Archive for the ‘miscellaneous’ Category
Iterative gravestones
October 18th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
This post of tips for scripting at Clark’s Tech Blog is well worth reading. I especially like the first tip: Consider scripting an interactive process. Don’t expect you’ll get everything right the first time; get it written, start using it, and fix bugs/add features as the need arises. This weekend I was able to use this idea outside the realm of scripting, on some old Halloween decorations.
I first made a set of faux gravestones about a ten years ago. They’re cut from some old wooden shelves left behind by the previous owner of my house and painted gray and black. Like many projects of this sort, they were hacked together out of the materials at hand.
The stones look OK, as these things go, but I’ve always had a problem keeping them upright in the yard. At first, I had wooden stakes nailed or screwed to the back sides, but the stakes were hard to drive into the ground, because I’d have to hit the top of the stake with the sledge repeatedly without hitting and damaging the gravestone. Not a terrible problem, but a once-a-year annoyance that didn’t have to be.
So this year, when October came and we started pulling the Halloween decorations out of storage, I decided to fix this bug rather than continue to live with it. Each gravestone now has a pair of ¾-inch conduit hanger brackets glued to its back side. A ½-inch conduit, 2 to 2½ feet long, is driven into the ground until its exposed height is less than the height of the gravestone. The gravestone is then slid down into place, with the conduit running through the brackets.
The size mismatch between the conduit and the brackets was deliberate. As time goes on, I expect the top ends of the conduit pieces to mushroom out from the pounding. The bigger brackets should be able to accommodate the increasing conduit diameter.
The carpenter’s glue I used to attach the brackets is probably not the most robust solution. Bolts would make the strongest attachment, but I didn’t want any hardware to be seen on the front side. Construction adhesive (e.g., Liquid Nails) probably would have been the best choice, but I didn’t have any lying around and didn’t feel like buying a full tube for just a few dots of adhesive. The carpenter’s glue is another iteration; if it doesn’t hold, I’ll do another bug fix next year.
Update 10/27/09
Next year came early. The carpenter’s glue failed on one of the headstones in about a week. I redid all the brackets with an indoor/outdoor construction adhesive, which held up to some reasonably tough twisting tests.
Post #1064 in miscellaneous, personal | No Comments
Weather icons
June 11th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
Yes, I’ve written a lot about weather forecasts lately. I like to think that my interest in weather forecasts comes from a combination of this year’s rainy and cold spring and my desire to ride my bike to work most days of the week. Getting an accurate forecast helps me dress for the weather and, in some cases, time my rides to avoid the heaviest rain.
Or maybe I’m just developing that peculiar interest in weather that comes with advancing years.
Either way, I’ve noticed that the online weather services play up the possibility of storms just as much as TV weatherfolks do. For example, over the last few days the National Weather Service, AccuWeather, and the Weather Underground have been predicting a 30-40% chance of thunderstorms in Naperville tomorrow and Friday—a reasonably high percentage, but not even to the level of a coin flip. Despite the less-than-even odds, all three sites have decorated their forecasts with formidable icons of thunderclouds, lightning bolts, and slanting rain. (To be fair, the Weather Underground’s icon incorporates a question mark in the cloud. But the question mark is pretty subtle—I didn’t notice it when looking at the reduced-size icon on my iPhone.)
The icons make you think the chance of bad weather is much higher than what’s actually predicted. Several times I’ve found myself planning to drive to work to avoid getting caught in a thunderstorm only to read the fine print and decide to ride my bike. I know I’ll get caught eventually, but so far my rides have been pretty dry.
Consider this my top tip for bicycle commuting: pack rain gear as if the thunderstorm icon is right, but make your decision to ride as if it’s wrong. You’ll do a lot more riding and won’t get nearly as wet as you think.
Post #402 in internet, miscellaneous, personal | No Comments
“Standard” time
November 15th, 2007 at 12:02 pm
I was looking at my calendar and just realized that standard time only covers about four months out of the year, which means it really isn’t standard at all. When I was a kid, standard time and daylight savings time were about evenly split, so calling one of them “standard” didn’t strike anyone as weird (and there were, of course, plenty of cranks who railed against any use of DST). Won’t today’s kids think it’s odd that the most common clock setting is considered special?
The Navy has a very short history of DST here.
Post #310 in miscellaneous | No Comments
Cellphone/headset pairing
December 6th, 2006 at 12:01 am
Yesterday I tried to pair my Motorola RAZR phone and H700 headset. Eventually I succeeded, but the many failures that came first were very frustrating. I figured it was worth describing the success so others could avoid the frustration.
First, a bit of background. I bought the phone and headset together this past summer, and they’ve worked well together. I have no memory of pairing the two, so I suspect the salesman did it for me before I left the store. After a couple of months, dust began to collect between the phone’s LCD screen and the lens that covers it. It started as a few specks but grew into a splotch that began to interfere with my reading of the screen. I asked for and got a replacement phone under warranty, which arrived about a week ago. I synced its phone book and calendar with Address Book and iCal and reloaded my ringtones and wallpaper but forgot to pair it with the headset. Then I went off on a business trip.
During a short layover in Salt Lake City, I wanted to use the headset while calling my voicemail so I’d have both hands free to take notes as I listened to my messages—one hand for writing, the other for steadying my HPDA on my knee. At first I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t hearing anything through the headset, but eventually I remembered that I was using a phone that had never been paired with it. I went through the phone’s menu system to initiate the pairing, but after several tries I still couldn’t get them to pair (I could have paired the phone with a nearby Pocket PC, but wasn’t interested). So I just used the phone by itself and my notes came out a bit shaky.
That night, I got on the web and searched for a solution. I found a PDF file with instructions (source of the image below) and an interactive tutorial, both from Motorola. They both say that the H700 will go into pairing mode a few seconds after its turned on, as long as there are no devices around to which it has already been paired. And you’ll know it’s in pairing mode when the slowing flashing blue light on the side of the headset turns into a steady purple light.
Well, there were no devices in my hotel room to which the H700 had been paired (I’d never paired it with my iBook, and besides, the iBook’s Bluetooth was turned off), but its flashing blue light never turned to purple and the RAZR never found it. By accident, I learned I could get the purple light to turn on briefly by pushing the Call button when the head set was off, that is, when the boom is folded up. This didn’t put the H700 in pairing mode, but it suggested that the Call button had to be part of the pairing procedure. After a bit of experimenting, I came up with this:
Procedure for pairing an H700 headset with a RAZR
- Start with the H700’s boom in the folded position.
- Push the call button and hold it in. This will make the indicator light come on and glow purple.
- While the light is still purple, flip open the boom.
With these three steps, the indicator light will stay purple and the headset will be in pairing mode. You can now go to the RAZR, push the menu button at the top center and work your way through
- Settings
- Connection
- Bluetooth Link
- Handsfree
- [Look for Devices]
The phone should find the headset, ask if you want to pair with it, and ask for a passkey. The passkey for the H700 is 0000. Enter it and you’ll be on your way.
Post #198 in miscellaneous | No Comments
Viva
November 29th, 2006 at 11:48 am
Now in the Las Vegas airport on my south-to-go-east trip from Boise to Chicago. As a brief followup to my previous post:
- I had a “B” boarding pass on the flight from Boise to Vegas.
- I was either the last or second-to-last “B” passenger to board because I stayed seated until my group was called instead of standing in line for half an hour.
- I got an aisle seat.
There seems to be some group dynamic/viral stupidity among Southwest Airlines passengers. A few dopey people line up way before they need to, then otherwise intelligent folks start to wonder if maybe they should line up, too. Their unease builds until it overwhelms them. The lines get longer, slowly at first, but at an increasing rate. At some point they reach a length that causes almost everyone at the gate to stand up and queue.
On an unrelated note, McCarran airport has designated smoking areas that have huge doorways open to the rest of the terminal, making the smell of cigarette smoke impossible to avoid. Not much different from being in a casino, really.
Post #193 in miscellaneous | No Comments
The A Team
November 29th, 2006 at 9:27 am
I am sitting here in the Boise airport at a Southwest gate. It is about 45 minutes before scheduled takeoff and there are 20+ people standing in the “A” line. Standing, even though their boarding pass guarantees them a decent seat. Now, I can understand folks standing in the “B” line, especially if they’re traveling as a couple or a group that want to sit together. But “A” standers are just stupid.
Post #192 in miscellaneous | No Comments
Coffee, tea, and you
September 12th, 2006 at 6:11 am
As I sit here in another hotel room enjoying a cup of tea, it seems worthwhile to post these two tips for making tea in one of those hotel mini coffeemakers:
- Bring your own tea. Not because your tastes are so refined that you can’t imagine drinking the generic tea you get in those little plastic packages in the room (although that might also be true), but because the tea in those packages picks up the smell of coffee. And if you wanted to drink something that smells and tastes like coffee, you would have made coffee.
- Remove the filter cup and pot top before heating the water. This is another coffee contamination thing. If the coffeemaker is old, the plastic of these parts has picked up the smell/taste of coffee, and the water running through it will give your tea an off-taste of coffee. And if you wanted to drink coffee…
Post #162 in miscellaneous | No Comments
Rainbow
July 22nd, 2006 at 10:22 pm
This evening Naperville was treated to a beautiful rainbow in the eastern sky. The main arc was complete, and the lower ends of the secondary arc could be seen easily near the horizon. My family was out in the car and because I happened to have my camera with me, we pulled into a parking lot and took a few pictures. This is a quickly hacked-together composite of three of the pictures.
You can click on it to see a larger version.
Several people were standing in the parking lot doing just what we were doing. As people came out of the stores and fast-food places that ringed the lot they’d suddenly stop and just stare. The rainbow was long-lived, but eventually faded as the sun sank lower, and we all went back to our business feeling better about the world.
Post #137 in miscellaneous | 1 Comment
Happy birthday, Dr. O’Boogie!
October 9th, 2005 at 9:26 pm
And thanks.
Post #44 in miscellaneous | No Comments
A Brit in the woodpile?
August 19th, 2005 at 10:39 am
I was looking at the LA Times online edition this morning and saw a small picture of Clay Aiken, the American Idol loser of a couple of years ago. Doesn’t he look like the love child of Tony Blair?
Something about the ears and the teeth, I think.