Now that I’m linked to our main site, I suppose that I should be blogging.  After instigating others that blog so well, I feel literically challenged (and can prove it!)
Most of what I’ll post here, will be technical stuff.  That should chase a good part of the crowd away!
To start with, I’ll share my latest find.   Ever wonder you to get an avatar on our blog?  I’m sure you’re dieing to know!
It’s pretty simple, free, and once you’ve done it, your avatar will show up on a variety of places, including pretty much any WordPress blog.
Just go here: Gravatar and follow the simple instructions.

Now the dog story…. of course I’ve been up all night again (blame it on Julie’s banana cake!) have gone down to get a couple beers in the process and the doggies were nowhere to be seen.. but before long, they came in…. didn’t have to see them…. didn’t have to hear them (though I did)… but could identify them cuz they were out playing with their friend the skunk. pepe’ living up to his name!

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Last night, I was reading out of John Steinbecks novel, “The Grapes of Wrath” (for the third time in my life) and this passage struck me:

“They was a brave on a ridge, against the sun. Knowed he stood out. Spread his arms an’ stood. Naked as morning, an’ against the sun. Maybe he was crazy, I don’t know. Stood there, arms spread out; like a cross he looked. Four hundred yards. An’ the men–well, they raised their sights an’ they felt the wind with their fingers; an’ then they jus’ lay there and couldn’ shoot. Maybe that Injun knowed somepin. Knowed we couldn’ shoot. Jes’ laid there with the rifles cocked, an’ didn’ even put ‘em to our shoulders. Lookin’s at him. Head-band, one feather. Could see it, an’ naked as the sun. Long time we laid there an’ looked, an’ he never moved. An’ then the captain got mad. ‘Shoot, you crazy bastards, shoot!’ he yells. An’ we jus’ laid there. ‘I’ll give you to a five-count, an’ then mark you down,’ the captain says. Well, sir–we put up our rifles slow, an’ ever’ man hoped some-body’s shoot first. I ain’t never been so sad in my life. An’ I laid my sights on his belly, cause’ you can’t stop a Injun no other place–an’–then. Well, he jest plunkered down an’ rolled. An’ we went up. An’ he wasn’ big–he’d looked so grand–up there. All tore to pieces an’ little. Ever see a cock pheasant, stiff and beautiful, ever’ feather drawed an’ painted, an’ even his eyes drawed in pretty? An’ bang! You pick him up–bloody an’ twisted, an’ you spoiled somepin better’n you; an’ eatin’ him don’t make it up to you, ’cause you spoiled somepin in yaself, an’ you can’t never fix it up”

It was a story being told in the “Gov’ment Camp” the Joads stayed in. The story seems to be just tossed in among a few other random type stories and events that depict what went on during a typical evening in the camps.

Now twicet he uses a simile that describes how naked this “Injun is”.

Maybe he was crazy. Maybe I’m crazy…………….. er.

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.

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.