Sharing bohunk ingenuity with the world.
While working on an upcoming new website for Gramps (Free Open Source Genealogical Research tool that I contribute to) I am learning the challenges of developing a multilingual international website. In working with some translations I discovered that my character chart did not include characters from the Polish alphabet!
Needless to say, my character chart now includes decimal and hexadecimal/Unicode references for the characters in the Polish alphabet.
Produces about 3.5 gallons of port-style wine at 15.7% alcohol. Continue reading “Gooseberry Port-Style Wine”
This batch is from a wine kit: Winexpert Selection Original Series: Pinot Noir. A 4 gallon kit that produces 6 gallons of wine. It was about $118. Continue reading “Pinot Noir 2010-02-12”
This batch was made from a kit: Winexpert Vintner’s Reserve World Vineyard Collection: Australian Shiraz. It is a 2.6 gallon kit that produces 6 gallons of wine. It cost about $75. Continue reading “Australian Shiraz 2009-12-12”
This wine is created from a kit: Winexpert Vintner’s Reserve: Cabernet Sauvignon. It is a 2 gallon juice concentrate kit that produces a 6 gallon batch of wine. The kit was about $60. Continue reading “Cabernet Sauvignon 2009-10-23”
Not sure when this feature was added, but I’m running the Inkscape 0.47 preview and discovered that the default install now includes a “Printing Marks” feature. You can access it from the main menu:
0.47 Extensions > Render > Printing Marks
0.91 Extensions > Render > Layout > Printing Marks
The small options window that pops up allows you to adjust a variety of settings for the position of the marks as well as the type of marks to be displayed, seeming to cover all of the needs of a typical commercial printing process.
The “Live Preview” option makes it easy and efficient to adjust the settings to match your desired output. Once you hit Apply the specified marks are added to your document as vector art in a new, locked layer titled “Printing Marks”.
In the past I’ve manually created crop marks when needed, but this is a major step on the road to serious recognition and use by graphic design professionals. Eventually it would be great to see these options removed to a print and/or export dialog interface, but this is an excellent option to have as well.
Inkscape is an open source and free application built around the SVG recommendation that makes it easy to create vector images. I use it to create illustrations as well as single-page layouts of all sizes. In fact, I recently created a business card layout with Inkscape, exported as PDF and sent to a printer to create offset business cards. The cards turned out great without any problems. A serious vector art tool.
Over the last few months I’ve been shopping for a new/refurbished laptop. I had my mind set on a refurbished Thinkpad R61 or R500, but those were ranging between $600 and $700. At that price I was going to have to wait a while until I had more money set aside. In the meantime I have been looking at every laptop I come across just in case there’s something awesome out there that I have not yet seen.
Earlier this week I was at Best Buy for an unrelated computer project and, on my way out, I swung through the laptop section. After looking everything over it was apparent that anything that was under $500 was crap. However, NONE of the machines were very appealing to me. I know that for a computer I should just be concerned with the performance aspects, but I can’t help but be extremely interested in the overall design of the hardware.
Looking at all of those laptops was disappointing in that aspect. But for Apple and Lenovo, all of the computer manufacturers have apparently decided that all computers must look like some kind of pimped-out Honda Accord. All of them are very glossy plastic and generally covered in distracting ‘designer’ details. The new Dell Studio line is an improvement, but I was underwhelmed by the ‘feel’ of those devices. They felt cheap and bulky and were all priced at the high end. The Sonys look a little better, but not much and they are WAY over priced.
None of these machines resembled the regal designs of Apple or Thinkpad laptops. I know Thinkpads are often considered ugly and bland, but I don’t agree with that. The T-series especially are always very thin with hinges, buttons and levers that intuitively make sense. And the cases always feel very serious and rugged. The Thinkpad is actually better than any Apple laptop in my opinion since it doesn’t allow aesthetics to override functionality. There are plenty of buttons next to the trackpads. The display-latch is not some thin little button that you have to push with your fingernail (Titanium Powerbook).The arrow keys are not scaled down to fit into the overall rectangle of the keyboard.
Speaking of screwed up keyboards, just used a friend’s Dell-AlienWare laptop last night… why would a gamer or anyone that would spend that much money on a laptop want a keyboard that is compromised in any way? For example, the laptop was a 17″ display version with a full number pad but for some reason important keys like the arrow keys, the right-shift key and the question mark/slash key were all micro-sized to fit into a rectangular keyboard outline. It made the keyboard almost unusable. I kept hitting the Shift key instead of the slash-key while typing in URLs. Why would you do that to a premium laptop keyboard? These hardware designers have obviously lost touch with reality. Or maybe gamers really don’t use their computers for anything other than gaming.
After all of this frustration I ended up finding a good laptop at the unbelievable price of $378 on NewEgg.com’s daily specials. I did some quick research and decided to go with it as a compromise to save some money. When the machine arrived two days later I was mostly delighted. What’s the machine? A Lenovo G530. Never heard of it? Neither had I.
Apparently Lenovo’s Value Line isn’t very heavily promoted. Also, if you go to their site, the price isn’t much different from their IdeaPad line. The price on NewEgg was pretty spectacular. I knowingly made some compromises, but overall I’m very happy with this new laptop, how it runs and how it looks.
Once you carefully peal off the ‘Intel Dual Pentium Inside’ and ‘Built for Windows Vista’ decals the machine is all black with some subtle gray print and a few blue lights. The only real design misstep is the oversized Lenovo logo on the outside cover. It could have been half the size or maybe even a third. And it’s some kind of metal decal that’s inset into the cover, so you would probably do more damage than good trying to remove it. Here’s a short list of gripes:
Here’s a list of nice features:
And here are the specs:
This is a good system and great for running Linux. Some of the hardware needs proprietary drivers (wireless) but with Ubuntu getting drivers like that is fairly simple. A great budget machine that, in my opinion, is much better looking and less bulky than most of the ]more expensive models that are on the market currently. If you can find it at the price I got, this is an amazing machine compared to the much smaller and less powerful netbooks that are similarly priced.
If you don’t know, Ubuntu and OpenOffice.org make it very easy to install the artwork from OpenClipArt.org as a built-in gallery within OpenOffice. It’s slick: while in OpenOffice Writer go to TOOLS > GALLERY and a little panel shows up, displaying categorized clipart, ready to be dropped into your document. Very cool.
Unfortunately, after Ubuntu migrated to installing OpenOffice.org 3.0 as default, the simple process of installing this excellent feature has been broken. You can still choose to install the OpenClipArt with Ubuntu’s simple application installer, but after the install is done the gallery remains unavailable in OpenOffice. Fortunately, there is an easy fix for this problem.
It isn’t working because OpenOffice.org 3.0 saves its resources in a slightly different location than the previous versions. Meanwhile, the OpenClipArt gallery installer is still installing it in the previous location. Somebody forgot to tell them about the change.
It’s fairly simple, really. Here’s how it works:
This solution could work for any operating system, but the following instructions will be specific to Ubuntu.
sudo nautilus This will allow you to use Nautilus as though you are the System Administrator. Be very cautious with these administrative rights. If you move or delete an important file you could damage your system./usr/lib/openoffice/share/gallery This is the old resource location./usr/lib/openoffice/basis3.0/share/gallery This is the new OpenOffice.org 3.0 resource location.I hope this was helpful and gives you access to this excellent free clip art library once again.
My wife’s 1997 Ford Escort suddenly started having idling problems today. Basically, whenever the car was fully stopped or in park it would idle up and down, hovering over stalling and eventually doing just that. However, it would have no problems restarting after the stall.
Initially I thought the problem was related to the status of motor oil… but that’s another issue. Topping off the motor oil to the appropriate level did nothing to correct the idling problem.
After that disappointment I started noticing a hissing, or air-sucking noise coming from somewhere around the engine. This turned out to be the key.
I found a small hole in the L-bend of the PCV hose, which sits along the top-back of the engine on this particular Escort model. I put my finger over the hole and the engine suddenly returned to normal idle. The L-bend piece was actually caved-in around the hole, so proper repair would mean replacing the PCV hose or PCV hose and valve, depending on how Ford sells the parts. However, with one day left in the work week I temporarily repaired the L-bend with an abundant wrapping of black electric tape. This seems to work and will hopefully keep the car running properly until I can replace the PCV part or parts on Saturday.
You can read more about the interesting history and functionality of the PCV valve at Wikipedia.
Several years ago I bought an old PowerBook G3 Lombard in pieces, put it together and installed OSX 10.3. It worked surprisingly well and was good enough for email, web and other basic stuff. However, one of the biggest disappointments was how ‘dumb’ the trackpad software was. That was the first time I discovered Raging Menace and two pieces of software that they make that are completely awesome: MenuMeters and SideTrack. Last week I acquired a PowerBook G4 550 MHz laptop and remembered how necessary SideTrack was. Without it the laptop was painful to use without carrying a mouse around at all times. It makes these old trackpads just about as useful or maybe even more useful than the new multi-touch trackpads that Apple has introduced. I like this software so much that I am taking the time to introduce more people to it.
I know this is a post about enhancing Apple trackpads, but first a quick note about MenuMeters. If you’re familiar with Linux you’re probably used to having a nifty system resources ‘gauge’ that provides live information about processor activity, RAM use, network activity and more. OSX comes with an application called ‘Activity Monitor’ but it’s a resource hog and doesn’t provide a simple interface that can be visible at all times.
MenuMeters adds this feature to OSX by making this data available in the main menu bar next to your wireless network status and volume control. It takes very little resources. I don’t know exactly how little, but if you can run it on a PowerBook G3 running OSX 10.3 while being able to do OTHER things, it apparently isn’t using very many resources. It’s so excellent that it should come with OSX pre-installed. The good news? Raging Menace offers MenuMeters as a free download.
This little bit of software is just as valuable and unassuming. SideTrack opens up that simple, one-purpose Apple trackpad and turns it into a powerful, multi-purpose device. Suddenly your trackpad is endowed with vertical scroll, horizontal scroll, the ability to set each corner of the trackpad to evoke a custom key command and more.
SideTrack isn’t free, but you can try it out for free and, if you find it useful, purchase a license for $15. Totally worth every penny. It’s definitely easiest to understand its many features by just downloading and installing it. However, these screenshots of the preference panes will tell you a lot.
Check out these excellent pieces of software at ragingmenace.com. You won’t regret it.
Read Flyover States Wow… just came across this term for the first time. Just when the Midwest was starting to get some respect!
There are many aspects of Apple’s Mac OS that I dislike, but there are others that I like very much. Ever since I switched from Apple to Linux I have searched for an Apple-like way of entering special characters. “Special characters” are any characters that are not visible on your physical keyboard. For my needs this is mostly characters that are associated with typesetting and graphic design such as em and en dashes, “curly” quotes, copyright symbols and things of that sort. Special characters can also be characters from outside of your primary language.
In the Apple world these characters are available in a manner similar to how the SHIFT key makes uppercase letters and a small group of other characters available. Most computer users and even typewriter users are familiar with how the SHIFT key makes an alternate keyboard available. The Apple OS by default includes two additional alternate keyboards. The OPTION/ALT key and the combination of the SHIFT and OPTION/ALT keys activate these alternate keyboards. All together these modifier keys make it possible for each key on the keyboard to represent four different characters.
It comes as no surprise that Linux offers not one but many ways to enter special characters. Here’s a list of the few that I am familiar with starting with the most inefficient:
What’s great about the Third Level method is that it includes the cross-platform defacto standard of dead keys while also providing a way to access other analphabetic and symbol characters. What’s bad about this method is the perfectly meaningless name associated with it. It’s not even consistent with itself since it provides a fourth as well as a third keyboard layout. Maybe I’ll come up with a better name by the time I finish this post.
Third Level works in the exact same manner as I described the Apple method above except that you are not stuck using the Option/Alt key. Generally, Linux uses the alt key for a lot of key shortcuts, so taking advantage of that dust-covered Windows key might be a better choice. The Fourth Level is activated by combining your defined key with the SHIFT key, just like Apple.
Main Menu > System > Preferences > KeyboardIf you want, it can be very handy to have the Keyboard Indicator Gnome Panel Item available. From this panel item you can switch between different keyboard layouts as well as summon a diagram of your keyboard that displays where to find the many different characters you now have available.
I hope you have found this article helpful. Let me know if there are any aspects of the above that I have misrepresented. My goal with the above information is to provide some basic information on a topic that seems to be rarely discussed. Maybe the Linux experts already know these options as a given, but there are a lot of new users that are probably in the dark.
As the Web Producer/Designer at Country Weekly Magazine’s website I am proud to announce a new feature that will make it easier for people to find our magazine in stores. I was able to create this tool thanks to Google’s excellent generosity. You can see this new tool in action here: www.countryweekly.com/where2buy
If you haven’t already created your own custom Google Map, here are some resources that might be helpful. After figuring it out, it’s not too difficult and once in place it’s easy for others to update the locations.
There are two components:
In order for these two components to correctly produce a map similar to the one shown above you will need the following:
Signing up for a Google Account is simple and you can get a Google Maps API Key at code.google.com/apis/maps/signup.html. There is also an excellent resource for general info about everything Google Map API at code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/staticmaps/. However, there’s a lot of information there you don’t really need.
Once you have it up and running you can tweak the default location and zoom of the map and add some other cool features.
By default the Create a Map page sets the default location so that it contains your defined markers. Sometimes you want to specifically define the default location. In the generated code look for the following cluster:
cm_map = new GMap2(document.getElementById("cm_map"));
cm_map.addControl(new GLargeMapControl());
cm_map.addControl(new GMapTypeControl());
cm_map.setCenter(new GLatLng( 43.907787,-79.359741), 2);
Update the cm_map.setCenter(); bit to look like this:
/* Set default map position and zoom here. */
cm_map.setCenter(new GLatLng(41.500000,-99.600000), 7);
This makes it easier to find for future changes. To adjust geocode center of your map, adjust the numbers. The three numbers listed there are:
The zoom value seems to correspond to the ‘notches’ on the visual zoom tool that sits at the top-left corner of most Google Map implementations.
One of my favorite features of Google Maps is that you can zoom in and out of the map with your mouse scroll wheel. This isn’t enabled by default from the Create a Map page. It’s easy to add though. In the same cluster of code shown above add the following statement:
cm_map.enableScrollWheelZoom();
So that’s it in a nutshell. I hope this helps more people take advantage of the wealth of free tools that Google has made available by way of using standard HTML, CSS and JavaScript. It’s very cool stuff!
Dave Girard from Ars Technica has written a very realistic and thorough review of the GIMP 2.6.4 “Suite freedom: a review of GIMP 2.6.4”. It’s a couple of pages long, but any graphic designers out there that are pirating Photoshop for their home computers should take a look. It’s refreshing to see a designer’s perspective on the GIMP after actually using it.
My only gripe is his comment on GIMP’s image slicing capabilities. He sort of makes it sound like state-of-the-art web designers are still routinely slicing their raster image layouts into pieces to be reassembled in HTML <tables>.
The only time I use that technique now is for the backwards medium of HTML emails. Never mind the importance of meaningful, semantic markup, but with the prominent support of CSS in modern browsers (and even Internet Explorer 6), slicing images like this, though it is a nice feature, isn’t all that important. It wouldn’t hurt to have Photoshop’s functionality, but it’s not a deal-breaker.
On the last page of the review I was delighted to see a link to my how-to “X11: Switch Control Key To Apple/Command Key” as a clever hack to switch the X11 modifier key from Control to Command for Mac OSX users. I’m pretty stoked!
The Remnants from John August on Vimeo.
Since there’s a good chance you’ll never get to see more of the story, this sucks. However, it’s a refreshing approach to the subject matter. Enjoy.
Dear 1and1,
I frequently defend the quality of services that you provide. You have a lot of enemies out there, but my experience has been positive. Your management tools are very simple and intuitive, especially when compared to GoDaddy (I don’t know WHAT is going on with their admin tools, but they’re getting better.).
Even your mail service is top notch. When using email clients, I rarely have problems receiving or sending emails. Good stuff.
However, I have recently been forced to use your Webmail service when away from home and it is a horrible experience. Why?
Otherwise, with the address book, other features and the overall design, your webmail could be a great product. These four issues (and I’m sure there could be more) diminish any other positives. If you could address the service availability at the very least it would be much appreciated. Thanks.
Sincerely,
Jason Simanek
Last night my wife informed me that her brake lights were stuck on. It had been a rainy day, so my biggest fear was that there was some sort of electrical short God-knows-where inside the car. This could be expensive. After some back-and-forth of tapping the brakes, turning on the car, turning the lights on and off with no result I finally changed clothes and squirmed under the dash to see what was up. Here’s what I found, in case it might be helpful to others.
The brake pedal is connected to at least one button for turning the brake lights on and off. As the pedal is released, the button is depressed. As the pedal is pressed, the button is released. When the button is depressed, the lights go off. When the button is released, the lights go on.
In the case of my wife’s 1996 Ford Escort, there is a small, blue rubber pad on the ‘contact plate’ that the brake light button presses against. The reason I was looking under the dashboard in the first place is because my wife asked if maybe the blue rubber filings and rubber pad that she recently found on the driver-side floorboard might have something to do with her brake light problem. She was right after all.
Since the pad had fallen off of the contact plate the button was not getting depressed far enough to turn off the lights when the brake pedal was released. The solution is to replace the little blue pad. I was not able to find out what this thing was called or even if you could buy one without replacing the entire brake light switch.
The rubber pad worked like a ladies ear ring. It had a little nub on the back that fit into a hole in the contact plate. Probably due to age, this nub broke off and created a big headache for me. In order to avoid visiting the Ford dealer I simply reconnected the nub with some super glue and, after a lot of sweating upside down under the steering wheel, snapped the blue pad back in place. It’s been a few days. So far the super glue is still holding the rubber pad together. My wife’s brake lights are back in action.
Well, the repaired rubber pad didn’t last long: 2 days. Now it’s broken into several pieces.
But I came up with a better solution. This time I rebuilt the pad using a foam-based wine bottle cork, a circle cut-out in heavy coated paper (a better surface for the button to press against) and the original pad’s little stem. All assembled with super glue. Let’s see how long this one lasts.
If you don’t know, Big Buck Bunny is a free movie published under a Creative Commons license and created with the open source 3-D animation program Blender. Learn more at bigbuckbunny.org and you can watch a decent-res version right here:
Big Buck Bunny from Blender Foundation on Vimeo.
I have recently discovered a great blog by a designer that is smart and funny. Today I decided to Google his name and found a great article that he wrote for a list apart about being a good designer:
and at the bottom of that article his short bio states that he is the creator of Textpattern, a website CMS that I’ve been learning to develop with recently.
I love discovering that two people I find interesting are actually one person.