Had our first fire of the new fall season last night. Our first frost of the new fall season as well.
Coincidence? I think not.
Month: October 2009
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What Life?
Better than a month into the football season and I have yet to sit down and watch more than 5 minutes of a football game. Does this mean I do, or do not, have a life?
First racquetball match of the fall tonight. Yes, I’m looking forward to it. This might be a point in favor of having a life. Then again, the fact that I look forward to the game might be a point against…
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uzbl Scripts
I’ve worked up some python scripts for working with uzbl. They are available for download from here. They are both wxWidgets programs.
The first one, wxuzblAbar.py, is an address bar of sorts for a uzbl instance. It can be bound to a key press with something like the following in the uzbl config file:
bind a = spawn $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/uzbl/wxuzblAbar.py
When launched, it has a text field to enter an address as well as a drop down list for favorite links. In order for that to be useful a file name “favorites” needs to be added to $XDG_DATA_HOME/uzbl. The file format consists of two double-quoted text fields separated by spaces:
"Mutt" "www.mutt.org"
The other file, addFavorites.py, actually makes the “favorites” file that the first script uses. Bind it to a key like this:
bind f = spawn $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/uzbl/addFavorites.py
When the key is pressed, a text box will appear allowing the name to be edited. The next time the address bar is invoked the new link will be in the drop down list.
At this point the only dependency, I think, is socat which is required for wxuzblAbar.py to work. Also, the wxWidgets libraries might come in handy.
One limitation of the address bar program is that is must be launched for each instance. Based on the way uzbl created sockets, it might be possible to scan for all opened uzbl sockets and put them in a list so that a single address bar instance can control multiple uzbl instances. Of course, that might be a bit kludgy from UI perspective, but it’s something to try. Something else that might be more useful is a dropdown list for a history of links. I’m just not sure what would be involved with parsing the history file.
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The Armoire Continues
I can honestly say that I’m glad I didn’t really get much done in the shop today.
Not that I didn’t try to. I was actually hoping to fit some of the stretchers into their mortises; with an outside shot of doing a little glue up. In the end, all I really got done was trimming the tenons on the stretchers for the front and back, and getting the rails for the sides cut along with their tenons.
I thought I had marked the layout lines on the posts for the mortises. After I had finished the third attempt and realized I had gotten it wrong again, I decided it was time to call it quits. How did I get it wrong 3 times? Because I’d forgotten the details involved that I had so meticulously thought through a week or two ago and I didn’t thoroughly inspect the notes I’d taken at the time.
After the first markup, I realized I’d forgotten to account for the shoulder cuts. Having remarked everything for the second time, I then forgot to allow 1/4 inch for spacing around the drawer. So I marked it up a third time. When I finished, the last tenon was too close to the end of the post; I knew I had left a margin for error. Finally, I went back to my notes. I figured out that instead of starting the layout at 4″ from the bottom of the post, I should have started 3″ from the bottom of the post.
Man, was I glad I hadn’t cut any mortises like I’d considered doing. Next time, I’ll make a story stick when I’ve worked out those details for a non-trivial layout.
“The other boys said I was wearing a purple shirt and that it was a girl color and laughed at me. None of the girls said anything, just the boys. I told them to stop and they didn’t.”
For the record, the shirt in question is a nice rugby shirt which is maroon and white striped. It’s perfectly suited for the boy, or any boy. I would wear a shirt of its like without a seconds hesitation.
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Brakes Done
I had the keyed lug nuts replaced this morning by a garage- I just didn’t have the ability to get them off. With that, I was finally able to replace the front brake pads. The boy proved interested and willing to help with the project. No description of the process- it’s too tedious and boring. Plus anyone who’s interested is probably already capable, so why bother?
Now I get to do the rear brake pads. Luckily, they are disc brakes too so the operation shouldn’t be any more traumatic than replacing the fronts. Assuming I don’t strip a lug not or something…
UPDATE: The rear brakes still had better than half their pads remaining. No need to replace them. Too bad I had to jack the car and pull the wheel off to find out.
I finally got around to using that rye starter. Actually, I’ve used it 4 times so far. The first time, I used it on a recipe from a favorite book of mine. The results were a little disappointing. So I tried again. Having gotten a feel for the recipe, I made some minor alterations. The results were much better. I then made the recipe 2 more times to make sure the results would be consistent. As a result, I enjoyed 3 nice loaves of rye.
Chleba is a simple Czech rye bread. It’s been good eating with stew, or as a sandwich bread, or in the morning with cream cheese. My recipe for it after the link.
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A Fall Day
Today was breezy with rain. Leaves and pine needles that is.
The day was actually quite spectacular. It started with some actual rain. By mid-morning it was clearing. By noon, it was bright, sunny and breezy.
Before today, most of the trees still had leaves. After today, the trees were noticeably lighter.
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Props to Rikon
I just wanted to give credit where its due. I have a 14″ bandsaw from Rikon, the 10-325 model. I think highly of the saw, for what that’s worth. My problem is the lower guide bearings had frozen up and are heating up the blade. I was thinking of replacing them with guide blocks instead so I contacted Rikon’s tech support to see what they recommended.
The gentleman’s name I spoke with is Rod. He convinced me that the guide blocks probably aren’t the way to go because of heat build-up, though he did say the the Coolblocks might be a possibility if that’s what I wanted to do. In addition, he’s sending me a complete set of replacement bearings, for free. It sounds like they were aware of the potential for problems and that these newer bearings should be an improvement. We’ll see.
Rod was friendly, knowledgable and left me a happy customer. If he is representative of their support, then I’d say this is one more reason to go with Rikon products, certainly the 10-325.
Well done, sir.
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Tool Review- Tite-Mark Marking Gauge
The Wife recently gifted me with a Tite-Mark marking gauge from Glen-Drake Tools. Mainly, I was looking for such a tool to help me with laying out dovetails on drawers. After getting a chance to look over the Tite-Mark documentation, I realized that the uses for a marking gauge were much greater than I had previously thought. With that in mind, I knew that the armoire project would proved a good testing ground for it’s all-round usefulness. Is it a uni-tasker, or is it truly as universally useful as claimed?
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Awesome and uzbl
I spent a little time and finally came up with a fairly simple start to integrating Awesome with uzbl. I created a file called favorites and put it in a suitably obscure location. The file format is simply 2 double-quoted fields per line. The first field is a site name, the second is the url. The fields are space separated. For example:
"Mutt" "www.mutt.org"
Lua pattern matching is fairly restrictive, so this was the simplest way to get a lot of possibilities for the name and the url fields.
I’ve installed uzbl on my EEE today and have to say that I really like it.
Now, uzbl isn’t for everyone. If you like you’re full featured browser that manages all things browser, then stick with what you got. If you want a minimal browser that renders pages fast, fast, fast, then you might want to give it a look. By the way- when I say minimal I mean minimal. No buttons. No menus. No bookmarks. No address bar. No scroll bar. Barely a status bar.
I’m currently running Opera but I’ve also tried Iceweasel, Epiphany, Chrome, Safari and a few others that I’ve forgotten. Opera has been the best one for me to date, but uzbl is so much quicker than Opera on my EEE, I’m going to have to spend some time getting to know it. Even though the uzbl home page claims alpha status, the functionality is a very high level. It easily handles most of the sites I go to. The only trouble I ran into is accessing a site with ssl where a link opens a new page. That may just be a config issue- something I’ll look into.
The novelty of a minimal browser has me hooked for the moment. We’ll see how long it lasts.
Just got word from the Wife that a co-worker has contracted H1N1. It sounds like he exposed co-workers to the virus since he started getting sick earlier in the week and then was out afterwards. Unfortunately, the Wife was at corporate HQ and it’s quite probable she was exposed, as she was in this individual’s presence just prior to his absence.
Upon hearing the news, I opted to do a little research.
Now, before making the following statement, I’d like to state that I don’t get sick. Ever. In the last 20 years, I have been sick a handful of times. I can’t even remember the last time I got a flu shot.
Based on that, it probably won’t be a surprise when I state that I don’t see the big deal here about H1N1. Also called “swine flu” because it was initially believed to have a lot in common with pig flu strains, it turns out that it really doesn’t have much in common. Just a couple of genes. It also has genes in common with bird flus. You can go read more about it here. The link also makes it clear that the deaths which have occurred involved other high risk medical conditions. It does not indicate that H1N1 is an nastier than the typical seasonal flu.
Apparently the big concern is that it could mutate into something worse, like in the 1920’s. So I guess the logic is that if we can kill it in its crib, so to speak, we can prevent it from having the opportunity to mutate. To which I say, how do we know it hasn’t already mutated? Are there hard and fast rules that we know of regarding flu virus mutation? I mean, really, what makes people think we have ANY control over this thing? I know this may sound heretical, but perhaps people contracting H1N1 is the best defense against any mutation.
Having cavalierly dismissed the disease at this point, I’ll also say that the appropriate action here would be to take your normal precautions. Contrary to my tone, I’m NOT hoping people get sick. If getting the vaccines makes you feel better, then do so(although, from my reading, it sounds like the effectiveness of flu vaccines is questionable). The usual suggestions regarding cleanliness are also appropriate. Beyond that, I’m not sure that life has to, or should, stop because this thing is out there.
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The Manipulation Dance
I was folding laundry after dinner when the boy toddled in and declared that he was going to help me. He proceeded to start pulling clothes out and attempting to fold them. Unfortunately, he still doesn’t have the required coordination for the task, so he settled for pulling clothes out and handing them to me. Which was fine, now I didn’t have to bend down to pull things out. Even so, his behavior was odd.
Then I recalled that after dinner, he had taken his plate and cup and placed them in the dishwasher. Making it more remarkable is the fact that I didn’t ask him to do it. So as I finished folding the shirt I was working on, I realized what was going on.
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Rye Sourdough Starter
Since I had no luck getting a normal sourdough starter going, I figured a little experiment to test the rye flour might be worthwhile. What better way to test it than to make a rye sourdough starter? A rye starter is much more sour than your typical white flour starter, and very active. The flavor is a tangy sour one and the odor is very strong. Almost as strong as smelling salts.