A blog and journal about projects, travels, technology, philosophy and more generally on whatever my mind is occupied with at present.
Another addition to the applewood series, five hanging light fixtures. Three I kept and two were given off as gifts. Applewood being so crooked and irregular, I had to come up with a simple design that would still bring about the staggering beauty of that weathered wood while not turning this project into a jointing an planing nightmare.
The end product turned up to be pleasantly retro-modern and a nice addition to our interior. Each different, each unique.
The pandemic has meant for me a sudden halt in my clinical rotations at the hospital and confinement at home. It was rather frustrating to see the crisis unfold in our healthcare system and especially in our senior’s residences and stand here by the sidelines. However, I soon found a way to partake in this vast effort to fight off Covid-19 by volunteering along with dozens of my peers for the HowITreatCovid19.com project:
Our website is dedicated to helping healthcare professionals find accurate and up-to-date information about the best ways to manage and treat patients affected by the COVID-19 outbreak.
Most other volunteers dedicated themselves to sifting through the vast amounts of scientific publications coming out each day. As for myself, I renewed with my previous job as a web developer and got busy building the platform and some of it’s editorial processes.
Every little bit (of code) truly helps in this fight.
MediaWiki is meant to be an open platform and was not conceived with fine-grained access control in mind (like ACL). For most cases, that’s ok, but on a project I’m working on I’ve felt the need for keeping some parts of my wiki private and secure from indirect access using transclusions or searches.
In order to achieve that, I’ve entirely revamped the Semantic ACL extension, which had been left unmaintained for some years, but had great potential.
Here’s the list of features (more will be added when needed):
All the docs are on the extension’s page.
Latest in the applewood series, a bench I had started making a couple years ago and that I just got to finishing last fall. It’s made almost entirely from the wood of an old apple tree we had to fell due to disease and that I turned into timber. With enough room to sit two people, I used the straightest cuts but still had to do a lot of planing and jointing to get something I could actually do proper woodworking with. The bench top itself is a full slice of the tree cut and glued to alternate the grain’s direction and then screwed to a backing of plywood for stability.
The whole project is assembled using screws hidden behind walnut plugs. The finish is Danish oil for a smooth shine that really enhances the natural beauty and the weathering of this imperfect wood. I’ll admit the end result is most satisfying and sturdy. It found an obvious home in the entrance of our apartment, providing a sitting area where shoes can put on or off and be stored.
Latest in my applewood series, a small table lamp put together using reclaimed parts from another derelict lamp that had been sitting around in the basement for ages. It features a bit of detailing in brass rod and an SPST switch to control it. For the finish, I used danish oil as I feel it does the best job at bringing out the beauty of the intertwined patterns of sapwood and hardwood.
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