andrewlucking.com

Nearly made it to November this year.

Yesterday, after sanding the Quickfair applied last weekend I wrapped the boat in a big tarp and hauled my toolbox down from the hayloft.

I guess it’s back to vicarious building in front of the monitor… Do you know of any projects being chronicled that I should add to last winter’s list? I think it was Tim Zim who pointed me to The Voyage of Wendy Ann 2 . Seb Pattenden has a knack for colourfully describing the adventures of refurbishing an old tug.

Thinking about upgrading to Firefox 2? Wondering if RMD will work after the update? Fret not, RMD supports Firefox 2. In fact, it has for the past month or so.

Upon seeing the frost on my windshield and the thin layer of ice on the puddles yesterday morning I had little expectation of making much progress on the VG23. Driving to the farm with a steaming cup of coffee I kept thinking about the warm bed I’d left behind and wondering how my allergies to cold weather would hold up under the day’s forecast high of 5°C.

Of course sanding is one of those all-weather tasks and now that I’m fairing, the exertion of using a longboard served to chase away some of the chill. There was actually only a bit of sanding on the keel that needed to be done and by putting a bit of arm into it I managed to quickly move onto applying more fairing compound.

I have an old desk in the hayloft that has been re-purposed as a workbench and by sticking a halogen lamp beneath it and blocking off the ends I had a nice spot to warm Quickfair to a workable temperature. With a second halogen lamp aimed on the hull I was able to keep the fairing compound being applied from becoming too cool to spread easily. I found that with this technique I was able to take my time and didn’t feel rushed to beat the Quickfair’s curing time (here’s hoping it will cure eventually ;-).

This is by far this the latest into the fall that I’ve worked on the boat and while it’s only October I consider it “bonus” time. I’ll probably just keep playing it by ear and close up shop when the temperature drops a few more degrees.

There, I’ve said it.

IE7 shipped yesterday and among the many changes is one that has caused Authoware Web Player calls to JavaScript in the embedding HTML to fail. (The bug ticket in Microsoft Connect was here). This is a significant issue as e-learning content delivered in the Authorware Web Player is commonly accessed through SCORM Learning Management Systems (LMS), and SCORM requires that content communicate across a JavaScript API.

There does seem to be a workaround which involves loading the page that embeds the Authorware content as either a frame or iframe element. While tests indicate this is a successful workaround, it is a disconcerting one as I haven’t been able to track down why it works. Depending upon various LMS environments it can also be a difficult, or at the very least, time consuming workaround to implement.

This has been a known issue since the early IE7 beta releases and was reported to both Microsoft and Adobe. After a last ditch campaign by members of the AWARE list and some persistent questioning during the October IE7 Expert’s Chat the significance of the problem was brought to the IE7 team’s attention. As I both suspected and feared, Microsoft seemed to indicate that this was a problem that would need to be resolved by the Authorware Web Player.

Where was Adobe through all of this? Good question. As I mentioned, the bug was communicated through official channels sometime ago (May 2006 to be exact) and was also discussed on mailing lists and in forums (on at least one of those lists members have an expectation of monitoring and participation from Adobe representatives). All has resulted in deafening silence.

As things currently stand I have lost confidence in Adobe’s commitment to the Authorware community. Authorware developers, like developers everywhere, are a resourceful and independent lot and have grown used to “fending for themselves” (perhaps more so that other developers) but now Adobe needs to stand up and support them.

According to System Three’s The Epoxy Book, fairing “is the operation of filling the low spots on a boat hull or auto body to the level of the high spots, eliminating waviness and hollows“. That sounds easy, right?

In the month or so since the last update I managed to complete construction of the keel and glass the VG23’s exterior. Last weekend began the process of fairing the hull and already I’m starting to see a problem developing:
See, I’m not a particularly patient person. I’ll work hard, (possibly even a little obsessively), provided I see progress being made. Once I begin to feel things are bogging down however, I have a tendency to convince myself that the current state of affairs is “good enough”. Something I almost always regret later. Unfortunately, from my limited experience, patience seems to be a key “ingredient” in the fairing process…

I’m hoping though that I can use the fast approaching winter to my advantage. Figuring I probably only have a few more weeks before it becomes simply too cold in the hayloft to work with epoxy and fairing compound, I’d like to get the fairing job well begun before winding down for the winter. The theory being that the winter off will serve to dull any negative feelings I have about fairing and I’ll be raring to get back at it come spring.

Of course, there’s always the risk that little scheme will backfire. It’s possible that spring will roll around and knowing full well how tedious the fairing process will be I’ll succumb to another of my problematic characteristics – procrastination.