URLs From the Edge

Wow. My brown (er... golden) hillside is starting to turn GREEN. It's pretty amazing how quickly a desert will bloom, just given a little water. Our lawns are always fine, but that water comes from our sucking the life out of Nevada.

New stuff:
Built a pell last weekend (I think all the old crowd knows just what this *really* means). My armor has been dragged out and dusted off finally and I spend several hours last weekend cleaning up practice swords and fixing rivets. I guess it's time. Besides, I need something to break up all the stress, and getting beat up by young kids is just the thing. Now if I can just keep my knees from tearing out again. :-(

My newest student has some potential too, so that helps to goad me in the right direction and not take shortcuts. Bad fighting habits last a lifetime (I should know) so I get to rebuild the proper mindset and training in myself too.

I also rebuilt the workshop a little this weekend. I finally moved the huge pile of Burning Man gear from the spot where I dropped it last summer. I've been a bit afraid to move it, but it was also time for serious restructuring of the workflow pattern in the workshop, and it was in the way. I'm trying to establish separate work spaces for metal, electrical, leather, wood and painting. All have different tools, space needs, storage, tempo, etc. requirements. The pegboard is getting full (4' x 8') now (!) so I'll need to rethink that too. A Harbor Freight trip is order for another pegboard.

Also, building plans for a garden workbench for P. I'm basing it on a cool old bench I saw at the Canyon of the Eagles resort, where we stayed during Project Horseshoe.

So, as many of you know, I've left my cozy job at Emergent and started a new company. Wheee. The first few weeks have been administrivia; setting up all the thousand little things that a new company needs. My partners all seem pretty skilled in their respective areas, and I'm getting a chance to staff this new company with some amazing talent. I can hardly wait to get to the 'roll-up-the-sleeves' part, real soon now.

Kiaya (www.kiaya.org) has posted a request for book suggestions, I can only presume she means a "what should I read" list, so that's what I'll create...

(Since I've been remiss in updating my blog, I'll make this a lengthier update)

A lot has been happening (that's my excuse, btw) and here are some highlights from the end of December -

a. I quit my job!
b. I started a company!
c. This means less money, but perhaps fame & fortune someday
d. In the short term it also means less sleep and more stress
e. ...since we've only got six months to get something in front of consumers. Wheee!

Sadly, a new UV light (the old one broke) revealed that the Door to Moria is fading out slowly, and will need to be redone soon. I'm not sure why... perhaps the sunlight is breaking it down, or maybe it's the paint underneath. I'll make another doorway in a shadier spot and maybe I'll seal the paint first with a primer coating.

This an another image test.
Now I'm trying to embed images that I've uploaded to my local server (this one) instead of simply linking to images out on the internet someplace (e.g. flickr.com)

This is something I painted on a blank wall in my living room. Obviously, it's completely invisible unless you hit it with UV light (like I'm doing here).

Hopefully this should peg the Geek Meter for you.

:-)

So I think I figured this out:

A bit of a manual process to be sure, but I can live with this.
Now I can add pictures (yay!).

Sadly the Image module for Drupal is *not* easy to install, so this blog will be sadly deficient of pictures for a little while.

Since this is my blog, and since I'm the admin of the servers, I really don't have anyone to blame but myself for not figuring it out. It just requires more shell commands and PHP than I feel like dealing with right now.

L8R all!

So this is Nikolai. He's my parrot companion.
He's a cockatoo hybrid (which is unusual), a cross between a beautiful Greater Sulfur Crested and a large fluffy Moluccan.
The result is a magnificent coloration and the sweetest personality I've ever encountered in a non-human.
But since I'm bonded to the guy, I'm a little biased :-)
(oh, apparently I haven't installed the IMAGES module yet, so the actual picture will have to wait - There should be a link to the image file however)

So this is the fifth blog I've set up in a month. I have to think I'm getting a little better at it, but my ISP is giving me flak about a lot of my noob questions. Since I'm a pretty fair linux admin, that tells you something about the hard-core nature of the tech-support folks at my ISP.

Anyway, this is the genesis blog entry that kicks off my drupal page, so I'll add more stuff soon, I promise.

--M