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Notes from 24 Pull Requests event

See notes and further research prompts below in relation to yesterday’s 24 Pull Requests event. It was organised by Codebar, Ladies Who Code, and Your First PR, sponsored by Gitter, Shutl, and Twitter. I left Twitter HQ with my brain fizzing, always a good thing.

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Blender reference links

Black and white rendering of an 8 page gate fold leaflet done with the Blender Internal engine by Piper Haywood

Render of 8pp gate fold, done with Blender Internal engine

Been experimenting with Blender these past few months, pretty incredible free/open source 3D software. Definitely a bit of a learning curve, but very addictive and satisfying once you get the hang of it.

Links to some of the more helpful tutorials and info I’ve found are listed below. I switched from the Blender Internal engine to Cycles recently for improved results w/ architectural rendering, so some of these links are specific to Cycles.

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Dal tadka recipe

This is the recipe I follow for dal/dhal/dahl/daal tadka/tarka. “Tadka” is a tempered spice-and-oil topping that you add before serving to enhance the flavours of the dal. The ingredients and method are based on one of the dal tadka recipes on the excellent site Vegetable Recipes of India (see recipe). It would be best to use arhar or tuvar dal, but I use red lentils generally since they’re the easiest to find and still taste great. This serves 4 people and is excellent with jeera rice.

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Cobbler’s work on Loake chelsea boots

Work slip from Daniel, the cobbler on Francis Road

The cobbler on Francis Road did great work fixing up a second-hand pair of Loake chelsea boots recently. The uppers were in pretty good condition except for some salt damage. The elastic was perfect, surprisingly. The leather soles on the other hand were nearly shot, the right one in particular. The stitches were worn through.

Daniel pinned the leather sole to the welt, slightly built up the nose, built up the super-thin area under the ball of the foot, and then he glued and pinned a thin, black rubber sole to the leather outsole. The rubber sole says “Longlife Indiana”. He write “High-life sole” in thin silver pen on the left shoe near the heel, and “Francis Cobb” on the right. Though the heel didn’t need replacing, he did pin it down to make sure there’s no way it’ll peel away. Really, really pleased with the results.

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Mr Rogers on disaster and tragedy

Fred Rogers often told this story about when he was a boy and would see scary things on the news:

“My mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.”

From Helping Children with Scary News on pbs.org.

Fred Rogers created and hosted the classic American television series Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood for more than 30 years. Since 1963, he has been a dependable source of comfort and delight for generations of children and their parents.

The quote above feels appropriate at the moment. See also his primetime special following the RFK assasination, his article advising readers on how to help children cope with disaster, and many further anecdotes on fredrogers.org and exhibit.fredrogerscenter.org.

The final new episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood aired on 31 August 2001. His goodbye message was aired on PBS a year after the 9/11 attacks. About five months later, he passed away at the age of 74.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAttFerhtnw

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Video: Ice Cube Celebrates the Eames

Lots of Eames notes recently. SB recommended this video to me, I love it. Also, found the Guardian review of the Eames exhibition kind of interesting. It does seem contradictory that they managed to be so unflaggingly optimistic in their lives and output in the face of some pretty harsh concurrent events.