John Cusack, writing about the NSA leaks:
It cannot be criminal to report a crime or an abuse of power. Freedom of the Press Foundation co-founder Daniel Ellsberg argues that Snowden’s leaks could be a tipping point in America. This week he wrote “there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden’s release of NSA material,” including his own leak of the Pentagon Papers.
via Boing Boing.
Today in “Duh”: Supreme Court says human genes cannot be patented. Thank God; this means I won’t have to pay Monsanto or Merck or Bayer for the right to use my own genetic material.
Last night, after the ladies went to bed, I crept quietly around the house and quietly drilled a single hole to install speaker wire from the den to the living room; this allows us to have music accompanying our dinner or playing while we entertain guests. I put my Advents in the living room and set the new Polks up in their place; they have great range both high and low for their size, and I think are better matched for video-based sound than the warmer tone of the Advents.
Eventually, the plan is to set up AirPlay in the den so that we can control the music from anywhere in the house with our phones (and stream services like Pandora through the system). That comes after we get an HDMI-capable head unit to run the various components. One thing at a time…
It’s Wednesday and I’m just catching up from the weekend. Rather than take any longer to write out a narrative retelling of what got done, here are the highlights:
- Emptied the rest of my Belgian IPA into bottles and washed the keg.
- Cleaned up the mess left by my Hefeweizen when the airlock shot itself off. Looks like I’m moving to a tube-in-a-jar setup from here on out.
- Chopped the ever-loving shit out of the front hedge; it went from 9′ at its highest to a reasonable 6′ and about 4′ for the low sections.
- We can now see the light fixture again, even though it’s not working.
- Visited with friends up in Glen Arm, who were hosting a client appreciation party. There were kids, bubbles, friends, and ice cream. There was sunshine! It was lots of fun.
- Put down more weed killer and Roundup on the driveway in an effort to clean the place up before the parade.
- Seeded more of the backyard and areas of the front yard for the same reason.
- Finished repairing the main sections of Finn’s playset; the swings are now level and the desk is functional again.
- Chopped my old rusty Scout top into five smaller rusty sections to be recycled
- Nuked all the weeds around and behind the greenhouse
- Took delivery of a pair of beautiful Polk 15 bookshelf speakers to complement the other two, with the eventual goal of adding audio to the living room
- Helped our neighbor jack up the corner of his garage, stiffen the supports with some 2×4″ and pour concrete around the footers.
Via Kottke, a very handy article about How to Grill a Steak, a Complete Guide. Who’s hungry? ME.
File this under awesome ideas: Lomography Smartphone Film Scanner. $59 is a little steep but it’s a very tempting toy.
So the snaps I bought from West Marine last fall have proven to be pretty worthless. Only one out of a total of twelve will stay connected for more than ten minutes; the brass rings inside the cap section just don’t hold well enough.
I did some research online and plugged some new search terms into the Googles; I came upon a commercial manufacturer who makes Milspec snaps and then a distributor who sells them by piece. They showed up yesterday and they are as strong as advertised. A test with the install pliers I got with the West Marine kit was successful, but I think I’m going to use the punch I got in a repair kit from Kayline years ago.
I got 20 11/64″ snap button barrels, 20 sockets (hard action), and 20 3/8″ #8-32 machine screws. “Hard Action” sounds sexxxy but only means it takes a lot of force to get the snap to connect and release. So now the screws will face inside and the door flaps will fold underneath and snap to the inside of the door frames.
Update: The punch worked perfectly. I’m short two nylock nuts for the passenger side but everything is installed and the snaps hold the way they should. Problem solved!
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.