I am grateful that winter is gone and spring is finally here.
Oh Sea
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Crashing salty wet brine leaping off cold wind on to my scorched face, twisting, crawling, trying to burrow deeper into my warm shell of a coat. My fingers are numb at the deep edges.
Gulls want more, they scream at me to run in; to try and drown myself upon the soaked and scratched coral sea-bed. They are furious at me; angry that I do not care to worship Neptune in his salty temple.
They are his minions and scraggly temple slaves hooded in white; half demon -half dove. They have been cast from the frigid crushing sea to scream and cry for bread and for blood on the lonely shore.
Circling in great clouds of white they push, they call, they plead. Into the salty tear soaked spray: the teeth of the storm. I slosh, I tremble, I fall. Sinking slowly down to a shell strewn path that leads farther down into the blackness.
-Ezra Hilyer
My Journal today, nostalgic for Portland.
Synergy on Fedora and Slacko Puppy 5.5
I have two computers on my lab bench: the Franken-Computer that I wrote about a few weeks ago, and another regular computer running ‘Slacko Puppy 5.5′ (which is a lightweight Slackware build) I have had these two systems going for a few months, and have had two sets of keyboards and mice, but knew I didn’t want to waste all that good useful desk-space with an extra keyboard and mouse.
I had initially thought that I would put in a KVM switch and just switch the inputs whenever I needed to, but instead I installed Synergy on both systems and now I am able to use both computers just as if it were only one! Really awesome.
I simply move my mouse off the edge of the screen, and voila!!! it appears on the other system!
I didn’t have any trouble setting up the Synergy client on the Fedora system, but I did run into a bit of trouble on Slackware. I had to track down a pesky dependency that Synergy needed, but a few minutes googling led me to it with little trouble.
Awesome!!!
My Lab; A Work In Progress
My electronics lab is slowly coming together. It feels great to get my old tools and parts-boxes out of storage and start to get back into my old projects.
This picture is the left wall in my lab, still getting things in-order and going again.
Can A Young Person Appreciate & Understand Proust?
When I was about 19, I started to read ‘Remembrance’ and after a few hundred pages gave up, now years later I find that like a good Scotch; Proust ( or rather myself) has improved with age.
A lifetime of experience and my own collection of memories is the vocabulary necessary to appreciate the nuances and poetry of Proust.
How much more will I absorb and reflect upon in another 30 years?
Raspberry Pi – “It’s Alive!!!”
The mini computer lives!
I have been wanting a Raspberry Pi for a while now and finally have one! Awesome little computer. I have lots of ideas for this little toy!
I have been using this one completely headless now. I think I may hook it up as a small web-server with Nglinx
Need I Say More?
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RadioShack: A little Less Sucky.
I very rarely go to RadioShack nowadays, They used to be full of cool stuff and the best place to get components for electronics parts, but in the mid 90s, all that started to change; and resistors and capacitors were pushed out by beige consumer cordless phones, and breadboards were replaced by cheap cable splitters.
I went from going to RadioShack to grab a 555 timer to avoiding the place as much as I could, but today I went in to get a replacement tip for a desoldering Iron, and was very surprised to see that they are now stocking Arduino kits and have brought back a lot of components. What a welcome sight! RadioShack is helping make electronics fun and accessible again! 
Dual Screen VESA Mount All In One FrankenComputer Hack
I am converting an old Compaq Laptop and A Dell Flat-Screen Desktop Monitor into an All-In-One computer with one power supply and dual Displays.
I took the display panel off the rear mount, and behind it there is just enough space to mount the power supply for the laptop motherboard.
And here I tied the power input to the same input the monitor shares.
Here is the first bench-test connected to the lower display.
Here is the notebook motherboard mounted to the back of the display and many of the connections routed.
It is aliiiiiiive!!!! Booted into Fedora 18 with both displays active.
Here is a better picture of the rear, showing how I routed all the data and power lines.
The final project. Complete.
Working, mounted to the wall, and ready for action!!!
