When we were planning our tour I was thinking this would be a great time to get a good working tool for making wood kindle, cutting rope or preparing meat since Peli is vegetarian. This is where the dilemma arose: I wanted a good-looking knife, with a wood handle, nice and wide, since I have big hands. A good sturdy blade that could take some beating from a wood club when making kindle. And around six inches long, so I have something to work with.

Even in the knife-loving United States it was hard to find something that wasn’t ridiculously expensive, ugly or impractical for what I wanted.

I have seen some of the handmade knives from Sweden and Finland which are works of art with beautiful blades and stunning wooden handles. But they tended to ask for way too much money for something that had a high chance of me misplacing and honestly not using that often. I dragged my feet and never got around to ordering the Danish scout knife in time for our departure, which would probably have made this boy very happy.

Then I found the leaflet about knife making in Barrytown in New Zealand. A day spent forging, modelling and polishing a knife that you made to the exact shape you (nearly) wanted. Now that is something I just had to do, get to use an anvil, red hot forge and power tools and I would walk away with a knife I had made myself.

You might have to call ahead a fair bit in the high season, from what I understood from talking to Steven and Robyn, our hosts for the day. I was booked in with nine others and we were all ready to go at 9:30am outside their home in the outdoor work shed.

The forge was going at full blast and behind it were the various other tools we were going to use throughout the day, jack saws, drills and band sanders. We donned our safety glasses and old shirts to keep the dust away and Steven gave us a quick and sensible health and safety spiel, nothing deep just don’t be a numpty as there’s hot stuff here and power tools there. And knives are sharp.

We got given our knife-to-be, steel from a mine near Auckland, pretty much the same old stuff that the world is being built up with. A few seconds in the forge and the steel was orange which is hotter than red hot. Red, orange and then yellow where steel starts to burn. And then we were to whack the living *beep* out of it, on the side where we wanted to create the sharp edge. As we were making one side thinner it became longer so the knife began to curve up and my dilemma started, which will become clearer as the story/day moves along.

To un-curve the knife you hammer the knife edge which causes the blade to bend. But it being hot and soft steel you could just whack it back into shape. You repeat this three times and every time you do this you add more carbon dioxide into the steel and therefore create a harder steel and edge to your knife.

When you are generally happy with the shape you lower the blade part into a bucket of water up to the handle. This hardens the blade which make a good knife. You then figure out how much blade and handle you want and cut it to size.

Next step is the handle. We did a bit of sanding to make the surface flat for the brass part of the handle. Then we drilled holes for the brass (??) rivets. A bit of superglue helped to hold it in place though mine wasn’t set so it slipped. The safe and experienced hands of Robyn came to my aid and fixed it all.

The next step was the wood handle. Again, we were somewhat thrown into it: that is the shape we’re looking for, cut wide (easier to remove than to add later), here’s the electric jack saw and on you go. Most of what we did and used that day I have used at least once before over the years, so I’m not scared of power tools and the like. But it could be a bit scary for someone who hasn’t. This is where Steven and Robyn were great as they could read us all right away and knew when to leave us to it or guide us through it.

The Rimu hardwood, a rare native wood, was second-hand from an old hospital. At first it didn’t look like much but as it got worked on it turned out to be a very pretty bit of wood. The handles were then glued and riveted onto the steel and you had something that looked like a knife. Rough, but definitely a knife. We then sanded the handle into a rough shape we wanted.

All the little gaps between the steel, brass and wood were filled with filler and then it was lunch time. We prepared our sandwiches along a production line in the kitchen and ate either in their living room or in their back garden looking at the beautiful views of the sea and pastures with horses.

While we rested Steven took over and sanded down the handles and blades, because apparently the hardened filler would be nasty to breath in.

We went on a little post-lunch walk with Robyn, talked to their horses and had a go on their massive swing, a few people need to pull to get it going, well good fun.

Back at the shed our work really looked like a knife now and was ready to be polished with finer and finer sand on the band sanders.

I still was fighting with the final look of my knife. Should I keep the curved point, or get rid of it? I kind of liked the ‘nose’ as it made for a different-looking knife with a personal touch. But I wasn’t sure if I should give it a ‘nose job’ and give the blade and handle the same curve, or even just make the back of the blade straight. I was talking to the others and looked at their work and the knives on display, and still I could not make up my mind.

After we had sanded the blade down, we put masking tape on the handle to keep it clean and we went to the views of the back garden for our Zen moment, the fine polishing. First a wet polish then a dry one before we attacked the knife with polisher and cotton. Each session lasted at least five minutes and if you want a really good job you’d be at it for an hour at least.

The last step before sharpening was to dye the wood handle, which gave the wood a nice dark look that goes very well with the brass bits on the handle and the brass rivets.

This is where I made my final decision that the knife needed a ‘nose job’ and I went at it with the sanders. As I sanded, I was really worried that I would ruin the personal touch and its uniqueness. But as I saw the knife with a straight back I knew I was on the right donkey. After a few small touches I managed to get the curve going from the back of the handle to the blade.

If I had the tools myself I would probably have made a knife to a different design and would have had the time to polish it more. But knowing that in one day I made a knife pretty much all by myself is really satisfying. Even the impurities give it character and really make it mine.

All in all a day spent in Barrytown with Steven and Robyn making a knife from scratch is a brilliant day and one you will remember forever. I now have a wood craft tool which will last a long time, with a story attached to it, that I made myself. And I’m very happy with that.

Click here to see all the photos of a great day spent knife making in Barrytown

The post Is this a dagger I see before me? appeared first on random@woollypigs.

For some reason the bog standard set up of these two don’t seem to like each other on my host. So after a lot of searching and going around in circles and just trying, eg. random editing something in the .htaccess for the heck of it.

I either got an 500 error or the blank galleries page in wordpress. I ended up with this in the .htaccess in my root folder.

.htaccess in the root folder (www.woollypigs.com/) :

# Switch rewrite engine off in case this was installed under HostPay.
RewriteEngine Off

SetEnv DEFAULT_PHP_VERSION 5

DirectoryIndex index.cgi index.php index.html

# BEGIN WordPress

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ – [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

# END WordPress

With trying to set the “RewriteEngine Off” I managed to get to see the woollypigs.com/galleries, the wordpress page, still not the Gallery3 page I had hoped.

So I changed my .htaccess in the /galleries folder where Gallery 3.0.4 (I know I downloaded that version)

.htaccess in the galleries folder (www.woollypigs.com/galleries) :

# Set some reasonable defaults for PHP. Most of these cannot be set
# inside the script itself. For hosts that don’t have .htaccess
# support but do support per-dir php.ini files, these settings are
# mirrored in php.ini
#

php_flag short_open_tag On
php_flag magic_quotes_gpc Off
php_flag magic_quotes_sybase Off
php_flag magic_quotes_runtime Off
php_flag register_globals Off
php_flag session.auto_start Off
php_flag suhosin.session.encrypt Off
php_value upload_max_filesize 20M
php_value post_max_size 100M

# Try to disable the parts of mod_security that interfere with the
# Flash uploader
#

SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off

# Increase security by uncommenting this block. It keeps browsers
# from seeing support files that they shouldn’t have access to. We
# comment this out because Apache2 requires some minor configuration
# in order for you to use it. You must specify “AllowOverride Limit”
# in your Apache2 config file before you uncomment this block or
# you’ll get an “Internal Server Error”.
#
#
# Order deny,allow
# Deny from all
#
#
# Order allow,deny
# Allow from all
#

# Improve performance by uncommenting this block. It tells the
# browser that your images don’t change very often so it won’t keep
# asking for them. If you get an error after uncommenting this, make
# sure you specify “AuthConfig Indexes” in your Apache config file.
#

ExpiresActive On
# Cache all files for a month after access (A).
ExpiresDefault A2678400
# Do not cache dynamically generated pages.
ExpiresByType text/html A1

# You can use the mod_rewrite Apache module to get rid of the
# “index.php” from your Gallery 3 urls. Uncomment the block below
# inside the … lines and then edit the
# RewriteBase line to match your Gallery 3 URL.
#
# Here are some RewriteBase values:
# Gallery 3 URL RewriteBase line
# ============= ====================
# http://example.com/gallery3 RewriteBase /gallery3
# http://example.com/~bob/photos RewriteBase /~bob/photos
# http://gallery3.example.com/ RewriteBase /
#
# Then just use your Gallery 3 without the index.php in the url.
#
# NOTE: future upgrades of Gallery 3 will overwrite this file! If you
# want these changes to be persistent, talk to your system admin about
# putting this block into your Apache config files.
#

DirectoryIndex index.cgi index.php

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /galleries/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?kohana_uri=$1 [QSA,PT,L]
RewriteRule ^$ index.php?kohana_uri=$1 [QSA,PT,L]
RewriteRule ^index.php/(.*) $1 [QSA,R,L]

This got the whole thing to work again \o/

For some reason the WordPress SEO by Joost de Valk rewrote my root .htaccess and I then lost contact to my gallery3 install, error 500. While I was poking around I decided to upgrade from 3.0.3 to 3.0.4 which Gallery3 had told me to do. I tried adding the index.php/upgrader to the url and it said that I had successfully upgrades, but I still got the please update note.

Therefore I downloaded 3.0.4 and followed these steps : http://codex.gallery2.org/Gallery3:User_guide:Gallery3:Installing_and_upgrading#Upgrading even after that I still got the please update to 3.0.4. But hey wordpress blog and the gallery3 is working now, so therefore I can’t complain.

The post wordpress and Gallery3 and .htaccess appeared first on random@woollypigs.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/16069118

Then why the heck do the people in power NOT do more to safe this wonderful world? Don’t you want this to be there for your kids and grand kids when they grow up? From where I sit, most of us (not in power) are agreeing to what I say, but as soon as you get a little power you forget your dreams and this.

Politician, CEO’s of big polluting companies should be made to watch this Clockwork Orange style, every day they go into their office.

What I do among other things: I cycle everywhere, take my litter with me home and recycle where possible. It is the little things that get us started but we need too much more and not just from the grass-roots but from the top down too.

The post Wonderful world appeared first on random@woollypigs.

Only today I tried to click on it to find out what it all was about. But for some reason it is pulling up my emails, not what is going on in my circles. Most of them do not have anything to do with the names/titles/persons in my circles. The normal friends and family circles are there though some are duplicated even though some aren’t friends or family and visa versa.

Then there is a circle I call cycle touring, it have picked up lots of my emails that has something to do with cycling but most of them aren’t or haven’t got anything to do with that circle. Ans so on for my other circles.

And what you wanted in there e.g. circles aren’t, the rest of circles are empty. So what is these links/circles in my email then?

The circles link within my Gmail contacts makes a lot of sense and I like it there and it works there. But mixing my emails up with my circles.

LINK: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/gmail-and-contacts-get-better-with.html

The post Gmail vs google+ appeared first on random@woollypigs.

I have always loved to sit down and watch a zombie moives and books about zombies and the age old question : fast or slow? Can have me talking for hours on end.

I have just become hooked to watching the Walking Dead, albeit the weak special effect, see the explosion end of season one, but hey that is not what I’m blogging about.

Shaun of the dead is already classic zombie movie in my eyes and is the one that stand in the slow corner.

If you can get your hands(bittorrent) on Dead Set from Channel 4 you are in for a brilliant little series (5 episodes) and is in the fast corner.

Always do remember to double tap as in Zombieland.

And so we can go on with what have come out over the last few years plus then there is all the classics.

“The Good News: We Survived. The Bad News: So Did They”

A few weeks ago I got hold of Feed by Mira Grant, which is a rather good read. But it also raise the question, when do you get infected. Which in the book you already are, the infection is just waiting for you to die. The idea of “life” after a zombie rising and that we are getting on with life after the fact, reminds me of Stephen King’s the Stand.

The walking dead, Shaun of the dead etc you get covered in blood an only when you are bitten you become a zombie. Though since nearly all zombie movie I have seen it is the blood that the cause. In Feed the whole area would get burned down if one little drop is spilled even if you are in it.

My next read will be Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, mainly because my other half keep going on and on about Pride and Prejudice, so I thought that I better read it :)

Other book on the next to read list : The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks and J.L. Bourne’s Day by day Armageddon.

The post Feed by Mira Grant appeared first on random@woollypigs.

NAME RC759 Piccoline
MANUFACTURER Regnecentralen
TYPE Professional Computer
ORIGIN Denmark
YEAR 1984
END OF PRODUCTION 1989
BUILT IN LANGUAGE None, mostly used with COMAL 80 or PASCAL.
KEYBOARD Full size QWERTY with Danish characters
CPU Intel 80186
SPEED Unknown
RAM 256 KB expandable to 512 KB
VRAM Unknown
ROM Unknown
TEXT MODES 80 columns x 24 lines
GRAPHIC MODES Yes, resolution unknown
COLOrsc Monochrome
SOUND Yes, unknown
I/O PORTS Printer, monitor, cassette player, remote printer/diskette, optional LAN
BUILT IN MEDIA 5 1/4 ”diskette station with printer interface, sharable between 4 computers
OS CP/M 86
POWER SUPPLY built-in switch mode
PERIPHERALS Unknown

Yup cutting edge :)

Along with learning how to write COMAL 80 and PASCAL we had a go at word processing. So we had to come up with a story or some text to “word process” so we just came up with this story called “De fyre ben” aka The Forty Legs. It looked pretty good on printed out on a dot-matric printer, it had paragraphs and bold letters too.

Then around 14 years later I was looking for something to use to learn this new thing called Flash. Since it was pretty made for animation so why not use the Forty Legs for that and show it to my mate who I wrote the story with.

The thing I had visualised this animation should be made out to look like. Was stop motion, rough and simple graphic, but I couldn’t really get it as my skills were not that good. Then when I just about about to finish I saw the first ad for the little know show called South Park. Which was rather disappointing and heartbraking since that was just like I had visualised.

Then tonight I fell over a site that told me that you could convert .swf to HTML5 and just for a laugh I was thinking why not give it a go. And the only .swf files I had laying around, since me and Flash didn’t get going.

So bear with me and these links below, it is old and badly made and it is a converted files. And do remember that not all the links works so come back to this page to watch it all. Also it is a bit slow too so take your time and remember way back when www stood for the world wide wait.

Teaser
Intro
Main menu
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

The post The Fourty Legs appeared first on random@woollypigs.

Which from what I understand is linked to Evolution, which I do not use, so why does it start up and eat my CPU at 100%.

I even tried to uninstall Evolution which was not a smart move at Ubuntu fell over because even when you don’t used Evolution Ubuntu does. Which meant I had to install Ubuntu again to get it to run right again as the attempt to install just Evolution again failed big time.

After some searching around on the net I haven’t found away to cure this problem. I have asked over on ubuntuforums.org – http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1887220 so lets see if someone answers.

Opening up your terminal and enter “killall -9 e-addressbook-factory” stops e-addressbook-factory but does not prevent it from starting again later and eat your CPU.

The post e-addressbook-factory appeared first on random@woollypigs.

I did also find that the Chrome v14.something was struggling on a 64bit machine, not many people reported it. Though speed wise FireFox wasn’t that fast either.

So I was on the look out for something lighter on the system. I knew about Mint and other lighter version of ubunutu and linux. But when I spotted lubuntu I thought that I should give it a go.

I had seen online that there was some report that the HP Mini 110 have had it issues with the wifi. I also give it a go with the ubuntu install from the a USB stick along with dual booting with windows 7.

Windows 7 did run very well on the HP Mini 110 with 1Gb RAM, though I did spend a few hours removing all the bloatware and other crap that HP and Mickysoft thinks is essential for your computer experience.

The USB and dual boot was so easy to set up, plug in, a few clicks and a reboot later you had a laptop that could run ubuntu and windows. They have come a long way since I last had a stab at this, good work chaps.

Ubuntu 11.04 and later 11.11 was eating more RAM than 7 and it struggled a few time and it got a bit annoying to use when you had a few tabs open in Chrome and wanted to do something else.

I tried out Gnome instead of Unity but that didn’t make it much better, though the GUI was more suited to the small screen.

Since I found out that the wifi and other hardware wan’t the issue, I decided that an extra lump of RAM and a clean, no dual boot, install was due if I could find something that was lighter on the system.

Again the USB stick install of lubuntu was just a few simple clicks, give the laptop a name and create a user and you are running.

Lubuntu runs Chromiminium, however it is spelled, and a version below the official chrome which made surfing much more bearable again. The 1Gb RAM and the LXDE was much more friendly to the system, so we are flying again even with plenty of tabs open in chrome and other stuff running.

The only thing I could say is that the default mouse icons are rather ugly, so I had to changed that before it drove me nuts, else I’m very happy with it.

The post lubuntu 11.04 on HP Mini 110-3500 appeared first on random@woollypigs.

Yes it is nice and convenient for us but we need to start thinking about the bigger picture(oh, I have gone all blue sky thinking here :) ) and do more at home and locally.

Just heard that we are about to clock seven BILLION people on this little rock we call home. That is a BILLION more than in 1999. And it is not slowing down, eight billion is just around the corner and I’m sure that this jump will be faster than from six to seven billion.

With flying everything around the globe to make it easier for ourself is not going to float for longer. The natural resources, space and pollution with come to a head as we grow in numbers and Earth will win this battle.

The post There is no spoon appeared first on random@woollypigs.

My laptop had a fully charged battery, I then pulled out the power cord and Ubuntu told me that the battery is critical low and turned off the laptop. I could do nothing to stop it from doing so. When I then started the laptop up again without the power cord it runned just fine, though the remaining power left time yo-yo’ed up and down one sec it is 2h30 the next 5h20, a bit like the good old windows minutes.

I have done nothing with regards to the power settings when I installed 11.10.

UPDATE: Since this I have noticed something else that is rather weird. A few people have commented that my screen is dark/dim, though I find it ok. The keyboard brightness buttons are not working at all, the little graphical display comes up and shows that you are pressing the right keys. But the bar goes up and down but not the brightness of the screen.

If I should take the power cord out and let the laptop go into suspend mode either by itself or with me pressing the button/closing the lid. And then wake it up again without the power plugged in, so it is just running on battery, the screen brightness is rammed up to burning the text on the screen into my retinas mode. And still the buttons behave the same, only way to dim it is to restart the laptop.

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