[Terrapreta] Where to get the right charcoal?

[code suidae]

On 9/27/07, ch braun <brauncch at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I have an idea to write a little windows utility program to keep track of
> > char experiments.
> Could you give more details on what your utility program
> is supposed to do?

Well, I suspect that I'll want to have my personal charcoal and
cultivation data in a disconnected format on my computer, so I can
work with it without an internet connection until I'm ready to upload
it (particularly for cultivation experiments which can take a
substantial amount of time). Once the data was ready I'd export it to
the specified XML format and send it up to your website for public
access.

The current plan is to write it in Delphi 7 using a Firebird database.
I've considered C# too, but the overhead of the dotnet environment is
much higher and I'd like to keep the system requirements minimal. I
might try it in C# too, just because I'd like to explore some of the
tools it provides that I don't usually get to work with, but initially
I'll do it in Delphi, for me it'll make for a much faster development
cycle.

> Which editor do you use ? Could you send me the uml file
> represented on the picture you sent me?

I did that one at http://gModeler.com as an experiment to see if I
liked their web-based (Flash) editor. It isn't bad, but it's a little
difficult to share documents with it. The XML that it exports doesn't
include the note entities, which is a little disappointing. That is
why I took a picture instead of sending the file.

For parts of my project I will use ModelMaker
<http://www.modelmakertools.com> which comes with Delphi.
Unfortunately there doesn't appear to be any interoperability between
gModeler and ModelMaker. I could write an importer for it, but I'd
rather just use a different modeler. I'm looking at some other options
that include XMI support that would let ModelMaker import the model.

Do you have a preference on the modeling tool? I'm taking a look at
hyperModel 3 right now, it's a free Eclipse based java tool with XMI
support. If you have access to ModelMaker we can use that, or if you
know of something else?

> I have only a doubt as to the scope of what we call "experiment": I agree
> with all that, but for me the actual "experiment" is the soil amendment,
> right? So where do you put all that?

I'm thinking that there are two kinds of experiments, char making and
cultivation. They are separate but related; a cultivation experiment
can use char from a char experiment.

Cultivation can also use other amendments, though we won't track them
to the same level of detail (for example, composting can be done in a
number of different ways, much like char production. We'll just note
in a cultivation experiment that compost was used as an amendment).

It's also interesting to note that a cultivation experiment uses soil
as an input for amendments. This soil can be the result of a previous
cultivation experiment, a test plot from a previous season for
example. This could be done to track season to season performance with
or without further amendments.

I suppose we should change the subject for this thread?

Dave K
-- 
"Our ignorance is not so vast as our failure to use what we know." -
M. King Hubbert