I'm looking to build an enclosed hydroponic plant growing unit thing.
The main feature was supposed to be the LED growing lights that I'm going to build (since LEDs produce such a narrow spectrum of light, I can precisely control what wavelengths of light and how much the plants get, rather than wasting energy on parts of the spectrum [greens mostly] that are just reflected by the plants), but some other things have come up.

One being what type of hydroponics system I'm going to build and what type of enclosure to use. Right now I'm thinking of using a "video cabinet" type thing with doors that close, and the entire inside lined with mylar. The growing medium will probably be something like pea-gravel. And I'm thinking of using a system pressurized by an air pump to push the nutrient solution up to the plants.

Another issue is deciding what to grow. Ideally I'd be growing things that I could eat. Plants that don't get very tall, and don't creep or spread. Right now all I've come up with is lettuce and strawberries. I need some suggestions for other things to grow though! Any idea?

Ok people, there are tons of us. Almost 7-billion of us! I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that 1 out of every 100,000 people is actually a "superhero" – using a secret identity to fight crime in the spare time. That works out to ~70,000 (seventy-thousand) superheroes! Even if you assume that only 1 out of every 1 million people is a superhero, you're still left with about 7 thousand superheroes.

Are these people doing such an awesome job that we are truly completely unaware of their existence?

If you're a superhero, I would suggest contacting me. We'll need your talents and abilities when it comes time to fight the zombies!

You know what's good? Chocolate covered raisins. You know what else is good? Chocolate covered peanuts, strawberries, and lots of other things.

And what's just really awkward? That's right: chocolate covered gummi bears. I don't know who thought this crap up, but I wish they hadn't. It's a waste of chocolate!

I'm slightly-more-than-half tempted to suck the chocolate off of all of these, put them back in the little bowl, and then cross off the "chocolate covered" part on the slip of paper sitting next to them.

You know what'd be cool?
If more people read this darn blog and commented.

Otherwise… I might have to start posting about zombies again.
Actually, I'll post about zombies no matter what, so it really doesn't matter if more people read and comment.. it's just more fun when they do!

Many of us has to deal with evil office printers at work, some more than others. It's bad enough dealing with printer errors, "'PC Load Letter'? What the fuck does that mean?", paper jams, etc – but some people seem to feel the need to add themselves to the list of possible printer problems. Here are some things that you can do to avoid being one of these work-place annoyances:

• Don't walk away from an empty printer – If you used up all the paper or toner, fix it. Add paper. Add toner. Whatever. If you don't know how to do these, then you shouldn't be using the printer.
• Don't walk away with someone else's prints – Double check that you have your print and only yours before walking away from the printer with a stack of paper. There are few things more frustrating than trying to track down who stole your printout.
• Try not to monopolize the printer – unless it's in your own office, it's not your printer. If people are frequently waiting for your print jobs to finish so they can get their own, you're abusing your printing privileges (and most likely printing way more than you need to be. STOP KILLING TREES!) If you really need to do that much printing, ask about getting your own printer.
• Leave printouts that aren't yours in the 'output bin/tray' – Once again, if it's not yours, don't mess with it. There are people that I work with that think they need to take other people's printouts out of the output tray and set them on top of the printer. Unfortunately, this leads to papers getting knocked off the printer by other people, or by pages coming out of the printer. Just leave them alone!
• If you put in colored or special paper, take it out when you're done – most people don't want to walk to the printer and find out that they need to reprint their important *whatever* because someone left 4 sheets of salmon colored paper in the printer.

The list could go on and on – but the general idea is: be considerate, be responsible, and don't mess with stuff that isn't yours.

Have an addition to the list? Add it in the comments below.

In my rush to get Ninja Picks up and running, I forgot about a little quirk in the video game recommendations that I needed to fix. A "little quirk" that basically made all of the video game recommendations that were returned absolute garbage.

Now it's fixed though, and in the process I thought up a way to improve the relevancy of the search (right now it's overly broad for some searches), which I'll hopefully be implementing within the next couple of weeks. This will improve the book recommendations and movie recommendations as well.

I'm thinking about resurrecting the "Friday lolcats" posts. Yea/nay?