A littler something I was playing around with this evening.
Click the Flash movie to reset the image with some new parameters.
Author: John Winkelman
The Weekly Avocado, week 4 – and a how-to
Yup. More roots coming in. Shouldn’t be long before there are shoots coming out the top.
In other news, two more of my avocado seeds have started sprouting. At the same time. The same day, even. So for all you people who want to know my secret, here it is:
1. Eat an avocado.
2. Clean the pit carefully, and set aside of a couple of days, until completely dry to the touch.
3. Carefully peel all of the brown skin from the pit. At this point it should come off fairly easily.
4. Cut the top and bottom from the pit; maybe a quarter of an inch each, but be careful on the bottom that you don’t slice into the seed inside the pit.
5. Now you should be able to see the natural split in the avocado pit. Carefully, very carefully, insert a thin knife blade a bit and just barely begin to pry the two halves apart. You don’t want them to come completely apart; just enough to weaken the seam between the halves.
6. Toothpicks around the perimeter, suspend the pit half submerged in a container of water as in the above photo.
The change here, from other online instructions, is the weakening of the seam between the halves of the pit. In most every failed attempt, the pit remained a solid whole and I think this prevented the seed from sprouting. This is not to say this method is foolproof, but it seemed to work okay for me (call it fool resistant instead).
I have two more pits waiting, and I will try with them too. I will post progress if and when there is any to report.
The Fulton Street Farmer’s Market is Open!
At long last, the Fulton Street Farmer’s Market is open for the season. After a long bland winter, I now have access to vegetables which are bred for flavor instead of toughness. For the moment the vendors are mostly selling plants and various non-food wares, but as the growing season picks up we will see a shift over to more foodstuffs. This morning the big sellers were asparagus, rhubarb and various meats.
Yum!
Spring in Huff Park
The Cognitive Sinks
A few days ago a crime mapping article I wrote for the People Design blog went live. It pulls together thoughts I have had about this whole mapping thing, and some input from some other people who are involved in this sort of thing.
On Monday I came across a link to a presentation Clay Shirky gave at the Web 2.0 conference last week (transcript of the speech) (video of the speech). In it he talks about the idea of a “cognitive surplus”, and what that could mean for the world in the upcoming years. The idea, brutally simplified, is that as we cease indulging in passive entertainment and begin involving ourselves more and more in interactive pursuits, the amount of available brain-power in the world will increase dramatically. Not that the brains haven’t always been there; they have been turned down to a flicker by being pure consumers of ideas rather than producers.
Shirky brought up the common comment about people who do things like create the Wikipedia: “Where do they find the time?” Simple. They are actively exercising their imaginations, rather than passively absorbing someone else’s output.
The comments and compliments my co-workers offered me about the crime map, combined with the Shirky talk, got me to thinking. The crime map was a simple project. Other than gathering the crime data, it really represented about five hours of work. An afternoon. The length of two of the Matrix movies. If everyone who sat through the Matrix movies more than once, decided instead to exercise their imaginations for that time instead, how many more wonderful things would there be in the world?
The Weekly Avocado
Week 3. Shouldn’t be long before we see some sprouts coming out the top. Then, out of the jar and into the pot.
The Avocado Tree, Week 2
What is this, California?
We just had an earthquake! About 20 seconds of my house shaking, walls creaking, and bed moving like a washing machine agitator. Woke me up, too – just after 5:30 this morning.
Forget coffee – nothing gets you out of bed like a big steaming cup of ADRENALINE!
Like Vampires? Like Science Fiction?
If your answer to the above two questions is “Yes”, then there is a book you need to read. It is call Blindsight and the author is Peter Watts.
Blindsight is a first-contact novel set in the year 2082. I don’t really want to give any details, other than the fact that the ship is captained by a vampire, which Watts makes plausible by demonstrating that, in fact, it is not entirely out of the question that vampires could have existed once upon a time. He even throws in the hard science explaining how it could be possible, which is – in my experience – absolutely unprecedented in vampire novels. But don’t just take my word for it: You can read Watts’ research notes here (PDF), or watch a powerpoint-ish presentation (Flash – highly recommended) from a the Big Pharma company which successfully brought vampires out of extinction. And if that isn’t enough, you can read Blindsight online, for free.
Aaaaannnndddd, if Blindsight makes you hungry for more Peter Watts, you can read his other books – Starfish, Maelstrom, and Βehemoth for free as well.
One warning, though: The other novels are much darker than Blindsight.
But wait: There’s more! Watts is working on another novel, which takes place on Earth at the same time as Blindsight is happening in space. The title is State of Grace, and an excerpt can be read here.
Enjoy!
O Avocado
I eat a lot of avocados.
Truth be told, I probably eat more avocados than any other single fruit or vegetable, except maybe bananas or pizza.
This means I end up with a lot of avocado pits.
This past summer, I did a little research, to see if there was anything I could do with an avocado pit after the rest of the avocado had been eaten. Someone – possibly my girlfriend – told me I should try to grow an avocado tree.
So I did. They are easy to grow, if you happen to have a pit which has within it the spark of life. Perhaps 9 times out of 10 the pit will sit there and shrivel and get slimy. But O, that tenth time!
I have managed, in the last eight months, to sprout three avocado trees. The first one was this past summer. After the roots looked good and long I transplanted it into a pot out on my front porch. When I got home from work, the plant was gone and there were SQUIRREL FOOTPRINTS in the soil in the pot.
Argh.
Round about the end of summer another seed germinated. This one I kept inside, and at the moment the plant is about eighteen inches tall, green, leafy and – as far as I can tell – happy and healthy. This one is staying inside until it is too big to be eaten by any of the local wildlife.
This past weekend, I noticed that one of the seeds sitting in the kitchen window had begun to grow.
This is how I start the seeds. All it takes is a small jar, three toothpicks, a sunny window, and some patience.
That little nubbin coming out of the bottom of the pit is a root. In another couple of weeks a small stem will sprout from the top of the avocado, and then, once it begins to grow a couple of leaves, it will be time to put it in a pot.
If you want to try this yourself, I recommend using the seeds from organically-grown avocados, rather than the big supermarket chains, although this might not make any difference. Don’t expect to have fruit bearing trees any time in the next decade, and then only if you have several trees in the same space. This is definitely a labor of love.