Author: Elaine

Squid

I usually do one organizational project New Year’s day or the closest weekend thereof. Usually, this involved cleaning out closets or something similar. This past weekend, I recabled my PC and its many peripherals so that I could actually turn off the power to peripherals except when I use them. Since I have a ton of USB peripherals, I had to match up USB bridges with power strips as well. I even did a little cleaning while I was down there.

In my reorganization, I employed a new Power Sentry 5-Outlet PowerSquid Power Multiplier. I thought it was very cool when I saw it on a website a year or so ago, and it came in very handy extending power between the UPS and the tower and monitor.  My computer desk is rather massive, which makes it difficult to get to the connections on the PC.

Desktop Wallpaper

December 31, 2007 – Click on image for higher resolution version.

I love using my photos and graphics as backgrounds for my computer desktop, but hate having icons cluttering up the image. So using ImageMagick and a little scripting, I created some Desktop Wallpaper with my graphics to the right of the screen so I have space for one line of icons. I’ve uploaded twenty-six, both fractals and photos, for others to use. The gallery of wallpaper was generated using Curator, a command line program that I downloaded from the Ubuntu repositories.

Sheila

December 22, 2007 – Click on image for higher resolution version.

Sheila is visiting again. One of her nicest traits is that when she rolls over on her back, she actually wants her chest rubbed, and is not trying to sucker you into getting your hand lacerated.

Ice Fog

December 08, 2007 – Click on image for higher resolution version.

One or twice each winter, we will have one of these weird gray days when the snow falls continuously, but the rate of evaporation equals the snow fall so there is no accumulation beyond an inch or so. As usual when this weather occurs, the horses are ignoring their stalls where they could stay dry and standing braced against the snow instead. Every once in a while I will look out and catch the horses playing in the snow. Hap is still a graceful creature, even at the age of 22: the other two, not so much.