1. Visiting the Ramses the Great Exhibit.

    22 March 2023

    Early in October of 2022.ev, we paid a visit to an exhibit of artifacts at the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco from the reign of Ramesses II, third ruler of the nineteenth dynasty of Egypt. Since covid started we haven't done a whole lot of going places so we figured that, all things in our respective risk models being equal, this would be an outing worth making the time for. As I write those post I don't know if it's still there, but the museum's page didn't 404 so it probably is. If you're in the area, it's …

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  2. Propmaking: Lego handlink replica

    09 March 2023

    Warning: I'm going to be geeking about about science fiction to provide context for the rest of the post. Either skip to the bottom and page up a few times or close the tab. Also, the narrative is going to wander around a bit because there's a fair amount of setup.

    Note: There are a couple of affiliate links.

    As my handle implies I'm a sucker for time travel stories. I love the idea of seeing history as it happens and not just reading about it. I'm not that inclined to talk about fandom, so I tend to not bring …

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  3. I may as well clear my cache.

    22 February 2023

    I'm back from Pittsburgh. I think everything's done. Somewhere in the back of my head I have things to write about and maybe some photographs to post. I don't have the brainpower to do that right now, though. Hopefully I'll get my head together soon.

    Anyway, I've updated my .plan file. The usual warnings apply, you have been warned.

    I also finally got around to fleshing out and posting an essay that I've had going for a year or two, which is some of the stuff I ran into while running my mom's estate. It's not my best writing, it's …

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  4. Setting up Syncthing.

    08 February 2023

    A very common problem one has if one has enough files stacked up in one place, is whether or not those files have been copied to another system already. Have they already been copied off? To where on the other system were they copied? Sure, you can deduplicate them through various means but that tends to be kind of a sledgehammer thing to do, especially when one of the things with files is a mobile device. You could always upload the files to a provider's cloud1 storage, like Google Drive or iCloud or something.

    But what if you don't …

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  5. Tools on the bench.

    27 January 2023

    Fairly serious hardware hackers and makers like to post lists of all the gear they use for whatever it is they do (mostly the big-name Youtubers and bloggers who do a lot of retrotech work and reverse engineering). That's all well and good, but I'm just a schmuck from Pittsburgh who likes to mess around with stuff. While cleaning up my office over the holidays I decided that maybe I should put one of those lists together because maybe it would help someone later. So, here is just about every tool that I have sitting on, under, around, or within …

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  6. Laid off?

    23 January 2023

    If you've been following the news lately, undoubtedly you've heard one way or another that massive rounds of layoffs have been taking place. I got caught in one of them.1

    If you're younger than I am you may never have been laid off before. That's okay.

    I've been laid off a few times in my career, so here are a few things to keep in mind if this is your first goat rodeo.

    I can't tell you "don't panic" because you might have very good reasons for feeling panic. I'm certainly not going to judge you for it and …

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  7. 2023 did not get off to an auspicious start.

    17 January 2023

    I try very hard not to pay too much attention to mercury in retrograde, mostly because I think it's a bad idea to name names too often because Things tend to hear them.

    Who am I kidding. I have a calendar that charts mercury in retrograde out to 2030.ev that warns me ahead of time. I just wish I could get the odd warning of what might be coming down the line.

    You might recall that during the final days of 2020.ev my car was totalled and hauled away as abandoned. Well, on the 4th of January my …

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  8. Testing an RFID blocking wallet.

    06 January 2023

    A couple of years back, when we thought that the covid pandemic might actually be over someday I did some research on RFID blocking fabric to see if it was actually worth anything. Somewhat surprisingly, I discovered that it does actually do what it says it does, within certain parameters (if you don't use something right it won't work; who knew?)

    Late last year two noteworthy things happened: First, I finally got my hands on a Flipper Zero after waiting many months for it to arrive (no thanks to US Customs seizing the shipment for unspecified reasons) and spent some …

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  9. 2022 is almost in the can.

    22 December 2022

    As I write this we're just a week or so shy of Christmas. It's been, to put it mildly, one hell of a year. Enough so that I've pretty much coasted into holiday break on fumes (again) and, probably against my better judgement, I'm trying to come up with something (anything, really) to write. If I were smart I'd give it another couple of days to relax and get my head straight. Maybe read some books or something to let the organics rest and wiring cool down.

    Of course, taking my adderall also helps.

    Work is... well, work. Things take …

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