Weekly local government rant

OK, so Wanneroo is finally getting around to doing some more bike-path work... on a section already adequately covered by paths, but which I am assured happens to be near a councillor’s house. Nevertheless, it is bike-path work.

Part of the work consists of turning a short section of old road immediately north of Ocean Reef Road into a bike path. It’s in pretty good nick for its age, with only one small strip suffering from potholes and irregularities.

The work probably looks good on a blueprint, but they’ve just destroyed a parking area which often has 2 or 3 vehicles in it during the day while their drivers take a refreshing stroll around Lake Joondalup, and from which a flower van regularly trades.

Yeah, well, par for the course... but in chipping away most of the bitumen to leave a bike-path-sized strip, have a guess at which narrow strip they’ve left untouched?

Yes, it’s pretty much inevitable that it’s the strip of potholes and irregularities, not the good road. And of course, the potholes and irregularities probably followed one narrow strip (and not the tyre-wear regions) for a very good reason; my guess is that the foundations for the road were laid down in two adjacent swathes, and the strip represents the poorly-made join between them. What does this imply for the on-going quality of the future cycle path?

However, what gets up my nose is that they’re not working on one of the many areas which are devoid of any more substantial a path than sand and leaf litter.

Comments

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

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.

Plantagenet Penguinista

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