A few random things to think about

Extrapolation. “Do you realize that in about 30 or 40 years, we'll have thousands of old ladies running around with tattoos and belly button rings?”

Perspectives. “I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then suddenly it hit me.”

Are you sure you want to know? “A woman was shopping at her local supermarket where she selected:

A 2-litre bottle of HiLo milk
A carton of eggs
A litre of orange juice,
A head of hydroponic lettuce,
A kilo can of coffee
A brown paper bag of mushrooms

As she was unloading her items on the rubber belt to run it through the register, a drunk standing behind her watched her unload them. While the cashier was ringing up her purchases, the drunk calmly stated, ‘<hic> You must be single.’

The woman was a bit startled by this proclamation, but she was intrigued by the derelict's intuition, since she was indeed single.

She looked at her shopping on the belt and saw nothing particularly unusual about her selections that could have tipped off the drunk to her marital status.

Curiosity getting the better of her, she said ‘Well, you know what, you’re absolutely correct. But how on earth did you know?’

The drunk replied, ‘<hic> ’Cause you’re really ugly.’ ”

Comments

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.

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...

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.

Plantagenet Penguinista

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