tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-100247062024-03-14T12:45:32.717-05:00Walking the FringeScribblings from the Edge of NormalBrian Gilstraphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11799840454645440786noreply@blogger.comBlogger40125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10024706.post-31418688821305365112010-08-07T22:39:00.004-05:002010-08-16T20:53:30.391-05:00Learning T'ai ChiI took a T'ai Chi workshop this weekend, presented by Robert Goodwin. Mr. Goodwin is one of the founders of the St. Louis T'ai Chi Chuan Association. The Association is affiliated with Mr. Benjamin Lo (no link), the senior student of Professor Cheng Man-Ch'ing. This lineage is important.
I once again find myself in the position of being both happy and sad. I am very glad that I took the workshopBrian Gilstraphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11799840454645440786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10024706.post-90571496856243454992010-01-26T23:57:00.005-06:002010-01-27T00:04:15.136-06:00I'm a "Week"I'm a software "guy". And by some definitions that makes me a "geek". And when it comes to cool, inventive and creative things, I really am a software geek. But lately I've become a woodworking geek. Sadly, the term "woodworking geek" suffers from a plethora of problems, not the least of which includes a sort of cognitive dissonance. So I've decided that I'm a "week" (woodworking geek). Is that Brian Gilstraphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11799840454645440786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10024706.post-42863946191489641252008-02-19T23:23:00.001-06:002008-02-19T23:24:53.741-06:00HumanityOne of the great tragedies of our existence is the way in which man's baser instincts run roughshod over his transcendent ideals. Greed, aggression, and cruelty can undo, in moments, the painstaking efforts of millenia. Are we so fundamentally flawed that we are destined to ignoble oblivion?Brian Gilstraphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11799840454645440786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10024706.post-62027936012670637292007-11-07T00:17:00.000-06:002007-11-07T00:27:01.284-06:00Middle AgeI've been feeling lately like I'm middle-aged. It's not something I could explain it in any clear way, beyond the obvious things (like having a couple of kids, a job that I need to pay the bills, thinking about whether I'm saving enough for retirement, etc.). Besides, you can have those things and not feel middle-aged.Then, tonight, it hit me: you're middle-aged when you read the vast majority ofBrian Gilstraphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11799840454645440786noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10024706.post-38452114820072013962007-07-19T15:46:00.000-05:002008-12-09T11:48:10.423-06:00I wonder what's coming from DeltaWell, Delta Machinery has had a countdown clock on their website for more than a month now:I think they are going to announce a new line of tools at the big AWFS woodworking show in Las Vegas. I hope it's something cool and not just an excuse to introduce a lower-quality line of tools made in China.Looks like I'll find out tomorrow.Brian Gilstraphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11799840454645440786noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10024706.post-83498127185675788222007-05-15T22:32:00.000-05:002008-12-09T11:48:10.741-06:00Bathtub Reading TableI recently completed my latest woodworking project. It's a bathtub reading table made of mahogany.I designed it to be just wide enough between the outside supports to allow felt pads on the inside edges. This prevents the table and tub from being scratched, and provides a nice smooth surface for sliding the table back and forth.Brian Gilstraphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11799840454645440786noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10024706.post-1169446553476254872007-01-21T23:52:00.000-06:002007-01-22T11:07:20.166-06:00Learning Cocoa: Which Frameworks to Learn?I've been wondering which frameworks on Mac OS X I should learn. It's hard to know the answer to this, since different applications will need different frameworks. But it occurred to me that examining the frameworks that Apple uses in their own applications might be a good start.Not too surprisingly, you can determine the shared libraries used by an application. So I whipped up a little shell Brian Gilstraphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11799840454645440786noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10024706.post-1169425961327661352007-01-21T22:32:00.000-06:002007-01-21T22:54:35.596-06:00Learning Cocoa: Peeling the Currency Converter OnionWell, after quite a bit of reading and trying to puzzle out how to use Interface Builder to work on applications using Cocoa Bindings, I've concluded that I don't understand well enough. This is rather surprising to me, since I have more than twenty years of development experience with more than fifteen years of object-oriented and GUI programming experience. But whether I'm in the early stages Brian Gilstraphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11799840454645440786noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10024706.post-1169408332707160282007-01-21T13:04:00.000-06:002007-01-21T13:38:52.756-06:00Learning Cocoa: LinksI'm starting to spend more time trying to learn the Cocoa development frameworks. For those not familiar with it, Cocoa is a set of software development frameworks based around the Objective-C programming language. There are a number of different frameworks within Cocoa, including GUIs, networking (and IO in general), graphics & imaging, distributed computing, etc.The most obvious site for Brian Gilstraphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11799840454645440786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10024706.post-1157953356812365192007-01-21T08:41:00.000-06:002007-01-22T11:25:50.873-06:00Searching: Wikipedia as a Primary SourceIt's amazing to me how much good material there is on Wikipedia these days. It's getting to the point where I'm about to switch from doing a Google search as my first step in research to doing a Wikipedia search. This obviously doesn't work for very dynamic or overly specific things, like a recent news story (Google News) or some very detailed aspect of a software package. But for terms, or Brian Gilstraphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11799840454645440786noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10024706.post-1168459894208444312007-01-10T14:07:00.000-06:002007-01-10T14:11:34.210-06:00Splitting the BlogI've decided to split my blog. I'll use this blog for more 'personal' items, not related to technology. My other blog, View From the Fringe, which has been almost unused since I created it, will be for more technical content.So if you come here looking for something and can't find it, it may have moved over to the other blog. And if you come here looking for technical material, check out View Brian Gilstraphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11799840454645440786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10024706.post-1167709588540113932007-01-01T19:39:00.000-06:002007-02-01T12:29:49.086-06:00Home Improvement: The Closet ProjectI've been working to install built-in, adjustable storage in our closet since late September. It was a fairly large project to tackle, since it would involve building the equivalent of seven bookcases, except the cases were taller (8 feet) and deeper (15 or 22 inches) than normal bookcases. In addition, I planned to build them into the space permanently.These are some pictures of the closet at Brian Gilstraphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11799840454645440786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10024706.post-1157954585279288432006-10-05T23:09:00.000-05:002006-10-06T00:08:37.563-05:00The PC that Ate my Printer PaperI recently set out to configure the PC my girls use for educational games to allow them to print from the PC to our printer connected to our 20" iMac. I had just slogged through getting a WiFi card to work with the Windows box, and was already pretty grouchy. But I figured printing is a solved problem, so what could go wrong? Silly me.Being a long-time Mac user, I decided to turn there first. I Brian Gilstraphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11799840454645440786noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10024706.post-1158634925270971312006-09-18T21:47:00.000-05:002006-09-18T22:26:10.200-05:00Sexy RecessionTonight I saw no less than four ads for 'sexy' commercials for products. From 'sexy' makup to 'sexy' undergarments, it was a veritable cornucopia of underweight, over-painted, and under-dressed women (and a few leather-coated men). The topper was the advertisement from JCPenny, of all retailers, with few words, lots of innuendo, high heels, and leather coats.The last time I saw such overt Brian Gilstraphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11799840454645440786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10024706.post-1158281387776639702006-09-14T19:29:00.000-05:002006-09-14T21:06:50.020-05:00The Other Reason Apple now Offers Album Art for FreeWith the latest release of iTunes, Apple added some very nice features. Several of them depend upon you having album art in order to make effective use of them. So it's not that surprising that Apple now offers album art through the iTunes music store. It is a bit surprising that they offer free album art even for albums you didn't buy through the music store. While this is mostly to enable the Brian Gilstraphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11799840454645440786noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10024706.post-1157954126126375022006-09-12T21:07:00.000-05:002006-09-13T22:46:14.773-05:00WiFi on Wintel - only a geek could work it out and no one could love itI recently installed a generic WiFi card in the Wintel PC I retired as a game machine and gave to my girls to play educational games on. Talk about an experience in frustration.It's not that I was unable to figure it out. I did get it working. And I certainly forgot one thing while doing so that slowed me down for a bit. But the completely opaque manner in which the install went and the total Brian Gilstraphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11799840454645440786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10024706.post-1157955928968823092006-09-11T01:21:00.000-05:002006-09-11T01:25:28.966-05:00You won't see me mongering 9/11I had forgotten that today is 9/11 until I checked Goggle news. This is going to be one painful news cycle. I hope it dies down before the end of the week. I hate news mongering.Brian Gilstraphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11799840454645440786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10024706.post-1157955535180912612006-09-11T01:03:00.000-05:002006-09-11T01:19:10.236-05:0017" MacBook Pro Screen Flex and Drained BatteriesMore than a year ago, my friend Brad Shuler gave me a strip of paper with some little bits of some kind of plastic on them. He told me they were to keep my 15" PowerBook G4 from having its lid pop open while in a backpack or shoulder bag. When this happens, the machine can come out of sleep and end up draining it's battery completely.The idea behind these little do-dads (called Wildeepz by their Brian Gilstraphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11799840454645440786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10024706.post-1157951896383495412006-09-11T00:16:00.000-05:002006-09-13T21:36:09.833-05:00Open Source RouterAs part of a project to move my noisy Power Mac G4 to the basement (see my blog entery Silence is Golden), I recently bought a LinkSys WRT45GL. This is a 4-port ethernet and WiFi (802.11g) router which is hooked up to my DSL line and provides a firewall and port forwarding for the G4. I know that Kevin Heifner got this same router and immediately installed Thibor's HyperWRT version of the Brian Gilstraphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11799840454645440786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10024706.post-1157951785061763652006-09-10T23:58:00.000-05:002006-09-11T00:26:32.786-05:00Silence is GoldenI recently got a new 20" iMac (yes, recently enough to be saddened that they just came out with a 24" model). Since I got the new machine, I've been working to make a place in the basement where I could move the six year old Power Mac G4). The G4 is the mail server for the family domain and will eventually host a family web site.I finally got that project completed today. It involved running Brian Gilstraphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11799840454645440786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10024706.post-1155572920681550402006-08-14T11:17:00.000-05:002006-08-14T11:33:51.726-05:00Parallels and the Mac: Friendly FrankensteinSo I've been working with Parallels Desktop for Mac lately and it's a rather nice package. It does most of the things you'd want and does them well. Today I discovered that the full-screen mode is just a big window with no border or with the border outside the visible region of the display. As a result, you can Cmd-tab to other Mac applications and the full-screen Windows VM is still there. You Brian Gilstraphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11799840454645440786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10024706.post-1129870858441114932005-10-21T00:00:00.000-05:002005-10-21T00:13:35.240-05:00Pell-mell to HellI just checked Google News before heading to bed and was confronted with this:It reminded me of Collapse: How Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail by Jared Diamond.Will we destroy the biosphere to the point where it can't sustain us before we learn to appreciate the consequences of our actions?I fear we will.Brian Gilstraphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11799840454645440786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10024706.post-1128177164878404072005-10-01T09:26:00.000-05:002005-10-01T09:32:44.883-05:00Macintosh: Apple and O'Reilly Safari Bookshelf team upWell, Apple has teamed with the O'Reilly folks to offer a Safari-style subscription service for searching and reading 1000 Mac-related books online.Brad Shuler told me about nine months ago he thought such 'online bookshelves' were the wave of the future. I mostly dismissed the idea at the time, probably because I like reading a physical book and find I absorb the material better that way. I Brian Gilstraphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11799840454645440786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10024706.post-1127854055378805502005-09-27T15:02:00.000-05:002005-09-27T15:47:35.386-05:00Walking: Full keyboard access on a MacintoshSo, a number of people have commented about the inability to navigate GUI's completely via the keyboard (without having to use the mouse). I don't find using the mouse that much of a burden, but there are times (especially when filling out forms in websites) that I'd like to do things like pick my state from the choice/combobox without having to go to the mouse.It turns out you can turn on "full Brian Gilstraphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11799840454645440786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10024706.post-1126710383703296982005-09-14T12:04:00.000-05:002005-09-14T10:34:31.386-05:00Society: Can you pay for your health care?A study (published by Reuters in the U.K. but not in the U.S. as far as I can find) shows that a patient's success getting follow-up care after an emergency room visit for a serious condition was determined primarily by the quality of their health care plan.So if you thought that America has great health care, it depends on how much money you make and the job you have. The 45 million (>15%) Brian Gilstraphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11799840454645440786noreply@blogger.com1