Hurrah for local servicepeople!

Frank, our neighbourhood mobile mechanic, fixed the water pump on our van for 20% under budget, and it’s running one notch cooler than it ever has before even though the thermostat is the same, which I attribute to better water flow throughout. Frank also seems to have bled the clutch, and not mentioned it on his bill. If you’re in Perth’s northern suburbs and chasing a good mechanic, Frank trades as C & A Autos on 0414-803-185.

The fixed water pump has allowed me to try out the shiny new injectors and freshly re-sealed fuel pump, too, and the difference is quite startling. Subjectively, it feels about 50% more powerful and while an 1800cc diesel 4WD van isn’t ever going to be popping any wheelies or blowing the doors off anything but snails it is certainly much more interested in keeping up with the traffic, and much easier to ramp up over 3000RPM (its TDC on the tacho; 2500 RPM is about where it starts seriously pulling, and that seems ot last to about 3700 RPM now) than ever before. The injectors and pump were done by Paul (trading as Perth Injector Exchange on 0411-430-576) who covers the entire metro area.

Edit: after taking it for another run and watching carefully, I see that the torque actually kicks in at around 2000RPM now, and the kick-in curve isn’t as steep as it used to be. It feels much healthier all around. There was still a little black smoke this morning — as expected — but the crud seems to have pretty much burned away now, leaving the exhaust clear and... well, not exactly “sweet”, but... (-:

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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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