Category: Resources

Useful Sites: Cyclone and Dust Collection Research, courtesy of Bill Pentz

The site: Cyclone and Dust Collection Research. The home page says it was created in 2000 and was last updated in August 2022. That’s an impressive amount of dedication.

I found this through a link from The Wood Database.

Yes, he is advocating for products that he helped design. I’m fine with that, profit is part of what makes the world go round.

Obviously, it’s about dust collection. I’ve only just started reading through the site, but I already found this bit of interesting information: it’s dangerous for a person to vent their dust collection system inside their shop. Very fine dust is what causes a lot of the physical damage and venting a dust collector system inside the shop lets particles too fine for dust filter continue to circulate in the shop. Much better is venting the dust collection system outside.

Mr. Pentz’s biography is quite interesting. At the end he says that his health has finally required him to retire and slow down. I hope his health gets better.

The Person Doing the Job Is As Important As the Job

Is It the Tool, Or Is It the User?

It’s as important to use a tool which fits the person doing the job, as it is to use a tool which fits the job.

I started this blog for a number of reasons. One of them is to get more familiar with WordPress in its current form.

And I have found I like the WordPress post editor for editing. I hate the WordPress post editor for composing. It’s not local, it’s hosted on a server somewhere, so sometimes there is a slight delay between me typing and the letters showing up on the screen. At times this is maddening.

More frustrating is trying to navigate between paragraphs using the keyboard. Sometimes the arrow keys work great in the post editor. Sometimes the arrow keys don’t work at all, even when I know there is more text to see if I could just get the screen to keep scrolling down.

I’m By Myself, So If It Works For Me, Then It Works For Me

The last couple of weeks I’ve started composing posts in a program that runs on my computer. No internet connection needed, navigation in the document is simple. Then I cut and paste it into the WordPress post editor and finish editing there.

That works much better for me.

I am sure there are writers out there who love the post editor. And that is the point of this post: sometimes who is doing the job and using the tools is as important, or even more important, than which tools are being used.

This is part of a larger theme I repeatedly see, confusing the How with the Goal and the Why. If my Goal was to learn how to use the WordPress post editor, inside and out, then using a separate program for composing would be admitting defeat. If my Goal instead is learning how to use WordPress efficiently, and it’s more efficient for me to use a separate writing program for composition, I think that’s fine.

What If It’s Not Just Me?

Writing this, I have newfound sympathy for someone supervising a group of creators. Yes, as long as each person gets their part of the job done, then how much do tools matter? But if they have to work together, they’ll need a common framework to talk to each other. If it’s expected that absences can be covered by co-workers, then common tools are essential.

Am I Looking In the Wrong Places?

For tasks such as editing photos or video or graphics, I see many tutorials on how to set up workflow. I don’t see nearly as many tutorials for how to set up workflow when it comes to writing, or to blogging. I’m not sure if I’m actually seeing a lack, or if I’m not looking in the right places.

Useful Sites: The Wood Database. Using Wood Is a Technology Too.

The Wood Database is a great source of information about the mechanical properties of different types of wood. It also has many articles about wood. They’ve broken down the articles into the following categories:

  • General Information
  • Identifying Wood
  • Mechanical Properties
  • Separating Specific Woods
  • Health and Safety
  • Reference / For the Shop
  • Working with Wood

So much graph paper: Incompetech

There’s more types of graph paper than I realized existed, free to download, at Incompetech.com.

I already knew polar graphs existed, but it’s nice to find a place to download those. Polar graph paper isn’t typically stocked at your local office supply store.

Also, there’s accounting ledgers, and paper for writing music too.

It’s a very handy site.

Slowing Down to Speed Up, Writing Edition

I listen to some small business and entrepreneur podcasts. One of the phrases I frequently hear is “slow down to speed up.”

I’ll be honest, I typically hear that right before the host explains why they fought that idea when they first heard it, before having to learn it the hard way. And by “hard way,” I mean by repeated painful experience. Anyway, I’ll get back on topic.

Slowing down to speed up also applies to writing. I used to wonder why there were so many different types of notebooks and stationery. For that matter, why were there so many different types of accounting ledger books?

In both cases, writing something down and then rewriting it somewhere else in a different way helps focus the mind.

For writing, I’ve seen guidelines which say there is a creative mode which runs fast and often a bit too free, then there is the editing mode. These are different parts of the brain, and trying to switch in and out of editing mode while ostensibly being in creating mode doesn’t work that well.

I’ve tried that with writing and it does work. I’m still not fully in the habit. But each time I get a little bit better are remembering to let it flow first and then go back and correct later.

I’m also finding it helps to do that with money. I don’t write down every cent of every transaction, but I’m starting to create a list of regular expenses, pulling the information from multiple other places it’s recorded. And it is helping me focus on what I want to keep and what I’m fine letting go.

Why am I writing this on a blog about making technology work for you?

Technology has created so many time-saving services, it’s erased the friction which used to exist. So we all, myself included, want to let the apps and programs and whatever do it all for us. When we do that, we convince ourselves we’re going faster and faster. But we’re planning and considering less and less.

A re-read and rewriting of a good idea is better than writing it hurriedly fifteen times. And it will be fifteen times because we’re moving so fast we forgot what we already wrote.

An inventory and accounting of what classes and guides and books have already been purchased is better than purchasing more variations of the same thing. But it’s faster and feels faster to just buy more of what has already been purchases.

Slowing down to go faster is a real thing.

TAS: Tool Acquisition Syndrome. The Struggle Is Real.

I heard the term Tool Acquisition Syndrome on some welding or woodworking podcast. It’s witty and descriptive. “Shiny Object Syndrome” is a similar term I’ve heard in entrepreneur and small business podcasts.

Both terms describe the tendency to buy more tools. Usually this ends up delaying a project: the tool must be bought, arrive, be unpacked, the manual read, and so on.

I’ve found one of the counters to TAS is to look through all the things which can be done by the tools I already own. Many electronic devices can do a surprising number of things.

Once in a great while there will be a great sale on a tool I don’t actually need. I’ve purchased some really interesting tools that way. But generally, I don’t need to buy new tools, I already have what I need.

Useful Finds: Taking the time for a class rather than re-inventing the wheel, MS Excel

I generally avoid Microsoft Office if I can. It tries to do too much. And no matter how much I log in and confirm on whichever websites, if I am using Microsoft Office while I’m logged in to Windows on a different email than I bought the Microsoft Office license under, Windows and Microsoft Office throw fits.

Currently, I’m working on a project which needs Excel. I signed up for a couple of Udemy courses. I’m currently working my way through the first one, Unlock Excel VBA and Excel Macros by Lella Gharani. I’m only partway through and I’ve already learned a lot.

Thoughts About Technology: Our Brains Are Not Hard Drives. Write It Down.

I don’t like to admit mistakes. I think most people are the same way.

So none of us like to admit what we’ve forgotten. If we forget enough things, we start to forget what we’ve forgotten.

If it’s something I want to remember, I need to write it down. And if it’s worth keeping, I’ll eventually come back to it. Which means I’ll probably have to do some occasional reorganization of what I’ve written. Again, if the information is worth keeping, I’ll come back to it and it will be worth the time to reorganize.

It took me a long time to realize this. I thought it was just me, until I started to notice how few people keep notes on anything. And how much people struggle to recreate or rediscover information which I know they already had.

Write it down.

Mindset Monday: The Cloud and TANSTAAFL

The word “cloud” has long existed in the English language. “The cloud” took on a technological meaning several years ago.

The concept of “the cloud” was originally met with skepticism. It seemed unlikely that companies would throw away the investments they’d made in servers and the infrastructure to support servers and would entrust their data to servers that they didn’t have physical access to and which were run and maintained by people who weren’t their employees.

The skeptics were wrong. Even though “the cloud” means a computer owned by someone who isn’t you, once all the cyberpunk and world of tomorrow imagery is stripped away, “the cloud” became so popular it’s a multi-billion dollar business for multiple companies.

And yet, problems remain.

Today I read the article “Basecamp details ‘obscene’ $3.2 million bill that caused it to quit the cloud” by Simon Sharwood in The Register (article dated 2023 Jan 16). That article led me to “The world was promised ‘cloud magic’. So much for that fairy tale” also by Simon Sharwood (article dated 2022 Nov 2), “VC’s paper claims cost of cloud is twice as much as running on-premises. Let’s have a look at that” by Tim Anderson (article dated 2021 Jun 02), and “AWS Free Tier, where’s your spending limit? ‘I thought I deleted everything but I have been charged $200′” also by Tim Anderson (article dated 2021 May 28), all in The Register.

If it wasn’t obvious from the titles, the common theme of these four articles is “the cloud” can be expensive.

Why am I writing about this in a Mindset post?

I believe one of the eternal human temptations is for each of us to believe we are uniquely special. Sure, there are rules which almost all of us agree apply to almost all of us, almost all of the time. But there is the temptation to then say under our breaths “but not to me.”

TANSTAAFL means There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

The illusory promise of “the cloud” was the cost of hiring people who understood servers and server infrastructure, and the cost of buying, installing, using, and maintaining servers and their supporting infrastructure, could be farmed out to a different company and it would be cheaper and simpler. Even though there would be additional layers of cost and overhead because it was someone else’s employees and physical installation which was being used, that would still be better and cheaper.

I’ll even admit for many companies it was better and cheaper. For many companies, it’s still better and cheaper for right now.

There (still) Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. The servers cost money and so does the electricity, air conditioning, security, internet connections, employees to monitor and maintain the servers, and everything else which comes with having a data center.

Eventually someone has to pay that price. It’s very unlikely the cloud companies are running their businesses as charities or non-profits. And that means the cost comes back to the customers.