Category: FYI

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Kindle Fire Usability Fun

I’ve made no secret of the fact that my first gen Kindle Fire is just fine and dandy for the uses I have for it. One thing that did stand out, though, as a usability PITA from the beginning was the onscreen keyboard. For typing, not much fun. So, one of the first things I did was to locate some conductive foam in my stash of junk, urm, parts and equipment and make some styli. They worked and were a help, making “typing” on the Fire almost Good Enough, and easily OK for typing brief notes in books.

But actually buying a stylus? Fuggedaboutit. All of ’em I found on the web were too much money, once I’d made some from castoff junk, urm, parts and equipment for essentially nothing.

Page forward to today when I was standing at the checkout at our local “fell off the back of a truck” store and saw mini-styli (with handy lil 2.5mm/3.5mm plugin tethers) for a buck apiece. Since my home made styli have long since become well-worn, I picked up a couple. They work quite well, but “mini-styli” means using something about the size of a pencil nub, so. . .

At the same “fell off the back of a truck” I buy a particular ball point pen that has a Parker-compatible refill. A buck apiece. Cheap and useful, since I have more than a few Parker (and Parker compatible) ballpoint pens. While the barrels of these cheapies are fairly nice bamboo tubes, I junk the barrels and keep the refills handy. (Where “junk the barrels” means “put ’em in my stash of someday useful stuff” *heh*).

Do you see a convergence coming up here? Right. I just mated one of the mini-styli to one of those spare bamboo tubes (with a handy pocket clip already installed!) and have a pen-sized stylus that works a charm and even clips nicely to the leather case my Fire regularly occupies.

The smaller surface contact area of a stylus really makes a difference when using the onscreen keyboard, and the more normal pen size of the bamboo barreled (with the conductive part protruding for index finger contact) stylus is just right.

Rabbit trail: it’s also a wee tad easier using TeamViewer on the Fire with a stylus, well, for most things. Pinch-n-zoom isn’t all that improved. *heh* I do kinda enjoy accessing the Win8 Media Center compy with TeamViewer on my Fire. Comes in handy sometimes.

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*sigh* Looks Like It Has to Be This Year. . .

. . .when I get serious about finishing up electrical work here at twc central.

*profound sigh*

I do so very much dislike doing electrical work, but the only electrician I really trust here in America’s Third County retired a couple of years ago, and I really, really, really don’t want to pay someone to just screw things up, so that leaves me, my “consultant” (“Hey, X, can you tell me what to do/where to go for parts/etc., for such and so?”) and my several references on electrical work, codes, etc.

See, there are several ESSENTIAL circuits. Some I’ve already reworked, and they’re OK, but there is one seriously, majorly [messed up] circuit that serves stuff all over the house in ways that make no rhyme or reason that I’ve been putting off simply because it is the single weirdest electrical circuit I’ve ever run across. It serves parts of serveral rooms and one room entirely–the small room I have used as an office that is now pretty much simply a computer junk room and place with my most comfy chair for sitting at a computer.

(Yeh, yeh, I know, whine, whine, whine.)

Well, that circuit decided today was the day to go crazy. Dead. Live. Dead again. No, the circuit breaker doesn’t pop. It’s the live bus bar in the main box. *sigh* Yeh. Best solution is simply to replace the main service panel. *groan* I do NOT want to do that. Second best: call the manufacturer and order a new bus bar. Now, while that’s nearly the cost of a completely new circuit panel and still involves working around the live mains, I can do that. (Good insulation all over, including properly insulated tools, gloves, shoes, etc., then terminating the live mains with appropriately-sized insulators; still a PITA and still a bit scary. *shrugs* I have life insurance. :-)) But that, of course, will still leave me with rewiring to do, since circuits wired by a jackleg electrician and added to later by someone’s retarded pet monkey still need to be cleaned up (*cough* rewired completely *cough*).

Ah, well, in th meantime, I can bring in those three (or four–there is room in the box) circuits someone added to the house in a box outside about 30 years or so ago (going by the manufacture date of the circuit panel outside). . . coming straight off the mains! *sigh* I suppose I could cut off two of the rooms on this bad circuit and use one circuit apiece from the outside box for them. That’d (temporarily, in a hash-up sort of way) solve a world of ills. Another for an appliance circuit that I think is overloaded, although it’s never had any problems. I could almost do that recycling the conduit that’s outside, although I’d want to use new wiring.

Looks like my Spring task list has pretty well filled up, cos I do electrical work v e r y s l o w l y.

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First Time

Tuesday will be the first time since I began voting that I will vote a straight party ticket. No exceptions. Oh, there is one local candidate who’s a Democrat who is OK. He’s done as good a job as anyone else in living memory in the Sheriff’s position (which is somewhere between so-so and “not quite corrupt enough to catch out”–about par for the Sheriff’s job around here from time immemorial, I’m told *sigh*). But this year, quite apart from a late-blooming appreciation for the few points where the Republican presidential candidate does truly shine (and a grudging acknowledgement that he’s mostly all right on more than a few points), my only criterion for voting for any other candidates are that they NOT be Democrats.

It’s my own small way of voting a “punishment” vote on the general Dhimmicrappic agenda. I DGARA if any of the other Republican candidates are genuine Republicans or just country club wanna-be elite Repugnican’ts. I can deal with either of those (although genuine republicans aren’t genuinely conservative enough for me, for the most part), but I will not now, or ever, vote again for a Dhimmicrap, unless the party is utterly broken and remade with genuinely liberal principles the Founders (who sought to CONSERVE, in the sense of Burke’s conservatism, the more liberal traditions of expanding liberty protected by government that had become a British tradition from the Magna Carta onward) espoused.

Just call me a one-issue voter this election. That issue is, “Is the candidate or ballot proposition a Democratic one? If so, consign him/it to the eighth level of hell.”

–30–

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Eureka!

[N.B. Added link to one example–of many, many examples–of behaviors in support of my thesis below. ;-)]

The Zero has been an open book enigma, wrapped in a con man’s smile, covered by a flack industry’s hand-waving distractions and outright lies.

All this stuff we’ve been seeing from The Zero, his fellow travelers and cronies–the gutting of the economy and building of “golden Solyndrachutes” for the Crony Class, the bowing and scraping and (at least metaphorical) bending of knee to all sorts of foreign potentates and outright enemies of the US, the shredding of constitutional guarantees of fundamental human rights, and on and on and on: it’s all about Moochele’s campaign to combat her childhood nemesis. Yep, her childhood obesity is driving all this.

Oh, I have no picture of her as a fat child, but her psychological derangement is blatantly apparent, and its most likely cause is her own self-image, formed growing up as a fat kid.

And how does this explain The Zero’s (and his fellow travelers, etc.) behaviors? Think about if for a nano-second (that’s about all it takes, of course, to understand so simple a set of minds).

  • That Moochele drags Barry around firmly by the one ball she has let him keep is pretty much a given, taking even a brief glance at their respective public behaviors. One shudders to think what that emasculated quasi-male suffers in private (but then, considering who and what it is, notsomuch with the shuddering, ya know?)
  • That EVERYTHING Barry (and etc.) has done is aimed squarely at enfeebling the US is obvious to anyone with active brain cells numbering greater than that found in the average used Kleenex.
  • That this enfeebling of America has resulted and continues to progressively result in a cancelation of the “super-size” menu plan for Americans is also obvious. Just take a look at that package of bacon you’ve been buying for years. It doesn’t cost a LOT more (in increasingly worthless fiat dollars) now than when the Zero took office, true, but have you stopped to look closely at why that is? Yep. It’s now 12 ounces instead of 16. That package of cookies that’s only a “little more expensive” than in 2009? Yep. Smaller.
  • And as “the little people” have less and less to spend on smaller and smaller portions, Moochele’s dream from her childhood will come to pass. It’s almost biblical in scope. Or Greek god-like in petty, childish arrogance. (Those columns: whose idea were they really? Hmmm?)

And so it goes. Genius! It’s all about slowly weaning Americans from food entirely!

Continue reading “Eureka!”

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FB Rumors and Scaremongering

Deer season approaches, and here in the Ozarks that’s a VERY BIG DEAL. Saw/heard some FB scaremongering about the Bluetongue Virus (“BTV”) in deer–folks worried about what that might mean and/or warning people about it: safe to hunt, eat venison? What?

*feh* I felt like saying, “See that search bar in your browser? USE IT!!! (Well, actually, my thoughts were a bit more derogatory *heh*)

http://www.cfsph.iastate.edu/FastFacts/pdfs/bluetongue_F.pdf

(Note that I posted the link in the clear to give you fair warning that it’s a pdf file. Don’t use Adobe Acrobat Reader to view it, mmmK? Oh, I scanned the file and it’s OK, but not all pdfs are, and AAR is notoriously full of security holes for malicious folks to exploit.)

Check with the CDC and the USDA as well, if you doubt Iowa State University… though the pdf was linked by the USDA. *heh*

The takeaway, for folks who

    a. are willing to trust me to be honest with my sources
    b. have read this far

From the linked pdf:

Can I get bluetongue?
No. Bluetongue is not a significant
threat to human health.

and, from a USDA page,

“Humans do not play a role in the transmission of the bluetongue virus, either as mechanical or biological vectors. The exception to this is via poor management practices such as using contaminated needles or equipment.”

That is, don’t inject infected blood into your own bloodstream, and don’t cut yourself while processing an infected carcass and get its blood in your wound. *duh* Those are just commonsense behaviors, period. Heck, most sources, from the University of Vermont to te Brtish health services to the University of Queensland–resources all over the world–simply say it’s NOT A PROBLEM FOR HUMANS.

Infection via meat products? Notaproblem. HEAT KILLS THE VIRUS, silly scaremongers.Blood-to-blood–and a susceptible host! (which most sources say MUST be ruminants–bovine or ovine: in those families somewhere) seems to be the only possible way it can be transmitted (which is how the animals are infected: midge bites from midges already carrying infected blood from another animal. Those midges are sooooo messy in their food habits… although none of the sources I have read have indicated humans can also be infected by those same midges. *shrugs* I’d still wear an unscented insect repellent).

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“I’m Givin’ It All She’s Got, Cap’n!”

OK, 105(+) degree weather. Roofing gig on hold. Why? Oh, not the temps so much. No, worn out right now from cutting up and removing a tree that fell last night. Oh, the tree removal’s nowhere near complete, but it’s cut up enough to get it off the house (no damage to house) and moved out of the way enough to be able to get back to work on the roof… when I’ve rested up a wee tad.

Still, looks like no actual roofing today. Have 65% of the roofing done. The heat allows just spurts of activity, so it’s been slow going, but getting done.

Interesting project.

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Well, This Sucks

*sigh* I was saddened to hear of Ric Locke’s illness, and sadder still to learn just now of his passing. I had just read Temporary Duty and was spurred to search out more web info on him… and was struck by the poignancy of his circumstances: first published novel doing well; lung cancer. He seemed to be the kind of guy I would have enjoyed meeting. Someone needs to do a Sci-Fi adaptation of W.H. Auden’s lil ditty for cases like this:

“As poets have mournfully sung
Death takes the innocent young,
The rolling-in-money,
The screamingly funny,
And those who are very well hung.”

R.I.P, Ric. I never knew you, but after having read your novel, I feel as though I could have known you, at least a bit.