If you like App Images and want an easier way to find, download, and update them, check out AppImage Pool. This app is pretty cool — come see!
This post, Find, Download, and Update AppImages Quickly with this Neat Tool is from OMG! Ubuntu!. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
Our guest this week is George Dyson. George divides his time between building boats and writing books, and some fo the books he has written include Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship, Darwin among the Machines: The Evolution of Global Intelligence, Turing’s Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe.
Subscribe to the Cool Tools Show on iTunes | RSS | Transcript | Download MP3 | See all the Cool Tools Show posts on a single page
Show notes:
Peavey ($74)
“[This is] a tool that has literally not changed at all for 150 years, and it is still made by the company that it’s named after, the Peavey Company in Maine. If you do any work in the woods, with logs, chainsaws, things like that, it allows you to basically put a big leaver on the end of a log and roll the log around. It’s just a beautiful work of art tool and sort of a miracle that it’s still made and survives. You spear the log, and then that hook catches and suddenly you have a really secure five- or six-foot lever arm on the log. I cut a lot of firewood on the beach, and before you cut a log you want to roll it over and clean the sand off. It’s the only tool that’ll allow you to do that without sort of killing yourself. … It’s a classic, absolutely essential and unequaled tool for any serious woodsperson.”
Netting Needles ($9) and How to Carve a Net Needle and Weave a Survival Gill Net video,
“[This] the net needle, which isn’t really a needle. Some people would call it a similar to a weaver’s shuttle, but it’s a little, very cleverly-made design. In fact, you can find them more or less unchanged in archeological sites that are 5000 or 6000 years old. It’s a small sort of cigar that you wind up with net-mending twine or string or anything like that, and then you have a pretty good length of string or twine on this thing that it gives you something to hold on to, and you can immediately mend nets, or of course I use them lashing kayaks together. So it’s the kind of thing that I wouldn’t go anywhere without one in my toolkit somewhere. They’re made in all sorts of sizes. There’s flat ones, and there’s three-dimensional ones, which are better. They’re still made in Norway, and there’s a company in the United States, the Loomis Company, that makes the Norwegian pattern. … It just becomes almost automatic or second nature that as you’re weaving this thing in and out and let come off every now and then you have this handle you can pull on, so it’s a kind of tool that becomes part of your mind.”
Lanolin in bulk ($50/gallon)
“Lanolin, or wool grease, which is actually a wax, is a by-product of cleaning raw wool, but it’s the best part — it’s how sheep in wind-swept northern Scotland stay waterproof and warm. It is used in all kinds of products, from lip balm to anti-corrosion coatings, but you can buy it pure and unadulterated for about $50/gallon which is a lifetime supply for you and many friends. It is absolutely unexcelled for chapped skin and lips, and is favored by all serious mariners for lubricating through-hull sea-cocks and corrosion protection of metal parts and fasteners that may be exposed to years of saltwater before having to be taken apart. … it’s the greatest corrosion protection known to the maritime world. Even modern, the most modern, sailboats will still use lanolin. I gave a whole lot to everybody for Christmas. I bought little cosmetic jars, and if you heat it up … It’s very interesting. It’s actually a wax, not a grease, so if you heat it up a certain temperature then it becomes liquid. You can fill the containers, and everybody loves it. It’s like 100-proof lip balm with nothing else diluting it.”
Scrivener
“I make my living writing books, and so my tool for writing books is a software package called Scrivener that actually Neal Stephenson gave me sort of a beta version of when it first came out. It changed my life overnight. I had been struggling writing. I wrote my first book with no computer at all, I guess with a typewriter, and the second in Word on floppies, and the third one with Word and a hard drive. And then I got Scrivener, and in 24 hours I was using the program and it became transparent, and I never used Word unless I had to again. It’s just a miraculous piece of software written by one person. So I looked at my last book, Turing’s Cathedral, and if you open up the Scrivener package it is 3730 separate files of things that I collected and worked into the book, yet when you look at it from the outside, from the writer’s side, you just are sort of looking at a typewriter, and you can pull out the ideas it. …. You can just throw out all this stuff and then shuffle it. It’s miraculous for a piece of software for organizing.”
We have hired professional editors to help create our weekly podcasts and video reviews. So far, Cool Tools listeners have pledged $400 a month. Please consider supporting us on Patreon. We have great rewards for people who contribute! If you would like to make a one-time donation, you can do so using this link: https://paypal.me/cooltools.– MF
E6000 Craft Adhesive, 3.7 Fluid Ounces ($7)
E6000 High Viscosity Adhesive – 3.7 fl. oz. ($7)
12 Snip Tip Applicator Tips for E6000 Craft Glue ($6)
E6000 Craft Adhesive Mini (4 Pack) ($7)
High Viscosity Adhesive, 10.2 fl oz Cartridge ($11)
UV Resistant Industrial Adhesive, 3.7 fl oz Clear ($13)
Jewelry And Bead Adhesive With 4 Precision Applicator Tips ($7)
Fabri-Fuse Adhesive – 4 fl oz Bottle ($8)
Adhesive Spray, 4 Fluid Ounce ($6)
E6000 Medium Viscosity Industrial Strength Adhesive, Black ($9)
Transcript:
You can find this stuff in any hardware store and you can now find it in craft stores too because it’s a go-to for glueing things to fabric and leather. The reason people like this stuff is because it’s strong and permanent, like an epoxy, but has the flexibility of a silicone caulking. If I want to get something down quick, I go for my hot glue gun or some super glue. But if I want to make a lasting, permanent bond, I reach for this because it doesn’t get brittle.
But this particular tube design has its drawbacks. One is that it tends to dry out before you reach the end of the tube. Two is that the thick glob coming out of here is hard to work with and tends to smear around the threads of the opening, sealing it shut or making it impossible to put the lid back on.
So, two things I learned while doing research. One is that you can order a high-viscosity variation of this stuff in the same 3.7 ounce tube. It looks like this but says high-viscosity on the side. I’ll show you what the glue looks like a little later, but it’s essentially a runnier version that can be easier to work with.
The second thing I learned is that you can get inexpensive tips for these that screw on. I got a dozen for $6. You can cut the tip for exactly the size of bead you want to put down. When you’re done, a little tape on the tip is enough to seal it off.
Alright, so here’s another way to go. These are mini tubes of the same stuff. I got a 4-pack for $7. This solves two problems. It puts out a smaller bead of glue because it has a smaller opening. And you don’t have to worry as much about the glue drying out because there’s less glue at stake and the other tubes are sealed up until you need them.
On the other end of the spectrum, you can get E6000 in a 10 oz cartridge format. If you need to glue up a ton of barbie dolls to your Burning Man art car, this a cool way to do it. You can cut the tip to get the bead size you want, and you get the added control of the squeeze trigger. At $12, it’s a good value.
You can also get this stuff in high or medium viscosity. This one is high and I’ll show you what that looks like. Here’s a line of standard E6000. And here’s a line of high-viscosity. Still pretty goopy, but easier to work with, I think. It’s a similar feel to high-temp hot glue.
I also found out about UV E6800. This is a UV resistant variation of E6000 that comes in either a tube or a 10 oz. cartridge. It’s a little pricier, but if you’re using it on a boat or a car or something that’s going to stay outdoors and you don’t want the glue to yellow, it’s good to know this is an option.
Now, for crafters, there’s a lot of interesting E6000 variations on the market. One example is this 1 oz. tube of E6000 for Jewelry and Beads. I picked this up for $8 and I didn’t notice anything different about the adhesive itself compared to standard E6000. I did like, though, that it includes 3 metal tips to help place precise drops of the stuff. I was able to clear these out with compressed air and a small drill bit and reuse them over and over.
Next up, a real departure for E6000. It’s called Fabri-Fuse, it’s $9, and it’s specifically made for attaching things to fabric. It comes in different colors, including some glitter options. It’s definitely a different formulation from typical E6000. As an experiment, I tried using it for gluing up a 3D printing project and it didn’t work at all. But to be fair, it doesn’t list plastic as a compatible material. It worked great for gluing on a patch to my jacket, but if you’re hoping to use this for wearable electronics or LEDs, I’d stick with the standard E6000.
I also couldn’t resist checking out a E6000 spray. Again, don’t let the brand name name fool you. This is a different formulation that’s probably best suited for collages and crafts. It doesn’t put out a fine mist like a 3M Super 77, but it’s also not as stinky. Could be a great fit for some project, but not a great fit for what I’m doing at the moment.
Finally, just to bring us back to the original E6000 that I know and love, here’s one last variation on the original that I didn’t know about. E6000 black!
-- Donald Bell
[Cool Tools has a YouTube channel with many more tool reviews]
These are plastic razor blades made by Scraperite. They come with a little holder. And what these are good for is any task where you need to delicately scrape something off of a surface that you don’t want to scratch up with conventional razor or pallete knife.
Just last week, my wife found this great tin-framed mirror at a yard sale, that had old stickers and gunk on it. I put a few drops of goo-gone on there and used the plastic blade to work off the stickers. It felt like the perfect tool for the job and it spared me from having to pick away at it with my nails. Plus, you can sharpen these with sandpaper if you want a really fine edge. The same can’t be said of your fingertips.
-- Donald Bell
Hardline Products Scraperite 5 Plastic Razor Blades with Holder ($13)
Available from Amazon
Android’s designed largely for mobile users, but since it has Linux at its core, it can work with a desktop environment as well. If you’ve ever wanted a Linux-style GNU workspace for Android, this guide from XDA can show you how.
Want to keep an eye on your CPU temperature on Ubuntu? You have a lot of different apps to choose from, including this neat app called 'Sensors Unity'.
This post, Display CPU Temperature in the Unity Launcher, was written by Joey-Elijah Sneddon and first appeared on OMG! Ubuntu!.
It’s no secret that we adore the Aeropress coffee maker here at Lifehacker and one of the reasons is just how many variables you can tweak to make a good cup of coffee . If you’re looking for some new methods, the winner of the World Aeropress Championship (yes, that’s a thing) shares his.
After you’ve transformed to a werewolf, do these things
Your Ubuntu 15.10 Wily Werewolf download has finished, and installation has begun. Now you’re wondering what to do next.
Well, no worries, we’re here to help.
Below you’ll find our list of the top 10 things to do after installing Ubuntu.
You’ll find plenty of useful tips and suggestion in this post if you’re new to Ubuntu. It’s not comprehensive though so do also check out the comments at the bottom to read other users’ advice about their post-install must-dos!
Waffle served up, now for the cream.
Ubuntu 15.10 Wily Werewolf may lack the bite of its namesake but there is still some nifty new changes shipping inside it.
For example, you can now create application shortcuts on the desktop by dragging apps out from the Dash. Not a ground changing feature but certainly one worth knowing about, right?
It doesn’t matter if you’re a seasoned Ubuntu pro or fresh faced newbie it always helps to know what’s new and notable about the latest release.
Check out our rundown of Ubuntu 15.10 for the full skinny on what’s new.
See What’s New In Ubuntu 15.10
It might sound strange to tell you to check for updates just after you’ve installed — but you should.
Why?
Well, for one: you might not be reading this list on release day. In the time between Ubuntu spinning up it’s installation media and you installing it chances are a bunch of security, stability and bug fixes have accrued.
After All, bugs don’t adhere to the same deadlines as developers do!
Open the Software Updater tool from the Dash and click the button to check for updates.
Install GPU drivers
You want the best performance from your device you’re going to want to install graphics drivers. These will make the Unity desktop run smoothly (it’s a composited environment) and let you get the best frame-rates from games, media content and apps.
Ubuntu supports most graphics hardware out of the box using free, open-source drivers. These are getting better all the time.
If you plan to play the latest Steam games on Ubuntu, watch high-definition video, or play around with GPU intensive apps like Blender and Lightworks, you will need to install the latest proprietary Linux graphics drivers available for your hardware.
Gamers can also use a brand new PPA that makes it easier to get the latest Nvidia Linux graphics drivers as they’re released.
Want to listen to music?
A spaghetti tangle of legal issues means Ubuntu cannot play MP3s and other popular media content ‘out of the box’. It’s an inconvenience, but one that is easily solvable.
During installation you can check a ‘Enable Restricted Formats’ box to have all the required multimedia codecs pulled in and installed alongside the system.
If you forgot to do that, or are upgrading from an earlier release, you can install multimedia codecs yourself straight through the Ubuntu Software Centre.
Yes, this really is Ubuntu
Ubuntu’s default theme is nice enough, but it is hasn’t changed much in several years. If you’re coming from a modern operating system or newish Linux distribution, Ubuntu can look a little humdrum.
If you want a stylish looking Ubuntu desktop that people will swoon over, try an alternative theme. Our favourite right now is called Arc but there are tonnes more available.
The ‘Appearance‘ section of the Ubuntu System Settings app also lets you tailor other parts of the Ubuntu desktop to your tastes:
A glut of additional layout and customization options — from changing the desktop font to choosing which side window controls appear — can be toggled, tweaked and toyed with using the free Unity Tweak Tool available to install from Ubuntu Software Center.
Install Unity Tweak Tool from the Ubuntu Software Center
Do You Prefer App Menus To Be In-App?
Application menus appear in Ubuntu’s top panel by default and auto-hide after a set number of seconds.
A great way to save space, but also a great way to confuse. When you’re using several apps it’s often hard to know which app the ‘Files’, ‘Edit’, etc strip at the top of the screen belongs to — or where they’ve suddenly vanished to!
Ubuntu provides options inside the System Settings >Appearance pane that allow you to choose where app menus appear.
If you’d rather see menus inside the window of the app they below to:
Ubuntu also lets you set app menus to ‘Always Show’ (that is, not hide after a few seconds) but it’s not obvious how to access it.
We could walk you through the recommended way, installing dconf-editor, finding the schema, manually editing, it, etc, but honestly it’s just far quicker (and somewhat safer) to paste the following command into the Terminal to set menus to always show:
gsettings set com.canonical.Unity always-show-menus true
To undo the change (i.e. set app menus to hide until you mouse over them) run:
gsettings set com.canonical.Unity always-show-menus false
Done.
Ubuntu offers a small but capable crop of apps by default, ranging from big names like LibreOffice and Firefox to lesser known tools like Totem and Shotwell.
Great though they may be they might not be your favourites.
The Ubuntu Software Centre offers up thousands of free applications to install, including:
You’ll also find a wealth of awesome software available outside the Ubuntu Software Centre. Some notable apps include:
View App Posts on OMG! Ubuntu!
Dropbox for Linux Works Great
Backing up your files and documents is, like, super important. You know that.
Whether you stash your stuff in Dropbox, OneDrive or Google Drive, you’ll want to get everything in sync, soon as.
Not all of these solutions integrate with Nautilus, the file manager used in Ubuntu.
Flash sucks, but there may be a few sites you like to view that require it. Adobe officially stopped supporting Flash on Linux several years back, and many web-browsers are dropping support for it’s NPAPI architecture.
The best all-round solution is to download Google Chrome. It comes with an up-to-date version of the Flash plugin built in.
If you want to watch Amazon Instant Video, Hulu or any other sites that uses DRM through Hal, we’ve got a guide on that.
Security & Privacy
The Unity Dash is great for finding files, apps and snippets of online data in a pinch. Just open the Dash, type your query — be it ‘Firefox’ or ‘Weather in Townsville’ — and Ubuntu will try to return results that match.
But if you don’t want to see local weather results when searching for jpgs, or wikipedia links every time you look for an album, you can turn it off.
Whatever your preference head to the Privacy & Security section of System Settings to:
It sounds obvious but don’t get so sucked into using Ubuntu that you forget to tell others about how awesome it is.
If you try Ubuntu and like it do spread the word. How? Maybe try one of the following:
Those are our action items post release, but what are yours? Share your tips and tweaks in the comments section below.
A polite notice: if you don’t like the Unity desktop, don’t install Ubuntu. Several community flavors ship with other desktop environments installed and integrated by default. Save yourself the hassle of ‘uninstalling Unity’ by installing one that doesn’t include it!
This post, 10 Things To Do After Installing Ubuntu 15.10, was written by Joey-Elijah Sneddon and first appeared on OMG! Ubuntu!.
I know Cool Tools is not traditionally a phone/gadget review site, but the Moto X got so much small stuff right that it qualifies as a cool tool.
The biggest is the Active Display, which lets you check the time and notifications without unlocking the phone or even pushing a button. The sensors detect when you pull your phone out of your pocket (or pick it up off the table), and 90% of the time, what you need to know is right there. Because the X has an OLED screen, displaying grey text on a black background uses almost no battery power. That feature alone is such an incredible timesaver that even though my employer provided a brand new iPhone 5S, I find myself reaching for the Moto X first.
The other invaluable feature is being able to say “OK, Google Now” without touching the phone. In the car, this means I can make calls, start music, and navigate without taking my hands off the wheel. It just works, and I can’t imagine switching to a phone that doesn’t include this feature.
Yes, you can put many of the Moto X features on existing Android phones, but this is the only one that does it out of the box, and without sacrificing battery life. I’ve had mine for 6 months, and if I lost it today, I wouldn’t consider replacing it with anything else.
-- Aaron Weiss
Motorola Moto X, 16GB Unlocked
$275
Available from Amazon
I work at a French school here in San Francisco, and our French teachers require students to use these pens for editing purposes. Apparently they are quite popular in France, their origin of manufacture. In fact, many of our American teachers have begun using these pens for their utility, and I myself have found the four colors useful for taking notes, as they allow me to differentiate between the types of notes I am taking. Funny enough, I recently ran across an homage to these pens in the New York Times, so it appears they have attracted a cult following.
-- Jason Sellers
Bic 4-Color Ball Pen
Available from Amazon
This is a Cool Tools Favorite from 2015
I installed this item on my sixteen foot garage door about a month ago. It’s snowing outside today here in Denver, but my overhead door is snugly sealed, despite a two inch gap on one side of my door. What is a Snirt Stopper? From the website:
We have designed a garage door bottom seal and threshold seal that mounts to the inside face of the door instead of the bottom, this gives you the ability to adjust the seal up or down allowing you to match any unevenness (up to 2 inches) of shifting floors and garage doors.
Snirt Stopper is the inventor’s euphemism for stopping “snow and dirt.” Actually, it also stops rain, leaves, grass and anything else that might otherwise blow inside your man cave.
There is nothing else like this “tool” on the market, and I found it buried fairly deep on the web by deep searching “garage door gap solutions.”
-- Eugene Pummill
Snirt Stopper
$52 – $99
I know how to change bike tires. I watched my father do it when I was ten years old and the guys at the local bike shop make it look easy. So I never went for a ride without tire levers and a spare inner tube or two.
Unfortunately, knowing how and actually doing it can be two different things. They say to put the tire back on over the rim with just your hands, because using a metal tool may pinch your new tube or poke a hole in it. With some tire and rim combinations, it’s close to impossible, and becomes less possible as you reach those last few inches of bead and your hands get tired and sore. You’ll be stranded until you get that tire bead over the rim.
The Kool Stop Tire Bead Jack is the lightweight, inexpensive answer to this problem. Just put the fixed end on the other side of the rim, hook a section of bead and use the handle to pull it up over the rim. Repeat as needed, and in a few seconds, you’re done and on your way.
It’s too long to fit in a small tool kit. It’s about the length of a CO2 pump, but it’s not metal so it’s very light. You can stick it in a handlebar bag, or a rack trunk or just strap it to your top tube. You won’t want to ride far without it.
-- Matthew Perks
Kool Stop Tire Bead Jack
$12
Available from Amazon
OK, so maybe you couldn't find a snow brush.
But you can't even push a button?
I know for a fact that all cars this new have rear window defrosters.
Westbound 401 approaching DVP, 10:48 a.m., Monday February 3, 2014.
And yes, my passenger took this shot.
Rob.eglyLooks like Canada is pretty hate free :)
A somewhat belated Happy New Year to you all.
I trust you all had a Merry Christmas, or whatever holiday you celebrate at this time of year.
I think Jerry Seinfeld might have been on to something when he simply called it “Festivus''.
Today's epistle may not have a lot to do with cars, but I deserve to be cut some slack due to what has happened over the past couple of weeks.
We 'won' Christmas last year. All our sprogs and their Significant Others were at Kenzie World Headquarters; we had a tree and everything.
This year, it was looking like Lady Leadfoot, me and some cats. Everyone else was somewhere else, ranging from Chesley to Whitehorse to Canberra Australia.
No point in roasting a turkey for two. We were thinking of splitting a 12-inch turkey club from Subway around a roaring fire.
Then the lights went out.
Saturday evening before Christmas.
Trying to sleep with shotgun blasts every few minutes as trees and branches crashed to the ground.
No heat, no light, only the water that was in our storage tank, plus some drinking water we always keep on hand for just such an emergency.
No clue as to when power would come back. Estimates that it would be as much as a week proved accurate - Friday evening after Christmas for us.
So much for Festivus.
We did enjoy the irony of living in our adult child's basement - our daughter Laura's townhouse in Guelph. Her roommates, fellow U of Guelph students, were all away for the holidays so there was lots of room.
To complete the trope, I did play some video games...
Here's a shot of the main damage chez Kenzie World Headquarters. The big branch fell off a tree to the right of the barn, bounced off the barn roof (you can just see a bit of damage to the fascia board on the upper part of this photo, with the 'scar' from the tree from which the branch fell). It pinned the Dodge Journey test car, and punched a hole in the Miata's roof.
Initially, it looked as if the Dodge broke the fall of the tree so the Miata was not more badly hit! But amazingly, the Journey did not appear to be damaged at all.
Through a clever bit of engineering (above) I got two floor jacks, managed to get the big branch off the Journey, and backed it out.
Further examination once the debris was cleared showed two holes in the Miata roof, and the hood lightly dinged.
Could have been a lot worse.
Don't worry - the Hornet was IN the barn.
The barn roof needs to be re-shingled anyway, and some of the roof sheathing replaced, so it won't be much more expensive for the roofer to fix the fascia board too.
We don't know what it would have cost for an arborist to clean up the fallen trees and branches. But Bill Gardiner, our Motoring TV mechanic, texted me out of the blue and asked if I needed someone with a chain saw. Well, yes...
He said he much preferred to do that than help his wife take down their Christmas decorations. So, come on over!
On New Year's Eve day we cut up all the trees and branches that were in the driveway, yard or over the pool.
Stuff that fell in the woods stayed in the woods.
There is one big birch branch still leaning against both our power line and phone line - we were afraid to touch that one for fear of causing more damage, but it will have to be dealt with eventually.
Our beautiful little Christmas tree lies on the deck, as undecorated as the day Lady Leadfoot bought it.
Beside it sits a face cord of firewood. Maybe we will have to buy that wood stove after all.
We were actually luckier than some of our 'better-prepared' neighbours. Some of them heat with wood - one even had a propane feed to his barbecue, so that's how their turkey dinner got cooked.
(Subway was closed Christmas Day by the time we got to it, so we nuked leftover pizza...).
But those who weren't clever enough to put perishables outside or in their garages lost much of the contents of their fridges and freezers.
Our house stayed cold enough that nothing was affected.
OK, so the cats were a bit cranky. We checked on them every day, but they were fine. We couldn't take them with us because Laura has four of her own.
Our neighbours two doors down had just installed a big generator so they were OK - except a fallen tree knocked out their power and phone lines, and Hydro/Bell don't fix that. He somehow managed to find an electrician - he knows people, but you know those guys got a bit of an extra Christmas present this year... - but he needed to get some parts so they weren't back on line until three days after us.
A Christmas we won't soon forget - unfortunately...
We've never had anything remotely like this in 40 years out here. Given that they KNEW an ice storm was coming you wonder why they weren't better prepared.
Some back-up service people we heard from who came in from places like London, Listowel and even Winnipeg said they weren't contacted until Tuesday, by which time the full extent of the damage was well-known.
Sure, the service people probably got triple time and a half.
We thank them for their tremendous service at a very awkward time of year.
But emergency planning obviously needs to be re-thought. Some areas of Toronto were power-free for even longer than us in the boonies.
Our roads out here are barely clear even now. There are still big trees leaning on poles and wires.
Another foot of 'global warming' sits in my driveway as I type; I can barely imagine the added loads on the remaining trees.
It was interesting to observe traffic during the blackout. For the most part, people seemed to understand that uncontrolled intersections were to be treated as four-way stops. Everyone stops; whoever gets there first goes first; tie goes to the car on the right (easy to remember - 'right' of way...).
But you had to be careful. All it would take is one guy not playing nice and you'd have a Big Time crash, with limited emergency services to help you out.
Another aspect of driving under these conditions - we just aren't used to seeing obstructions that have fallen across the road. It wasn't a matter of only looking well down the road, but also of looking up, to see if overhanging branches were going to bash into your windshield.
Road crews couldn't keep up; I must have cleared a dozen big branches off our sideroad myself.
Long after the ice had melted off the trees, they were still falling; I guess they had been weakened, and another stiff breeze was the camel-back-breaking straw.
We have had a couple of minor power outages since.
But the worst seems behind us now.
The joys of rural living!
Or urban living, for that matter...
***
Next week, what Astronaut Extraordinaire Chris Hadfield can teach us about driving, right here on Earth.
Ever come across a tutorial online that tells you to run a long terminal command, but want to know what each part of it actually means? ExplainShell does exactly that: paste in the command, and it'll tell you what each portion of the code does.
Mosh(mobile shell) is Remote terminal application that allows roaming, supports intermittent connectivity, and provides intelligent local echo and line editing of user keystrokes.
(...)
Read the rest of Mosh – A replacement for SSH (416 words)
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...whichever Ontario Provincial Police officer was driving westbound on the 401 near McCowan Road at 4 p.m. last Friday afternoon, come on!
I know police cars have their Daytime Running Lights (DRL) disabled because they might have to sneak up on the Bad Guys during a stake-out or whatever.
But you weren't sneaking up on anybody. It was broad daylight, and you didn't have your roof lights or anything on, so obviously you were not in a hurry.
But NO lights at all?
Like I said, come on.
Flick the little switch on the dashboard.
Earlier last week, I was driving in Tennessee on a Nissan event. It always feels a bit odd to drive in the USA because few cars have DRL, and up here we get used to seeing cars coming towards us with lights on.
The former editor of Car and Driver magazine seemed to think DRL was some sort of communist plot, but I digress...
It was raining for much of the time I was there, and during those times I actually saw far more cars with full headlights on there than I typically see here.
Tennessee is one of 27 of those United States of America which has a 'wipers on, lights on' law - if rain or fog requires the wipers to be operating, this law requires you to also switch on your full headlights.
While headlights on all the time regardless of time of day or weather is still the only truly sensible way to do it, maybe 'wipers on, lights on' is a bit more sensible than Daytime Running Lights.
As I have said many times, with DRL you do see light on the road ahead of you, and your dash is lit up, so there's no obvious indication that you have no taillights - which, in the vast majority of cars, you do not with DRL.
Especially on freeways where we do so much of our driving, and at higher speeds, it might be argued that taillights are even more important than headlights.
Since our federal government won't do the right thing and make DRL also work the taillights - or at least not allow the dash to be lit up under DRL, which might give brain-dead drivers half a clue - and since most car companies won't do the right thing and stop letting their customers drive around in poor weather conditions as sitting ducks for other drivers who can't see them, maybe our provincial governments have to step up with amendments to the individual Highway Traffic Acts (those being a Provincial/Territorial responsibility) to make 'wipers on, lights on' mandatory.
No, wait - those are the same people who paint the road markings so the right lane keeps disappearing, and who keep building stoplight-controlled intersections instead of roundabouts.
Geez - does nobody give a damn about traffic safety?
Two thousand five hundred deaths a year? September 11, every single year?
That's acceptable?
Like I said, come on.
This certainly is no Big Deal.
But I thought it was interesting.
This is a picture (don't worry; it was taken when I was stopped on the shoulder of the road) of the SatNav display in the instrument cluster of a new Porsche Boxster.
It shows the 401 interchange I take every time I drive into The Big Smoke.
Now the normal route when coming southbound on 25 to follow Highway 401 eastbound into Toronto (what the road signs say you should do) is to take the on-ramp to the right, swing around on what we used to call a 'cloverleaf' - that would be the white circular piece of road below and just to the left of 'Chisholm Drive' in that pic - and join the highway.
But the route Porsche's SatNav is indicating suggests turning left heading towards the commuter parking lot (which isn't shown on the map) then continue onto the on-ramp from northbound 25.
This is in fact the route I often take, if the traffic lights look right, because you can gain a few seconds, especially if you would otherwise be following one of the multitude of huge, slow gravel trucks we have to put up with in our neighbourhood.
Can't beat local knowledge, right?
But how would Porsche's SatNav system know this?
I can only assume that the system integrates all possible routes, determines which is the shortest, and presents that route to you.
Clever, eh?