Cookies and Napalm

My favorite game

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 19 Jan 2016 05:16:00 +0000

Rings, or ringboard, is an old English pub dexterity game. The game consists of a series of 13 hooks arranged on a board, at which are thrown 6 rubber rings. First to a pre-set number (a nice round number between 50 and 500) wins.

I've made about 4 of these boards now, and I really love this game. Unfortunately the rings have very few suppliers, but can be ordered from Masters Traditional Games in the UK. The board below I made for my dad last year, and since it was hard to wrap I just put a little bow on it.

A quick score board

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 11 Jan 2016 01:51:00 +0000

"Daddy, who's winning?" I am. Well, usually I am, but when the kids are just barely too small to understand math, how do you really know? So I whipped up this quick 4 player bilingual counting board so they can always keep score on the rings board in the backyard.

Coffee table build, part II: the top

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 03 Jan 2016 01:50:00 +0000

Oy, has it really been this long? Sorry folks, the holidays take their toll when everyone has birthdays too. So, surface planing the top:

Arranging boards:

All the clamps:

Next up: the apron!

Rage fixing a Stanley 21-399 rasp plane

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 20 Sep 2015 02:32:00 +0000

So, the other day I was finally installing the trim around the windows, when the drywall rasp I was using slipped out of my hand and fell to the floor. For a construction-grade tool, this wouldn't have been a problem. However, for this particular sloppy chunk of yak dung, the plastic screw which holds the blade in snapped in half. While Stanley has a great warranty, I would in fact have been stuck with a shiny new piece of said dung, and that's just unacceptable. So, I rage-fixed it.

First, I grabbed a piece of scrap hardwood, a bolt, and a matching threaded insert.

Drill out the hole, and mark the appropriate shape

Plane the front angle

Insert the threaded...er...insert

Chisel the angle for the blade hook

Test fit and file accordingly

Too high, file a bit more

Perfect. Rage-fix time: 15 minutes. Less time than going back to the store.

Coffee Table build, Part I

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 13 Sep 2015 02:05:00 +0000

My friend Cody got married recently, and asked to make him a rustic coffee table. Actually, at first he asked me to make a table from pallets. A request to which I promptly said no. Why? Pallets are gross. They're full of nails, they've been in the sun and the rain (which hardens them beyond reason), and they're full of grit. However, I can certainly make new wood, which is nice to my tools and psyche, look old. After putting together a couple of dimensions, I got started with some rough sawn cedar from the orange store:

Here's a sample of the stain, iron acetate (aka steel wool soaked in vinegar), which literally ages the wood to that grey patina that you'd find in weathered boards, without the headache of cutting through nails and burning your motors out:

And the first boards off the plane:

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 13 Nov 2014 04:30:00 +0000

Processes, multiplexers and scripts, oh my!

Processes

Now that we have an understanding of how to do some basic text editing on the command line, lets get down into some of the running processes of your system.

Uptime

OK, now that we’ve got a reasonable handle on moving around the file structure, let’s find out what’s going on in the system. For starters, let’s find out how long the system’s been running and how hard by typing uptime. This will give a wonderfully cryptic output looking something like this: 20:49:35 up 12:21, 1 user, load average: 0.39, 0.76, 1.00 Sure…whatever. Here it is broken down:

Output	Meaning
`20:49:35`	The current time
`up 12:21`	How long this system has been running without a reboot, in D:H:M format.
`1 user`	Obviously, how many users are logged in
`load average:` `0.39, 0.76, 1.00`	OK, here’s where we get sticky. Let’s break this part a little further.

“Load average” is a metric of the amount of work currently being handled by the system, including CPU, RAM, and disk. This is expressed as a number corresponding to percent utilization divided by 100. So a 1.00 load is using 100% of the available resources of your machine. A number above 1 means that there are processes waiting in line to be calculated by the CPU, and a number below 1 means that the system is idling part of the time. Why three numbers? Well, these are the averages for the past minute, 5 minutes, and 15 minutes respectively.

Top

Now that we have an idea of how the system’s doing, let’s find out exactly what’s running. top will give a nice list of all the running processes. Does that first line look familiar? Yup, that’s the output of uptime. It self-updates every couple of seconds, so if you’re system is really bogged down top might not be your first choice, but it’s nice to see all the running processes.

ps

Back to two-letter commands, ps is the process snapshot utility. There’s a bunch of switches, but the easiest way to list all the current relevent processes is ps aux. This will usually output lots of info, so you can manually look at it by piping to less, (| less) or search the output with grep if you know what you’re looking for. If you’re just looking for the maximum process, try this: ps aux|sort -k 3n This uses another nice tool, sort, which does exactly what it says, it sorts. the -k 3n is it’s switch to tell it to sort by the third column, sorting numerically.

Multiplexers: Screen and Tmux

Sometimes you want to leave something running after you log out, such as a backup script. But all the processes associated with your login are terminated when you log out, so how are you to cope? A “terminal multiplexer” is what you want. Let’s look at a couple.

Screen

Screen is often installed on remote systems, if for no other reason that if you are disconnected, your session is just detached and you can just log in and resume your work from where you left off. screen will bring up something that looks…exactly like what you just had. Huh. This is actually not true, it’s a “virtual” terminal. If you type \<C-a\>, d, you will detach from the session and leave anything running that was previously running. \<C-a\>, k kills the window, while screen -r will reattach the session. Cool, huh? You can do all sorts of things with a multiplexer, such as split the screen and run a bunch of things at once.

Keystroke	Action
`<C-a> S`	Split horizontally
`<C-a>\|`	Split vertically
`<C-a> <tab>`	Switch to next pane

Tmux

Tmux, or “terminal multiplexer” is kind of the vim to screen’s vi. It has a status bar, which is quite helpful, as well as an easy way to customize the keyboard shortcuts so they’re easy to remember. The defaults are as follows:

Keystroke	Action
`<C-b> &`	Kill window
`<C-b> %`	Split vertically
`<C-b> "`	Split horizontally
`<C-b> o`	Switch to next pane
`<C-b> d`	Detach session
`tmux attach`	Attach a previously detached session

Scripting

Now that we’ve gotten some commands under our belts, it’s time to write a script. Open up an editor, and put this in the first line: #!/bin/bash This tells the system which program to use to run the next lines. Now on the second line, just put ls. Save the file as a .sh file, and change the file permissions to be able to execute with sudo chmod +x filename. the sudo command allows you to be root for a single command instead of logging in as root, which is helpful for security and generally not screwing things up. Run your file by typing sh filename.sh. You’re now looking at the output of the ls command, right? While this is not actually a useful thing to write a script for, it illustrates the point of bash scripts: anything you can type on the command line can be in a script. Let that sink in a bit. Do you have a huge one-liner that you can’t ever remember? Try putting it in a script instead of writing it on a post-it. Bash scripts can use if-then loops, case statements, and take input from the user to become a very flexible and powerful way of managing systems. There are lots of books and tutorials on the subject, so I’m not going to attempt to repeat their fine work. Go, read, and enjoy.

Final Thoughts

While this is not by any means a complete course in command-line use, I hope it’s gotten you on your way to be able to start to learn for yourself how powerful this method of computing can be. It’s not pretty, I grant you. But it’s low-bandwidth and very powerful once you get over the learning curve. Here’s a parting shot: Have a bunch of programs that you need to install on a fresh Debian-based system? Try this one, after putting each program on it’s own line in a plain text file called programs:

cat programs| xargs sudo apt-get install

BOOM!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 07 Nov 2014 04:00:00 +0000

The best podcasts

Edit: Sadly, as of 9/12/2015, it seems that the Alton Browncast has podfaded. The old episodes are still there, and are certainly worth a listen, but no new episodes have come out since December 2014.

One of the hidden gems of the internet is a thing called podcasts: radio shows put on by guys and girls with nothing but a microphone and spare time. Over the years, it’s even become a mildly profitable venture, with many companies paying advertising money to spread their message to the listeners of these shows. There’s podcasts on everything, and they can be downloaded with any of a thousand apps on your desktop or mobile device. As someone who spends much of the day disconnected from the internet, it’s nice to have some rotating information which can be entertaining without having to be completely connected. Here are my favorites, culled from a list of my 63 regular podcast subscriptions.

Alton Browncast

Alton Brown, TV host known for a half dozen shows on Food Network over the past couple of decades, has a hidden talent: interviewing. As a creative outlet for AB to shoot the breeze with his favorite people, he has a knack for not asking “regular” questions, and as such has produced some of the best interviews I’ve ever heard. Anyone who can ask William Shatner a question which leaves him speechless has some mad chops. ‘Nuff said.

Bad Voltage

This is a tech show which consists of four guys on different continents insulting each other with reckless abandon. Forget the fact that the hosts of this show are some of the pillars of Open Source communities from Ubuntu to Stack Exchange, and that their audio quality over a combined 20,000 miles rivals many commercial radio sudios. In all actuality, it doesn't matter what they talk about because Jono Bacon, Stuart Langridge, Bryan Lunduke, and Jeremy Garcia make such an amazing comedic team that you will have tears of laughter streaming down your face with every episode.

BBC Radio 4: The Now Show

OK, this show isn’t going to be for everyone, but it regularly gets skipped to the front of the queue for me because it scratches a particular comedic itch in my brain: topical political satire. US politics is usually rather depressing, but English politics can be outright hilarious when put in the right light. On top of the political satire, there’s also the best newspaper headline flubs of the week, which will make you laugh hard enough to spit your kippers.

TWiT.TV: Know How (Video)

TWiT is one of the largest podcasting networks on the internet, and rightly so. They’ve got lots of sponsors, and therefore top notch equipment. But the best thing they’ve got? A giant jolly Jesuit priest! That’s right, Father Robert Ballecer, SJ is the host of this maker show (and a few others) which is as useful as it is funny. Originally hosted by Iyaz Ahktar, PadreSJ took over around episode 6, and the show has never been the same. Full of just plain good info and light hearted banter, this show will fill your knowledge hole and leave you smiling. While it’s available in all formats, I’d suggest leaving this one in video format, since Padre goes to great lengths to produce some quality B-roll video for nearly every episode.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 18 Sep 2014 02:40:00 +0000

Scribal Tradition in the age of Technology

3000 years ago, a sect of monks placed copies of a writing into stone jars within a cave, as they were fleeing an invading army. They sat there until the 1950's, when a group of archaeologists discovered them. After several years of translation, they discovered that the then-called "Dead Sea Scrolls" contained the earliest known copies of much of the Old Testament. The only reason that these documents were preserved was because of the pristine environment in which the volumes had been placed without being disturbed for centuries.

Dust To Dust

The story of the Dead Sea Scrolls is steeped in our culture now, as an example of how long paper lasts, as a nearly indestructible force. The truth, however, is far from it. With the presence of oxygen, humidity, vibration, and sunlight, paper and ink quickly turn to dust. Paper was well known, even then, to be a transient method of archiving information, and as such was given rise to an entire subculture with nearly every literate society: the scribes. The sole purpose of this sector of society was to not only write down the events of the day, but to copy letter for letter works which were in danger of being lost due to rot or other environmental factors. Oftentimes kings and lords of far away lands would send for copies of a certain text to have read in their court, and the fees incurrred in the process would pay the salary of these learned scholars.

The beginning of the end

As time went on, the scribes underwent several periods of rise and decline, though their worth was more often than not overlooked. Such writings as the Book of Kells still stand today as a testament to their skill throughout the ages. However, a Chinese invention was brought to the West which changed everything: Gutenberg's movable type printing press. The invention made hand-copied texts obsolete nearly overnight, as speed increased a hundredfold. Lost also was the care with which the information was preserved, and the rise of mass media created a lust for new information at the cost of the old.

Enter the Underwood

For centuries more, the press was the only way to create many copies of the same document, and had dominated news, fiction and nonfiction. But in the late 19th century another invention came along and into the office an home: the Underwood #5. This revolutionary typewriter was the first to show the typist what was being typed, and subsequently became the primary correspondence tool for businesses in all of the English-speaking world. While copies were still made by hand, the scribe had been forgotten and replaced by the secretary.

Cellophane Coffins

As the typewriters of the West utilized more and more paper, space became a problem. The piles of triplicate copies of tax returns and grandma's recipes were taking their toll on the archives of various offices in businesses and had to themselves be archived. A couple of mirrors, lenses and cameras later, the microfiche was born. Able to hold an entire newspaper on the size of a 5x7 note card, the microfiche again saved the day for those paying rent of archival storage units. But still, it's components were not long lived, and had to be maintained as much as paper, dutifully copied before they too turned to dust.

Electrons in the Cloud

In the 1940's, the first adding machines were created, to break the codes of the Japanese and Germans in WWII. Hand-wired from thousands of mechanical relays, they were a marvel of engineering and sheer will. With the advent of the transistor, along with later miniaturizations, the computer was born. Much more than a code-breaking machine, we now have access to more information than has ever been recorded at our fingertips. Yet, where are the scribes?

The Pace of Failure

Magnetic audio tape, cassette, 16mm, Super-8, Beta, VHS, Laserdisc, 35mm slide, Vinyl. All these have come and gone, and few are available to play in their original form. The pace of technology fast outstripped the ability to maintain the machines needed to reproduce the information contained on the various formats. As each new wave of faster, smaller, or cheaper materials arrived, the market dropped out from underneath the companies who made the players, and so left behind mountains of information which could no longet be accessed.

Every Man For Himself

With nobody to pawn the job off to, the scribal tradition falls now to every individual. "Bit rot", or the ability of a static file to lose it's magnetism on the disk, is as much of a problem as the physical rot of paper journals and magnetic tape. So it turns to the sons, daughters, and grandkids of those who so painstakingly preserved the last 75 years in lost formats to convert them and keep their bits fresh so that future generations can enjoy the first hand accounts of some of the richest history we have ever been able to record.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 11 Sep 2014 14:49:00 +0000

Help! I’m on the Command Line!

So you’re administering a *nix server somewhere, playing with the settings, and now that you’ve figured out how to ssh into the stupid box you’re greeted with a friendly you@server:~$ and a blinking cursor. “Great, now what?” you ask. Well, that’s why I’m here.

The command prompt

OK, you’re looking at this cryptic line, known as the variable PS1. Interesting, yes? No? Ok, no not really. This is usually set like I’ve outlined above, but what does it mean? Let’s break it down. you is the username that you’re currently logged in as. @server is the name of the machine where you’re logged in. ~ is the folder you’re actively looking at. $ is just a separator between that information and the stuff you’re about to type. The PS1 variable is customizable, and some systems will just have a # with nothing, while others have a huge string of useful information embedded in the prompt line. Search for custom ps1 if you’re interested in that rabbit hole.

The Filesystem

The linux filesystem is…well… a little crazy. If you’re used to finding C: or A: in a Windows filesystem, and everything is stuck in folders where everything is contained in the same folder, you’re in for a shock. It’s a bit like switching from the Dewey Decimal System to the Library of Congress Card Catalog. Both catalog books, but one is more widely used, so the switch can be painful. It’s not that either is necessarily the “right” way, it’s just different. Tomaeto/tomahto, etc.

/

We’re mostly dealing with tradition here, so bear with me. Back in ‘76 when Unix on the PDP-11 was the best you could hope for, 10 character-per-minute typing was blazing fast. As a result, shorthand was used for everything. So the root of the filesystem was just a slash, /. No drive letter, nothing. You’ll see that these short commands are nearly always the oldest, just for that reason. Given that the rest is mostly convention, / is the only truly guaranteed location on a *nix system. Luckily, it’s super unusual to find something that deviates from the norm, I mean it’s been nearly 50 years since it was invented, right?

/etc

This folder is for your configuration files. This is most likely where you’ll be mucking about with a server. /etc/fstab is the filesystem table, where disks and such are mounted. “Mounted?!” You say? Well, on every system, even if it doesn’t say, there can be a disk or filesystem that is detected, but not necessarily available to the system. Once it’s mounted, that’s when you can actually do stuff to the data that’s stored there. the fstab is what does that automatically on boot. There’s loads of configurations, and depending on your system you might have to hunt a bit to find where to look. /etc gives you a start.

/var

Looking for your logs? They’re here! /var/log is going to be your friend if you’re log hunting, this is where you need to look. There’s also an internal mail, print spool, and temporary file directory.

/usr

Yoooozrrrzzz… Yup this is the place where all the user-level files are located. /usr/bin is a nice place to look if you’re wanting to find out which programs are installed, but otherwise is going to be left alone.

/home

This is where all the user-land files are. All the cat pictures, skateboard-fails, and defunct wordstar files reside here. If you’re going to back up only one thing, let it be /home.

/srv or /http

Here’s your server files, and all the web pages you have on this thing. Apache or Nginx serverblock files are here, and this is where you’ll need to go if your pages aren’t loading.

Navigating the filesystem: cd and ls

CD, not your obsolete audio format

Remember when I said the shortest commands are the oldest? Well here they come. First, you’re going to need a way to move around. This is done with the “Change Directory” command, cd. But where to go? If you just type cd and <enter>, you’ll go to your home directory, located at /home/you/. This is represented by a tilde, ~. Figuratively, as you go further from the root directory, this is considered “down”. So “up” one level is represented by two periods, ... So now you can get to /home with cd ... But how do you know what’s there?

ls

The list function, ls is pretty handy, as it’s the only way you know what’s in the directory you’re in. This is where we get into something called a switch. It’s just a modifier to change the way a program acts. By default, ls will list all the visible files in a multi-column format. But say you want to see more detailed information? Just add -l to the end of the line and see what happens. Whoa! All in a single line, with a huge amount of detail. Now try -a. Back to the same old boring column format, but with a bunch more files added. That is the “list all” switch, which doesn’t hide stuff starting with a dot, whcih are hidden files or directories. Many of the configuration options are in hidden files, so don’t forget to look. Switches can be nested, so ls -la will list all the files in detailed format.

man

OK, before we go any further, let’s get into the “man” pages. No, it’s not a chauvanistic website, it’s the command-line manual. Try man ls to learn some more switches for ls. The arrow keys work for up and down, and q quits out of it. Almost all commands have a man page, which is super useful as a reference, but not as a standalone manual since you really need to know what you’re looking for to be able to use it. A very useful place to start is to read the man page for man, man man.

Looking at text: cat, less, head and tail

cat: not just for youtube videos

Now that you’ve found your log file, how in the world do you get to see it? Just type cat and then your desired file. If the file you wanted to look at was relatively small, it’ll show up all on the screen. Otherwise, it’ll scroll the entire file as fast as it can render until it reaches the end. In that case, keep reading.

less is more

In the very likely event that you’ve got a file which is longer than your screen size, the less program will help you immensely. less *filename* will bring up a screen which will allow you to scroll back and forth in the window with the arrow keys. Pressing h will bring up the help screen, which has a lot of options.

When you only need a little: head and tail

In addition to less, there are two programs which can make quick work of the latest changes to a file: head and tail. As their name implies, they will strip the start or end of a file and print the results to the console. Either program wil take a -n switch, followed by a number which will tell it how many lines to print. The default is 10 lines.

Pipe to GREP for some geeky searching

OK, put on your suspenders and get out the cheetos, we’re going to grok the grep. Grep, the GNU Regular Expression Parser, is a neat little program which will, at it’s most basic, spit out the results of a matching expression to the console. It uses regular expressions, which can be quite complex but very useful when searching. Ever wonder what the sign above the backslash symbol (|) does? Well, other than making some mad ASCII art, it’s called a pipe, and it’s pretty neat. Say you’ve got a 300mb text file called rayneboughs, and you’re looking for every occurrence of the word gnunicorn. You would be able to push the text of that file to the console with cat, right? Well, if you have a pipe after that, it will push that output to the start of the next program instead. This is the foundation of “one-liners”, little scripts which do powerful things like
this:

cat rayneboughs | grep gnunicorn

This little bit will output every line in the file rayneboughs which contains the word gnunicorn. Cool, huh? Grep is very powerful, and nearly it’s own scripting language, well worth the time to research a bit more to get into the power of regular expressions.

The same function can be had by typing grep gnunicorn rayneboughs, but this is a good way to get familiar with pipes, as they can be super handy. For example, piping can alleviate some of the headaches with individual switches, and keep your structure more readable.

Editing text: vi, vim, emacs, nano, ad infinitum

While viewing text files is all well and good, it’s time to actually change something. Some of the things we’ve covered can actually change files, but if you’re going to get to work on your configurations, it’s time to step into the middle of the holy war that is console text editing.

vi/vim

The first of the text editors I’m bringing up is vi, the most universally installed text editor on linux systems. Originally envisioned by Bill Joy in 1976, it’s currently maintained by Bram Moolenaar and is likely to be installed by default regardless of the distribution you’re running. For that reason alone, you need to at least be familiar with how to modify, save, and close a file. That said, my first several attempts at learning vi nearly resulted in a manual override on the machine. Typing vi on most machines will bring up Vi iMproved, known as Vim, which has the nicety of a status bar at the bottom which tells you which mode you’re in. Yeah, mode. You see, every key can do something different depending on which mode you’re in. There’s “normal” mode, which is the default state of the program (and also the result of much anguish), and “insert” mode, which is what you think of when you’re writing text. There’s also “visual” mode, but we’re not going to worry about that for the moment.

Upon opening a vim session with no file, you’re greeted by the default screen with a couple shortcuts which tell you very little. “type :q to quit” looks a bit cryptic, but it means what it says. The colon character “:” is the normal mode command line character, and is how you do file operations. Here’s the basics:

Normal Mode:
j Down
k Up
h Left
l Right
Note: the movement keys work in all versions of vim, including vi. Sometimes the arrow keys will result in funny character displays, so you might have to default to these

i switch to insert mode, will begin inserting characters before the cursor
a switch to insert mode, inserting characters after the cursor
:w save file
:qquit program
:wqsave and quit
:q! quit, discard changes

Insert Mode:
<esc> switch back to normal mode

While there’s much more to all of these editors, I’ll leave it up to you to see if you want to dive deeper and become a text ninja.

emacs

Sometimes described as it’s own operating system, emacs was developed in 1976 by Richard Stallman and Guy Steele. It makes excessive use of the ( or ) and (called for Modifier) keys to switch in and out of modes. There’s support for a couple of games, an email client, internal compilers, and a host of other things. It might be a bit much for changing a config file, but if it’s what’s installed, you might as well jump in.

Moving around is a matter of forward and backward one character at a time, or next and previous one line at a time. Text can be inserted at any time, once you’ve gotten the cursor there.

Save the file by pressing s

There is an integrated help, loaded by pressing i.

To exit, press ,

This should be enough to get a file edited and saved, for more information the program is quite well documented internally with the help function.

nano/pico

While the original PIne COmposer, PICO, appears to have been abandoned with it's original mail client, the University of Washington's PINE client, it’s successor, nano, is alive and well. Nano is likely to be the go-to editor of choice for the occasional command-line user, as it’s got a helpful menu bar at the bottom and is not modal. It uses some of the previously mentioned control commands from emacs, but those aren’t required for moving around and making changes. The backspace and arrow keys work fine, and generally there’s no surprises.

Others

There are hosts of other editors, such as jed, sanos, cream, elvis, and more, but the general rule is: if you don’t like your editor, install another one!

But that’s not all!

We’ve only scratched the surface of the power of the command line, but this should be enough to get you through the first few times of command-line goodness enough to get you familiar with the workflow. Do not be afraid! Next up: processes, multiplexers and scripts, oh my!

New stuff to write about

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 04:14:00 +0000

Life has not, in fact, been devoid of projects, however devoid of writing about them life has become. I've been working with Raspberry Pi, OpenSprinkler, TheTireGarden, building some sweet shelving, re-arranging the garage, hiking with the dog, and basically filling my time with many many things. We'll be getting some more articles up once things die down a bit.

Cookies!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 01:52:00 +0000

Obligatory cookie post: Since I have yet to actually post cookies on this blog, I decided it was about time. Recipe here in @cookbook format: PBCC Cookies: Mix 22oz Bisquick/20oz brsug/16oz Skippy/8oz Boiling h2o. Cool slightly; add ~12oz chocchip. Form & bake 9min@350F. Makes lots of cookies, but uses a full jar of Skippy peanut butter, in a size I have often.

Blacksmithing note: I've yet to get an answer about the insurance, so I'll probably put that project on hold this summer. I thought it would be pretty cut and dry, aka "you'll get burned, deal with it" and, "we haven't lost anybody yet, so don't be stupid." Apparently insurance companies want a bit more than that, and where my middleman is out to lunch I don't have much choice but to sit and wait. As Stan Lee would say, Excelsior!

Delays, delays

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 15:54:00 +0000

Not a blacksmith's shop, but a cute picture from an old woodworking book. I'm still waiting on the paperwork to get completed for NCC, so the insurance will go through. *Sigh* Luckily I've been delayed by the weather, so that still gets me some time to finish the exhaust. Hopes are still high, but I wish we could just start! Hang in there,
-Fuzzy

Things we won't be doing

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 14:30:00 +0000

This is an amazing video, but just so you know, we don't have nearly enough coke (or carbs!) to do this kind of thing out at the shop. I'm in the final steps of clearing the insurance, fitting the ducts, and generally cleaning up now, so get ready! I'm looking at about $100 per class, something like 11 to 4 on two Saturdays a month to start. Sound ok?

Sustainable Living Fair

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 13:36:00 +0000

We'll be at the Sustainable Living Fair this weekend, keep an eye out for coal smoke and hot iron. Always a great time, there's going to be hundreds of vendors with tools and ideas to make you think, which is why it's one of our absolutely favorite festivals of anywhere!

Using ebbok2cw

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:01:00 +0000

OK, I've been learning to use the program ebook2cw, by Fabian Kurz, DJ1YFK, to make Mp3 Morse Code files of Project Gutenberg etexts. It's been a bit confusing, so I want to share what I've found.

Before we start, I use Ubuntu 9.10, because it's free. Sorry if you're trying to use something else, but Fabian has been kind enough to retain the same format throughout the supported systems.

First, if you download the binary file, you should put it in a directory and be able to run it by typing the following (using alice30.txt, Alice in Wonderland from Gutenberg.org):

./ebook2cw -w 21 -e 7 -o alice- alice30.txt

This will make several files of over an hour long each at 7 words per minute and a character speed of 21 words per minute, split everywhere the file says, "CHAPTER". To cancel the program running, press CTRL-C. The QRQ (increase speed by 1WPM every "x" minutes) function errors when you try to use the -e option, since the QRQ speed can surpass the Farnsworth speed (if you try running it with the full text of Alice, the eventual speed is something like 1800WPM!).

If that doesn't work, you might need to change the permission for it like so:

sudo chmod +x ebook2cw

You'll have to enter your password, then run the previous command.

So...Since my average time to listen to CW (and my...what?...attention span) runs about 20 minutes, I wanted to find out how make a file 20 minutes long. This would also allow me to make use of the QRQ function without hitting 42wpm. Can't be done currently within the program, but "We have the technology!"

Find out how many lines and words the program has using the "Tools>Document statistics" plugin for the default text editor (gedit). After a bit of pre-editing by removing bad characters and extra spaces,we get 27341 words and 3537 lines. This gives us an average of 7.73 words per line. If we want a 20 minute file, increasing 1 word per minute every 5 minutes (which is the -Q 5 option), beginning at 7wpm, then we will end up at 11wpm. Our average wpm then becomes 9wpm, for 20 minutes, is 180 words. Divide by 7.73 words per line, and we get 23.28 lines per file. Round up to 25 to account for an extra line or so and to make things easy.

Now, we can insert CHAPTER (the default break point) every 25 lines to get 20 minute files. A minute here and there isn't going to hurt, so we can put in the breaks at the end of a paragraph. Apparently the QRQ sets the timer based off the original word count at the original speed instead of clock time, so my files went up to 20wpm in 20 minutes, but that's ok. We can still set it manually in the text file.

What if we get bored with 9wpm? Let's add some extras into the mix. ebook2cw is pretty powerful, as it can even read stuff within the file itself. If we write w8 (make sure it's lower case) after the chapter heading (or the one we added 25 lines later), it will begin the speed setting at 8wpm, and give us an average speed of 10wpm, or 26 lines every 20 minutes. Although this is rather tedious to count out so many lines, it allows more fine control over our code practice, and we can do high speed jumps from 10wpm to 20wpm and back again within the same file. N0HFF has a wonderful free ebook on learning the code, "The Art and Skill of Radiotelegraphy" . Check it out for some great hints on setting up your practice sessions.

Balloons!

noreply@blogger.com (Chase Carlton) — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 15:13:00 +0000

Surfing the web the other day, I found what may be the best picture ever taken:

Yep folks, that's what it looks like. An entire Mongolian family, all wearing balloon hats! This is part of a series of photos called The Varieties of The Balloon Hat Experience by Addi Somekh and Charlie Eckert. These daft geniuses travel the world, making balloon hats for folks. From camels to Mongols to Norwegan military units, their goal is simple: to make people smile. They certainly got me.

Survival Belt

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:04:00 +0000

Here's a custom belt made from a few "D" rings, some webbing, and a single length of parachute cord. The idea was sparked by a customer of mine who noticed the bit of cord that I keep around my neck for tying things out of my way, keeping baby toys from falling out of the stroller, etc. He was an ex- special forces soldier, and mentioned that they used to make belts and all kinds of things out of paracord so that, in addition to being useful, the item could be unraveled in an emergency. When I got home I found only a couple of designs for such a belt, the best of which were published on stormdrane.blogspot.com/. I found that I had some preconceived notions of what I wanted such a belt to actually do:

1) It must hold up your pants. It's a belt. Preferably it should be able to do this even if you need a piece of cord.

2) It must be able to unravel quickly. Paracord is certainly strong enough to retrieve a friend who has fallen through the ice, so time is a concern (a la Slatt's Rescue Knot bit.ly/8sPMIG - difficult to untie).

2.5) It would be nice to be able to make it quickly, just so that there is no subconscious, "is it gonna be worth it? I mean, I spent 3 days locked in a room to make this thing- how good a friend are they?...)

3) Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. Neither would you expect to need to rescue someone from thin ice, so it must be something you can fit through your everyday belt loops (usually 1") and still look good enough that you will actually wear it.

This is the answer. Looks good, can in fact be made in 15 minutes, unravels without binding in less than 15 seconds, and can be used a bit at a time while still holding up your pants. It can even be assembled with multiple lengths of cord, allowing any piece that you needed to be put back without making a whole new belt!

Complete assembly instructions at http://www.instructables.com/id/Parachute-Cord-Belt/

Jobsite Utility Belt!

noreply@blogger.com (Chase Carlton) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 03:29:00 +0000

Ever been bothered by a persistent and nagging feeling that your pants shouldn't be falling down? At the same time, have you been both broke and unable to make it to the store? That piece of weatherstripping you tied around your waist not fitting so well after lunch? Well folks, I know I have and I bet you have too. Be bothered no more, for I have happened upon a solution! Introducing the Jobsite Utility Belt! Now, with adjust-ability!

Thats right! For the low, low price of only two washers and a bit of lumber strap you too can be rid of that nasty pants-falling-down problem. It's fashionable! It says "I'm cheap, and I also don't like to spend money." It's adjustable! With d-ring simulating action, it can handle all your gastronomic fluctuations. Operators are standing by.

We Made The Paper!

noreply@blogger.com (Chase Carlton) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 22:15:00 +0000

Our participation this year in the Sustainable Living Fair was not overlooked. The Berthoud Recorder did a short piece on us. They only misspelled my name twice! The article can be found here.

Sustainable Living Fair

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 17:57:00 +0000

We're going to be dragging the blacksmithing trailer down to the Sustainable Living Fair in Ft Collins this weekend for a rockin time and mini hammer-in with Matt (and crew) of Creative Welding, wellington, CO. Come by and see us!

Why are we here

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 15:57:00 +0000

So...one day while working in the yard, we were visited by a friend. "Watcha doin?", he asked. "Making cookies and napalm," we said. We were serious.