Author: grant

First Hatha at YogaOne @yogaonemke Fox Point Report

On Sunday I attended the “Vinyasa Flow L1-2” class. Catherine taught it in Fox Point. This was my first class in a long, long time. Too long. It was so great to get back.

Catherine is a delightful teacher and she taught a delightful class. Let me elaborate.

I haven’t done hatha for a long, long time. Too long. I really haven’t done much of anything physical for a long time, either. That is the problem. No, that is the opportunity. Everything is either an opportunity, or not worth pondering.

I went to class without a clue about how I was going to get through 60 minutes of hatha. I mean, I knew that I couldn’t. I banked on being able to just stop and rest. I did, and that was fine.

I needed help overcoming the inertia of doing nothing, and this was my chance, so with a gentle nudge from my good friend to help me along, I went, even though people would probably figure out pretty quickly that I wasn’t attending class as my warm up for my Cirque du Soleil interview later that morning.

Nobody chased me out of the studio, it was no big deal. I didn’t run away from the whole thing, either. I did hatha for 20 minutes, rested for 20, and did the final 20, and that was no big deal. The last 20 was a lot easier floor stuff. The world didn’t end. Instead, the world expanded.

Could somebody going to yoga be embarrassed about being clueless? Yes. Could they be insecure about the whole thing? Yes. Might they wonder why the heck they are there when, everyone else there seems to be an expert already? Yes. I didn’t think any of it, though.

My mind didn’t even bother to start telling me those stories. Catherine created an environment where the minds of her students could be illuminated by the luminosity of that which is gentle and kind, so that they could just do their practice. There is work to be done, and you have to be the one to do it, but when you have a kind and masterful teacher, it is a delightful experience because you can utilize your energy for your own good, instead of your own detriment with doubt and fear. Catherine was super.

The whole thing was really, really great. I’m going to the beginner classes next, with the goal of working on strength and flexibility. Part of me wonders of some beginner-yoga motorcycle-riders classes will spontaneously be scheduled as Spring nears.

CB750F: Day 36: Forward Progress

I couldn’t find a throttle plate rod for the carburetor on ebay. I couldn’t even find the part on the microfiche. A kind soul sent me the link for that part though, used, on ebay. The search term is “carb linkage assembly”. Another kind soul explained that some of the carburetors on the ’79 CB750F were recalled and maybe half the bikes got the work done. He went on to explain that the carburetors were very different between ’79 and ’80-’83, and even more, that the carburetors were very different between the supersport and the classic. Great to know; great to know. Those should be here soon. The other option presented was to weld some steel in there and tap out a new thread. That may still happen, we’ll see.
The next project is to rebuild the front suspension.
Addendum: 2015-02-09
Here is the Motamec Tools Thread Insert Nut & Stud Rivet Gun Riveting Rivut Blind Riveter that was suggested on Facebook. Very cool.

Hydra, a new Emacs package to fall in love with

A few weeks ago a really nice post appeared. It explained how to use set-transient-map. Is is nice for all the same reasons that all keymaps are nice, and additionally, their transience. The example of managing text size is perfect. Everyone has that in their Emacs config. When we define a goal like “we want to adjust the text size”, we are virtually “in the zone” of performing that task. We just want to hit a couple of keys to make the font bigger or smaller and this approach makes that really easy. That idea, and post, quickly blossomed into a package and many new cool features.

That “zone thinking” is how most modes and features work, whether the authors and the users are conscious of this or not. Hydra makes you very conscious of this. Watch how quickly examples evolved into re-recreating most of what someone needed of ViM. Cool!

The user-interface feature of displaying available commands (while in that “Hydra”) in the mode-line really piques my interest about using Hydras to provide a very “user friendly” suite of features for new users. Granted, after you use the same features a lot your quit using visual helpers, but for new users, this could be really interesting.

This package has all of the earmarks of a game-changer. That is my gut feeling; it will be a major facilitator for expressing all sorts of creative approaches for creative expression in Emacs (or ALEC in my case).

For the last few months I’ve had a thought visit me more than a few times: “What would it take to implement ViM, in Emacs, without taking one peek at evil-mode”. That question was just in the collective conscious I believe. Very, very delightful to see it get answered in this delightful new package, Hydra.

Thank you Oleh!

Easily set column width in org tables

Org tables are great. Most of the time I rely on the column width auto-resizing feature. Perhaps you want to do force a smaller width though for example. Just specify the width, in its own empty row inside of angled parentheses. Default justification is right. Prefix the number with a l or c to do left or center.
Here is the page. Thanks Tory!

     |---+------------------------------|               |---+--------|
     |   |                              |               |   | <6>    |
     | 1 | one                          |               | 1 | one    |
     | 2 | two                          |     ----\     | 2 | two    |
     | 3 | This is a long chunk of text |     ----/     | 3 | This=> |
     | 4 | four                         |               | 4 | four   |
     |---+------------------------------|               |---+--------|

org-table-edit-field (C-c `) lets you easily edit the entire field and the org super key (C-c C-c) saves it.

Narrow your view on multiple-cursor marks

The discussion in the comments of this post is great. It reveals a couple of ways to narrow your view, in a few frameworks. In particular it reveals that in multiple-cursors, all it takes is a call to mc-hide-unmatched-lines-mode.

(mc-hide-unmatched-lines-mode &optional ARG)
Minor mode when enabled hides all lines where no cursors (and
also hum/lines-to-expand below and above) To make use of this
mode press “C-‘” while multiple-cursor-mode is active. You can
still edit lines while you are in mc-hide-unmatched-lines
mode. To leave this mode press or “C-g”

Just be sure to exit this mode before closing Emacs as it is a little confusing to return to nothing.

Easily browsing the kill-ring

Ever wish you could just look through everything you’ve killed recently to find out if you killed that piece of text that you think you killed, but you’re not quite sure?

I haven’t, but kind of wish I did, because this package looks interesting.
Wondering if my workflow obviates the need for it, or, I’m just “doing it wrong”.

Elmacro Shows Keyboard Macros or Latest Interactive Commands As Emacs Lisp

elmacro shows keyboard macros or latest interactive commands as emacs lisp.
This package might pique your curiosity. Surely everyone has wondered how to do something like this, especially if you use the macro recorder a lot.
While I don’t have an immediate need for it, I look forward to being able to address it with this package.

Building Web Apps & Services with Entity Framework and Web API

Building Web Apps & Services with Entity Framework and Web API.
If you already know JavaScript, C#, an ORM, and IoC, and all of the other stuff for dealing with, then this is a fast-track to getting on-board with them on the MS platform. Yea, it is fast, but you can get the details elsewhere. This is the place just to see it happen. So many value-adds are referenced in the video. Don’t want to talk it up to much, but it is just very valuable. The major failing here is that the examples are no longer correct though, so you have to do research just to make sense of what is happening and how to implement it.

Windows Azure: The Big Picture

Windows Azure: The Big Picture.
You won’t view anything in this video and say “Oh my goodness I never imagined you could do that with a computer”. What will happen though is that now you will know how Azure lets you do that with a computer, all of their offerings from virtualization to networking to message queues covered. That is great to know. I chose this video specifically because it is the shortest. Further digging is required.