Like a diamond in the sky

While playing "Super Shape Challenge" game (for two year olds):

Mummy: "What shape is this?"
Child: "Errr.."
Mummy: "T....."
Mummy: "Tr...."
Mummy: "Tri..."
Child: "Triangle!"
Child: "Look! I've found a Rhombus over here!"

I can just imagine in a year or so "unlearning" the name for an equilateral parallelogram at nursery or infant school:

Teacher: "What shape is this?"
Child: "A Rhombus"
Teacher: "It's diamond!"

Venetian Blind

I had always, naively, assumed that there was some technical logic in the sizes of ready-made blinds. I now believe that there is absolutely no forethought or design, whatsoever, in choosing the range of sizes for blinds.

For example...

We have a window that is 126.5cm wide and we decided that we would fit a Venetian blind. The range of Venetian blinds that we choose includes 120cm and 150cm wide blinds.

We tried the 120cm blind, it being almost right. However, with a 3(.25)cm gap at each side, it did look a bit silly. So I exchanged it for the next size up, 150cm, so that we could shorten it to exactly the right size, just as I had done quite easily for another window (just clamp, hacksaw and then file the corners).

It turns out that due to the placement of the cords, the cord catch and the twiddly thing that adjusts the blind, that the minimum width that this 150cm blind can ever (without serious modification) be adjusted to is 131cm.

I have spent almost three hours fitting this blind tonight. And it's still not finished. Further modification, requiring a tower drill or drill stand, is still needed before it will adequately fit my simple 126.5cm window.

The conclusions?
1. There is no sane logic to the sizes of ready-made Venetian blinds
2. Buy made to measure next time.

Administrator Woes

Well, our new employee seems to be everything we hoped for. All is going really great and I've had a few days of actual software-related work to do.

I'd forgotten how good it is to get your teeth into a real technical problem. In this case: making every byte in every file identical across all platforms including different big-endian and little-endian architectures. (Actually it's quite painful, but a welcome change.)

So the woes? The problem is that when I was doing every little odd-job that needed doing, my day was full of standing up, sitting down, reaching, answering phones, lifting, walking, fetching and carrying. This week, I've sat still in my chair, working hard on the computer.

I've got slight eye-strain and a back ache.

How can I force myself to take breaks and move around when my job has suddenly got so exciting?