The Lappyvator seems to be helping

Sleeping is still not up to scratch, but I was able to work mostly standing up from 08:00 to now (13:00, 5 hours straight) today, most of it standing up and with some walking around as a form of break.

My lower back is stiff now but not seriously sore. I can sort-of-mostly sit down on soft chairs even after that stretch, which is a big step in the right direction compared with, say, Friday.

I spent most of yesterday evening under my laptop, and had no trouble working recumbent. It does, however, slow down my response to domestic micro-crises.

The physical stress also “blondes” me (<duck> <swish>) in that I start to miss a lot of detail in what’s going on around me as the stress builds up – a little like being very tired, in effect, although it feels quite different – and sometimes I can stare at a piece of documentation (I’m working on QMail Toaster at the moment (someone didn’t test some of the Mandrake mods to those RPMs and a couple of them need to be built as root, ugh, <shudder>) and I have the new server all set up and apparently 100% happy, with web admin interfaces and all, but QMail is, well, different; very different), and know what all of the words mean, understand what it’s instructing me to do, but for up to a minute or two be completely incapable of translating that knowledge into action (so I don’t dare bring the server on line yet lest that happen while some oversight in mail configuration is busily binning important messages).

I guess you could look on it as a means for developing empathy with the digital illiterati. Other than that, I can’t recommend it.

Comments

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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