しーまブログ 2012年05月14日
Things on my mind
It is wet weather now. It's windy. The wind has blown the cover off the garden-tractor I fixed, which is cluttering up the parking area. I'm planning to write a piece on that tractor, and as soon as I get the pictures uploaded I'll publish it here.
The other side of the parking area has two scooters. One of them, a Honda Dio, is almost finished. One of my hobbies is fixing things, and as I have quite a good relationship with the owner of a bike shop, I get old bikes for free, then I order parts through the shop, and sell them cheaply. I have fixed and sold about a half-dozen scooters now - maybe I should make this a part of my job? Anyway, I want to write at length about the scooters I fix because I'd like to use this site to try to sell them.
It's difficult to get enough scooters to sell. Scooters are very much in demand at the moment. People don't have much money these days, and so cheap (but reliable) scooters are very popular.
If anyone has a scooter that needs fixing inexpensively then you might like to ask me to fix it for you? For example, an old scooter might need a bit of welding on the frame, new tyres, a new muffler, new mirrors, a new seat cover and maybe a few other parts. I can do all that with new parts for around 30,000 yen.
I was hard at work in my garden today. I planted 'nira.' My garden is mostly rocks, so it takes a very long time to dig a trench, then put compost, fertilizer and soil in it. It took me four hours to dig a trench 1.2 metres long, 40cms wide, and 30cms deep. I use a steel bar and a spade to dig the trench, and I mix the new soil with a small hoe ... I managed to break two hoes today. They both need new handles. Two weeks ago I broke the cutting edge off one of the (cheap) hoes, so I welded it back (I'm so cheap).
So I got a lot of exercise today. There's NO DOUBT that trying to make a garden with poor soil is a massive undertaking. Basically all that poor soil needs to be removed and replaced with organic stuff. I've been trying to get some decent vegetables growing in my garden for over a year, and I've moved tons of rocks and shifted tons of soil. I've added all the organic stuff I can find for the past year, and still now only a quarter of my garden has good soil. The rest of the garden is still waiting for me to dig up the lifeless inorganic rock and replace it with rotted vegetation.
As well as planting about a hundred 'nira' seedlings, I and my wife also planted some green peppers, some cucumbers, some 'okura,', some lemon-grass and a few other things. The 35 tomato plants I grew from seed and transplanted into my garden are all looking fine. Last year, an early typhoon killed all my tomato plants, so I hope I'll be lucky this year.
Near to my garden I am planning to build a home for my son's turtles. The turtles were about 4cm long when we bought the turtles for my eldest son, and now they are about 20cms long. There are four turtles. At first the turtles were OK in a modified aquarium. It was a 60cm fish tank, and I fitted it with a heater, a heat lamp, a place to sit above the water, and a water pump to recycle and clean the water. That tank was OK for a year and a half, but they grew too big. Then I made a bigger home for them using the top of a discarded 'kotatsu.' I made a hole in the centre and put a 40cm plastic bowl there for them to swim in, and I made a cover with a hinged door so it could be accessed. A 20W fluorescent light meant the turtle's home could be maintained when it was dark. But unfortunately even that home is too small now.
Now there is a 70cm aluminium bowl set into the ground near my garden. As soon as I get some materials, I'm going to build a new home for them around that bowl. This time it needs to be a permanent location outside because they are too big for a practically-portable home. I'll make a small waterfall and build a small hill inside a fenced-off enclosure, and I'll fit some kind of removable lid. I hope I can make the waterfall run off solar power.
I thought of using lots of rocks insulated from the ground, so that in the early morning, the dew will condense on the rocks and provide a small, but reliable source of water to keep the turtles' bowl filled.
Every few weeks I cut the grass around our apartment building. Then I rake it all up and put it all in a pile so it can become compost. Wow! Such hard work! Of course I could buy some good soil, but it is expensive and I can't afford it.
Why am I feeling listless tonight? Maybe not enough sleep? I suppose I've got all the jobs I planned to get done today finished, so I should be feeling satisfied. Over time, if I am not careful, I can get quite messy with my jobs. Sometimes I have two or three jobs being done at the same time, and so my bench becomes cluttered. Then sometimes I manage to have a pile of tools on the kitchen table. If I don't do a big clean-up then it is possible for me to become stuck. Then I am forced to do a blitz and clean everything up. It takes me only an hour or so, and I feel a lot better when the place is tidy and I know where all my tools are.
I always feel bad because I am unable to get my photos up on this blog. The reason is my own laziness, because I still haven't learnt the Japanese instructions of a lot of the programmes on this computer. This blog is all Japanese of course, and I can understand just enough to post a simple entry - such as this one. My wife is very busy these days, and I keep forgetting to ask her to upload my photos for me.
How many people can understand what I write here? I expect the number must be very small - that's why I want to put lots of pictures up, because a picture is worth a thousand words, and the language is not so much of a problem if you can see the issue being written about.
For a while now I've been thinking about making a diary here. It's a big undertaking if I decide to do it, because for a diary to be useful, it should be regularly updated, and really ought to have a new page every day - or every few days at the most.
I decided to write this piece because I am trying to push myself to make the effort to make this blog more alive. My conscience nags me because I don't update enough.
Well - it's late, and I should go about the place and just make sure everything's done, then I'll head for bed. Before I sleep I'll be planning tomorrow's activities. I must get that scooter done. The scooter is in the kitchen at the moment because I haven't as yet put the plastic cover on it, and if it sits outside in the rain, water will get all over the engine and all the bits the plastic cover conceals.
The wind is gusting - it's rattling the loose parts on this old building. Tomorrow we are set for a day of rain, and that's good because of the plants I put in today. It's not so good as far as my getting the scooter finished though.
One more thing I am doing now, is I've got a friend's lead/acid battery hooked-up to one of my homemade pulse-chargers. The battery was severely sulphated, and by pulsing a high current with a sharp leading edge to the spike it is possible to remove the hardened sulphates. Yesterday when I began pulsing the battery, my hydrometer registered the electrolyte was virtually water. The float indicated the battery was off the scale. The meter I use indicates a green band when the electrolyte's specific gravity is good, a yellow band if it is a little weak, and a wide red band indicating the battery is unfit for service. All six cells were beyond registering on even the red band.
Now, after a little over 24 hours, all the cells are inside the yellow area, and a few cells are almost in the green area. The electrolyte should be sulphuric acid and water of a concentration of 36%. The specific gravity should be at least 1,265. Many people have heard of desulphating systems, and some pay a lot of money for such devices in the shops. But as far as I can tell, all the shop-bought units are practicably ineffective. I have compared a friend's pulse-charger bought from Nishimuta, and it is useless. It is, however, quite satisfactory as a regular charger.
I spent five years making and experimenting with circuits until I found what worked, and now I'm pretty confident I can get any sulphated battery back into service. My neighbours use batteries I have desulphated with my machines, as do quite a few of my relatives. All the batteries I use are ones I've desulphated after they were scrapped. I think my Honda Cub's battery must be over 20 years old now - that's the oldest one I've got.
Good Morning,Richad-san. This is Noguchi=your pupil.
Thank you very much for your yesterday cooperation.
I 've read your article.Please do up more articles.If you can,every day,can you?
I can teach you how to up photgraph in this blog system.
See you on this Tuesday.