18
php.pl needs these lines customized: 25, 28, 37
line3.pl needs this lines customized: 7

MySQL database and table are both named “digi”. SQL structure is include with files.

The online display for this system is still in the same spot at:
Cellar Monitor

And a stash of all the software (some is just links to installers) is put here for safe keeping.

And a little plagiarism is due:

Below is copied from misterhouse install page

Download and install Perl version 5.8 (or higher) from http://www.activestate.com/ActivePerl . The 12 MB zip file installs into about 43 MB of disk space. The also have older versions available while will work, but 5.6 had a memory leak problem and 5.0 is, well, kind of old

After installing the core Perl package, you will likely want to install a few optional packages. mh will run without them, but they are easy to install and give it more function. Activestate has provided ppm (Perl Package Manager), a nifty way of automatically downloading and installing packages. Unfortunatly, some of the packages we need are not yet avaliable from ActiveState for perl version 5.8, but Randy Kobes has kindly made them available at his site. You can install them with the following:

> cd \perl\bin (modify to match your directory)
> ppm
ppm > repository add http://theoryx5.uwinnipeg.ca/ppms
ppm> install GD
ppm> install DB_File
ppm> install Tk-JPEG
ppm> install Win32-Setupsup
ppm> install DBI (if you want to interface to a database server)
ppm> install DBD-mysql (if you want to interface with a mysql server)
ppm> install Scalar-List-Utils (if you want AOL im)
ppm> exit

two more needed for my script:

date-calc
time-local

Note: The above from the MH site states “5.8 (or higher)”, but I had troubles with 5.10 that seemed to go away when 5.8 was installed instead.

I just had the extreme pleasure of a visit by Francois Witasse and his wife (excuse me for not getting her name) and young son. Francois is the Directeur General for Tonnellerie Demptos in Bordeaux. They do quite a bit of business with our local cooper, McGinness Wood Products and were in the area paying them a visit. So Tina McGinness brought them by to see a local winery. What delightful people and wonderful appreciation of wines. Always fun to show off our wares to someone who can appreciate them without bias. Not much time, now, but just wanted to get a post started… more on the visit later.

Looks like a misspelling, but it’s my name for a grape found growing here at Peaceful Bend.

This guy seems to just want to be wine. It is a volunteer vine located near our crush pad. Most years, the majority of it’s crop makes it through to harvest, without any intervention whatsoever. This alone makes it a great candidate for cultivation. It has a relatively small berry, similar to Norton, but the tannins are considerably higher, which really sparks my interest, and spawned the name.

Yesterday marked the completion of the rough filtration of all our wines from the cold stability process.
This year, about 7,000 gallons passed through the filter, and 8,000 gallons were moved (1k of reds were just racked and not filtered, which constitutes the majority of the work; detartrating tanks!

Everything went quite well. One major note I wanted to make: a 1.5″ triclover “T” placed at the intake of the filter greatly aided the process several ways:

Pump Priming

Bypass filter to fill dosing tank or place lees in dosing tank

This is a project we’ve been working on this winter. The wine will only be available at the Hy-Vee store at Lake of the Ozarks. But more than anything, I was just wanting to test the image upload function of the new version of WordPress.

…. for being trapped in the salesroom. Had some nice customers. One of the better thing about the off season (doesn’t seem near as off as it use to be!) is that the customers that do show up are high quality. Sometimes I wonder if we structured things properly around here; I often joke about not having a salesroom personality, but it really is enjoyable and instructive. Nothing like getting the poop from the horse’s mouth! That didn’t really sound right, did it. Anyway, sold some cases, had some great conversation, and rested my weary bones from the end of the week’s work.

Also did some good IT work. Last month I started studying SEO from Cricket and with that tagged onto some tech groups that are just chalked full of good info. I had been shopping for good defenseware (you read that first here, cuz I just made it up) and Martha’s site recommended Eset. So the trial version is running on all our boxes now.

Also worked on a little in-house project: setting up a little php program that I wrote this winter so that it emails confirmations when data gets entered. Not quite finished yet, but did get this php library installed and functioning. Now to integrate it seamlessly into the program.

Tho the rest has done me good, I’m getting antsy to get back into the cellar to continue the wine work. Was able to get 1,000 gallons of Catawba through the filter on Wednesday, AND all the tanks cleaned (the biggest task of the operation, beyond getting everything setup) but was interrupted on Thursday by a truck with 15 pallets of bottles!

Lots has gone down since my last entry. The least of which not being that I’ve moved all websites to a new server. This took quite some time and effort and has put me way behind on many things, including keeping up with my stuff on the web.

Recently, the wines been calling me back. I started filtration of the wines out of cold stability, then 15 pallets of bottles arrive yesterday. And today I had salesroom duty. Will do the salesroom tomorrow too, but this is restful stuff, and I hope to be able to knock out some more wine in the morning before the salesroom is open. All is pretty much set to go.

Anyway, this blog was broken since I moved it, and a lull in the salesroom allowed me to get it going again. Hopefully, it all works ok. I notice some missing picks that were uploaded to via the blog…. good reason not to do it that way. Also noticed a bunch of “A”s with hats added. What’s with that. A bit distracting, but everything basically looks to be intact. Hoping to do more fun blogging here. Awhile back I setup a blog on our intranet for detailed winemaking to keep from putting people to sleep here.

Decided to find some links that describe the 2012 event without a religious slant.

Here’s a nicely done one.

http://www.acalan.com/event2012.htm

It’s easy to find lots of “talk” on the subject, but unfortunately, much of it is cluttered with apocolyptic views.

The ground was saturated with the nice rains and snows this winter, including a recent 2 inches of sleet that was like walking in a bunch of beads. Then we got an inch and half of rain with a couple hours on the night of Feb. 16/17 according to Wudack.

Recently, I got in trouble on a discussion forum for starting a thread with this title. Actually, the way that others ended up interpreting the situation, it was Sean who got in trouble. I would have rather it be. Not because I’m some kind of martyr, but because after thinking about this long and hard, I think he was probably more correct than me. But my first intentions were good ones, and I did think I was staying within the rules. However, by definition, someone misconstrued my intentions and therefore, by definition (DO NOT discuss anything that can be even remotely construed as political or religious talk. ) I broke the rules. I can only think that my side was sided with because of the good, no great, joke that was included!

So anyway, here’s why I didn’t feel that my subject was religious, but simply philosophical: The event that correlates with the time posted in the subject line is an astronomical event. There’s some serious celestial alignment about to happen in less than five years, and it was first known to be noticed by the Maya people quite some time ago. That some modern Zealots have taken this under their wing to be Armageddon is their own business. Some of those same people would be just as ready to claim that any particular rainstorm is a deliberate Godsend, especially if it does damage to their home. But does that make a rainstorm into a religious subject. Not in my book. Consequently those same people tend to “thank the Lord” for saving them, instead of bitching at him for tearing their house down in the first place. Mind you I do neither of those actions.

I’ve invited the participants and viewers of the forum to this thread on my site* , as I am not in fear of a discussion of a very interesting event that might be considered to be religious by some.

You, of course, are invited to comment or ignore, but I thought my explanation was more appropriately place in my own space.

*which by the way, involves a whole other mixed bag of emotions… I’ve never invited anyone here except winemakers or perl writers; the winemakers most likely did not recognize this as the default template of wordpress, an I’m pretty sure the perl geeks don’t care! But I did build a template for our main site, and have always been a bit more focused on content then glitz. But perhaps I should be more embarrassed about my scant content! But hey, I’ve had wine to make!