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West Virginia annex
Thursday, September 27 2007
Now, as you may have gathered, my plan for the ultimate stand-alone smei-retro media device is to build it around a clunky old Toshiba laptop, in this case one based on a 600 MHz Intel Celeron (Coppermine-era) processor. It is a cheap, bulky machine with only a single Cardbus slot, a single USB 1.1 port, no ethernet port, and a twelve inch 800 by 600 pixel display. On a whim I decided to download the very latest version of the Kubuntu installation CD (Kubuntu is the KDE version of Ubuntu, which is in turn based on Debian Linux). I've used a long evolutionary sequence of Linux installs, starting from back in 1997 or so, and I've seen them steadily improve and become increasingly user-friendly. Gradually the useless GUI frontends for configuration text files have been supplanted by GUIs that simplify (as opposed to complicate) configuration procedures. And, maybe best of all, and greater and greater diversity of devices are supported in a plug-and-play fashion (a relief to anyone who has ever been forced to install Linux devices manually).
I was amazed by Kubuntu. Not only did it register a no-name Chinese USB 2.0 Cardbus adapter on the fly, after the OS was installed; it also recognized and started using a USB ethernet adapter and a no-name Chinese USB 802.11g WiFi adapter plugged into that adapter. For the first time ever, a Linux operating system gave me easy access to a WiFi site survey (although I could tell there were still some bugs in the WiFi configurator).
I spent some time this evening stapling clear UV-resistant plastic greenhouse sheeting (originally bought to reglaze my homebrewed solar panel) onto the frame of the new woodshed. As an annex off the back of the woodshed, I incorporated the old camper shell from my old (and long hauled-away) Toyota pickup truck. Though such an architectural addition suggested the æsthetics of a West Virginia holler, I thought it prudent to add a mostly-inaccessible reserve area where I could stack up the greenest of my firewood to tap into should the winter prove unusually harsh or snowy. Besides, the annex won't be visible from anywhere in the yard, particularly once there is a sizable stack of firewood in the shed.
The new woodshed, some hours before I put up the plastic.
The panes of insulated plate glass Penny and David gave me. I have them tied up against a basketball goal for now, though originally I'd had them flat on the grass, where the trapped solar heat beneath them quickly killed the grass, as you can see.
Sally the dog and Julius the cat in front of the house.
Julius took a surprising interest in a stream of ants flowing to some new settlement beneath the walkway flagstones. He sat directly in this stream and then put considerable effort into licking the ants individually out of his fur. Perhaps he had a sound reason for doing this.
Eleanor on the couch in the living room, next to the painting I did of her.
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