Published

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.

Published

The Peter Principle in management theory

I had a spectacularly inarticulate moment recently trying to recall a management concept I read about a while back. By chance, I came across it today, so note to self: the Peter Principle is the theory you’re looking for. “Managers rise to the level of their incompetence”, or “anything that works will be used in progressively more challenging applications until it fails”.

Published

Snippet for LazyLoad + Spin.js

/**
 * Identify images by class. For each image, add 
 * [Spin.js](http://fgnass.github.io/spin.js/) to parent, [LazyLoad](http://verlok.github.io/lazyload/) image, stop spinner 
 * when image is loaded.
 */

var imgClass = "lazy";

var spinOpts = {
  // [Spin.js options](http://fgnass.github.io/spin.js/#usage)
};

var spinners = [];
var elems = document.getElementsByClassName( imgClass );
for ( var i = 0; i < elems.length; i++ ) {
  var pId = "lazy-" + ( i + 1 );
  var parent = elems[i].parentElement;
  parent.id = pId;
  spinners[pId] = new Spinner( spinOpts ).spin( parent );
}

var lazyLoad = new LazyLoad( {
  elements_selector: "." + imgClass,
  callback_load: function( element ) {
    var spinner = spinners[element.parentElement.id];
    if ( spinner ) {
      spinner.stop();
    }
  }
} );

For use with LazyLoad by Andrea Verlicchi and Spin.js by Felix Gnass. SB and I have both checked out a few different lazyloading plugins, we’re pleased with how this one works with srcset.

Since the default positioning of Spin.js centres the spinner in the element, it’s best for the image to be the only child of the parent element. The code above assumes that this is the case. If I didn’t have control over the markup or needed to individually wrap each image for any other reason, would probably implement something similar to the above w/ jQuery (see the Spin.js jQuery plugin).

Published

Semi-recent frequency illusion: Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt has been the subject of a months-long frequency illusion.

  1. A new friend described her research on biopolitics w/ a focus on Hannah Arendt’s work, was surprised when she realised I haven’t heard of The Human Condition and said I should check it out. Wanted to, but of course it slipped to the back of my mind.
  2. Months later, started reading essays and books by Joan Didion. Was reminded to read Arendt while reading Didion’s Miami where she dissects the language used by U.S. politicians and media during the Cuban Revolution.

    When someone speaks of Orlando Letelier as “murdered by his own masters,” […] that person is not arguing a case, but counting instead on the willingness of the listener to enter what Hannah Arendt called, in a discussion of propaganda, “the gruesome quiet of an entirely imaginary world.”

    Managed to at least purchase The Human Condition, got sidetracked again.

  3. Started reading Walter Benjamin’s Illuminations after coming across Carol Bove’s contribution to AKADEMIE X. The introduction to my edition is excellent. Lo and behold, it’s written by Arendt.
  4. Sam came across the origin of Life of the Mind as a name earlier this week, then this morning he mentioned a ditigized Arendt collection amassed by Bard College and currently making the rounds online.

Time to devote some time to her work.

Published

Update to colour JS on piperhaywood.com

Just pushed an update to the colour JS on piperhaywood.com. The HSL colour has been looking pretty muddy recently, partly since it’s an orange-y hue this time of year, but mostly because sunrise and sunset weren’t being taken in to account properly. Before, the lightness value changed gradually between 12:01am and midnight. Now it looks a little more “sunny” in the daytime. Will need to keep monitoring the min/max values, yellow could be problematic.

Published

Constructs in art

Researching the definition/concept of a construct (in science, in philosophy, in art) and came across a listing for On new constructs in art by Ernest Edmonds in the publications section of the compArt | center of excellence digital art database. Need to take a closer look at this database, they’re currently drawing attention to the early phase of digital art (roughly 1950 to 1980).

Published

Linter (scss-lint) not working in Atom

Linting package linter-scss-lint was not working properly for me, with no linting occurring and no errors thrown. On top of that, other linters were functioning properly (i.e. linter-jshint). Came across issue Linters not linting…, and one comment suggested opening Atom from the command line. Tried this, and linter-scss-lint began working properly. Upon further searching, found issue noting that $PATH only present when Atom is launched from the command line.

Look in to this with Sam, he’s not having the same problems even though our .bash_profile and .bashrc files are the same. Check versions of Atom, all packages, Ruby, etc.