Articles
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Refurbishing the Espresso Machine (in pursuit of coffee)
September 11, 2020
Read moreThe heating element on my Rancilio Silvia finally died for real, after faking it a couple times previously. One day the machine was happily cranking out shots of espresso, and the next day I flipped the power switch and the GFCI breaker immediately tripped. Arrgh, I need coffee! Fortunately I have one or two (OK, six actually) backup ways to make coffee, but dangit it’s just not the same.
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Writing Machines
September 8, 2020
Read moreTODO: add photos of the devices
As part of my intermittent but long-standing quest for the perfect solution to electronic writing, I recently revisited some of my old devices, and acquired a new one. The objective of this quest is to make writing technical papers, letters, autobiographical notes, and blog posts accessible when not sitting in front of a proper computer; generally speaking it translates to 1) a decent keyboard, 2) a display of at least a few lines by more-than-a-few columns, 3) compact size, 4) low power consumption, 5) nearly-instantaneous startup, 6) inexpensive enough to tolerate being used in public settings where it might be damaged or “borrowed”, like e.g. a bar.
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Coe Bikepacking Addendum
September 8, 2020
Sadly, almost everything I saw when I rode through Henry Coe State Park back in March on a bikepacking trip, has been burned by the recent fires. Fire is a natural process and passess through Coe on a pretty regular cadence; I worked on the last big fire in there in 2007 and it burned pretty hot in some places. And yet, the area recovered quickly. You’d hardly know it burned, if you didn’t know what to look for. So I’m hopeful that this latest conflagration will not have been too devastating.
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Blog Update Addendum
September 8, 2020
Read moreI had a bit of a breakthrough with this blog that requires an update to the previous update. I was struggling with how to make my Tufte-style theme work with GitHub’s automated Jekyll build; the Tufte theme doesn’t adhere to GitHub’s “safe” plugins list, so it won’t build in their system. It almost works – there’s really only a couple features that seem to prevent it from working, but they’re pretty integral to the look-and-feel I want from the theme. It took me a couple trips down blind alleys, but now I have a working solution.
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PowerPoint is the wrong hammer
April 28, 2020
Read moreOut of an email discussion at work , came this, which I thought I’d share since I seem to have to repeat it on a semi-regular basis… indeed, we are doomed to re-learn most lessons.
ATMOAccording To My Opinion (warning: rant begins) there is no plausible “good” use-case for Power Point, but it has become so embedded in the technocracy that it’s extremely difficult to back out of the habit. One can use it to present good material, but that doesn’t make any use whatsoever of the features that make PowerPoint what it is. Better to use a different tool altogether, lest one be tempted by the “features”.