Happy 112th birthday Elmwood Park!

   I did several coats of gesso on the hardboard painting panel, and painted the frame.  It looks pretty good and will be ready for Kim to turn it into something. 

   I glued this hardboard to the frame yesterday and allowed it to set overnight.  Today I used a router to bring the edges of the hardboard flush to the frame.  After routing everything got a good sanding.  The first pieces of hardboard didn't want to take the gesso and I have a feeling it was because they were sanded too lightly and the gesso wasn't able adhere to anything.  So for this hardboard I used a slightly more aggressive git and sanded a little longer.
   The panel isn't perfect.  I should have measured both sides of the panel before making the frame.  This panel was leftover from a bench building project, and I had cut the hardboard with a circular saw.  While the cut was exact enough for the bench top, it was was not for a painting panel.  There is around 1/4" difference between the two sides  This causes the frame to stick out a little.  Nothing a strip of trim once the painting is complete won't fix, but a good reminder of why always to measure both sides.
   In the future I plan to have the hardboard always be a bit too large for the frame.  The router with a flushing bit will then ensure the hardboard and frames are perfectly aligned.
 

   In yesterday's frame assembly I used screws to hold the frame together while the glue dried.  I pre-drilled the screen wholes, counter sunk the screws, and then plugged the holes.  I had not used plugged on a project before but had them laying around from some other project that didn't end up happening.  They worked pretty good and will hardly need any sanding to be level.  The frame will be painted so they plugs should be quite hidden in the end.

   I have cut up the remains of a 4x8 foot sheet of hardboard into some painting panels.  The largest of these panels is 24x36".  The hardboard is 1/8" thick and this large sheet needs some reinforcement to keep it rigid.  I had considered using a some light reinforcement, but decided to go rather extreme.  What I designed will be overkill, but good practice.
   Pictured are all the cut pieces prior to assembly and gluing.
 

   The business end of a Saturn V first stage.  A combine 7.5 million pounds of thrust would blast out those 5x F-1 rocket engines.  No rocket before or since has bested this.  Not bad for a rocket that last launched in 1973.  I don't know why we have been stagnant for the last 50 years, but that is all changing.  There are several super-heavy lift rockets in the works and at least one is expected to exceed the power of the Saturn V. 

One nice things about running Linux is downloading Windows virus/malware. I never worry about it. Download it, unpack it, and give it an antivirus scan using an online checker. Oh, it’s a threat? Don’t care. I’ll find something else. Unpacked files in my temporary directory will get cleaned out automatically at some point in the future. Like sifting through items laced with bubonic plague, smallpox, AIDS, influenza, measles, typhus and cocoliztli, but you are a robot.

Picture under the shuttle replica Independence.

   Had the misfortune of trying to setup a Windows 10 based virtual machine.  How does anyone use this operating system when is constantly telling you "no"?  I want to remove that.  No, you cannot.  I don't need that.  No, you must have it enabled.  I don't have Internet access.  No, you must have Internet access.  Etc., etc.
   I run my computer, not Microsoft.  You say it is because the average user needs a safe walled-off area, but the reality is you want control so you can make my computer do what you want.  Forgive me if I respond with a phrase once uttered by Dick Cheney to Patrick Leahy.  My computer will do what I want.

   Random picture, Austin, Texas.

Sometimes one needs to create a local encrypted disk for test. The easiest way to do this is to create a file to serve as the disk.

$ dd if=/dev/urandom of=disk.img bs=1M count=1024 status=progress

This will create a 1 GiB file containing random data. Now we need to mount it.

$ sudo cryptsetup luksFormat disk.img

As of this writing, there is a bug in cryptsetup that requires it be root in order to format a file. Not really a problem since we need to be root anyway to mount this device.

$ sudo cryptsetup open disk.img disk

Format the drive:

$ sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/mapper/disk

And mount it:

$ sudo mount /dev/mapper/disk /mnt/disk/