Skip to main content

It all comes out squaw

Imagine an American Indian tribe — in particular three families, the Smiths, the Joneses and the Chiefs.

Squaw Smith “falls” pregnant, so the chief of the Smith family improves their tent by finding, hunting & adding a deer-hide to it for softness and warmth. Squaw Smith is pleased, and gestates appropriately.

Squaw Jones presumably trips over and “falls” solidly pregnant herself, so now it’s up to the Jones family chief to compete with the Smiths. Tribesman Jones can’t merely match the Smiths’ improvement and retain his own status, so he tops it by hiking into the next valley and hunting down a buffalo hide for their tent. The buffalo-hide is larger, softer & warmer than a deer-hide, which pleases Squaw Jones immensely.

Then social unrest descends when Squaw Chief develops the bulge of motherhood as well.

The tribe’s chief looks around puzzled. He’s well-aware of how such bulges arise, but buffalo is the most sumptious local hide, so he’s wondering how to outdo the Jones family.

After much head-scratching, Chief impels his brother to take his own canoe down-river, then out into the sea, then island-hop around the coast & across islands in the mighty blue water to Africa, where he is finally able to secure a hippopotamus hide. This is larger, software & better-insulating than the other two hides.

Brother Chief eventually works his way back home again with his immense prize, and Chief himself presents it grandly to his Squaw. It smells a little, but is very impressive so the Chiefs leave it in place to see how well it works.

The Chiefs’s tent is much larger than the other two tents & had been built by a tribesman with a funny Greek name, something like Hyper-Tonne-Use.

Squaw Smith gives birth to a happy little son. Squaw Jones brings forth a beautiful pair of twin daughters.

Squaw Chief finally tops them all with mixed triplets, showing that the sum of the squaws in the Hyper-Tonne-Use tent equals the sum of the squaws on the other two hides.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

every-application-is-part-of-a-toolkit at work

I have a LibreOffice Impress slideshow that I wish to turn into a narrated video. 1. export the slideshow as PNG images (if that is partially broken — as at now — at higher resolutions, Export Directly as PDF then use ‘pdftoppm’ (from the poppler-utils package) to do the same). 2. write a small C program (63 lines including comments) to display those images one at a time, writing a config file entry for Imagination (default transition: ‘cross fade’) based on when the image-viewer application (‘display,’ from the GraphicsMagick suite) is closed on each one; run that, read each image aloud, then close each image in turn. 3. run ‘Imagination’ over the config file to produce a silent MP4 video with the correct timings. 4. run ‘Audacity’ to record speech while using ‘SMPlayer’ to display the silent video, then export that recording as a WAV file. 4a. optionally, use ‘TiMIDIty’ to convert a non-copyright-encumbered MIDI tune to WAV, then import that and blend it with the speech (as a quiet b

new life for an old (FTX) PSU, improved life for one human

the LEDs on this 5m strip happen to emit light centred on a red that does unexpectedly helpful things to (and surprisingly deeply within) a human routinely exposed to it. it has been soldered to a Molex connector, plugged into a TFX power supply from a (retired: the MoBo is cactus) Small Form Factor PC, the assorted PSU connectors (and loose end from the strip) have been taped over. the LED strip cost $10.24 including postage, the rest cost $0, the PSU is running at 12½% of capacity, consumes less power than a laptop plug-pack despite running a fan. trial runs begin today.

boundaries

pushing the actual boundaries of the physical (not extremes, the boundaries themselves) can often remove barriers not otherwise perceived. one can then often resolve an issue itself, rather than merely stonewalling at the physical consequences of the issue.