The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning

Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.

Category: Administrivia

Overhead

  • Mandatory Setup Slide for All Presentations

    Presentation Setup Slide
    Presentation Setup Slide

    When you put together a presentation, add this slide at the very end.

    Display it while you’re setting up the projector so you can make sure all the corners are on-screen, all the colors work, and that the circles are actually circular. Your audience will appreciate your consideration.

    The text font should be whatever you’re using for the main body text in the presentation. If you think the text I’ve used is too large, then you’ve never sat in the back of your own presentation…

    When you’re ready to start, whack the Home key and your regular title slide will appear.

    Here it is as a single-slide PowerPoint presentation, because WordPress doesn’t allow uploading OpenOffice ODP presentations. Copy the slide into your own file and let your audience move around accordingly.

  • Attention: Patent Litigation Attorneys

    Read that before contacting me; it’ll save us both some time.

    Thanks…

  • Poof: A Post!

    Looking at the calendar shows I missed 16 March… so I’ll just go back and rewrite history.

    I generally have two or three weeks of posts scheduled for release, one a day, just before 8 am Eastern US time. That way I can write ’em when I have the time, edit them a bit to make the answer look better (or, in some cases, come out right), and not have to worry about being somewhere else in the morning.

    Yes, I agree that’s a bit sneaky. Perhaps a blog post should appear when the spirit moves me, but all in all I’d rather not dump a dozen entries in two days, then go dry for a week.

    That’s how it works… and now I’ve filled in the hole.

    Memo to self: scan the dates a little closer next time, eh?

  • Same Content, Different Theme: Redux

    This theme (Rubric) seems less glaring than Shocking Blue Green, it’s flexible-width, and the fonts seem fine.

    A bit heavy on the Javascript that nails that gradient to the screen. Ain’t it amazing how software eats up all the performance of the hardware?

    Heck, it even has a customized header image!

  • Spam Proposition

    This flotsam recently washed over the railing. I added the bold highlight:

    Ladies and Gentleman.

    In order to have your company inserted into the registry of World Businesses for 2009/2010, please print, complete and return the enclosed form (PDF file) to the following address:

    WORLD BUSINESS GUIDE
    P.O. Box 2021
    3500 GA Utrecht
    The Netherlands

    register@ — .biz
    FAX: ++31 — — 8107

    Updating is free of charge

    Treating the attached PDF with the same casual nonchalance I use with any lump of high-level radioactive waste, I opened it in The GIMP (to strip any interesting PDF malware) and found an ordinary printable PDF form.

    Surprisingly, it didn’t have any slots for charge card or bank account info, but, down at the bottom, there’s a dense block of fine print.

    I ran it through pdftotext to get the raw text and here’s the kick in the head, boldified for your reading convenience.

    THE SIGNING OF THIS DOCUMENT REPRESENTS THE ACCEPTANCE OF THE FOLLOWING CONDITIONS AND THE CONDITIONS STATED IN “THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR INSERTION” ON WEBPAGE: WWW.WORLD-BUSINESSGUIDE.COM. THE SIGNING IS LEGALLY BINDING AND GIVES YOU THE RIGHT OF AN INSERTION IN THE ONLINE DATA BASE OF THE WORLD BUSINESS GUIDE, WHICH CAN BE ACCESSED VIA THE INTERNET. A CD ROM WITH WORLDWIDE BUSINESSES IS GRANTED, ALL IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONTRACT CONDITIONS STATED IN “THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR INSERTION” ON WEBPAGE: WWW.WORLDBUSINESSGUIDE.COM. THE VALIDATION TIME OF THE CONTRACT IS THREE YEARS AND STARTS ON THE EIGHTH DAY AFTER SIGNING THE CONTRACT. THE INSERTION IS GRANTED AFTER SIGNING AND RECEIVING THIS DOCUMENT BY THE SERVICE PROVIDER. I HEREBY ORDER A SUBSCRIPTION WITH SERVICE PROVIDER INTERNATIONAL DIRECTORIES LTD “WORLD BUSINESS GUIDE”. I WILL HAVE AN INSERTION INTO ITS DATA BASE FOR THREE YEARS. THE PRICE PER YEAR IS EURO 995. THE SUBSCRIPTION WILL BE AUTOMATICALLY EXTENDED EVERY YEAR FOR ANOTHER YEAR, UNLESS SPECIFIC WRITTEN NOTICE IS RECEIVED BY THE SERVICE PROVIDER OR THE SUBSCRIBER TWO MONTHS BEFORE THE EXPIRATION OF THE SUBSCRIPTION. YOUR DATA WILL BE RECORDED. THE PLACE OF JURISDICTION IN ANY DISPUTE ARISING IS THE SERVICE PROVIDER’S ADDRESS. THE AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE SERVICE PROVIDER AND THE SUBSCRIBER IS GOVERNED BY THE CONDITIONS STATED IN “THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR INSERTION” ON WEBPAGE: WWW.WORLD-BUSINESSGUIDE.COM

    I haven’t checked out the full T&C, as I doubt I’ll benefit from such a listing.

    This probably works best in large organizations, where one sucker responds to the spam and then the billing department responds automatically to incoming invoices. The two-month advance notice is a really nice touch, isn’t it?

    Why do people continue to fall for this crap? If it didn’t pay off, the spammers would dry up and blow away, so there must be a fresh crop of suckers every day.

    People, stop doing that!

    Update: More on spam and what (not) to do: http://www.spamprimer.com/

  • New Theme

    Same content, different look…

    That monospace typewriter font was just too ugly for words.

    I figure you’d rather have the text flow as needed to fit your screen, rather than have me jam it in an arbitrary column down the middle of your monitor. Alas, WordPress has very few flexible-width themes, of which this (“Shocking Blue Green”) is the next-least-offensive.

    I just don’t want to fiddle with CSS…

    Memo to Self: the results of filtering the available themes excludes the one in use. Sort of makes sense, after you realize that’s what’s happening.

  • Hits from EMC Mailing List

    The number of daily visitors here rounds off to very nearly zero, so this spike from my Cabin Fever trip report stands out like a sore thumb:

    Cabin Fever Trip Report Hits
    Cabin Fever Trip Report Hits

    The numbers are 118, 36, 10, 5, 4, 3. If you’re a geek, you’ll think of an exponential decay and it turns out that’s just about true: the time constant is 2.8 days and the equation pretty much works for the first four days, after which we’re into the Long Tail.

    Most of the hits came directly from the EMC mailing list, with a substantial minority from Webbish sources like Gmail and various archives. There’s no way to tell how many people who subscribe to the list didn’t click on the link, although this provides a quick-and-dirty estimate of the folks interested in such things.

    The counterweight gantry, laser aligner, and Y-axis bellows posts were also popular, at least to very small groups of people in the grand scheme of things. But if everybody showed up in the basement shop, I’d definitely have to move some stuff to make room!