Orientation::QuilterQuilts, Cat Herding, Fruitcake, Life :: Mary Beth Frezon

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§ November 27th, 2004 § Filed under quilting § Add a comment

Friday night, I had a little fun. OK, I was pooped from working Black Friday (let’s just say Holy Moly!) at the Apple Store, but I came home and played a bit with some new techie toys.

Toy One: Airport Express.
I’ve been looking for a way to set up my 3 printers in a space directly behind where I sit. So imagine, the chair swivels around 180 degrees and there are my printers. I got a little tower of sorts by customizing one of those wooden folding bookshelves. Worked great. But how to connect all those printers to the powerbook? Anywhere I considered putting the printers was just too far for the normal USB cable/extension. A powered relay would be needed. Next I considered a D-Link wireless print server. That would be cool but most of the ones I looked at only fed two USB printers and maybe one via ethernet, and were in the 180-200 dollar range.

So I sprang for an Airport Express. I moved the tower o’printers, found a power bar, untangled all the cables and sat down with the instructions. A few minutes later, the first printer was up and running! Now the real test: Unplug the USB cable from printer one and plug in the cable from printer two. Whaddyaknow?! Printer two magically appeared in my rendezvous printer list. Cool. I can live with plugging in the printers as needed. Elegant and relatively cheap solution!

Toy Two: SightFlex by MacMice.
Arrived Friday at work and I couldn’t wait to get it home. Unplugged the iSight’s clamp and firewire cable and plugged in the SightFlex. Plugged the SightFlex Firewire cable into my hub. Voila! A very positionable iSight. Perfect for spying on cats. More importantly: perfect for capturing close ups for quilting demos etc. Imagine if you will — iSight poised and positioned near sewing machine. Computer hooked to projector. Students able to SEE what hands are doing while quilting etc from my perspective, rather than from whereever they’re standing. Cool.

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§ November 27th, 2004 § Filed under quilting § Add a comment

There comes a time in a man’s life when to get to where he has to go–if there are no doors or windows–he walks through a wall. — Bernard Malamud

Believing in the impossible is what teachers are all about.

Go read Mary Beth Matthews tale of a parent-teacher conference and believe yourself.

“One can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay, you haven’t much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why sometimes I’d believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” — Lewis Carrroll

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§ November 23rd, 2004 § Filed under quilting § Add a comment

Recipe for fun and food:

• Take one good-size blue hubbard squash. Maybe 10-15 pounds worth.
• Wash the field dirt off the down side.
• Get a good grip on the squash and carry it outside
• Once you’ve gotten to the driveway, pitch the squash UP .
• Watch the satisfying little arc it makes, up, up and then downward
• Enjoy the nice cracking noise it makes as it hits the ground.
• Pick up the several big pieces (one which bears all the big white seeds) and put them in the big bowl you wisely brought with you
• Go inside and use the biggest knife you have and understand why others have advised using a hatchet to whack the pieces into smaller pieces for cooking.

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§ November 19th, 2004 § Filed under quilting § Add a comment

I’ve updated the growing iSight software and info page (thanks Matthias!). Start here for a trio of new software and a couple new gadgets for the iSight. Probably the most interesting of the softwares was the SecuritySpy, which is something people ask about all the time. Ok, maybe not ALL the time, but at least now I can refer them to something. It’s only $50 to buy which isn’t bad for the features it provides.

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§ November 16th, 2004 § Filed under quilting § Add a comment

Sometimes cats are just plain out photogenic. And sometimes they’re just sweet.

Bill the cat, Boopsie (aka Mrs. Bill) and a late appearance by Gus.