I have the extreme good fortune to be writing this while sitting on my balcony. The weather in the Charlotte area, unlike much of the rest of the country is mild and I feel like I am playing hooky from school, hanging out in the back yard in the middle of the day with the sun shining and my feet bare. I know the west coast is gasping for air. It’s hot there. Hotter than it should be, and drier than it should be. And the fires that are still burning are creating air quality problems as bad as any that we saw in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s when we had smog days. I know that farther south of me, it’s hot as well. And while a day at the beach seems like the perfect antidote, in some places the skies and ocean look angry and uninviting. So while I complain to myself that I don’t want to go inside, I know this is a real luxury and I am going to make sure I enjoy it.
It has been quite a week. If I’d had the energy any night to do more than feed myself or take a couple of Taekwondo classes, I would have. I didn’t. I’ve even still got letters that I meant to answer and just didn’t have the mental energy to write. I’ll be working on them after this.
I might have mentioned that my manager for the day job was on vacation all last week and, as we really are a team of two, I was trying to finish up some things I needed to before my vacation and hold things together as best I could. That was more of an adventure than I wanted, and probably just the adventure that I needed. As challenging and somewhat daunting as it felt most of the week, it really turned out to be a good experience for me. It didn’t go smoothly by any means. It looked like it was going to and then Thursday night one of the systems I support hit a major snag with a problem I’d never seen before and I had not a lot of ideas of what to do to fix it. It’s a bit of a story so I won’t go into all the details. I’ll just say that it is fixed. And the system was down less than 20 hours. It made for a long day on what is supposed to be our short day. And then there was patching the next day that was just as long. As a result, I’m still a little confused as to what day of the week it is.
What I did manage to do last week involved some testing for some changes I’m looking at making to my personal technology environment, (computer, laptop, phone, tablet, that sort of stuff). I purchased a video dongle converter to find out if I would be able to use my Wacom Cintiq that has a DVI video connection on my laptop that only has an HDMI connection. It worked, and it worked even better once I downloaded the drivers. I know it should work on Mac OS because I saw the drivers on the Wacom site when I downloaded the Windows ones. But I was curious if it would work on Linux.
I have a laptop that I have had for 10 years, and I’m planning on finding it a new home. Since I haven’t yet, and much to my surprise it has an HDMI port, it got to be my guinea pig. I loaded a version of Linux on it and started putting some software on it so I could play. Somethings didn’t work as I wanted and so I tried a different version of Linux that I really don’t like. I never got to actually testing if the Cintiq was going to work on Linux because I figured out that I don’t want to use Linux when I next refresh either my laptop or desktop.
I like to have options. I think it is important to look at those options and see if there is one that is going to work better for me than just defaulting to what I’ve always done or what is the ‘norm’. So I like that I can choose if I want to use a Windows environment, or a Linux environment, or an Apple environment. At the same time, I also like being able to eliminate an option because I have evaluated it for myself and been able to decide, is this what is going to work best for me. And that’s what I got to do with that experiment.
Along with that, I’ve decided to work on some site changes. Some you may not really notice and some you will. Many are behind the scenes changes like cleaning up some extra code that isn’t being used, or even eliminating the use of Google Analytics. Others you might notice. I’ve been running ads on my site for 10 years, and I have yet to have earned $10 in revenue from them. They don’t seem to really be of any help and are probably annoying to other people. They also carry tracking code in them and I would like to stop feeding that monster so much. So I will be removing the advertisements. I’m happy to take individual adverts from people or organizations that I know, use, or support. I’m just not going to do the random ad network thing. Instead, I’ll use that space to showcase groups, organizations, products, and the like that I like, use, think are cool, or worth looking into.
Some of the other changes I’m planning on include updating the header image at the top. I think it’s time for a little change. Like the image I currently use, it will be one I took while on vacation. I’m also planning on updating some of the other pages you see, like the About, and Bio-ish. I have a few other things I’d like to adjust as well, I just don’t know if I can do what I want to with them. Some changes will happen quickly, some will take me a little longer to put in place. And the Google Analytics one has already been done.
So. No. I didn’t get to guitar, or blender this week. I did get a couple of doodles done during a meeting. I did take care of some re-potting of plants and potting of plants this week. I have even started a new garden in the Aerogarden. I decided to only fill half the slots this time since with all the slots full something always gets crowded out.
The most impacting thing I did this week involved furniture. I have lived in my place for 8 years and I finally purchased some outdoor furniture for my balcony. It was time. I’m at the end of the selling season for this type of thing so my options were really limited. In fact the thing I went to purchase wasn’t actually there. So I improvised and got what I could that might work. I’m happy with the result. I only got one chair at first and then, after dining at the table last night I decided I needed another chair. And coffee on the balcony this morning was a treat.
I’m on vacation from the day job for the next two weeks. I have several things I plan to work on, including that study thing, as well as some Blender stuff, and a few books I’m planning on reading or finishing. I’m not sure how much of that I’ll get done. Usually, all my best laid plans for vacation don’t happen at all. This year might be different. I’m optimistic that at least some of them will happen.
Oh. I do have news on the Blender front. The newest version, 2.90 is out. It was released after I wrote my article last week. I haven’t downloaded it yet but there are a couple of things that look really exciting. Also, the people at Renderman which is the rendering engine that Pixar wrote, develops, and uses for their animations, they have a Blender to Renderman bridge, which is really cool. I’ll be attending the virtual Bcon (Blender Conference) this year. I’ve already ordered my comfort box and requested the day off from the day job.
The only music or guitar news I have is that I found the next course I want to take. It’s less specialized and more in depth in a lot of ways. I haven’t started it. Maybe this week.
That’s it for now. I know this is a long one. Sorry about that. Would it help if I add a warning at the top?
As always, check back next week to see what new adventures I’ve encountered, and enjoy the pictures.