Blog

Reanimator

David Himmelstrup’s reanimate package provides a library for generating animations programatically. I wanted to use it on Windows 10, but hit a dead end. However, I had better luck with Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) 2 and Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. GSL and linear algebra reanimate depends on the hmatrix package, which, in turn, requires the […]

Moving to WSL 2

Windows 10 version 2004, rolled out from 27 May 2020, arrived on my machines, allowing a move from Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) 1 to WSL 2. However, there was a wrinkle. File Explorer integration WSL promises access to the Linux root file system with File Explorer, by entering explorer.exe .. This did not work; […]

Moving to Catalina

Moving my ‘mid 2011’ Mac mini to macOS High Sierra was not easy and it seemed it was stuck there. Apple said that macOS Mojave was not available for my machine and the same was true for macOS Catalina, launched in October 2019 and now at version 10.15.5. Then I discovered Dosdude1’s Catalina Patcher, currently […]

Bauble cutting

Another clay cutter was needed, simpler than before, but benefiting from the learning curve. A new feature was the cutting of a hole. 3D modelling As before, in Autodesk’s Fusion 360, the profile of a cutting edge was swept around a boundary curve. The profile was narrower (built on a 2.4 mm square, rather than […]

Cookie cutting

The so-called Southampton Psalter, donated to St John’s College, Cambridge, by the Earl of Southampton in 1635, but with origins in Ireland, has been dated to the 10th or 11th century. It includes a crucifixion scene with two figures above the arms of Christ, representing angels or, perhaps, the Virgin and St John. The right […]

Balls

I wanted to add JavaScript to a WordPress post, in order to animate on a canvas element. Canvas I added the canvas element in the Code Editor, giving it the unique id myCanvas. The width and height of the element are measured in pixels. JavaScript The JavaScript did not need to export any identifiers, and […]

Wood carving

Domestic 3D printing is an additive process. A gift allowed me to experience a subtractive one: Alex Jones’ short course Woodcarving for beginners at West Dean College. The blank The blank was a oval of lime wood, about 25 cm by 20 cm, and 3 cm to 4 cm high. Lime has a fine and […]

Moving to Gutenberg

The Gutenberg editor is now WordPress’s default and support for the previous Classic editor is through a plugin. That support is not guaranteed after 31 December 2021. I wanted to patch Aram Kocharyan’s Crayon Syntax Highlighter plugin to work with Gutenberg. Other people have had the same objective. I relied heavily on Fedor Urvanov’s resuscitation […]

Highlighting PowerShell Core

I use a patched version of Aram Kocharyan’s Crayon Syntax Highlighter as a syntax highlighter plugin for WordPress, currently version 5.3.2 running on PHP 7.3.14. I wanted the plugin to highlight PowerShell Core scripts in the same way that the PSReadLine module does. Configuring the theme I created a new Crayon theme Solarized Dark PS […]

Powershell Core

Windows 10 replaced the Command Prompt (cmd.exe) with Windows PowerShell (powershell.exe) as the default command-line interpreter (CLI). PowerShell Core (pwsh.exe) is the successor to Windows PowerShell. Until recently, I had used the Command Prompt through the Windows Terminal with the DejaVu Sans Mono font and the Solarized Dark colour scheme. What would be required to […]