I couldn't agree more, John. Thanks for bringing this up again. CJ's point about the numbers being masters was very well taken, I thought. Also, I actually felt all the greenhouse envy seeping out of me when I read CJ's post. And if you don't know, I've had a severe case of GH envy since my days with tropicals, long before orchids. What's hard for me about indoor growing is the decisions-under-risk that have to be made all the time, every day it seems: is this too much shade? Is 95 too hot for them? Will they burn at 11:30am on July 10? Can I take the shade off at 3:30 or should I wait til 5? Should I turn the heat on now the night temps are hitting 60-61? etc etc etc ad infinitum. You solve one dilemma and another is waiting for you, or it's back in another guise a few days later. Nothing is ever clear and labelled for me. Makes my poor head hurt. You have to just grit your teeth and choose and risk being wrong. I always imagine a greenhouse as a sunlit paradise. To realize they have the same dim days each winter (Duh!), find out they have the *same decisions* to make: How much shade, how hot is too hot, should I turn the heat on, etc etc opened my eyes to a little reality. Every generalization has to be turned into a specific choice by the grower, every day. *Plus* add the worries about systems going out on a freezing night... This is what drove catt hybridizers to CA and FL in the first place. The December issue of the Oak Hill newsletter was all about trying to keep a furnace from breaking down on a cold night. Not much to envy there. I admit I do love to splash water all over, and a greenhouse is great for that-- but so is the concrete floor in my basement, or my deck in summer. So thanks CJ (and John). Now I can relax and enjoy what I do have instead of spending all my energy on what I don't.

I wouldn't add any sugar or butter, although I understand the grains like a little milk fat. Meanwhile, mine are happy fermenting in fat-free reconstituted powdered milk. I do occasionally add a bit of half and half if I happen to have some around after I read that information. Raw goat milk probably has the fat in it since I doubt it's been processed through a separator. If I have some milk in the refrigerator I think is about to "turn" on me, that's when I make a point of making kefir. It's going to sour anyway during the fermentation stage. I try to use the freshest milk I have when I rest them in the refrigerator, especially if I know it's going to be several days, or up to a week, before I make kefir again. What will help your grains grow is making consecutive batches - non-stop kefiring. Once your grains are acclimated, you can add them to milk and ferment for 6-8 hours and then take the grains out and add them to another batch. Leave the first batch sit for 12-24 hours TOTAL (until you achieve the thickness you like). There is more than enough good bacteria in the first batch to make nice thick kefir even without the grains in it. If you do that for a several days you should see enough growth to divide the grains within a week or two. You may also need to put the grains in more than one cup of milk as they grow. I use 2-1/2 c. of milk per quart jar + 1/4 - 1/3 c. kefir grains. What is the temperature where you are placing your kefir for fermenting? As our home gets colder (mid- to lower-60-degrees F), it takes the kefir longer to ferment, but it's also sweeter-tasting and less tart than in the summer when the house is much warmer. The kefir also ferments much quicker in the warmer temperatures. If the fermenting temperature is too warm, the kefir gets very grainy and separates, instead of a nice smooth curd. I divide the grains when they get to the size of a quarter. How to: with clean fingers (make sure there isn't any soap residue on your hands after washing them), pull them apart into 2 or 3 portions. They easily pull apart where they are the weakest. -Grainlady

The short story? Upload your photos to photobucket using the "800 by 600" pixel upload option. Done. You'll get a small file size but a photo that will display well. To answer your questions, here's the long story. And I'm not kidding. It's long. Way too long: "What I'm also trying to understand is the whole process: I take a picture with my 6.1 Kodak camera. The picture size is therefore________" Your file size depends on the settings on your camera at which you are taking photos. Most cameras offer a couple of choices, like "Image Quality: FINE/NORMAL/BASIC" and/or "Image size: LARGE/MEDIUM/SMALL". Those choices will define the amount of jpeg compression that your photo undergoes and thus they will define the size of the file that comes out of your camera. Generically a 6MP camera is probably putting out jpeg photos in the 2-3MB range. "Jpeg" is a compression program. It's a program that reduces the MB file size of the program by discarding redundant pixel color information from the photo's file for similar-colored pixels in the photo. It does not get rid of or discard any pixels. It just "averages" out red/ green/blue information assigned to similar colored pixels. jpeg looks at the photo's individual pixel information and says "these reddish pixels that are next to each other in this photo are so close in color, I'm going to consider them the exact same color". So it keeps the R/G/B information for one of the pixels, discards the RGB info for the other two, and assigns that saved RGB info to all three pixels. That allows your file to be smaller without destroying the overall visual integrity of the photo when you view it. If a file were to be over-compressed...too much information thrown away...then it can get ugly looking, very blocky. "When I upload it to Photobucket it remains 6.1 or do they change it as they "store it"__________" Using the default settings on PB it'll be uploaded as a small file. A MUCH SMALLER file. You've discovered the "Customize Your Upload Options" and you can use that to get a larger and more usable file size uploaded to your PB account. More about that later. "Of course talking about a picture in terms of 800x600 vs MB is confusing. " Your photo is made up of little dots, or to simplify, "pixels". If you have a photo that is "800 by 600", that's 800 pixels or dots wide by 600 pixels/dots tall. That's how "big" your photo appears. 800 dots wide. 600 dots tall. Each of those dots or pixels is a color, all those little colored dots together make up the photo. If each of those pixels is a different color, then the file size (the "MB" or "KB") will be large because the file has to store red/green/blue information for each and every one of those tiny pixels. If you take a photo of a piece of red paper, then theoretically the photo's jpeg file size will be smaller because so many of the pixels will be the same red color. The file doesn't have to "remember" as much red/green/blue information even though the number of pixels in the photo is the same. So if you take your glorious 6MP photo that's 3000 by 2000 pixels and upload it to Photobucket at the 320 by 240 pixel option, PB is going to throw way a lot of pixels. You uploaded a detailed file with 3000 times 2000, or 6 million pixels, and Photobucket is going to throw away and discard over 5.9 million of them! Gone forever! It'll display that photo small, 320 pixels by 240 pixels, so to the eye it will still look okay at that small size. But if you try to blow up or magnify the photo, pixels will have to be created to fill in the "holes", and the color information for those created pixels will be guessed at based upon what the neighboring pixels look like. You'll end up with a blocky looking photo. So the picture can have a physical size defined in terms of how many dots or pixels make up the picture. 3000 x 2000, 800 x 600, 320 x 240, etc. The pixels define how big or small the picture will be represented on your computer monitor or on a piece of paper when printed out. The photo file size, in MB or KB, is how much information is assigned to remember the color information of the pixels that make up the photo. 6MP is a large photo and will take longer to upload than a 1MP file. It's how much space the photo will take up n your computer's hard drive. I'm going to run you through a few examples, I hope this helps to clarify: I have a 2MB photo on my computer. I just uploaded it to photobucket, during the upload photobucket automatically reduced the file size from 2MB down to 38kb. Ouch! It reduced the pixel size (or the number of "dots" that make up the photo) from 3341 x 2217 (3341 pixels wide by 2217 pixels tall) to 310 x 212. That was done using the default upload setting of 320 by 240. This file is tiny, only 38kb, so it'll upload fast. But the small file can limit the quality of the photo seen by the viewer. Here is the quality of the 320 by 240 photo: By adding a "Width=" designator to the HTML code, I can make your browser display the photo larger. Previously it showed at 320 pixels wide, because that's it's size of the photobucket file. I'll add "Width=800" to make it display 800 pixels wide. Again, it's a 38kb file size, 319 x 212 photo that's being forced to display 800 pixels wide. Where did the extra pixels come from? They were made up, their color information copied from neighboring pixels in the photo's file. Since they had to be guessed at, the photo looks blocky due to the groupings of exactly-colored pixels all clumped next to one another: The photo shows larger, but it's blockier. Now going into photobucket's upload settings I chose "Best possible quality (while staying 1mb or less)". A large file size...but not ridiculous. Photobucket uploaded my same original 2MB, 3342 x 2217 pixel photo as a 745kb file that is 2301 pixels wide by 1527 pixels tall. At 745kb it's a large file size so it'll upload slower, but with all those pixels the resolution will be quite good. When I now have gardenweb show this new photo file at its native resolution, it looks like this: Since most people have their computer's screen displays set at 800-1200 pixels wide, this 2301 pixel wide photo causes you to have to scroll left/right to take it all in. It's not viewer friendly. So now I'll limit the photo by adding a "Width=800" to the html code and it'll show better. A better size, and with nice resolution: There actually is a point to this post, and it's this: Photobucket has an 800 by 600 upload selection. If you want a "bang for your buck" upload selection, use the 800 x 600 choice. Uploading my 2MB file using the 800 by 600 option gave me a 134kb file with pixel dimensions of 800 wide by 530 tall. A very manageable file size that will upload quickly, and a pixel size that will display nicely: Still awake? Not me. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Slight correction to what I mentioned above. Photobucket has a preset resizing feature if you load photos there. If you have the photo selected, hold your mouse over the top of the picture & options will appear above. It's the third one in "resize". If you're looking at a bunch of photos in your the album you'll need to go under the edit feature.