45 New Sketches
Done gone drawn a bunch of doodles yesterday and today.
Collect all 45 here! Pens and pencils not included. Paper sold separately.
A few others that might have slipped through the cracks recently:
Also, don’t forget my Favorite Drawings set, in which I toss some of the drawings I particularly like.
Posted on Thursday, April 5th, 2007.
Powerplant
This past weekend I had the opportunity to bring home the engine for my hot rod (pictured above). This coming Saturday I anticipate that the car itself will finally come home. I’ll post photos here.
Posted on Thursday, April 5th, 2007.
I pick up secret transmissions when I crouch under the table
The other day I attached a pair of cheap old speakers to the underside of my desk. It’s a nice, clutter-free way to get some more volume out of my laptop when I’m working there.
I was fiddling around with the volume today when I thought I heard some static that I hadn’t noticed before. So I leaned under the desk, and the instant I touched the volume knob, the noise resolved into a faint voice. Eureka! I have discovered radio.
Presumably the volume potentiometer is so poorly insulated that it acts as a radio coil. I pick up ESPN talk radio (AM 1330) around 50% volume, but haven’t found any other stations yet. It is not a very practical arrangement for casual listening, since it is barely audible and so difficult to tune, but I am inordinately pleased with this serendipitous receiver. Radio is such a straightforward technology that it happens spontaneously. Chew on that, internet!
Posted on Tuesday, March 6th, 2007.
Some Sketches
Haven’t posted many drawings recently, so here are a few.
Posted on Sunday, March 4th, 2007.
txt2dat online
Hot on the heels of Bitsticker, I’ve made an interface for Ross Crawford’s txt2dat program: txt2dat online. You just enter some text and click a button to download a custom LDraw part with the text stamped right on it. Bring some literacy to the lives of your virtual LEGO people with labeled street signs and storefronts.
Posted on Sunday, March 4th, 2007.
PSA: Mac OS X Text Editing Shortcuts
These tips work in just about every modern app that lets you edit text.
If you hold down Option and press the left or right arrows, the cursor moves left or right one word instead of one letter. If you hold down Option while pressing up or down, the cursor moves up or down one paragraph instead of one line.
Hold down the Command key while pressing left or right to jump to the beginning or end of the current line. Hold down Command and press up or down to jump to the beginning or end of the file or field.
Holding down Shift at the same time will cause the corresponding span of text to be selected. In conjunction with the well known shortcuts for cut, copy, and paste, these controls provide a handy way to manipulate and navigate text right from the keyboard. If you’re into that kind of thing.
Posted on Thursday, March 1st, 2007.
Bitsticker
As recently announced elsewhere, I’ve released Bitsticker, a little script that converts bitmap images into virtual “stickers” that can be used to decorate LDraw models.
So. Art on your LEGO. On your computer. What’s not to love?
Posted on Thursday, March 1st, 2007.
Man oh Man
This little AppleScript prompts you to name a term (typically, a command line program) to look up in your Mac’s man pages. Rather than display the manual text in a tedious little terminal window, you can peruse it in your web browser using Bwana (a free prerequisite) or render a high-quality version suitable for printing with Preview.
Here are examples of the cp manual page as rendered by both output options:
- Bwana Example (HTML)
- Preview Example (PDF)
You can download a plain text version of the script or a precompiled version ready to drop in your ~/Library/Scripts folder.
Just a handy helper for you programmer types.
Posted on Wednesday, February 21st, 2007.
Road Trip Recap
Here is a highly abbreviated summary of the road trip Dan and I took in January. The trip lasted two weeks and covered 3672 miles (thanks to space truck).
- Monday: Binghamton, NY to Hagerstown, MD by way of Pennsylvania.
- Tuesday: Hagerstown, MD to Huntington, WV by way of Charleston, WV.
- Wednesday: Huntington, WV to Nashville, TN by way of Lexington, KY.
- Thursday: Nashville, TN to Hattiesburg, MS by way of Birmingham, AL.
- Friday: Hattiesburg, MS to New Orleans, LA by way of Biloxi, MS.
- Saturday: Volunteered gutting flood-damaged homes in New Orleans with
a bunch of hippiesthe Common Ground Collective. - Sunday: Ditto.
- Monday: Good food and authentic New Orleans jazz.
- Tuesday: New Orleans, LA to Pensacola, FL.
- Wednesday: Pensacola, FL to Lake City, FL.
- Thursday: Lake City, FL to Myrtle Beach, NC by way of Georgia’s Golden Isles.
- Friday: Myrtle Beach, NC to Charlottesville, VA.
- Saturday: Charlottesville, VA to Front Royal, VA by way of Shenandoah National Park.
- Sunday: Front Royal, VA to Baltimore, MD by way of Washington, DC.
- Monday: Baltimore, MD to Binghamton, NY.
The linked photos were not necessarily taken at exactly that location, but they were taken at that general point in the trip.
Posted on Friday, February 16th, 2007.
