Jeff's Repository

Sun Dial

2010-10-20T08:07:00.002-05:00

This is a neat little Google mashup that lets you make paper sundials.

http://sundial.damia.net/vertical/index-en.html

Broke my Hamate bone

2010-07-25T19:49:00.000-05:00

Riding my bike, I felt a tug on my shoe. I looked down and there it was, my shoelace, wrapping itself around the pedal. Having read online that when this happens on a "fixie", it's a guaranteed crash, I forcefully squeezed the brake levers and skidded to a stop.

Crisis averted... put your feet down...

Shit.

I'm falling away from the foot that isn't tied to the pedal... maybe if I put my hand out...

*snap*

I rolled away counterclockwise a quarter turn onto my back. My immediate thought was that I had broken my arm. The remains of my summer flashed before my eyes. I looked at my forearm, wrist, then hand, there was a tiny laceration in the middle where it caught a rock, but it didn't look to be injured past that.

My fingers still worked.

I turned my attention to my right foot. My leg was still caught underneath my bike in the middle of the road. I quickly unwound my shoelace from it's hitch on the pedal, and picked up the bike, moving it to the boulevard.

That's when I noticed my little finger was numb immobile. I brought my bike home and after seeing that my hand had swollen to twice it's usual size, I hopped in the car to get to an MIR clinic. Turns out, driving a stick shift with a broken hand isn't much fun! Eight hours later, I've got a removable cast and a diagnosis;

"Mr. Carnahan, you've got an occult fracture in your Hamate bone. We'll see you in a week."

Reading up on it, I probably started the fracture golfing earlier in the year; my little finger went numb after lifting a litre of turf out of the tee-off area with a driver.

It's been getting better each day, I broke it Tuesday, it's Sunday of the same week and I think I'll be riding my bike 10km to work tomorrow with the cast on.

Your CPU has been composting.

2010-06-11T12:00:00.001-05:00

Your CPU has been composting., originally uploaded by worldcoast.

If your computer is constantly rebooting after a few minutes of use there's a good chance the heatsink is clogged up. To clean it out, turn the power supply off, use q-tips and canned air. Take care not to spin the the fan with the air uncontrollably as you can damage the bearings.

2010-05-29T11:27:00.001-05:00

I need two cinder blocks, real ones, none of this farmville bs

2010-05-23T22:03:00.001-05:00

Bonfire!

2010-05-22T21:44:00.001-05:00

Down to one bag of waste a week. Everything else gets composted or recycled. Woopty woo!

Mmm silverfish

2010-05-04T13:05:00.001-05:00

2010-04-25T19:40:00.001-05:00

Streetzfm

2010-04-20T09:53:00.001-05:00

mms://wms141.netromedia.net/ciurfm?stream=ciurfm&station=streetz%20FM&link=www.streetzfm.com

Best buds

2010-04-12T23:20:00.001-05:00

Cock soup anyone?

2010-04-12T18:01:00.001-05:00

Firepit liberated from the bowels of the yard

2010-04-10T17:01:00.000-05:00

It took about an hour to dig it up and then about two weeks to work up
to filling in underneath it.

Gravity

2010-04-08T16:50:00.001-05:00

What if a vacuum really isn't "nothing", but a form of capturing reversed pressure in absence of mass. F = Vacuum Pressure/Mass

Think about it.

Vacuum becomes the universal polar constant opposite gravity.

Rocks

2010-04-02T17:27:00.001-05:00

1991 1992 1993 1994 Tercel Tire Pressure

2010-03-31T14:44:00.000-05:00

The official manufacturer recommended tire pressure for a 4th Generation Toyota Tercel is 32 PSI.

I'm posting this because it's really not anywhere on the car but in the OEM manual. Even Haynes doesn't have it!

http://socaltercel.com/manuals/94%20Tercel/Suspension%20and%20Axle.pdf

This PDF lists it :)

Waiting for mail.

2010-03-30T18:03:00.001-05:00

Nanotube RFID's

2010-03-30T08:51:00.001-05:00

RFID chips that can be embedded into paper, they've just been developed. This gives rise to the possibility of absolute tracking of documents. Truly anonymous notes could become a big ticket item if they need to be printed on paper that'll be about as easy to come by as 8mm film.

Imagine, not going to the printer to find your doc, you just hit the track button on your printer program and any number of RFID receivers will fire up in the office and index every piece of paper. No more printing things five times each time they can't be found. Your employee didn't get a copy of the new agreement? Yes they did. You've got it all right here in your micrologistics software.

Just sayin'....

Cat-bite biscuits ( we hope )

2010-03-28T16:44:00.000-05:00

2010-03-27T22:53:00.001-05:00

Brave New World

2010-03-25T23:10:00.002-05:00

"Brave New World."

It appears on each and every stemcell and nano post on the Internet in the comments. While the commenter probably feels they are being profound by invoking the title of Huxley's work, they are simply reminding us of the worst possible scenario that they (with their pop culture education) can fathom. This is after all just one possible branch in a series of events. Something much worse could come of these discoveries, or hopefully something much better.

When humanity follows a similar path to that of a sci-fi author's works, then by definition that book can be considered prophecy. It makes me wonder sometimes if Rome is preparing a new compendium?

Day 2 of no caffeine

2010-03-24T08:03:00.000-05:00

I definitely had some trouble getting to sleep last night despite being very tired.

I'm experiencing some muscle soreness on waking for day 3. Also, it snowed.

Minnedosa Childhood

2010-03-22T12:21:00.001-05:00

Here's my bedroom, the window on the left. I endured an endless amount of teasing from a handful of kids for living above a Chicken Delight. The awnings above the lucky dollar foods (used to be Burgess) could be accessed from the next apartments. We often had epic water battles on this street, using the awnings as a sniper perch, with a full 5 gallon pail being our weapon of choice.

I used to hang out on these steps with the local ruffians. We'd chill out and listen to music on my ghetto blaster. 8 D cells it took.

Here's the laundromat we used to hang in after hours. It was open 24/7 with washing machines all over and a few arcade games inside. The laundry soap vending machine could be defeated with a strong magnet tied to a string as it was made of a non-ferrous metal. We played arcades for free with this trick. I wonder if they ever caught on?

This dollar store was a pool hall and arcade when I first moved to the town. I spent a lot of time there in the first few months.

The scene of my first and only major bicycle accident. I tried to take the turn onto this street too sharply with a paperbag on the wrong side of my person. As a result I wiped out and slid from the stop sign to the curb. Every part of my body not covered in denim had a thick scab for the next month.

My first capitalist venture was undertaken at this corner store. I rented out my Sega Genesis on consigment. Net profit: $55

I walked down this back alley to the gate in the fence in the distance to cross over the bridge to the brokenhead river to get to school every morning. The "cool kids" used to hang out on this bridge, shaking it back and forth violently trying to break it from it's moorings.

The pumphouse bike jump. Go too fast and you'll hit the bricks. There was a step on the back of this building that we used to hide our adult magazines under. Behind the pumphouse was a large wreckage of some building that was never hauled away, lots of cement slabs everywhere, perfect for playing war with friends.

The fairgrounds home to the Minnedosa Rodeo. More amusing however, home to a snake den. In the spring we would grab snakes by the bucket and terrorize the town. The hills in the background were perfect for toboganning on, and the bush was perfect for partying in. Also the first place I had ever held and later fired a loaded rifle.

We used to fish and swim in the spillway at the base of the man-made lake. The beach a little further up was groomed twice a week with a tractor when I was kid. Free of sticks and glass!

One of the town doctor's families lived here in "The Castle". I think it's a bed and breakfast now? I spent a lot of time here with the kids, mostly playing on the trampoline. Across the street was the dentist.

I could go on for hours with memories of this town, but I'll cut it there.

Day 1 of no caffeine

2010-03-22T11:34:00.000-05:00

I'm noticeably jumpier, reactions to small noises for the most part.
The water line on the coffee maker kicking in made me jump. I've
noticed that there is only one caffiene-free tea choice at work. I may
have to resort to just drinking water.

My eyes are dry, but that could be just from the season.

I don't have the shake in my hand today. That's a bonus.

2010-03-20T18:08:00.001-05:00

Are calculators making our children dumb?

2010-03-19T10:03:00.001-05:00

My parents constantly told me that I had it easy because I was able to
use a calculator in my grade 10 physics courses. They had to use a
slide rule. I can't imagine how frustrating using and caring for a
slide rule must be.

I've been restraining from telling my children how easy they have it
being able to do their homework on a laptop. Your rough draft becomes
your final draft with a few keystrokes. You no longer have to re-write
the entire document to correct mistakes, it's simply a matter of
highlighting offending passages and hitting a delete key. But isn't
this just working smarter?

You can solve twenty physics problems in the amount of time it took to
solve just one in the past. This should allow you to harness more of
your attention span and tie everything together.

So are calculators making our children dumb? Only if you take them away.