Been another less than productive day. Browsed a lot and posted a few more things to the blog. Mid-afternoon we went to the grocery store and then by my folks house where we got a bunch of clippings from the scuppernong vines, he has in the back yard, to try to root so we can start some over here. After sitting and talking a bit Cat remembered we had frozen stuff in the van so we came home and unloaded and that was about it activity wise for me for the day. Have been browsing a bit and made a few more posts this evening after eating supper but am about worn out so am gonna call it a night and hope for a bit more energy tomorrow. Till then…
*** esprit cabane, the magazine of crafty & green living ideas
A really neat French magazine (now in English too) that has all kinds of projects and craft ideas with a focus on homemade and non-toxic. From how-to’s on making wallpaper paste and rice glue to upholstering furniture and making your own paint they cover a wide range of projects for anyone interested in doing it yourself.
I was surprised to find that glazers putty was simply a mixture of chalk power and linseed oil. They give the proper mixture and explain how to use and the curing time.
Good stuff! 😎
A Low Impact Woodland Home
I know I’ve posted about this house before but I think he’s got a new site, and I know that some of the stuff on the site is new. Good stuff! And I still want to build one!
Mike’s Electric Stuff
All kinds of neat and nasty electronics stuff. 😯 🙄 😉
The Register: The Home of the Mighty BOFH
The current years index of BOFH stories. Getting better all the time!!! 😆 😆 😆
Basildon Coder » Blog Archive » The P.G. Wodehouse Method Of Refactoring
I am much given to ruminating on refactoring at the moment, as one of my current projects is a major overhaul of a fairly large (>31,000 lines) application which has exactly the kind of dotted history any experienced developer has learned to fear – written by many different people, including short-term contractors, at a time in the company’s life when first-mover advantage was significantly more important than coding best-practice, and without any consistent steer on the subjects of structure, coding conventions, unit tests, and so on.
In other words, here be dragons.
Interesting method of cleaning code and viewing the progress. I certainly don’t envy him the job!
I’ve always liked P.G. Wodehouse’s work, and this is an interesting look into a current day use of his method of deciding when a page was finished. Cool! 😎
Linux.com :: It’s time to learn Scheme
Have you ever peeked into one of those bazillion .el files in your Emacs installation’s lisp folder and wondered what it meant? Or have you ever looked at a GIMP script .scm file and scratched your head over all the parentheses? Lisp is one of the oldest programming languages still in common use, and Scheme is a streamlined dialect of Lisp. Many universities use Scheme as the language to introduce students to the Computer Science curriculum, and some of their teaching methods are based on the assumption that Scheme is the one language they can count on their students knowing. Even so, many active programmers and system administrators are unfamiliar with Scheme. This article will get you on your way to adding this tool to your developer or sysadmin toolkit.
I’ve looked at it before but never taken any time to get to know anything about Scheme. From what little I’ve looked at this article it looks like a good starting point. Will give it a read and see if any of it sticks.
Cloud EV – Home
The motors and controllers aren’t cheap, nor are the batteries, but with the cost of fuel skyrocketing with no end in sight I’m looking at converting something to electric or building it from scratch. Going to have to spend some serious time doing research as to the how, which, and what… 😉
The Cost of E-Voting | Threat Level from Wired.com
One reason election officials around the country have given for purchasing touch-screen voting machines is that they say the systems save money — both in the cost of printing paper ballots and in storing them after an election. Officials have made this claim, despite the fact that the machines carry a steep price tag (about $3,000 per machine).
So SaveOurVotes (.pdf), a voting integrity group in Maryland, decided to see if the 19,000 touch-screen machines their state purchased really did save money. The results aren’t really a surprise — the machines are wildly more expensive than anyone anticipated. But just how expensive they are makes their analysis mandatory reading for any legislators and state or county budget committees that approve voting equipment purchases.
Talk about untruth in advertising and long term hidden costs! Looks like the true cost is FAR more than we have been led to believe. 👿
MIT Scientists Build Nanowire Structures for Use in Tiny Lithium-Ion Batteries
MIT scientists have harnessed the construction talents of tiny viruses to build ultra-small “nanowire” structures for use in very thin lithium-ion batteries.
By manipulating a few genes inside these viruses, the team was able to coax the organisms to grow and self-assemble into a functional electronic device.
The goal of the work, led by MIT Professors Angela Belcher, Paula Hammond and Yet-Ming Chiang, is to create batteries that cram as much electrical energy into as small or lightweight a package as possible. The batteries they hope to build could range from the size of a grain of rice up to the size of existing hearing aid batteries.
Now THAT’S some serious nanotech! Cool stuff!
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