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Windows Live Writer

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So during the conversation with Joe last night some other things came up including Windows Live Writer.  My blogging lately has been a little lighter than usual because I’ve gotten tired of fighting Word 2007 and getting my images and video embedded.  Often this would result in me doing A LOT of work by hand.  It’s not difficult but time consuming.  Well, as late as I got home last night I went and grabbed Windows Live writer.

Setup was a breeze, for the most part.  My issue was a bunch of features I know my blog supports, but Writer doesn’t see them?  Quick search of the internet reveals there’s a Windows Live Writer plugin for Drupal.  Drop it in, enable, BAM everything is working.

I must say this is the ultimate is WYSIWYG editing, even more than that, it doesn’t do the weird formatting problems that word would do when posting through the BlogAPI.  Both of the previous posts today have been through WLW however I didn’t let it go fully hog wild.  I normally would post a draft and then do a final review before sending a post live.  The one thing I have discovered that doesn’t seem to be working correctly yet is the meta words that I tie into every post.  Categories are working correctly, but alas the important tags for the search engines are not.  At least that is a very simple and easy thing to take care of.

One thing I absolutely love is how easy it is to use pictures from online, including from other services such as flicker.  I however have a photography blog where I post hobby pictures I’ve done.  Tied to that site I run a Gallery for putting my pictures on.  To make life easy I prefer to just upload all my pictures there.  WLW makes that cake to do so.

Hopefully this wonderful little tool will allow me to write more blog posts in the evenings now.  If you haven’t tried Windows Live Writer I highly suggest you give it a spin.

A picture of the hill at the Boomershoot site I took yesterday.

Chalk Dispenser 3.0 Testing

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Joe, Ry, and I braved the cold yesterday to go out to the Boomershoot site and do some testing.

We did numerous different tests trying to get different information.  While we learned a lot, we also discovered that many ideas we had to try and learn the information weren’t going to work as expected.  We learned things we weren’t setting out to learn

Here’s the full test video along with pictures and different things we learned.

There were numerous video cameras and stills take by Ry.  I had only my single video camera and SLR with me, so I’m sure a video will probably be coming soon from Ry correcting everything I messed up in my video.

Joe was doing all the shooting, for those of you familiar with the area, we were actually shooting from the road into the side of the berm.  The snow was too deep to easily do the tests in the field.  Ry was out there the day before and got the van momentarily detained for 20 minutes.

We attempted to launch softballs to measure time of flight to estimate launch velocity, however the ball was thrashed beyond maintaining a reasonably consistency for experiments.  We attempted to add a buffer to lessen the shock, and initially we thought it worked, till we saw that it was just in a slightly larger piece than before.

We then instead decided to attempt to launch a golf ball.  The ones we were using were bright pink.  However we think we placed them into LEO to never be seen again.  The last launch we did with 3 golf balls was quite impressive with the resulting smoke ring.

We learned a lot yesterday and the three of us had a long discussion trying to figure out what we learned, as well as how to deal with the newest piece of information we discovered.  While searching for the initial golf ball Ry saw a small hole that looked as if it was from the golf ball.  He reaches in, has to punch through snow to get it and then pulls it out.  While I did not get a picture of that exact extraction, I did get pictures of a extraction Joe did to a similar hole.

Initially that chalk was a powder when placed on the dispenser.  The explosion however compacted it back into a block, and you can even make out the grooves from the plastic baggie.  When Joe first picked the piece up there was still plastic embedded in it, but it fell off.

The compaction of the chalk results in there not being as much color, further all you get is raining chunks.  I ended up staying over at his place chatting… MUCH longer than initially expected, however the wife did have an idea to add to the conversation worth experimenting with.  Instead of chalk, what about colored glitter?  As Joe said, that’s only something a Woman would think of.

Another interesting discovery is the fact that each time we would set of the target, it would pound the stakes about another 3/4 of an inch to an inch into the ground.  When we noticed this and measured the target top to the ground below the snow.

In this picture the top of the target is about 32 inches off the ground, note this is when we first started measuring, we have already set off a couple boomers.  At the end of the day this is what it was at:

The chalk dispenser appeared to survive this test with nothing more than flaking paint.  Between the design changes and operating only using 100 grams of Boomerite (half charge relative to the previous test) it appeared to function quite well.  Also with the addition of the 1/4 in AR500 on the front Ry is reasonably sure the front plate can be made thinner which would help shed some weight.  For more details on the AR500 testing see here, here and here.

Overall though it was an absolutely beautiful day out there yesterday.

Can you see the berm?  With that, here is your friendly reminder that Registration for Boomershoot opens this week.

Winter on the Palouse

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Winter arrived for me and the wife just prior to Thanksgiving this year and has yet to leave. This past Thursday we had yet another significant snow fall but with the catch of high winds. This resulted in much of my yard being devoid of snow, yet my drive way and sidewalks in decently sized drifts.

Yes that snow next to the truck is up to the running board. Opening the door caused snow to be scraped off the top of the drift. Clearing the driveway was fun because the drifts were big enough to have to be slowly cut off.

I will say though, that 44 inch blower for the lawn tractor thus far has been a life saver. When I get to the far side of the driveway it actually takes a couple passes because it’s so deep as well. While yes, the snow can be annoying, I am willing to put up with it for the following couple reasons.

There’s some more of the senic pictures I took today here.

Death to Pumkins

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I have been meaning for a while to put up this post but never had the time to get around to it until today. Instead of cleaning the shop I wasted my time editing pictures, writing this post and working on some others, and chatting on GBC.

A couple years ago we blew up some pumpkins as relief for the election of fearless leader. After rolling through the store and being able to walk away with 400 lbs of pumpkins for about 20 cents a pound I sent an email to Joe.

The results were quite wonderful.

And lastly, as I always try to do, here’s the video:

Coming to a Mall Near You

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With everyone refusing to have their privacy and 4th Amendment rights violated by TSA at the airport, They have decided to expand to commonly traveled areas.

I’ve already seen that the TSA is worse than Russia in 1989. However with the tactics and the rate that they’re expanding, I’m seriously beginning to wonder when people are going to start “disappearing” in the night to never be seen or heard from again.

DHS and TSA are both totally out of control and obsessed with power. The worst part of all of this though is we’re told it’s for our own good. William Pitt has expressed my feelings on that type of sentiment quite well.

Update: Some coworkers and I were talking and trying to figure out why they would want to screen malls. Then it dawned on us, the number of teenage girls at malls is through the roof. Coupled with their soccer mom escorts, it’s a sexual predators wet dream.