Topic: Posts

dear Microsoft Mac office design team,

On the whole I am successful in my project to avoid using your products, because they are, as tools, not particularly suited to the kinds of ways that I use my computer. Nevertheless, particularly with regards to programs like Excel, this is unavoidable. Good job there guys.

Nevertheless, I would like to say that it would be really nice if you could stop having your program dump temporary files in my documents folder. I understand your intentions here, but really think that the “Application Support” folder remains the customary place for such files, and I’m getting tired of deleting this folder.

thank you for understanding.

warmest regards, tycho

hello!

I’ve had a pretty good weekend I think. There’s a knitting group this afternoon, and I now have the missing needle that I’ve needed for a while to continue with my knitting progress on a sweater that I put aside a few weeks ago. THe new sweater might need an afterthought hem but that can happen later of course. Also, on the schedule for today is a trip out to get a tea pot. How cool is that?

Other newsbits:

• I’ve completed a series of tealart posts that I’m going to start airing this week or maybe next week. It outlines a cool project that I might be able to start later this year or early next year, depending on what energy I get behind it. Knitting related. I’ve had a lot of fun
• I finished chapter two of the novella. I have a good outline for chapter 3. Chapter 2’s pacing is a bit slower than I intended, and I was worried that I didn’t get enough story done in it, despite the fact that it was jammed full of stuff that needed to be there. Then I did the outline for chapter 3, and it came out perfect. I’m still on track. It’s still early, of course, but this writing experience has felt very much like everything is “clicking into place.” That’s a good thing.
• I culled a lot of my RSS reading, to 121 feeds. At the beginning of the summer I had nearly 500 feeds (many of them had stopped updating, stiil) every time I would hit refresh (per week) I would get ~1200 new items. I got down to about 250. Which meant that I refreshed a couple of times a week, but still had about 400 items to read each time, even if I was pretty regular about it. This new low, cuts out a lot of the things that I wasn’t actively reading, but wanted to “keep an eye on.” It’s hard to be a digital pack rat sometimes. It’s my hope that with fewer things to read, I’ll be able to think of the internet reading that I do as participation in a community, rather than the mass absorption of information. It might also mean that I could start to experiment with other news-reading software, that I’ve wanted to try out, but haven’t had the freedom to really use in a long time.) Vienna, google reader, etc.

This progress also means that I have some more/new tasks to complete, in addition to all the things that are lingering around:

• While I have almost two weeks worth of TealArt posts prepped and ready to go, I don’t have two consecutive weeks of posts ready, so I need to write a few different kinds of posts for this week, to make everything jive right.
• I need to get a start on chapter three of the novella, so that I have something easy to pick up on next week. having at least 500 words and possibly more, would be great, because I’m not going to get much fiction-writing time this week or next.
• Do school stuff.

That’s all for now. We’ll be in touch of course.

So I started a little throw away post here and it turned into a rather ambitious series of TealArt posts that I’ll post in the coming weeks.

I’ve sort of been neglecting TealArt for a number of weeks, using TA posts as “warm up” for fiction and other writing projects, which means I have something of a backlog (woo!) now that Station Keeping is wrapped up for the present.

SK being wrapped up for the present, ironically means I need to spend some time on that project, to get a few episodes taken care of, but I’m trying to make sure I have enough time to dedicate to the novella project. It’s precarious, I tell you.

I’ll be in touch as the weekend goes by, of course.

cheers!

Jared, of Sportive Thoughts has tagged me with a meme. And I’m totally up for such things. Because I’m a dork, and I usually get passed over for these sorts of things.

The rules seem to be: say eight things about your self, and then tag eight people who will do the same. Pretty standard, but whatever. Figuring that I have somewhere in the neighborhood of eight readers, I think you should all consider yourself tagged. Also, it’d be cool if you could post links to your blogs (where you’ve filled out the meme) in the comments for this entry. Rock on, lets get started.

1. I hate ripping out my knitting, and most of the cool knitted techniques that I now use are a product of not wanting to rip. 2. I’m an only child. 3. Regular Expressions don’t really scare me 4. I have a fountain pen that matches my computer. Old meets new. 5. I make sweaters out of yarn that most people make socks out of (very fine) and socks out of yarn that most people make sweaters out of. 6. No one guesses my academic interests/discipline right (they always think I’m into literature or fine art or history). 7. I’m left handed. 8. I’ve been a blogger for about 8 years.

Also, and I suppose this might qualify as a #8, but I just culled about 160 items from my feed reader. I think they were mostly from bloggers that don’t read this, but if it was, I will totally add you back.

Cheers!

I think it’s time to further cull the number of blogs I read. because I need to stay in touch with the blogosphere (g-d I hate that term), but I need to cut bat. Ugg.

I just signed up for a new ruby-on-rails based tumble log service that produced the following error message:

Your browser does not support javascript and we were too lazy to support browsers that do not support javascript

The ironic thing, is that my browser, does support java script. It’s basically firefox written in cocoa and nice. So rather than test a script, they checked to see if it was firefox and then borked when it wasn’t. Lame.

Besides, who needs new fangled things like that when you have wordpress and all it’s goodness. (ie. this site.)

Speaking of Rails, I’m totally going to use the ruby instiki project next time I need a wiki….

I’ve been thinking about free knitting (as in speech, not really beer, but that too,) and I have a couple of thinking points:

• Is there a layer of information that goes into knitting design and documentation that isn’t typically exposed in “closed”/conventional publications? (that would be equivalent in role to source code)?
• The role of editors and communities and the sometimes very “conventional” development models that “open” projects use.
• The way GPL/GFDL knitting projects can be used commercially.
• Technological methods of attending to such a project.
• …

Hello Everyone.

I’m selling a couple of spinning wheels, in the hopes of consolidating my flock. These are good, wheels,that would be great for beginners or old hands alike. If you have any questions, please email me at tycho@tealart.com. I’m in the St. Louis area, so if you’re nearby, and we can do a direct hand-off, that would be preferable, otherwise the buyer should expect to pay shipping costs, and all wheels are sold as is. If you want more than one of these wheels, some sort of “package” deal could be arranged.

The wheels are (all made by ashford):

1. Traditional Spinning Wheel: This is the same traditional wheel that Ashford has made for a great number of years. It’s it good shape, and is stained a medium tone. This is one of the older models, but it looks and operates the same as the newer ones. It is a single treadle wheel. Scotch Tension; Three bobbin Lazy Kate; Two ratios; and at least four bobbins. Caveat: The wheel is a little warped, it looks like this is the kind of thing that a half-wit with any knowledge of woodworking and circles should be able to straighten out, but it runs fine as is. Asking Price: $200 (new traditional’s retail base price is $370 )
2. Country Spinner: This is a to spec, country spinner production wheel. 1.5 kg bobbin, double treadle. The wheel has only marginal use, although, in the interests of full disclosure, there is a very slight lilt/warp to the wheel, that I can only notice if I look at the wheel from a certain angle. The wheel is unfinished. This is a great wheel for plying and spinning chunky yarns, as the orifice is almost an inch wide Asking Price: $350 (Country Spinners retail for $475.)
3. Joy Portable: This is a single treadle, joy folding wheel. It’s completely to spec. It’s used, but in great shape. Slightly older, and though this isn’t completely empirical I think the newer Joy’s use a thinner wood, so it’s always really sturdy, by comparison, but this isn’t something I’ve verified.) It’s used, and thus not “mint,” but it’s in great shape, and it works like a charm. This wheel also comes with a new (nearly mint) ashford, padded/coudra-nylon traveling bag. Asking Price: $400 (A New Joy’s base retail is $500 + $100 bag)

If you have any questions or would like me to take pictures, I will do my best to capture them properly. If you’re in St. Louis, we can arrange a time for you to come and visit them, again tycho@tealart.com

best, tycho

Welcome to the final part of our Station Keeping finale for this season of the project. Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you in a month or so. As always if you want to `participate <http://tychoish.com/particpate/>`_ in the next or figure seasons of the project, please contact us by email at tycho@tealart.com, and we’ll see you on the other side. Thanks so much for reading! Cheers, tycho

First Eli tried pacing, but that seemed to be distressing the others waiting for the lift with him. No one spoke, they were too worried or numb or confused, or maybe they were just tired. He contemplated going back to his quarters to see if he could get more information from the computer system, but he suspected that Julia would probably have control over resources, and his quarters weren’t on the top of any list. What’s more he didn’t get access to the network from home, in an effort to avoid taking work home with him.

“Commanders are always on duty, even when they’re not.” David’s words of so long ago echoed in his head. Except now, he figured.

Eli even stopped looking at his time piece, because he had become too concerned trying to calculate time-till-death based on available data and the time that had passed. How long it would take a reactor to go critical, how long it would take a fire to spread, how long it would take atmosphere to leak out slowly, how long it would take to die in vacuum: these thoughts wouldn’t save anybody, and didn’t make him feel any better.

Just when Eli had started to loose track of time, the intercom box crackled to life. “Commander, can you reset the lift controls from there? I think the team has cleared up the mechanics, the system just needs to be reactivated down there,” Joshua Sian’s voice called over the intercom. Eli could hear Talia directing the deck in the background. A small comfort at least.

“Ok, I think I have it,” Eli had to search through the lift controls for a second, but finally came to the proper option. The system appeared to cycle through and a moment later, the doors opened.

“You’re good to go,” Sian reported quickly and then the channel thought. This crisis wasn’t over, that much was clear, and it required every ounce of self control to keep from asking his crew what was happening. He’d be there soon enough, and they were busy.

The lift ride seemed to take even longer than usual. It might have actually been slower, if resources were needed elsewhere, or if the lift hadn’t been properly fixed. He banished the images of getting stuck for hours in the lift waiting for a rescue; but the lift trudged on.

Finally they reached the command deck. He stepped out of the lift and looked around. His people were working in a fuss, and although he thought he heard Josh say “welcome to the party,” it would take him a moment to get up to speed. He was a little dazed but he walked over to where Talia was standing and began to get a feel for what was happening.

Julia was emerged in her systems; Josh was directing the maintenance and construction squads for emergency duty; Talia was routing incoming communications to other officers and stations, and the entire place was crawling with techs and operations staff. He still didn’t know what’s happening.

“Look,” Talia said, as she transferred something to the display in front of him. She pointed with her left hand, but continued to work her controls with her right, and a moment later she was reabsorbed in her task.

The display flickered once, and then Eli saw. His jaw fell slack.

“Oh, g-d…”

“Disaster” was written by, `tycho <http://tychoish.com/tycho>`_, the creator of `TealArt <http://tychoish.com>`_ and `Station Keeping <http://tychoish.com/hanm>`_. He is a student and knitter by day and a science fiction writer by night, you can read his work elsewhere on `TealArt <http://tychoish.com>`_ and at `~/tychoish <http://tychoish.com>`_.