So very rude that I will masticate it.

Angerface was accusatory and wanted me to feel guilty for modifying a device I personally own and am not using for commercial purposes.

I grew bored of his company, though it amused me at first. So I sought to replace him with a batch of videos that I intended to chop into small pieces. You probably already know, but if you don’t, there’s a moving images collection at The Internet Archive where you can obtain legal copies of public domain video of various sorts.

So I looked at a handful of selections and soon found Max Fleischer’s Betty Boop short, “Minnie the Moocher,” complete with live intro of Cab Calloway and his Orchestra. Not only an amazing performance of a really great piece of music, not only a great work of animation by Fleischer studios, but we get to meet her parents who are apparently immigrants prone to transforming into Victrolas. Into the grinder it went.

a newsreel of Eleanor Roosevelt telling a joke at some function
an out-of-context public access green-screen fashion show where they never drew in the background and which was hosted by an awkward looking teenage girl
a speech by former President George W. Bush.
and a Lego mini-fig stop-motion zombie movie.

After downloading, converting, chopping them to peices, I am somewhat, though not completely, pleased. The videos cycle through at about one every two to three seconds; it’s quite dizzying to have George Bush barely begin to make one of his stupid faces before being replaced by an image of a flower trying to force-feed Betty Boop some vile crap on a spoon. Dizzying, but amusing.
Anyhow, probably, Angerface still doesn’t approve. ]]> http://www.safetinspector.com/index.php/2012/03/the-public-domain/feed/ 0 http://www.safetinspector.com/index.php/2012/03/piu-i-own-you/ http://www.safetinspector.com/index.php/2012/03/piu-i-own-you/#comments Sat, 03 Mar 2012 22:13:27 +0000 SafeTinspector http://www.safetinspector.com/?p=1226 I only use Linux for recreational purposes in the privacy of my own home, officer.

If you give a man a Linux kernel….
Of course, this is all educational and has rendered the entire device non-functional and I’ll have to restore from backup because this officially Does/Did Not Work. Really.

DD-WRT is pretty damn amazing, really. With this free, open-source, upgrade, the Linksys is now much more capable and with a more powerful and modern web interface.
Strange that the commercial administrative interface was so poor in comparison.

Is it me or is my web site faster? Could the default router image on the WRT310n really have nerfed my entire operation?

WHAT? And now the BitTorrent engine in the Linkstation is functioning? Really, I just assumed it was broke for reasons of being crap; apparently it was the router all along. So my Buffalo can obtain on my behalf now. GO FORTH AND GET ME THINGS!

Anyway, with Akismet back in charge of moderating my comments, I’ve turned the comment feature back on. All two of you who are likely to post such a thing may do so now.

Akismet’s on the fritz, I’ve no time to fix it for now. No comments allowed until I’ve mended it.

*yawn* Well, I’m back. ]]> http://www.safetinspector.com/index.php/2012/02/nastinspector-mkii/feed/ 2 http://www.safetinspector.com/index.php/2011/11/bob-now-xavier-cat/ http://www.safetinspector.com/index.php/2011/11/bob-now-xavier-cat/#comments Mon, 21 Nov 2011 12:30:59 +0000 SafeTinspector http://www.safetinspector.com/?p=1164

    Tom’s home was foreclosed: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of its vacancy was signed by the bank, the property management company, and the Utica police.

    For a week or more we noticed there was a large dumpster in the driveway of our neighbor’s home and he was nowhere to be seen. Its a tough time in the Detroit area and these things happen. A property management sticker, the housing equivalent of a cadaver’s toe-tag, hung from the front door and the lights started turning on and off with the precision that only a collection of timed switches can provide*.

    Shortly thereafter Heather began noticing a cat. It was jet black, and was normally laying under the tree in the front yard or sitting on the porch. In the days that followed we speculated that, perhaps, this was just a neighborhood cat that Tom had been feeding and it was visiting the home from habit and hope**. The days turned into a week and still the cat watched us coming and going, a black silhouette with moon eyes shining from the porch every evening; the cat had been abandoned.

One morning, waving at the back of Heather’s car as she drove off, I met the gaze of the cat where he sat upright next to his tree. As soon as our eyes met he began rubbing against the tree and pacing back and forth, meowing. I crossed over and as I approached the cat ran to meet me, meow-wowwing pitifully and ramming my legs. The cat was solid, weighty, and pretty strong. There was a wound on his head that needed cleaning.     I knelt and petted him as he desperately rubbed against me, crying from loneliness. My heart, which is never more solid than your average stick of butter in any case, melted.     ”You’re probably hungry, too.”     Rub, rub, “Meow!” With that I went back home, half-expecting the cat to follow me. He did not, and instead stopped at the curb in front of his empty home and sat, his tail curled around his front paws and wide eyes staring after me. I returned with a small margarine tub of cat food and another with clean tap water.     He attacked the food before the tub hit the concrete and purred loudly enough to be heard over the wind. I stroked his back, walked to my car and went to work. The cat didn’t look up from his food as I drove past.     Heather and I discussed the cat’s plight with the other neighbors, several of which hadn’t noticed the animal while others stated that, before Tom left, the cat had always had a collar and a tag. So not only was the cat abandoned, but Tom had removed his tag so no one could track it back to him. I tweeted at the time, “Neighbor lost his house and left his cat. Thanks, jerk-GLAD you lost your house”, a sentiment I still espouse.     Heather and I resolved to first get him checked out by a vet and then to take him to an animal rescue if possible. So, the next day we obtained a large rabbit cage from a friend, fashioned a litter tray from a modded shoebox***, placed the second in the first and the both of them in the garage. We captured him easily with cat food and a pet carrier and the cat, now called “Bob” by Sam and Riley, began his new life near the front wheel of Heather’s Yamaha V-Star. For the next two days we fed the cat, and the girls visited and played with him as often as we’d allow.     The cat was very upbeat, never giving us trouble about going back in the cage, greeting us with a cheerful meow and head-butt, and he spilled his food and water constantly. Such a nice cat he was that I even called my brother, Gerald, who lives alone and hadn’t had a cat in years, and offered the cat to him. Gerald was interested; he’s had a tough couple of years and had been on the fence about getting a pet for a while.     On Friday, Nov 11, Heather brought Bob to the vet for a check-up. Bob was about one year old, was neutered, male, had signs of fleas, tested positive for worms, suffered from a slight ear infection and…. was FIV positive.     Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (FIV) is similar in effect to HIV, which eventually develops into AIDS and death. A cat catches it by either biting or being bitten by another FIV positive cat, and therefore is almost exclusively diagnosed in cats allowed to roam outside the home. Yet another of the many reasons it is NOT a good idea to let your cat wander freely.     The rub is that while FIV can’t be transmitted to any other animal besides cats, and an infected cat may remain symptom free for many years, Bob was now unadoptable. No shelter could take him in, and since we have two cats of our own we couldn’t take him either.     It might not have been so sad had Bob been older, or had been antisocial. Instead, this was a charming, affectionate, healthy looking young cat who was, apparently, doomed to receive the “blue juice****.” The vet gave Heather medicine for his ears, worms and fleas, and Heather took Bob back to our garage so we could carefully consider the next move. Heather’s friend, a veterinary tech who works there, tells us that later on the doctor teared up during a surgical operation and admitted to having been thinking of Bob.     I called and broke the news to my brother, who had been planning to come and see the cat that evening. I told him the cat had an uncertain but definite expiration date, and that he might not want to take Bob after all. Something in the story must’ve touched Jerry, though, because he still wanted to meet Bob.     So Friday night Jerry met Bob and, by the time of his departure, he’d agreed to take Bob in. My daughters were thrilled and we spent Saturday buying house-warming presents for the cat. A large cat tray, a bag of pine litter, cat dishes, a bag of food, scratching post, scratching mat, catnip mice, $81.00; Bob having a home instead of mouldering in a pet pit? -priceless.***** Late last week, after having had Bob in his home for several days, I received the following email: Bob is now Xavier. He is doing great. He seems well adjusted to his new home and is very affectionate.         - Gerry Xavier nee Bob

* It could be very punctual ghosts. Perhaps a murdered efficiency consultant.
** Habit and Hope was, coincidentally, the name of a short-lived mystery drama TV series starring a wacky nun and an aging prostitute solving crimes together. The sub-plots usually revolved around the prostitutes attempts to corrupt the nun. The show was aired on the Oxygen Channel during its inaugural year.
*** If requested, I can provide the step-by-step modding instructions that can allow you to turn a shoe-box into a small litter tray as well. No tools necessary, only four steps. Skill level needed: minimal.
**** Blue Juice is a slang term for sodium phenobarbital, used to euthanize animals.
***** Sometimes a cliche fits because it can be a facile short-hand to express meaning. This may not have been one of those times.