Springtime

 A decade ago I decided to buy lots of plants.

I don’t know what this is…

I’d always had a couple of plants, but they’d always die on me.  Since I’m basically enthusiasm-driven, I realized that the only way I’d ever be able to have any non-dead plants on my windows was to buy lots and lots of them, and force myself to pay attention.  If something falls below my enthusiasm radar, it just doesn’t get done at all.
So I got like a hundred plants or something.  When I get enthusiastic, I get…  obsessed.

This has to be a crassula
This can’t be anything but a bromeliad
Citrus.  Of some kind.
This is definitely an aloe
That’s a myrta
Uhm…  schiffer?  Schifferia?
What are these called?  Haworthia?  Or something?
This is probably something

I’ve cut back a bit since then, and plants still die.  I travel quite a bit, and any plants that don’t survive without water for a week or two suffer.  So I have to replenish the windows sills once in a while.
These are my new recruits.

Hair Today

According to experts, apparently long hair can get trapped in pipes leading to a less than optimal drainage situation.

The solution here, according to the same experts, is to pour a liquid called “Mudin” down the drains twice a year.  Or, as the experts said,  “or, for you, every three months”.

I’m just reporting what the experts said.  I take no responsibility for any negative effect this advice may or not may have for you.

They left me a bottle.

Computers Can Remember Things

One feature that I’ve been missing from mplayer for years and years is the ability to remember how far you’ve watched a movie.  Like, if I’ve been watching a movie, but then I stop the movie because I want to watch a TV show, then mplayer doesn’t helpfully remember where you left off.

So I’ve added a totally trivial fix to mplayer that just records all the shows you’ve watched (and how far into the file you’ve watched them) to the ~/.mplayer.positions file.

I’ve put the result (along with the previous hacks) on github.  And, of course, I’ve amended movie.el to use this data to start off the movie at the correct spot.

This will save me several seconds per week, I bet.

The changes are probably not that useful as is, but if somebody wants to take this idea an add it to mplayer proper, then … that would be nice.  Perhaps.

Plastic Bags Considered Arty

The Floor

What is that lovely expressionistic piece of art on the right, you say?

Let me tell you a story.

I went shopping for groceries at ICA today.  I left the bags on the floor in the kitchen.

The kitchen floor has heating cables.  The cables switched themselves on.

The red text on the plastic bags melted.

The Bag

No, the the floor does not get toasty warm.  It just gets pleasantly warm.  But obviously ICA is using plastic that melts at very low temperatures.

I should sow them for a million megabucks!

Or I could just get the floor repainted, which I was kinda planning on doing, anyway…

(The picture on the top right was taken after scrubbing at the redness with White Spirit for ten minutes.  It didn’t help much.)

So much drama!