We have a door that keeps swinging open to an awkward angle – halfway between open and closed so I’ll give this a shot and see how it works: Hammer Hinge Pins to Keep Open Doors from Closing – Repair – Lifehacker.
Archive for September, 2009
It’s been the subject of countless cartoons and columns, but I find myself stuck repeating the same phrases to my kids over and over again, especially when we’re getting ready to head out the door. “Did you wash your face?” “Did you brush your teeth?” I like the idea of these: Routine cards to help kids organize their schedule. Unfortunately the site that’s hosting them seems to be down right now. Maybe if I print out one of these, I can cut my questions down to “Did you do everything on the routine poster?”
I’ve been looking for a utility such as this one: Dirpy Converts YouTube Videos to Audio for Later Listening – Mp3 – Lifehacker. It seems that I’m forever running across interesting lectures or presentations in video format. Most of the time the video is a presenter standing in front of a screen, so I don’t really need the video to appreciate the presentation.
Queen of Orcs
Sep 27
I recently read the first book in Morgan Howell’s Queen of the Orcs trilogy. I really enjoyed it.
Here’s the author’s one sentence synopsis, "A young woman, enslaved to serve the king’s orc army, discovers the orcs’ nobility and leads them in revolt." I found Dar, the young woman, a surprisingly likeable character. She is a strong female character without being a man with breasts. Her strengths and weaknesses flow from who she is.
The orcs manage to look and act like your typical fantasy orcs but as the book goes on, the reasons for their actions come from an admirable culture and not an evil one. I’m looking forward to finding more about their culture in the next two books.
This book is definitely worth reading. I think there will be more romance elements in the subsequent books and I’m looking forward to those.
Sand Animation
Sep 26
This video tells a beautiful story via sand animation. Watch it.
If you want some background on the story she’s telling, check out Dan Carlin’s current Hardcore History series, Ghosts of the Ostfront.
(Found via RealDelia)
Totally Together Journal asks: What Are the Necessary Cleaning Supplies? I’m not terribly good at keeping our house clean I’m hoping that some of that is due to it being an older house with lots of nooks and crannies. The hope is that when we move into our new house, it’ll be easier to clean. I’ve made progress on some things over last few years, but still none on housecleaning and that really frustrates me.
from krisandapril's photostream
Sexual Assault Prevention Tips Guaranteed to Work! « Feminist Law Professors made me think. My first reaction was to chuckle and dismiss this as humor. Really though, these tips would really work The trick is to get the potential assulter thinking this way rather than forcing potential victims to think defensively. There are a lot of other areas where this kind of perspective flip would be tremendously powerful. I really doubt that this mode of thought could be implemented effectively, but it would change the world if it were.
Left 4 Teletubbies
Sep 23
Jaimie mentioned this a few days ago: Left 4 Teletubbies. It’s a Left 4 Dead mod that lets you kill Teletubbies. few years back I would have loved to have this mod, but I would have had to play it when Evan wasn’t around. We’ve just reactivated TV for the winter, so I haven’t decided what horrrible example of kids’ programming is this year’s target of wrath.
Why Rechargeable Batteries Are Rarely Cost Effective gives a good breakdown of which batteries to use when. From his breakdown, about the only rechargeables I should be using are Lithium Ion batteries for our camera. Otherwise my usage patterns call for regular alkaline batteries. This is good timing as my current batch of rechargeable batteries are dying.
(via Lifehacker)
This Sheldon Strip made me snicker. When you start looking at them, there are few activities that couldn’t be mocked in this way. BoingBoing had a post a while back, We are Fractal Sheep, that described how groups of people tend to resemble one another regardless of what the groups are focused on. Hang around any group of fans and you’ll find theorycrafters and noobs and those who are bitter about the last round of changes and so on. I wonder what we’d look like to a complete alien: would they be able to tell the difference between football fans and Warcraft players?
Grouping kills you
Sep 20
Tobold recently had a post on how Grouping kills you. I was looking at it from the perspective of twinking up a rogue. A Balanced Heartseeker dagger costs 40 Emblems or 60 Champion’s Seals.
40 Emblems is roughly 13 heroic instance runs – depending on the group and the instance, you’re looking at 13 hours or more.
60 Champion’s Seals is about 12 days of dailies – maybe an hour a day, a good chunk of which is flight time when you can be afk to do other things. Also, you are guaranteed your Seals whereas if the group falls apart you may not get your emblems.
If your daily playtime is limited, you’re better off doing dailies rather than trying to find instance runs. Why group before raiding?
Blogging to Learn
Sep 19
Blogging to Learn is something I hadn’t thought about before. As I see it, this would be a notebook tracking what you’ve learned and advancing hypotheses for later testing. The great thing about this approach is that you don’t need to be an expert in your blog’s subject matter. You could start a blog this way for anything that interests you and have it grow in detail as you grow in knowledge. What a wonderful way to study, track what you’ve learned, and maybe help someone else along the way!
Photo by peigianlongStudent Teacher
“To teach is to learn.”
Internet “relief kit” brings sweet, sweet connectivity to disaster sites. My hope for projects such as this is that messing around planning for these extreme contingencies ends up making something that works for everyday use in unconnected areas. From what I read of this project, you have to be anticipating a disaster for it to be useful. A next step could be to make it something that can easily be deployed when a disaster happens. Pieces of a system such as this one could be used in areas where there is no other Internet coverage, particularly if the costs can be brought down drastically.
YouTube – Saskatchewan Driving Etiquette amused me. We live out in the boonies in Manitoba so a lot of the customs are the same. I suspect that a lot of these types of customs are predicated on the likelihood that you know the person you’re passing. When I bike to work I tend to pass a lot of the same people so it helps build a relationship with them over time. Amusingly enough, that’s how the guy we bought our lot from recognized me.
I got around to doing some healing on my shaman when I was pulled into a Trial of the Champion run. That first run was just terrible as I really had no idea what I was doing.
A little later I found myself healing for an assault on the world dragons as an engineer hunted for the lifelike mechanical toad pattern. This time I wasn’t scrambling to figure out my gear and spec while a group waited, so it went much better.
Surprisingly, the clearest explanation of how to heal as a shaman is on Elitist Jerks: Shaman: Restoration. I went for the Riptide – Lesser Healing Wave – Lesser Healing Wave setup.
Here’s the Pawn scale I used. Note that the quotation marks may not come through in a copy/paste.
( Pawn: v1: “Resto EJ (3.2)”: Intellect=1.1, CritRating=0.8, HasteRating=0.45, SpellPower=1, Mp5=1.3, GemQualityLevel=81 )
I found that Power Auras Classic was extremely useful, especially as a reminder to keep buffs up as an inexperienced healer. (See this NoStockUI post for more)
Sadly, Power Auras strings are quite long, so I’m just going to put up the one I used for Earthshield on Focus:
gcd:bofalse; b:nu0.1843137254902; anim1:nu1; ignoreResting:botrue; optunitn:bofalse; ignoremaj:botrue; stacksLower:nu0; target:bofalse; icon:stInterface\Icons\Spell_Nature_SkinofEarth; size:nu0.5; torsion:nu1; r:nu0.39607843137255; y:nu30; x:nu0; customname:st; groupany:botrue; timerduration:nu0; unitn:st; bufftype:nu1; stacks:nu0; focus:botrue; raid:bofalse; texture:nu42; alpha:nu0.75; aurastext:st; symetrie:nu0; soundfile:st; owntex:bofalse; duration:nu0; mine:botrue; multiids:st; inVehicle:bofalse; speed:nu1; sound:nu0; stacksOperator:st>=; realaura:nu1; threshold:nu50; exact:bofalse; textaura:bofalse; wowtex:botrue; groupOrSelf:bofalse; customsound:st; combat:nu0; InactiveDueToState:botrue; id:nu1; aurastextfont:nu1; HideRequest:bofalse; Active:bofalse; spec2:botrue; customtex:bofalse; isSecondary:bofalse; g:nu0.25882352941176; thresholdinvert:bofalse; tooltipCheck:st; stance:nu10; anim2:nu0; buffname:stEarth Shield; Showing:bofalse; spec1:bofalse; begin:nu0; off:bofalse; party:bofalse; texmode:nu1; inverse:botrue; ismounted:bofalse; targetfriend:bofalse; randomcolor:bofalse; isinraid:bofalse; finish:nu1; timer.a:nu1; timer.dual:bofalse; timer.cents:botrue; timer.HideLeadingZeros:bofalse; timer.id:nu1; timer.y:nu0; timer.h:nu1; timer.Transparent:bofalse; timer.HideRequest:botrue; timer.Showing:bofalse; timer.x:nu0; timer.enabled:bofalse
I didn’t mind healing on my shaman, but I’m still not up for much group play right now so I’ll probably stick to a nice solo enhancement build as primary spec.
Different Music
Sep 15
I listened to Vishal Vaid’s TED performance and thought “it’s not really my kind of music.” That let me to wondering what my kind of music is.
This summer I completed the Couch to 5k running listening to Robert Ullrey’s Podcasts. As a followup, I’m most of the way through Podrunner: Intervals’ Freeway to 10K. These feature electronic dance music, a genre I’ve had very little exposure to prior to these programs. It’s perfect exercise music. The tempo of the music encourages me to keep moving at a good pace. The lack of words keeps me from being pulled out of my mental zone so that I can keep going and going.
For some reason, I bought an Enya CD many years back. Her music is very soft and dreamlike and the words are often in Gaelic. I find her music extremely soothing – if I have any difficulty sleeping, I put on her CD and I’m out in no time. It’s perfect go-to-sleep music. It’s not what I want to listen to at work or exercising.
The Fump has tons of funny music and parodies. As with anything comedy-wise, some songs make me laugh every time while others have me stabbing the fast-forward button. It’s perfect music for being silly. My kids have been known to express some severe disapproval of my choices in silly songs, especially when sung to wake them up for school.
My classification would make music purists scream, but what I think of as pop music is popular music where the lyrics are usually nonsense but it’s still fun to listen to. Examples for me would be U2, Smashing Pumpkins, REM, Miley Cyrus, Britney Spears, and so on. The singers themselves are usually ridiculous – either in I want to be taken seriously as an artist mode or Whee, I’m a star! fashion. Don’t think about this music too much, enjoy it in much the same way as you would free-form poetry.
I recently listened to a talk about the urbanization of the world where the speaker said that country music is one of the most popular genres around the world. It speaks to newly arrived city dwellers of the home that they left behind and the values that are projected onto that simpler and more rural past. In many way, Jaimie and I have opted to pursue the values described in country music, so it’s not surprising that it speaks to me. At the same time nostalgia is often a longing for an idealized past that never was. People remain people and are no more (or less) virtuous when found in cities than on farms. It’s perfect value reinforcement music for me.
Overall my favorite kind of music is Celtic music. Celtic seems to be the genre that comes closest to describing what I enjoy – traditional western European instruments and arrangements with lyrics that tell a story. It’s music you can sing without a band to back you up. If I want to listen to music in general, Celtic music is perfect for me. Currently my favorite Celtic artists are Heather Dale and The Merry Wives of Windsor.
If I’m willing to take music on its own terms, there is a situation in my life that fits it. I can see Vishal Vaid’s music as music to contemplate, even if it’s not something that fits my life right now. It seems that every time I stop and listen to a new genre, I find new music to enjoy. Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto. (I am human, nothing that is human is alien to me.)
This looks really useful: Repair a Broken Ethernet Plug. I’ve had plenty of cables with broken locking tabs and usually I either just live with it or dig out another jack and re-crimp the cable (and usually the locking tab breaks again). This Instructable gives a solution that looks more robust.
Build a Beneficial Bug House
Sep 13
This looks like a useful garden project: Build a Beneficial Bug House – Garden – Lifehacker. The site we’re looking at building on is quite large and near a river. We will definitely have plenty of bugs flying around, so if something such as this can improve the ratio of beneficial to noxious bugs I’m all for it. I wonder if there’s a way of attracting mosquito predators?
photo by macrophile
Wired’s Geekdad has a list of the Top 10 Eighties Computer Games Worth Playing (Again). Reading this list made me nostalgic. I’ve played every game on this list except for Seven Cities of Gold, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and Fool’s Errand.
Starflight’s DRM was terrible – it wiped the game on me before I could get very far. Starflight 2 took forever to save games – I remember running down from my computer, mowing a patch of lawn, then running back in before it had finished saving.
I did have a lot of fun playing these games. I plan on downloading them again to see if my kids enjoy them too. Justin and I spent hours and hours trying to figure out some of these games. I hope my kids have fond memories of gaming when they look back on their misspent youths.
The Brown Pumpernickel
Sep 11
This was one of my favorite Wayne and Shuster sketches, especially while reading The Scarlet Pimpernel.