I used to have Adobe Acrobat Reader on my laptop, to open and view PDF files with. But lately the program is getting rather bloated, with not much visible reason. After all, it still does the same things, with some new bells and whistles (and honestly I couldn't name one of those new featues to save my life).
The download for the latest version, version 9, was a whopping 41.1 MB. Wow, does it really need to be so big?
So I checked out older, and much smaller, versions on Oldversion.com. They had an interesting little list:   

    * Acrobat Reader 2 (1.4 MB)
    * Acrobat Reader 3 (3.9 MB)
    * Acrobat Reader 4 (5.2 MB)
    * Acrobat Reader 4.05 (5.5 MB)
    * Acrobat Reader 5.0 (8.4 MB)
    * Acrobat Reader 5.0.5 (8.6 MB)
    * Acrobat Reader 5.1 (13.0 MB)
    * Acrobat Reader 6.0 (15.9 MB)
    * Acrobat Reader 6.01 (16.3 MB)
    * Acrobat Reader 7.05 (31.5 MB)
    * Acrobat Reader 7.07 (20.2 MB)
    * Acrobat Reader 7.08 (20.3 MB)
    * Acrobat Reader 7.0.9 (20.2 MB)
    * Acrobat Reader 8.11 (22.3 MB)

Oops! Looks like you've really let yourself go there, darling!

But wait. Surely there are other options. Of course, I still want to be able to read, save and print PDFs, but I really don't need much more.
So I tried Foxit reader. It's like Acrobat on Slimfast!
A download size of 3,65 MB, it installs easily, and it starts up much faster. I haven't been able to find any features missing yet.
Yep, looks like this one is on my harddisk to stay.
But don't take my word for it, read some reviews if you're interested.

You've shown me yours (or your housemate's, to be fair), now here's mine!

( X-rated stuff behind the cut... )

Three things that happened lately:

- I went to Belgium with aka_phoenix  to be present at yellow-star's goodbye ceremony / funeral. Like Phoenix, I didn't know her personally; yet I enjoyed her very positive presence in the forums, and I have a fond memory of the time when she won a 10 kg box of release fodder in my Newbies prize drawing. Since someone was kind enough to deliver the box to her home address in Belgium I could send an even bigger box so she ended up winning 20 kgs of books, and her surprise and happiness were so great they were contagious.
I'm still glad she won that prize drawing.
Yellow-Star, even though you're gone forever, you'll always be a winner to me.

Phoenix described the ceremony quite well in her journal so I don't have much to add. It was a bit strange for me to be at a religious service, but I'm glad I went. I'm pretty sure that our presence meant a lot to Yellow-Star's father and that alone was a good reason to be there.

- I joined stoneshop  in helping out at a motorcycle trials event. They always need so-called observers to watch the participants closely and see if they touch the ground with their feet, or make other mistakes while riding through the course. They get penalty points if they do.
It's a fun type of event because the sport is not based on speed but on balance and control, which makes it interesting to watch. For a competition sport, it has a decidedly relaxed and non-competitive atmosphere; riders will congratulate each other on good results, or point out tricky bits of the course to each other while exploring the course on foot before riding it.
Each course has different routes for different skill levels, marked with arrows of a specific colour, so each rider can ride at his or her own skill level. It's typically a parent-child event where fathers compete against their sons or daughters. Mothers, not so much; maybe in time we'll see that too.
I managed to punch my finger with the punching pliers that we used to mark the participants' cards to show the results. I'd never thought that was possible, but it was. Apart from that, it was a really nice way to spend a day outdoors.

- Last night I dreamt I found my Leatherman (which I hadn't been able to find for a while, and I was obviously starting to miss it). Then when putting on my working clothes this morning, I found it in one of my safety shoes.

My, this entry sure needs a lot of tags.

Yesterday was tinkering time again. stoneshop had been busy fitting a new (or rather, newer and sans rust and holes) mudguard to the car.
My car is a Citroen C15 which we lovingly refer to as the Paint Can, because it's often used to transport paint, but it will also carry as many as ten banana boxes of books around with no problems.
It runs on LPG, which makes it one of the cheapest possible ways to get around. So, even though it's not as young as it used to be, the Paint Can is going to be around for as long as we can manage to keep it legal and safe.
Of course, this is an older car of a French make, which means that it's prone to rust.
There's this old joke of French car makers employing very, very skilled painters, who work together in pairs, spraying the paint at each other in opposite directions so it collides in mid-air, and thus build a car without actually needing any metal in between the two coats of paint. There is some truth in that.

Removing the old mudguard exposed some problems... or rather, some challenges.
We found some holes that allowed water into one of the hollow spaces of the car. Not good. I sprayed Tectyl inside, through the holes, and onto any rust that I could see; after letting it dry, I sealed off the holes with bitumen kit and pieces of plastic cut from the top of a Chinese takeaway food container. I couldn't help singing 'Fixing a hole, where the rain gets in' while working on this.

Stoneshop also discovered that the frame the left headlight unit hangs in was badly rusted, so that it had come loose on one side, giving it more freedom to move than it ought to have. This seemed undesirable and it would probably get worse. So we decided that liquid polyesther resin would be needed to repair that. Of course, it was Sunday so we could not buy any.

So yesterday I got some from the shop nearby, and got to work.
Now I love working with polyesther resin. You mix a bit of hardener in with the Golden Syrup-like liquid, and then you can make almost anything out of it. You can pour it into a mold, or brush it onto something. If you want it to be strong, you use the fibreglass mats that come in the package as reinforcement. Entire boats can be made this way.
I cut some parts so I'd have them handy, and mixed the resin.
First, I soaked all rust that I could see, so it would be sealed off from water and air, and thus stop rotting away.
Then, I applied the pieces of fibreglass, and liberally soaked them in resin too, so they turned transparent. I used up all of the resin I had mixed and glued everything together with it.

Then it was time for tea while the resin hardened. It took about 20 minutes to harden all in all.

I think that it turned out beautifully. Today I'm going to put the headlight unit back in and see if I can put the whole thing back together again. This part of the car is probably going to outlive the rest of it!

Oh, and the new mudguard looks très shiny. Too bad it makes the rest of the car look so matte and weathered  ;-)

It's a question many of us have asked ourselves (and some others should have asked themselves):
If a harddisk (or an entire computer) needs to be thrown away, how can you be absolutely sure no one will ever be able to get hold of your data that's stored inside?
Deleting it isn't enough. Deleting and formatting is a bit better. Deleting, formatting and overwriting is better still. But the method stoneshop  used yesterday is more fun, and even safer!

Fun with powertools; not for the faint of heart.
Most of us know about the quote by Dorothy Parker: "This novel is not to be tossed lightly aside, but to be hurled with great force." Stoneshop takes it one step further here.
( Photo series behind the cut, for those who can handle it. )

Stoneshop and I spent most of the day working on my bike. We managed to get some good stuff done:
he swapped the whole rear suspension for used but less tired parts that I had on stock, and I swapped both of the tyres for a fresh pair.
I'm curious about the handling now, I've been told that the rear shock wasn't working as it should, and it's never been any different for as long as I've had the bike (which is almost 10 years, and almost 100.000 kilometres). At the very least, we'll have gotten rid of the *squeak* that the bike's had for as long as I know, and which caused me to name it Rubber Duckie.

The old rear tyre had gone very inflexible with age (but don't we all?) and I had a hard time getting it off. Of course, I could have cheated and used the angle grinder. But I was actually enjoying myself, and when I finally had the new tyre on I felt rather good about myself. :-)
The new tyres are Michelin T63, also named Desert, and for a reason. I've tried them in the desert, so I know what I'm on about.

I love having plenty of space to tinker, lots of tools to do it with, and also having a companion who will encourage me to do so, and give me a hand when I need one. It's a great thing that we can do stuff like this together and enjoy it.

Today was a fine day and Friday is market day. So we grabbed some BookCrossing books to release on the way, and walked into town.
Here's what we got:
- fresh shrimps and fish for a fish soup
- some fried fish to eat on the spot, one of my favourite street foods
- a pineapple (which was very ripe, and delicious, we just had it for dessert)
- spring onions, red peppers and soy bean sprouts for Nasi Goreng
- two kinds of mushrooms, and fresh spinach, for filled pancakes
- chestnuts of the edible kind, for roasting in the oven
- some useful stuff in cheap spray cans: wax spray to prevent rust on vehicles, an oily spray to prevent bread from sticking to the baking tin, carburettor cleaner, and a kind of copper grease for greasing things that get hot
- two pairs of jeans for me, at just 10 euros each, and you know what? They both fit!

The man in the vegetables stall was looking for a knife to cut something with, so Stoneshop lent him his Leatherman, which made a great impression all around. One of his workers wanted to see it, so I handed him mine (which is almost identical) so he could take a look. It took a while before Stoneshop got his knife back, but when he did, it came with a free pear as payment for 'renting' the knife.
Friendly people,  nice weather, happy day.

At the Chinese store, we also bought
- a block of tempeh, which was also for the Nasi Goreng
- and a bag of deep frozen shrimps.

I took pictures of the pretty flowering plants that were being sold. They happened to catch my eye. You'd probably prefer me to show you a Real Dutch Cheese Seller's Market Stall, wouldn't you? Well, I'll do that some other time.

Ever since I've had my first computer of my own, I've been using non-Microsoft software as much as I could, except for my OS. Many of my friends have given me good reasons for using alternatives ,and at first I did it just because they said so. Over time, I've grown used to it, and I've also learned more about the advantages, so that nowadays I'm often telling others why they should not use Outlook or Explorer.
So what do I use?
For e-mail, I've been using Eudora for many years. It's a good solid product with nice features. I've always been happy with it.
My browser is K-Meleon, which has grown into a mature browser while I was using it. It used to have an unfinished feel about it but lately it's been getting really good.
Before that, in days of old, I used the Netscape Communicator suite. And I may well be going back to it now.

You see, the company that made Eudora has given up on it. They have handed the code over to the Open Source community, which is in itself most commendable, and I wish software companies would do that all the time with software they'd stop developing.
Currently, an open source version of Eudora is being developed under the name of Penelope. But it's taking them a while, and I'm not sure I want to wait that long. Of course, I could continue using Eudora even when it's not being updated anymore. But wait...

I heard about another interesting open source project, another member of the Mozilla family: SeaMonkey. This is actually not one program but a suite, much like Netscape Communicator was: it contains a browser, an e-mail client, and a HTML editor. In fact, this is the successor of the Communicator suite.
I decided to take it for a spin today and I find myself liking it so much that I may ditch both Eudora and K-Meleon in favour of SeaMonkey.

The browser feels solid and fast; it runs on the same engine as FireFox does (as does K-meleon). My only gripe so far is that it doesn't let me grab and drag the toolbars to a new location. In K-Meleon, I can even stack them so the shorter ones can be in one line together. On a 12" laptop, screen estate is valuable!
But otherwise I felt right at home within the hour. (It may take you a little longer if you're coming from IE. But that's only fair since you have so much more to gain!)

The e-mail client looks slick and doesn't seem to be missing any features. It has a very nice search bar that will allow fast and easy searching for text in message subjects.
Furthermore, it imported my existing mail, server settings and address book from Eudora without batting a digital eyelid.

I'm impressed so far.
If you're looking for both a full-fledged browser and an E-mail client, I suggest you check out SeaMonkey.

Fixing stuff is nice. I'm not overly technical, and I tend to be lazy, but sometimes I really enjoy tinkering and making things work again.
I'm currently working on a plastic ramp from my pinball machine. It's badly cracked and some pieces have fallen off, so stoneshop took it out so I could fix it.
First I glued all the pieces back together and now I'm putting coat after coat of clear two components expoxy glue on, filling the holes and cracks in the clear plastic and making it thicker and stronger. I can't mend it invisibly. But I can make it whole and strong again, and it's going to look reasonably good.
The glue dries in ten minutes after you mix the two components together. I'm using an infrared lamp to heat it up while drying, which makes it harden better. It's great stuff, there are a lot of things you can fix with it.

I think I'll bend a strip of thin copper into shape and glue that to the underside of the ramp, to reinforce it. It's in the middle of the playfield and the ball hits it really hard sometimes. I'm looking forward to reinstalling the ramp once it's finished.

The place is smelling of epoxy and so am I.
But I don't mind.

(Warning: anyone who can actually sew will find this laughable and/or pathetic. I can't sew my way out of a wet paper bag if my life depends on it.)

Today I made a tablecloth from two metres of fabric that I'd bought at Ikea. It's a thick cotton fabric and it's printed in a nice fifties-style pattern. I love that retro look, it goes well with my stuff. Here's what it looks like:

I'm using this user pic because I believe I'm up a creek, as they say.
I seem to have worn out the left mouse click on my Thinkpad.
It's a tiny flexible plastic hat-shaped thingie, that gets pushed in when you push the button it lives under. If you wear it out, the middle part gets torn off from the outer part and it won't give you that nice clicky feeling anymore, and more importantly, it won't work. Either it doesn't click anymore or it never stops. The latter is what was happening.
I swapped it for the one under my right mouse button, because I'd already swapped it for the one under the middle mouse button...
I'm looking for a replacement or three, but so far I've only found stores that sell complete keyboards. Not the tiny round plastic things as such.
I guess I just click too much...

...and did today: buying a coconut.
When I was a kid, we regarded them as pretty special. Opening them was an interesting ritual: first, a big nail was hammered though two of the dark 'eyes' on one side of the nut, so the juice could run out; then, the whole thing would need to be sawed in half... because, of course, we wanted to use the halves for some project. I can't remember what we actually did with them... oh, yeah, we filled them with used frying fat and bird seed, and then hung them in a tree for the birds during winter.

A short list of some of my favourite freeware. Yes, sometimes there is such a thing as a free lunch, and it can be pretty damn good, too.


Some other time: how to make web surfing more pleasant, faster and safer at the same time by using a host file. Watch this space!

[Error: unknown template 'qotd'] I guess I'd have to say my Leatherman, even though it's strictly not a 'tool of my trade'. It's more of a Tool For Life. Being the girlfriend of a certified nerd, I had to get myself one of these, and when I found it on special somewhere, it would have been foolish not to get one.
I have bought a nice sleek black leather sheath from Victorinox, that it fits in very snugly.
My Leatherman is a Wave of the latest model, which appears to give me instant geek cred. But it's actually very useful in other ways, too.
Here's a list of all its features:

* Needlenose Pliers
* Regular Pliers
* Wire Cutters
* Hard-Wire Cutters
* Clip-Point Knife
* Serrated Knife
* Saw
* Scissors
* Wood/Metal File
* Diamond-Coated File
* Large Bit Driver
* Small Bit Driver
* Ruler (8 inch/19cm)
* Large Screwdriver
* Bottle/Can Opener
* Wire Stripper
* Lanyard Attachment

Impressive, huh. I do miss the corkscrew every now and then.

(Originally posted on MySpace)
Look what I got.