Recent Entries

Is that a real program or did somebody write that?

I was reading https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/1p5ke3s/a_sweet_little_interaction/ and it reminded me of a sweet interaction of my own. A Mac in a university office was running one of the screensavers I'd written and I heard a passing student say, "Is that a real program or did somebody write that?"

Context: Back in the late '80s software on floppies in cardboard boxes that you bought in a store. In the late '80s kids learned Basic in school, but Basic programs always felt unprofessional.

Computational Theology

When I was in college, I carried in my wallet a Miskatonic University fake ID that list my major as Computational Theology. I ran across this today:

THEOLOGICAL ENGINEERING EXAM 1

5 Questions, 60 Minutes.

You may use a calculator, the Bible, the Koran, the Torah, and the

Book of Mormon. The speed of light is c. Show all work. For all

problems, assume a perfectly spherical Jesus of constant density D.

No praying during the exam.

1. (20 pts.) Bob and Joe are standing on a street corner. God loves

each an equal amount L_0. Bob then accelerates to .9c. In Joe's

rest frame, how much does God now love Bob?

2. Sven, a Catholic, is in a state of grace. He then has sex with

sheep S. a. (8 pts.) What is Sven's atonement coefficient following

the act if the sheep was not willing? b. (12 pts.) What if the

sheep, while not technically being willing, could not be said to

mind either?

3. (20 pts.) Let the eternal, all abiding love of the Holy Spirit

be the xy plane. Let Sue's soul be at (0,0,5) at t = 0 sec.,

traveling at 5 m/s in the direction of the positive z axis.

Everything is in Cartesian coordinates bespeaking subscription to a

perfectly rational Enlightenment attitude towards the Universe. At

what time t will Sue be saved? (Hint: Assume a point soul.)

4. (20 pts.) Assume the Rapture occurs at time t. Cornelia, a saved

human weighing 90 kg, in a state of grace, has her head in the

closing jaws of an alligator at time t. What mass of meat will

remain to the alligator at time t + 10 sec.?

5. Stan is a frictionless, massless Mormon in a rest state. His sin

level for his faith is currently 11 McBeals. He eats .3 kg of pork,

and enjoys it very much. Assume that the Jews are right about,

well, pretty much everything. a. (10 pts.) What is Stan's sin level

now? b. (10 pts.) Stan is one of them Salt Lake City Mormons. He

ain't so damn smug now, is he?

Extra Credit (10 pts): 25 grams of wafers and 20 ml of cheap wine

undergo transubstantiation and become the flesh and blood of our

Lord. How many Joules of heat are released by the transformation?

Hand in exam when done, and may God have mercy on your work.

From email, author unknown. http://danny.oz.au/danny/humour/theology-exam

Mushroom hunting on my block

Oct 16, 2024 Portland Monthly ran the story A Beginner’s Guide to Foraging for Mushrooms in Oregon.

This amused me because on the next block from my condo I have:

and more, including I've noted with an orange circle in the detail shot for where there was a lush crop last week.

circled is where larger cluster of mushrooms were last week

but, I'm not brave enough to actually try eating any of these.

Entry tags:

"three weeks for dreamwidth"

Three Weeks for Dreamwidth 2024 Question 2: Childhood (posted on day 3)

In the spirit of Three Weeks for Dreamwidth

Salmon Patties

Here is a dish from my childhood that I still make and enjoy

Ingredients:

6 oz canned salmon

2 plain matzohs

1 egg

Directions:

combine the salmon, matzohs, and egg -

• In a small bowl (Quart sized) put the entire contents of the can of salmon, liquid and all (remove any large bones, pieces of skin.

• Separately, crush the 2 matzohs to a coarse powder. You can use a mortar& pestle, or your fingers, but I like to use a "bullet" blender. then add to bowl.

• It would probably be better to beat the egg first, but I don't bother. add egg to bowl.

Stir with a fork until well mixed. With wet hands, form into patties about 2" in diameter, and about a half inch thick.

fry in peanut oil for about 2 minutes on each side. Move to a paper towel to drain any excess oil.

My Bubbie (Bathsheba Oster, Edward Oster’s mother) used to serve these with sugar or a little jam on top (I remember strawberry.) When I make them for Kitt and me, I use a little table sugar.

Putting something sweet on a fish cake is optional, but something my grandmother did for me so it always reminds me of good times with her. She grew up in Ukraine, before the revolution, so I always figured it was both an old world thing and a thing that she did to please children.

Source code for a replacement for Stickies

I was annoyed that Apple’s Stickies did not support dark mode, and that I couldn't use AppleScript to move stickies where on the display I wanted them.

It also annoys me when document-based apps don't support right-clicking in the title bar to see the file system path, or dragging the proxy icon to move a file, or when dragging to a Terminal window, display the file’s path. So I fixed that, too.

It's also hard to find source code examples of non-standard windows for macOS.

So I wrote a replacement for Stickies, source code posted on github, Stickery and, since many programmers no longer like Objective-C, I did the app again, in Swift: Swickery

The signed executables for either are on the Releases link on those pages.

edit: I've pulled the source code down from github, but you could write to me.

Entry tags:

recipe

Russian black bread for Dec 31, 2023

I made Russian black bread using a recipe that I used to make frequently in 1987:

heat the following wet ingredients in a saucepan over low heat until the cocoa and butter melt. cool to 105° - 115°

— wet ingredients

1 c +2T water

2 T honey

2 T cider vinegar

2 T butter

½ oz cocoa powder.

— dry ingredients

1 t yeast

1 T sugar

1 ½ c flour (if needed: 2 T more.)

1 ½ c whole wheat flour

¼ c rye flour

½ c oatmeal

1 T caraway seeds

1 t salt

1 t instant coffee

¼ t fennel seeds

optional: pumpkin seed for garnish

mix all ingredients for 10 minutes in stand mixer. If dough is too watery after a few minutes of mixing give it the extra 2 T flour. By the end of mixing, dough should be mostly stuck in a ball to the dough hook of the mixer, not like pancake batter.
let the dough sit for 20 min, then stretch and fold it like toffee for a few folds - it will tighten up.
let the dough sit for 20 min, then stretch and fold it like toffee for a few folds - it will tighten up.
let rise (in oven on bread proofer setting if you have one.) for one hour. transfer to loaf pan, let rise until doubled in size (60 to 120 min),
optional: garnish with pumpkin seed
bake at 350° for 40 minutes

In the '80s I used unsweetened baking chocolate in place of the cocoa powder, molasses in place of the honey, and bran flakes in place of the oatmeal and I flipped the quantities of the whole wheat flour and the rye flour. I made the changes here so I could make it with stuff already in the kitchen.

This was one of the tastier breads I've made. I expect I'll make it fairly often.

I was so angry that the vendor dropped support that I wrote my own

I have a Brother PTouch 2730 label maker, and the Mac software PTouch Editor, dropped support for it in macOS Big Sur 11.0 2020.

I have an old Intel Mac, running the old version of the editor, and I pull it out when I want to run the PTouch.

I am furious that Brother dropped support. How hard can it be, it's just a simple USB device?

So, I went on a quest:

Were there open source printer drivers for it?

I didn't find any Mac software, but I found Linux software. But the Linux command line tool didn't show in macPorts.

So I ported it myself to macOS.

It had two dependencies:

* libUSB - but Google had already done an open source macOS port with the MIT license. I just pulled their source code files into my repository so I could statically link the code and not have to worry about dynamic library search paths.

* libgd - a bitmap image manipulation library. So big I didn't want to mess with it. I wrote my own implementation of the library’s API using Apple’s Core Graphics framework.

I've put my version on https://github.com/DavidPhillipOster/ptouch-print-macOS

Now, I can use the label printer I paid for without the vendor shutting me out.

Pleasant surprise from ebook reader, Libby

These days, I prefer to read ebooks - they are easier on my wrists than physical books. I live in Portland Oregon, and the local public library system delivers their ebooks through an app named Libby.

Last month, I drove across the river to the neighboring city of Vancouver, Washington and got a public library card there. It was free because they have a reciprocal agreement with the Portland system. I immediately signed into Libby with this card, too.

I'm currently reading a novel by Terry Pratchet that I'd checked out from the Portland library. There was a long queue to get the novel, so I was pleased when my turn finally came, but I'd been busy, and the loan expired when I was only half done reading it. As expected, the book auto-returned itself, disappearing from the app, and showing up in the history as properly returned.

Now here is the surprising part:

The next time I opened the Libby app, it told me that the book I had been reading was available without any wait from one of the other libraries (i.e. Vancouver) I had a card with, and showed me a borrow button to borrow it from the other library immediately. I pressed the button, and the app borrowed the book, and even remembered my place so I could keep reading without any interruption.

Libby had given me a useful feature that I didn't know I wanted!

(Now I want Search in Libby to tell me, when I search for a book, if another of "my" libraries has that book with a shorter waiting queue.)

Advantages of Menopause

Advantages of menopause

Eleanor kept this photo on her desktop to remind her of the advantages of menopause, and the toughness of Canadian women.

Time to mourn the death of Netflix DVDs

Netflix announced that they are going to stop shipping DVDs September 2023.

I'm often asked, "Why do you still get Netflix disks? What’s wrong with streaming?" For answer, here are 3 URLs from Netflix’s own website, describing their streaming catalog:

https://www.whats-on-netflix.com/library/list-of-movies-from-the-1940s-on-netflix/ Number of titles: 0

https://www.whats-on-netflix.com/library/list-of-movies-from-the-1950s-on-netflix/ Number of titles: 4

https://www.whats-on-netflix.com/library/list-of-movies-from-the-1960s-on-netflix/ Number of titles: 5

And Netflix doesn't even provide a URL for movies before 1940.

By comparison, I know of no easy way to get the counts from their DVD catalog, but it looks like just entering a year in the DVD search box gives films made in that year. For the 1940’s, I see:

44+47+41+39+30+32+31+40+39+57 = Number of titles: 400

Once Netflix’s disk service is gone I'll be reserving more disks from the public library.

Perspectives on the death of the older generation

I was amused to read on the same day two very different perspectives on the death of the older generation:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/jul/22/is-housing-crisis-killing-romance-modern-dating-jane-austen

talking about what a problem it is that kids can't buy except with the money they inherited

and

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2020/10/18/commentary/japan-commentary/japan-inheritance-windfall/

talking about what a blessing it is that kids can buy with the money they inherited

Netflix DVD Queue - "Saved" culled.

I still have a DVD subscription from Netflix. The service that Netflix says they will be shutting down in late September of this year.

I've been in the habit of entering disks on Netflix’s queue to remember that I'm interested in them. If Netflix doesn't stock a disk, it goes on the end of their queue in a special second section named "Saved".

I was surprised, when I checked my account today, that Netflix had, without notice, removed most of the items from my Saved queue.

I quickly made a local copy of the list of titles remaining on my Saved queue, but I wish that Netflix had given me advance notice that they were going to delete that list - That list is my data, dammit!

Closing a PayPal account (Maybe it is closed)

I received an email from PayPal on Eleanor’s email account asking me to log in to their website and check the account balance.

So I did check the balance on their website: It was zero. I clicked the Account on that web page.

At the bottom of the Account page was a link to close the account.

Clicking that link takes you to a page saying the account cannot be closed because of a non-zero balance, and offering a choice of three next steps:
chat-link on the website, phone given open hours 11Am to 1AM EST, or a link saying "email us".

I called that phone number using my phone, and it immediately said: "we recognize the phone number you are calling from and will connect you to your account." So I had to hang up, and dig out Eleanor’s phone and call back from that number.

With Eleanor’s phone I had to wade through an automated menu system but even though the active hours are listed with time zone on the website, and I was within the hours, it said I was outside the active hours and to call back during a different set of hours.

The next day, I called back, and after wading through their prompt tree again, it said it could only help me by sending me an SMS. The SMS had a link that in turn brought me back to the chat feature of their website. So I did that, typed in my request, and got an automated reply saying my request would be routed to a representative. I typed in my request again, and after half an hour their website terminated the chat due to inactivity.

So I tried the email-link from the initial refusal page. This took me not to an email form, but to an FAQ web page where none of the questions dealt with closing an account, and no email addresses were present. There was a "Contact Us" link in the footer, but it just redirected back to the same FAQ page.

The next morning I got an email saying I had a chat reply. So I followed that link, pasted in my request a third time, and this time got a reply saying they'd send me an email.

Later that day, I actually got a reply that gave me directions for what data they actually wanted, and what email address to send it to. I've sent that email.

I haven't heard back from PayPal yet.

Follow up June 8: 2023
I did get an email from them, now nearly a month later. The email said they would not close the account and gave me a phone number to call to find out why.

I called, and it was the associated Paypal Credit account underwritten by a bank. The phone tree made it easy to close the account, so now it looks like it is finally done.

Summary: So they had a nice, friendly, "close the account" button that didn't work, but gave you three alternate methods, and all three of those methods also did not work.

TLDR: The message that they eventually sent said:

Can you please provide us with some documentation we need in order to close the account… We would need a copy of the death certificate, any beneficiary info, the account holders name, address, and email address… Please prove a brief description implementing that you just want to close the account…You can send that info to deceasedaccounts@paypal.com

Entry tags:

cooking

How To Zest an Orange

I had a few micro-planes in the gadget drawer in the kitchen, but using these on an orange produced almost no results for lots of work.

Here’s what did work:

I used the vegetable peeler that I use on cucumbers to remove the tasty outer skin of the orange, then chopped those orange skin pieces up fine with a paring knife.

I'm celebrating spring by making Rhubarb Crisp from The New York Times recipe. (If you get a paywall, try turning off Javascript and reloading.)

It's in the oven now. I'll add more to this post when it comes out.

I have no idea what rhubarb tastes like but it is supposed to be a spring vegetable treat.

Edit: 12/24/2023 I bought the zester that the NY Times recommended, and it actually works.

Current Mood: sad

Funeral arrangements for Eleanor.

Eleanor, my wife of almost 25 years, died March 3.

Yesterday, I and my adult child, Kitt, signed a contract with earthfuneral.com and settled accounts with Terry Family Funeral Home.

The full process will take a few months.

The organ donation people have come and gone, but the death certificate is not yet signed by the medical examiner. Kitt and I aren't ready to think about a memorial service yet.

That's what Eleanor wanted: to return to the Earth as usable chemicals.

While I was shopping to finalize arrangements I found this page from a competitor so off-putting that I laughed: greatgoodbyes.com/ideas/themes

Adding a new feature to Simple Comic

I was reading NSView.h and noticed that Apple supports showing a dictionary popup for selected text, so I added it to Simple Comic:

Select a word, then Control-Click:

If you choose the Look Up menu item, you get the standard dictionary panel:

This blog entry exists to document the pull request, humbly asking that it be added to Simple Comic.

Data Entry in the 21st century.

Our condominium replaced the air conditioner condensers on the roof, and to register for the extended warranty the manufacturer wants the model number and serial number of each of the roughly 40 condensers.

Each condo owner also owns the condenser for that unit so I was asked to let each owner know their model# and serial#.

Kitt Oster and I went up on the roof and used an iPhone to make a video: point the camera at the condo number written on the condenser, then bend down to point it at the label at shin height with the model# and serial#.

To get the data I needed:

* We sent the video from the iPhone to the mac using Airdrop.

* I played the video in Quicktime Player. When it came to a label, I paused it, and used the arrow-keys to advance by single video frames to a frame where the text of the label was clearly in view.

* I double-clicked on the text and Apple's Vision framework recognized:

A) That I was clicking on text

B) Recognized the entire serial number as a contiguous piece of text and visibly selected it.

* From there I copy and pasted the number into the appropriate cell of spreadsheet.

So much quicker and easier than wandering the roof with a notebook and a pencil then hand copying that data one digit at a time into a spreadsheet.

I'm amazed and delighted by the built-in tools of macOS - this new addition of OCR in many places is something I didn't know I needed, but now that I have it I use it all the time.

Scott Aaronson's "Dream" blog post

I'm still laughing from reading Scott Aaronson's "Dream" blog post https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6718

Current Mood: angry

Entry tags:

money

Name and Shame: REI Mastercard

I'd been using an REI Mastercard as my main credit card for more than 20 years. I use them because they had a 1.5% cash back for ordinary purposes and a 5% cash back for purchases at REI. They called this collection of benefits their "Rewards Program" - You could pay at REI using your Rewards balance, or once a year they'd tell you your total and you could request a check in dollars for your reward balance.

they use marketing language like this on the REI website and on the credit card website:

You get rewards that you can redeem as you earn them,¹ like 5% back² in card rewards on REI purchases—and that’s in addition to your typical 10% Co-op Member Reward³—and 1.5% back⁴ in card rewards on purchases everywhere else. Shopping and paying bills with your REI Co-op Mastercard lets you grow your Total REI Rewards.

Note the use of the word "back" above: I pay in dollars and get rewards back.

About 2 months ago, they changed underwriting credit card companies, from USBank to Citibank. There was a mass of paperwork from them announcing this change. In it, they just silently dropped the line: ~~once a year they'd tell you your total and you could request a check~~.

On https://www.rei.com/membership#faq Once you click on the line Co-op Member Reward:, you see:

Note: You will no longer be able to receive cash or check for the 2022 Co-op Member Reward and beyond. Co-op Member Reward earned in 2022 and beyond will be able to be redeemed at an REI store, REI.com, REI Outlet, for an REI adventure trip, or via the REI app.

so, they do disclose it. It's just extremely buried on their website.

Time to stop using that card.

Entry tags:

3d_print

3D Printers in Old Science Fiction

In the 1955 novel Things Pass By - Murray Leinster, available to read free online in Fantastic Story Magazine v08n01 (1955 Winter) on page 21 is this description of using a filament deposition printer to make a rocket ship:

In the center of the big shed, the plastic constructor worked tirelessly. It was an ungainly contrivance with an awkward-seeming arm mounted on a truck with motors and pumps and a long hose trailing from it. A cable led a table at the side of the shed, where vivid lights showed upon drawings pinned in the vision-range of scanners.

The arm made clumsy but precise gestures, following the drawings off to one side. It had begun by putting a blob magnetronic plastic on a stout upright at the end of its steel track, Then, for awhile, it made gradually enlarging circles about that spot.

The result was rather remarkable, because plastic flowed through the hose to the end of that moving arm; and as it came out of the end it was shaped and hardened. It formed a cone. The forming arm, in fact, simply poured out plastic as it described a circle, and the plastic was hardened as it emerged.

A cone resulted when the circles widened, and the arm drew back. The process was exactly that of an insect, spinning a cocoon, save that the result was no mass of gummed-together threads, but a solid wall of glass-hard plastic, strong as steel, but vastly lighter. It was, moreover, practically a non-conductor of heat and electricity.

Presently the shape became more complex. The growing object ceased to be merely a cone. Guided by drawings under the harsh light of scanning lamps, the constructor built on. The cone swelled and curved.

The movements of the moving arm became more complicated. It sealed off the cone with a solid wall. Interior walls started from that. There were openings in some of them. In three hours, fifteen feet of the length of a rounded hull had been made.

With this nifty illustration (page 13):

I found the story referenced on

https://all3dp.com/2/history-of-3d-printing-when-was-3d-printing-invented/

My Question:

About 1969 I, in the U.S., read a story in a science fiction anthology in which a character was printing a rocket engine nozzle by using a printer that sprayed metal droplets one layer at a time, controlled by a stack of punch cards.

The protagonist was trying to discover if his visitor was an engineer or just a worthless politician.

The visitor passed the test by showing the protagonist that one of the punch cards was in the wrong place in the deck so if printed it would have wrecked the print.

Does anyone have a clue to the title and author?