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Frederic Crozat, a man with a beautiful name, has created a very nice LiveCD and USB test image for Gnome 3. You can download the image and write it to a USB stick to test Gnome 3 easily. Just note that the password to unlock the screensaver is "linux" :)
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Global Guerrillas has some good meta-commentary on the Egyptian uprising. In general, his analysis of "open source insurgency" is great.
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Spotted this while walking around Coatepec, Veracruz.
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Oralia is using her laptop a lot recently.
My wife stubbornly refused my suggestion that her lap would function as a perfectly acceptable desk and that one studies better while sitting on the toilet. "But where would I put my books?", she complained. Apparently my habit of surrounding the WC with open books is not very much of her liking. The other makeshift study-surfaces around the house — dinner table, TV couch — are not really ideal, either.
So I made a desk for her.
This is all done with hand tools, except for the final sanding of the top. The drawer has a dovetailed front and it is the first drawer I've made, so it has a few inaccuracies — but it slides smoothly in and out. The legs have mortises and tenons against the apron, drawbored with dowels so that the legs won't come loose even if the glue fails.
Oralia wanted a dark, deep red for the desk. The wood is cheap pine. I first gave it a coat of boiled linseed oil to seal the pores. Then, a few coats of alcohol-based red dye. Then, a coat of dark, rustic wax. It needs some more wax and buffing to make it really dark and shiny.
I learned a lot while making this desk:
- Haunched, drawbored mortise and tenon (parts 1 and 2)
- Making a wide top from match-planed boards
- Making good drawers
I think I want a similar desk now. My metal-and-melamine piece of shit from Office Depot just doesn't feel as nice.
