The Wandering Minstrel

Our humble blog has just exceeded 150 thousand hits and over 200 thousand page hits according to SiteMeter. Our first post was in November of 2007 when we decided to create a weblog (mostly) dedicated to second amendment issues and the right to keep and bear arms. That continues to be the focus here and we intend to keep our sights on gun grabbers and interesting things about firearms.

I recently passed another milestone - that is another birthday. I am now 68 years young and (fortunately) don’t feel much over 40 except for some very minor issues. The Better Half baked my favorite cake for my birthday - carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. She only made a few cupcakes and did not put candles on them because of the fire hazard. Clickable image.

The software that I use for animations on this site is a Flash® animation tool called SwishMax4. I subscribe to their technical blog and just this week they added a jigsaw puzzle component. Of course, being the penultimate nerd, I had to try it out regardless of being of no actual use other than entertainment. The button controls are self-explanatory.

Since we’re going to need a printer for our new home in Arizona and still need one when we’re in California, we bought a new laser printer. It’s a Brother model HL-2230 which is a later model, but similar to the printer we already have at the old place.

I got the printer hooked up and operational this afternoon. The Better Half snapped this (clickable) photo of the printer cranking out it’s first test page. It’s good to have a printer again. We have been doing without for a month or so. We might not have much furniture in Camp Casandro* but we have a working laser printer, by God.

We are adding one or two things at a time. Yesterday, our bed frame finally came in. We assembled it and (finally) didn’t have to sleep in a mattress and box spring on the floor.

* Our Arizona home is near Casandro Wash and Casandro Dam.

Several years ago, the project I was working on required me to become proficient with Perl, the programming language commonly used to implement Common Gateway Interface applications. I signed up for a Perl class that my employer offered. One of the requirements of the class was to develop a project using Perl. I chose to develop a universal triangle solutions application, which I now share with you.

The instructions are below the fold . . . Continue Reading »

One of the limitations of my Garmin Nüvi 205W GPS is its inability to select a custom route. Unlike Google Maps™ and other popular on-line map resources, the Garmin only allows one waypoint to be programmed in addition to the destination.

When we leave the LA area to go to the new house (something we have been and will be doing a lot), I like to take a different route than the GPS decides. The GPS always wants to send me to Banning via state route 60 through Riverside which is an inferior route to joining up with I-10 via I-15. There is less traffic and construction that way, plus 60 takes us over the winding road east of Moreno Valley.

I searched for some information on setting a custom route on my GPS and found a blog that had tons of information: Tricks, Tips, Work Arounds, Hints, Secrets and Ideas for Garmin GPS. I spent quite a lot of time looking through the many articles there and found out a whole lot I didn’t already know about my GPS.

I eventually stumbled on a tip that solved 70 percent of my problem. I programmed a precision waypoint on the ramp from northbound I-15 to eastbound I-10. I say 70 percent because it still wants to take me up to I-105 and east. Fortunately, It will recalculate the route as I drive where I want to go and once we’re east of I-605 it shows the preferred route. Even though the hints and tips website didn’t solve my exact problem 100 percent, it showed me how to get more out of the GPS.

I recently upgraded to the latest version of the Flash™ authoring tool that I use. There are lots of new features in the latest release, several of which I used for the slideshow seen here. The tool lets me break up the images into whimsical shapes and then the effects browser allows me to preview the transition effect before choosing it. This is the result:

The images were made in November at the site of the new house in Arizona.

A couple of days ago, we passed the third anniversary of blogging on “The Wandering Minstrel.” The initial post was “SI VIS PACEM PARA BELLUM.” In a few days, the site meter should roll past 100k hits. Thanks for reading!

In a few weeks we will resume shooting near our new Arizona home and hope to blog more on the topics of firearms, self defense and our conservative views on politics.

Field strip a Jeep and rebuild it in under 4 minutes . . .