in control

I’ve been flying solo since my last babystep in the third week of May. But I’ll be decluttering for a while yet as stuff is like sand. The more you dig into it, the more boxes I need to temporarily hold the expanded volume.

Fifteen minutes at a time to ‘put away’, ‘give away’, and ‘throw away’ has only seen the emptying of three archive boxes out of the 20+, and that is only my stuff. I’m hoping that H gets enthused with decluttering and some of his boxes get moved too.

I’m now beginning to update my Control Journal from that developed while doing the FlyLady babysteps. Keeping babysteps in mind, I’ll follow Building Your Own Control Journal on FlyLady.net.

The changes I wish to make include accommodating that we are currently renovating in earnest, which means I cannot always just do the ’swish and swipe’. Also, although I appear to be doing more [1], for example, ironing teatowels [2], I have more free time to include other routines.

After a workshop on Saturday, I have been making sourdough bread. It doesn’t take very much time, but I need to schedule it better to coincide with lunch or dinner when I’m likely to be ramping up the oven to 230 deg C.

[1] The rubber bladed brush is fantastic for removing cat fur from furniture.
[2] I’ve discovered that ironed linen is easier to put away!

FLYing

I have been FLYing for ten days.

What has been most remarkable is discovering that electrostatic dusters do in fact work!

Prior to having someone else clean, I have always just walked around the house with a damp or polishing cloth when doing the vacuuming, thinking that feather dusters simply spread the dust. The new cleaner wanted a duster, so she got one.

When I returned to doing the cleaning myself I continued to use the feather duster, but felt that it did not achieve much, and resorted back to walking around with a cloth.

On the weekend I went to the hardware shop for a bannister brush and some long life masking tape (as you do), and discovered that there is a whole world of brushes out there that I did not know about. On a whim, I treated myself to a new electrostatic duster - probably because I had been reading about FLY Lady caring for her feather duster and deciding that the existing one was beyond redemption. It had curled up ends suggesting that I had wiped it across something that was hot.

Well, it is simply amazing. It does in fact pick up the dust. I was only going to do the one room, but I ended up making my way throughout the house.

Reading the label instructions I read that it should not be used on electronic equipment and that I could clean it in soapy warm water. Mmm, I thought. Perhaps this confirms that the previous electrostatic duster did not work, as I can’t remember any zapped computers.

Etch from scratch - Xfce shutdown

The tie it up and lock it all down as a default approach is sometimes very frustrating. Having logged in to an Xfce session, when I came to shut down my computer, I can’t do this from within my log in as the button is greyed out. Not that I have ever needed to use it, but so is the ‘Restart’ button.

The Xfce - Session Manager documentation on my computer says that you have to be listed in the systems Sudoers file to execute the ${libexecdir}/xfsm-shutdown-helper command as user root. This is /usr/sbin/xfsm-shutdown-helper on my Debian GNU/Linux (Etch) system so I became root, ran the visudo command and added the line as per the example:

dilettante poppy=/usr/sbin/xfsm-shutdown-helper

where dilettante is my username and poppy the hostname.

It didn’t work.

Reading the Sudoers Manual, I read about the NOPASSWD tag value, so I edited the line that I added previously to:

dilettante poppy = NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/sfsm-shutdown-helper

And it worked!

However, my computer is not exactly a PC, i.e. a personal computer. H ’sometimes’ gets to use it I could add H as a user to the Sudoers file, but a more inclusive solution was to use what Cameron set up for the Computer Angels Sarge system which H kindly implemented for me.

So that all (two of us) users can shut down poppy, Sudoers now includes:

User_Alias XFCE_SHUTDOWN_USERS = ALL
Cmnd_Alias XFCE_SHUTDOWN_COMMAND = /usr/sbin/xfsm-shutdown-helper
XFCE_SHUTDOWN_USERS ALL = NOPASSWD: XFCE_SHUTDOWN_COMMAND

Albeit slower, I guess choosing ‘Shut Down’ from the ‘End Session’ dialog is a more elegant exit than poweroff in a root terminal.

third time lucky

Today I tried the ’sabrina’s breadsticks’ recipe from Stephanie Alexander’s The Cook’s Companion. This is the third of three recipes that I have followed from Alexander’s book.

The recipe said to roll out the dough into a long log. I could only roll it out to the width of the round plate that circulates in my fan-forced convection oven which is much shorter than the breadsticks I see in the grocers.

They were a bit doughy, but the outside is crisp and the inside is a consistent springy. And they do/did taste VERY nice.

Breadsticks are probably not so practical as a loaf of bread, but I guess we could cut them lengthwise to make a roll for lunch. Leftovers to be cut thinly for a ‘chocolate bread and butter pudding’ as I’ve had the sultanas soaking in the cointreau for at least a week now.

The breadsticks do take a long time to make, although not time consuming as most of the time is waiting dough rising time. Also, they only take one teaspoon of dried yeast, so inexpensive in the scheme of things.

I think we will have to remove the bread, bread knife and cutting board from the dining room table though. That way, we are not walking past and having JUST another slice

woo hoo

I’m doing the happy dance. We ate all the bread from my first attempt, and tonight I baked my first olive bread.

The olive bread recipe is from Stephanie Alexander’s The Cook’s Companion and is simpler than the country-style crusty bread recipe as you don’t need to knead a second time or leave the dough to rise for a third time.

It is yummy. We had some warm after dinner tonight, but we will keep it for tomorrow to accompany a Greek salad.

Note: My Kenwood mixer stopped tonight. But H was quick to fix the broken wire so it all turned out right in the end albeit belatedly. I recognise that my hands and wrists would be no good at kneading almost 1 kg of dough for 15 minutes, so the mixer is a necessity for making bread.

making bread

It worked! First time!

I made bread using my Kenwood mixer, small amount of manual kneading, and lots of patience by following the ‘country-style crusty bread’ recipe in Stephanie Alexander’s The Cook’s Companion.

My oven is a combination microwave convection and the maximum temperature that I can specify is 230 deg C, whereas I have never seen the actual temperature above 200 deg C. For this reason, the only change I made to the recipe was to add five minutes to baking the top and when I turned the loaves over.

The smell of dough and the baking bread was reward enough, but to have two complete loaves that were tasty with good springy texture was thrilling.

I purchased the yeast and bread flour (unbleached and wholemeal) from Loose Produce. One of the few places that allow you to purchase just what you need. For example, I only needed 800 g of unbleached bread or strong flour and 200 g of wholemeal bread flour. All the other places that I looked for ingredients wanted me to buy either bread mix or bread flour in 10 kg bags.

Once this bread is finished, I think I’ll have a go at olive bread. It is very similar to the recipe that I have just followed except that it includes olives, rosemary and a bit more olive oil.

I think the secret ingredient was the flour. That is, following the recipe and using the recommended unbleached bread or strong flour. What I read is that these flours are milled from wheat that has a high gluten content. Household flour that you get from the supermarket is made from low-gluten soft wheat, with most of the bran extracted, and is bleached. It is the gluten that ensures that the bread is well aerated by trapping the gas produced by the rising loaf.

Etch from scratch - Java

There have been a few web sites, that I quickly move on from as they require Java. They have just not been important or enough of them for me to install Java - until today.

I received a notice that the Australian Science Media Centre were hosting an online briefing on biofuels. In order to participate, I needed Java.

Well, I installed Java, but not in time to participate in the briefing. But this will be available to download and listen to later if I’m still so inclined.

I guess if I really wanted to listen to the briefing live, I could have just installed the version (Java Sun JRE 5.0) that is available in the Debian stable repository.

I’ve already got a bit of a mess on my Debian Etch system having not used the package manager to install Adobe Acrobat Reader and Flash, so I was not about to go down that route with Java. But I learnt that Sun JRE 6.0 was available, and I could get it from the unstable repository. And my reading and learning did not stop there.

Having started reading Installing Java on Debian and then Getting Sun Java 6 On Debian 4.0 With APT Pinning on Weiqi Gao’s Observations, I got distracted reading about APT pining and Feta.

A morning later, I mostly followed Weiqi Gao’s Observations to install Java Sun JRE 6.0 (and the rest), and began to learn about APT pining and play with Feta.

The only thing that I would add to this, is that to get the plugin to work with Iceweasel, I needed to create a sym link in my .Mozilla directory to /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so as per mozdev.org’s PluginDoc.

The successful installation of Java has been confirmed using Java.com, entering ‘about:plugins’ in the Iceweasel Location Bar, and wiggling a molecule.

Nvu - creating a web site

I had the opportunity to create tutorial material and conduct a practical session at uni to create a web site using Nvu.

The purpose of the ‘Creating a Web Site Using Nvu’ practical session was to assist university students in the UWA Science and the Media (COMM3321) unit to design and create a web site (multiple web pages) using Nvu. This included:

• creating a home page (index.html)
• creating additional web pages (e.g. about.html)
• adding images to a web page
• links to other web pages and web sites, and other files (e.g. podcasts)
• formatting web pages for a consistent look and feel

The practical session was two hours long and material included:

• Creating a Web Site Using Nvu (September 2007) handout
• Student Worksheet
• Minimalistic and modified Textual templates (links to relative stylesheets were edited to be absolute)
• Example web page, and associated graphics and podcast
• Nvu 1.0 User Guide
• Software Freedom Day CDROM (includes Nvu software for Windows)

The tutorial was prepared on a Debian GNU/Linux system for use in a Mac Studio by students that use Windows at home (all except one). So the tutorial attempted to envisage any differences or difficulties between the three platforms. Fortunately, there was only one anomaly that was attributed to one platform, in that Safari did not launch automatically in the Mac Studio.

During the practical session, one of the students that followed the Creating a Web Site Using Nvu tutorial found that he could not modify the title using Format > Page Title and Properties having already modified the HTML in Source View. I will check this and edit some other minor formatting issues in a future revision.

Feedback from the unit coordinator and students affirmed that the practical session went well. Follow up the next week was less certain, but some students said that Nvu appeared to be straightforward to use and they did not feel they needed any further assistance.

I enjoyed this work because I was able to share my enthusiasm and introduce free software for the first time to colleagues and other students at uni.

Etch from scratch - Nvu

Discovered today that Nvu is not part of Debian Etch. Having found a tutorial that said to get it (for Etch) from Debian Backports. I paused - for a moment, or two, or three.

Debian Backports is for programmes that have been backported from Debian testing, or so I thought. So if Nvu is listed as N/A in Etch and 1.0final-0bpo1 in Sarge. What does this mean?

I decided to take the plunge. Downloaded nvu_1.0final-0bpo1_i386.deb anyway, became root, and used dpkg to install:

dpkg -i nvu_1.0final-0bpo1_i386.deb

Nvu was correctly added to my Xfce Apps under the Net menu.

Phew.

Now to check Nvu on the Windows box. I installed it ages ago, it might of even be years. This was confirmed by noting that the version was 0.6.

Downloaded the Nvu Windows version 1.0 from Download.com, double-clicked the icon on the Desktop, and followed the prompts to install Nvu where I wanted and selected how I wanted to run the programme. Note: I didn’t like the Download.com web site, as they have lots and lots of ads that were not blocked by my browser and continued to flash and be distracting.

More phew.

Fortunately, Nvu on the Windows box has a similar look and feel to that on the Linux box.

I have been assured that installing Nvu on Mac OS X is a “simple download-open-drag and drop into the Applications folder procedure”. Having never installed anything on a Mac before, I’m crossing my fingers and toes that this is indeed the case.

If you are wondering why I need Nvu on Linux, Windows, and Mac, it is because I am conducting a tutorial on how to create web pages. In addition, I am more familiar with using Nvu (and drafting the handout) on my Linux box, the majority of the students use Windows, and the tutorial is to be conduced in a Mac studio (what they call the computer lab that has Macs).

free guides for installing software

Software installation is often a huge step, even for those of us that are confident with our computing environment and have expertise with particular applications and services. To assist with that sometimes difficult task, Packt Publishing has launched InstallationWiki.org, the beginnings of a one-stop source of installation guides.

InstallationWiki.org is using MediaWiki and the initial content is all the installation chapters from Packts’ own books.

From Packt’s own news:

“I’m more than happy to support an online repository of guides for installing software and Packt is honored to populate the Wiki with its first content” explains Packt spokesman, Damian Carvill. “Working closely with the open source community has given us insight into the difficulties of finding reliable documentation and the launch of a Wiki, which centralizes updated guides, will be warmly greeted”, he adds.

Earlier this year, I was fortunate to receive a review copy of MediaWiki Administrators’ Tutorial Guide. So I am delighted to see InstallationWiki.org as it may assist those installations that don’t go quite according to book, hopefully with the collaboration on the wiki to troubleshoot various issues as they arise.

Although I had already successfully installed MediaWiki using the online guide prior to receiving my review copy, my initial installation went like the book. I’m about to move or re-install this wiki on another machine, so I will be consulting my book and InstallationWiki.org when the time comes.

In addition, I am about to find out how to install Nvu on Mac OS X, having previously successfully installed it on a Windows and Linux machine.

I would like to encourage you to add what you know about installing software to InstallationWiki.org, knowing that this is the step that most people have to stumble over, particularly with regard to open source software.