It will be morning, soon

This assurance is not one I was eager to hear from our youngest at 05:45 this morning. Especially at about 90dB... not kind to unused ears, first thing...

Miss snuggled down OK for about an hour after that, then we had a breakfast session where Miss was absolutely determined to put her milk into the bowl first, then follow it at leisure with cereal — and vigorously refused to even entertain the idea of explaining why she “must have” it that way.

Sir awoke remarkably late (06:40) given the celebrations, then chucked a complete wobbly over things his older sister “should have bought” but evidently hadn’t.

This morning was too much like dealing with those “random” customers & the variety of insane problems they habitually raise. It’d be a lot easier to face if the last couple of days had been relaxing, but Friday was very busy/wearing & Saturday was a bit... miscellaneous. Stuff had to be rearranged without notice, for example.

This has all left my beaten-up little (well... 186cm, 90kg) body somewhat worn out & weary this morning (survivor? yes; perfect? no), so I’m really ready to spend all day sleeping — except that there’s no reasonable way for that to happen: I have far too many things which need to get done.

Ah, well... it ain’t a perfect world; I’m eating a decent breakfast & whisking out my ToDo list now... hopefully finished whinging for today.

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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