… but they’re in my garden and I kind of like them. I suspect most people would call them weeds.
Month: June 2005
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I don’t know what these flowers are
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say something, anything …
It really annoys me that Natural Power Consultants have been so quiet about a blade failure at Crystal Rig. Not merely has it taken them two months to start repairs, but they haven’t come out with a news release saying what happened, how unlikely it is to happen again, and reassuring everyone that this is a) very unusual, and b) fully under control.
Wind farm operators aren’t alone. The actions of one in one country affects the industry worldwide. I mean, we’re even seeing questions in Ontario based on the Altamont experience. So, c’mon people, get hep.
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All Is Not Green At The Viridian Design Online Store
Strange that the supposedly deep green Viridian Design online store only features one organic item out of twenty six on sale …
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Treehugger: vote for me!!!
Please vote for my picture (#2) on the Treehugger: Windfarms- Beauty or Blight? contest.
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Sam Hinton, et al
Memo to self: must remember to get some Sam Hinton music. And probably the Charlie Poole box set, too.
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wide angles ‘r us
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Dissing the discmen
Victor Keegan gets the whole electronic media and copyright: Dissing the discmen
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Electrified!
Can I just say that Dressy Bessy‘s Electrified is currently rocking my world? Their noisy, joyous power-pop is a wonder to behold.
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“I cannot tell a Soft”
I love the way the word softened has become a nice way of saying falsified, as in Ex-Oil Lobbyist Softened US Climate Research.
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more web file managers
I’ve previously written about PHPFileExchange, but it looks like it has strange installation requirements. Cwfm and Owl might do the happy thing, but neither looks quite perfect.
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windows is killing usability, pt. 314
Sent some urgent data to a client yesterday. This morning, a couple of frantic e-mails in my inbox: “Our IT dept has blocked zip files ‘cos they’re a security threat. Please resend!”
So basically, Windows now means we have to:
- create the zip file
- rename it to .zap, .zep, .zop, .zup, … or whatever
- send the file
- the recipient has to save the attachment, and rename the file.
Listen, I want to go to a sensible place today. How long will it be before those alternative endings are compromised (or that Windows gets a less lobotomised security model)?
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aargh, my eyes, my eyes!
Hmm, my left eye has caome over all useless; all I can see is a flickering pattern in the middle. I haven’t had one for a long time, but I seem to remember this being the precursor to a migraine. Joy …
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CanWEA: SmallWind: Small Wind Turbines
Small wind turbine information from the Canadian Wind Energy Association: CanWEA: SmallWind: Small Wind Turbines.
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Panamatic
I bought a Panamatic on Saturday at Henry’s. It’s a very simple panorama mount, with a large level, and fixed 30° click stops.
It works extremely well, and is quick to set up. The image below (larger image if you follow the link) was taken with my Cybershot P100, and stitched with hugin:
I’ve highlighted the overlap between the images with a bright blue background, and only cropped the image for width. The Panamatic gives very even and level results.
There are a couple of downsides: you can’t correct for lens nodal point location (thus giving woozy effects if you used it for an animated cylindrical panorama), and the click stops are fixed at 30°, so you had better use a near standard lens. Apart from that, it seems pretty well made, and easily worth $40 for hassle-reduction alone.
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p100 sensor size
so I don’t forget: the crop factor for the Sony Cybershot DSC-P100 is 4.786. All will become clear soon …
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Lego, ergo sum
… he returns to his building blocks in preparation for the exhibition, rummaging through a bag of Lego. “Hear that sound? They feel so great. You know that feeling, when your fingers are chafed because you’ve been sticking so much Lego together? And that sound!”
Coupland continues to move his hand in a rhythmic, circular motion, making the hundreds of Lego bricks rattle up against each other. “I love Lego! I just love it!”
— from Douglas Coupland has a plan: Let’s live in Legoland, The Globe & Mail, 4 June 02005.I have always loved Lego. Not in a grown-man-builds-working-model-of-Pickering-A-out-of-Lego-Technic kind of way, which would be weird (and would be more than nuclear engineers could do with the real Pickering A). Lego was such an integral part of my childhood that there was seldom a seat cushion that didn’t have a brick or too under them. And by Lego, I mean the real stuff; hundreds of little regular blocks (mostly red), not the modern stuff that you can make a B’Zurqar Battle Cruiser out of just two simple pieces. Things made from Lego were abstract. You had to use as much imagination to believe they represented the object you set out to make, as to make the object itself.
I predate Technic, though I had some of the proto-Technic gears and blocks. I used to make absurdly high ratio gearboxes out of the plastic spur gears and shafts, and crash them with satisfying gronks. We even made it to Legoland (for all of about 25 minutes), as we raced to catch the Esbjerg ferry in 1977.
The article about Coupland set me off on a serious Lego tactile jones yesterday. The Eaton Centre was about to be a site of great disappointment when I saw stacks of Lego buckets by the door of Toys Toys Toys. And not just any Lego; this was a classic 4028 Creator set, with hundreds of simple blocks. And it was reduced to $13!
So, yes, Lego still hurts to make — the sharp corners make a satisfying impression on the fingers. Prying them apart is still hard. And that sound!
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compose yourself!
Just one of the things that I really, really hate about Windows is its lack of a sane way of entering accented characters. People are forced to do is remember arcane character codes, like Alt+0235 to get ë. I’m sorry, but I don’t get why one should need to remember these numbers.
Suns have a Compose key, that works conceptually a little like backspacing on a manual typewriter. To get e-umlaut, you type Compose + “ (either together, or one after the other) then e. It’s a system thing, and it works in all applications. A table of compose key sequences shows the huge range of special characters you can access in this way. Most Linux machines support this too; I have right Alt bound as the Compose key.
I need the same facility for Windows. An MS tech staff blog entry basically hints that it can’t be done. But it is being done, admittedly half-heartedly, by MS-Word; if you search for accent in the Help, you can find Insert an international character by using a shortcut key. Word has done this for years, so why isn’t it in the OS?
Update, 2025: You need samhocevar/wincompose: 🔣 Compose Key for Windows
