Dogs in Elk: binding and source
I found the original post of Dogs in Elk, and formatted and bound it as a book!1 This led to a lot of conversations last fall that started “So what are you up to?” — “Do you remember Dogs in Elk?”[^relish] ↩
resc1440
the person, not the disk image
Latest posts
One hundred million maps
I took an intro cog sci class in school, and during a philosophy section, we got into some verbal conundrums. If you sit on a table every day for a year, is it a CHAIR? If you shoot at a window, and there’s a moment where the bullet has gone through but the cracks have barely started to form, is the window BROKEN?
Computers in/as art, Seeing as a Singularity - Links, May and June 2023
We made it up to three non-working lamps in the house, and re-wiring them can’t be that hard, right? I have had a lot of trouble finding the supplies online, though - Amazon must have them but the search terms eluded me. Anyway I found Grand Brass Lamp Parts which was perfect, and the search terms are set wire with molded polarized plug and lamp holders. They have a knowledge base/faq section that…
Links, April 2023
During the powerful winter storm in the Midwest late last December, apparently it was too cold to operate a lot of natural gas power plants! We avoided more blackouts because wind energy really came through (it was awfully windy). There’s a system in place to reward resilient generation capacity, and penalize if you say your capacity is resilient but it isn’t. The link is an interesting Union of…
Links, March 2023
I got on a little kick for old-time telephone switching systems. I started with the Connections Museum playlist about how telephone calls used to work, where Sarah’s excitement about the whole thing was totally infectious. In one of her videos, she linked to Evan Doorbell, who talks about phone phreaking with the most delicious radio voice.
A low-tech way to see the TOTP secret exported from Google Authenticator
Google Authenticator’s Export functionality produces a QR code. You can scan the QR code with another copy of Google Authenticator, to transfer the Time-based One-Time Password secret to a new phone for example. But if you want to use it in another context, it’s annoying and tricky. For example, if you need to authenticate in order to run automated tests, you can’t be getting your phone out each…
Barometz (The Vegetable Lamb)
When cotton was first introduced to Europeans in medieval times, they were mystified. What was the source of this marvelous material? Theories abounded. For a time, the source was thought to be ‘the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary’—a plant with tiny sheep on stems bowing down and grazing the undergrowth. One can only imagine how they thought all those tiny sheep were shorn.
Dissecting an asthma inhaler with a dose counter
Back in the 90s, before Le Chiffre made asthma inhalers cool,1 my mother taught me how to tell if my Proventil canister was empty. If there was any of that sweet sweet albuterol left, it would float vertically in water, but if it went horizontal it was empty. Did he make inhalers cool, or did he make them sinister? Also, his technique was bad: ↩
System76 Darter Pro 6: power supply, case screws
I like this laptop a lot! It comes with a Chicony power supply, 19V 3.42A 65W. Those are easy to find, but you have to get the right barrel connector. The nominal outer diameter of the barrel is 5.5mm, the nominal inside is 2.5mm. The tip is positive. I ordered this power adapter from amazon, and the brick part is exactly what I got from System76. The barrel fits correctly except it’s a couple mm…
Delights of a Minnesotan Gigabit Switch (part 3, good hax!)
Welcome back! I’m rehabilitating and taking control of a Waters Network Systems GSM-2112-POE 12-port managed Ethernet switch. You can check out part 1 or part 2 if you feel like it.