Eunoia : Stu Savory's Blog

Eunoia
Nav Tools --> Most recent Blog Comments are OFF, so send any via Email to :- Comments Policy Impressum Maths trivia Search this site RSS Feed About Eunoia, who is a grumpy, overeducated, facetious, multilingual ex-pat Scot, blatantly opinionated, old (1944-vintage), amateur cryptologist, computer consultant, atheist, flying instructor, bulldog-lover, Beetle-driver, textbook-writer, long-distance biker, geocacher and blogger living in the foothills south of the northern German plains. Not too shy to reveal his true name or even whereabouts, he blogs his opinions, and humour and rants irregularly. Stubbornly he clings to his beliefs, e.g. that Faith does not give answers, it only prevents you doing any goddamn questioning. You are as atheist as he is. When you understand why you don't believe in all the other gods, you will know why he does not believe in yours :-) Oh, and he also has a neat English Bulldog bitch 'Frieda'. And her big son 'Kosmo'. Some of my bikes My Crypto Pages My Maths Pages	Wednesday, March 30, 2016 North Korea tests short-range missile ;-) Copyright ^© Ole Phat Stu on March 30, 2016 permalink Comments Email Tuesday, March 29, 2016 Crap Abble :-( The rot is setting in :-( First problem for Abble was that their watch would lock up and refuse to restart (Crash-reboot-loop). I quote the Abble support website "If you see the Apple logo or a red exclamation mark during startup, and your Apple Watch appears to restart or never fully starts up, contact Apple Support." But there was a bunch (maybe a dozen) other problems too for which you needed to access online help. Now the newest Abble problem is with the iOS update from march 21st which makes your iPhone 6S or 6S+ virtually useless :-( Links to websites from mails, WhatsApps or other apps don't work in Safari or Chrome browsers. SWMBO often uses Booking.com but Safari will freeze up completely, so this site is no longer accessible from an updated iPhone :-( Deleting the (3rd-party) app and restarting doesn't help either. Deactivating Javascript MAY help, but many sites rely on Javascript to work at all :-( Oh and FBI-investigators have broken into the dead San Bernardino gunman's iPhone, albeit with the help of a 3rd party (my guess : Mossad). So we now know that the US government has knowledge of a security vulnerability that weakens Apple devices around the world. And of course they're not revealing it. Apple has said it did not know how to gain access, and said it hoped that the government would share with them any vulnerabilities of the iPhone that might come to light. Fat hope! So not only does your Watch brick, but your updated iPhone no longer works, and their encryption is known to be not secure. Summary : iPhoney Crap abble :-( Copyright ^© Ole Phat Stu on March 29, 2016 permalink Comments Email Wednesday, March 23, 2016 A four line proof without any formulae ;-) One of the local agricultural workers down at the pub was complaining that his daughter (aged 10?) had been given homework to do over the Easter school holidays. He asked me for help with one "Prove that the internal angles of a plane triangle add up to 180°". He opined that it probably needed "pages and pages" of formulae. Not so, I told him, I can show you a four line proof that doesn't use a single formula! And here it is :- Just draw any triangle extending one side at the apex. That's 3 lines, right? Add the fourth line from the apex parallel to the base. That's it, a 4-line proof using no formulae. If you want to make it more obvious, just label the angles as I have done here. Go Euclid! Comments (3) Ed (USA) wrote "I could understand that! :-)" Yes, but labelling the angles helps :-) Jenny (Ibiza) points us to this cheeseburger cartoon :-) John (UK) complains "Looks like a stick-figure Dalek to me! Haven't you got anything better?" OK; this one annoys most people: 1=0.9 recurring. Proof: Let x=0.99... , multiply by 10 getting 10x=9.9... Now subtract the original line getting 9x=9 and therefore x=1 also. Copyright ^© Ole Phat Stu on March 23, 2016 permalink Comments Email Monday, March 21, 2016 Bags of Fun :-) Just bought myself some new luggage for my motorcycle. Bags of fun expected :-) It used to be that I just threw my seaman's sack across the pillion and strapped it down with a couple of rubber expanders. Then 2 years ago, I found that as I was getting older, after a week's vacation, I was having problems heaving my right leg over it. So for last year's biking vacation I bought a cheap large (and thus heavy when full) backpack which - most of the time - rested its base on the pillion seat so my poor back didn't have to support it. However, it turned out that the roads in parts of e.g. Slovakia and the Ukraine were so bumpy and bad that the heavy backpack was hammering/compressing my spine every time we hit a bump. And Slovakian potholes have to be felt to be believed. Small city cars could be swallowed up by some of them :-( So I've bought these Givi cases for the sides of the bike which can be locked onto a subframe that fits this specific model of bike. That way there is no load hammering my old back AND I can swing my leg over the pillion seat easily because the rear seat is empty. I also bought a rear-end adapter plate for the huge old topcase I've owned for about two decades; also solid Givi workmanship and durable :-) The old topcase takes 35 liters, i.e. I can put TWO helmets into it. The new side cases are smaller but expandable. Closed up, they are hard plastic. But I can unzip them around the perimeter whereupon a (canvas?) expansion lets the bags become about 6 inches wider :-) I'll be doing some packing experiments to see what should go where in them and take a ride on a rather rainy day to see just how waterproof they are when expanded. This year we're off to Ireland where it often rains I'm told :-( Of course, carrying luggage may change the aerodynamics and balance of the bike, so on thursday I went for a test ride. Normally the bike is very agile, weight being concentrated more on the steering head. With the luggage, the centre of gravity is moved back and the aerodynamic drag causes the rear wheel to squat down more, making the bike a little less agile when flicking through the Esses. So, come vacation time, I'll just change the pre-load on the rear suspension to raise the rear a couple of millimeters. The other things to look out for are aerodynamic changes which cause the bike to weave at high speed. So I took it out on the autobahn too and took it up to 185 kph (=115mph) without any signs of weave, so that's OK too :-) Now I just need to adapt in tight traffic because the widest part of the bike is no longer the handlebar :-( It's nice though that the sidebags are small enough that SWMBO can ride pillion with luggage on the bike, which she couldn't with the previous solutions :-) Really looking forward to the longer trips this summer :-) Comments (2) Ed (USA) asks "Why would you want such a big case at the back?" It's practical at sightseeing stops. I take out my hiking shoes and the camera and put in both my helmet and the riding boots which 3 together just fit. Plus it's lockable :-) Hattie (Hawaii) wrote " I really like those round corners! Wear your helmet and don't take them too fast." Copyright ^© Ole Phat Stu on March 21, 2016 permalink Comments Email Thursday, March 17, 2016 St.Patrick's day, begorrah :-) This video - of the world's longest Riverdance line - is now 3 years old, but worth seeing anyway, and today is the most suitable day for doing so :-) That doesn't look too difficult to do; I bet almost anybody can learn it :-) Copyright ^© Ole Phat Stu on March 17, 2016 permalink Comments Email Monday, March 14, 2016 PI day, USA Whereas we Yurpeens celebrate PI day on 22/7 because we write the day before the month when writing dates, American geeks celebrate PI day today, march 14th, because they write it month then day, i.e. 3.14 :-) Presumably they celebrate at just before 2 am, 3.14 1:59:26 exactly :-) So, it is for you US geeks that I present this little poem sketch today :- Geddit? No? Just count the number of letters in each word of the poem :-) Comments (1) Ed (USA) wrote "Rounding to 5 digits, today is 3.1416 :-)" I hadn't noticed that. Cute! Copyright ^© Ole Phat Stu on March 14, 2016 permalink Comments Email Sunday, March 13, 2016 Round the corner! Thanks to a tip from Bodo, I've just been shown how to put round corners on my blog-photos which have - until now - been rectangular. This little piece of CSS3 needs to be declared in the STYLE block in the HEAD of the CSS file. You will need at least version 5 of Chrome, or 9 of IE, or 4 of Firefox, or 5 of Safari, or 10.5 of Opera to get this CSS3 feature supported. I find that a 10% rounding gives aesthetically pleasing corners to the photos. But by raising that number to 50% I can get circular photos, or - by changing the height and width sizes - I can get elliptical photos, either with the long axis vertical (e.g. for faces) or horizontal (e.g. for yo momma photos). My photo in the sidebar on the left has been easter-egged using this idea :-) Thanks Bodo, for the optical candy; however, content still rules ;-) Comments (1) Barbara (UK) wrote "When I saw that title line I immediately wanted to remonstrate with you for writing "Round" instead of "Around"! Then I actually read the article and unexpectedly your usage was correct :-)" Heh, nearly caught you out then ;-) Copyright ^© Ole Phat Stu on March 13, 2016 permalink Comments Email Sunday, March 6, 2016 Typewriter irrelevancy Content! Content! Content! Famous writers - Einstein, Tolstoy, Brecht, Ringelnatz, und Sean O'Casey, to name five diverse ones always gain their fame from the content of the stuff they write, NOT from the paper they write on. Thus possibly the LEAST relevant question to ask of them is "What make of typewriter did they use?". And yet this is the sort of quasi-irrelevant question that amateur historians ask and indeed the HNF collects their typewriters. Einstein, for example, hand-wrote his papers and sent them handwritten to his publishers for them to worry about typesetting etc. So NO typewriter, inter alia because a typewriter couldn't cope with the maths he wrote. This is my photo of Tolstoi's typewriter. Well, not quite, because he didn't type himself. He had a lady type it all up for him. This is my photo of Brecht's typewriter. This is my photo of Ringelnatz's typewriter. His real name was Hans Bötticher. And last of all, this is my photo of Sean O'Casey's typewriter. And now you've seen the typewriters they used, go read some of their great works to see that CONTENT is the only important thing! :-) FWIW - should historians ever want to know - the book I'm writing this year is written on an Akoya laptop using Office Word 2007 for formatting , the results of which will get poured into a PDF file which gets sent to the publisher. Like I said : irrelevant details :-( Comments (7) Hattie (Hawaii) sent a photo and wrote " Aloha, Stu. I've been thinking about the machines we grew up with. They were so noisy, so poorly designed, took up so much room,sucked up electricity, but they were what we had and seemed inevitable in our lives. And they were plug ugly. Now, with all these new materials and integrated circuits, we can have devices that were beyond anyone's imagination once. As you say, though, content is all. Pic is of typewriters at an art co-op in Cuba. Barbara (UK) asked "Did you ever own a typewriter?" Indeed. In the early seventies, I co-opted one of our secretaries into going typewriter-shopping for an ultra-portable machine with me. She tried out a dozen for their "feel" (whatever that is) and recommended the Triumph-Adler Tippa S. If I remember correctly it used the Pica font. Mechanically sound and really robust. Downside turned out to be that the hard case was so tight-fitting that you could carry neither paper nor a spare reel in it :-( Cop Car (USA) wrote " You reminded me that in 1968 I had the opportunity to buy a great typewriter, really cheaply. A friend had bought a crate of typewriters, sight unseen, from some sort of distressed shipping concern. He had about 50 machines. The catch? They were for typing Hebrew. (He asked me how to convert them!) P.S. I learned on a Smith-Corona-Monroe (SCM) (manual) portable, circa 1951, co-owned by my elder brother. In the mid-1980s, I owned an IBM Executive (electric - with proportioned spacing for various characters) that did a beautiful job on résumés. I think my elder brother still has the IBM Executive which I gave him when I left Albuquerque in 1990." I assume that Hebrew typewriters type from right to left. David, is that so? David (IL) answered immediately ".tfel ot thgir epyt senihcam cibara dna werbeh, seY" That's hilarious, David, you are really funny :-) And Cop Car (USA) also replied " Yes, Hebrew typewriters do. That's why I told my friend not to bother trying to convert the typewriters. After all, they were set in their ways. (It must be Punday!) I thought it was Miss Muppet who was set in her wheys (yes, it is Punday ;-)). Marion (D) showed me a copy of Zeit-Magazine which had a collection of pictures of famous artists' used mixing-palettes (sp?). She could identify many of the artists just by looking at the way the oil colours on the palettes had been mixed together! I only got two right (OK, I'm not an art aesthete at all ;-)). This would have been something for Hattie to try :-) Peter aka Sarchiorama (UK) wrote " before computers everyone couldn't type because you had to be trained but as soon as computers became fashionable everyone had to type if you did not want to be disabled. Unlike the politicial joke by the late Paul Daniels about politicans who don't walk any more but they still are going to die." That's true about typing of course, but for longer texts I prefer to use dictation software (Dragon "Naturally Speaking"). Copyright ^© Ole Phat Stu on March 6, 2016 permalink Comments Email Wednesday, March 2, 2016 Super Choose Day Seriously, America, seriously? With over 130 million naturally-born Americans over 35 who are thus qualified to run for POTUS this is the best you could come up with on your super-choose day??? It seems that any idiot can run for the GOP nomination and many have :-( So you chose Fascist-in-spe KKK-sympathiser Drumpf to run against the dubious Clitnone as your probable POTUS candidates? Seriously? The bog mindles! MaKKKing America grate (sic!) again? Comments (4) John (UK) quips "If only one of their candidates had been called Kinell. Then all the fans' placards would read FOR KINELL!" I had to say that out loud in your British accent to get the joke ;-) Doug (Canada) wrote " See cartoon here :)" Heh, heh, that's good :-) David (NY,NY) quips "Rumor has it that Drumpf will appear in a movie about his fight to be the GOP candidate. Working title is "Trumpocalypse now!" Really? I thought he would call it "My Struggle" :-( Pergolator (USA) sent this this Trump link :-) Copyright ^© Ole Phat Stu on March 2, 2016 permalink Comments Email	Recent Writings North Korean SSM ;-) Crap Abble :-( A 4 line proof :-) Bags of Fun :-) St.Patrick's day :-) PI day, USA Round the corner! Typewriter irrelevancy Super Choose Day :-( Self-publishing Kafka's coffee-machine Ticket avoided ;-) Unlikely 590 nm limerick The photocopier fiasco Valentine's day Photo :-) A precursor to BMI ;-) R.I.P. Bob Snell POTUS candidates Clinton vs. Sanders Blogroll Ain Bulldog Blog Badtux... Balloon Juice Cop Car Curmudgeonly... Earth-Bound Misfit Fail Blog Finding life hard? Hattie (Hawaii) Making Light Mockpaperscissors Mostly Cajun Not Always Right Observing Hermann Pergelator Rants from t'Rookery Scary Duck Spork in the drawer Squatlo Rant Yellowdog Grannie Archive 2016: Jan Feb Archive 2015: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Archive 2014: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec This blog is getting really unmanagable, so I've taken the first 12 years' archives offline. My blog, my random decision. Tough shit; YOLO. Link Disclaimer ENGLISH : I am not responsible for the contents or form of any external page to which this website links. I specifically do not adopt their content, nor do I make it mine. DEUTSCH : Für alle Seiten, die auf dieser Website verlinkt sind, möchte ich betonen, dass ich keinerlei Einfluss auf deren Gestaltung und Inhalte habe. Deshalb distanziere ich mich ausdrücklich von allen Inhalten aller gelinkten Seiten und mache mir ihren Inhalt nicht zu eigen. This Blog's Status is Blog Dewey Decimal Classification : 153 FWIW, 153 is a triangular number, meaning that you can arrange 153 items into an equilateral triangle (with 17 items on a side). It is also one of the six known truncated triangular numbers, because 1 and 15 are triangular numbers as well. It is a hexagonal number, meaning that you can distribute 153 points evenly at the corners and along the sides of a hexagon. It is the smallest 3-narcissistic number. This means it’s the sum of the cubes of its digits. It is the sum of the first five positive factorials. Yup, this is a 153-type blog. QED ;-) Books I have written