Swings and roundabouts to follow shortly. I’ve had far too much coffee today.

The untold story

On a side note, I’m starting to add my photographs to Panoramio. The fuchsia nursery was Walton Nurseries.

Wikipedia on Fuchsias:

Fuchsia (pronounced /ˈfjuːʃə/ FEW–shə) is a genus of flowering plants that consists mostly of shrubs or small trees. The first, Fuchsia triphylla, was discovered on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola(present day Dominican Republic and Haiti) in 1703 by the French Minim monk and botanist, Charles Plumier. He named the new genus after the renowned German botanist Leonhart Fuchs (1501–1566).

This was technically achieved by a print process in that I applied the ink to some paper using pressure alone, the pressure in this case provided by the weight of my pen. I like to get a bit pedantic when it comes to print.

“Police arrested two children yesterday; one was drinking battery acid, the other was eating fireworks. They charged one and let the other one off.”

I’m sorry.

The Battery Chicken

SNNNAP!!

Original photo used for composition  credited to Darren Baker

Beets are cultivated for fodder (e.g. mangelwurzel), for sugar (the sugar beet), as a leaf vegetable (chard or “Bull’s Blood”), or as a root vegetable (“beetroot”, “table beet”, or “garden beet”). Major root vegetable cultivars include:

 

“Albina Vereduna”, a white variety

“Burpee’s Golden”, a beet with orange-red skin and yellow flesh.

“Chioggia”, an open-pollinated variety originally grown in Italy. The concentric rings of its red and white roots are visually striking when sliced. As a heritage variety, Chioggia is largely unimproved and has relatively high concentrations of geosmin.

“Detroit Dark Red”, with relatively low concentrations of geosmin, and is therefore a popular commercial cultivar in the United States.

“India Beet” is not as sweet as Western beet. However India beet is more nutritious than Western beet.

“Lutz Greenleaf”, a variety with a red root and green leaves, and a reputation for maintaining its quality well in storage.

“Red Ace”, the principal variety of beet found in the United States, typical for its bright red root and red-veined green foliage.

“Blood Turnip” was once a common name for beet root cultivars for the garden. Examples include: Bastian’s Blood Turnip, Dewing’s Early Blood Turnip, Edmand Blood Turnip, and Will’s Improved Blood Turnip.

Check out the video after the break if you have no idea what I’m on about.

Check out the others in the series too, they’re brilliant!

I did manage to stich a panorama of the town square however:

Panorama of Siena Town Square

In other news:

A sieve, or sifter, separates wanted elements from unwanted material using a filter such as a mesh or net. However, in cooking, especially with flour, a sifter is used to aerate the substance, among other things. A strainer is a type of sieve typically used to separate a solid from aliquid. The word “sift” derives from sieve.

Sieves, yeah!

Encyclopaedia Britannica on Zebra:

any of three species of strikingly black-and-white-striped mammals of the horse family Equidae (genus Equus): Burchell’s, or plains, zebra (E. burchellii), which is found in rich grasslands over much of eastern and southern Africa; Grevy’s zebra (E. grevyi), which lives in arid, sparsely wooded areas in Kenya and a few small areas in Ethiopia; and the mountain zebra (E. zebra), which inhabits dry upland plains in Namibia and a few scattered areas in western South Africa.

My typographical study of a zebra

A readme (or read me) file contains information about other files in a directory or archive and is very commonly distributed with computer software. Such a file is usually a text filecalled README.TXT, README.1ST, READ.ME, or simply README, although some Microsoft Windows software may occasionally include a README.WRI, README.RTF, orREADME.DOC. The name is chosen so that users unaware of the existence of this type of files would be drawn to read it. It is traditionally written in upper case so that on case-preserving environments using an ASCIIbetical ordering, the name will appear near the beginning of a directory listing (since upper-case letters sort before lower-case letters in ASCIIbetical ordering).

This is my picture of README.txt:

This is readme.txt

Got the photo from this month’s Computer Arts free CD, I always like to do something with the free stock photos they put on there!

Before.…

…after!

So today I decided to make my own. I recently modded my Ikea Expedit bookcase by removing a shelf so as to accomodate my PC, and so I had a spare piece of chipboard with a nice beach effect finish. This spare shelf would become the shelf on which my laptop would rest:

Ikea Expedit bookcase — missing a shelf

Shelf from Ikea Expedit bookcase

And the tilt assembly:

Monitor stand tilt assemply

It tilts on both hinges, so one can adjust the viewing angle, and the height separately.

I then marked out the centre of my shelf with 2 diagonal lines from corner to corner, and attached the tilt assembly with 3 small screws I had spare. I then attached the other side of the tilt assembly to a metal plate that was originally part of the swivel mechanism for the monitor stand, but had holes in the right places for some bolts to screw into the bottom of the tilt assembly. I attached the plate, in turn, to a large piece of chipboard so as to add stability to the whole thing.

Marked out center of shelf

Attached big chunk of chipboard to the bottom

Metal Plate from Monitor Stand

Finally I used a section of laminate floor edging I had left over from a previous project to make the lip so my laptop doesn’t fall off. I thought about using tacks, but opted to go with No More Nails instead.

No More Nails

Attached lip

After the No More Nails had dried I was ready to go! No longer am I one of those loner mac users that doesn’t possess a laptop stand!

Finished product — side view

And the rear-view

This was a fun afternoon project, it only took about an hour, if that! In the future I might source some better materials, but I’m quite pleased that I managed to make this from spare bits and bobs lying around!

A Beautiful Desk!