April | 2014 | doof.me.uk

Cow Timer and Pig Whisk

April 26th, 2014

In the future, all kitchen utensils will be farmyard animal themed.

Long Man

April 26th, 2014

Went for a walk along the South Downs last weekend with my parents. Having previously brought you several large chalk horses, doof.me.uk now presents a giant chalk man!

Bit awkward to find a good viewing angle from the top of the hill.

Blurry Chinese Characters on Linux

April 21st, 2014

For future reference, this fixes all woes:

sudo apt-get install xfonts-wqy

UPDATE: a much better solution is to install a pretty TTF font and then make all the characters bigger.

sudo apt-get install fonts-wqy-zenhei fonts-wqy-microhei

Then create a file ~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf with the following contents:

<?xml version = "1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
  <match target="font">
    <test qual="any" name="family" compare="eq">
      <string>WenQuanYi Zen Hei</string>
    </test>
 
    <edit name="pixelsize" mode="assign">
      <times>
        <name>pixelsize</name>
        <double>1.5</double>
      </times>
    </edit>
  </match>
</fontconfig>

Oh yeah: am trying to learn some Chinese characters! Prompted by the arrival of an enormous Chinese phone at work.

I went for an epic hike last Sunday in the Chilterns near Henley. I’m pondering applying for the London Marathon next year and as this was just shy of 25 miles I reckon that gives a firm 10 hour upper bound. Just need to repeat it again and again with increasing speed…

One exciting event was the discovery of a lamb (pictured below) not in its enclosure! I promptly entered hero mode and located a nearby farmer who thankfully knew its owner. Apparently this wasn’t the first time it’s escaped…