Success!

At the third try, with me actually putting in an order, I finally got the correct wiring harness. To give the vendor their due, they refunded the cost of that order; my final total paid was the same as if they'd sent me the right wires in the first place.

So yesterday afternoon, I sat in a lawn chair and exercised my crimping skills to make a wiring harness. It ended up a yard long, almost unbelievable to think that it would disappear into my dashboard. But, disappear it did, after I'd removed various pieces to expose the necessary connections. As a side note, if I ever find the chap who decided the connections to the rear speakers of my car should be made above the driver's left knee, I would advise him to call for an ambulance immediately; the sheer volume of shouting I intend to direct at him will likely burst his eardrums!

This oddly-located connection meant that I was upside down, laying across the door sill of my car (thankfully I'd found our one-step hop-up to support the parts of me outside the car) with my head in the footwell, one hand reaching deeply into the radio recess with the plug in hand, and the other hand attempting to sneak into the space just above the kick panel to get a hold of the plug to pull it through. Once I'd got it through, I decided to bite the bullet and commit; I lopped off the old plug to pull that harness out. Then it was simply a case of making sure all the remaining connections were solid, and reassembling the dash, and I could reconnect the battery and try it out.

My car now speaks iPod. As a bonus, the new stereo sticks out less than the old one.

I shan't be installing a new stereo any time soon, though. If it becomes necessary, I'll have a professional do it; I found the experience rather painful in multiple ways, not unlike being a combination contortionist and OB/GYN to a box of dull knives.

The art of cheapskating.

Today, the LA asked me to check the tyre pressures on her car. All were in spec, but while I was doing this, the couple across the street set out an air compressor, and not just any air compressor but the kind with built-in wheels because it weighs a heck of a lot. Then they put out a sign saying "Free", and I wandered across to ask if it still worked. Not only does it work, they had all the instructions including the parts listing.

So, over the next week or so, I shall be cleaning it up, ensuring that it does compress air suitably, that the reservoir is reasonably leak-free, and so on, and then I shall draw up a prioritised list of air tools I can use. A compressor of similar capacity and quality would likely run me a good $300 at current prices, so to have scored one for nothing makes me VERY happy.

And of course I shall endeavour to keep it operational for as long as possible, since I want to get plenty of use out of any air tools I buy; and when it eventually does cease to work, I know I shall have to buy a replacement. After all, by then I'll have all these air tools which will be useless without a compressor to supply the air!

Coat tails

As my mother will no doubt confirm, I have a tendency towards running to fat. The lack of activity in my daily life (due to a combination of lack of need to exercise in doing things and an ever-increasing collection of mobility-impairing health problems) doesn't help at all. The LA, having an office job, also struggles with keeping weight to an acceptable level; so much so, in fact, that she's begun (with some friends) attending meetings at Weight Watchers. Their points system is nicely generous, with the majority of vegetables counting as freebies, and her attention to it is also providing fringe benefits for me; since I cook for both of us, it's simplest to cook something that's good for her, and eat my portion of it happily. It's not impossible that I'll be able to lose some weight as well, which will make my doctor happy; he's been on at me to lose about a stone and a half. For the same reason, I'm working (when I have tuits and suitable weather available) on a frame to raise my desk by roughly 15 inches, so that I can stand at it instead of sitting.

Perhaps I ought to try posting regular updates here. Allow my readers to help keep me accountable.

In other news, my car has lost a feature it had until very recently; the powered antenna ceased to work reliably, and my efforts to troubleshoot resulted in finding that the $200 motor is up the Swanee, which is far more than I'm willing to invest in what is, frankly, a luxury on what I consider to be utilitarian transport. And so, I reassembled the thing with a shortened pigtail (having removed the mast while troubleshooting, and been unable to re-thread the pigtail) and a permanently erect mast, and then disconnected the control and power lines to the motor. I can no longer take my car through an automatic car wash, but then again I hadn't done that in over a year anyway. I wash the dust off it occasionally, and keep the important glass scrupulously clean; beyond that, it's getting on for 18 years old and is always going to look it., so as long as the paint remains sufficiently intact to prevent rust, I honestly don't really care.

Expressions of annoyance

It is with some regret that I draw to a close my endeavours to make a business of glowing dice, but the glow is simply insufficient for the necessary price. While they are nicely glowy in darkness, they're nowhere near as wonderful as I'd hoped, and so I shan't be making them available.

Not that it's all doom and gloom. I got excited about something, which made the LA very happy, and I got a set of nuclear-powered dice out of it.

Expressions of interest

As you probably know, I like dice. I also like things which glow, and am not uninterested in radioactivity. I've had the idea to combine the three, but I cannot quite do it independently. Allow me to explain.

There is a technology known as tritium illumination. This uses the radioactive decay of a hydrogen isotope to excite a phosphor, which produces cold, visible light with no immediately obvious power source. It is possible to obtain small vials which produce this light; it is also possible to obtain clear plastic dice. With these, I would be able to create internally glowing dice, which would glow for a long time. The trouble is the price point; in order to make the project viable, an individual set of seven dice would have to sell for $80 before shipping. While it's possible to sell dice at that price point, they're a niche product, and I would not have the advantage of volume. I am also considering offering single d20s, which would sell at $11 before shipping. I am willing to make a limited production run of dice, glowing green (as the other colours are lower in light output), as long as I obtain sufficient interest. I would require pre-ordering with a deposit if I committed to a production run, and the run would be unlikely to be repeated. However, given sufficient interest, and as long as it turns out to be legal, I will do this.

Productivity can mean several things.

My maternal grandmother could draw very well. My maternal grandfather was a good woodworker. Most of my family has some creative talent, in fact. For a while, I felt like I was an exception, as though I was the sole non-creative person in my family.

But now that I look at it... I build worlds. I also do a fair amount of work with my hands, such as the installation of the front wing turn signals on my car which should have been there from the day it was built (US lighting regulations are a long way behind Europe when it comes to cars), or the add-on tabletop I made with felt covering for gaming. I knit.

And in the past week, I've finally made a breakthrough in sketching. I've wanted to draw for many years, but always found it frustrating. The best output I came up with was the doodles I made while on the phone, with most of my brain otherwise occupied. I finally realised that, and stopped thinking about drawing while drawing. Simply letting the sketch flow has led to me producing works I'm happy to sign and date.

I'm a perfectionist. I readily admit that, and in some areas of my life it's a benefit, but I've finally learned to accept "good enough", and it has finally become good enough. Next time I go anywhere scenic, I'm going to take with me a board, some paper, and some of the 2B pencils the LA managed to find for my birthday. She knows I prefer a slightly softer pencil for writing, but I usually go for a B. A 2B is a touch softer than that, and I've found it's very good for the sketches I draw. Currently, those are drawings from memory of Cornish landscapes, but I shall be drawing Californian lanscapes from life soon enough...

Using the right tool for the job

As you probably know, our landlord is nominally responsible for fixtures and fittings in the house the LA and I rent. That said, it's usually quicker, easier, and gets better results, if we just take care of things ourselves. For instance, the curtains provided by our landlord are three for three on "breaking", since they were never properly done in the first place. If you're screwing into sheetrock, you need to drill a pilot hole and use a proper anchor, because otherwise you're asking plaster to hold against screw threads. That's not something plaster does well, to say the least. As a result, today I bought a box of Drive Wall Anchors, which are ever so clever, and ever so cheap at $10 for 50 of the blighters. For your 20 cents, you get a screw-headed bolt (fine pitch engineered thread, to mate with a matching thread, driven by a screwdriver), with a sharpened tip, and a clever metal contraption designed to slip through behind the sharp tip (and a plastic insert provided to bridge the gap) until its final plate reaches the surface, at which point it bites in and prevents the metal thing from turning. You then tighten the screw, which causes this clever metal wossname to expand outwards, ensuring it'll never come back through the hole. Then you loosen the screw (or remove it, if necessary; the anchor being an integral part of the wall by this point) and put the thing you needed screwed to the wall on, then tighten up again. Simple, easy, and it actually works. Of course, it does cost about 20 cents per hole more than "that'll hold until I've left the building", which just goes to show that the most important tool is the one between your ears!

Knit Dice

When I started to knit, I was short of ideas after my first garter stitch scarf, but rapidly realised that with increases and decreases, I could knit shapes. Then I decided, well, I'm a gamer, and I like dice. Why not work out how to knit the faces of dice?

The results turned out well:




And now, I've released the pattern, so you can work out how to do it yourself. Have fun, and feel free to share pictures!

She said it.

The LA has a blog. Its title is "Productivity through Procrastination", and that state, I have today achieved. You see... well, it's a somewhat involved story. It starts with my discovery of Lego, in the mists before I was properly forming memories (and before Lego was ventilated to prevent choking; I remember the introduction, without fanfare, of the swallow-safe Lego cylinders!), and the love of making things that protean toy introduced. I've always loved making things, be they useless or merely decorative, and very recently, a friend I made through making things (one of the theatre folk) made me aware of a place by the name of TechShop.

TechShop costs money, of course, but frankly, for what they offer, they are EXTREMELY inexpensive. $1200 per annum is peanuts for practically unfettered access to a very well-equipped workshop; I have ideas for things I wish to make there, but at present, the LA and I simply cannot shake loose the necessary budget. To that end, I'm looking for a job.

Which would be why the bookshelves and table in the game room are the best-organised they've been in six months.

A blast from the past.

When I first began knitting, I had trouble deciding what to knit. I finished up making dice, which at least introduced me to the basic techniques. I documented them on Ravelry, before I pretty much stopped remembering to document projects.

Now, someone has found them, and begged me to write up the patterns.

Fortunately, I did make good enough notes at the time to extract the formulae needed to let people work out how to do it, and so I spent this morning writing up the patterns and providing worked examples. There's a little more work to be done, but fairly soon, I should have my first pattern available for download.

Continuations

It seems that in the nearly two years I've been a temporary permanent resident of the US, the rules have changed. Two years ago, an immigration attorney told me that I could apply for citizenship when I applied for permanent permanent resident status (the earliest I can do that, incidentally, is 90 days prior to the expiration of my temporary permanent residency; the start of next week), but now I need three years of permanent residency (since I'm a spouse of a US citizen; otherwise, it would be even longer, and I'd have had a harder time gaining permanent residency) and I don't know if the two years I've had will count. Be that as it may, I can still apply before my British passport expires, even if the 2 years don't count.

Meanwhile, I'm currently working on my second sock. The first one went reasonably well, but there were some niggles. Things I didn't get right. First, the cast-on (figure-8; I do socks toe-up, to avoid a need to graft and so I can cope with running out of yarn) was horribly loose. This was partly because it's not a great cast-on, and partly because doing it with DPNs has a tendency to mess things up and loosen it to the point of its degeneration into holes. For this sock, I switched to a circular (but still square; I much prefer squares at this needle size for their controllability and even tension) and to Judy's Magic Cast-On, and the combination has eased things tremendously. The short-row heel works well for me, but on the first sock I started it a little early. Easily fixed. The final problem is that the 2x2 ribbing I used for the cuff of the first sock is too loose and floppy. I'll still be using it for the second sock, but for future pairs, since I'm using the nice simple sewn bind-off, I can just switch to a 1x1 rib that'll fix that easily.

And eventually, I'll start doing fancy cabled socks and the like. Not yet, though.

New hobbies

I've acquired more hobbies than simply knitting, playing boardgames, and fixing my car. Now, I'm painting miniatures, and I've begun jogging. Yes, I've long disparaged joggers, but it's more interesting than running on the spot, and I do need to get more exercise.

The miniatures painting is connected with the boardgaming; one of the regulars of my group is running a role-playing game campaign starting in August, and I decided I would paint a miniature to represent myself. Since the painting supplies run into money, it's worth painting more minis, once the investment is made; I have enough paint for literally hundreds of minis, so it's going to continue cheaply. Besides, I have a boardgame which has plastic figures for players; they came unpainted, but they'll look great painted.

As for the jogging, last time I saw my doctor, he was concerned about my cholesterol levels, so I'm working on diet and exercise to avoid statins. I've also decided to train to run a 5k at the start of June. That gives me a target to aim for, and I can measure my progress towards it; when I can run twelve laps of the block I live on, that's three miles; just short of 5000 metres. I have a way to go before I can manage that, but I will do it.

Friendship and nationality

As those of you with a calendar will have noticed, this weekend was the 4th of July. Notable for any number of events, but of course the one which got all the attention was in 1776, when the United States of America declared their existence and their independence from the rule of the United Kingdom. This act rather upset the British, and there was a somewhat nasty war over it, but in the 200 and change years since, things have improved, and so my presence as a British subject at a friend's party was no impediment to conversation. Much fun was had by all as we spent an afternoon talking, knitting and generally enjoying ourselves, followed by trooping up the hill to watch several fireworks displays at once.

We also found out that I'm rather comfortable in a kilt (a long story is behind that, and I shan't tell it here), and so I've decided that the LA and I should take a trip into the City to visit the local stockist of Utilikilts, and also that I should start knitting myself some suitable socks. So, tomorrow, I shall visit the yarn store for some nice lightweight yarn, suitably sized needles, and then I shall embark on the fun of making my own socks.

I don't know what I was procrastinating on...

but it must have been something impressive.



I started with these...



And this.



Not long afterwards, this was the state of play.





This is how I got there.



And this was the final result.



That game board is a shade under three feet long, and not much less than two feet wide.



And the old table was too small to play the game sensibly. The new tabletop will allow us to use the big-box expansions.

Go me.

The long weekend.

The LA and I had a very long weekend. In fact, the recovery is still going on. On Thursday, we headed down to San Jose and toured the Winchester Mystery House, an historic architectural curiosity which was under continuous construction for several decades. On Friday, having spent the night in a Santa Clara hotel, we spent most of the day not buying yarn at Stitches, and then on Saturday we spent the day buying yarn. The LA got a lot of alpaca and some nice wool, I got some wool and a nice amount of variegated red cotton which I shall be using to make myself a sweater-vest, or a sweater if there's sufficient. On Sunday, we hit Stitches again, but my knees had given out and we finished up heading home early.

Today, we've been recuperating.

And over the weekend, I had a thought: why are books only numbered in ascending order? Many thick books would prove far less intimidating if one could see at a glance just how many pages were remaining.

On completion

I have now completed a cat plaything.

From Ravelry photos

Sheba has yet to actually play with it, but she does accept it. It doesn't roll very well, but it does roll.

Further on the new table

The LA and I went through hardware and craft stores this weekend, and procured a four-foot piano hinge and a two-yard length of 72" wide crimson felt. These items will be combined, after we've visited a supplier, with two sheets of 5/8" MDF, each 4' by 2'6", and a few battens and laths, to produce a folding tabletop. The extra felt will allow me to ensure that the underlying table is protected from scratching while still having the tabletop covered in nice crimson felt which will grip dice very nicely and (sadly) show spills a treat.

I shall probably also make a wooden frame with no bottom, to use as a virtual dice tray.

On tabletops, gaming and space problems

The LA and I enjoy the occasional (read: regular) game of Arkham Horror, which, while fun, is also space-hungry. Our largest table is approximately 3 feet square (EDIT: just measured; 3'6"), and this is (barely) large enough for our four-investigator games. However, for Christmas, the LA's father was kind enough to buy for us the Dunwich Horror expansion. This adds a number of cards, making some of the locations rather more interesting (and in some cases, posing the risk of "killing off" at least one location permanently), a few wrinkles in the mechanics (apparently, spraining one's ankle twice was fatal in the 1920s; who knew?) and an extra board. While much of the expansion can be "dropped in" without the new board, it's reportedly best with the board. This presents a problem.

I have, however, already worked out how to fix it. What I shall need for this is: a four-foot length of piano hinge, two four foot by two foot six sheets of MDF (sufficiently thick for me to install the hinge such that it's flush on the pin side), about a square yard of felt (preferably something I can easily glue down, although staples would also work), four 18" battens, and the usual screws and suchlike. With these, I can make an expansion tabletop. With some extra felt and sufficient edging, I can make a most excellent gaming surface.