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May 24-25,2008 (WeekendEdition) |
We stopped by our favorite shop, Birch Street House & Garden, on Friday night for “Ghana comes to Birch Street.” Lovely jewelry, textiles, pottery, and papergoods were for sale by Cross Cultural Collaborative, “an educational non-profit that invites people to Ghana to promote cultural exchange and understanding through the arts” as its website says. The proceeds from the sales of the Ghanan pieces went to the Collaborative.
Erin, the owner of Birch Street, organized this evening for her long-time chum Ellie Schimelman, who is the president of Cross Cultural Collaborative.
Ellie was on-hand Friday to talk about the Collaborative and the pieces she brought with her. Carolyn, our copy editor, delightedly bought two recycled-glass bead bracelets and a bronze cheetah key holder.
The products of the Cultural Collaborative are gaining an appreciative audience; Ellie told us that she just sold to Smithsonian Institute a number of their hand-woven ties!
We were very happy that we had the opportunity to see first-hand the terrific items that the Ghanan Cross Cultural Collaborative is creating. [Permalink] - Carolyn Donovan
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May 23,2008 (FiskarsFriday) |
It is the Friday of Memorial Day weekend. Even with gas prices as high as it is, many folks will be heading out on the road. We, however, will be staying around Boston and doing some work on the RainyDayGarden.
One reason is that a variety of Fiskars garden shears came into the office. Since we just got back from being on the road most of the week, the thought of hanging out doing some gardening was pretty appealing.
These Fiskars are some serious garden loppers and pruners. They are lightweight, but their long handles will enable them to cleanly cut some pretty thick branches. We'll have a FirstUse this weekend. [Permalink] - Wan Chi Lau
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May 22,2008 (TravelTipThursday) |
Traveling can be a lot of things: fun, relaxing, and a lot of work. It can also mean greasy fingerprints on our laptop screen, cheesy drips on our cellphones, and BBQ sauce on our hands. OK, the BBQ sauce was because we were down in Texas these past few days :-)
Fortunately for us, on this trip we added a new travel item to our travel kit. The item, the La Fresh Tech Pack, made a difference on its first outing! This pre-packaged kit has 4 wet/dry screen cleaning packets, 3 anti-bacterial towelettes, and 3 lens cleaning wipes.
One working lunch later and we were down several of the screen cleaners and a few packets of lens wipes. We don't know how sauce got on the screen and our glasses, but getting it off with a napkin doesn't work as well as you think it would :-) We didn't use any of the hand wipes because they had tons of the lemon-scented towelettes at the BBQ places. If you travel with gadgets, pack this kit. That is our TravelTip for this Thursday. [Permalink] - Wan Chi Lau
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May 21,2008 (WowUsWednesday) |
Just when we had finally gotten rid of all of our Canon cameras we came upon this site...on how to hack tons (advance histograms, access raw formats, unlimited video, etc...) of Canon cameras!!!
Apparently, folks at CHDK (we are guessing it means Canon Hacker Developer's Kit) has pretty much figured out how to mess with firmware common to many of Canon's digital cameras.
The best part is the hack is loaded via the flash card and does not permanently override the on-camera firmware. So to back out, all you need to do is to remove the software from the SD card! If you have a Canon camera and want to access some of it's "hidden" capabilities, go check out the CHDK site and hack away! [Permalink] - Wan Chi Lau
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May 20,2008 (TireToteTuesday) |
RainyDayGarage reviewed the Kurgo TireTote (FirstLook, FirstUse) last year when we packed up the Summer tires for storage. It is now mid-May and New England's night time temperature has consistently been above 40º. Confidence is high that we will not be getting any more snow, so the Summer tire went back on this past weekend :-)
Our usual set of tools for the Winter/Summer tire swap are: torque wrench, soft socket, jack, tire mount rod, air pump, and Dremel tool with a wire brush attachement.
The Summer tires had been in storage in a cool basement since the Fall. Their pressure had dropped a few pounds. The JNC Air got things pumped up (30psi front, 34psi rear) in a hurry.
New England winters can be a bit harsh on the car and some cleaning are usually necessary. The Dremel with a wire brush made short work of cleaning off some of the rust and deposits on the rotor and the bolts.
The Boxster had also develope a slight rattle over the Winter in the driver rear quarter. Our intern had thought it was a loose heat shield on the catalytic converter.
It turned out that a plastic shield which ran underneath the length of the rear had cracked. Buffy said she'll figure out a way to secure it to the frame so it doesn't vibrate by next weekend.
The TireTotes definitely made the process of hauling the tires around SO MUCH easier. If you are "old school" like us and like to use a different set of tires for Summer and Winter, make the process a bit easier and get yourselves a set of these TireTotes! [Permalink] - Wan Chi Lau
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May 19,2008 (MiracleGroMonday) |
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This past weekend started out sunny so we spent the morning cleaning and weeding the RainyDayGarden. Showers were forecasted for the latter part of the day, but one can never tell in these parts.
A few weeks ago, we got a few packages of the new MiracleGro LiquaFeed Advance. We decided this weekend was a good time as any for the Spring feeding.
The LiquaFeed Advance system came with an integrated sprinkler-feeder unit. The MiracleGro bottle attaches to one end. There are few spray options to the head. The switch for plain water/ mix feed switch is on the top.
The bottle's cap mates and seals with the sprinker for a precise mix when feeding. The bottles are designed as single-use only, but they are recycleable.
When assembled, the bottle is angled so gravity will cause the liquid to flow into the feeder. The entire unit is quite light and very comfortable to hold.
The balance of the sprinkler/feeder was surpisingly good! We had no problems aiming and spraying. The MiracleGro LiquaFeed system was easy to assemble and simple to use. We are looking forward to a vigorous RainyDayGarden this season. [Permalink] - Wan Chi Lau
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