Webster Art

Back in 2002 my dean asked me to lock my online journal. I’d been writing it since 1997. She thought it made me look unprofessional and she was probably right, though it wasn’t anything bizarre or salacious. It was/is just a bunch of daily writing about working as a printer and raising two teenagers. Last century an online journal was a new thing. WordPress hadn’t been invented, so you had to know how to build a website from scratch. Required skills were html, css, ftp and Photoshop…or at least some kind of image editor.

I used that online journal to learn all that stuff as soon as I bought my first computer in ’97. Anyway, since I’m between jobs right now and not working at the college, I’ve decided to unlock it. Here is the link into the old journal website. The navigation is in Flash…but if you don’t have Flash, you can use the links at the bottom of each post to navigate. It’s not responsive. They hadn’t invented smartphones in ’97, so that was not a concern.

I also have paper journals going back to when I first started drawing in 1971. My sketch pads double as my journals. I find that writing clears the mind. Putting my thoughts down on paper makes them easier to understand. Sort of like emptying out my backpack to see why its so heavy.  Once I can see everything in the clear light of day I can move forward.

I’ve been having a lot of fun studying Javascript at www.lynda.com. They have a guy working there called Morton Rand Hendrickson. He teaches a lot of stuff for Lynda. I’ve taken several WordPress classes from him and he’s always great. In the Javascript class he’s taught me how to build an online clock. I used to teach a clock in Flash Actionscript, so it was interesting to see how similar the Javascript programing was to the old Actionscript. He’s also taught me how to build a typing application that measures the speed and accuracy of your typing. I’ve not put that one online yet, but it was some very interesting programming.

I’ve had a PETZL Sirocco helmet for a year and I like it a lot. But my buckle just broke during my yearly Christmas trip to Joshua Tree. Before the Sirocco I had been wearing a 1993 Joe Brown helmet. It blew a rivet, so this Sirocco looked very attractive. It’s super light, and as long as I stuff something inside it (to protect it from crushing), I can pack my pack normally and it survived until last week. The buckle Petzl uses is very fragile. The plastic snap tabs are ultra small. There is a magnet inside the buckle that helps pull it closed. Unfortunately, the magnet also attracts iron ore, of which there is a lot in Jtree. I was constantly having to scrape and blow out the sand stuck to the magnet before it would snap.

Finally, up on the “Heart of Darkness” route, one side of the buckle broke completely. I had to borrow a helmet that day. When I got back to camp I replaced the buckle with one I bought at the jtree climbing store. To get the old buckles off, I shaved down the plastic with a razor knife until I could slide the nylon out of the old buckles. Then I prusiked on the new buckle, extended the strap with some tubular nylon using a water knot and had a helmet again. The repair job is stronger than the original. Here are the photos:

PETZL Sirocco broken buckle fix

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PETZL Sirocco broken buckle