Is it cosmic?

 I read a post the other day about Bi Directional printing. The post was on Schneier on Security and is about how malicious code can be inserted into source code. It does this by looking innocent. However when the compiler reads the file, it gets parts of it in different order than what you see on the screen. I think we can presume the compiler gets the raw file and what we see on the screen has been rearranged according to the constraints of the window and the formatting control characters embedded in the file.

Golden Earring - Twilight Zone (Extended Long Version)
Opening Salvo

There was an example posted so I thought I would try it out. The sample, however, did not have the control codes embedded in it, all it gave you were the two examples, one with control codes active and one without. So I thought I would give it a try, I mean it shouldn't be two hard to open up some kind of text editor and insert a couple of control codes, should it? Well, for some reason, man, the find function on my text editor has flat quit working. Do-do-Do-do - are we in the Twilight Zone?

I've been threatening to replace my Linux box with a Chromebox. You can buy them now. A few years ago you couldn't, you had to roll your own, and that was too much trouble. I'd gone through that in setting up my Linux box, but after having been using it for years without having to get back under the hood* I'm not keen to do so now.

I've been threatening to replace my Linux box with a Chromebox. You don't suppose the Linux box was listening in, do you? I mean it's what I use for all my web surfing, surfing for a new Chromebook (drool). Do I get a high power one or do I get a one with a Celeron processor? I think the high power ones also use an Intel processor with some kind of alpha-numeric name. And then there's the question of memory. I think I have a choice of 4, 8 or 16 gigabytes. I think this box, the one I'm using, has 4, but I can't be bothered to check. I guess I'm a little irritated, all that time I spent screwing around, waiting for computers to boot up. Maybe that's why I did it, I was a glutton for punishment, people looked at the job in passing and just passed on by. A smarter me might have done that, but I guess that's just who I am. There is a certain satisfaction in successfully jumping through all the hoops and finally getting the machine to behave. 

A couple of weeks ago, four of us spent the afternoon moving a big piece of cast iron a couple of miles across the west side. Any complaints? No, just a chorus of 'that was fun, we should do it again some time'. Probably deprived some honest hardworking men a day's wages, but not everyone has an unlimited budget for hobbies.

Oh yeah, the control codes, from Google search:

Overriding BiDi using Unicode control characters

Character	Code point	Markup equivalent
Left-to-Right Isolate (LRI)	U+2066	dir="ltr"
Right-to-Left Isolate (LRI)	U+2067	dir="rtl"
First Strong Isolate (FSI)	U+2068	dir="auto"
Left-to-Right Embedding (LRE)	U+202A	dir="ltr"

I'm not quite sure just how or what to actually insert in a file, but I'm sure I'll figure it out.

*Capiche 'under the hood'? To work on an automobile engine, which used to be a very common activity but hardly ever happens any more, you had to open the hood, so all the time you were working on the engine, you were 'under the hood'. For some reason, most people, maybe 95 percent, won't ever engage in it. It might be lack of aptitude, or just simple disinclination, or possibly even a gut level revulsion. I don't know, people are weird. Anyway, 'under the hood' means getting down into the inner workings of of whatever mechanism, virtual or mechanical, is under discussion. That's a weird way to put it, 'under discussion'. The thing is broken and it needs to be fixed, there doesn't need to be any discussion. Aha! But anything worth repairing that breaks down is going to cause a discussion. Is it worth fixing? Can it be fixed? Who can do it? Should we just buy another one, it'd be quicker, etc., etc., etc.

Update April 2022 replaced missing video.

Mask as Shibboleth

Aztec Mask

JM Smith has a good post up about people of the mask.

Scientifical Left Handed Comedy

Homochirality: Why Nature Never Makes Mirror Molecules
Steve Mould
I enjoy listening to this guy. I haven't quite figured out why I like listening to some people and not to others. I do have definite preferences, there are any number of talking heads that I cannot stand listening to, but I am not sure why. Is it what they are saying, or the way they are saying it? Or is the background having some subconscious effect? I kind of doubt whether the background has any effect, but who knows? It might be because they are better speakers, but what makes them better? It's all very weird.

As to the subject of the video, Zyrtec, an antihistamine, has a mirror image called Xyzal. They both work pretty much the same way and are pretty much equally harmless. I take Zyrtec most everyday and it seems to work well enough for me.

Eluminator

Electric Ford F-100
Mashable

Pretty truck, though I think what makes it attractive is the paint job and the lowered stance. Not sure why that is. Perhaps it is years of conditioning. Stock cars have several inches of ground clearance to enable them to cope with real world roads, roads filled with all manner of obstacles. Custom cars, hot rods, race cars, super exotic cars all sit very low to the ground. It looks cool, but is totally impractical for anyplace besides a race track. I suspect they are feeding a fantasy - if you have this car you can go really fast on race track, a fantasy that completely ignores having to go to the grocery store to pick up a box of pampers.

The idea of an electric car is attractive, but the reality is a little hard to swallow. An electric car would probably work very well for me. I seldom make any long trips, the car would sit in the garage all night, every night, charging away. All I would have to do would be plug it in when I pull in and unplug it when I leave. Yes, all that plugging and unplugging would be a nuisance, but so is going to the gas station. Stopping at Costco for gas on my way into town takes an extra two miles and ten minutes, not counting waiting in line and at the pump.

There are other factors, like the cost and weight of the batteries, the possibility of a battery fire and the difficulty of putting out such a fire, but every modern convenience comes with risks and I suspect electric cars are less risky overall than others.

The one thing that concerns me is the electronic power controls. Being solid state, they are going to be reliable, but at some point they are going to start failing, maybe just of old age. When they fail they are going to very expensive to replace, partly due to their very reliability. If they never fail, there won't be a stout supply chain to supply replacement units. You'll have to go back to the factory where you will find that they quit making that model years ago and your best bet is to pick up one from a junkyard, or send it to Joe's Electric Power Control Repair Shop where they will tell you that the flux capacitor is blown, the ones used in your control box are very rare and will cost as much as a new control box, which you can't buy. Best just go buy a new car. Vunderbar.

The main reason I don't want an electric car is I allocated too much of my brain to the internal combustion engine. I could dive deep into how electric cars work, you can go all the way down to the quantum explanation of magnetism, but I don't think I've got the brain capacity for that AND all my knowledge about conventional automobile engines. Something would have to go, and since all my current knowledge was hard fought, I am reluctant to let my engine knowledge go. Of course, at my age, memory leaks are starting to appear (no they aren't!). I've made a couple of passes at trying to understand magnetism, but it gets really deep really quickly, and some of it just doesn't make any sense.

If your ignore the really deep parts of magnetism though, electric cars are simplicity itself, and I suspect that is one of the main attractions. Electric motors are ubiquitous in the modern American household, so people are familiar with them and how they operate. Internal combustion engines by comparison are horribly complicated. I can see how - for someone who is not mechanically inclined - they could be a little off-putting. You may as well tell a non-mechanical person that they need a new slankerator (an imaginary part) as tell them need a new head gasket (a real thing). For a non-gear head, it's all just Greek and could very well just be myths designed to extract money from their wallet.

Obligatory slam on the bogus green-ness of electric cars: most electric power in the USA comes from burning fossil fuels. So right there electric cars are producing just as much greenhouse gas as conventional cars. Add the amount of power lost in long distance power transmission and the efficiency of an electric car is worse than a conventional gasoline powered car. So electric cars are contributing more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than regular cars.

The Unwanted Blog has a post about the Eluminator.

My Special Skill

Pearls Before Swine - Procrastination

Today's funny comes to you via a circuitous route. I am not exactly sure of the first part, but here's what I suspect. My wife gets the 'paper' online, she sees something she likes, she takes a 'photo' with her phone and 'mails' it to me. I download it, crop it using Pix, and then upload it to Blogger, 'publish' my 'post' which puts it on the internet where all and sundry can see it. Kind of silly to go through all these contortions, but it's actually easier than chasing down the links and hooking things together. Yes, the image is slightly distorted, but you get what you pay for, and this is free. Other than having to surrender another piece of your identity to the great and benevolent Google.

Hache Season 2 - Netflix Series

Hache Temporada 2 | Tráiler oficial | Netflix
Netflix España

We watched Season 1 a couple of years ago and it was pretty great. Hache is back in Barcelona and this time she's the boss. Malpica died and left everything to her, so she opens up the Albatros nightclub and sets up a heroin lab in a disused winery. Scheming gangsters try to engineer her downfall, but her people are loyal and she foils them. A couple of straight arrows fall for her, she plays, but doesn't fall. She's all business. Her younger half-brother is a freaking disaster, but he redeems himself by being alert and taking action at a critical moment.

DHC-6 Twin Otter

A twin engine turbo-prop airplane shows up early on in the series. You can see it in the trailer above. Near as I can tell it's a DHC-6 Twin Otter. I thought it might be an anachronism. The show is set in the early 1960's and when did turbo-prop airplanes start showing up? 1945, if Wikipedia is to be believed. The Twin Otter has been flying since 1965, so if you want to quibble about dates it might technically be an anachronism, but it's close enough for show business.

Netflix 6 episodes 45 minutes each in Spanish with English subtitles.

Update December 2025 replaced missing video, updated title.

Winsome Sears

Winsome Sears

ZeroHedge reports: 

Tuesday night was a historic night for Virginians, and not only because a political newcomer defeated a seasoned, big business-backed Clintonite Democrat.

Arguably, the more historic event was the race for lieutenant governor, which was won by a Republican named Winsome Sears. Sears is a black immigrant from Jamaica and a former US Marine who was elected Lt. governor in the "purple" state despite being outspent 2:1. She will soon become the first black woman to serve as Lt. Gov in Va.; more importantly, she will also be the first black woman elected to statewide office in Va.

All of which is very cool, but I'm posting this because we've got a picture of a girl with a gun and I like girls with guns, even when they are grown women. And criminently, she was a marine. I'm impressed. I realize the photo was for her campaign, but I still like it. And she knows enough not to have her finger on the trigger, a mistake I make all too often when I pick up a gun.