Hitting the grass, Nullarbor return

The OK shop was open yesterday, so I dropped in & looked. As well as the almond jelly, they had a few cans of grass jelly, so I’ll try a smoothie-ish thingy made with that instead, a few hours from now.

At $1.35 a tin, that represents an actual saving in food costs compared with raw fruit, always a welcome feature.

Simple little distractions like this can be absolute life-savers when the rest of your life is turning to crushing, grinding horror. Well... not absolute life-savers as such, but they do tend to blunten the edges of some sharp real-life problems.

(-: This is not such a related problem, but... :-) it looks like I’ll be wandering across to Melbourne next week — possibly via Adelaide, & with a likely diversion to Sydney — so if you want something lugged across there (or back) I can probably squeeze up to a PC-sized box into the suitcase.

This needn’t be anything technical, could be conference documents, photo prints, a huge box of chocolates (from which you won’t mind a bit of taxation :-) or the like.

Comments

Leon RJ Brooks said…

Hmmmm. The grass jelly was a bit more savoury than the banana really felt comfortable with, but still an interesting flavour.

Nevertheless, almond tomorrow.

14 January, 2008 06:57

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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