All the way around the lake

Went all the way around Lake Joondalup today. Needed it, too. Will be seeing a chiropractor tomorrow as well.

Nice, smooth sealed dual-use path from about 2k north of us to about the same on the other side, then (continuing clockwise) several km of rough limestone track, short burst of nice path, longer burst of “triple-use roadway” then absolutely nothing, not even a footpath (except for a very short burst of concrete outside a new estate which is —ing useless ”coz it begins and ends in sand some way from the road and is hemmed in by gardens so there’s no way on or off except the pram ramp each side of the entry halfway along it) alongside Wanneroo Road all the way back down to the Shire depot, then dive in south of the pine plantation toward the lake again and back on the path.

The sealed bit on the southern stretch, west side is quite nice, buried deeply enough in the bush that even the traffic noises are hushed to inaudibility — and I met absolutely nobody on my whizz through there.

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new life for an old (FTX) PSU, improved life for one human

the LEDs on this 5m strip happen to emit light centred on a red that does unexpectedly helpful things to (and surprisingly deeply within) a human routinely exposed to it. it has been soldered to a Molex connector, plugged into a TFX power supply from a (retired: the MoBo is cactus) Small Form Factor PC, the assorted PSU connectors (and loose end from the strip) have been taped over. the LED strip cost $10.24 including postage, the rest cost $0, the PSU is running at 12½% of capacity, consumes less power than a laptop plug-pack despite running a fan. trial runs begin today.

boundaries

pushing the actual boundaries of the physical (not extremes, the boundaries themselves) can often remove barriers not otherwise perceived. one can then often resolve an issue itself, rather than merely stonewalling at the physical consequences of the issue.

every-application-is-part-of-a-toolkit at work

I have a LibreOffice Impress slideshow that I wish to turn into a narrated video. 1. export the slideshow as PNG images (if that is partially broken — as at now — at higher resolutions, Export Directly as PDF then use ‘pdftoppm’ (from the poppler-utils package) to do the same). 2. write a small C program (63 lines including comments) to display those images one at a time, writing a config file entry for Imagination (default transition: ‘cross fade’) based on when the image-viewer application (‘display,’ from the GraphicsMagick suite) is closed on each one; run that, read each image aloud, then close each image in turn. 3. run ‘Imagination’ over the config file to produce a silent MP4 video with the correct timings. 4. run ‘Audacity’ to record speech while using ‘SMPlayer’ to display the silent video, then export that recording as a WAV file. 4a. optionally, use ‘TiMIDIty’ to convert a non-copyright-encumbered MIDI tune to WAV, then import that and blend it with the speech (as a quiet b...

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