-
on icing cookings
One of my holiday memories from childhood is going to my mom's sister's home to decorate stacks and stacks of sugar cookies with sugar icing dyed with food coloring. While fun and festive, I found it frustrating. I was never able to make them come out as neat and nice as my aunt and my mom were able to do, using butter knives to apply the icing.
( Read more... ) -
A gentle lecture, what a codec is
I recently wrote an offhand post about doing software archaeology at my job into the FFmpeg project, and one of my nephews, who is very smart but his passions go doing a different path than mine responded with: "I have no idea what you're talking about but I'm sure it's great", and thus so, I wrote up a slightly longer lecture/essay as a comment ( Read more... ) -
The saga of my SLR 35mm camera
When I was living in Alaska in 1989, I bought a used Minolta Maxxum 35mm film camera. It had integrated autofocus, which was cutting edge at the time. And it came with a couple of 3rd party lenses, so I go from adjustable focal length 28mm to 108mm, as well as the stock 50mm lens. Also included was a small tripod, and a remote trigger cable, ( Read more... ) -
floating an idea: an APA
I have no idea why I'm considering doing such a crazy thing, but I'm considering starting and running an APA ( Read more... ) -
K vs Q, sounds of
I've noticed that I pronounce "K" and "Q" differently ( Read more... ) -
Buried in sheets of colorful glowing glass
Anyone remember those scenes from ST:TNG that showed the captain doing paperwork at his desk? He was using a display terminal to read text and to do vtc, AND he was switching between half a dozen data tablets? Remember how conceptually silly that was?
My edc backpack contains a laptop, a tablet, two phones, and one and sometimes two eink reader ( Read more... ) -
Phonejacking and Account Security
If you have an account that can be reset with your phone#, and that account becomes valuable, that account and that phone# will get stolen from you. It's only a matter of time. The tech companies who say this isn't a thing, they lie.
This entry was originally posted at https://fallenpegasus.dreamwidth.org/860583.html. Please comment there using ( Read more... ) -
Thoughts on the Google Titan token
The tech press so excited about Google's "Titan" hardware token, and the breathless statement that they have "never had an account takeover" since rolling it out internally. They are excited about the wrong things, and are being taken for a ride by G's marketing and PR departments.
It's only a FIDO U2F token. I've had one for almost 2 years now, ( Read more... ) -
The saga of the train tickets
As we were riding from Versailles back to Paris, there was sitting a few seats back from us a young attractive vivacious couple being young and attractive and vivacious with some other young attractive vivacious travellers, switching freely between Spanish and French ( Read more... ) -
What I noticed
It is easier to puzzle out a sign that is written in both Catalan and in Castilian, then it is to puzzle out Spanish on it's own. And it's a lot easier to figure out the Spanish to English mapping when the sign is written in Catalan, in Castilian, in French, and then again in English ( Read more... )