Geek Wisdom

I have been feeling a bit nostalgic lately and decided to try and transfer some of our families old VHS 'Home Movies' So I went ahead and bought a 'USB' VHS/Converter -> The specific one I bought was on Amazon https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B089GHH9BR/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 It was disappointing that the description makes no mention if this device works with Linux.  I my house I run mostly Linux distros at home. The idea of setting up an instance of  MS Windoze just to record the videos on a laptop was not too appealing. I was however presently surprised - After plugging in the device it quickly showed up as /dev/video0 on my machine. As I have had some previous experience with Linux and TV Tuner cards, it was my hope that I could simply cat the device to an output file cat /dev/video1 > myhomemovies.avi Alas it would not be that simple, and I got the error "Invalid argument" I then turned to VLC. VLC did capture the v...

  I was always a 90's student in elementary school (back in those days - we actually got grades). So when I started junior high and I got back the results of my first English test, I got 30! Yes that's 30 out of 100 possible points. The worst grade I ever received in my entire life! I was furious, I bet my English teacher could even see the steam coming out of my ears as I spoke to her about it after class that day.  Me a 30? - Did she not know how smart I was? There must be some sort of mistake, I don't make 30's. Did she have it 'in for me' (not unlike my Grade 3 teacher did). The teacher quietly and politely asked me how long I studied for the test. Why a full 2 hours the night before I proudly told her!.  Her response was simply 'interesting'.  So I have been teaching you this content for about an hour per day for day the last 90 days, so about 90 hours of information, and you prepared for it in 2 hours..is that correct.  YEP! (said I).  Well it seem...

  I wonder if everyone has a 'white whale' that is their obsession, like Moby Dick and Captain Aheb  OR is it a specific personality trait that some have and others do not (or more likely possess to a variance of degrees?) My first "white whale" that I can recall is programming the Vic 20 in the late 1980's.  That flashing - blinking cursor edging me on to make it "do something". The 'something' I imagined 'should have been' quite simple in my mind. The VIC20 had a very limited (3K) of memory, and although a lot of games and programs were written for it, The process of loading and starting a game was annoyingly teadious.  Sometimes, I would get up pre-breakfast, pop the tape in the datasette, hit load, and then proceed to go eat my breakfast, before the game would be ready to play.  It seemed to me there should be a simple way to have a menu of what was loaded, simply pick the item from the menu and 'GO'.  Of course the limited sp...

The other night I had the opportunity to watch "A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood"  a story about Mr Rogers, but not exactly the movie I had expected it to be.  The movie is not as much about 'Mr. Rogers' as it about the man Mr Rogers is trying to help  Lloyd Vogel. The story centers much more around Lloyd with Mr Rogers being more of the "guru" figure that helps him. As I watched it I sort of imagined a gentle - kinder version of 'Socrates'. What prompted me to write this entry is the way he 'ends his show' telling children - 'You've made this day a special day, by just 'being you', and I like you just the way you are.' What an amazing message! right. ??  We don't have to grow up to 'be something' we already are something, we already matter !! What is particularly interesting about the 'just being you' attitude is that it has the pre-conception that you know "who you are". To discover thi...

No one has to tell us 'remember to breathe', we do it without thinking, its 'autonomic'. Sometimes I wish 'don't take life too seriously' was an autonomic response as well. For as long as I can remember I have been a very 'serious person'. Sure - I like watching comedy movies, and a good laugh. Though I tend to take what I do (particularly in my work life) very seriously and personally. You might be reading this and thinking 'So what??? ' it's good to work hard..to give it your best, to be all that you can be.  Some of you are probably wishing that more took their work more seriously - Am I Right ??? The problem is when something doesn't happen the way I expect it to happen...the way I want it to have happened it can cause me a lot of frustration and stress.  Imagine a volume meter from 0...10 of the 'this is serious!' is  turned up to 10 (maybe even 11 or 12). The whole world can feel like it is falling apart, and hearing the...

 I have often heard people say "It's okay to make mistakes, as long as you learn from them", other versions include  - those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it., and  Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it The quote is a good reminder, that we improve both as individuals and as the human race by making mistakes, by failing. The best example of this was watching my children learn to crawl for the first time.  It is basically a trial and error process.  My kid gets up, tries to push forward a bit, and falls, tries again and..falls...and again...you get the idea.. until eventually, the child is now moving so fast around the house you barely have time to put gates up around the house for safety. I fully admit I make mistakes, probably around a hundred or so before I even drink my first tea at breakfast, and I am very confident I have made the same mistake twice. Recognizing mistakes isn't really the problem - knowing how to ...

It seems always easier to recognize in someone else, then in oneself. Perhaps it starts with a small but unpleasant event.  Your faucet starts leaking, you have to call the plumber, you are reminded of that time your dishwasher broke, and then when your car needed new brakes, your mind is now flooded with memories of every negative experience that has happened in the past 12-18 months, and you reach the "inescapable" conclusion that you just can't "get ahead" that there always seems to be something just around the corner waiting, lurking to ruin your day, your life...it's just not fair, when will you ever get a break? You suddenly look to your 'neighbor' and wonder why he/she seems to get all the easy breaks, while you are stuck dealing with some new shitty thing each and every day!   Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay The brain, for all its wonders and marvels, is at its core, a pattern matching device, when an event happens it searches for relati...

During one of "infamous" my lunch time walks, I was pretty excited to hear "MBA213" - Mastering Business Analysis Episode 123 "Applying the Theory of Constraints What was even more interesting is the person talking in this episode  Clarke Ching  tells a very similar story to how he got into the Theory of Constraints (TOC) as my own story. For me, it was around 1999, when I first came across "The Goal" in audiobook format. It was also my first experience with the 'business novel'. The Goal was written by Elijah Goldratt and Jeff Cox, and is an amazing story of Alex Rogo a 'middle manager' of a manufacturing plant, and he interactions with "Johah" his old college professor giving him his sage advice. I absolutely loved the book and at the time was working in a quasi-manufacturing company, I was also learning to be a quality assurance manager, and the two fell hand-in-hand. The key concept in all of Goldratt's business nove...