I have a second monitor at work

My boss got a huge beautiful new monitor, so I got her old apple display to use as a second monitor today. However, it wasn't entirely intuitive to set up dual monitors on my Ubuntu machine at work: The Apple monitor would turn on for a second and then turn off, which apparently is what they do if they have no signal, but I didn't know that at first. All the instructions said to go to the ubuntu display settings and tell it to autodetect, but that didn't work because it didn't notice the other monitor. So then I went to xorg.conf, which apparently by default is disturbingly short, but I wasn't too sure what to put in. Thankfully, this post came to the rescue. In short, here's what I did:

1. Run nvidia-settings.
   
2. Under "X Server Display Configuration" I could see that my second monitor was there but unused, so I clicked on it to enable it and modified the settings to suit.
   
3. I had already backed up my xorg.conf so I clicked on "Save to X Configuration file." It tossed an error about not being able to parse xorg.confg, but clicking through gave me a "Save X Configuration dialog" where I could click "Show preview" and copy those settings to my xorg.conf
   
4. Restarted X11 (actually, I rebooted 'cause I was lazy and wanted to knit a row of my latest project) and poof, it works!
   

So now that it works, I've also customized it to match the rest of my office with the help of some window cling stickers I had on hand:



I am either terrible at being an adult or awesome at it.

Knitted Kindle Fire Case

I'm still loving my Kindle Fire, but what I am not loving is that cases are still in the $40 range, and many were too bulky or otherwise not appealing to me. So I made my own little slipcover:

My new soft knitted Kindle Fire case
by Terriko.

It's so simple that it barely needs a pattern, but in case someone wants one, I wrote it out:

Knitted Kindle Fire Case

Size 9 needles, I used Loops & Threads Impeccable worsted in colour "Seaside Ombre" and a 7" zipper (longer might be better)

Cast on 32 stitches.
This will look noticeably shorter than the 7" height of the Kindle Fire, but I preferred my case to have a snug fit. If you prefer it looser, you can add some stitches here.

Row 1: Knit across
Row 2: Purl across
Repeat 1 and 2 until you've got something slightly more than double the width of your Kindle Fire.
This was around 70 rows for me.
Cast off.

Fold in half and sew up the sides. Put in the zipper on "top" and you're done!

You can see in the photo below that my 7" zipper was actually a bit too small, so I had to leave a bit of extra space at the end so it was easy to get the Kindle in and out of the pouch. If you have a longer zipper, you won't need to do this.

Knitted Kindle Fire Case: zipper side
by Terriko.

And that's it! Here's one last photo of it on and closed:

Knitted Kindle Fire Case: side view
by Terriko.

I learned to knit about a week before making this, so it's totally a suitable project for a beginner!

16g USB necklace

I decided I wanted to upgrade my flash drive and there was no reason it shouldn't be pretty, so I bought this 16G USB Flash Drive off Amazon.

It's so very shiny that when I opened it up, I decided that rather than just stuffing it into my purse, I should use it as a pendant. A few minutes, some jewelry wire, pliers, and a necklace wire I had on hand, and here it is:

16g necklace
by Terriko.

I'm inordinately pleased with myself. :)

Small Penguin Ball

For PAX East last year, some friends and I made a bunch of Angry Birds, which resulted in a great many games with strangers and a lot of fun. I've taken a smaller set of birds out to a few other conferences since, and when I was hanging out with some open source folk, I developed a penguin ball to toss around with the Angry Birds. At my last conference, Pycon, I crocheted up a couple of little ones to give away to my fellow GNU Mailman developers:

Penguin ball I made on the plane
by Terriko.

Small Penguin Ball

Crochet Instructions:

I use Red Heart Super Saver yarn with a K hook, but anything would do.

Start with white yarn
0: Make a magic ring (6)
1: incr in each stitch (12)
2: {incr, sc} x 6 (18)
3-4: sc around (18)
Switch to black yarn
5-7: sc around (18)
8: {decr, sc} x 6 (12)
Stuff (I use pillow stuffing 'cause pillows were on sale and fiberfill was not)
9: decr around (6) and finish off. Tuck ends in.

Wings (make 2):
Make a magic ring using 7 dc (start with one sc to get you up there), but pull it into a half-circle instead of a full circle

Eyes (make 2):
In White: 0: magic ring (5)
In Black: tie a big knot, thread it through the center of the magic ring. (I chain 3 and then tie that in a knot to make it big enough)

Beak:
0: magic ring (7) fold in half and sew together a little bit when you sew it on the penguin.

Basically, take all those things and sew them on the ball. I hide the join for the black and white body under one of the wings.