Small Talk: The Welcome Mat

[Netfoot]

Ok, I didn't have a cuppa, I had a nap. And woke to the decision that I wanted to get these sofa feet finished so I set up the drilling jig to steady the feet as they get drilled. Centered under the drill bit. 

There is a piece of scrap dowel in the photo. I used it to help assure the jig was centered on the bit. It is just a hair too short to make one more (#25) sofa foot. But honestly, holding that and offering it up to the router bit would have been scary. Fingers fairly close to the bit!

It didn't take long to drill all 24 sofa feet.

They will be picked up in the morning along with the old mahogany chairs.

The guy said he needed 8 quickly. He got all quickly, including 4 more than he expected in total. I wonder if my doing them so fast means that "Good Money" becomes "Not So Good Money"?

[andidante]

1 hour ago, Netfoot said:

They changed the meds in November and were to review 4 months later. But they couldn't organize a beer in a brewery an appointment in their clinic until September so I must wait until then before they review my meds again in light of changes to my condition since the last change.

That sucks honestly!

[Netfoot]

I thought Garden Patrol might be interesting, and didn't know whether to walk on the concrete where I would be closer to something to grab on to... or stick to the grass where it would be softer landing if I fell. 

To my surprise, we completed the Patrol without incident. I was lying in bed watching TV and when I got up I remained sitting for a while before standing. Not sure if that affected me. 

Not sure that medication is a part of this wobblyness I've been experiencing these last few days. (Today by far the worst.) My meds were reduced. That should not have caused an increase in side-effrcts! It would allow the underlying disease to surface more, but MG is characterized by weakness and loss of muscle control. This could cause the wobblies if I lost control of leg or foot muscles but when that happens it is quite apparent and that is not the case. 

My guy is coming to get his chairs and sofa feet tomorrow morning. He is also bringing back two of the towel racks I made for him. Zoë will get them from me.

I will make five more towel racks. Two will go to him to replace the two he is bringing for me tomorrow. The remaining three will go to her to make up the five she wanted in total. They have both agreed that I don't need to rush to make the five new racks. 

With the "Good Money" from him for the sofa feet and the money from her for the initial two racks, I can cover the rent and buy the lumber for the new batch of racks. Maybe even get some groceries!

 But I don't plan to do a lot for the next few days. To see if the wobblies persist.

ETA: And I have bad reflux tonight.

☹️

Edited April 25 by Netfoot

[Netfoot]

Great. Friday afternoon and my system dies again. It hung solid and when I tried to reboot it couldn't. 

Fortunately, I made a bootable install DVD a few days ago so I booted that got to a maintainance prompt. The drive containing the boot partition (/dev/sda) was not found. 

I powered off and will let the system cool down a bit and try booting again. If that falls I could try making a drivesickle (when you put the drive in the freezer to get really cold). That would be extreme. 

This system needs an overhaul badly. And it had told me this in no uncertain terms, more than once!

[Netfoot]

OK, after 7+ hours of work the machine has restarted and all appears to be working again. I must try and replace /dev/sda (the failing drive) and I have a low mileage drive here I can use. I just got to copy everything from /dev/sda to the new drive then unplug one and plug in the other. 

First: Garden Patrol and then a mug of tea.

Edited April 26 by Netfoot

[Netfoot]

Computer still running. Working to get a much newer disk ready to replace the bad one. 

Had to go out and buy a SATA disk enclosure with a USB interface. Cost me $79 bucks I really didn't want to spend. But I took the $21 remaining from the Grantley and buy a few things to eat.

So Mo and I had roti for lunch. Boneless chicken and channa and cabbage. It tasted good so I made roti for dinner!

This had a unique filling. Certainly I've never had one like this before....

Curried potato & corned beef with onion, plantain and diced cucumber.

Before you praise my roti-making skills, I will just say it's easy to make a roti if you buy the roti "skin" and bring it home! In practice, making a roti skin is a very complex and difficult process, especially if it is a Dhal Puri roti skin!

Mo and I ate the roti and then we ate the remaining filling. It was not the most delicious roti I've ever eaten but it was pretty good.

When I was a boy your choice of fillings was very limited. Curried beef or chicken and occasionally shrimp. With potato or without. Mum would stop on the way home and buy beef or chicken with potato (24¢) and an all-potato for me (19¢). She loved shrimp & potato but would consistently refuse to buy one at the horribly expensive price of 30¢!

Much later on there was a potato blight so roti makers experimented with sweet potato and yam as alternatives. Today you can get all sorts of stuff in a roti. Today there was a man in the line ahead of me who had bone-in lamb stew and okra. Personally, I'd rather eat a bullet than eat okra. But the most disconcerting thing about it is that none of the contents of his roti was curried! That just isn't right. It's like ordering pizza and having it served cold, in a bowl, in liquid form. 

Any way, I hooked up my replacement disk via USB and partitioned it to my needs. Right now I am copying data  from the old, faulty disk to the replacement. One of the partitions on the old disk is my current boot/root partition and I'm copying that as well but when all files are copied I will try a full install of the latest version of the OS onto what will become my new boot/root partition. To do that I will shut the system down, remove the old drive and replace it with the new. Then boot the install DVD and run the installer.

I must have done a couple hundred Slackware installs in my time. I could almost do it in my sleep. But I am always a little nervous about an install. Because things change over time. 

Want to use a 4T drive? Sorry MBR won't work with drives that big. Switch to GPT. New motherboard? They're almost all UEFI now, a scheme Microsoft introduced to try and kill the competition. That idea failed but we are stuck with UEFI. LILO? No, we use the GRUB bootloader instead. 

Over the years they have successfully fixed literally dozens of things that weren't broken to begin with.

The towel racks have gone off to Zoë and the one I had waiting for Heidi has gone as well. Glad to see them out of here. 

Been having some issues with gas. The type that moves up, not the type that moves down. Probably related to the reflux which has been bad lately. I seem to have a tiny little burp every few seconds. Sometimes not so tiny. And it can be very uncomfortable when sleeping. The gas pushes up out of my throat and some frothy mucous comes with it. Meanwhile you are breathing and that stuff isn't something you want to inhale. Woke up crack o' dawn and couldn't breathe. Spat out two handfuls of something that looked like frothy shaving foam and was then able to breathe normally. It's because I'm lying down and gravity doesn't help keep the reflux down.

Pillow pyramid helps but the more active the reflux the less effective it is. If I try to sleep sitting up in bed I have a very bad night's sleep. If I had an armchair it might be more comfortable. But with the pillow pyramid the more upright I am the faster I fall off on one side or the other.

Not done Garden Patrol yet and gotta get a shower as well. Will get that done and then enjoy a mug of tea. I think the box of tea bags is empty but there's another in the fridge. 25 more bags should get me to the end of the month. Got milk and sugar enough as well. 

My book is going slowly. I am usually too tired to read much at night. But it is interesting. I am a RAH fan for many years but this is one I have not read more than a few times over the years. It is the first book he ever wrote but nobody would publish it back then. It was published posthumously. But many of the themes that surfaced in his body of work through the span of his career can be seen in fledgling form in this book.

Got to lay out my meds for the next few days. Will test blood glucose in the morning. It's been annoyingly high last few times I checked. Hopefully tomorrow it is back down at least a bit.

Mo has just put in an appearance. I guess I better get Garden Patrol under way.

ETA: Just remembered. My phone's USB charge port stopped working ages ago. I would be in trouble if the phone didn't allow wireless charging if be in trouble! So I've been using a Qi charger. And today the USB port on the charger broke. I can't have a phone and not be able to charge it. So I had to open the Qi charger and solder the wires directly to the circuit board.

Not being able to unplug the charger from the wall wart is inconvenient. But at least the charger works again, now.

Edited Sunday at 12:51 PM by Netfoot

[Netfoot]

Blood sugar down a bit. Still too high but not by much. 

Replacement hard drive (attached via USB) partitioned and checked, data on the old drive copied across, everything triple checked three times. Drive unmounted, powered off and disconnected from the machine, removed from the USB enclosure and ready to be put back in as the system boot drive.

Install DVD placed in drive so I can boot into it. If you forget to do this you are in a race with the motherboard to get the drive open, get the disk in place and get the drive closed again, before the boot process begins. 

Mug of tea to accompany last minute contemplation of the plan.

By the way, I've used two separate methods to check the date of install of the current OS.  Slackware 14.2 was released to the public on 30th June, 2016.   It was installed on this computer 28 weeks or 6½ months later, on 12th January, 2017. It has been running here since then for a total of 8 years, 3½ months.

Any way, no more procrastinating. If you never hear from me again, you will know why.

[Netfoot]

Swapping in the new drive was a bit squirrelly. Didn't want to go in at first but when I threatened it with a mallet it slid in sweetly.

Would not power up at first. Note to self: Always check you reconnected the plug.

Package installation proceeding. Installing everything but EMACS. I'd rather eat okra than use EMACS. Bite me, RMS!

Edited Sunday at 03:10 PM by Netfoot

[Netfoot]

Packages installed, LILO installed, network configured. 

Default editor. Elvis, nvi or vim? Accustomed to Elvis but vim is becoming more of a standard and supports UTF8. (Notice all three contain "vi"? Because they are all derivatives of the "Visual" editor, which was developed in 1976.) Going with vim. 

Selected KDE Plasma Desktop.

Set root password. 

Ready to reboot.

Here goes....

[Netfoot]

System is up and running. Logged into the console as the superuser and bringing up logical volumes one by one.

They are coming up fine, now that I've stopped putting typos into /etc/fstab. 

Guess it's time to log off as root and try logging in as my normal user ....

[Netfoot]

OK, logged in as myself, started the graphical desktop and I'm running that ancient version of chrome to visit the forums.

The latest desktop (KDE Plasma 5) looks quite different to the old desktop from before (KDE 4). There may be a way to switch back to the older theme (Oxygen) rather than this new theme (Breeze). We will see how I get on with the new look.

[Later]
Ok, everything works, but nothing works like I an accustomed to. New version of e-mail program and torrent client work fine but there have been many changes since the versions I am familiar with. Had to download and install packages for my video player and programmer's text editor.

Music player (AmaroK) no longer available so I have switched to Strawberry. Strawberry is a fork of Clementine which is a port from AmaroK and as a result it is quite AmaroK-ish and I'm fine with making the switch.

I don't like Breeze. It is flat and I don't like pastel colours when I'm working on a computer. Light grey text on a slightly lighter grey background might win awards in a design contest but it is no good when you are trying to read a block of cryptic computer code. Going to have to tweak that.

And that is the problem!

This system is highly configurable with hundreds of thousands of applications that can be legitimately downloaded and added to the mix. Each of which has it's own set of possible options. Why, just the "shutdown" command has 15+ options you can apply in various combinations! There are at least a dozen desktops to choose from and literally thousands of ways to configure each them. So when you install an OS like this you start tweaking the setup. And you never stop. 

Eight plus years later you install a new version and you have eight years of tweaks to reapply. 

I'll be tweaking the system pretty much full time for weeks. In a fortnight the tweaks will be down to a dozen a day. Eight years from now (like I will be alive then!) the level of tweaking will probably be down to only a handful a week.

And weird stuff is happening. I'm listening to some music (right now? #41 from the album Crash by Dave Matthews Band). But every time the track ends and something else starts to play, a box pops up for a few seconds telling me what the track is. Strawberry isn't doing it.  Strawberry can do it, but that's not where it's coming from. I checked. So where? It took me hours to realize that my phone is listening, identifies the music and displays a note on the phone'd home screen.  But it's also notifying the desktop which pops up a little note. (See?  Mr. Blue Sky by ELO.)

Anyway, I've had nothing but tea and meds all day. I'm hungry but I'm too tired to feed myself. Mo filled up on chow but I'm not standing in that kitchen for 5 minutes to fry an egg! So I will roll over now and go to sleep. Next few days will be busy. And at some point I have to go to the bank to deposit money before month-end.

But don't worry! No more boring install/update/configure details from me. Just the usual rubbish with occasional puppy-pictures.

[Even Later]:
So tired I forgot to save. And woke up this morning to find the computer completely dead. But don't worry - it was only an island-wide power cut...  

 

[andidante]

51 minutes ago, Netfoot said:

OK, logged in as myself, started the graphical desktop and I'm running that ancient version of chrome to visit the forums.

The latest desktop (KDE Plasma 5) looks quite different to the old desktop from before (KDE 4). There may be a way to switch back to the older theme (Oxygen) rather than this new theme (Breeze). We will see how I get on with the new look.

[Later]
Ok, everything works, but nothing works like I an accustomed to. New version of e-mail program and torrent client work fine but there have been many changes since the versions I am familiar with. Had to download and install packages for my video player and programmer's text editor.

Music player (AmaroK) no longer available so I have switched to Strawberry. Strawberry is a fork of Clementine which is a port from AmaroK and as a result it is quite AmaroK-ish and I'm fine with making the switch.

I don't like Breeze. It is flat and I don't like pastel colours when I'm working on a computer. Light grey text on a slightly lighter grey background might win awards in a design contest but it is no good when you are trying to read a block of cryptic computer code. Going to have to tweak that.

And that is the problem!

This system is highly configurable with hundreds of thousands of applications that can be legitimately downloaded and added to the mix. Each of which has it's own set of possible options. Why, just the "shutdown" command has 15+ options you can apply in various combinations! There are at least a dozen desktops to choose from and literally thousands of ways to configure each them. So when you install an OS like this you start tweaking the setup. And you never stop. 

Eight plus years later you install a new version and you have eight years of tweaks to reapply. 

I'll be tweaking the system pretty much full time for weeks. In a fortnight the tweaks will be down to a dozen a day. Eight years from now (like I will be alive then!) the level of tweaking will probably be down to only a handful a week.

And weird stuff is happening. I'm listening to some music (right now? #41 from the album Crash by Dave Matthews Band). But every time the track ends and something else starts to play, a box pops up for a few seconds telling me what the track is. Strawberry isn't doing it.  Strawberry can do it, but that's not where it's coming from. I checked. So where? It took me hours to realize that my phone is listening, identifies the music and displays a note on the phone'd home screen.  But it's also notifying the desktop which pops up a little note. (See?  Mr. Blue Sky by ELO.)

Anyway, I've had nothing but tea and meds all day. I'm hungry but I'm too tired to feed myself. Mo filled up on chow but I'm not standing in that kitchen for 5 minutes to fry an egg! So I will roll over now and go to sleep. Next few days will be busy. And at some point I have to go to the bank to deposit money before month-end.

But don't worry! No more boring install/update/configure details from me. Just the usual rubbish with occasional puppy-pictures.

[Even Later]:
So tired I forgot to save. And woke up this morning to find the computer completely dead. But don't worry - it was only an island-wide power cut...  

 

I don't find the install etc. posts boring! I am not very tech savvy so this is very interesting to me. I have missed your telling us what music you are listening to! 

It would be neat if you could start some sort of computer repair business or something since you know so much about them. 

[Spunkygal]

The only way to eat okra is southern fried and salted. My mom made the best. Boiled okra is an abomination to mankind. Even okra in gumbo is gross.

[andidante]

5 hours ago, Spunkygal said:

The only way to eat okra is southern fried and salted. My mom made the best. Boiled okra is an abomination to mankind. Even okra in gumbo is gross.

That looks amazing and I have never had okra in my life!

[Mr. Sparkle]

5 hours ago, Spunkygal said:

Boiled okra is an abomination to mankind. Even okra in gumbo is gross.

This is my experience with okra, so I generally skip it. I'd definitely try that crunchy stuff, though! 

[Browncoat]

I don't like okra in any way, shape, or form.  

[Netfoot]

3 hours ago, Browncoat said:

I don't like okra in any way, shape, or form.  

Then avoid Trinidad Calaloo Soup. National dish of TnT = Crab & Calaloo. The crab is served in the shell, in the soup. Everyone says "It's delicious!"  I say "Here comes the projectile vomit!"

The fact that they add dasheen leaves just makes it worse.  It looks like you scooped it out of a gutter and added snot.

ETA:

Edited Tuesday at 03:43 AM by Netfoot

[Netfoot]

I told you about the flat, pastel colours of the theme the desktop recommends? Here is an example:

This is a screenshot of GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) that I was using to tweak a boot splash image for LILO (Linux Loader). It really is a great program.

But how are you supposed to use it? Grey text on a grey background with nasty little flat, grey icons/buttons. I ask you! And tell me -- how long did it take for you to find the mouse pointer? Go back and try to find it now, then!

Imagine using this with cataracty eyes and a smoky monitor!

Here is GIMP (image found online) with a more trad theme setting. The layout of the tools and dialogs is completely flexible so ignore that. Just look how clear and obvious the tools (top left) are and how easy text is to read!

I think a high priority tweak will have to be to get away from this "Breeze" theme and get with something more practical. Unfortunately the immediate choices are "Breeze", "Breeze Dark" and "Breeze Twilight".  And there ain't a fart of difference between them!

[Netfoot]

OK, a bit of tweaking and GIMP is looking a whole lot more usable:

Not perfect by any means but good enough for gubmint work!

(Photo of the clubhouse by Kevin!)

Unfortunately, this tweak covers just GIMP which is not a part of the KDE Core. If I can find a suitable theme for KDE it will affect most of the desktop environment

Fly Me Away by Goldfrapp. 

Edited Tuesday at 04:00 AM by Netfoot

[Netfoot]

Door locked. Just back from my second shower. Mo is sleeping (or pretending) in the passage but when the lights go off it won't be long before he arrives to bogart as many pillows as he can.

Bloodflowers by The Cure. I have about (checks on the computer which is about 3' away by logging in remotely with the phone using an SSH client, because I'm too tired to move 3') a dozen of their albums but don't listen to them much. They are a bit dark and Gothy. Good tunes though, if you are in the mood.

Cooked s big pit a big pot of rice at lunchtime. Four cups with bully beef, carrot, cucumber and onion. Spiced with garlic and paprika. Mo (who had not been eating well for several days) got a larger than usual portion. I top of that I chopped half a tin of Vienna sausages and stirred them in. He scarfed the lot before I could even get settled down and start mine! No sausage for me. Instead I had a microscopically small egg, hard boiled and chopped. 

Our dinner was more of the same. Mo got a more normally sized portion with the other half of the tin of sausages. I had to manage without an egg. 

There is more for tomorrow. Lunch, certainly. And at least Mo's dinner. Hopefully mine as well. 

I am falling asleep with the phone in my hand. And I'd like to see what happens to Perry, who just punched out one of Diana's co-workers for kissing her on the mouth. He (Perry) is now in the hands of a board of psychiatrist. Apparently punching people who kids kisses your SO was OK in 1939 but is verboten in 2086!

Wupps! There goes the phone again. Fortunately it landed on the bed and not over the edge on the tiles.

Calling it quits.....

Edited Tuesday at 02:21 PM by Netfoot

[Netfoot]

9 hours ago, Netfoot said:

There is more for tomorrow. Lunch, certainly. And at least Mo's dinner. Hopefully mine as well.

Well, Mo came and demanded his lunch at 7:30 and ate it all up when I gave it to him. If you don't eat your grub for most of a week, I guess you end up hungry! I wonder if there was a bitch in heat upwind? That usually puts the boys off their food.

But he will most likely ask for his lunch again at lunchtime. At this rate there won't be enough for the both of us for both lunch and dinner. He will get, but me will go begging. I may have to buy bread and cheese or something that I can eat.

No, I will cook chips. Pension should drop on.... Thursday so we can do some shopping then.

But look at this calendar which is a screen grab from my desktop:

This pops up when you click the clock I installed on the desktop in the top/right corner. See how easy it is to see that the 29th is highlighted? I think that a desktop scheme that works like this is crazy, but the I am ye olde farte so obviously I'm wrong.

[Netfoot]

Rushing to go out. So naturally....

[Netfoot]

Found a better Clock/Calendar widget for the screen. It still isn't pretty but at least you can see what day is today!

Also experimenting with wallpapers.....

[Netfoot]

Just been tweaking the system all day. Everything I try to tweak brings a dozen more tweaks to the surface. I suppose I should be less demanding of my systems but... I'm ye olde farte and I first started on computers 50 years ago in 1975.

It was an old terminal connected to an ICL 1904A running Maximop under George 3. It had four 7-track mag tapes and three EDS-300 disk drives. Plus punched card and punched paper tape readers and card punches. The EDS drives were the size of a washing machine and held a whopping 300 Mbytes of data. 

So the computers should do what I want them to do. Not me accepting what they want to do.

I also grabbed a copy of Persistence of Vision. This is a script driven ray tracer. Last time I used it I was running a DOS/Windows 3.1 machine and not much of the Windows.

Last Windows I used was 3.11 for Workgroup. After that, IBM Warp Connect until IBM betrayed their customers l. Dabbled with BeOs for a while and that was a fun one! But I was dabbling with an early version of Linux Slackware and in 1996 I switched completely to Slackware 3.0 which was hot off the presses at that time. Running sometimes as many as 11 computers in the house at one time I've done a lot of Slackware installs in my day. But it's over 8 years since the last one and a whole lot has changed in that time.

Mo had rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I skipped breakfast, had bread for lunch and shared the last of the rice with him tonight. Tomorrow might be another pot of rice, a sauce for pasta or a vegetable stew. But we don't have much vegetables. A good supply of potatoes and onions but only a couple carrots and a couples cucumbers to go with it. And one plantain. I have a few lentils and a tin of black beans. And $48 in the bank. 

But I have the money to pay the rent, so I can write the cheque tomorrow night. 

Dunno where Mo is. He had been in and out all day or hiding under the bed. He may be under there now or in the passage. Not far away, for sure. So I'm going to read a while and when he's ready we will lock up and power down!

The old phone can hardly take a photo, now!

[b4pjoe]

9 hours ago, Netfoot said:

The EDS drives were the size of a washing machine and held a whopping 300 Mbytes of data.

Spoiler

Been there and done that. Good exercise swapping out these hard drives. Each one weighed about 30 pounds. My old workplace had 44 of the drives and over 300 of the disks. We processed magazine pages on these disks for printing and each disk would hold 6 pages.

[Netfoot]

There is $2,707.99 in my bank!

But don't lose your head. 

Pension drops once every four weeks, not once a month. This means I get 13 payments a year. This is essentially once a month but one month each year I get two pensions in that month. And in 2025 that month is May. In May it drops on the 1st and the 29th. Only, as can happen (rarely) the payment dropped a day early. 

So after rent is paid tomorrow I will have about $1,200 to spend.  What shall I spend it on? Here in no particular order are my options:

1. Utilities. $442 to pay everything off to zero-balance
2. Rent. $177 to make up next month's rent.
3. Tire for van. ~$175 for one. I have not had a spare for nearly 18 months.
4. Tire #2. ~$175 make it a pair for safer driving.
5. Band saw parts. ~$400 to service it and get it back in action.
6. Kettle. $80 So I don't burn the house down.
7. Gas cylinder. $43.50 for cooking in the weeks ahead.

If I do all of those I will be $125 short so I have to pick. Which ones would you pick?

I am thinking 1 & 2 for sure. Then 6 & 7 maybe? That would leave me with about $460. With that I could either get another tyre and be safer on the road or try to fix up the bandsaw which had been non-functional for far too long. 

But I could go crazy and buy five tyres for around $875 and have a safe vehicle with a spare and the remaining $325 could got towards a couple of the other options. Rent & stove gas? 

Thoughts would be appreciated.

Edited Wednesday at 10:46 PM by Netfoot

[andidante]

49 minutes ago, Netfoot said:

There is $2,707.99 in my bank!

But don't lose your head. 

Pension drops once every four weeks, not once a month. This means I get 13 payments a year. This is essentially once a month but one month each year I get two pensions in that month. And in 2025 that month is May. In May it drops on the 1st and the 29th. Only, as can happen (rarely) the payment dropped a day early. 

So after rent is paid tomorrow I will have about $1,200 to spend.  What shall I spend it on? Here in no particular order are my options:

1. Utilities. $442 to pay everything off to zero-balance
2. Rent. $177 to make up next month's rent.
3. Tire for van. ~$175 for one. I have not had a spare for nearly 18 months.
4. Tire #2. ~$175 make it a pair for safer driving.
5. Band saw parts. ~$400 to service it and get it back in action.
6. Kettle. $80 So I don't burn the house down.
7. Gas cylinder. $43.50 for cooking in the weeks ahead.

If I do all of those I will be $125 short so I have to pick. Which ones would you pick?

I am thinking 1 & 2 for sure. Then 6 & 7 maybe? That would leave me with about $460. With that I could either get another tyre and be safer on the road or try to fix up the bandsaw which had been non-functional for far too long. 

But I could go crazy and buy five tyres for around $875 and have a safe vehicle with a spare and the remaining $325 could got towards a couple of the other options. Rent & stove gas? 

Thoughts would be appreciated.

Since you asked, I would do 1 and 2 for sure. You need utilities on and a place to live. A Kettle is $80? Goodness...However might be worth buying one to NOT burn the house down.  I know nothing about tires or bandsaws so I will leave that decision up to you! 

[Mr. Sparkle]

Let me ask you - can you use the band saw to make $$? If so, maybe consider it. 1, 2 and 7 are essentials. 

[Spunkygal]

In order: 1, 2, 7, 8. IMHO!

[b4pjoe]

1, 2, 7, 8 for sure which leaves you with $457.50 to do what you think is most important to you. I’m sure you will need to use some of that for food!

[Netfoot]

1 hour ago, andidante said:

A Kettle is $80?

I see them from $60 through $120 but the $60 ones look flimsy.

[Netfoot]

1 hour ago, Spunkygal said:

In order: 1, 2, 7, 8. IMHO!

37 minutes ago, b4pjoe said:

1, 2, 7, 8 for sure.....

Eight?  There is no eight!

I assume you are meaning 1,2,6,7.  And I feel the same. I would really love to get the bandsaw working but every time some money comes my way it seems there are higher priorities.  I think it would expand my woodwork capabilities but it wouldn't be a guaranteed money-maker.

[Netfoot]

Woke in the wee hours choking. Had to spit out a handful of foam.

Blood sugar a stratospheric 8.2 mmol/L.

Tweaking the computer all day and also working on the ray-tracer imagery.

Fried egg on bran slices for lunch. I had not seen Mo all morning bug as soon as I sat down to my sandwich there was a deafening sound as Mo arrived with a sonic boom. 

More tweaking and programming the scene files all afternoon.

Dinner was cavatappi with corned beef, cucumber - onion. It tasted great. I put s large portion for Mo and... He refused to touch it. I admonished, cajoled, threatened... No good. So I ate my own. When I put my bowl down, he attacked it and licked it clean. Then he attacked his own bowl and wolfed it down! 

Soon thereafter I was falling asleep. Rent cheque not written, no mug of tea, no Garden Patrol.... So let's get it done! Wrote the cheque to drop in his box while on Patrol. One Croc missing. Half of the patrol was done with one shoe. Back inside, mug brewed up and also got a glass of iced water.

Not going to be able to hold on for long. Certainly not after the tea is done....

[b4pjoe]

2 hours ago, Netfoot said:

Eight?  There is no eight!

Whoops...yes 1, 2, 6, 7.

[Netfoot]

OK, Utilities paid down and money set aside to top up the pension next month to cover the rent. Left over: $650 and a few cents.

Welfare drops tomorrow so total will be $770 by the weekend.

Still undecided about the other items in my list.

The van has four very worn and ancient tires and no spare The tires are so bad I am afraid to put air in them in case they burst. Because if one does, I can't get home from the gas station without a spare! They are so worn the back end tends to hang out if I out any power down, and if I don't the front end likes to understeer. Buying one tire as a spare would at least give me a chance to get home if one of the worn out tires bursts or gets a puncture. Buying two tires and puutting them on the road (front or back still undecided) will make the van safer to drive, And the best of the ones that come off can be my spare.

Called and called to get the confirmed price on a tire. No answer. Hmmm.  I wonder if today being May Day bank holiday would explain why? (dumbass that I am.) Last price I had for a set of four "West Lake" tires was $684 so presumably $171 and hope the price hasn't gone up since October when I last checked.

I have seen kettles as high as $119.99 and as low as $59.99 but the $59.99 ones were 1.0 liters and looked flimsy. Saw a fairly sturdy 1.7 liter one for $79.99 and subject to giving it a good feel-upp in the shoppe I would consider this to replace my old one which was 1.8 liters and was always empty.

Stove gas was $43.50 or $43.75 so I will say $44 for safety/

I've been trying to get that bandsaw operational for well over a year. The parts will be U$58.21 or $117.83 in dollarettes, plus 2% Foreign Exchange Fee or $2.36 or $120.19 with free shipping to Miami. Shipping to me here is an estimate based upon weight which I don't know. Rate is U$9/lb., U$14/2lb., U$19/3lb., +U$3.50 each additional lb. Insurance on that value will be U$3.49 and Customs handling U$10 (personal entries).  So assuming 3 lb. it will be U$32.69 or $65.77 to me. Plus FXF of $1.32 giving 67.09 total.  All together $187.27 not including the duties which may be levied on the goods.The shipper's online calculator estimates $48.54 in customs charges. That gives $226.81 grand total. Since the only people who like ripping you off more than the shippers would be the government and since I am dealing with them both, I will allow $250 for bandsaw refurbishment. This is less than the amount estimated before because I removed some parts that I can live without, like a spare drive belt. And because the cost of some items has fallen and because there is free shipping to Miami at present.

1. Stove gas. $44. Not essential  I like to secure the future so the stove gas would be nice.
2. Kettle. $80. I think it would be safer to have an auto-off kettle.
3. Spare tire. $171. Really, I need a spare. 
4. Two tires. $342. Two new tires on the road would be safer.
5. Bandsaw parts. $250. Been trying to refurbish it for nearly two years.

First option: 1, 2, 3 & 5 leaves me with $225 for groceries, etc.
Second option: 1, 2, 4 & 5 leaves me with $54 for groceries, etc. 

Although it leaves me with less grocery money, I am looking at Option #2. I am always hopeful that I will make some woodworking money and there will be more welfare cheques on 16th and 30th.

Opinions, please. Or if you have a third option to suggest.

Edited Thursday at 03:17 PM by Netfoot

[Mr. Sparkle]

I think you should minimally get a spare tire. 

[andidante]

I think you should get the spare tire also! For piece of mind at least.

[Netfoot]

8 hours ago, Mr. Sparkle said:

I think you should minimally get a spare tire. 

32 minutes ago, andidante said:

I think you should get the spare tire also! For piece of mind at least.

I'm going to get at least one tire. But I would like to get two, because eventually I want a full set of tires and 2 is closer to 4 than 1 is. Also, if I can get two, I can actually put them on the rear axle and hopefully the van will stop sliding it's back end out every time I go around a corner, even slowly. Then one of the existing, ancient tires can serve as a spare.

Mo & I had chips for lunch. Yum!

[Netfoot]

In bed after Garden Patrol with a mug of tea inside me. Got to shower and lock up but that will be later.

Cooked a very simple rice for dinner. Corned beef (of course) and lentils. It tasted quite passable. I thought I'd eat ramen but I would still have to feed Mo. With no chow in the house I had to cook rice. And I figured if I was cooking rice, I might as well look rice for two....

Today I watched videos, played with Mo, napped, listened to music, read, worked on my ray-tracer project and cooked & ate.

I should explain what I'm doing with the ray tracer. 

I registered my domain 24 years ago and soon after that I set up a very simple web site. For this I decided I needed a logo. So I created one:

This image is tiny because nobody wanted to download huge images 20+ years ago on their dial-up internet. And it's got a 4:3 aspect ratio because all monitors were 4:3 in those days. The colours of the letters were the simple colours available way back then. 

Understand that this image is entirely fake. It was generated entirely artificially by a ray tracer. The ocean and the sky and the four letters do not exist in reality.

What a ray tracer does is it reads a "scene" file that you type in and generates an image of the scene you describe. Your scene file describes objects like planes, a sky-sphere, cylinders, boxes, toroids, spheres, and so forth. Also a camera and one or more light sources. Each of these things is given attributes. Where it is, how large it is, what colour it is, what texture it has, how transparent and how shiny it is. Plus a whole lot more, if you want.

In reality, a ray of light will leave a light source, bounce off an object and enter your eye. That is how you see it. Ray tracers work in reverse.

For every pixel in the desired final image, rays are mathematically sent out from the camera to pass through that pixel and on into the scene. If it strikes an object a reflective ray is sent to the light source. This way the program can compute how much light from the source strikes the object, and the colour and intensity of the light reflecting off the object can be calculated. This tells you what brightness and colour the pixel in the final image must be. 

If the image is semi-transparent or reflective, the colour will be affected by what is behind the object or reflected by it. Textures mathematically alter the surface of the object causing it to appear to be stone, sand, water, etc.

Anyway, I wrote a scene file nearly 25 years ago and after weeks of tweaking it to produce the results I wanted, I generated the image you see above. I've been using that image ever since.

But a lot has happened since then. High speed internet allow larger images to be rapidly downloaded. Monitors commonly use 16:9 aspect ratios rather than 4:3. I should get the ray tracer to generate the image again, but at a modern aspect ratio and higher resolution. The original image probably took the ray tracer hours to complete the render. A modern machine could probably do it in 2 seconds. So let's just do it!

One problem. I still have and use the image after nearly 25 years. But the scene file has been lost for at least 15 years. So I am writing it again from scratch.

The logo itself is relatively straightforward, if laborious. But I have no clue how I did the sea and the sky. I just don't remember at all.

So I am working on the logo itself and when I'm satisfied with it I will start monkeying with the surface plane and the sky sphere. I do not expect to succeed in any hurry. 

If I get something that is starting to look like some progress is being made I will render an image small enough to upload to the forum so you can laugh at my efforts. I'm not there yet.

Anyway, Mo has just come in and curled up between my shoulder blades and my battery is now at 3% so I guess I will sign off and do some more fiddling with the ray tracer.

There is a lot of trig involved and I never was good at trig...

ETA: What is ANJO? No mystery. It comes from my first names. ANgus JOhn. 

Edited Yest. at 03:10 AM by Netfoot

[Netfoot]

Been researching kettles, because I want to buy one tomorrow.

Just for @andidante, here is a Hamilton Beach 1L kettle for $930.00 I kid you not. I have decided not to buy it.

I was more interested in this one, also by Hamilton Beach but 1.7L for $69.99 which is 12½% down on the $79.99 I was expecting.

Then I found this one by Blaupunkt. 1.8L for $45.00 which is a 43¾% down from expectations!

Hamilton Beach is a good brand that I'm sure most people know. Blaupunkt was a well respected German manufacturer but they went out of business about 10 years ago and now the brand is licensed to various manufacturers by a brand manager and the quality of their merchandise is possibly open to question. 

So. Do I take the 12½% reduction in price and buy the Hamilton Beach? Or go for the slightly larger kettle at a huge discount of 43¾% and hope the brand quality is as good as it formerly was? You tell me tomorrow, please because I will be going out before lunch to deposit a welfare cheque and would like to buy  a kettle at the same time. 

There is also this kettle which is also by Blaupunkt at 1.8L but it is $10 more at $55.00 and it is made of the same material as saucepan lids so I definitely won't be buying it!

Oh, and there is one more store I can try but their website keeps crashing so I have no idea what they have to offer me.

Let me know, people. A cheap Hamilton Beach or a very cheap Blaupunkt?

Edited Yest. at 04:14 AM by Netfoot

[b4pjoe]

The Hamilton Beach has more info including the fact it has the auto off function. The other one has no info at all. I think I would spend the extra money on the Hamilton Beach unless looking at them in person convinces you the other one is better.

[Mr. Sparkle]

Some years ago I bought my wife this lovely kettle:

https://smegstore.us/products/electric-kettle-retro-style-pastel-green-glossy-klf03pgus?variant_id=51237945704737 

I don't think it was the $240 US seen here, but it was definitely over $100. It lasted maybe a year before it stopped working. 

Luckily, we saved the plain black plastic kettle was had before that probably cost under $50. We're still using that one. 

Edited 22 hours ago by Mr. Sparkle

[Netfoot]

The auto-off feature is why I am buying a kettle at all. Any kettle that do0es not have this feature will be immediately rejected. 

OK, I am going to visit the store with the broken website in person and see what they have. Looking for a brand name that suggests quality & longevity. I will also take any contenders out of their box and examine them personally.

I will then visit the Hamilton Beach and the Blaupunkt kettles in person and give them the same sort of examination. 

It should be considered that if the $70 kettle lasts two years and the $45 kettle lasts only 14 months, then they were about equal in longevity on a dollar by dollar basis.

But you never know. I once bought a cheap blender for about $75 and used it to blend some soup I was making. Lentil peas. I kept overheating and stopping due to a thermal protection circuit. I would have to wait 4-5 minutes before I could turn it back on again. By the time the soup was all blended (three batches in the blender) the device smelt strongly of burnt insulation and melted plastic. So $75 lasted for one pot of soup. I bought a replacement for about $80 and it is still working today. I must have had it for ten years now, It was significantly pre-COVID.

So you never know.

Stores will have opened 2 minutes ago, so I guess I'd better go now.  I could use a cuppa!

[Netfoot]

Kettle bought. Which of the ones discussed did I buy? Neither!

This kettle is made by Daewoo. They make motor cars & fighter jets, so maybe they can build a kettle.

It was standing on the shelf next to the $45 Blaupunkt and it listed for $39 flat. I looked at the two of them and there was nothing in it from a build quality point of view. 

Nice brushed stainless finish. It had a base that plugs in and the kettle stands on top to charge. This is good because I can boil water and take the kettle to any art of the kitchen (or house) that needs hot water. 

I checked before buying and it does auto-off. 

And what I really like is that when you look inside, you don't see a coiled up heating element. The flat metal base of the kettle is the element. The coiled up elements were murder to clean and we have very high limestone content in our water. I used to buy vinegar by the gallon to dissolve it off the curly element.

It comes with a 3-month warranty.

So I took a risk. And I'm enjoying a nice cup of tea.

And best of all, I have a Loyalty Card, so I ended up paying only $37.31 which included 25¢ for a bag and is less than half the original estimate of $40!

Cash remaining for groceries is $265.50 if I buy one tire and $95.50 if I buy two.

Gotta call and confirm the price of the tires!

Edited 19 hours ago by Netfoot

[andidante]

1 hour ago, Netfoot said:

Kettle bought. Which of the ones discussed did I buy? Neither!

This kettle is made by Daewoo. They make motor cars & fighter jets, so maybe they can build a kettle.

It was standing on the shelf next to the $45 Blaupunkt and it listed for $39 flat. I looked at the two of them and there was nothing in it from a build quality point of view. 

Nice brushed stainless finish. It had a base that plugs in and the kettle stands on top to charge. This is good because I can boil water and take the kettle to any art of the kitchen (or house) that needs hot water. 

I checked before buying and it does auto-off. 

And what I really like is that when you look inside, you don't see a coiled up heating element. The flat metal base of the kettle is the element. The coiled up elements were murder to clean and we have very high limestone content in our water. I used to buy vinegar by the gallon to dissolve it off the curly element.

It comes with a 3-month warranty.

So I took a risk. And I'm enjoying a nice cup of tea.

And best of all, I have a Loyalty Card, so I ended up paying only $37.31 which included 25¢ for a bag and is less than half the original estimate of $40!

Cash remaining for groceries is $265.50 if I buy one tire and $95.50 if I buy two.

Gotta call and confirm the price of the tires!

Glad you were able to find a kettle! It looks very nice. I could not even imagine buying that Hamilton Beach one for that much money! Goodness. 

[Netfoot]

Ray tracing my logo. Here is where I'm at:

It is a long way from right!

OK, the sea and sky are completely wrong. I will work on them later, when everything else is right.  Also the horizon is too high. I can move the logo up and down but it is nicely centered as it is. I may have to move the camera up or down to adjust the horizon, which should be visible through the middle of the N and O. And the colours are not bright enough. I may have to use different colours but more likely tweal the light source(s).

Now, the logo itself.

The O is finished, pretty much. It's fairly basic and is defined as follows:

Quote
#declare ANJO_O = torus {
    #local major = (o_wide / 2) - lrad;
    #local minor = lrad;
    major, minor

    rotate -90*x        // so we can see it from the top

    translate <n_wide + (ldia * 3) + (o_wide / 2), (o_high / 2) + ldia, 0>
    pigment { Blue }
}

It's just a torus, with major and minor radii supplied, rotated from horizontal to vertical moved into position at the end of the logo and painted blue. Values like lrad and o_wide are defined elsewhere. 

The N is pretty much finished as well. But it is 141 lines of code. Look at it. It consists of four cylinders and a rounded corner. The rounded corner is a torus  like the O, but with the bottom half and the left half cut away. Two of the cylinders have both ends cut at a 45° miter angle and the other two cylinders have only one end mitered. This facilitates joining the corners smoothly. A lot of fiddling and trial & error went into getting that sorted. To see what an un-mitered corner looks like, check out the bottom right corner of the A.

Speaking of which the three corners of the A have to be mitered. The bottom right should be similar to the miters in the N, at 45° but the other two require miter cuts at non-45° angles and not the same angle per corner, either! Gonna be a ball-buster. The three parts of the A are three different colours because it helps me see where one part ends and the next one begins. They will all be resprayed red when the shape is correct. A is only 37 lines of code right now, but adding the miters will add a bit more because there are six miter cuts to be made, same as was needed for the N. 

And the J is a complete mess that is only there to help space out the other letters correctly and give a rough idea of final appearance. The diagonal part of the J and the "dot" on the top are still completely absent. 

Anyway, I am taking Mo shopping.

Edited 16 hours ago by Netfoot

[Netfoot]

Logo improved, but not by much. 

The corners of the A are mitered now, but I am not satisfied. There is a thin line of colour visible along each joint. Compare with the joints in the N which do not show any line along the joint. Probably a glitch in my geometry. Different colours still, so I can distinguish one part from the next.

Also, the slope of the diagonal is not the same as that of the original logo file. I have carefully set the height and width of the letter to be the same ratio as the height and width of the original but it somehow isn't coming out right. Another glitch in my geometry.

The sea and sky are still crap, but the colours of the letters are much brighter. I have to see if I can darken the colours of the sea/sky without affecting the colours of the letters. 

The horizon line is just where I want it to be but the entire logo is too high. The top of the A and the bottom of the J should be equidistant from the top and bottom of the image. If I move the logo down or alter the position of the camera to correct this, my horizon line changes.

Anyway, we bought our kettle and have brewed up one mug of tea. Very satisfactory. Took Mo shopping to buy chow for him and veggies for me. Threw in some bully beef and some tuna. 

We did Garden Patrol early. Something went missing and around here, Mo is the immediate suspect. That may not be fair but he brought it on himself by being a confirmed Kleptopup. So we did our Patrol and I searched. In vain. The missing item showed up again and Mo was blameless. But like I said, he brought the indignity upon himself. 

Mo had chow for dinner but I have not eaten. I am am a little hungry but also I want to test blood glucose tomorrow and if I slip dinner I will affect the results by artificially depressing the number.

But I didn't buy bread or biscuits and cheese or anything that I can make a simple meal for one from. So I guess I will brew up and be satisfied with a cuppa.

Listening to Rivers Of Babylon by The Melodians. This is off the soundtrack album for The Harder They Come starring Jimmy Cliff. This album has some great tracks from the late 60s and early 70s by half a dozen Jamaican musicians, including ska, rocksteady and reggae.

Gotta go brew that tea now. After that I will listen to music and read my book.