Welcome to Melbourne!

Countryside on the way over was a bit bereft of capturable icons but the ride was gentle & the seats comfy. Food was a tad pricey (e.g. $3 for a Mars bar) but went on special for the last 15 minutes.

Kerry & Haylie were cheerful & helpful plus David & Pat(rick? Irishman) buzzed about the place doing stuff like finding stuff & people. Kerry was pretty amazing as she had wanted to work right where she is since 7yo, started real-life work at 15yo, & was all settled in a train by 17yo. Her hubby works in a car factory & they seem to have made their off-work moments meet up with mutual happiness (for 7 years? some considerable time, anyway).

Power-sockets located under the bench in the dining car, so 4 passengers spent most of the trip there. Think they would do well to bolt a 4-way plug-pack adjacent each seat, later they can get fancy with a satt link & wireless routers. (-:

Aaaanyway, have things-to-do teed up for today & tomorrow, schedules for Conf & work seem to be meshing well. Breakfast time (baked Woolies buns, peaner burr), then away.

Thanks again to the Loxton family (& their cats, & an eeepc, & a WoW addict... oh, & three-flavour non-Neopolitan icecream) for busy accommodation in Adelaide, thanks to George Patterson for digs here, a block from a train station.

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

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Plantagenet Penguinista

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