A Christmas Carol

By briansrapier

Ed. note: I just realized that it’s been nearly a year since I posted my last ‘toon. I’ll try to get back in the groove and do them much more often.

The Birth-Age Correlation

The waking epiphany is a widely known phenomena by which a person, rousing from a sleep, has a sudden, intuitive insight into the deeper meaning of something or knowledge of how to solve a complex issue. While I have occasionally experienced this phenomena, most of my epiphanies take place in the shower. Maybe it’s because that it where I really wake up or perhaps it’s just because of the peace and solitude I experience being the only person awake in the house at 5AM.

Drive-by Photography: Scenic Views

I am an opportunistic photographer. Call me lazy, but I very rarely try to set up a shot or wait for a photographic moment to happen. Usually, moving 5-10 feet in one direction or another to line up the shot is enough effort on my part and I let nature do the rest. Here are a few of my favorite scenes over the past few months.

The 4-H Stamp of Approval

After an intense weekend of classroom instruction and hands-on practical training, I was awarded with a 4-H, level-1, Archery Instructor certification. The training went well beyond my expectations; rather than simply teaching archery, we received a crash course in the fundamentals of teaching the youth and how to reach out to the many different age groups currently involved in 4-H programs.

A Fair Exchange

In an effort to simplify my life I’ve slowly been paring down the amount of stuff I own. In a lot of cases, it has been a lot easier to simply donate smaller items to charity rather than go through the trouble of taking calls, answering e-mails, and driving around just to clean out a couple of closets. I used to freecycle. I was, in fact, a freecycle junkie. However, I was cured of my addiction once and for all by a nutty lady that insisted on free delivery and a warranty on a washer and dryer that I was giving away. Since then, I just put everything out at the curb and 10 times out of ten, it finds it’s way to a new home.

Drive-by Photography: Emergency Ballon Landing

I had a unique experience over the weekend. While driving back from a fun evening out with the kids we espied a hot air ballon landing in a small field next to the highway. I made a quick exit and tracked back to the place where I saw it come down. It wasn’t too hard to find.

Front Wheel Drive Recumbent

Over the past few weeks I’ve been working on a front wheel drive recumbent for my wife as a birthday present. I’ve been documenting the process to build it and posted my progress on Instructables. If you have questions or details concerning the specifics of construction, feel free to contact me.

By briansrapier

Ubuntu: Jaunty vs. Evolution, Xorg, Etc …

I have been running Ubuntu for several years now, starting with Dapper Drake back in 2006. Not being much of a desktop/graphics person, I’ve slowly mended my ways as I’ve seen Ubuntu become a bridge between the “who needs a GUI, use CLI” hardcore geeks and “just give me something I can point-n-click” crowd allowing Linux to become a main stream OS.

Having experienced a number of issues upgrading version the moment the latest and greatest is released, I am usually apprehensive about just doing a distribution upgrade the second it becomes available. However, a couple of months ago my much loved Dell XPS M1710 was replaced by an HP Compaq 6510b. It has been a lesson in frustration getting anything to work the way it should on the new laptop, mostly because of the crappy Intel graphics controller.

Drive-by Photography

I have a Blackberry. It’s not really mine. My company issues them so they can contact employees in the middle of the night just in case there’s a problem, such as the national media over-hyping pig flu resulting in a butt-load of internet traffic coming into our site and causing issues on our network (really).

I’ve never been a fan of electronic devices, even though I have an ipod (I hate mainstream radio). You see people all the time who are married to the thing – constantly communicating with everyone in the world except the ones who are right there with you. However, my Blackberry’s saving grace is the fact that it has a reasonably decent camera and a 4 GB micro SIM card. Since I got it at the end of last summer, I’ve taken upwards of 1700 pictures – mostly family shots, but also a lot of what has been happening around me.

Out Behind the Woodshed

A couple of years back, a friend of mine let me listen to his Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli CDs. The few short days they were in my possession took me back seventy years and reintroduced me to the world of swing-jazz. I had been rewarded with the crisp clean sound of a violin, masterfully played and the upbeat thrums and intricate chords of an acoustic guitar. I was even more impressed when I learned of Django’s tragic story and the fact that the intricate chords I was listening to were made with only two fingers.