08:13 – Here’s irony. I’ve been desperately hoping for an alternative to Time-Warner Cable ever since we’ve lived in this house. Yesterday, we got mail from AT&T announcing that their fiber Internet service is now available in our neighborhood, just as we’re preparing to move up to the North Carolina mountains. Ten years ago, five, even one year ago, I would have been first in line to sign up for the A&T fiber Internet service. Now it’s too late. Fortunately, the West Jefferson area already has fiber Internet service.
Barbara labeled several hundred bottles yesterday, in batches of 120 each, and will label several hundred more today. I’ll end up with something between 1,500 and 2,000 labeled bottles that I can fill this week. I’ll order another few cases of bottles today or tomorrow so she’ll have more to label this coming weekend. That’ll give us a good start on what we need to build kits for the summer/autumn rush.
Speaking of new services available in Winston-Salem, I just placed an order with Amazon on Friday and a message popped up to tell me that Winston-Salem is now one of the cities for which Amazon offers year-round Sunday delivery via US Postal Service. I’ll have to talk to the mailman and find out if that means we’ll also be getting Sunday pickup for kit shipments.
09:42 – When I converted to Linux more than a decade ago, I used a WYSIWYG HTML editor called N|Vu, which was a Linspire fork of Mozilla Composer. When N|Vu was orphaned, a community fork called KompoZer replaced it. Unfortunately, that project never really got off the ground, and it was last updated more than five years ago. The last version doesn’t work with “recent” Linux versions, which is to say any that use GTK ≥ 2.14.
So I went off looking for a WYSIWYG editor for Linux, but the cupboard appears to be bare. So I downloaded the last version of KompoZer, but in the Windows version. I hope it works there, or my only choice will be to bring up an e-commerce site, which I eventually intend to do anyway, but just not right now.
ll have to talk to the mailman and find out if that means we’ll also be getting Sunday pickup for kit shipments.
Probably not. USPS is using “non-career” employees for this, i.e. part-timers and low-wage employees that aren’t in the union. From what I can see, they don’t do anything else but deliver for Amazon.
Another variant of KompoZer was Blue Griffon, which I started using a few weeks ago, on OSX. Last updated in 2012 it works well enough – with one caveat.
I discovered that I can’t link a picture to another picture (thumbnail to full size,say). This is deliberate, as the button to do so sends you to another page where they try to sell it as an addon!
So, I dunno. Maybe when I get some time I’ll fork & update things. I think it’s all Java under the hood, which I’m only mildly acquainted with, but how hard could it be?
I tried Blue Griffon more than once, and it’s a piece of crap. It crashes frequently if you do outrageous things like, say, selecting a phrase and clicking “copy”.
Bob, have you tried Amaya?
Yep. I forget what the problem with it was, but I couldn’t use it.
Desktop Linux is withering for lack of good software. I am still muddling along, but am looking for a good 3D CAD package with architectural capability. So far, no joy.
Yeah, I notice that same thing, depending on what one wants to do, and many times if somebody wants to do something with Linux, it will involve a major concerted effort that takes a lot of time and research to get done. Yes, you can run a business on it; yes, you can do artsy and creative stuff with it. Other things, not so much. Mr. Chuck, who used to live here before he moved back to Germany?, would have periodic problems getting radio station stuff to work right with it.
And it seems most of the bells and whistles apps for building web sites run exclusively on Windows. though obviously it can be done on Linux, too. But not Dreamweaver, or Adobe Creative Suite.
@Jim B:
http://www.freecadweb.org/
And some info on possible other solutions:
http://archive09.linux.com/feature/119278
Fortunately, the West Jefferson area already has fiber Internet service.
I hope you told the realtor that this was a requirement for any house you look at. Sometimes that sort of thing has patchy coverage.
Boy oh boy, Waco, TX is to stay the hell away from, eh, homies?
http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/17/us/texas-shooting/index.html
At least nine motorhead douchebags dead so far, who knows how many wounded/injured, haha. Another great day for the human gene pool!
Thanks for the references, OFD. I had seen the one on Linux.com, and that was why I was whining. Chen Nan Yang really seems to know his stuff. Everything he mentioned is either abandonware, commercial, or not very finished. I won’t go into detail, but I looked all of them up, and, while it is possible to get work done, it will be challenging. The one I might use is Blender for rendering a 2D CAD file. It seems highly respected. As for FreeCAD, it looks great, but is in alpha. There are some reports of it not installing well on Mint, even with PPAs enabled. I think I will try it anyway.
I just came home from a trip, and before I left, I needed something in a hurry to draw a simple 2D plot plan. I used Libre Office Draw. I also looked at Libre Office Impress, but it has the same primitives and UI, and seemed more limited. I was able to make Draw work, but with difficulty. Snaps don’t work reliably, and grids disappear at some zoom levels. At one point, I changed the line width on an existing object, and the other objects I had already drawn disappeared without a trace. To be fair, I started using it without reading any help files, and expected it to work like other drawing programs. When I got stumped, I looked at the help, and was pretty unimpressed. That is a contrast to the rest of Libre Office. I have read most of the Writer and some of the Calc help, and they are excellent, at least as good and maybe better than Microsoft’s equivalents.
Back to CAD. Before I left, I looked around at CAD in the Mint Software Manager. I also looked at reviews independent from Mint. After some quick reading, I decided that I needed to look some more, but if I had to decide then, I would try LibreCAD. It is only 2D, but has many fine qualities. The most frequent comment I saw referred to bugs. It has more of what I want than FreeCAD, but FreeCAD might be more stable. FreeCAD seems to have more community support, but LibreCAD can use the .dxf format, which is a big plus in architecture, because almost everyone in that practice uses AutoCAD.
Time will tell. Since my crunch is over for now, I will take my time and actually try both of these. CAD can be difficult, and does require a lot of learning and practice. I have played with it before, but never needed it for a project. Now, I might. I say might, because the project is simple, and I should be able to communicate what I want to the engineer, who will draw and sign the “official” plans.
Good luck, Mr. Jim B; all of that is above my lowly pay grade.
And now for something a tad different; I’ve been looking at a book, “MiniFarming: Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre,” by Brett L. Markham. I turned to the section on raised beds, which is what we’re working with here, tentatively, and on page 26 we find this discussion of what is needed:
“Ultimately, for total food self-sufficiency, you will need about 700 square feet per person….Assuming the creation of beds that are 4-feet x 25-feet, That means you’ll need at least seven beds per person or 21 beds for a family of three. Using 4-feet x 8-feet beds, that would be 22 beds per person or 66 for a family of three.”
Our mostly shaded lot is about 93 feet by 140 or so feet, or a little bit more than a 1/4 acre, part of it occupied, of course, by the house, shed/studio, several trees, and the rear stone wall. I don’t see us being able to slap in 14 long beds for the two of us or 44 short beds anytime soon.
Does any of this seem far-fetched to anyone else here, Mr. nick, Dr. Bob, anyone? I dunno, maybe if it was a flat 1/4 acre with no buildings on it and out in the sun most of the day….
I stand corrected. FreeCAD CAN work with .dxf formats. More decisions… FreeCAD does look much better than LibreCAD. Any CAD users here?
Also, I second (third, fourth, …) missing Chuck W. If you are lurking, Chuck, please at least contact RBT and let him know you are all right.
re the biker brawl, anyone seen anything on the names of the gangs involved? Not a major issue, just idle curiosity.
One person at work has been informing me that Hell’s Angels really aren’t that bad. They’re like rattlesnakes: leave them alone and they’ll leave you alone. I’ll take that under advisement; I don’t have personal experience but it certainly doesn’t agree with what I’ve read and heard elsewhere.
I’m even less inclined to believe his assertions because he also tells me what US Special Forces is like, what their training is like, the kind of missions they go on, how the Green Berets behave off duty and after retirement. He’s never been in Special Forces, nor even in the Army, but he knows a couple of retired Green Berets so I guess he’s an expert. Never mind that his assertions contradict some things I’ve seen with my own eyes; while not a Green Beret myself, I’ve worked with Special Forces on this-n-that. I just roll my eyes and keep quiet. The stuff I know of my own knowledge I can’t talk about and probably shouldn’t even hint at as much as I do.
I simply do not understand the reluctance of people to pay for software to run on Linux. Do you complain that AutoCAD costs money? Do people think that there’s a human right to free applications just because the OS is free?
“…anyone seen anything on the names of the gangs involved?”
The pic on the Drudge main page shows some clowns with the Cossacks colors.
“I’m even less inclined to believe his assertions…”
Ditto. I’ve also worked with spec ops guys in SEA, usually Green Berets, and I’ve seen both spec ops guys and the Angels, along with some other biker gangs back here in CONUS and the rattlesnake analogy holds up pretty well—if you mean a rattler with rabies (yes I know that’s for mammals not reptiles, OK, whatever the reptilian equivalent is, if any) and loaded on speedballs.
I’ll go further: in a full-bore shit-has-hit-the-fan dystopian scenario with blood running in the streets, my inclination would be to shoot any of these people on sight.
“I simply do not understand the reluctance of people to pay for software to run on Linux.”
I’m guessing there are many of us out here with various needs who would be more than happy to pay reasonable money for certain apps to run on Linux.
The Scimitars was another gang going at it in a crowded shopping parking lot down there in Waco; I wonder if these are local shitbirds…
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2015/05/daniel-zimmerman/9-dead-in-waco-biker-gang-restaurant-shootout/#more-359647
I have no objection to paying for software, but do like open source. There is no prohibition to charge for FOSS. AutoCAD is not open source, and locks in users by using a proprietary file format, and some say their practice is much worse than Microsoft’s. I have purchased some inexpensive paid Windows CAD programs, and have admired just how good they were. One was TurboCAD, and the other was a 3D program. Full disclosure: played with it; I have never had a project where I needed CAD. I once considered buying a version of AutoCAD for homeowners. My recollection was that it cost “only” $200, and was well suited for home design. Even if it is still around, I wouldn’t consider it now, because I am trying to be all Linux, and Linux native software. Just a goal, and so far, I am pretty happy. I encourage lots of my retired friends to consider Linux, but not one has taken me up yet, because Windows comes with their computers for “free,” and works fine for them. I also encourage them to at least try Libre Office (and before that, Open Office,) but still no takers. I just don’t get it. These people would rather pay $100 or more than try something that is free. They seem to have more money than brains, but it is certainly their choice. I actually have one friend who claims that nothing free could possibly be worthwhile, citing TANSTAFL. I try in vain to convince him that there are exceptions.
Do people think that there’s a human right to free applications just because the OS is free?
Some in the software community do. RMS, for example.
@Mr. Jim B; yeah, I’ve run into that, too. A lot of peeps are just married to certain apps after a while and don’t wanna learn anything new or change anything. So they’d rather shell out dough to the monoliths like M$ and the Apple proprietary garden instead.
RMS? That guy needs to get laid. Preferably with someone of the same species.
According to the UK Daily News, “Multiple police sources told the Waco Tribune it was a fight between the Cossacks and the Bandidos. Based on their leathers, it appears the Scimitars were working in alliance with the Cossacks. ”
Looked like white v black to me based on bodies and groups. Not familiar with the gangs themselves.
Re: Hell’s Angels. They are hugely active in western Canada. The papers are full of their stories. Trafficking drugs, sex, violence, shootings in the street, 1% going strong. Here at home, you almost never hear anything about HA.
Re: cad, it’s probably worth considering just running a windows machine with DraftSight (free and fully supported by Dassault Systèmes.) The hardware is cheap enough, and comes with the os license. I used TurboCad from version 4 to 12. I was an occasional user, but I put $1000’s into it over the years. Sketchup, DraftSight, and Visio do it for me now. I used to be a fairly regular user of visio. For 2D CAD it is pretty good. It opens and writes .dxf and .dwg but there are compatibility issues. Heck, there are compatibility issues between different versions of AutoCad. Old versions of visio are cheap. It’s possible to generate 2d drawings in sketchup using sections, but they want extra money to open .dwg files.
nick
wow, shortwave is wide open tonight. Shropshire, England is booming in at 12Mhz. I never get england. Getting Romania clearer than Havana. They are using Jean Micheal Jarre’ for musical transitions. I thought I was the last person in the world who liked him.
nick
“Re: Hell’s Angels. They are hugely active in western Canada.”
Ditto Quebec along the Vampire State border and in the Montreal area.
We’ll see lots and lots more of this sort of thing in the coming years; we all gotta start being, if we’re not already, in minimum Condition Yellow all the time, and in crowds and/or spotting likely suspects, Condition Orange. Watch your 6 at all times and in all places. People today were out there in Waco shopping in the stores, walking back and forth to their vehicles, etc, and the cops had even had a big heads-up on this. A miracle no innocents were harmed.
Jim B, apologies if my rhetorical questions came out too aggressive. As a contributor of both money and time to many FOSS projects, I get annoyed at the seemingly endless complaints from people about software they haven’t paid for, but people complain and that’s just a fact of life. However, I get really bent out of shape at the people who complain about software companies having the nerve to charge for Linux applications, or for support. These complainers never contribute in any way to free projects, of course.
ech, yes, RMS wants all software to be free-as-in-speech, but he puts his money where his mouth is, so to speak. I could make a good case that no one in history has done as much to make free software available to the public. Also, contra your suggestion, he does not attempt to keep people from making a living selling software or support; he simply wants the source code to be at least as available as the executable.
@OFD: You may want to check out this guy’s YouTube site. Not only is he currently experimenting with raised beds under a hoop house, he also restores antique radios and televisions.
Tx for the link, Mr. medium wave!
We got six 4-feet x 6-feet raised beds underway so fah up here, in the area of our back yard that gets the most sun; mainly to see what will grow best in our short growing season and climate, so an experiment at this stage. We will also set up some containers along the driveway and I may get some hydroponic experiments going with grow lights up in the attic and down in the basement at some point.
@OFD wrt garden size,
Look at the Victory Garden idea for some info. I’ve got a great 3 season british victory garden planting plan, but I can ‘t find it at the moment.
Here’s a link to give you some idea of coverage:
http://www.hipchickdigs.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/victory-garden-planner.bmp
I haven’t done the math on your example, but it sounds good as a swag.
I am WAY underestimating garden size. I think most preppers (who aren’t homesteaders) are too. This is based on my experience so far this year and last year.
There are more intensive growing systems, square foot garden, hugelkultur, but they will require a lot more effort and knowledge.
Like all things prepping (and life in general) it turns out that gardening for REAL amounts and varieties of food (not just 100 tomatoes and a few beans) is a lot more involved than it looks at first glance. Add to the historical reality that whole settlements were wiped out by a bad crop, and I think there is a lot of “arm waving” in the community. Too often people dismiss the difficulty of ‘simple’ things. Gardening is turning out to be one for me. In theory, it’s easy. In reality, it’s difficult.
Given the length of time for each iteration, it’s time to get started learning!
nick
And if it wasn’t bad enough that we’ve given Ramadi back and resupplied the enemy, there’s this:
“Marine killed and 21 others hospitalized after V-22 Osprey crashes and explodes during training exercise in Hawaii.”
Used to see the guys training at Pendleton, and NAS North Island. Didn’t see many Ospreys. Saw SeaStallions, LCACs, MK4s etc. I have the impression that the Osprey has killed more Marines than the GWOT, but that can’t be literally true.
RIP
nick
“And if it wasn’t bad enough that we’ve given Ramadi back and resupplied the enemy, there’s this:”
What’s wrong with you, son? We do our best work giving shit up to the enemy, giving stuff back to them, and losing Marines for bullshit operations. See “Hamburger Hill,” and a bunch of other examples. Time-tested, great way to reduce the pop of violent young men with no jobs.
On the Osprey:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accidents_and_incidents_involving_the_V-22_Osprey
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hamburger_Hill
“I am WAY underestimating garden size.”
Apparently we are doing likewise here. With less than 1/4 acre and not a whole lot of sunlight even during the warm months, I don’t see mathematically that we can grow enough stuff here on our own to keep us alive, not exclusively through gardening, anyway.
However….we are surrounded on three sides by many, many square miles of some of the most fertile, flat, watershed farmland in the Northeast, if not the country. Most of it is used for corn at the present time, and grazing dairy cows, except, of course, for the big factory farms whose cows never leave the damn factory barns, and those are the ones leaching phosphorous and other crap into the watershed and Lake Champlain, so that we get the algae blooms here in the bays every year.
But I wonder if, when the time comes, we can work out co-op arrangements for gardening on all this land. Say, let the village here work 20 acres on what is now adjacent farmland in return for more work on their stuff, defensive operations, fixing machinery, setting up commo gear, tutoring kids, or whatever.
I’d also like to see us change the name back to Port Washington and rehab the pier and build another one and start attracting commercial waterway traffic again in conjunction with the rehabbed rail freight line. Years ago a trolley actually ran down here from the big city of Saint Albans itself, pop. 8k.
All just pie in the sky right now, though. We shall see.
I will second what Roy said. I live in a town of 10,000 people, and we are fortunate to have two “choices” for high speed Internet. Slow and reliable and fast and not so reliable. Lots of people we know are near us and have neither choice. Don’t rely on the agent for this. Before you put in an offer call the Internet provider and verify service is available there.
Yes, I’d planned to verify Internet service before we make an offer.
Ashe County is interesting. I’d have expected the fiber service to be in town and working its way outward. Instead, it was available first on the edges of the county and is working its way in. That’s apparently because the fiber project was funded by some government grant to bring high-speed Internet to underserved areas.
Before you put in an offer call the Internet provider and verify service is available there.
May not work. Providers have been known to lie because their maps are wrong, zip codes are useless, whatever. Instead knock on the doors of the pending neighbors and ask them what they know about getting high speed internet.
@nick, thanks. I saw the Dassault CAD and Trimble Sketchup (formerly Google,) but they are Windows only. Your advice to just run a Windows machine for CAD is probably the easiest route, and I even have a pretty good desktop with a copy of Win 7 just gathering dust. I am afraid to try going back to Windows because I would likely stay there. Unlike some others, I really like Windows a lot, and even do some volunteer IT support. That gig keeps me a little informed on the Windows front, and I am always impressed at how easy and mature it can be. Of course, that is also familiarity, which I still don’t have with Linux, even after more than five years. I REALLY want to give Linux a fair chance, but do realize that no one OS or application has it all. There will always be another that has some compelling features. For me, Linux harkens back to the spirit of the early days of computing, and I especially like the independence it gives. But that comes at a price.
BTW, I have even tried reverse psychology on some who refuse to even consider Linux. I challenge them to try it and see if they have the chops to make it work. Even that failed. If a plodder like me can make it work, they certainly could. I agree with OFD that some are attached to a way of doing things and won’t change. I am that way, but I had to change many times over the years. I will always remember RBT’s comment that it was probably easier to make the transition from Word to Open Office Writer than than between different versions of Word.
“Instead knock on the doors of the pending neighbors and ask them what they know about getting high speed internet.”
+1
And/or just ask people in the local restaurants, library, stores, etc.
We’ve had Comcast for a few months now, and it’s dropped for us maybe twice in that time, for a couple of hours each time, and that meant losing the net, tee-vee and phone. No explanation from them, but I really didn’t try to find out and put it down to the extremely windy conditions outside at those times. Otherwise it’s been pretty good. Vermont still has a few isolated rural areas using the old dial-up and it doesn’t look like anyone will extend fiber or anything else to them anytime soon.
They are using Jean Micheal Jarre’ for musical transitions. I thought I was the last person in the world who liked him.
If you like his music, check out VnV Nation. It’s got the same symphonic feel as Jarre’, but with vocals and a dance beat.
ech, yes, RMS wants all software to be free-as-in-speech, but he puts his money where his mouth is, so to speak. I could make a good case that no one in history has done as much to make free software available to the public. Also, contra your suggestion, he does not attempt to keep people from making a living selling software or support; he simply wants the source code to be at least as available as the executable.
He has done a lot to promote free software. However, I’ve read direct quotes from him where he essentially says it is immoral to write code for money unless the source is public. Do installs, support, etc. is fine, but selling code is right out.
All the code that I’ve written for money has been supplied with source code. In the case of my first job, it written in an interpreted language (MUMPS), and was protected by strong trade secret and non-disclosure agreements with the customers. At my second job, we supplied the source to the customers, but it was also protected by NDA and classification agreements. At NASA, they got the source as part of our contractor work orders. Some was protected by NDA – on Orion, for example.
I remember MUMPS running in medical/health-care sites on DEC’s VAX/VMS systems. I guess that dates me pretty good.
I remember MUMPS running in medical/health-care sites on DEC’s VAX/VMS systems.
I was programming in it on PDP-11s, in the MUMPS-11 dialect. The VAX version came later and was Standard MUMPS. I also did instrument interfaces for the medical labs we were working at using PDP-11/03 microcomputers. Written in machine code since the company couldn’t afford an RSX-11 license at the time. (MUMPS-11 ran without an operating system – you logged in directly to the interpreter.) I wrote the code on engineering paper and used a “jump ruler” to figure out relative addresses for branch and jump instructions.
I guess that dates me pretty good.
And me.
Wow. Tempus fugit.
My first full-time IT gig was as a sys admin for a bunch of engineers designing and building fire suppression systems and alarms; we ran RSX on a PDP-11 and had a microVAX, too; later, an IBM PC-XT or -AT, I forget which, but it had pretty color graphics, sort of nice after all the time spent since ’79 looking at green VT-100s. From there I went to DEC itself, supporting around 70 or so VAXen in five buildings and multiple data centers on night shifts.
I’d happily work on OpenVMS full-time again (HP has reversed its decision to stop supporting it.) but the gigs are few and far between now. Actually, ANY gigs are that way now, it seems.
If I’d been born 3-4 years later I would have learned my trade on Vax 11-780s running VMS. Instead, I had the good fortune to learn on a CDC Cyber-173 running NOS/BE – the hardware and OS of heaven.
All hail Seymour Cray!
All hail Niklaus Wirth!
I’ve used a DG with the green screen, and output to the line printer on green bar paper…..
circa 1984
nick
I’ve used a DG with the green screen, and output to the line printer on green bar paper…..
I predate that by many years. Started out on an IBM 1401. No screen, just switches and hollerith cards. Reliable machine that I have seen working in a 95 degree, 95% humidity room. Had to adjust the card reader to read the swollen cards but the machine still hummed along.
With the right program and all the RF emitted by the beast, you could place a transistor radio on top and recognize the song. First generation MP1 player.
“Reliable machine that I have seen working in a 95 degree, 95% humidity room.”
I’ve seen a small data center room full of microVAXen lose the A-C due to snow blocking the roof vents and when temp inside got up over 100, they crashed, one by one. That was a quarter-century ago while I was also pursuing the MA in English, haha.
@Ray, that was how you got sound effects on the TRS-80. You put a radio near the box, and games were written with timing loops that made sounds….
Worked pretty well.
It’s worth remembering that people actually wrote useful software in 4K of ram with a cassette tape for mass storage.
I’m pretty sure some business apps ran in 4k, but if not, then 16k certainly.
nick
“I’m pretty sure some business apps ran in 4k, but if not, then 16k certainly.”
VisiCalc, on a DEC Rainbow.
Hmm. I started on an IBM 701, which was the predecessor of the IBM 1401.