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Quorten Blog 1

First blog for all Quorten's blog-like writings

Lego train motors and Lego train history

2018-12-13

Categories: misc  
Tags: misc  

Ah, there’s a Wikipedia article on Lego trains, and indeed it is very helpful for understanding the broader picture of the history of Lego trains. What I saw happening with the 9 volt series Lego train components was just the tip of the ice berg. So, let take what I read about the bigger picture history and explain it from my perspective.

The earlier Lego trains were designed to be very similar to the established model train systems. Matter of fact, Lego train tracks are only slightly wider than the model train O-gauge rails, probaly mainly due to the need to make the tracks an integer number of studs wide. The earliest Lego train motors in 1966 were battery powered. Later on in 1969, 12-volt rail-powered motors came into the scene. Around this time, Lego trains had fairly sophisticated remote track control features, similar to those found in the established model train system.

Read on →

What is the current status of VML? Well, let’s check back at the Wikipedia article on it that I checked before. And the verdict… it hasn’t changed! But, my understanding of it has, as I have apparently misread the Wikipedia article the first time through. Even though VML is included in the Office Open XML specification, it is specifically marked as deprecated: new applications should not be using it, though they may have support for loading the legacy data format from existing files. Browser support for VML in was dropped in Internet Explorer version 10. Therefore, the last remnants of VML have been erased from the modern world… 6 years ago.

20181212/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_Markup_Language
20181212/https://web.archive.org/web/20080621213223/http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2007/06/is-vml-in-or-ou.html

So, this is an interesting line of programming exercises/challenges: Advent of code. This one in particular is interesting because it involves solving the problem via coding up your own solution of a sort with convolution matrices.

20181212/https://adventofcode.com/2018/day/11

This is interesting. Solaris has defined interface stability levels and promises that certain interfaces will be held stable and will not change. In hindsight, this is useful and important because historically, many Unix-like things were automated by parsing shell command output that was primarily meant only to be human readable messages. Then, when the original software developers would go and make changes to these messages, the updates would break automation scripts written by third parties that depend on the specific formatting of those messages. So, Solaris developers thoughtfully developed this interface stability promise system. Alas, it’s too bad that it’s all going to have to end now that the future of Solaris has been practically terminated.

20181212/DuckDuckGo solaris interface stability committed uncommitted
20181212/https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E86824_01/html/E54776/attributes-5.html
20181212/http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/solaris/solaris-guarantee-program-1426902.pdf

So, recently a did a bulk import of some of my recent pending blog entries that haven’t been brought into the Jekyll and GitHub Pages system yet, and I fixed some interesting peculiarities that are worth taking note of.

First of all, I started using SVG diagrams in my blog. Previously, I haven’t yet had any opportunities to put images in my blog due to not yet having decided on an image hosting service. But, after thinking through things carefully, I realized that, of course, this is not a problem with SVG images as SVG images are, in fact, “source code” of a sort: the XML data format is a text format, and the file format itself encodes line drawing commands that are essentially the same as the author’s intent (if authored dilligently). So, why not? } There’s another important point worth noting about SVG images. Previously… as it turns out, 10 years ago by now, not all browsers supported SVG images. Microsoft Internet Explorer version 6 was the particular hold-out, and even Internet Explorer 7 wasn’t much better. So, at the time, if you ever wanted to use SVG images in your web pages and get a good experience across all browsers, you needed to do so using an <object> tag that had an inline raster image fallback. And, of course, the raster image fallback may have a pure ASCII art text fallback for text-only browsers. I still use that authoring practice for modern web pages. So, now the question comes down to this. When you generate a PNG image from your SVG image source, what should you do about that? Is it okay to store the generated image in the repository? Ideally, you won’t do this, but because of the way I am publishing via GitHub pages, somehow storing the raster PNG image in the repository is the only way for me to get it to come out the other end on the published pages. Okay, so here’s the thing I can do for now. I can setup my pages to have links to the PNG fallback, even though it will not be visible until I fix the build system issue.

Read on →

I happened to find out about this construction equipment rental company at random, so I’m saving the link to it. But, the bigger point to make here is that there are construction equipment rental companies out and about. Indeed, a web search for just that shows that Sunbelt Rentals is near the top of the search results.

20181211/https://www.sunbeltrentals.com/
20181211/DuckDuckGo construction equipment rental

So, I decided to revisit the Mr. Money Mustache blog and look for anything interesting, and this is what I found. Wow, quite interesting the premises of this article. First, an attorney writing wanting to retire but feeling unconfident about doing so. Then, a story about a good friend named Luc. Luc was someone who was arguably less fortunate than either Mr. Money Mustache or the attorney writing in. Luc never had a really well paying job, instead working blue-collar jobs to make his earnings. But, nevertheless, through some good decision making, he was able to reach an early retirement and soar… with tons of projects going on all the time. So, the final advice given was to just try and see what you discover. You might be surprised.

WARNING: Contains some swear words across this article.

20181211/https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2018/11/08/honey-badger-entrepreneur/

Wow, this is interesting. You can build a tiny house for only $3500? Yeah, but there are many caveats in this build, like not using a concrete floor, and not giving a completely finished hardwood floor.

20181212/https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2018/06/30/tinyhouse/

Now, these last two are really interesting. A problem with a lot of Americans is that they spend a lot of money on entertainment, yet this is completely unnecessary, not to mention not as satisfying as some of the alternatives. Additionally, the promotional effort that goes into pushing such entertainment offerings, i.e. first month free, is indicative that such is not an endemically useful endeavor. Towns that are overrun by commercial tourism can actaully be unattractive for touring if you like meeting the local people and learning about culture.

WARNING: Contains some swear words across this article.

20181213/https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2017/09/20/seek-not-to-be-entertained/

20181213/https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/12/20/money-mustache-vs-tourist-trap/

Wow, now this is great. First it was GitHub… okay, I guess not really. My point is that GitHub was the first big player that I saw demonstrating the technique for others to follow. Specifically, putting the source text of legal terms/codes up on GitHub, from which software uses to automatically generate web-friendly publication versions, print versions, etc. Now, Washington DC of the United States is officially doing likewise with the DC legal code. In case you were suspecting/wondering, indeed, the older processes that lawmakers used 10-20 years before was to create draft documents in Microsoft Word, then manually merge them together. This is important to note, however. It’s not like using software automation to merge drafts and generate the final document couldn’t be done at the time. It’s that the talent pool of people in the earlier law field weren’t very experienced with computers at the time, so using the most user-friendly solution was the key, even if it mean that other things would be less efficient.

20181211/https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/11/how-i-changed-the-law-with-a-github-pull-request/

Whoa! Revisiting the Fisheye lens Wikipedia article, I see a Pentax K-1 camera pictured with Fish-eye Takumar 11/18mm. Now we’re really talking if we are seeing general-purpose Wikipedia articles depicting the Pentax K-1 camera.

20181210/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisheye_lens
20181210/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pentax_K-1with_flat_Fisheye(34927515900).jpg

So let’s go searching around for other information on that lens, if it is indeed a jewel worth owning.

20181210/DuckDuckGo Fish-eye Takumar 11/18mm

Ah, it’s considered “low value” according to Pentax Forums.

20181210/https://www.pentaxforums.com/lensreviews/Fish-Eye-Takumar-18mm-F11.html

Check out S-M-C or SMC 17/4 which is almost as small but has superior optical performance.

So, I’m still wondering. What existing open-source land surveying software is there out there? Surely, if I find such software, it will have all the tools for surveying techniques already programming in, making them easy to use.

So, wow! This one was quite the find. 13 Libre GIS Software Options: Map the World in Open Source. Quite impressive, not only the feature set of the software listed, but also the range of choices available. Surely, one of those powerhouses will have the tools that you need. And indeed, GRASS GIS is listed in there too!

But, there’s the flip-side that. Like you said, all of the options are powerful and complicated tools, perhaps too complicated for the needs of setting up a known structure in which to perform 3D scanning inside of.

20181210/DuckDuckGo open source land surveying software
20181210/https://gisgeography.com/free-gis-software/

There’s this other land survey software that was originally written in DOS, then ported to C++. Not particularly interesting, unless you are looking for a decidedly simple solution.

20181210/https://sourceforge.net/projects/landsurveytools/


  • Footnote: Alas, I would prefer to name it libre software, but I was concerned those search terms may not bring up very good results. Yeah, that’s the way things are when we live in a world that is determined by search terms and buzzwords. It makes or breaks the difference on whether you can find things. And, ultimately, it’s recognizably the #1 thing that makes the Internet difficult to use without prior knowledge. You can’t really explore around on today’s Internet and expect to reasonably learn how it works and use it well.