Doing the ironing

I have an interesting picture which I have been absolutely forbidden to post (here or anywhere) of SWMBO doing some ironing.

Why “forbidden”?

Well, Her Delightfulness is ironing some sheets...

...that are still on the bed.

No, it’s not as unsubtle as it first sounds; she wanted a flat surface to photo some clothes on for auction, so had stripped the blankets from our bed and was ironing the sheets — in place — to be that surface. It looked a little odd at times and I was rash/foolhardy enough to capture much of this oddness. Forbidden, you see?

On a different & more serious note, Mr Jim Baen is still in hospital & all goodwill directed his way remains most welcome. He’s been helpful, polite & odds-defiant for quite some time, and it would be good if he could remain so for a long while. He is also working (unusual for a publisher) against the currently-insane mainstream DRM trends, so needs extra goodwill to help deflect any curses from any PowersThatBe teams objecting to this.

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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