WeaponsGradeCode

Here’s our one year old crankin’ up Pippin for another hard core Python development session:

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So I’m coding away on a little project and mad the terrible mistake of simply pressing F1.

Horror of horrors. One NEVER does that in Visual Studio 2005. Why? It brings your 2.2 GHz Core2 Duo with a fast hard drive to halt for literally two minutes.

This is yet another sign that Microsoft has lost it’s way. It’s impossible to figure out what they’re doing over there other than they’ve got 20,000 strong egos fighting for number one and zero leadership.

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Every shed needs SGIs, a MythTV server, NeXT Cubes, Playboys, Commodore, and Apple computers,

Here’s some annotated images of a dream storage shed:

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Bummer about the dead pixel, but what are ya going to do?

The OLPC runs Open Source software so in a round about way the crash is my responsibility to diagnose and fix. I’ll see what I can do…

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Maybe it’s because I don’t get out much, but this one of the coolest pieces of hardware I’ve seen in a while. It’s worth the $400 even without the satisfaction of buying a second one for someone who needs it.

It’s heavier than I thought it would be, a bit smaller than I thought. Functionally, it competes with any laptop out there, USB slots, SD slot, great display than turns into a tablet, a half dozen input mechanisms, hardened for child use. Really amazing. I can’t believe they’re only $177 to build.

I’ll post a proper review later here. Here are some pictures:

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I’m a collector of fine antique computers and game systems that I spent most of my childhood playing with. This include Vic-20’s, Commodore 64’s, Apple II’s, and Amiga’s. The collection has expanded to other machines that I really would have liked to own like Sun’s, SGI’s, and NeXT computers. Over time the collection’s gotten a bit out of control (though not as bad as some of my peer’s problems) and needed to clear some things out.

Here’s about 75% of the stuff out of the shed and in the garage:

After the project was completed I basically gave away this stack:

Here’s the Commodore Tower of Power:

Here’s the Apple Tower of Power (Note the SGI Octane and Indy R5000 in the background):

…more later.

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My folks have a bit of land and love gardening. They’ve got all kinds of fruits and vegetables growing including a short, about 20 feet, vine of concord grapes. This is the first year they’ve had a good crop and boy did they have grapes. More than enough for them and the neighborhood. Just before going on vacation and the first frost, they asked if I wanted any. I took it as a great opportunity to get into wine making.

Not having and literature on the subject, I again relied on this site on the premise that it can’t be that hard to make wine provided that you’re not gunning for the best in show award at some Parisian wine contest. We’ve been doing this for over six thousand years and I’m pretty sure they didn’t sterilize their bucketswith potassium metabisulphate back then.

Armed with more enthusiasm than information, the kids and I headed up there in the cold and rain and picked about 35 lbs in about a half hour. That’s when the kids had had enough.

Back home we removed all the stems, spiders, snails and rotten grapes from the lot and placed them in a clean six gallon bucket. We mashed them up with our hands and a potato masher taking care not to break the seeds. This left us with a pleasant bucket of smashed grapes called a must.

We then added a bit of potassium metabisulphate to kill any creepy crawlys remaining in the must and left it alone for a day.

The next day we added the yeast and put it in the shed which, thanks to the MythTV server, hovers around 70 degrees. After about four days we finally started to get a cap, or all the skins rising to the top. Twice a day we mashed it down again with the potato masher.

Two weeks later we were ready to transfer.

I’ve never done this before so the method of transfer I chose was not successful, or even sane. So if you’re following along, do something else here.

I bought and sterilized in a dutch oven a large funnel and a small straining bag to match the small batch of must I had. I inserted the end of my big funnel into the straining bag and placed the two items in the sterile dutch oven. The wife then poured a bit of must into the funnel. The wine strained through the bag leaving a lug of grape skins. I then squeezed the wine from the skins. This was hard work but luckily only took about a half hour. My dad has a small wine press so we’ll use that next time. If I was to do this again with anything more than three gallons I’d buy or rent a press I think.

Now we had about 2 1/2 gallons of wine transfered to a three gallon carboy. I placed the bung and air lock on the top and placed the contraption into the shed.

In another week or so I’ll rack the wine into another three gallon carboy I have yet to purchase.

All this in the hope of getting our first eight bottles of wine next Christmas.

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It’s got tons of tiny pieces and it appears that the mechanism that holds the door to the chassis is glued in. The good news is that I only have one extra spring after re-assembling the camera.

We may be getting a new camera this Christmas.

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Basically, five business days after shipping the video camera to Canon, it’s back. They didn’t contact me, they simply fixed the thing and sent it back. I haven’t tried it yet, but if it fails again, you’ll hear about it here.

So, score a four out of five stars for Canon Support for fixing the bad camera on their dime, though a quick email would have been nice, at least to indicate that they received the camera.

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Just for fun I thought I’d try the recipe I found at the bottom of this fantastic site about making wine.

The recipe is simply:

• 3 cans of concentrated grape juice
• 1 pack of bread yeast
• 1/2 cup of sugar
• six cans of water (using the grape juice cans)
• a balloon

1. sanitize gallon jug with bleach
2. put grape juice in jug
3. put six cans of room temp water in jug
4. add 1/2 cup of sugar
5. shake shake shake
6. add rapid rise yeast package (or if using reg yeast, put in a small cup with a teaspoon of sugar and a half cup of water… let it sit for about 10 minutes or foamy and then dump in jug
7. put 5 holes in baloon with pin
8. place balloon over jug and place jug in a warm dark spot for about 2 weeks.

What a fun project. I’d recommend punching at least one hole larger than a pin prick. Otherwise you may get some overflow. It’s amazing how active the yeast can be in the right environment. I put the jug in a pantry that’s a solid 70 degrees and the concoction was bubbling like a warm, shaken can of Coke on a hot day. It almost blew the balloon off the jug.

I’ll update the site with how it tasted.

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