This is a draft blog from Nov 19, 2005. Thought it was about time I dealt with some of the drafts.
I bought a laptop recently. I thought it would be cool to be able to continue with some of my hare-brained projects while gallivanting between Yorkshire and California. I went for a “desktop replacement” laptop, i.e. one that’s set up to be more powerful than portable. It means I can put on it all the toys I like to use: graphics software, software development tools, my music software and my favourite game. It’s at this point that I discover just HOW dependent we have become on the internet.
The worst offenders are the pieces of software where I’ll download the installer, go offline, then run the installer and it will say “cannot find the internet to download the product”.
I got hold of Blender, a great open-source 3d modelling program, installed it, and took it offline to play. But the help menu in fact fires up a browser to the internet. All very nice for keeping the documents up-to-date, but not much use to me, unplugged and out in the e-wilderness.
So in the spirit of engineer-luddites everywhere, I hereby start the broken ribbon campaign - remembering our Offline Users.
I guess the reason it’s a draft is that I really needed to make an icon to go with it. Ho hum.
The trouble with things is that they have a fractal dimension. You might say “taking the old wardrobe doors left in the loft by previous owner to the tip” was a thing. But I have managed to turn that into “Getting stuff from loft”, “putting stuff in car” and “taking stuff to tip”.
If I’m not careful, I will start to count “opened loft hatch” as one thing towards renting the spare room.
Next thing has to be to find the bloody rawlplugs, I’ve bought all the shelfy bits I need, but I need to be able to attach them to the walls!
TAD: Fitted a strip light in the loft. If you decide to work on your loft, DO THIS FIRST! Suddenly I can see all the corners of the loft clearly!
I was too slow with the camera, but thanks to the power of IMAGE CONVERTER for the mac, here is a virtual-reality simulation of what happened this evening.
What you can clearly see from this fully immersive multimedia experience, is a black & white cat sat in the middle of the road with its back to the camera. Some poor woman in a red toyota or similar is attempting a three-point turn but is not 100% sure she can make it without squashing the cat. She makes a couple of tentative reversing moves to drop the hint… You could actually see the moment when the cat actively decided not to notice the reversing BRIGHT RED car. The woman gave the customary shake of the head that we Brits do in an attempt to get miscellaneous onlookers on our side, and then set off down to the end of the road to effect a three-pointer down there instead.
Cat: 1
Car: 0
Edit: This part is disputed property :-) I may have blown the cover of a forthcoming story by a children’s author not a million miles away!
TAD: having the choice of doing a LOT of hand sawing to do the last row in the loft or buying a circular saw, I took the more economical and expedient third option of simply not doing the last row. I lifted three rows of boards and drilled vent holes for the bathroom’s flush-fit lights, and finished the last full row. I now have a loft ready to accept piles of junk, and a Rachael who is eager to decorate the junk room ready to receive a lodger.
I woke early, so I popped into the loft for an hour and screwed in another row of boards. Just 1.5 rows to go now… unfortunately the 0.5 of a row is a whole row of 1/2 width boards, so heaps of sawing to go…
I also noticed that the bathroom lights had somewhat a warming effect on the loft boards. I went to B&Q and snuck the instructions out of a set of 50W recessed bathroom halogen lights, and found that I need to lift the boards again to clear a 10cm -radius void around each light for safety reasons. A bit narked about that.
I have Friday off work though so I can do the major work then. Next task is to sharpen the saw.
Laid a couple more boards in place and cleared away the space where the remaining boards will go. found a bathroom cabinet in the loft, complete with electric toothbrush, and mirror with “St. Helens RUFC 1978″ written on it.
Sunday was a busy one! After waking at 8 I completely failed to get up and fastbroken until about 10:30, when it was time to go make Latin music at Edd’s. For once we had a full complement of percussion, which the twin effects that (1) it sounded great! and (2) the neighbors complained so we have to do future rehearsals at the university rehearsal rooms :-(
When I got home at about 2:45 I was knackered, hungry and dehydrated, and so was Rachael. Fortunately she had made a shopping list so we had a fairly focussed shop and ate something healthy. Unfortunately that left me about 40 minutes to do my Thing A Day, sleep, bathe, and head off to the Gallery for the Montuno Lounge Sunday salsa social.
So my Thing was just to cut a chunk out of one loft board to fit around the loft hole. My coping saw skills are not great, and since I was tired and hurrying I did a bit of a botch job on it :-( I guess I can tidy it up with a chisel and a nice bit of trim if I ever care enough about it! The loft is about 2/3 done now and just needs one more good stint at boarding. Trouble is, I think that will be next Saturday judging by this week’s schedule.
The social was great fun, really glad to see the night back in York. The venue could not have got much more full without it getting uncomfortable, though there was a bit of a shortage of leaders. I took cowbells, shakers etc, and at one point got a small group going… good fun!
More loft boarding… it’s getting easier now since i can sit on the bit I’ve already done to do the next bit. Another session like that and it’ll be done! But the merry-go-round starts again tomorrow, with Latin band rehearsals and my weekly salsa teaching session… It’s gonna be tougher to get a thing done every day…
Got home early enough for banging and screwing, so I got up in t’Loft and started laying boards. There were already about 8 down though not screwed in, so I drilled about 5 holes, countersunk them, then discovered that when it says “4mm” on a packet of screws it means “don’t use a 4mm drill cos the screw will just fall down the hole and not screw into anything”. So I will go back to choosing drills by looking at the drill and at the screw. Re-drilled and re-countersunk the holes, and screwed a few boards down.
I got a few more boards laid into position and began to cut around some pipes but it got too late for making a din in the loft so I called it a night. “You”, I said, drawing myself up to as much of my full height as I could muster in the loft, “are a night.”
Initial progress was a little frustratingly slow, but I expect it to pick up somewhat, since much of the time was spent shuffling the various bits of junk already up there into places where I could (a) get to the floor panels (b) get to the place where the floor panels were going and (c) sit somewhere while banging and screwing.
I have pictures, but owing to my DEAD PC I haven’t had time to upload them yet. I have however got my Mac to take the piccies off my camera. (I’m still at the wide eyed mac user stage I think.)