Your leaking thatched hut during the restoration of a pre-Enlightenment state.

 

Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



links

decay & ruin
Biosphere II
Chernobyl
dead malls
Detroit
Irving housing

got that wrong
Paleofuture.com

appropriate tech
Arduino μcontrollers
Backwoods Home
Fractal antenna

fun social media stuff


Like asecular.com
(nobody does!)

Like my brownhouse:
   silently past the Coopers Hawk
Monday, September 26 2011

I'd hypothesized that one of the reasons I was having trouble getting my Hackintosh to work was the crappy no-name video card I was trying to use (it's called a BobcatATX, with bottom-of-the-barrel technology licensed from ATI), so I went to find a replacement online from the reliably-superior world of Nvidia Geforce. New cards from Newegg.com were going to cost me $40, so this was a job best left to Ebay.com. I bought a perfectly-good (if slightly older) PCIe 16x card for only $15, shipping included. Amazingly, this turned to out to be all I needed to get my Hackintosh to install OSX Snow Leopard (10.6). But I was far from done; I tried using MultiBeast and Chameleon to install device drivers and bootloaders, but I couldn't get any of that stuff to work. Apple has made things just hard enough to cause most rational people to just buy their hardware. I can't blame them, and it simultaneously gives the hackers of the world a puzzle to solve.

As part of Operation Clear Out the Upstairs, today I broke down our king-sized bed into portable-sized components, which I stashed away in freshly-vacated laboratory space. I also removed a set of wooden soffits I'd made to protect the hydronic pipes in the bedroom. This was to be my second recent experience having to break joints I'd made years ago with glue. I should have anticipated that some day I we might want to upgrade to a different flooring material than ugly pus-colored carpet.

This evening I rode a bicycle down Dug Hill Road to retrieve our Subaru from Kel's place on Hurley Mountain Road. I've been living here for almost nine years, and this was the first time I'd ever biked down that mile and a quarer of hill. It's an delightful experience, far better than I'd imagined. Mind you, it's not just how long and steep the road is; it's also how serenely-forested it is along its entire length. Coming silently down through those forests, it's easy to surprise wildlife; on this particular ride I came upon a Cooper's Hawk flying low through the trees, weaving back and forth to avoid trunks and branches while looking to ambush any small creature caught unaware. Off in the distance, I could hear Blue Jays warning anyone who cared to listen.

This evening after Gretchen was completely finished with watching teevee for the night, she helped me move the teevee room couch downstairs to the living room (it wouldn't fit through the 30 inch doors to the bedroom or laboratory). Then I moved all the entertainment hardware into the laboratory, where I could keep the DVR on and attached to the satellite dish so it could continue downloading programs.


For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?110926

feedback
previous | next