Here is a Karaoke program I can experiment with. This is the same VanBasco freeware that Arnel uses. It has some severe limitations for what I’ll need but nothing that can’t be worked around. I believe I may accidentally have thrown out a Karaoke video card just a few weeks ago because nobody knew what it was. I will need a card with two independently optionable video outputs.
This is a segment of the screen showing standard Karaoke lyrics screen, what the audience sees, and a small part of the screen controls. Factors like order, key, tempo and volume require very accurate screen navigation. I was easily able to follow on bass without any practice.There are many shortcomings, such as the way some of the music begins playing instantly, with no introduction. My intention is to punch out the bass lines and substitute my own. I have, so far, exactly one .kar file that is on my regular song list.
Panera opens a 7:30, not 7:00 A.M. on Sundays. Remember that, everybody. Wallace lost another crib game in which we both had 19 hands. Not a cribbage player? A 19 hand is the slang for zero points, since no combination in the game can equal 19. Gee, Wallace, time to upgrade the old magic shuffle.
We talked to some length about the mathematics of the cipher methods I looked at y’day. I’ll run over the analogy again to refresh the memory. How does one person send another a secret message without also sending him the key? I forget the man’s name (starts with a “W”), but I think he was brilliant. Before him, everybody thought more keys meant less security.
Here goes. Imagine a box with a secret message inside. Assume no courier can be trusted, therefore no keys can be exchanged. Party A puts a padlock on the box and sends it to B. But B cannot open it because he doesn’t have the key. So B puts a second padlock on the box and sends it back to A. When A receives the box with two padlocks, he removes only his padlock, and sends the box back to B. Absolute genius. Before you think it’s trivial, I remind all that it took 2,000 years for somebody to figure this out.
Now, to find out how this all works with these private and public keys I’ve heard so much about. True, I could just buy the software like everybody else and hope it works, but that is not how we do things around here. I’ve still got research to do, because I know the electronic messages are only sent one way, but the concept is valid.
[Author's note 2016: I got that padlock series mixed up. The way it works with public and private keys is the innovation. The concept is that one of the keys, the public key, can only be used to lock the message, that is, to scramble it. Once it is scrambled, only the recipient, who you have given a private key, can unscramble it.
The actual workings are a bit more complicated, but that's the idea. A key that can only lock but not unlock. Pure genius--and the first innovation in 2,000 years.]
Later, Wallace and I went to the ocean for a dip. The waves were four feet high. That completely swamps Millie so she stayed on shore while we went out chest deep. The water was too churned up and full of seaweed for swimming, but the breakers are always fun to ride. My first time in the water in a year, and I was famished. I told Wallace how when I was a kid, I asked around all over town how to get a job as a sailor and nobody could tell me. All I got was, “Join the navy.” And you wonder why I don’t respect most adults. I still dream of sailing across a real ocean some day. Not another cruise, but right across.There was a documentary on the Dust Bowl on the History Channel. I had to watch that. The producers correctly sensed most people cannot imagine the scale of the storms. The movie special effects people seem to have done a realistic job of it. Droughts are frequent but the Depression is the last time it affected the family farmer. There are no family farmers left, only agribusiness. Subsidized corporations, everybody’s favorite.
To those who notice the spelling errors recently, this new edition of my word processor is keeps resetting itself to Canadian English. Until I figure out how to disable that, keep chequeing back. Liked that, did you?
Return Home
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
