One year ago today: July 23, 2025, now that’s vegetarian!
Five years ago today: July 23, 2021, twice the honking price.
Nine years ago today: July 23, 2017, descriptions and prescriptions.
Random years ago today: July 23, 2016, hula-hoop earrings?
What nonsense will I get into today instead of fixing my kitchen floor? Can’t say but how about an early peek at the options. I have that German car alarm controller that I’ve tested every way, it has remote keychain buttons that can be paired to operate the alarms. It is off on, but I have two other remotes I have not tested. The idea is to see if I can get at least one of them to work with the broken starter on the Hundy. Yes, I still operate that with the momentary switch under the grill. But that’s unpopular when it is raining.
Here is the controller and the clips, but not the keychain switches. This is kind of expensive an approach. It’s the challenge. It has become trial and error since the instructions are in German and have terms I have never seen before. What else while I’m out in the shed? There’s the dowel maker. One of my questions was how fussy is this contraction about the wood it will use? It has to be pre-cut to a list of sizes needed to fit into the assembly. The dies are in standard, the stick dimensions are metric.
This is why I have the calipers out, and notice that they do not agree on any measurement using the test stick . The difference is miniscule, but these are supposed to be precision instruments. These are meant to calibrate other tools, not need this form of adjustment to start with. I will try to save space by having the sticks correct in two dimensions each, these are meant to be placed on the saw table to space the blade. Is this too ambitious? We shall see.
I have not been satisfied with my work lately. My recuperation is fine in a big way that while relapses occur, they are never back to the helpless level of two months ago. I find myself dropping more things and bumping into furniture a big more, though that has diminished. I wrote letters to both the Reb and JZ to take it easy. I cannot commit to any visits, but there is a chance in August. The blog is experiencing a great bloom, the only bright spot for now, I will require some extra nap time. As said, I’m at a strange period of reverses that are getting progressively weaker. Hmmm, that reads funny. What I meant is I'm still getting fatigue bouts, but they are shallower and don't last--but still not any fun.
The real South Park
(Houston)
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An afternoon tired spell had me checking the news for four hours, thank the stars I picked up 32 coffee pods y’day downtown. It took the father of another gunned down knife attacker less than 14 minutes to get on TV and say his son was “no threat”. Do these people have their speeches written and ready? Trump endorsements are running at 100% this year and I first heard of Nancy Mace. The first woman to graduate from Ft. Bragg’s Cadet school, were her father was the commanding officer, no less.
What did I learn this time? Other than the zero depth of yellow shading, I did not have to alter the original. On the top left, the logo is only partially burned. There is around a ten-minute time limit running the laser below 4000 mm per minute. One does this to make the etch darker [in a single pass]. You could make multiple passes if you have all day. This one fizzed out at 3500 mm. Also, these larger logos are harder to center, or I should say differences are more apparent if you don’t get it spot on. (Later, the radiation logos take ten minutes each, so this becomes uneconomical without a commercial laser,)
In the background, I’m watching more video on the Enigma code machine, having a laugh at the sheer extent of propaganda shoveled into the facts. I mean, some of these videos were made last year and the 1940s brainwashing still works on some people. One thing mentioned in most videos that a “flaw” in the Enigma meant a letter could never represent itself. There is no explanation how this worked, so I’ll provide one.
Every message is usually a string of random letters, so you write them out in two long strings, here is one string of sample code with a second string slid one position to the right and below. The codebreaker is looking for combinations, and if you notice on this short message there are three locations where the letters match up. The codebreaker knows not to bother with those combinations.
He is going to keep sliding the bottom set of letters along until he finds a position where none of the letters match. This eliminates millions of combinations and now he begins seeking a probable known phrase, like the date or “Heil Hitler”. Another favorite was Nichts zu berichten, the German phrase for “nothing to report”. I have watched every major code-breaking video on line and not one of them explained this. I’ve seen videos of people doing it, but as far as I know this is the first place most of you will see it explained. “Spelled out”, one might say.
ADDENDUM
Next, I made a ham sandwich and watched video on casino cheating. I was hoping to see some sophisticated electronics. Most of it was nothing new. Card marking, loaded dice, hand signals, and crooked dealers. Still pretty interesting because cheaters have to keep coming up with new ways to do old tricks. I was looking for the impact of A.I. and there wasn’t any. That just tells me the casinos are using it, but not yet the players. That will change.
By watching so many videos, I gather it is almost impossible for the house to monitor the countless ways of cheating, so they don’t. They rely on a small set of telltale signs, such as somebody winning consistently as well as information exchanges on known crooks. Myself, I’m just glad I never bothered with gambling. I don’t like the people at casinos anyway.
