Sunday, June 30, 2019

The Left Wants War

6/30/19 Daily Caller reports on the aggravated assault on gay Asian conservative journalist Andy Ngo.  (Milk shakes with fast drying cement and a beating.)  Portland's mayor has apparently given police orders not to arrest Antifa for violent crimes.  The left imagines that they will provoke civil war and win.  Yet another reason to resist gun bans.  The left is counting on intimidation of this sort:



They think that they are going to disarm the population and with no blowback.  They are going to be surprised.

Best to win elections.  Even winning a civil war is bloody, nasty business, with horrifying moral dilemmas.

And this poster, doubtless put up by a white Antifa member really catches where the Democrats are taking us:

Saturday, June 29, 2019

Source for 1/2" Wide .050" to .100" Inch Thick Steel?

I am trying to make the legs for the spider.  0.022" aluminum bends both in the mill vise and when the mill reaches the surface.  (I need to punch 1/4" diameter holes in one end of a 4" long piece.)  I can use steel instead--there is not much weight, and even .1" thick would not cause severe diffraction spikes.  The extra stiffness would help.  One proposal that I have seen is to use hacksaw blades, but they flex when I try to mill the round ends off, and they resist plunge milling very well.  So where might I find mild steel that is 1/2" wide and .1" thick.  Some utterly different use that I can use for this purpose.

Friday, June 28, 2019

Effective Ways to Express Disapproval of the Police

2/20/19 Idaho Press:
A 68-year-old Emmett man pleaded guilty Monday to lighting Emmett police vehicles on fire in 2017.
Darrel Rich pleaded guilty to two criminal counts — damage by fire to vehicles owned by an institution receiving federal funding, and damage by fire to vehicles used in interstate commerce, according to a news release from the Idaho U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Those charges stem from a July 2017 incident in which Emmett police officers responded to Rich’s home. After they left, Rich told his sister through “telephone communications” that police should “‘back off now or somebody is going to get hurt’” and told her that “‘if she call(ed) the cops on me again...we’re done.’”
Just after 12 a.m. the next morning, Rich drove to the Emmett Police Station and parked across the street from it, according to the release. He took a gasoline canister from the trunk of his Chevrolet Impala and poured the liquid behind four police vehicles parked in the department’s parking lot.
My wife saw this article this morning: "There are easier ways to get S'Mores."  He was apparently also convicted of felon in possession of a firearm.  I am so surprised.

When An MSNBC Apparatchnik Tells You Are Throwing the Election to Trump

6/28/19 The Hill:
MSNBC host Joe Scarborough called the second night of the first 2020 Democratic debates a “disaster for the Democratic Party” and said that he hopes voters were not watching the face-off, which aired on his network.
"With apologies to our friends and watching, last night was a disaster for the Democratic Party," Scarborough said Friday on "Morning Joe." "My only hope is people were not watching and I will tell you why."...
Scarborough also criticized the Democratic candidates for adopting a slate of progressive policy platforms, including decriminalizing border crossings and providing health insurance through a public option to undocumented immigrants, suggesting that they would not be able to beat Trump with that focus.
“It was a bad sign for me, as someone who desperately wants to see Donald Trump taken out of office,” Scarborough said.
They need to get out of their billionaire-only fundraising events.

Thursday, June 27, 2019

Working My Way Through USA Today's Really Comprehensive List Mass Murders 2006-17

These are mass murders that did not have white suburban victims, so CNN was not going to cover them.

Chicago, Ill. (2010)
2/26/2010: Prosecutors charged three men with the murder of three men in a drug-related incident in which the killers slit the victims’ throats.  Police shot dead one of the suspects in a car chase the murders.  The same murderers also committed mass murders on 5/18/2010 and 9/2/2010.
Category: residential
Suicide: no
Cause: drug business
Weapon: knife[1]Chicago, Ill. (2010)
5/18/2010: Prosecutors charged three men with the murder of three men in a drug-related shooting.
Category: public
Suicide: no
Cause: drug business
Weapon: unknown[2]Chicago, Ill. (2010)
9/2/2010: The same happy band of murderers murdered four other persons, motive unknown.
Category: residential
Suicide: no
Cause: unknown
Weapon: unknown[3]

[1] “Southwest Side Man Pleads Not Guilty To Role In Triple Murders,” CBS Chicago, Jul. 18, 2012, https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2011/07/18/southwest-side-man-pleads-not-guilty-to-role-in-triple-murders/, last accessed June 27, 2019.
[2] “Southwest Side Man Pleads Not Guilty To Role In Triple Murders,” CBS Chicago, Jul. 18, 2012, https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2011/07/18/southwest-side-man-pleads-not-guilty-to-role-in-triple-murders/, last accessed June 27, 2019.
[3] “Southwest Side Man Pleads Not Guilty To Role In Triple Murders,” CBS Chicago, Jul. 18, 2012, https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2011/07/18/southwest-side-man-pleads-not-guilty-to-role-in-triple-murders/, last accessed June 27, 2019.

Suppressors

Paul A. Clark, "Criminal Use of Firearm Silencers," Western Criminology Review 8(2), 44–57 (2007):
The Lexis/Westlaw database contains 153 cases over the past ten years in which the evidence suggests a silencer was used for a criminal purpose — including unlawful possession of a silencer where no other crime was committed. That gives an average of about 15 reported cases each year, and assuming this represents close to half of all prosecutions, one can assume 30-40 total cases per year. This is out of 75-80,000 federal criminal prosecutions each year. Overall numbers certainly suggest that silencers are a very minor law enforcement problem.
Moving from the overall numbers and looking at more specific offences, it appears that use of silencers in truly violent crime is even more rare. 

Wednesday, June 26, 2019

Ray Bradbury Theater

This was a 2000s HBO series where Ray Bradbury produced episodes based on his stories.  Some are excellent.  His story "The Veldt" came through exactly as I imagined it when reading it.  Like many of Bradbury's stories, there is often an amazingly effective projection of where things are going, and not in a positive way.  One story stared Bruce Weitz, who you may remember from Hill Street Blues as a rebel against an over connected world who murders all noisy electronic devices.

Tuesday, June 25, 2019

Today's Obscure Question

Say that I have several keywords such as "Lake Charles" and "Lee Roy Williams" that I want to do a search for, without having to enter each keyword by hand.  I will have a list of keywords produced by an awk script.  I would like to produce a series of searches (using whatever search engine is most familiar to you), so that I will double click a URL in a list of URLs, and have it take me to the list of matches.  There must be a way.

There is:
http://www.google.com/search?as_q=Arturo+Ibarra+Raul+Segura-Rodriguez
This explains the codes.

Now I just need to finish the awk that extracts all capitalized words out of the line.

This should output all words starting with a capital letter that include lower case letters, hyphens or apostrophes:
awk -F'\t' '/b[A-Z]+[-'a-z]*/{print $0} USATodayList.txt  
Use sed:
sed 's/\(\b[-a-z0-9[:punct:]]*\)//g' USATodayList.txt |sed 's/\bAM//g' | sed 's/\bPM//g'
I still need to delete capitalized words after quotes.  These are start of sentence.

I have a script that does the required filtering:
#!/bin/bash
#  extract city, and description fields
awk -F'\t' '{print $4,"\011",$9}' USATodayList.txt | \
# remove all words entirely lower case
sed 's/\(\b[-a-z0-9[:punct:]]*\)//g' |\
# remove all AM and PM strings 
sed 's/AM//g' | sed 's/PM//g' |\

# remove all $ and quotes
sed 's/$[[:print:]]//g'| tr -d '"'|\
# remove certain high frequency words not likely to improve matching
sed 's/\b\".\b//g' temp.txt| sed 's/Police//g'| sed 's/He//g' | sed 's/Him//g' | sed 's/Him//g' |\sed 's/The//g' | sed 's/Three//g' |sed 's/Four//g' | sed 's/Five//g' | sed 's/Suspects//g' | sed 's/Prosecutors//g' |\sed 's/Deputies//g' |\
# remove hyphens tr -d '-'|\
# remove all \ following a blank
sed 's/ \\//g' 
Now what should be easy (should not say that), combine all those keywords into search queries.
#!/bin/bash
#  extract city, and description fields
# skip first linetail -n +2 USATodayList.txt |\
awk -F'\t' '{print $4,"\011",$9}' | \sed 's/\"\\"/"/g' |\
# remove all words entirely lower casesed 's/\b[-a-z0-9]*//g' |tee nolower.txt|\
# remove all AM and PM strings sed 's/AM\|PM//g' |\
# remove all $ commas and quotes
sed 's/$[[:print:]]//g'| tr -d '",.' |tee nopunct.txt|\
# remove certain high frequency words not likely to improve matching
sed 's/\b\".\b//g' | sed 's/Police \|He \|Him \|His \|She \|Her \|Hers//g' |\sed 's/The \|Two \|Three \|Four \|Five \|Suspects \|Prosecutors \|Deputies \A \|There \|Before \|An \|When \|In |Investigators \|Just \|But \|According \| - //g' |\
# remove hyphens and double apostrophes
sed -e 's/--//g' | sed 's/\.\.//g'|\
# remove all \ following a blank

sed 's/ \\//g' |\
# and all apostrophes or commas remaining
tr -d "',;" |\
# replace all superfluous blanks and tabs 
sed -e ':loop' -e 's/\t\t/+/g' -e 't loop' | sed -e ':loop' -e 's/[[:blank:]][[:blank:]]/+/g' -e 't loop' | tee superfluous.txt|\
# remove superfluous +s
sed -e ':loop' -e 's/++/+/g' -e 't loop' |tee superpluses|\
# and the mysterious +blank
sed -e 's/+[[:blank:]]/+/g' |\# and the trailing blank
sed -e 's/+$//g' | tee trail.txt|\sed 's/ /+/g' |tee final.txt|\
# now build the URLs
awk '{print "http://www.google.com/search?as_q="$0}' >>urls.txt

And it works!  I now have search URLs for every entry in the USA Today database of mass murders.
The more I look at, the more fearful of changing anything.  James Gosling, author of emacs, once described PostScript as a write-only language.  I largely agree with him, but sed isn't much better.








Monday, June 24, 2019

Evidence That Transgender is a Mental Illness

From PJMedia:
On Saturday, a library in the Seattle area hosted a "Teen Pride" event for children ages 9-19. The event featured drag queens, all sorts of explicit adult-themed advice, and a raffle for dangerous transgender chest binders. Three local moms, concerned about children being exposed to such things at a taxpayer-funded library, filmed the event in order to expose it. Police escorted them out by force, warning that they were guilty of "criminal trespass."
Does anyone in the LGBT activist elite know any straight people who aren't billionaires?  If you want to know what is going to drive LGBT back into a legally imposed closet, it is trash like this, and Drag Queen Story Hour at public libraries.

When I was young, drag queens, swishy guys, and bull dykes were signs of vicious stereotyping.  Now they are an identity.  Who would have thought those nasty stereotypes were somewhat true?

Another Mass Murder, But in Gun Control Heaven

https://santamariatimes.com/news/local/names-of-two-men-shot-killed-at-casa-grande-released/article_dc33c5da-8c9e-5653-b120-0acf382470ed.html

At least five dead including the shooter.

"Nuke 'Em" Rep. Swalwell

He held a protest outside NRA headquarters, and 18 people showed up.  I think his campaign for President may not be going well.  Shame, really; I want Trump to run general election ads showing Swallwell's tweet about enforcing gun bans with nuclear weapons.

Sunday, June 23, 2019

Just Not My Day

Some directories have disappeared under Windows 7.  I know that they are hidden from Windows Explorer but are still there because I can see them from the command line and when I copy them from my backup, they are apparently there (do you want to merge?).  I have set Windows to show hidden files.  But nowhere that I can find is there an explanation.  Weirdly, the files in the missing directories appear in the parent directory.

It appears that the folder icons need to be rebuilt.  The Windows disk cleanup utility can delete all the icons and they automatically rebuild on the next reboot. But it appears the disk cleanup utility cannot be run until sfc /scannow (a Windows repair tool finishes and I will not interrupt it).  Maybe I will try this in the morning.  All very odd.

Next step if that fails: from the command shell rm -r the missing from Explorer directories and recopy them from the backup.

Somehow I Received an A in Both 2nd Semester and 3rd Semester Algebra

It sure is not showing now!  Please identify where I went wrong.  I am trying to write gCode to excavate a half-circle in a block of aluminum.  (Really a half cylinder.)  I will advance x by 0.5" with each pass.  (It is a .5" diameter mill.)  What is the formula for z?

Circle is:
(x-h)2 = (a-k)2 = r2 
where r is radius, h,k is center of circle. Solve for z, since x is known. To simplify this I am calculating upward motion, which I will go -z for vertical position.
x2 - 2xh + k2 + z2 - 2zk +k2 = r2
-2xh +h2 + z2 -2zk +k2 = r2 - x2 
h2+ z2 - 2zk + h2 = r2 - x2 + 4xh + k2 
z2 - 2zx = r2 - x2 + 4xh + k2 
z = r2 _x2 + 4xh = k2 + 2k
But plugging in r=4.5, x=0, h=4.5, k=4.5 (the left side of the workpiece) produces an obvious error.

Where Transtoolism Takes You


Saturday, June 22, 2019

Today's Not Very Bright Scam

Dear Recepient
You are required to appear in court on Wed 27h June 2019 at 10:00 am.Please, do not forget to submit all documents related to this case, attached to the file through the Attached content is a court order and other documents relating to the case.
The Attachment ID is: COURT ORDER # S12GF803Note: You will hear the case by the judge in your absence (if you do not come).
Yours faithfully,
Sarah Teodora,
Clerk of Court

Friday, June 21, 2019

Sleazy Email You May Get

Enter your shipping address here so you can test out the all new "Anytime Charge" Solar pack for FREE!
We've have just 85 left!
Just enter your address here so we can send your ANYTIME CHARGE
We've done the field testing!
We've taken it on long hikes, camping, hunting trips, we've used it as an every day power source to re-charge cells and tablets and this charger passed all our hardcore stress tests... all while being user friendly enough for every day use!
>> CLICK TO CHECK IF THIS OFFER IS STILL AVAILABLEStay Safe,
Your Friends from Ape Survival.
P.S. Remember: We only have 85 to left so jump on this offer right now!

Click over and you pay shipping of $14.95.  The charger is $0.00 with an asterisk which tells you that are agreeing to a recurring charge to your PayPal account of $34 per month for... what?  I almost did not notice this, and many people will never notice that their PayPal account is slowly being gobbled away.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. Or much of anything else.

Wednesday, June 19, 2019

Is There a Lint Equivalent for SED?

Someone joked that the problem with writing something insed is that it is written in sed.  I have never quite bought this claim until now.  Any guesses where the unmatched apostrophe is?
$ sed 's|\"\([A-z0-9 ]*\),"\(\[A-z0-9 \]*\), \([0-9/]*\), \([0-9]*\)|"\1," \t\2
,\t\3,\t\4|g'| sed 's/\"\"/"/g'  >articleColumn1.txt

Tuesday, June 18, 2019

Wasted Days and Wasted Nights

I have long been frustrated by the apparent inability of my Sherline mill to do plunge milling, and even relatively unambitious edge milling.  The Sherline mill is belt driven, not gear driven.  I have burned out a lot of belts and replacing them is a pain.  There are two sets of pulley positions, and I have been using the high speed set.  As you know, speed and torque are inversely related.  (Why we did not learn this in Newtonian mechanics, I do not know.  Just remember not to hire a Newtonian mechanic to fix your faster-than-light drive.) 

When I replaced the burned out belt today, I went to the lower speed positions, and it now does a splendid job of milling.  Instead of removing aluminum powder, it now does what a mill is supposed to do, tear off big chunks at a time.

Smaller and Smaller

My Toshiba 5TB drive failed in warranty.  It appears to have been a fault in the power connector.  So they ge me a $140 debit card.  I spent $100 on a 4TB Seagate backup drive that is tiny, and is powered from  the USB port.  Awesome!

Monday, June 17, 2019

Cabin Near McCall

One of you asked me to call him about the use of a cabin near McCall.  I was very busy and never called you.  Now I cannot find your phone number.

Saturday, June 15, 2019

And Another, Since I Am Waiting for the Sun to Set

It takes a while for all the optics on a telescope to reach thermal equilibrium.  During this time, the image may improve or degrade, but the one guarantee is that the collision will change.  Collimate after everything's had cooled off.  Typically a half hour for a small reflector.  Hour or more for a big reflector of a Schmidt-Cassegrain of any size.

Today's Telescope Tip

I have observed this before (but some of you may be new to this blog, or worse, do not memorize everything I write here).  The biggest disappointment young people experience is when Mom and Dad buy an inexpensive reflector as a first telescope for Junior.  There are three reasons for this.

1.  The mirror and mechanical parts are often very poorly made.  There is not much to do about this, unfortunately.  Spend a bit more money on a somewhat smaller refractor and ignore the huge magnification numbers that appear on the box or ad.

2. Few reflectors are properly collimated when you get them.  Even if they were good at the factory, every drop of a shipping crate is guaranteed to fix that.  Spend a little money on a laser collimator.  You will be amazed at how much the image quality improves.

3.  Many of the cheap reflectors come with low quality eyepieces, sometimes made of plastic not glass.  Orion Telescopes sells lots of decent eyepieces that will dramatically improve the images.  Make you sure you are buying a Plossl type or orthoscopic type eyepiece. 

TelescopeS typically have either .965" or 1.25" diameter eyepiece focusers.  Get one with a 1.25" focuser.  The eyepiece in this size are almost always superior in quality.

Almost Done With This Script

#!/bin/bash
awk -F'\t' '{print $33"\t"$34}' MassMurderCurrent.txt >SourcesUrls.txt
# remove all lines with URLs
sed '/https:/d' SourcesURLs.txt | sed '/http:/d' > Sources.txt
# remove all lines with Rith and Dayton
sed '/Roth and Dayton/d' Sources.txt >SourcesMinusDandR
# replace DOS characters with proper forms (" instead of inward quotes).
tr '\221\222\223\224\226\227' '\047\047""--' Dewindowed.txt
sed 's| \([0-9]\),| 0\1,|g' Dewindowed.txt >TwoDigitDates.txt
# convert month, date, year to mm/dd/yyyy
sed 's| Jan. \([0-9][0-9]\)[,\.] \([0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]\)[,\."]| 01/\1/\2, |g' TwoDigitDates.txt |\
sed 's| Feb. \([0-9][0-9]\)[,\."] \([0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]\)[,\."]| 02/\1/\2, |g' |\
sed 's| Mar. \([0-9][0-9]\)[,\.] \([0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]\)[,\."]| 03/\1/\2, |g' |\
sed 's| Apr. \([0-9][0-9]\)[,\.] \([0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]\)[,\."]| 04/\1/\2, |g' |\
sed 's| May \([0-9][0-9]\)[,\.] \([0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]\)[,\."]| 05/\1/\2, |g' |\
sed 's| Jun. \([0-9][0-9]\)[,\.] \([0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]\)[,\."]| 06/\1/\2, |g' |\
sed 's| Jul. \([0-9][0-9]\)[,\.] \([0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]\)[,\."]| 07/\1/\2, |g' |\
sed 's| July \([0-9][0-9]\)[,\.] \([0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]\)[,\."]| 07/\1/\2, |g' |\
sed 's| Aug. \([0-9][0-9]\)[,\.] \([0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]\)[,\."]| 08/\1/\2, |g' |\
sed 's| Sep. \([0-9][0-9]\)[,\.] \([0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]\)[,\."]| 09/\1/\2, |g' |\
sed 's| Oct. \([0-9][0-9]\)[,\.] \([0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]\)[,\."]| 10/\1/\2, |g' |\
sed 's| Nov. \([0-9][0-9]\)[,\.] \([0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]\)[,\."]| 11/\1/\2, |g' |\
sed 's| Dec. \([0-9][0-9]\)[,\.] \([0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]\)[,\."]| 12/\1/\2, |g' >mmddyyyy.txt
# extract article title
sed 's|sources\tURL|title\tjournal and date|g' mmddyyyy.txt |\
sed 's|"\([A-z0-9 ]*\),"\([A-z0-9 ]*\), \([0-9/]*\), \([0-9]*\)|"\1," \t\2,\t\3,\t\4|g'| sed 's/""/"/g'  >articleColumn1.txt 

(Yes, I could pipe all these together, but seeing the intermediate files is useful for debugging.)  The only remaining problem is that I cannot figure out how to convert the Windows ellipsis character to three periods.  Windows has several special characters (e.g., left quote, right quote, right apostrophe) which is why the above script has:

# replace DOS characters with proper forms (" instead of inward quotes).
tr '\221\222\223\224\226\227' '\047\047""--'

But I cannot find any description of how to enter the ellipsis character (\205).  I read that :

sed -e 's|`$(echo "\0205")`|...|g'

should do it.  But it does not.  \0205 is not matching it.

Solution: in Excel, Replace ALT-0133 (numeric keypad) with three periods.  It then saves as periods.

So why does this not work?
$ echo '"Horrid Barbarity,"' | sed 's|"\(A-z0-9]*\),"|\1$|g'

"Horrid Barbarity,"


Friday, June 14, 2019

California Is Doubtless Looking Out for Future Voters

Fox News reports on California's $214.8 billion budget:
The budget includes money to give taxpayer-funded health insurance to some low-income illegal immigrants. It also authorizes $2.4 billion in spending to address the state's housing and homelessness crisis....
That isn't the craziest part:
The state would give $650 million to local governments to tackle homelessness and pump $500 million into a tax credit program to spur construction of residential rental units.Lawmakers would spend $5 million on grants to homeless shelters so they can accommodate pets.
If you do not have a home, you do not need us to care for your pet.  Priorities!

The Funniest Craigs List Car Ad

Right here.
This car is as practical as a Roth IRA. It’s as middle-of-the-road as your grandpa during his last Silver Alert. It’s as utilitarian as a member of a church whose scripture is based entirely on water bills.

Attacks in the Persian Gulf

6/14/19 CBS News reports on tanker attacks in the Persian Gulf:
The Japanese owner of the Kokuka Courageous, one of two oil tankers targeted near the Strait of Hormuz, said Friday that sailors on board saw "flying objects" just before it was hit, suggesting the vessel wasn't damaged by mines.
That account contradicts what the U.S. military said as it released a video Friday it said shows Iranian forces removing an unexploded limpet mine from one of the two ships that were hit....
Company president Yutaka Katada said Friday he believes the flying objects seen by the sailors could have been bullets. He denied any possibility of mines or torpedoes because the damage was above the ship's waterline. He called reports of a mine attack "false."
Yes, I often see bullets in flight.  Don't you?  What is Iran's interest in this?  Reducing oil supplies drives up petroleum prices: one of Iran's primary sources of foreign exchange.  This is contrary to U.S. interests.

Iran is trying to force a military confrontation with the U.S.

I know that under some conditions you can see bullets in flight, but you need to be looking for them and I rather doubt any bullets set a tanker on fire.

Thursday, June 13, 2019

SED Sucks, But AWK does not work as expected

$ echo '"Horrid Barbarity," Cramer [N.Y.] Weekly' | sed 's|\"\([A-z0-9 ,\.\']*\
"\) \( [A-z0-9\[\]]*\)|\1$,$\2|g' |more

I am missing something.  It should match quote, followed by any number of letters, digits, brackets, commas, periods, ending with a quote as field 1 and all letters and numbers, blanks and brackets as field 2.

I have become so frustrated that I tried to use filter in Excel to extract only lines without an entry in the URLs column.  Does not work.  I may just give up on trying to get the missing URLs.

Awk: Why Does This Not Work?

Tab delimited lines.  One or two columns per line.  Only print lines with first column:
awk -F'\t' ' 'NF==1' filename
Lines in input file:
 sources URL
"Roth and Dayton, "Homicide among Adults: Massachusetts homicides, 1751-1760," 89." "Roth and Dayton, "Homicide among Adults: Massachusetts homicides, 1751-1760," 53." "Trial of Abel Clements, Petersburg Intelligencer, July 15, 1806." Horrid Murder! At an early hour on Wednesday morning last, the inhabitants of this town were alarmed with the dreadful information , (Augusta, Me., 1806), 1" ""Horrid Barbarity," Hillsborough [N.C.] Recorder, Apr. 28, 1824, 3."

No lines passed through.  Curiously using print NF, it claims two fields per line.  

awk -F'\t' '{$2!=""}' filename returns nothing.


Since the second field in lines that I want to exclude always has http:// or https:// in it, I tried:
grep -v "https://|http://' filename
And this passed through all lines including http:// or https:// .  Why?

sed '/https://d' file file | sed '/http://d' 
works.

Thanks for all the suggestions.  I found a fix in the mean time.  Beat your head against awk and sed long enough, and they will do what you want.

Wednesday, June 12, 2019

Rubber Grommets

I need one 1/4" OD, ID negotiable to whatever diameter of aluminum shaft I can find.  But online, grommets seem to come in packs of 100.  Any suggestions where I might find just one locally?

At Some Point, a Judge Needs to Sanction the Lawyers

The Colorado baker who refused to make a gay wedding cake was sued after winning at the Supreme Court.  He refused to bake a gender transition cake.  6/6/19 CBS Denver: A third suit has now been filed.  This 6/11/19 WND report:
The latest lawsuit against Jack Phillips, the owner of the Masterpiece Cakeshop, is filed by a guy who harassed the bakery for months, requesting things like a cake with a picture of Satan performing fellatio. The guy walks in, requested that Jack Phillips bake a cake with a picture of Satan performing fellatio. Of course, Jack Phillips said ‘no.’
Read more at https://www.wnd.com/2019/06/satan-sex-act-baked-on-a-cake-christian-business-under-fire-for-3rd-time/#Fx7MdJ4Brx4ErpRM.99

Everyone Knows Campaign Promises Lies, But...

Even for a Democrat this is a stretch.  6/12/19 Washington Times:
Joe Biden told an audience in Ottumwa, Iowa Tuesday that his White House would "cure" cancer should he beat President Trump in 2020.
"I've worked so hard in my career, that I promise you, if I'm elected president you're gonna see single most important thing that changes America, we're gonna cure cancer," Biden said to applause.
Didn't a Democrat promise the embryonic stem cells were going to cure actor Christopher Reeve's paralysis and let him rise from his wheelchair sort of like going to a Benny Hin revival fraud?

Tuesday, June 11, 2019

Gun-Free Zone With Consequences

Ideas have consequences; bad ideas have bad consequences.  7/11/19 Virginia Pilot:
So when she told her husband, Jason, that she had concerns about two of her co-workers, he knew it was serious. She didn't like to be around DeWayne Craddock, a fellow engineer — he gave off "real bad vibes" and she'd had to write him up several times for issues with performance and attitude. They both worked on the second floor of Building 2 in the Municipal Center.
But on the night of May 30, it was another man she was most worried about. Kate told her husband that the man, whom Jason Nixon declined to identify, was set to be fired Friday and there was supposed to be a police escort on scene when it happened. While cooking dinner, she expressed her concerns.
"She said, 'This guy's going to come back and shoot the place up,' " Jason Nixon said. He encouraged his wife to hide a pistol in her purse and take it to work — she had training and knew how to use it — but she didn't want to break city policy forbidding employees from bringing weapons to work.
Kate is dead.

Very Small Rolls of Duct Tape

It turns out for this application that 4" wide rolls are cheap enough to send a whole roll.

SIGABRT from malloc

Any ideas why malloc is failing?  Excel exports empty cells as just a tab, which is right, but strtok sees two tabs as end of tokens (as you would expect) but I need to replace \t\t with \t \t to make sure tha every cell is prsent in my char* fields array.

/* Replace one substring with another substring through the inputString.
   This mallocs a new string, so you are required to free this string when
   done */
char* stringReplace (char* inputString, char* searchString, char* replaceString)
{
  int i;
  int j;
  int len;
  int addedBlanks = 0;
  char* returnString;

  printf("inputString=%s\n", inputString);
  /* how many added blanks? */
  for(i = 0; i       if(0 == strncmp(inputString+i, searchString, strlen(searchString)))
       addedBlanks++;
  /* allocate larger destination string */
  if(addedBlanks == 0)
    returnString = inputString;
  else
    {
      len = strlen(inputString);
      returnString = malloc(len + addedBlanks+10);
      for(i = 0; i < strlen(inputString); i++)
{
  if(0 == strncmp(inputString+i, searchString, strlen(searchString)))
    {
    strcpy(returnString+j, replaceString);
    j += strlen(replaceString);
    i += strlen(searchString);
    }
  else
    returnString[j++] = inputString[i];
}
    }
  free(inputString);
  printf("returnString=%s\n", returnString);
  return(returnString);
}

Saturday, June 8, 2019

Not a Good Day

cygwin includes gcc, but the installed version has no idea where stddef.h is (found the fix for that) or what options to pass to ld to link the object to the libraries.  (Found a fix for that, but what else will I find after that?)  FileZilla still says it transferred files to the VM client, but the client does not show them.  Time to reboot Windows.

No change.  So I moved it to my webpage from Windows and back down to Linux.  Now it appears that I have forgotten bsic C, and my hardback edition of Kernighan and Ritchie is gone.  (Found it!)

 Why does this segmentation fault on fgets?

#include
#include
int main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
  FILE* inputFile;
  char* inputString;
 
  inputString = malloc(500);
  inputFile = fopen(argv[1], "r");
  inputString = fgets(inputString, 500, inputFile);
  printf("%s\n", inputString);
  exit(0);
}


I started with char inputLine[500] with same result.  Faults only in the debugger.  gdb works fine; DDD which uses gdb to provide a GUI fails.  I wish ancient releases of debian (the base for linuxcnc) supported modern Eclipse.

Using gdb from the command line takes me back to the 1980s, and reminds me why I helped develop a GUI high-levcl language debugger back then for Kontron Electronics.  I am relearning C, with the inevitable pointer reference problems that led to C++.

Holding an SJW College Responsible for Lying

6/7/19 Legal Insurrection:
The short version of this story is that the day after the 2016 election victory by Donald Trump, a black male Oberlin College student was stopped for shoplifting wine at Gibson’s Bakery and Market in downtown Oberlin, OH. Gibson’s had been in existence since 1885, was frequented by students, and also provided baked goods to the college dining halls. A scuffle ensued that was joined by two black female Oberlin College students accompanying the male shoplifter and apparently acting in concert with him. All three eventually would plead guilty to shoplifting and aggravated trespassing, and would avow that Gibson’s was not engaged in racial profiling.
But before those guilty pleas, students at the college immediately declared that Gibson’s was guilty of racial profiling, and large protests were organized outside the bakery. Flyers were passed out claiming Gibson’s was “racist” and had “a long account of racial profiling and discrimination.” The Oberlin College Dean of Students Meredith Raimondo allegedly participated in handing out the flyers in front of the bakery. The Oberlin College Student Senate also passed a resolution claiming Gibson’s “has a long history of racial profiling and discriminatory treatment of students and residents alike.” The college administration allegedly helped spread this student senate resolution.
Students started a boycott of the bakery, initially joined in by the college. The college eventually resumed business with the bakery, but then terminated that business after the lawsuit was filed.
Result: $11 million in damages.  Punitive damages, which might be treble damages, to be decided Monday.  Until rich SJWs are held liable for lying, nothing will change.

Awk: Why Did I Not Think of This?

Awk on a comma-separated file is a problem because commas can appear inside quotes.  Excel allows you to export tab-separated files as well.  So:

awk -F"\t" '{print $33}' MassMurderCurrent.txt


will show the Articles column.  With this, I can separate article title, and date.

What am I doing wrong?  I used to do amazing things with regex (like fix 30,000 records with the wrong incarceration date: there were patterns to how Corrections Officers screwed up mm/dd/yy.)  I am trying to replace every expression of the form: '  \d, with ' 0\d,'.  (One digit day number to two digit day number.)

sed -e 's/ {\d,/0$1}/g'

Does cygwin sed even work?  This seems no simple:

echo "Aug. 1," | sed -e 's/Aug. [0-9],/Aug. 0$1,/g'

outputs Aug. 1.  Where is the 0 before $1?  And \1 instead of $1 does not work either.  Is cygwin obsolete regex?

Figured it out.

echo "Aug. 1," | sed -e 's/\(Aug.\) \([[:digit:]]\)),/Aug. 0\1,/g'

Grouping.

Only works under linux, not cygwin.  If there was an easy way to share files betwen my Linux emulator and Windows, I would do this all under Linux.  Unfortunately, none of the instructions for installing VMWare Toools work, so sharing files means using FileZilla.  Maybe that is next.

But when I transfer my transform script over, it shows as being uploaded and present in the virtual Linux directory, but not in the Linux shell in that directory.  It may be time for my afternoon nap, when nothing works at even the most trivial level.

Nap helped not all.  I will write a C program to extract the needed information.

A Friend Had a Similar Experience

SARASOTA, Fla. (WWSB) - A Sarasota man is in custody following a manhunt in New York that ended with him naked inside a chicken coop.

On Wednesday, June 5, 2019 New York State Police arrested 25-year-old John Mehne after police say a bizarre series of events started when Mehne allegedly burglarized a home in Sarasota and stole a car.

Police say he crashed that car somewhere North of Pennsylvania and caught a ride on the back of a pickup truck, but eventually ran away on foot when multiple law enforcement units joined in on the chase.

Police say tips from the public made all the difference in his arrest. Mehne is charged with robbery, possession of stolen property, burglary and aggravated cruelty to animals.
A co-worker many years ago recounted a night that started with Tequila, then skinny-dipping off the Manhattan Beach pier, then his next memory is waking up in a strange car, stuck in mud some distance from the nearest road.

6/7/19 Fox News has an a more detailed and even more bizarre version of it.

And another too much tequila moment.


Mexico Tariff Threat Worked

6/7/19 AFP:
Washington (AFP) - The United States and Mexico reached an 11th-hour deal late Friday to crack down on migration from Central America, with President Donald Trump relenting on threats to slap potentially devastating tariffs on the neighboring country.
With Trump ready to impose five percent tariffs on all Mexican goods starting Monday, senior officials hammered out an agreement after three days of intense negotiations at the State Department.
Under the deal, Mexico acknowledged and agreed to expand its policy of taking back migrants from violence-riven Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador as the United States processes their asylum claims.

Friday, June 7, 2019

Preparing For a Debate









Every graph has a reason.


Church Sign: Why Church Sucks

This is in front of a local church.  My wife's commentary:
We have, in America, gathered around us teachers who promise us untold wealth; a perfectly healed body every time illness darkens our door; miracles, signs and wonders every time we show up; worship services that provide a "Sunday experience"; and laughter and stories that dominate the preaching, with a touch of Scripture here and there.  Not enough Scripture to offend us, but just enough to make us feel like we "did church." 
In Idaho, I drive by a certain church quite often.  The latest series boasted by it on its marquee is, "Why Church Sucks."  I know, I know.  They are probably lamenting how church is inadequate in meeting people's needs, and of course, because they have figured it all out, their church doesn't suck. 

History is So Inconvenient

6/6/19 Indie Wire:
YouTube hovers in paradox: It’s a platform for expression that vacillates on the kinds of expression it wants to support. Even when the site makes constructive changes in the content it promotes or prohibits, the outcomes raise questions about censorship and curation. On Wednesday YouTube revealed extensive new policies around hate speech in a move to “reduce more hateful and supremacist content from YouTube,” as the company announced in a blog post.
The policy also meant the removal of Leni Riefenstahl’s 1935 Nazi propaganda epic “Triumph of the Will,” which left the site hours after YouTube announced its new standards. After all, “Triumph of the Will” falls under the rubric of “videos that promote or glorify Nazi ideology, which is inherently discriminatory,” as YouTube explains one prohibited category. The movie is also regarded as one with major historical value, raising essential questions about the nature of the film medium. Does it belong in the same category as Lunikoff, a German Neo-Nazi band whose channel also got the boot?
Triumph of the Will is an important historical artifact, reminding us that artistic sorts are usually on the side of the thugs.  Just like today.  And in Ford's Theater in 1865.  But it is still on Amazon Prime.  Who knew Bezos was a fascist?

Thursday, June 6, 2019

Orange Bad Man, Have You No Shame?

6/5/19 The Smoking Gun:
 Florida woman told police that she stabbed herself in the stomach with a kitchen knife because, “I’m tired of living in Trump’s country, I’m tired of Trump being president.”
Cops found the 46-year-old woman standing outside her residence in Palmetto Sunday, according to a police report. She had blood all over her legs, hands, and face, a cop noted.
When asked what was wrong, the woman lifted her shirt to reveal “three stab wounds on [her] stomach that were still bleeding.” She then told the patrolman she had “stabbed herself because she does not want to live in Trump’s country.”
Good news:
After evaluating the woman, a cop concluded that there was a “substantial likelihood” that she “will cause bodily harm to herself and/or others.” As a result, the officer appears to have recommended that the woman be involuntarily admitted to a mental health treatment facility (per the state’s Baker Act).
The report states that the woman said she “has been Baker Acted before and has attempted to hurt herself in the past.”
 I thought this meant she should join the crowd seeking the Democratic nomination.

Finally, the Bureaucracy Does Its Job

6/6/19 The Hill:
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted on Thursday to allow phone carriers to block suspicious calls by default in an effort to bolster industry efforts to filter out robocalls and scammers.
The proposal would also let phone companies offer their customers the option of blocking any numbers that are not pre-approved, a service that could help protect elderly consumers from scams and telemarketers.
“We expect phone companies will move quickly to use this tool and help consumers block unwanted robocalls,” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai wrote in USA Today. “Among other things, default call-blocking will reduce the costs of handling the robocalls that flood their networks and save them grief by limiting customer complaints.”
Lots of East Indians will be looking for new jobs.

Threatening Mexico With Higher Tariffs Cannot Possibly Work

While the President is overseas honoring D-Day, the cable news talking heads back home have been busy critiquing his recently announced plan to impose an increasing series of tariffs on Mexico unless that nation stops the flood of migrants passing through their country toward the United States. The plan has been described in the press with a variety of terms ranging from reckless to impossible. After all, even if Mexico was willing to consider such a deal, how could they possibly stop the human tide from flowing across their own southern border?...
Mexican soldiers, armed police and migration officials blocked hundreds of migrants after they crossed the border from Guatemala in a caravan into southern Mexico on Wednesday, and detained dozens of them, a witness from a migrant aid group and an official said.
The Mexican response in the border town of Metapa, which included dozens of soldiers, marked a toughening of the government’s efforts to curb the flow of mainly Central American migrants, said Salva Cruz, a coordinator with Fray Matias de Cordova.

Wednesday, June 5, 2019

D-Day Tomorrow

75 years since the most incredible amphibious operation ever done.  Imagine the world if it failed.

East Indian Privilege

A picture of the 8-way tie for a spelling bee.  Clearly, East Indians are unfairly privileged, hence overrepresented.

Guts Then, Guts Now

A D-Day veteran recreates his parachute jump 75 years ago.  Yes, he's 97.  And a British veteran too.

Bargain Laser Collimator

Meoptex Alignment 1.25" Next Generation Laser Collimator for Newtonian Telescopes

I am comparing this to the Orion LaserMate collimator that I already own.  This is not quite as good, but at this price ($23.59) it is impressive (I bought it for a friend with a small reflector which is not behaving well because of collimation issues).    

Strong points: 

1. The display where the laser hits on the return from the two mirrors is a white background, which makes adjusting the beam to the center very easy.  

2. It collimates to almost exactly the same settings as my Orion LaserMate,

Weaknesses: 

1. It is not exactly concentric: if you rotate the unit in your eyepiece focuser, you can see it is not hitting the same spot on the primary mirror.  It is not a big variation, but not perfect.  There are adjustment screws covered with some plastic or sealant which might fix this.  To be fair the patient is a 2000mm focal length mirror, so even slight concentricity problems are obvious.  

2. The battery that came in it was utterly dead, but CR2032 batteries are easy to find in my cupboard of obscure batteries.  

3. The instructions mention a 2" adapter which was not included, but there was a space in the box for it.  Most telescopes with 2" focusers have such adapters anyway, so more a minor disappointment than defect.

4. It is not spectacularly bright, but again this is a 2000mm mirror, and in twilight with most reflectors should be adequate.

5. No instructions for using it to collimate.

Remember: NRA Was Responsible for Parkland Mass Murder

6/5/19 Orlando Sentinel:
When every second counted, as students were screaming and dying in their classrooms, school security officer Scot Peterson hid rather than respond. His inaction resulted in his arrest Tuesday on charges of neglecting his duty.
Peterson stood alone in the Broward County Main Jail’s prisoner assembly room for his first court appearance Wednesday morning. He is charged with seven counts of child neglect with great bodily harm, three counts of culpable negligence and exposure to harm, and one count of perjury, records showed.
His attorney:
 “Today, the individuals who have made this charging decision have taken the easy way out and blamed Mr. Peterson … when there has only ever been one person to blame – Nikolas Cruz.” 
And that's why millions of law-abiding gun owners must be punished!

Who Keeps Actual Passwords in Their Security Control?

I got one of those "I have a keylogger in your PC, send me money or get exposed" emails.  It has a password that I have not used online for several years.  Unix systems only store a hash of the password (not as good as encryption; there are brute force methods, requiring several NSA's of computing power to try all combinations to see if they produce the target hash).

Are there other systems that do not encrypt the password?  This claims these are all false extortion schemes; having an actual password is the result of data breaches, not keyloggers or viruses; this site says there have been 9 such breaches involving my email address.  Many of these breaches included poorly encrypted passwords.

As I said, I do not use that password anymore and this doubtless one of these old breaches.

Received the exact same email from someone else.

An Actual Scientific Investigation of Causes of Autism

"Parental Obesity and Risk of Autism Spectrum Disorder," . 2014 May; 133(5): e1128–e1138.
The risk of autistic disorder was 0.27% (25 of 9267) in children of obese fathers and 0.14% (59 of 41 603) in children of fathers with normal weight (BMI <25 1.07="" 1.73="" adjusted="" aged="" an="" analyses="" asperger="" children="" ci:="" disorder="" for="" generating="" limited="" of="" or="" span="" to="" were="" years="">n = 50 116). The risk was 0.38% (18 of 4761) in children of obese fathers and 0.18% (42 of 22 736) in children of normal-weight fathers, and the adjusted OR was 2.01 (95% CI: 1.13–3.57). No associations were found for pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified.
Hence, rising autism rates during the Great Fattening of the last few decades.  How does paternal obesity cause autism?  I am guessing it is associated with some common cause, but worth investigating.

Tuesday, June 4, 2019

No, Radio Shack Stores Still Exist

I was in Vale, Oregon a few weeks ago to renew my Oregon Concealed Handgun License and found this store:



It was not a leftover sign: