Pre-expo panicking

The load of disposable vinyl gloves arrived this morning and I thought “fantastic! I can get all the last fibreglass work done tonight afterall!
I go out, come home, hit the workshop and open the gloves.

And find out I’ve ordered 200 in Small size. My own fault, didn’t read the listing right. Fuck.

More have been ordered, but they’ll take at least 2 days to get here.

Tomorrow I’m going to have to go and find some at retail prices because I can’t wait that long for them.

I’ve also got the roto-caster dismantled to a large degree now. I’ve spent some of the would-be-fibreglassing time working out how to make the inner motor drive two spinning frames instead of one. Should be able to get it all fixed up again in a few hours tomorrow. This way it’ll actually be able to do what I intended it to.

Running worryingly short on time now though.

Bathtime thoughts

There’s an old adage that “there’s no money in a cure” when talking about pharmaceutical companies. It’s wrong though, from a single angle. There is money in a cure; when the treatment is the main product of your competitor.

Was also thinking about Scientology.
There’s a disconnect in understanding them I think. While we joke about Xenu and so forth, we’re not thinking about it from their perspective. If they’re so far into the “church” that they know that big ultimate truth, then they’ve been conditioned to KNOW that learning of these things without conditioning will KILL YOU.
I can only conclude then that either those who’re exposed to the protesters shouting about Xenu & the whole alien-souls backstory are either never going to be allowed so high in the organisation to be told of its alleged importance or are so high in the org that they know it’s bullshit (unlikely, as there would need to be thousands that high in base-level jobs for those to be the only type exposed). I conclude this because if the ones being shouted at knew what their cults own stance on that knowledge was, the fact these unconditioned protesters were not dropping dead from the knowledge would expose a fundamental chink in the armour.
Of course I rather suspect that there’s a third or fourth option, possibly in the form some sort defined of natural enemy of Scientology who I’m unaware of who can be exposed to the info & live with the express purpose of harming the cult, or that the definition of the information destroying/killing you is in a more metaphorical or spiritual sense.

Advice on OpenOffice Database design?

Need some advice on Forms & layout.

I’ve been doing the tutorials, because I need to make an inventory database for my business. The paper one really ins’t cutting it.

The easiest way would be to include forms for entering orders, rather than adjusting item stock levels one at a time. However I’m having a bit of trouble thinking how to plan the forms for it.

If I have a table for orders, then I have to somehow make it so it can handle an unknown quantity of differing items within it’s entry. And while that may be possible I think it would mean some easy-to-break parsing of multiple entries in a single table cell.
The alternative seems to be to create a sales table where each item type per sale is it’s own set of data, but some may share an order number. I think it would also mean the order contents would only be visible in Query results after entering, not the order Form, which would be a problem if I needed to amend an order. Can entry forms collate data like that? I suspect so, but the tutorial I ran through didn’t mention it, only display of single table entries.

Both would need me to design a form capable of extending as needed, ideally with drop-down menus of items to select from.

The latter seems the most reliable solution atm.

I need to get this done soon, so if someone can offer advice on more options or point me to guides on this sort of aspect of database building, I’d be very grateful!

New T-shirts order

Got what’s likely to be the final quote in from Screens for the next shirt order. It’s been a long time coming, going through various options and revisions.
A £500 order will get all the shirts up to stock (previously tried to keep a stock of 4 of each), increase the held stock on some to 5, and widen the range to include some ladies-fit shirts.

The ladies fit will be standard black, light-pink and a blue one with the “union” variant on. There didn’t seem to be much interest in other colour options. The blue will probably sell for £13.50-£14 unless a cheaper shirt option comes up. The other ladies shirts will probably be about £12. The non-unisex base shirts cost more.

Onward and upward though! The range widens! And I had a dream about the proposed Ferret shirt last night which had the colours perfect on it! So thank-you subconscious!

[20/06/2010: Amalgamating old posts from “Dreamwidth Creative Blog” into sci-fi-fox.com to re-purpose DW blog account.]

Castings in progress

The new work order sheet is helping hugely. I’ve got them listed by resin type, rather than by order. I start at the top, then look at the list to see what moulds are still free that there’s an entry for, then do that.
Makes for some odd bed-fellows, but with the FAR shorter degassing times the bench-top de-gasser’s giving me, it’s easy to manage interleaving the different mixes.

Mondays castings:

Tuesdays castings:

Yes that’s an anvil. I thought it was overkill last time, but since they last couple haven’t bonded to the velcro right without it, it’s in play again.

At this rate, all orders should be complete and shipped at the latest, Monday. Phew.

Please keep an eye on the Twitter feed for up-to-the-minute updates if you’re concerned about your order.

[20/06/2010: Amalgamating old posts from “Dreamwidth Creative Blog” into sci-fi-fox.com to re-purpose DW blog account.]