Rick and Eric talk about renovation, recording podcasts, and the usual rick and eric stuff. and how to frost your glass.
photo by morguefile
Category: Podcast
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Soil Remediation Information : GFR 309
Your yard tests positive for lead or heavy metals, time for some soil remediation information. Today we talk with GF Contributor Brian about he removed lead and heavy metals from the soil in his yard.
Rick and Eric will be back in September with more cool stuff.
We will be making a video about this this fall, stay tuned.
Photo from MorgueFile.
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Toilet Installation and Frosted Glass with Tracy : GF Radio 308
Tracy joins us to talk about the renovation. Stay tuned for more new stuff in September! thx, eric.
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How to Start A Podcast : GF Radio 307
Start Podcasting Now. Start a podcast by listening to this podcast. Kevin emailed me asking about how to podcast, and I suggested we do a skype call and create a podcast on podcasting!
Creating a podcast consists of:
- Preparing To Record
- Recording the Show
- Editing the Podcast
- Posting the Podcast on a website and/or server
Preparation involves whatever you need to do to set up the recording, schedule guests, research topics, create a discussion list, schedule the recording.Recording the show can be as simple or complicated as you want it to be. We use Skype to do most of our shows, and we use a plug in by Ecamm called Record A Call to record the skype call.
At this point you can just convert the audio recording into an mp3, or edit the recording to include music, introductions, and remove glitches.
You have to post the show on a server that is connected to the internet. You can use inexpensive hosts like BlueHost or HostGator, you don’t need anything fancy. Keep the site design real simple when you first start. Use the default wordpress template. Simple is Good.
You then need to create an iTunes compliant RSS Feed, here is some info on that from Apple.
We post each audio recording on our WordPress site as a post, and use a podcasting plugin to create the iTunes compatible RSS feed. We have also used Feed For All to create iTunes compliant RSS feeds
You can also use a service like Libsyn, who for a small fee, can take care of most of this for you.
What Equipment is needed to make a podcast?
I suggest you get a good quality USB headset
. Test out the microphone of the headset to see how it records, it might sound fine, it might not.
I use a Blue Snowball USB microphone, which I really like. Kevin, our guest here, is using a Blue Snowball microphone for this show.
For in person recording we use a Zoom ZH1 Portable Digital Recorder
, with a a wind screen, aka dead cat, covering the microphone.
You can use Garage Band or Audacity to edit the audio file.
photo from MorgueFile.
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Geek Show 1 with Mike and Rick : GF Radio 305
Here are some brief notes on our new Geek Show. We hope to post more info soon, but I wanted to get this show up and don’t have time to do the notes fully. Any additions are welcome.
Rick talks about Feedly, an RSS reader that he likes. Then we talk about using HootSuite to manage your social media presence, this is especially good for small businesses. Mike is interested in using this for his electronics startup.
We then move onto curating the internet. Eric likes Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings blog and how she uses a monthly donation system with paypal to fund the website. Mike talks about Reddit, which is kinda wild west sometimes.
We talk about the new Canon 70D and its new auto focus ability in video mode. Use our affiliate link to buy it here: Canon EOS 70D
Eric uses the Canon T4i with the 18-135mm lens. Buy it here with our Amazon affiliate link
We then move onto Pinhole photography with a digital camera, which not everyone gets, but we talk about anyway.
Mike talks about a DIY camera mount for his iPhone, and asks if its ok to use an iPhone to make videos for the web.
DIY iphone tripod bracket mount Mike gives us an update on his electronics pinball business and the challenges of running a small business and the tipping point of being too busy, what its like to hire people, and all that.
Here is the article on how software startups are growing in Detroit.
Of course we talk about bees and the bee hive monitor.
we then we talk bout cooking BBQ and the Power Stoker BBQ monitor you can hook up to your meat smoker
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Help Build A Permaculture Farm : Blueberry Girls Miracle : GF Radio 305b
We talk with Eleanor Justice of the Blueberry Girls Miracle . They are raising funds to buy a blueberry farm and turn the farm into a permaculture farm with demonstrations and classes. You can help Eleanor make this happen by visiting their fundraising site here.
photo from MorgueFile
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Do Something Interesting : GF Radio #305
Rick and Eric talk about weather data and GardenFork’s Allisonhouse weather station. Learn more about allisonhouse.com severe weather data and app here.
We then read a letter from Bob about his son helping with beekeeping and harvesting honey, which is great to hear.
Rick’s new blog of #podcastsworthhearing go to this blog: www.rhkennerly.com . And Eric brought up the CBC Ideas podcasts on the Knights Templar and other knight groups.Eric did some mushroom foraging for oyster mushrooms and gave them to GF producer Sarah, check out Sarah’s mushroom rissotto recipe that she made with the mushrooms. You can read more of Sarah’s posts on her site, Punctuated With Food.
Rick made these zucchini fritters from Kevin’s A Garden For The House blog
Eric tells of using a dutch oven to bake a cake outdoors to keep your house cool in the summer.
We then discuss using buckwheat as a cover crop overseeding, Rick wrote about pollinators on our GF site here.
Rick tells us about this cool free tree identification app called Leafsnap .
Rick likes this: clyde’s garden planner guide, tells you when to plant, which helps.
For ordering garlic to plant this fall, check out filareefarm.com and Territorial Seed, and Johnny’s Seed.
You can learn more about having less of a grass lawn with SALT from CT college
photo from MorgueFile
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Keep The House Cool Without AC : GF Radio #304
How to keep the house cool without AC, or reduce your use of the air conditioning, with these simple ways to cool the house. An emphasis on simple ways to keep the house cool is the theme here. Cooking in the early morning, cooking outside, keeping the shades drawn are a few of the ways to keep your house cool.
One of the biggest ways to keeping your house cooler, is to use CFL bulbs in place of incandescent bulbs. The old style bulbs put off a huge amount of heat. Also using CFLs will reduce the amount of mercury in the air. This is because CFLs use less energy, fewer coal fired power plants – which put mercury in the air – need to be running.Using smart power strips, that turn off power to electronics when not in use. HDTVs, stereos, printers are all ‘on’ when plugged in, even it they are turned off. Monica talked about smart power strips on a previous GF Radio.
Eric is a big advocate of spray foam insulation, and we talk about the use of blown-in insulation using cellulose, which can be put on top of the existing insulation in your attic space.
Using trees to shade your home, or to shade the outdoor air conditioner compressor, is one suggested by Rick.
The house cooling tips were inspired by a post in Mother Earth Living.
How to cut down a tree with a chainsaw is discussed, with our recent chainsaw video. This was quite a large tree to cut down. Again, use a chainsaw with extreme caution, and be very careful. If you are not sure what you are doing, hire a professional.
stumpshot70 is a lumberjack that Eric watches on YouTube.
We talk about digital SLR cameras, aka DSLR cameras. Eric uses a Canon T4i with a 18-135mm lens. Rick is looking at the Canon 70D, which seems to be better at auto focus in the video mode.
Rick’s Podcasts Worth Hearing, a curated list of interesting podcasts, can be found here: http://rhkennerly.com/
The article about crabgrass can be read here: https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=crabgrass-carries-on-chemical-warfa-13-07-09
photo courtesy MorgueFile
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Re-Post Good Garden Bugs GF Radio #303
1811 August 20. (Jefferson to Charles Willson Peale). “I have often thought that if heaven had given me choice of my position & calling, it should have been on a rich spot of earth, well watered, and near a good market for the productions of the garden. “no occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, & no culture comparable to that of the garden. such a variety of subjects, some one always coming to perfection, the failure of one thing repaired by the success of another, & instead of one harvest a continued one thro’ the year. under a total want of demand except for our family table I am still devoted to the garden. but tho’ an old man, I am but a young gardener.”[10]
Squash! Squash! Squash! &
Powdery Mildew : Compost tea, baking soda, NEEM oil – always add a bit of soapTomatoes : race with blight but my grafted tomatoes are resisting…so far
good habits dealing with blight and mildews clean debris, cut out damage, and sanitiize,
hands gloves tools move disease faster than wind or insectsWhat’s Wrong with My Plant? (and How do I fix it?) Deardorff & Wadsworth
kind of flow charting http://ow.ly/mJdp4What’s Wrong With My Vegetable Garden?: 100% Organic Solutions for All Your Vegetables, from Artichokes to Zucchini: David Deardorff, Kathryn Wadsworth: 9781604691849: Amazon.com: Books http://ow.ly/mJdsh
Good Bug Bad Bug: Who’s Who, What They Do, and How to Manage Them Organically (All you need to know about the insects in your garden): Jessica Walliser: 9780981961590: Amazon.com: Books http://ow.ly/mJduI
An authoritative link regarding legionnaires disease and hot water temperature in residential hot water heaters: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2094925/
Regarding evernote & twitter. Just as we recorded this piece, twitter stopped support for RSS feeds, so the If This, Then That (ifttt.com) recipe no longer works. A good work around, though, is to follow @myEN (see https://twitter.com/myen for directions ) and you can send tweets to your Evernote account from twitter.
BTW: iftt.com is free and has recipes to automate a whole lot of different processes with about 30 different social networking, feed readers,and on-line tools.
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Keep Your House Cool, Saving Energy GF Radio
Keep your house cool and saving energy how-to info on this GardenFork Radio show. Rick and Eric give a shout-out to Bruce Berg, aka CheeseHeadBruce on twitter . Then we talk about how to hang a pre-hung door, and the value of hiring a carpenter to hang doors, it may save you money in the long run.
Rick brings up solar chimney, and how heat convection and pull in cool air and let hot air out the top of a building. A neat way to keep your house cool without air conditioning.
Eric talks about painting his flat roof white, which helps keep your house cool. The house roof is currently silver, but white paint has a higher reflectivity and will reduce the heat transmission. This and the spray foam insulation applied to the ceiling joists will help.
Street trees also keep your house cool. Eric asks about how people use passive cooling techniques
We move onto to Eric’s conversation with Dan Grey of MPGomatic and the good info on low rolling resistance tires. Rick agrees that the low rolling resistance tires makes a huge difference. He has them on his Prius and gets MPG in then 50 mpg range.
We also talk about ethanol, and have more questions than answers.
Rick says, “energy efficiency is the first best fuel we have” ; insulating your house – Eric just used spray foam insulation – can reduce the need for air conditioning
Rick talks about hot water heaters and how he uses a utility timer on his hot water heater, but cautions that one must be careful when using it.
On that note, we talk about how eric has had to open up his walls for renovation and he has slid on pipe insulation onto the hot water pipes while working on his house. pipe insulation makes a huge difference in keeping the hot water hot as it travels to your bathroom or kitchen.Rick uses red christmas tree bulbs to trick the birds in to pecking those bulbs and they then wont peck at the red tomatoes.
we move on to bees and wasps. if you see wasps nests and they are not bothering anyone, leave them be. wasps eat bugs in your garden, especially the wasps that parasitize the tomato hornworm.
worm composting is next ,and how to make compost tea, which is liquid gold . rick adds one cup of sugar to his compost tea, and the sugar helps increase the beneficial organisms in the compost tea. the tea needs to sit in the sun for a day. stir the tea or use an aquarium bubble to aerate the tea.
rick talks more about using evernote and twitter, and we read viewer mail.
photo by wallenberg from morguefile.com
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Improve Gas Mileage Of Your Car : GF Radio
Get better gas mileage with your existing car with these simple tips. Dan of MPGomatic tells us how to increase the MPG of the car you own now, which is easier than going out and buying a new one.
The biggest takeaway from our talk, which I was not aware of, is how the car’s tires have an effect on MPG. And this isn’t talking tire pressure – there is a new kind of gas saving tire that have low rolling resistance. These fuel efficient tires used to have a bad name, only showing up on hybrid cars like the Prius, but now these gas saving tires are on Corvettes and sporty Subarus. Dan is buying Continental Pure Contact Ecoplus tiresfor his test car. (Amazon affiliate link)
Here is an article on the NY Times site on better fuel efficiency with car tires. Dan offers a free guide The Roadmap To Better Gas Mileage, sign up for his email newsletter here, to receive a copy.
The other way to improve gas mileage is to use synthetic oil, which i had not idea would make a difference. Dan suggests if you change your own oil to buy synthetic oil in bulk, you can buy it in 5 quart containers. Look for it on sale and then buy a bunch, put it on the shelf for the next few oil changes. You have to recycle your used oil, and you can recycle synthetic oil the same way to recycle regular motor oil, take it to a auto shop or your town garage for recycling.
Another neat one is how hubcaps affect gas mileage, the smoother or flatter the hubcap, you will get an improvement in gas saving. Dan tells us about the Moon hubcaps that the high speed cars for breaking speed records use to minimize drag on their car. Truck fleets are now looking into these smooth hubcaps.
The number one way to save gas is to improve your driving. Drive with a light foot. Buy an instant MPG Fuel Gauge (Amazon link here) that plugs into the code reader port under your dashboard. This display sits on your dashboard and gives you instant feedback on how your driving is affecting how much gas you are using. There are some smartphone apps avail for this. Dan uses an app called DashCommand that can do data logging. You can also get high tech with bluetooth wireless rigs to connect to your car’s data.
Dan and Eric talk about the need for people to drive trucks, and Eric talks about the Instant MPG feedback readout of the Ford F150 Limited he drove last month.
Is ethanol gas good? Dan tells us about the pros and cons of using ethanol and E85 gas, and the best place to buy a used car at auction.
photo by dhester – morguefile.com
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Matty’s Weed Fabric : GF Radio
Rick and Eric talk about using a heat gun to melt the wax caps off of honeycombs
Eric asks if there is an intellectual property lawyer who might help out GardenFork
Then talk moves to spray foam insulation and sheetrock on ceilings
and viewer mail with Matty!
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The Future Always Wins : GF Radio
Eric tells about driving the 2013 Ford F150 Limited in downtown Manhattan, as well as using the truck up at the CT house. A big thank you to our Mike and Scott and Mary Beth at Ford for making that happen!
Rick brings up the illegal importation of honey, read more here: http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2013/02/honeygate-sting-leads-to-charges-for-illegal-chinese-honey-importation
Eric talks about the celebration of the neato factor, the cool stuff people are doing, like Tyler and his severe weather data company, Allison House.
Speaking of the maker world, Rick tells us about WikiHouse, a project to use CNC machines to make housing, very neat. Its a house that is assembled all from plywood cut on a CNC machine.
Eric gives a shout out to Steve at Born To Farm, and his podcast, Growing Your Own Grub
Rick suggests looking outside the US for neat podcasts, you can get his podcast suggestions by following Rick on twitter and his hashtag: #podcastsworthhearing
Spray Foam Insulation comes up at the end
The Cement Truck always wins.
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Rick Falls Out Of A Truck : GF Radio
Rick gets a bee swarm call and ends up on the ground. there are more notes, but i will have to post them later, OK? have to go to work now. thx! eric. -
Just Build and Fail with Mike : GF Radio
Mike and Eric talk bout Mike’s electronics fabrication startup, DK Pinball, and his recent trip to the Midwest Gaming Classic with his PIG pinball interface device. Through this story we learn again that most of us learn by failure, and not to be afraid to try, to not come up with excuses for not doing stuff.Kinda like the GardenFork mantra, Go Out And Do Stuff.
Because Mike asked, he was able to secure a prime spot at the Gaming Classic to show people his Pinball Interface Gagdet, which allows pinball machines to be modified to flash lights or LEDs, to control motors or servos, signal relays. The PIG makes modifying your pinball machine that much easier. Get more information about the PIG from DK Pinball here.
So remember, the worst they can say is no.
Mike talks about the importance of working for free, either to learn how to do stuff, or be able to trade labor or time in a shop. Mike worked for free at a shop and was then able to use their laser CNC machine, which is a computer controlled cutting machine. neat.
The talk then moves toward starting a small business, and your career in general. Eric speaks highly of Rich Gee, Executive Business Coach. So if you are looking for someone to help with your career with advice and an action plan, Rich is the guy.
Mike talks about the challenge of hiring your first employee, and what a hurdle that is. Its harder than one might think. Eric suggests using a payroll service, even though it may sound expensive, it will save time and headaches for you, allowing you to focus on being in business, not pushing paper around.
we then move on to how you work in your workshop. Do we spend time cleaning our workshop or working in our workshop? Does stuff get stacked up in your workshop, what about de-cluttering your workshop? Mike tells us how to organize the workshop.
Eric talks about the number of cables one has just to connect all the devices one has on a desk, and Mike suggests Spiral Wraps to organize computer cables.
We then close with dog food thoughts and viewer mail.
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Birdhouses, Arugula, and Daylilies – GF Radio
Rick and Eric talk building bird houses, removing a swimming pool from Rick’s yard, foraging for daylilies.
And then there is Eric’s secret to inner peace!
Links:
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Propagating Boxwood with Kevin Lee Jacobs : GF Radio
Learn how to grow more plants, like propagating boxwood instead of buying boxwood plants, with Kevin Lee Jacobs, whose website is A Garden For The House. We learn from Kevin how to propagate boxwood and create ornamental gardens inexpensively with the Use What You Got method. Kevin is a big advocate of leaf mold and leaf mulch, using the leaves in your yard, not some stuff you bought in a bag from the store.
We also talk about Garter Snakes, and how we should promote snake habitat instead of shunning snakes. Snakes get the short end of the stick often in literature and life, but they are beneficial to the garden, Kevin feels. Snakes like rocks, Kevin suggested creating rock walls or rock piles in your garden to encourage Garter Snakes to take up residence.
Kevin shows us how to make Mozzarella Cheese, which is super simple with ingredients ordered from New Englad Cheese Making Supply. Be sure to use regular milk, not ultra-pasturized milk, which will not work to make Mozzarella cheese.
We also talk about how to make yogurt and cottage cheese. We have a few how-to videos on how to make yogurt here. We have yet to make cottage cheese, but its on the to-do list of GardenFork shows.
photo by Alvimann
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Maple Syrup Boil and Apple Tree Grafting : GF Radio
How do you know when maple syrup is syrup? Either by watching the local boiling point or hydrometer, Eric tells about how to boil maple sap into maple syrup, here is a great how-to by the CT DEP http://www.ct.gov/deep/lib/deep/forestry/ctwildlife/cwjf12.pdf#page=10
Then Eric has the secret to world peace. We discuss
Eric was a guest of Ford at the New York International Auto Show, and learned about Ford’s C-Max line of electric hybrid cars and got to check out the new 2014 Ford Fiesta with a 1.0L Eco-Boost engine
Ford Eco Boost 1.0 L engine We asked people on Twitter and Facebook what they wanted us to talk about and Matt wants to hear about splitting a hive, so we talk about why one splits a hive, and how to capture a swarm, here is the link to Eric showing how to capture a honeybee swarm.
Several viewers asked us to talk about the “Monsanto Bill” that was slipped into law, Rick talks about it and his take on GMOs
Our GMO talk moved on to apple tree breeding, and Eric mentioned the Newtown Pippin in neighbor’s yard, which makes great cider.
You can buy heirloom apple trees from fedco here.
Another Viewer asked about coffee. Rick and Eric know nothing about making or drinking coffee, but Rick suggests using coffee sacks for your bee smoker
rick has new open space minus pool
we talk coffee,
And then we admit we know nothing about raising chickens either. But Rick talks about chicken moats anyway.
We touch on Parking, and here are the two podcasts Eric referenced: CBC Ideas with Paul Kennedy http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/podcasts/
Freakonomics Podcast : http://www.freakonomics.com/2013/03/13/parking-is-hell-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/
Then Viewer Mail:
Can you eat the leaves of Brussel Sprouts? Eric thinks so, its part of cabbage plant
Can you grow garlic in Uganda? Yes.
We read a note from Josh Bauer local food farmer in Florida, aetherfarms.com