Josh asked me the other day about how we backed up early hard disks when we didn’t have small portable drives, the internet, NAS, or writable DVDs. I started telling him about my teak box with the tambour top that held 50 (or was it 100?) 1.4MB 3½” floppy disks. I remember a routine of running a backup program while feeding disk after disk into the machine for an hour or two every day.
Author: ron (Page 6 of 9)
One critically-important aspect to running WordPress sites is keeping everything up-to-date. Not just the WordPress software itself, but themes and plugins. I wrote a quick script to keep everything tidy; it runs as a cron job, and it runs often.
I remember the shoe store my mother used to take my brother and me to when we were little. I remember men handling my ticklish feet and squeezing them with cold metal implements. I remember being asked, over and over, “Do those feel okay? This is really important. Don’t step off the carpet!” No, they hurt like hell. All of them. Every time. But I quickly got the message that the right answer was to say they feel okay. I remember how, every day, the best part of the day was taking my shoes off at night. When I got to high school, I stopped wearing shoes in favor of tatami sandals. Continue reading
The garden is growing, and I was able to harvest almost enough basil to make a batch of pesto. Even though I had to add some commercial leaves, it still tasted better (in my mind?) than when everything comes from the store.
Yum.
There are a number of cool-looking thumb drive holders around, but I decided to roll my own using FreeCAD and my 3D printer. It holds six drives with space in the middle for any loose caps. Continue reading
I’m not talking about computer memory.
I have a fair size collection of 1/4″ drive bits. Flat and phillips screwdrivers. Many sizes of Torx. Star drives, nut drives. But any way you cut it, sifting through them loose in a box was a mess.
It reached a critical point when I knocked the box off my tool chest and they scattered all over the garage floor. Colorful vocabulary and lots of searching on hands and knees ensued.
A quick FreeCAD design and some 3D printing later, and they’re all organized. Files are available on Thingiverse.
Our tradition is that I set up the pool after the first day the temperature exceeds 90°. Today was pool day.
Even after all these years, I still marvel at how small the box is. Continue reading
I don’t want to get into a discussion about the “right” way to brew coffee. People have different tastes, and I’m okay with that. I even like the occasional cup of cheap powdered instant. It’s not coffee, more like Caltech pizza, but I find the taste intriguing. Did I mention occasionally?
Can you wait 12 hours for a cup of coffee? This is currently my favorite brew for daily consumption.
The garden is in that sweet spot: everything is young and growing fast, but the tomato worms and other would-be diners haven’t discovered it.
There isn’t enough basil for pesto yet, and the tomatoes are still small, but there’s mint enough to garnish our couscous and basil enough for soup and there’s lots of promise.
