Though I am not all that fond of Karl Fogel’s so called “cozy” San Francisco heater(because it does not work), I am more fond of his ideas on copyright.
And I think his recent modest proposal that calls for a shorter term period for copyright and proportional registration is a good one. I agree with 90% of it although I am not sure that all types of creations are “created” equal in so far as I would be more comfortable with having software under a shorter term and books under a slightly longer one.
I have come across these “Cozy” heaters a couple of times in SF and fixed one with a sledgehammer and the other by taking apart and cleaning out the upper and side filters and excavating the flue. The practice when the ubiquitous neo-Edwardian apartments went up was to make chimneys out of a terra-cotta series of tubes (seriously
encased in flashing, then a second crook-necked tin flue to connect to a furnace. The little circle behind the heater in your photo was probably once connected to a coal or wood stove and there are likely matchbooks from the twenties and a layer of ash and soot as high as the bottom of the opening. You can clean out as much of that as you can bear, then remove the accumulated obstructions from the intake and vent and presto.
If this is a bit over-the-top for a temporary stay forgive me for jumping at the only chance I’ll ever have to fix a technical problem raised on Planet Debian!
Comment by Timon — May 25, 2007 @ 12:25 am