Body to brain, body to brain: don't do that!

Spent a long day working yesterday and got a clear and painful indication that I should have spent at least a large part of that day under my Lappyvator instead. Blurgh.

Much as I detest pain, it is generally a very useful thing — like fear. Whenever you see a “No Fear” sticker or tee-shirt, remember to mentally translate it to “No Brains”.

An Osborne Park company has had a look at the Lappyvator and is interested in making something like it for themselves. It turns out that the owner has back problems as well, and he showed me a nifty little sit-in device which looks like a padded plank swing with a separate back and a pair of stirrups, which also does good things for one’s spine. The “plank” goes under your legs, the back (attached to some rings on the straps supporting the seat) rides up on your back, and one foot goes into each stirrip, which are separately attached to the bar the whole thing hangs from and strapped to limit their distance form one another.

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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.

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...

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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