Noodles’ Blog

I had been searching for approximate frost dates for Auckland to help schedule veggie plantings. Luckily the people at NIWA are nice and respond very quickly to emails. I was told that ground frosts are days where grass minimum temperature are less than -1.0 degree C. Screen frosts are when the air temperature dips below 0.0 degrees C.

Using NIWA’s free data explorer tool “Cliflo” and the closest weather station to me I came up with the following data:

2009
First Frost: 2009-04-10
Last Frost: 2009-09-09

2008
First Frost: 2008-04-21
Last Frost: 2008-09-07

2007
First Frost: 2007-05-29
Last Frost: 2007-10-04

2006
First Frost: 2006-05-31
Last Frost: 2006-09-19

2005
First Frost: 2005-04-22
Last Frost: 2005-09-03

2004
First Frost: 2004-05-21
Last Frost: 2004-09-30

2003
First Frost: 2003-04-26
Last Frost: 2003-10-27

2002
First Frost: 2002-07-14
Last Frost: 2002-10-24

2001
First Frost: 2001-05-29
Last Frost: 2001-09-29

2000
First Frost: 2000-06-14
Last Frost: 2000-09-29

This averages out to:

First Frost: May 19
Last Frost: September 27

Hopefully this helps the local gardeners. Join me on Folia

The Webby Awards are upon us again for the 13th year. It’s ironic though that awards that celebrate the best on the internet have one of the worst designed sites. The Webby People’s Voice site (http://pv.webbyawards.com) is hard to register on and vote. This has discouraged a lot of people from voting for their favourite websites.

I had to find out the size of all our images on a site today. This was the easiest and fastest way to do it

Here's a great list of photography resources: http://mashable.com/2007/06/23/photography-toolbox/

Add your imob friend code to the comments and I'll add you

My code is 100 631 009 (also for iKnights)

If you haven't installed iMob yet, search for it on the itunes store and install it on your iPhone for free.

Update: Comments are now closed, there are over 1200 people posting here and it takes ages to page through them all. If you want your code added to this post (at the top) please donate $2 via paypal:

Add your code into the comments of the payment and I'll add it. Limited to 100 places. This is highly ranked page for imob codes and gets a ton of traffic, you'll get added by hundreds of users (I've been added by 2300 people).

Other codes to add:

268-154-383
165-281-454
123-643-569
142-622-107
162-023-523
163-976-612
179-594-415

Learn about freezer jam and how to make it. I hadn't heard of it before, but apparently it's quite a popular way to make jams these days. Saves a lot of time.

Recipes:

Strawberry Freezer Jam
Blueberry Freezer Jam

I'm doing an experiment with Google Knol, so I've written a Knol about back pain

I will post the results of this test later on.

I've just started a new blog about antioxidants and good health.

You can find it here: Antioxidant Smart

I've just set up a lens on Squidoo.com about Verizon Wireless

It's still a work in progress, but there's some interesting information there.

I happened across a really neat site the other day, called codegolf.com. Some of you might recall a similar scheme going on a while back called perl golf - well this is the same idea.

The deal is, there is a load of challenges set, and you have to write and submit the code to supply the required output of the challenge. However, there is one snag - you have to write it in as little code as possible. It has you really thinking laterally - outside of ways you might normally think of writing code, which I personally find fantastic (and depressing, realising how little shorthand I know!)

There is currently four languages you can submit in - PHP, Perl, Ruby and Python. Suggest that you hardcore execution-time monkies take a look at it and get scoring.

The Sheriff's Department in Douglas County, Colorado says it's going to start warning computer users that their networks may be vulnerable to hackers. It plans on equipping its patrol cars with devices that detect unprotected computer networks, and distributing brochures to computer users in vulnerable areas, instructing them on how to password protect their networks.

More info here