Monday 22 November 2010

Using PVC in the Laser Cutter

So, Sue called and wanted some circles cutting for use with Jo. Set it all up and asked if it was PVC, she said no, probably not. I went on and started cutting and she asked "what is PVC", and I said it was like PVC windows and doors. She then said she got it from home after they'd done the conservatory! She had to go anyway, so I stopped the job.

So talking to Tom he said there was a test for PVC, so I looked it up. Found the "Beilstein Test" where you get some copper, put it in the flame so that there is no other material on it and touch the hot copper onto the suspected PVC (it should melt onto it). Then put it back in the flame. If the flame goes green then it contains PVC (poisonous and erodes metal). Found an example here:
http://jchemed.chem.wisc.edu/JCESoft/CCA/CCA5/MAIN/1ORGANIC/ORG16/TRAM16/E/0570301/THUMBS.HTM

Turns out Sue did the rest of it after she phoned the people to see whether it was PVC. It did stink out most of North Block 3.

Tuesday 16 November 2010

Website creation for Nviro-Clean Solutions NCS

Tom asked me if I'd be interested and I jumped at the chance. His brother is just starting out and wants a nice clean coorporate website for the cleaning company. Mostly to advertise and make first contact with customers. Firstly a front page, then some more pages with info.

The company is very flexible set up into two main parts; Domestic and Commercial. It is setup to do business in the midlands, centred on Matlock. Tom has designed the logo which the website will work around.

I've jumped the gun and had some ideas. Based around the blog templates of having a blurred background, each page could have it's own background. So for the domestic some non-de-script clean home, and for commercial some offices. Perhaps for others we could have a commercial kitchen.

Perhaps to contrast the blur, we could some cleaning utilities in focus. Of-course this means some bespoke photography and the question of what products to show. Perhaps a silhouette of a vaccum cleaner and brush. Perhaps not the brush, a little old fashioned.

For the navigation nothing has really come to mind. Keep it simple and in line with the logo.

Package Maker for OS X

Well, after finding out to some degree that Firefox 3.6.12 works perfectly on Active Directory I thought I'd try and role it out through the Task Server. First and final step was to make a package file which puts Firefox in the Applications folder with the right permissions.

It took some time but I found just dragging Firefox over the "drag contents here" dialogue on the left of the window added Firefox and also added Applications/ folder for the destination!. Tried it, it said it worked, even took a little time installing the files, and it just wouldn't appear in the Applications folder.

After trying "trial and error" I finally looked at the logs to find it saying it was "Diverting" or some similar wording, the files to some other place. I searched on the internet to find that you need to 'untick' the "Relocate" box. I think it's been finding "firefox" or reminants of Firefox  in the folder and so didn't want to overwrite it. Unticking the box finally worked which then showed some wierd results.

The wierd results were that once this was run, Guest and other logins couldn't run firefox. I thought of permissions issues might be the cause because I was logged in and made it from Firefox which I copied. I tried it from Cove login from the Firefox in the Applications folder with no luck. Finally I tried it from Cove and Firefox from the original DMG file downloaded from the interweb. The pkg file recommended a restart through ARD and this tended to work. Just a few more tests and I shall run it through the Task Server.

Should now be able to make more PKG files for distribution. Yay

Wednesday 3 November 2010

Confucius

Well, having seen the film, I thought I'd quite like to know of his 'teachings'. Can't find the book at the library though. Here's a good start:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/p00547k8/In_Our_Time_Confucius

I'm 11 minutes in and it's quite interesting. I shall add to this post later.