Saturday - The sprinkles have let up,
though it's still a bit cloudy and breezy. But it was nice to be able
to get out and take a walk again.
Working away on the GIS job for the county.
Friday
25
January
2013
Friday
- The mild showers continue. My own fault for running my lawn sprinklers on Tuesday.
S and I hired an artist. It's a small commission, just a few scenes, but we'll see how our artist-for-hire does.
I haven't done much reading, though I've several things in the queue.
My eyes are pretty strained by the end of the day when working on the
app or the county stuff, for one thing. And I'm enjoying the wackiness
of Japanese anime in the evening for another. And, maybe, still
struggling with those old mid-winter blues.
Thursday24 January 2013
Thursday
- A bit damp and drizzly out. The cat is not happy.
Working away on the stuff for the county. It's taking a lot longer to
do inventory than I thought, but then there are over 1800 channel
segments to look at. Clearly I won't be able to fix everything, but
it's best to get the worst stuff identified.
Wednesday 23 January
2013
Wednesday
- Working away on this and that. It's getting a bit overcast, there's a chance of rain in the next few days.
Coming home the other night, I looked up at the half Moon and saw there
was a bright star perhaps a Moon diameter away. Neat. I emailed my
brother that the Moon was near conjunction with Vega, but he emailed
back that it was actually near Jupiter.
And indeed it was Jupiter, clearly brighter and not as blue, thinking
back on it. All I can use for an excuse is that it was rather late,
very cold, and I was in my shirt sleeves and in no mood to linger
outside...
I did spend some time with S,
looking at some contracts for artwork for the iPad app.
Essentially, if you hire an artist for illustration work there is a
spectrum of options. At one end the client gets limited rights for a
limited type of media for a limited time: the art and illustrator
guilds like this. At the other end of the spectrum is "work for hire",
in which the client is essentially granted authorship of the work:
business owners like this. In between is an area where both get use,
and the artists get royalties. Given the early stages of our business,
and the desire to avoid complications we are going to try for the
second option, work for hire. Essentially you pay more up front, but
then it's done and you don't have any later entanglements with the
illustrator to keep track of. And, since the applicants for the job
right now are complete newbies, with no portfolio and no work history they are getting a fair deal, I think.
Tuesday 22 January
2013
Tuesday
- Down to Oak Park, where there was a pre-bid visit to the demolition
sites for the contractors. Despite lots of notice only three companies
sent representatives, but so it goes. It was a beautiful day for it,
about 70F with blue skies. About three hours paying work, about four
hours of driving...
I was battling a headache, from all the computer work on Monday, but
ibuprofen kept that under control. While driving I did keep looking for
my sunglasses, then realizing they were on already. So, no computer
work after I got home!
Monday 21 January 2012
Monday
- Messed about with computers. As I said, I was storing all my imagery
on the macbook pro, since it has space. And, being new, I assumed that
it had Blue Ray. Not so. It is, like my 2004 Sony XP laptop,
limited to dual layer DVD's. Pitiful. So even just a years worth of
images won't fit on a disk. In fact some months won't fit.
And the burning process is cryptic. You put a blank disk in, and a
little dialog comes up and asks you if you want iTunes, Finder, or the
Disk Utility. What you want is Finder. Then a little icon representing
the drive shows up on the desktop. It may, or may not, show up in
Finder. Then you drag and drop files and folders onto the desktop icon,
and right click to burn. The files and folders you drag are just links
- it copies the files during the burn process. And there is no feedback
on whether the disk is full as you add them, you have to guess or add up the file sizes
manually. Pitiful - windows burners have had that feedback for over a decade.
The other computer is the work HP Pavilion. It's very limited in RAM,
only 1GB, and when I use it for GIS I have to continually keep shutting
it down because of memory leaks and hang ups. But even if there was
2GB, I'd still have to shut it down regularly, because of overheating
issues. Google says this is a common problem with these models, they
suck in hair and dirt and you essentially have to completely
disassemble the system to get to the cpu cooler. Lots and lots of
little tiny screws and cables and bits and pieces. I don't want to buy
it, so I've left that alone. Instead I work with it perched on top of a
couple of blocks of "blue ice", and that seems to help.
Tomorrow I'll go down in the morning and help in the visit and walk
through of the demolition project facilities. A few hours of work.
Sunday 20 January 2012
Sunday
- Watched the 49er's win over Atlanta. A close fought game, really. A
little too close, in fact. And I imagine the Superbowl will be pretty
darn close as well.
Not too much else going on. Warming up outside, finally, which is nice.
Haven't done much reading for pleasure. Netflix is too addictive...
My brother sent me this pic of his cat, Rita, sitting on top of the
heater grate - directly over where the pilot light is, actually.
His other cat, Xeno, avoids that grate - burned once, maybe?
Hard to
believe we're starting the fourth week of the year already.
Picture of
the Week Photo Notes: Phoebe,
May 2010.
