General

Stuff that doesn’t fit in any other category

The end of the banging of the cabinet doors

Apr 3 '17Apr 4 '17
Cool Hardware, Home

I really hate the bang when a cabinet door closes. Years ago, I'd looked into soft-close mechanisms and found them pricey and a bit fussy to install. But this weekend, we were at Home Depot when I stumbled across these Liberty soft-close dampers. On a lark, I bought the 10-pack to see how well they'd work. The short answer: very well.

Installation is a breeze; they go into the corner of the cabinet with one screw—and the screw hole is angled at 60 degrees, so the pre-drilling goes quickly and at the proper angle. Here's how one looks installed:

I think it took me about 20 minutes to install all 10, and I probably spent five of that on the first one, making sure I did it right. These are not metal pieces; the body is metallic-painted plastic. However they have decent reviews on Amazon, and were reasoinably priced. There are other brands, too, but I haven't used any of those. All I know is that I'm thrilled with how they work…

Ah, the blissful sounds of a non-slamming cabinet door!

Color and ‘human readable’ file sizes in Terminal

Mar 30 '17Oct 23 '20
General, Mac OS X Hints, macOS Apps, Terminal, Unix

These are two very old tips, but I'd forgotten about them until recently, when I sent someone a screenshot and they said "Hey, how'd you do that?"

Do what, exactly? This…

The most-obvious thing in that shot is the colored filenames. But notice, too, the file sizes are in a human-readable form. Both of these changes are pretty simple, though you could spend hours playing with colors.

Human-readable output

To get human readable output—not just from ls but also in du, which shows disk space usage—just include an h with the ls command: ls -alh. Instead of raw bytes, the values are converted and marked with trailing B, K, M, etc.

Because I never use ls in its short form, I actually added a line to my .profile (which loads whenever you open a Terminal session) to make this automatic:

alias ls='ls -alh'

You could do the same thing with du, but I rarely use that command, so I didn't bother.

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Create CSS gradients using an online tool

Mar 29 '17Oct 24 '17
Blogging, Interesting Sites

I recently needed a gradient background for a page I was making. My usual method of creating gradient backgrounds is to muck around in my image editor until I find some combination I like, then futz around in my text editor getting the syntax just right for CSS gradients across all the browsers.

But then I discovered the Ultimate CSS Gradient Generator from ColorZilla. This handy tool lets you create gradients directly in the browser, and it outputs all the required codes for full browser support. The UI is very much like any image editor's gradient tool:

Drag the slider thumbs, click them to change the colors, click along the gradient to add color stops, etc. This tools works like a charm, and saves me a bit of time and aggravation whenever I need to make a CSS gradient.

A unique way to see the weather

Mar 18 '17
Interesting Sites, macOS Apps, Terminal

Ever wanted a "light" weather check web site, free of ads and other visual clutter? One that you could maybe even use from Terminal? Then you want wttr.in.

Sure, you can use it from your browser, i.e. see the weather in Boston or Montreal, by just appending the zip/postal code of interest to the URL, i.e. http://wttr.in/95014. If you omit the location, wttr.in will get the location based on your IP address—for me, that's never anywhere near correct when I'm at home, though.

What's really neat is you can use it in Terminal, too, via curl:

$ curl wttr.in/80301

The output is graphical, but done so with text characters (click for zoomed version):

At a glance, you get a few days' worth of conditions, including temperature range, wind speed, visibility, and precipitation. There's even animation—check somewhere with thunderstorms, and you'll see flashing lightning bolts.

There's a help page that explains lots of other options, like forcing metric or US units, and looking at weather by airport code.

If it seems to good to be true…

Mar 12 '17
Auto

A friend emailed me a link to a Craigslist posting of a Tesla for sale, asking what I thought…on first glance, I thought "Whoa, what a bargain!" Here's how the ad looked, in case it vanishes:

Of course, on second glance, I realized it had to be a scam—the value of a 2014 Tesla Performance (85KWh battery with the Performance option) should be at least double the $36K asking price in that advert.

I thought I'd do just a bit of research and show my friend that it was a scam; I searched for "2014 Tesla Model S Signature Performance," and the very first (non-advert) hit was this AutoTrader ad, selling the same type of car for $79K. The description in AutoTrader seems familiar somehow…

A/C ice cold, All scheduled maintenance, All records, Always garaged, Custom wheels, Excellent condition, Factory GPS system, Fully loaded with all the goodies, Looks & drives great, Mostly highway miles, Must see, Never seen snow, New paint, New tires, No accidents, Non-smoker, One owner, Perfect first car, Satellite radio, Seats like new, Still under factory warranty, Upgraded sound system, Very clean interior, Well maintained, Custom paint/graphics.

The Craigslist ad's description (as well as the picture) was clearly copied from this legitimate ad. That was perhaps the quickest scam-find I've ever pulled off. (Yes, I've reported the ad to Craigslist.)

I've bought a lot of stuff off Craigslist, but never a car. I wouldn't hesitate to do so, though, as long as I could meet the seller in person to see and drive the car.

However, if you were to try to buy this bargain-priced Telsa, you'd probably hear something like "The car is actually in Seattle, but I can have it trucked down for you to inspect before buying. I just need $2,000 sent to Western Union for the transportation, and then you can decide to buy or not once you see it in person."

Be careful out there, people!

The Art of the Brick at OMSI

Mar 5 '17Mar 6 '17
Kids, Photography

We recently toured Nathan Sawaya's The Art of the Brick at OMSI, our local science museum. I had heard about this show, and seen pictures, but they don't do it justice…so here, look at some of my pictures which also won't do it justice. [View on Flickr]

[flickr_set id="72157677535255164"]

Part of the reason photos don't do the ehxibit justice is the lack of sense of scale—further accentuated in my photos due to the lack of reference points. Most of these things are quite large; the human figures are all life size (or bigger). The Easter Island head is maybe 8' tall, the Whistler's Mother figure is six or so feet long, etc. Each piece has a descriptive card that includes the total number of Lego pieces used. As you'd expect, it's a lot of Lego!

If you're in the Portland area—or The Art of the Brick is coming to your town—I highly recommend a visit. You don't even have to like Legos; the art is just amazing…even without considering it's made of Lego bricks.

Like a kid in a candy store…

Mar 3 '17Sep 11 '23
Auto, Photography

Back in January, I spent a morning at the Portland International Auto Show, walking around looking at a huge assortment of new cars and trucks, and even a couple of campers.

As the title says, for me, short of actually buying a new car, that was peak fun. I love everything about cars, and walking around a car show is about as good as it gets: All the new cars, none of the sales pressure of a dealer visit! Here are some of the better shots from the morning's virtual shopping trip. [View on Flickr]

Of the vehicles we saw, the Acura NSX and the BMW i8 were both very striking looking—much more so in person than in photographs. And I think the Audi RS7, especially in all-black, is one of the meanest-looking cars to come along in a long time. Now I just need to come up with the $7.5 million or so it'd take to buy all the cars on my wish list!

The above album is hosted on Flickr and displayed here via a plug-in; read on if you're interested in how I did that…

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Out with fluorescent garage lights, in with LEDs

Mar 1 '17Mar 3 '17
Cool Hardware, Home

I've converted most of our home to LED lighting—costs have plummeted in recent years, and when you combine LED lights' long lives with low energy costs, the payback period is incredibly short. Newer LEDs are also warmer in tone—we found some "soft light" 60W equivalent bulbs that are nicely warm (and warmer when dimmed). Through all of this, though, I had one area of the house I'd ignored: The garage.

Our garage has six (five overhead, one over a workbench) 48" long fluorescent hanging fixtures. I hate fluorescent bulbs, but the cost to replace them with LED-equivalent fixtures was high—about $300 to do all six. But the other day at Costco, I noticed they had two-pack FEIT 4' LED replacement bulbs—like these at Amazon—for only $18 (versus $28 at Amazon as I write this).

A "normal" 48" fluorescent tube light, as in this Sylania four-pack is around $6 or $7 per light. So while the LED bulbs are more expensive, a $3 difference isn't much at all given the lower engery usage and long life. (And the fluorescents in my garage go out quite often, even compared to indoor incandescents.) So I bought one box, as a test to use over the workbench.

Within a couple minutes of installing the LED tubes, I was headed back to Costco to buy five more boxes—the difference is that notable. Instant on, brighter and more-even light distribution, no flicker, and they should last nearly forever.

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Construction of the Millau Viaduct

Feb 19 '17Mar 3 '17
Interesting Sites, Technology, Travel

I've long been fascinated by massive engineering projects, whether they be for ships or tunnels or skyscrapers…or in this case, a bridge.

The Millau Viaduct is an amazing structure in the south of France; it spans a deep and wide valley with incredibly tall pylons and an elegant design.

Photo by logopop. [original photo]

While browsing YouTube the other day, for something completely unrelated (isn't it always like that?), I stumbled on this excellent show about the construction of the bridge:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHACv9hs9ds

Just amazing what they did to get that bridge built—and without a single worker injury of any note, despite working hundreds of feet above the ground for four years.

It’s hard to see the light in a dark (interior) car world

Feb 17 '17Mar 3 '17
Auto

In 1909, Henry Ford described his philosophy on offering customers different car colors:

Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.

While paint is no longer only available in black, it seems that car interiors are—or at least, they might as well be. And to me, that's a shame—I really dislike dark interiors. (They get overly hot in the sun, they show every single scuff, and they hide some lovely design details. They can also make interiors feel much smaller than they are.)

You'd never know this is a problem, though, when you start looking at cars on manufacturers' web sites. Visit most any car maker's web site, and for most any car you're interested in, you'll see a mix of available interior colors—black, grey, tan, brown, red, etc.

Using the ubiquitous configuration tools on such sites, you can mix and match your exterior and interior colors to get what you want. (Not all interior colors will be available with all exteriors.) For me, of course, I build with light interiors.

But if you want to actually buy the car you've designed, and you like light interiors, you'll find you'll probably have to custom order your vehicle. Why? Because dealers (at least in the USA) don't stock the light colors.

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