From a London Times crossword puzzle I was doing on an airplane:

"Formula to make face appear relaxed". Two words, four letters each. First letter of first word is L. Took me a long time, but now that I've got it, it seems inevitable --- as with all the best clues. I like this one.

(If nobody gets it, I'll reveal another letter in a day or so

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I have a very expensive couch, about a year old, on which some decorative stitching has come undone ( Read more... )

As those who have had to deal with my code are aware, I'm not a professional programmer. Or ever likely to be. On the other hand, I'm usually able to fumble around and make things do what I want them to, frequently having to learn some pretty basic stuff along the way ( Read more... )

Post deleted, because I figured out that my problem was being caused by an interaction with some of my other scripts that nobody reading this could possibly know about and that would take too long to explain. So this is my own problem to deal with.

Well, if you'd asked me how different things could possibly go wrong during a lighting installation, I'd have been low by a factor of about ten. But everything is fixed and my portraits look entirely awesome, though this picture does not remotely do justice to the real-life effect (click for higher resolution):


( Read more... )

*Many* thanks to frobzwiththingz, points, underwatercolor and zudensternen for educating me about LED accent lighting. I ended up deciding to go with the relatively high-end Grace Line. The electrician will be here to install the fixtures on Tuesday ( Read more... )

I wish to illuminate eight 4-foot shelves on which I display black-and-white portraits of my heroes.

My electrician is very big on the Grace Line of under-cabinet LED lighting. He has advised me that I'll save a lot of money if I buy these myself directly from the wholesaler as opposed to buying them from him and paying his markup. I can then ( Read more... )

We --- I, my two sisters, my daughter and the various spouses --- spent the weekend in Florida, where my father's Alzheimer's is becoming more evident. He and my mother are both 91, and both in otherwise excellent health ( Read more... )

For those who have asked, here is an extremely rough sketch of my downstairs, with ongoing downstairs rainstorms marked in red, and the location of the upstairs rainstorm marked in blue. (Warning: This is certainly not to scale, has none of the angles right, etc. Beyond that, I am notoriously directionally challenged and it would not be ( Read more... )