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Quorten Blog 1

First blog for all Quorten's blog-like writings

Very interesting and useful project! Writing a Markdown file and want to automatically generate a table of contents? Use doctoc.

20180831/https://github.com/thlorenz/doctoc

  • Footnote: Renote, I searched for this and found it, that means it’s important!

Now apparently some Markdown generators automatically generate anchors to headings. I the case that your Markdown generator does not, I’ll have to read up more on this later.

Failed search.

Read on →

Important! So, now I’ve got a lot more documents that I want to scan, thanks to many of my improved technological procedures for doing so. But, what’s becoming evident is that the staple removal process is now one of the major bottlenecks. So, how to streamline this? Well, I’ve got to look for not just a regular staple remover, but a high-end staple remover. A gentle staple remover, a quality staple remover. Surely by the year 2018, there are better products on the market than the traditional staple removers. So, let’s get searching, then.

20181005/DuckDuckGo gentle quality staple remover
20181005/https://www.gostapling.com/best-staple-remover-reviews/

So there is a kind of “push” staple remover. This can be used for documents stapled together, but maybe it works best for removing staples from bulletin boards. I personally don’t prefer it to the claw-style staple remover. Not to say that I think the claw-style style staple remover is ideal either.

20181005/https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00006IFMU/

However, apparently there’s a variation of this design that has a unique, higher quality staple release design. But beware, reading the product reviews on this, apparently this is even worse than the push-style removers, which still aren’t as good as the claw-style removers.

20181005/https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001E641R2/

Read on →

Home improvements, mainly around new addition.

  • Shock-mounted garage door opener

  • Drainage system for the garage

  • Conduit for telecommunications cable, for easy upgrades.

  • Chrome-plated supports to hold bathroom mirror in place, to avoid corrosion.

  • Possibly change the position of the bathroom fan to be more directly over the shower. Shower mist condensing on the mirror surface can cause harm to it.

Read on →

Security!

So it’s finally real. A hardware supply chain hack has made its way into some commercial computers, namely Super Micro blade server motherboards.

20181004/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies

Decades back, military contracts were reluctant to adopt the latest technology due to potential, though not yet realized, security concerns such as these. Over time, they’ve begrudgingly accepted compromises required to use more modern technology. Finally, this happens, for real.

What parts of our modern computing experience have solidified early on and haven’t changed much ever since?

  • Mass market Human Interface Devices (HID):

    • Raster scan, square pixel, video display(s). A bit-mapped framebuffer is used by the video card to drive the display, not a software-controlled dynamic serial video signal.

    • Audio output

    • Keyboard, mouse, tablet input

    • Touchscreen

  • Telecommunications analogy for remote computer access

  • Command-line protocol for system administration, programming, debugging, and other highly technical computer uses

  • Text editors

  • Text-based programming languages

  • Computer games, especially those that only use mass-market input and output devices

  • Small graphical user interface controls.

Read on →

Interesting article. Spot on about the question of going to grad school. Do a cost-benefit analysis. Will the monetary spend to go to grad school really be worth it for you? What exactly are your goals? Have you thought of alternatives that will also achieve your goals?

For example, suppose you want to be a doctor. Going through medical school will be the only way to get there, of course. But, think about the reason behind that decision: why do you want to be a doctor? Suppose it’s so that you can help other people. Now, it turns out that nurses also do a lot of what doctors do in that regard, plus it doesn’t come with the risk and cost of higher level education.

20181003/https://medium.com/brightcrowd/the-eternal-question-should-i-go-to-grad-school-2810ce2f9bc5

Also, I’ve got to start a new category on my blog around the subject of “personal finance.” Well, let’s call it that for starters.

So, I’m wondering about the My Little Pony movie. How well did it do? Looking back on it for its box office financials. Oh, actually it did pretty well, apparently. The multilingual, international sales about tripled the earnings up to $60 million. True, not as good as a Disney/Pixar mainstream like Frozen, but pretty good compared to a niche movie like Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie. Alas, that is a many-years apart comparison, but the My Little Pony movie still does at least twice as well accounting for rising costs due to inflation. Indeed, Frozen was also a multilingual, international movie, and it looks like the general trend is that going international triples earnings.

20181002/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Little_Pony:The_Movie(2017film)
20181002/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonah:_A_VeggieTales_Movie
20181002/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frozen
(2013_film)

Mentioning the Frozen movie, it also used some highly advanced snow simulation. Now, that’s a plus for me to look more into. Also, something interesting about the Frozen movie was some children liking the songs so much they would just sing them over and over again, to the annoyance of some of their peers and parents. Such to an extent that a preschooler arranged a Skype call with the writer/director asking why they brought about such a menance to the world.

Publicity stunts and viral marketing

2018-10-02

Categories: random  
Tags: random  

PR stunt? Publicity stunt you ask? Well, well. One interesting theme mentioned time-and-time again on publicity stunts is that often times the risk is high that the intented marketing message will get lost in the stunt.

20181002/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publicity_stunt
20181002/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_marketing

Very interesting! I found this children’s book called The Story About Ping. Curiously, if you read the book, you can trace many parallels with the modern Unix ping command and the Duck named “Ping” described n the story. Note, however, that the book was written decades in advance of the Unix ping command. In older tech circles, apparently this book has become quite popular. In the modern tech community, apparently it isn’t nearly as popular.

20181002/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_about_Ping
20181002/http://ftp.arl.army.mil/~mike/ping.html

Interesting article here about the history of Northrop Field, an old football statium on the University of Minnesota campus. My particular commentary, the article as-written could be better about its geospatial resoning when presenting the modern photograph and tying it in with the older evidence. That’s one important thing that the article really just glossed over, but should be done much better. Otherwise, I like the idea and approach, and the determination to save information in the past and associate it with modern physical structures.

20181002/https://www.continuum.umn.edu/2018/09/northrop-field-rediscovered/