Toby's Log page 121

Design Problem Solutions/Tutorial Database

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I spend a lot of time writing html, php, and css for my website to implement various ideas and create a certain look. I very often find myself having trouble with one particular thing. I search the web with google or search forums to try to find a solution. Sometimes it’s extremely simple, while others it creates new problems. As I am often working on one part of my site at once, these problems are often related. I would like a site that is a central repository for solutions for all of these problems to exist.

The site would probably be a wiki so as to get input from many people, have a large source of authors, and continue to be updated with new problems.

Posts would be much like a tutorial. They would explain what to do, and also why.

Navigation would be critical, allowing one to quickly find solutions to a specific problem as well as for a more generic learning how to do something type fashion. A good search system would exist like most wikis have, allowing search of the title as well as the content. Also needed is a good way to relate articles and navigate to them through relations. A good, specific category system would be important, with related articles in related categories. The articles should be organized in such a way that they could be followed in a general sequence towards a specific goal like a tutorial. As an example, many people like to create CMSs to manage their site. They go through the same or comparable problems to those who’ve already made them, and thus would benefit from the knowledge of those who’ve already been through it. The cms tutorial would guide them through the process, with the most basic articles being the main path they follow and the less important articles forming side paths. Branching off based upon decisions would also lead through different paths. CMSs are similar in many ways, but some decisions in the design process lead to certain differences in the design process; branches would allow one to design their CMS and choose the branches that apply to them.

This would become sort of a code repository, with code for anything already generically written, and branches in logic allowing for all possible different needs to be accomodated.

Though I came up with this for programming and web design, it could apply to any problems, and thus web-design and programming would only be sub-categories. Examples of where this could be used are in designing a car or planning the construction of a house. Numerous decisions are made in each, though the basic concepts would be used in every implementation: every housebuilder must look at the types of flooring available and decide which is best for the application; every car body design must choose a balance between factors such as aerodynamics, appearance, and capacity to accomodate other parts; every design must choose between a more costly or less costly path based on available resource (money, time, etc).

This seems to work best for problems of design.

Versatility of Design

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An object that can have a wider range of uses, especially potential uses, should be designed to be more versatile than one with fewer uses. It must be so in that it is more able to be changed to suit particular needs.

A house must be much more versatile in design than a car. In the house, you must be able to easily move things around to suit current needs. A house is used for a lot, and those uses can change, requiring a change in layout to better suit them. A car isn’t used for as much, and thus needn’t be as versatile. A car is used for driving primarily, and possibilities for a good setup for that are more narrow than for a house. Things can be improved and tuned for specific needs, but not so much as with a house. In a house, you may need to move a light fixture for better lighting of a certain area if you decide to do something in that area you hadn’t done before, so it is good for this to be easy to do. In a car, the lighting needs that will most likely be realized through use can be thought of beforehand and designed for; it is much less likely to find a task that needs better lighting in a certain area (if the initial design was well thought out).

New Halfstack

in

After a bit of trouble getting a bass we let someone borrow and fixing up Frankenstack (our makeshift stack Dwight was using made from his Leem portable amp running two large speakers from our old PA), we finally got Dwight a new, regular amp head and halfstack. We traded in the old Mexican Fender bass we got from one of our floormates in Clark over two years ago; the old, almost functioning PA we bought from the music store where Dwight had got his guitar lessons years ago; and Dwight’s former favorite amp, his Leem. This, with a little extra cash, got him a used 100 watt (I believe) Fender amp head and a half stack of four 12″ speakers. The bass traded for double what me and Dwight paid for it, while the PA went for less than a third.

I haven’t seen the new stack yet, but I hear it’s both quite loud and light. At 20% volume, it is about as loud as we’d normally have it for practice. It’s lighter and smaller than the frankenstack, and even has wheels, so it’ll be much easier to transport. It was quite a pain to carry the big speakers of frankenstack around and fit them into Dwights truck.

The Pope died

in

I’m not a Catholic, even a Christian, or even a theist. However, the day the pope died brought some interesting weather. There was a quite cold and very strong wind carrying some cold rain. It was cold in the middle of a rather warm period. Going outside was generally miserable and to be avoided. The wind was so strong that night that my electricity was flickering on and off, making it the worst i’ve seen since I’ve moved into my trailer. I was somewhat worried the power would go out and stay out, as it’s my source of heat in my very cold house. Overnight it snowed, though it had seemed like the snow was definately done for the year. It wasn’t just a short last revisit of the snow; it was a complete snow cover of five or six inches. It was enough that I wanted to go sledding. The next day I was to work, so I decided that if the snow was still on the ground on Monday, I’d go sledding one last time. Unfortunately for me, the next day, like the day before that day, was warm and sunny, and the snow melted well before the day was over. Interestingly enough, that had happened earlier this year: snowed on Saturday, I planned to sled on Monday, snow melted Sunday during the day.

Writing of Ideas

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The ability to write ideas allows easy storage for later review and retrieval as well as the ability to share with others. Ideas not recorded have the possibility of never being thought again, or of being revived in such a hideous manor as to deteriorate or destroy their original meaning. It is a good idea to write down or at least tell someone else notable ideas so they may live on and perhaps bear fruit in the future

plumbing, etc

in

Hey hey, spring is finally here. Now my house is actually warm or even hot during the days, and with a little heat it can be regular room temperature during the night. Much better than the 45 in most of my house and at most 60 in the bedroom from during the winter. That was mighty cold. Warmth makes it much easier to do things other than sit at the computer or in bed or any other dormant activity in my cozy electric blanket, so I may actually get the stuff I’ve been wanting to done.

My water heater went stopped working properly perhaps two months ago, and then generally stopped working altogether maybe a month ago. I tried working on it during that time, buying some parts and what not, but determined it was probably time to get a new one: there was a very large amount of sediment in the bottom that made it impossible to get the heating element out I was trying to replace. Me, my brother, and cousin Paul dropped it from its access panel and rolled it around my house, leaving a rusty mess along the way, to where it now sits. Luckily for me, April is summit county appliance recycle month, so I should be able to easily recycle it. It’s been sitting for two weeks though, so hopefully I’ll take action soon. I’ve also had no plumbed water for longer than that. I’ve been using a hose run into the bathroom to fill up buckets of water. It’s actually worked out okay, and has taught me many good ways to work without running water. But I’d still prefer running water, and am slowly working towards replumbing the pipes I’m replacing. Some of the old pipes (the iron ones) were quite corroded, and I’m replacing them with copper. Eventually I’ll replace the pipes under the flooring, but for now just the easily accessible ones. I’ve soldered and cut a few peices already, and hope to finish tomorrow. Then I can finally have my running water back.

Unfortunately, I’ll still be without hot water. I’ve been taking showers at my parents. Once I boiled water on the stove for washing dishes, which worked nicely, though took a while. I’m looking at water heaters. The tankless are what I really want, as they are more efficient, take up less space, last longer, and won’t run out of hot water. They’re also much more expensive and harder to find though, with fewer models available. The tankless models are at least $500, while I could get tanked electric ones for less than $200. I was going to use electric, as it would be much easier to install (no need to plumb gas line or cut a hole for venting) but my electrical system doesn’t appear to be up to it; these tankless ones require a lot of power. That’s too bad, as propane tankless probably won’t be much cheaper to run than electric, and the electric one I was looking at was much more efficient than the gas ones that I could afford. 82% is a bit dissappointing, though still impressive compared to the 60% of many gas tank heaters. Now that I know I need a gas one, I’ve done plenty of research and should be ready to purchase soon. Luckily, the gas ones can be found at Home Depot, though they must need to special order them; they’re not on display.

I’ve got many things still to do to this place just to get it up to par, even before I include the many things I plan to eventually do to make it closer to my dream super-efficient home. This summer, I definately must work on the insulation and air infiltration problem. I’ll do what I can, though I don’t currently have a lot of money to afford something like tearing out the old insulation and putting in new. I’ll concentrate on infiltration, though leaks are everywhere, along every junction of every wall and every window and door, and many other places too. It’ll be quite hard, but I’m hoping next winter I can heat my house to normal people temperatures, or at least heat it to the colder temperatures at closer to the cost of a regular similarly sized dwelling: it shure sucks paying maybe $150 or so dollars a month to keep the thermostat at 45° for half the winter and 60° for the other half.

I also still need a stove. I’ve been using a hot plate and camping stove, but neither are quite good enough: the pan slips off the camping stove very easily, and the hot plate seems only be on or off (very hot or very cold) despite the full range dial. My parents will buy me one as a Christmas present (now 4 months past), but I’ve been having lots of trouble deciding which to get. I definately want a 24″ or 20″, as I have very limited counter space, and find anything bigger to be excessive anyway. These stove sizes are unavailable from any place I’ve tried with a store front, so I’ll probably have to order it online. Unfortunately the best one I’ve seen for the money is a range. I really would prefer just a cooktop, as it would fit much better (allowing the storage space that would be quite missed beneath it), it would require much less work to install (no cutting out a big section of the counter), and I already have a convection microwave that functions as a convection oven. That microwave certainly isn’t nearly as nice as a real oven, which is one of the few reasons I’m still considering the range. I’ll decide soon though, as it really would be nice to have a good stove.

This has been a very long post, since the last one was so long ago, so I’ll stop now

ECC Shows

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Hey hey! (the) Yars will be playing shows every Wednesday at the ECC for the next couple of weeks. We’ll have new bands open for us each show. We’ll be getting payed for it (wow, regular pay). I dunno much of the details yet, but I’ll let you know when I get them.

Waste Handling

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There should be a government, or perhaps commercially, run organization which handles any sort of good people no longer want. If you don’t want something, you either take it to one of their locations, or have them pick it up. They will take anything at all.

The organization will take all goods given to them and handle them through the appropriate channel.
-Recycleable goods will be sent to an appropriate recycling facility: goods such as styrofoams that are recycled in only select areas will be shipped in bulk to that area.
-Lawn debri and other compostable items will be sent to composting facilities to be used by local farms.
-Consumer goods still useable, such as old toys or electronics, will be resold in second-hand type stores or given to needy folks
-Construction material still useable will be made available to construction companies or to homeowners
-Any items that cannot be disposed of by any other reasonable means will be sent to landfills
The avenues through which each type of item is sent may either be run by the organization or through independant organizations that most properly fit the orgs needs.

The organization will need to be large spread to be economically feasable and be able to appropriately handle all types of goods. This is hard to do for startup independant companies. The org will likely have to be either an already established company that has the means to handle it, maybe even a consortium of several companies; or something like a state or federal government agency, or perhaps a consortium of local governments.

There would be charges for items the organization cannot make money off of appropriate to the costs incurred for that amount of that type of item. There will also be nominal fees for on-site pickup of items. For items the org does make money off of, the remainder of income after costs incurred by the org for handling it will be given to the discarder, either by an estimate based on similar items at the time of discarding, or later through some sort of well set up account system.

Shows Again

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We were on a three month break from shows while working on our demo and some new songs. Now we’re back. In less than two weeks, we played three shows: Annabell’s, the ECC, and Klub Kameleon. It was our first visit to Annabell’s: we will probably play there again. We also met a band we will probably play with again called Mario Speedwagon.

All three shows were payed gigs, possibly paving the way for us actually making money with this venture, and perhaps some new band equipment.

We’ve got two more shows lined up in the coming months already, and possibly more will come, so watch for us.

Education

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My response to a survey asking how my education could have been better

would have worked better to have:

occupation training in more of a working business environment, with no classes per-se, learning specific areas of the business as progress through one large ‘class’. the business would have all students from a given field as first observers learning from instructors, then workers still being given instruction, the more senior of who would take part in training the new ones. The business would pay students once they begin work, as well as provide the program with income. Students could elect to focus on certain areas of the business, which instructors would then concentrate on.

less concentration on memorization and much more concentration on use

less concentration on getting good grades on assignments/exams and more on learning the material – a student could learn to the same level as another, but reach that point more slowly and thus perform more poorly early on in the class and thus get worse grades though they come out with the same level of knowledge

better connection between classes in a series

many more short classes on a wide variety of topics, that would allow students to take many of these classes at once, and thus learn many more subject areas. work load would be minimal, the classes would merely provide an introduction (the basics) of the topic. I had wanted to take a lot of classes when I had looked at the course book, but was unable to because of time restrictions and especially prerequisites.

more flexibility of course hours, able to spend proper amount of time to learn current material, including both length of time spent in classroom in a day and number of weeks attending the class

ability to learn desired amount of a given subject, by either offering more and less involved versions of classes, or by allowing students in the same class to choose their desired work loads/learning amounts (with several broad categories), or by having many short (perhaps even only one visit long) classes in a series that a student could attend until they feel like they’ve had enough
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