Silicon Valley Redneck

Wait, did Mythbusters just try this?

Knight-Mare Hare, 1955.

Bring back engineer pr0n!

Over at the Castle, Bad Cat Robot expounds (in short form) on the need to bring back the sense of wonder in science fiction.

Ah, yes: the good old days!  When the hero would invent a star-drive, build a space-ship, and go gallivanting off around the galaxy, fighting and/or befriending bug-eyed monsters along the way!  And, if a villain was needed, a lawyer or pointy-haired manager would do nicely!

And, indeed, this is the sort of thing that used to inspire a new crop of budding engineers: the notion of creating cool new toys (yes, folks, toys can be created, not just bought), using them to do awesome stuff, and making the galaxy a better place.

Not only is it inspiration to the young, it's escapism for those stuck in the world our future turned into, in which even a small and mildly innovative project drags on interminably, and no mighty deed would ever get past corporate management and government regulators.

So bypass the publishing cartels, and go back to writing the good stuff.  Perhaps it'll inspire the youngsters, and show them the future we've lost.  And maybe, just maybe, they'll try to salvage it from the present we have.

More teevee

Still under the weather, though I seem to be recuperating.  So, what with my brain being out of order, it's an occasion for more mindless entertainment.

The boss had mentioned Rocket City Rednecks, on account of he's been having business dealings with someone connected somehow with the show (that was a few weeks ago, and the details escape me).

It's kind of a fun show - sort of like of Red Green, if the denizens of Possum Lodge were Southerners and also were Piled Higher and Deeper.  And had a penchant for kludging laptop computers into their creations, and occasionally resorting to math.

And that counterweight-catapult gizmo with the balloons is kinda halfway to an idea that's been rattling around my head for a couple of years now, as an untried solution to a common Scrapheap Challenge problem: imparting controlled multi-G acceleration to flangable objects using block & tackle and a 16-ton weight.  Sometime when health and work schedule cooperate (i.e., not anytime in the next few weeks), I need to test the concept, and, if it works as it ought, make an instructional Youtube video or something.

Oh, and the "this stuff is dangerous" warning?  In the case of the moonshine rocket fuel, yeah: that kinda stuff can get you shot by the revenooers, can't it?

Anyway, as edumacashional teevee goes, it's not even up to the recent standards of Pinky and the Brain and the Three Stooges Mythbusters, but it is fun.

Teevee

Been watching some recent TV during downtime.  Specifically, Archer, whereof I first read here.

Crazy animated spy-show spoof.  With extra crazy.  In crazy sauce.

Er... not a kid-friendly show.  Nor Santorum-friendly.  Nor Eloi-friendly.

Joy keeps getting Archer mixed up with the Tick's sidekick (only he doesn't wear a bunny suit, and doesn't fly).  I get him mixed up with Sam Spade's sidekick (only he hasn't been shot with a Webley-Fosbery, and isn't dead).

Oh, and that authentic weaponry?  Drawn well enough for me to notice when someone's brandishing a single-action pistol with the hammer down.  (Funny how none of the characters in these shows ever spot that, even, in The Rocketeer, when the thugs pulled the menacing-with-uncocked-1911s bit on a bar full of WWI vets.)

Anyway: for those who like spy spooves and don't mind over-the-top sex and violence in their comedy, it's a fun show.

Huh.  Silly spellchecker flags Eloi and Rocketeer, but doesn't mind spooves.  Until I type it a second time; then it flags both of them.

Dependency hell

So, I've been using DownloadHelper to snag videos off the Intarwebz, usually in .flv format.

And I sometimes want to watch them out in the living room, on the big screen.

And the living-room computer doesn't, currently, handle local .flv playback.

Thus, I've been comverting them to .avi format.

Well... the latest FFMPEG/WinFF combination on Debian-testing appears to be b0rked.  (Unless FFMPEG is officially obsolete, perhaps, and I need to install something with a libav-derived name instead.  Must look into that.)  Anyway: just used avconv, sans options to convert a bunch of .flvs to .mp4, which doesn't result in a notable increas in file size.  But: the video doesn't play back on the living-room machine.

My old script for converting .flv to .avi using mencoder works on these, though the file size increases dramatically, and the files play back... but mencoder reports many dropped frames, and on playback the sound and video gradually drift out of sync.

So, time to update FFMPEG and Xine on the living-room system so's I can play back some of these newfangled formats.

Now, when I set up that system, back in '05, I figured on a totally stable configuration.  In fact, the plan was to nail down the configuration, including a couple of specialty peripherals.  So I installed Slackware: easy to nail down, awkward to update.

And now, when I go to update the video-playing software, I find that sundry libraries are out of date, I don't have yasm installed (what the heck's a yasm, anyway?), and even make is out of date and gives confusing errors when I try to build FFMPEG or libav.

Oh, well... got yasm and the latest make installed; just got libav to build; now having a go at xine-lib.

Update: With libav 0.8 built and installed, I can't build xine-lib 1.2.1 even after futzing with the config script to play nice with the outdated gcc.  The old xine-lib 1.1.0 and xine-ui 0.99.4 do build... but, even with what ought to be the new library, xine can't play those .mp4 files (no video, and a serious wedgie after a few seconds).

Oh, well: guess I'm stuck with playing the poorly-sync'ed .avis for now.  Perhaps, when time allows, I should (much of the original justification for a nailed-down customer installation now being well in the past) just do a fresh install of Debian-stable + debian-multimedia.

Shopping irritation

One of the things I really like about Digi-Key's web site is the ability to do a parametric search.

Amazon is still, notably, lacking this.

I'm sort of toying with replacing my DVD player (which seems to be going flakey), and the existence of blurray players with network features for under $100 caught my eye.  Gee, there's one from LG that has an Ethernet connector (which saves trying to enter a 64-hex-digit random WPA key), and component video out (I have no intention of replacing my projector with an HDMI model until it needs replacement).  Hmmm....

But wait!  It supports Netflix, YouTube, and a couple of others... but not, apparently, Amazon video-on-demand (nor files on the local network).  And way to filter these things by on-line services supported?  No.  By network connection type?  No.  By video output connectors available?  No.

Eventually I find the list of devices that support AmVOD.  Minimal description, if any, given in the list.  Have to click through to the product pages... which tend to be highly uninformative about what connectors are provided.  And the first though I look at have purty pictures of the front of the unit and the remote control... but none of the back of the unit, where the information is.  I want my connector pr0n!

Oh, and some of them have both Ethernet and WiFi... with cryptic words implying that the Ethernet is for some special purposes only, not for the Internet features.  How's that again?

Oh, well: back to Plan A, i.e., take no action until further notice.

Update: it appears that the living-room computer, which serves as the alternative DVD player (actually, the primary DVD player, until the pause button on the remote stopped working), has eaten yet another DVD-ROM drive.  Surely I have another PATA DVD drive somewhere....

This sounds rather silly.

It seems the first episode of the new series of Pinky and the Brain and the Three Stooges is called "Duct Tape Island."

Okaaaaay then.  Instead of the Professor improvising all the appurtenances of civilization (except a usable boat) from coconuts, he'll be presented with an island full of duct-tape bushes.  And expected to build a boat.

New myth: you can make a malaria vaccine out of duct tape!

(For reals!  All you do is wrap yourself in duct tape so the mosquitoes can't get to you!)

This movie I haven't seen puts me in mind of a book I haven't read.

OK, so I have been watching bits of Star Wars Uncut.

However, the book whereof it reminds me, Naked Came the Stranger, I know only by reputation.

Same basic concept, no?

And I keep wondering whether, if I watched the whole thing, I'd eventually see Chewbacca played by Cousin Itt.  (Hey, if Chewie talked at 78 RPM they'd sound much alike, wouldn't they?)

Update: Y'know what that movie should have had, and didn't?  15 seconds of 633 Squadron, that's what!  Wouldn't have taken any working in at all, unlike the cunningly incorporated Seventh Seal bit.

Goofy ideas, tossed out

Idea #1: we've all heard of the old-time traveling medicine show.  Imagine, if you will, a traveling forensic medicine show.

Idea #2: for the neighbor who has a disgustingly flat lawn that could pass for a duckweed-covered pond, a novelty item: the eyes and snout of an alligator to poke above the surface.

 

MacGoofus fail

Golly, Richard Dean Anderson's car broke down, and he couldn't fix it with a paperclip and whatever bits were lying by the roadside.  Surprise!

I watched the pilot episode of that show, and a couple of others at random, and, well...

Not only was the tech completely wrong from beginning to end, often dangerously so (as in: not only will this trick not work, but if you try it in real life you'll blow your hands off), but such improvisations as didn't violate any laws of physics were still Infinitely Improbable.

Think: MacGoofus needs to improvise a gizmo.  He grabs a few random bits that happen to be lying around, and they all fit together just so.  You, on the other hand, order a replacement water pump for your truck, specifying the make, model, year, and engine type, wait three days for express delivery, go to install it, and discover that halfway through the model year they changed the bolt pattern and nothing lines up.

And what's with never using guns?  Right near the beginning of the pilot episode, as I recall, he used a cheap glass hand-mirror to make a high-powered laser self-destruct.  This Doesn't Work; the laser will destroy your cheap mirror long before its own high-quality optics are damaged.  What does work for sure is breaking the laser's output mirror, e.g., with a bullet.  (Your superior intellects are no match for our puny weapons!)  A proper go-everywhere fixer ought to have a pistol and a few demolition charges with him at all times.

(No, I'm not in the habit of lugging around a pistol and a pocket full of explosives, but my style of fixing doesn't often call for that sort of thing.  I'm more likely to need a soldering iron, an oscilloscope, a set of jeweler's screwdrivers, a variety of small pointy objects, and of course duct electrical tape.  If the job calls for a milling machine, I'll just have to take it home to work on it, as the inflatable Bridgeport remains elusive.)