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Technology in context

Technology can be a useful servant, however is not so safe in the rôle of master. In thinking, there is a balance between reason and emotion. If one dominates, the outcome(s) may not be so functional. When emotion dominates, the thinker tends to come to conclusion(s) they are comfortable with and trust, yet are irrational. When reason dominates, the thinker tends to omit context which has a significant impact on the conclusion(s), so it/they tend to be irrelevant and/or inapplicable. For what you may call an illustrative (or extreme) example of that, late last year a person asked a pattern-matching AI how rapidly they should turn an egg while frying it... and the response amounted to “slowly, so you don’t risk breaking it.” Spot the complete absence of relevant context. My own personal experience with an “intelligent” car (that I drove for a fortnight last month while my usual car was being repaired), was that having it automatically brake (in wet conditions!) when the vehicle in fron...
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Recent posts
repurposing — these things (from some discarded microwave ovens — another person has a specific use for the magnetron bias magnets from same) push through over 1kW, and they all seem to be functional thus far.  driving them is... not quite as simple as it may appear, however, strapping in a second core may allow for magnetic leverage. for the cost... hmmm...
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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.
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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.
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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...
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mac on mac

There is an ancient PowerPC-based Macintosh (still working!) about 18km West of here. The chap who began using it about two decades ago has a need to access some of the CAD files on it, and to print some of those out. So I installed QEMU on an hp laptop I own (based on Lubuntu), then a PowerPC emulator module for it, Mac OS 9.2 on that (retired 17 years ago), the free CAD package, and a print-to-PDF plugin. After copying the CAD files into the emulated file space (from the internal hard-disk drive borrowed from the original Mac), they can be opened, viewed, edited and/or PDFed. The next step was to install QEMU under OS X on his MacBook Pro under OS X, and copy the virtual workspaces to it. Now the owner can edit drawings of machinery (some of it older than I am), print them out on a modern printer, and back up the entire system by copying two files. If his MacBook ever quits the game, QEMU can be installed on whatever replaces it, those two files copied into it, then away he goes aga...
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not so technical... or so mindless...

Posit a human being who claims to be Christian. They might also claim to be Atheist, or Hindu, or almost anything else. To this particular individual, the most important person is their grandiose — false — self-image. Everyone else (everything else) comes secondary to that. Regardless of their claims, the belief system they follow is Virtual Idolatry. “Virtual?” Yes. There is zero tangible evidence of the physical existence of the principal object of their affection. “Idolatry?” Yes.  What they effectively worship was created by mankind (in this case, themselves, although they may have been conditioned to act that way by an authority figure early in their lives). Their actions reveal them to not follow the best-documented human in history (Christ) in any practical way, so they are evidently not Christian. That they regard themselves (by projection of that image) to be better than any other human being clashes with the basic Monism upon which Hinduism is built, so they are evident...
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Person T has had Person A design a one-page flyer and sent it to Person J... as a single image. Person T is two hours ahead, time-zone wise, and Person A is roughly 12 hours behind. Person J also wishes to email out the flyer with hyperlinks on each of two names in the image. Sent as a bare image, she will not fly. Embedding the image in a PDF would allow only the entire image to possess a single hyperlink. So... crank up GIMP, open image, select the Move tool, drag Guides from each Ruler to section up the image. Each Guide changes nothing, however its presence allows the Rectangle Select tool to be very precise and consistent. Now File ⇒ Save the work-file in case you wish to adjust things for another round. Here, I have applied the Cubist tool from the Filters to most of the content, so the idea is conveyed without revealing details of said content. The next step is to Rectangle Select the top area (in the screenshot above, the left-name area has been Rectangle Select...
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