June 11th, 2009
Things that cause tech guilt.
- I should backup more often.
- I should use any/stronger crypto on everything.
- I should really change my password
- I should blog/twitter/facebook/otherwise broadcast desperate attempts to get people to pay attention to me more
- I should blog/etc less
- I should update this system
- I should really automate this task
- I should write this code using WhizBangTech instead of the way that works and I actually know.
- I should optimize this code
- I should document this.
- I should file a bug report about this.
- I really should refactor this code.
Posted in ideas, linux, software, work | No Comments »
April 26th, 2009
Fiddling around with the laser cutter at Techshop. I used inkscape to vectorize some doodles, then cut then out of paper using the Epilog laser cutter at Techshop.
Paper cuts very well, with pretty good detail (see the hatching cut out from the doodle in the front for example). I’ve tried cutting acrylic as well, and it cuts well too, but in some of the detail areas, it unmelts into a bit of a blob that makes detailed parts harder to extract. Need to try it again with more power to see if it will cut a wider kerf.
I also tried engraving/rasterizing an image. I think it turned out pretty well, almost exactly what I was looking for. It did burn through a little bit in one section, but I could fix that in the image. The image itself started off kind of “pointilist”, which I vectorized with some of the settings tweaked a bit so it would blurb some of the points together so it would hold together. Then I “engraved” it instead of cutting it out, but with the power set high enough to burn through the paper.
Posted in art, doodles, graphics, ideas, software | 3 Comments »
April 10th, 2009
I’m not sure I understand the point of wide screen monitors. With my useage patterns, about 25% of the screen is wasted, over there, off to the side, full of white space.
Most of the time, I find myself wanting more vertical space than horizontal. Especially, when writing code, or web browsing, or reading email, or running commands in a terminal. Aka, 99.9% of what I do with a computer.
I kind of miss CRT’s for that big, almost square aspect ratio. I’ve been tempted to find a wide screen LCD that I could rotate vertically. Never really been able to get a hardware/software combination that actually worked that way, though in theory, it should be easy.
I think it’s about time to put a new desktop machine together (and probably a new laptop as well). So I’ve been thinking a new monitor setup as well. Currently got a 21″ dell.
[And of course, the Civil War nerds will point out the Monitor was actually called the CSS Virginia]
Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments »
April 1st, 2009
I managed to get one of my machines installed with a os version I didn’t want, and no way to change it. Normally, this means it’s time to koan/cobbler to get it re-provisioned. But I couldn’t log into the machine to do anything. I could of reinstalled it from a cd/dvd, but I hate burning cd/dvd’s for that. I could of written an image to usb key and installed from that, but I didn’t have any with me.
So I decided to try what Mark Cox; did and try to boot it from my phone. I more or less just followed the steps he mentioned, though I had to get some 3rd party software to expose the storage card as a usb device.
But that aside, it worked. Not the fastest way to boot, but it got the live image running so I could do a hard drive install. Kind of cool. Wonder if there is anyway to support i386/x86_64 live images on the same card?
Posted in fedora, linux, software, work | 3 Comments »
March 27th, 2009
If there is one skill I have with regards to music, it’s that I make can make some really annoying noises.
While driving home, I started thinking about what would be the most annoying musical instrument one could build. More specially, more or less “acoustic” instruments.[1]
The ideas that came to mind were mostly about building wind instruments, and attaching a large number of them to a compressed air source. Kind of like a set of bagpipes, but far more annoying.
A large pressure chamber with say, three dozen slide whistles attached to it. All slightly out of tune. Or a large number of siren whistles. Or both. Maybe a few dozen cheap penny whistles. Or a hundred kazoos.
Something else to put on the list of things to build.
[1] and not including things that are just brutally loud, like a klaxon, or steam whistle, or a Hemi powered siren, or an orchestra of pulse jets, or maybe a fog horn.
Posted in ideas, music | No Comments »
March 18th, 2009
I was having a discussion with michael over lunch, about other words for “thesaurus”. I could swear I saw one used somewhere that was along the lines of “omnilexigraph” or the like.
Couldn’t find anythough, so I created one. It’s “lexibus”.
Usage example: “‘fabiform’? Thats not a real word! It’s not even in the lexibus!”
Posted in ideas | 2 Comments »
March 10th, 2009
I managed to get a picture of my gloved hand holding a oxy-acetylene torch and cutting through a metal plate into the Durham Herald Sun. It was an article about the Durham Tech Shop and was taken during the oxy-acetylene class. I’d post a link to the article, but the Herald Sun’s website seems to be from somewhere in the past.
Tech Shop Durham seem to be making progress getting things setup for the opening, but there’s still a lot to do. It take’s a lot of work and time. It certainly took us longer to get Rod-O-Rama setup and ready than we expected, and Tech Shop is much bigger.
I’ve noticed on my blog, that I get more requests to update the spam protection plugin than I get actual spam. I’m not sure if this is good or bad.
If you get a chance, take a look at Not Yet Rain. It’s the website for the Not Yet Rain documentary about womens reproductive health in Ethopia. lintqueens been working on getting the site launched for a bit.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
March 9th, 2009
I’m not sure why, but it always annoys me when people confuse Talkboxes, vocoders, and auto-tune. So stop doing that.
Posted in music | No Comments »
February 22nd, 2009
I managed to get a picture published.
This image of the crowd in the Pentagon parking lot for the Rolling Thunder parade was used in the latest issue of Motorcycle Consumer News in an article by Glynn Kerr
Posted in motorcycle | No Comments »
February 17th, 2009
Red Hat Magazine Spotlight on Func
Video put together by Red Hat in which Seth Vidal, Michael DeHaan and I comment intelligently about func.
Or at least, that’s what the clever editing will hopefully lead you to believe.
Posted in free culture, linux, software, work | 1 Comment »
