Have you ever thought of installing a ceiling fan in your bedroom? It can keep your AC costs in the summer time down and make your bedroom more comfortable. Especially if your mate doesn’t like the same temperatures as you do. I am from Boston and she is from Colombia. At 60 degrees, I’m wearing shorts and a T-Shirt and she is searching for her Parka. The opposite goes for the hot, humid, DC summers.

Here is a little guide that may help you to install a ceiling fan in your bedroom. My situation was made easier by a concrete ceiling with a pre-drilled, sturdy electrical box. First of all, it is critical to have a tall and sturdy ladder. I tried at first with a 3-foot stepladder, but it would have been superhuman to lift the 40lb motor and tighten very small, very intricate screws standing on my tip-toes. Get a good ladder!

See what your mounting hardware looks like

Remove your existing light fixture to see what you will mount your ceiling fan to. Here in the Floridian, our ceilings are concrete and the builder installed some very solid electrical boxes. You shouldn’t feel scared to secure a spinning 40 pound contraption to the ceiling.

The boxes in our ceilings are made of sturdy plastic. It is hard to see in the picture, but it is well encased in concrete. The box has kind of a mushroom shape with the wider part at the top and encased in concrete, so it is unlikely to slip out. I used machine screws (not the provided wood screws) to secure the fan to the ceiling box.

You have to remove all of the existing light fixtures and hardware and stretch out the wires. In our building, you may see two “live ends”, where you can connect two separate fixtures, each controlled by a separate wall switch. See the picture below. This was a nice addition by the developer.

Two live ends.

Each with a separate wall switch.

Putting the heavy bits together

Do exactly as the manual says! The Hunter Fan that I bought had ~100 pieces and it wasn’t easy putting it together. But whenever I diverged from the instructions and did something of my own, it was bad… real bad. At one point I had to disassemble the whole body while it was hanging from the ceiling. I’d wired everything together and turned the switch and nothing happened. As it turns out, I didn’t push a “reset” button after changing the remote control frequency. 2 hour detour.

Building the heavy bits

Hanging and taking shape!

From Installing a Ceiling Fan

The final product!

The fan looks beautiful in our bedroom, matching the wood texture of the ceiling. I slept in comfort last night. It could have been the fan or the wine, but it was a lovely sleep nonetheless. The fan is a Hunter fan from LightingDirect.com and cost ~$320. Be sure to get a coupon from the internet. I used a 12″ downrod to lower it down from the ceiling. Lighting Direct recommends an 18″ downrod for 10-foot ceilings like mine, but I opted for a shorter one and like this look better. The fan ships with a ~4 inch downrod that is totally insufficient.

Give it a try, and leave a comment if you found this useful. It is very easy to install this in the Floridian condos in NW DC – no drilling, cutting, or excessive wiring needed.

I’m trying out a new wordpress plugin called “CommentLuv”. If you have a wordpress blog, then leave a comment here with the URL of your wordpress blog. It’ll do something cool.

My parents are here this weekend and we’re having a great time. They were sad when I left Boston, or at least my father was. I had a very interesting life change recently, some of you know what it was, and this is the first time my parents are coming to visit afterward. I’ll be writing a protected post about it shortly.

I recently purchased a Samsung Fascinate, a galaxy S phone. They are notoriously easy to “root” and install a custom rom. This cleans out all of the Verizon crap-ware, consequently improving battery life. It also enables you to do more with your phone – use it as a wireless access point, skype from wifi or verizon’s network, and customize much, much more.

One of the cooler things I’ve done with the phone is to have it automagically download my favorite podcasts so I can listen to them on the subway. I sometimes listen to Pandora on my 30 minute morning and evening train ride, but sometimes the train gets stuck beneath the Potomac River and there is no Verizon data signal down there. Pandora will drop the song half-way through and I’ll be sitting listening to farts and coughing for the remainder of my ride.

I chose a free application called Acast to listen to podcasts. I always choose a free application first because I can get rid of it without a second thought if I don’t like it. Acast will:

- Show all of the podcast feeds so I can choose the most recent content (basic functionality)

- Download podcasts to my SD card so I can listen when my phone is off the network or in a tunnel

- Be configured to download podcasts only when my phone is plugged in and on wifi at night (save that battery!)

Anyway, it is cool. The new version of Acast works well. The previous version had some issues with the “podcast control pane”, so when I wanted to pause or ffwd I couldn’t find the pane and would be SOL.

My four favorite podcasts are:

- NPR Marketplace Money

- NPR: Technology

- HVW8 International Podcast – All kinds of funky music

- Gilles Peterson’s Podcast – All kinds of music from Jazz to House, all super tasteful and good for parties and chilling out.

That list is being refined and complemented by other podcasts, so check back.

I highly recommend you download ACast and subscribe to some podcasts of your own! You can customize your content endlessly!

Gizmodo published these incredible photos of the snowstorm that is about to hit the US.

This is what the snow cover will look like.

Totally nuts. The entire US will be covered in snow!

I have had a god-awful time installing matplotlib for Mac OSX. I thought it was going to be easy to port my python development environment from Ubuntu to my new(ish) macbook pro, but NO.

I found myself googling errors like:
matplotlib tar: unrecognized archive format: inappropriate file type or format
(when the matplotlib make file had incorrect args for an untar of libpng)

no module named matplotlib.pyplot
(when an incorrect version of matplotlib was installed)

matplotlib ImportError: No module named ma
(when an incorrect version, 0.91 of matplotlib was installed)

matplotlib lipo: can’t open input file: /var/folders/8e/8efpckbcfb4dgr+x8n3urk+++tq/-tmp-//ccczosb6.out (no such file or directory)
(when baby jesus didn’t come on time)

matplotlib requires system python 2.6 to install
(when trying to install from dpkg)

and several other problems.

HERE IS HOW I GOT IT TO WORK
1. Install freetype2
- get freetype from http://gnu.mirrors.pair.com/savannah/savannah/freetype/freetype-2.4.4.tar.gz , which is the most current as of 12-2010
- a standard install:
./configure
make
sudo make install
2. Install libpng
- get libpng from http://ethan.tira-thompson.org/Mac_OS_X_Ports.html
- a standard install:
./configure
make
sudo make install
3. Install matplotlib from source
- get matplotlib version > 0.9. version 0.9 is totally out of date and should not be used
- do not use “pip install matplotlib”. matplotlib developers have not properly updated their link with pypi, and “pip install matplotlib” will install the OLD and USELESS version of matplotlib.
- Instead, get the source from: http://superb-sea2.dl.sourceforge.net/project/matplotlib/matplotlib/matplotlib-1.0/matplotlib-1.0.0.tar.gz
- python setup.py build
At this point, it MUST recognize your freetype2 with the correct version:
REQUIRED DEPENDENCIES
numpy: 1.2.1
freetype2: 12.2.6

If it continues without a real version number beside freetype2, it WILL FAIL. I don’t know why the installer continues, as it certainly should not. If a matplotlib developer reads this, please correct!
- If this step finishes without errors, you’re golden
- python setup.py install

and you’re golden!

I have burned 3 hours on this sh** when I should have been writing my thesis. Hope this helps others out there.

My 2006 Audi A3 has been leaking coolant for many months now. Usually it had been a slow leak, and I would need to top off the fluids about once a month. This is not standard – in most radiators the anti-freeze should stay level indefinitely.

My problem was that on long road trips, the coolant would disappear at a much higher rate. If I left from Boston at 10am, by the time I hit New Jersey around 3pm, the coolant indicator would be on and the coolant reservoir would be totally empty. This could be very dangerous and cause the engine to overheat, causing permanent damage and more importantly stranding me on the road. That would be a huge pain in the ass.

I’ve been reading around the interwebs and heard nightmare stories – A3′s apparently have a tendency to have leaky head gaskets and / or cracked cylinder heads. It is less than thrilling to have the engine of your 4-year old auto, just off warranty, dismantled and reassembled. The mechanic’s bill would make anyone cry. I was scared for my car.

Well, the resolution was a good one. This radiator was another casualty of I-93 and the shitty job the road crews did to clean up rock chips and asphalt while they resurfaced it last summer. While I worked at LogMeIn, I’d drive up 93, way too fast, on my way to work. For 2-3 months, the road was milled and shaved down, but not repaved. There was an unbelievable amount of debris on the road and my windshield was cracked in 3 places by flying rocks.

Turns out one of the flying rocks destroyed my radiator too.

The radiator. Obvious marks from dried / burnt coolant leaking for a long period of time. It was necessary to remove the radiator to see this damage. Two mechanics looked at it for estimates and couldn’t see the source of the leak.

Point of Impact. Probably a stone chip or bit of flying asphalt.

Wide open for easy access. The radiator is right behind the grille without any protection.

Another casualty of I-93 rocks. I’m going to need a new windshield soon.