Emergency light swap - Need advice

[pdgenoa]

I've got three strains of photoperiod seedlings (they're about 2.5 weeks old) doing great under a 600w MH light, currently at about 75%.

Unfortunately my MH just died!

I do have an HPS and changed out the MH bulb today. So my question is whether I need to adjust the wattage or distance of the light - or both?

Note: I have a replacement MH bulb that'll be here by Sunday.

 

[TorturedSoul]

Should be fine. If anything, the HPS will be just a wee bit cooler, IMHO. Growth rate will probably increase a little, although you might notice less compact growth.

If they're "regular" (IOW, not feminized) and you're hoping for as many females as possible, I'd toss in a bunch of ~6500K fluorescents (CFLs, tubes, makes no real difference I suppose) to tilt the spectrum towards the blue end of the scale, to encourage a higher percentage of female plants during the next week and a half or so (critical time period). Other than that... <SHRUGS> Many people grow with high pressure sodium only.

 

[pdgenoa]

Thank you for the quick reply. They're fem so I'm good there. You've eased my mind.

 

[pdgenoa]

I think I duplicated my answer but thank you for replying so quick. My plants are fems so I guess I'm ok. This eases my mind.

Also, a huge Zelazny fan (Amber is favorite) I like your sig.

 

[TorturedSoul]

Thanks. He's permanently on my list of favorite authors - and always in one of the top three spots - even though he obviously won't be writing any more novels, since he's deceased (RiP, Roger). Died at a young age, 58. I even liked most all of his earlier works. This Immortal (aka ...And Call Me Conrad) - which, as many of his works did, said a lot about Homo sapiens. His short story, A Rose for Ecclesiastes, about Mars, and Martians... was included on The First Library on Mars DVD - on the Phoenix Mars Lander in 2008 (shame he wasn't alive to witness that). Roadmarks - Leaves of Grass (Flowers of Evil )... I loved the concept of the highway that connected all times.

And who could forget "His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam. He never claimed to be a god, but then he never claimed not to be a god." - the opening to Lord of Light?

I could go on and on (and almost did, lol). If you asked me to pick my absolute favorite Zelazny novel / short story / et cetera... Well, I suppose I know how the Nobel committee must have felt in 1921 when they decided that they should give their physics award to Albert Einstein. "Yes," they must have thought, "But for what, exactly?" The man published, what, six papers all in the same year? And each one basically founded a branch of physics, lol. They must have placed the title/subject of each into a hat and simply drawn one, then declared to the world that that was what he was receiving the award for. Yeah... That's how I'd have to select my favorite Roger Zelazny story.

I hung out with this <COUGH>wayward<COUGH> pregnant chick some years ago. Knowing her yet-to-be-born child would need every advantage it could get, I suggested she read something every single day until she had the kid, then gently encourage him to learn to read at a very young age (by parking him in front of PBS when Sesame Street and The Electric Company were on, if nothing else). She, not being a reader, asked me what she should be reading. "Here," I said, handing her a two-volume set containing the original five volumes of the Amber... trilogy, "Start with this." I never got them back, so she must have liked them.

I, uh... might have... digital backups of almost everything the man ever published, though . One of the very, very few authors whose works I occasionally blow the dust (real or virtual) off of and reread every decade or so.

I "discovered him" in 1976. I was six years old, and had already been reading everything I could get my grubby little hands on for about three years. I still remember thinking, "THIS is what I want to do when I grow up! I'll write stories that'll be as good as his." Unfortunately, that never came to pass. A writer, I'm not. At least not a good one - or even a paid one. Oh well, as imitators go, I would have been the palest of pales. But... Ah, such is life, I suppose. An infinite number of monkeys, pounding away for an infinite number of years, would undoubtedly punch out the complete works of William Shakespeare (which... arguably... would be an accomplishment) - but this particular primate hasn't - and won't - have that kind of time. . . .

 

[pdgenoa]

Really glad you went into that. I was influenced by him early on and also wanted to be a writer (my ambition went the same direction yours did apparently).

I think you're right about This Immortal and Lord of Light. He wrote about "Sam" a couple years after so if nothing else it branched out of the way he was thinking at the time.

I've read every story you listed and the ones you didn't but it sounds like you're as big a fan as me so I'm sure you've read them too.

The thing that's always stayed with me from his stories was the idea of technology advancing and melting into a society in such a ubiquitous way that it became a lot like magic or even fantasy within that society. I thought it was pure genius to approach sci-fi this way because it allowed him to go completely wild with what the tech could do without having to actually explain how it worked.

I don't know if I'm explaining that right and I suspect my recent vape is to blame

Anyway, I recently came across a hard sci-fi writer - a woman, which is a rarity for that genre - named Catherine Asaro and she presented very detailed tech that enabled virtual telepathy, telekinesis, super strength, enhanced vision, a built in AI, etc. and it impressed me because she finally put the details into advances Zelazny played with decades ago.

If you're interested the book I'm talking about is Primary Inversion. She has several others just as good but that was my intro to her.

 

[TorturedSoul]

I've gotten away from reading female authors. I'm trying not to be sexist, here (appearances to the contrary ), but... I don't see very well (at all), so most of my reading is done either on my laptop or... that phone thing. And for a while I wasn't paying much attention to who the authors were in ebook choices (library's app, free reads!). Just "grabbing" books.

But it seemed like I could tell the sex of the author within a couple chapters (if not pages). And... this isn't meant to be complimentary. I shouldn't be able to discern the sex of the author. It wasn't always like this. Back in the '70s... even up to several years ago, it wasn't, really. More recently, IDK. Again, the majority of my reading experiences these days are with ebooks. Perhaps standards are lower with them, lol? But that makes no sense if they're just versions of actual books.

There have been some decent female authors in the science fiction genre. Most of them seem to be dead now, but it shows it's possible. IDK. Too many of them these days want to turn every genre into romance novels (and even do those badly, lol). If I wanted to spend my days reading Harlequin garbage, I'd have arranged to have been born with a set of t!ts.

Men can punch out drivel, too, of course. But less seems to make it past (or to, lol?) the editor. I've got nothing against the concept of women as authors - or as anything else they wish to become. But I very much have something against lowering the standards of the thing in order to facilitate this. It demeans whatever that thing is - and it demeans the women, too, IMHO.

I guess that qualified as a ~TS~ RANT. But I've always understood "you're pretty good - for a woman (or a man, for that matter)" to be an insult, not a compliment. You're either good or not good; if I have to make excuses for you based on your sex, then the latter designation applies. Kind of thing.

DISCLAIMER: I was raised to open doors for women and such. If that makes me sexist in today's messed-up world, so be it. OtOH, lol, I once went on a date with someone who turned out to be one of those women's lip () feminists. I made the mistake (as it turned out) of opening the door for her at the restraunt. She was still b!tching about that when we were seated and looking at menus. "Fine," I said, "I won't open - or hold - any more doors for you." But - on, and on, and... on. So, when we left the place, I happened to be in front (got out of the bathroom first). I went through the door - and the THUD I heard was the plate glass door that must have swung shut as she attempted to walk through the space it occupied. Or her landing on the floor, who can say which? People standing there to be seated were looking at me like I had someone's head in my doggy bag. Luckily, our waitress vocally came to my defense. Told the peanut gallery about the woman's... opinions, and how she'd seen me exit, kind of holding the door with my arm behind me for a second, like guys do out of politeness but NOT going so far as to open it, hold the thing open, and politely stand aside for (her words and tone) A LADY to walk through it. Got some unexpected help at that point from a couple that was paying, who'd had the misfortune to have been seated at the table beside ours. But... <SHRUGS> I still felt bad, what can ya do, lol? I did feel better after the waitress quietly slipped me her number and told me that I could open a door for her any time, though. So it worked out well for all concerned. I eventually ended up having a wonderful dinner date, albeit on a different evening and with a different woman. The woman that I'd taken to that original dinner got to scream at a man (which appeared to be her goal in life). And the waitress, well, she later got to do a bit of screaming, too .

There, I even added a ~TS~ RAMBLE. Who needs PGP-signed messages, lol?

BtW, to get back on-topic, I just read Peter F. Hamilton's Pandora's Star a couple of days ago. Took me a little longer than I'd expected (I think the hardcover version is over 800 pages and the paperback one is, IDK, well over 1,000 - so I should have budgeted two days, I suppose). It was okay. I started reading the second volume (of two, I believe) of that particular story, Judas Unchained, last evening. If anything, it's slightly lengthier, so I haven't quite finished it yet. But it's... okay, too. Not exactly award-winning, but they're okay.

Ohwaitaminute, that wasn't it... Hmm... Emergency Light Swap, yeah, that's it... If you're not hurting for space, you might consider running the HPS from now until about two weeks before harvest, and then swapping your (replacement) metal halide bulb in. Or keeping the HPS for the entire duration and, instead, adding some supplemental UV illumination via a ReptiSun 10.0 bulb or two (available in tube-type and CFL-type fluorescent, at various wattages).