Hi-tech response to a low-tech problem (wheels within wheels)

Plugged my pushbike in at a petrol station in Jondalup to square off a flattish back tyre. Tyre went completely flat, as connector was stuffed.

Sigh.

Walk to other station, find that last night’s power surges have killed their air pump.

Sigh.

Next servo is about 4km (to be walked) down the road (& back), so instead I devised an exceedingly cunning high-tech solution.

Most shops still closed, so no way to buy a hand-pump, leaving only said solution: board a massive steel-plated & glazed electrical device, which runs along straightish pieces of metal via Edgewater, Whitfords, Stirling & Perth to the Raffles Hotel (or beyond). Disembark. Wheel pushbike maybe 300m to Caltex servo, find working nozzle; deploy, fill to repletion, become a cyclomaniac again.

See? Deploy enough technology, problem will be solved. (-:

Comments

Anonymous said…

Next time go all bush mechanic and stuff the tyres with grass.

26 December, 2007 15:17

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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