Personal – Page 15 – Spinor Info

More hardware hacking

Computers, Electronics, Personal, Television No Responses »

Oct 142015

I finished this weeks ago but never had the time to post. My previous attempt to hack a Rogers cable decoder was only partially successful, so I gave it another try, with better results.

By “hack”, I don’t mean illegally obtaining cable signals or anything like. I was simply looking for a way to get composite video and stereo audio out of the “free” cable boxes that Rogers provides, as opposed to just a plain RF signal on channel 3. The reason is pretty mundane: I’ve been using a dual-tuner TV card in my computer for years, which allowed me to record one program while watching another. The transition by Rogers to full digital cable messed this up: the TV card has only one RF input, so it is impossible to attach two decoders that could supply two signals simultaneously. But the TV card does have two independent composite video inputs. So if only the decoders had the corresponding output…

Well, they do, sort of: the only problem was that the audio was an undecoded (multiplexed) stereo signal. To decode it, I first built a standard stereo decoder circuit, but that was before I learned that the NTSC standard for stereo also includes noise suppression.

Hence my second attempt, using an appropriate chip.

Once again, I used a custom printed circuit board of my own design, and once again, it worked like a charm. The only fly in the ointment is that this larger board no longer fits inside the original decoder casing without some “plastic surgery”; so chances are that if it ever comes to returning these boxes to Rogers, I’ll be paying for them instead. Oh well.

More cats for Mr. Harper

Canada, Cats, Personal, Politics No Responses »

Oct 112015

Even as I hope that the wheels are indeed falling off Mr. Harper’s election bus, I am trying to do my part by listing more of the Harper government’s shenanigans on catsforharper.ca.

The idea is simple. Harper likes cats. He should have more time to play with cats. And he should atone for his political sins by adopting lots of shelter cats.

The site is growing, by the way; I still have a ways to go through my list of political sins so new topics are added daily, sometimes several times a day.

I am disappointed, however, with my Canadian friends: So few of you registered and “voted” on catsforharper.ca! I honestly hoped it would be more popular. But then, there is still time… 8 more days until Election Day. And I hope most sincerely that after October 19, I can safely retire the site, as Mr. Harper will no longer be in a position to do any more political damage.

Editorial dilemma

Personal, Science No Responses »

Oct 082015

I received a very polite invitation to be an “academic editor” to a scholarly journal.

Sounds good, right? To be sure, I am promised no monetary compensation, indeed, I’d still have to pay (albeit at a discount) to have my papers published in the same journal (not that I have any plans to do so). Still… it’s an honor, right?

Too bad it’s one of the many predatory journals of a predatory publisher. A journal that publishes just about anything so long as the author pays the (often hefty) publication fee. There are now thousands of such journals around the world, maintaining a parasitic existence, leeching off both crackpots and third-world researchers who don’t know any better and try to pad their resumes with a seemingly legitimate publication record.

So why am I ever so slightly hesitant? Well… on two (maybe three?) occasions in recent weeks, I received requests from the same journal to referee papers. I indicated that I was not available, but also that, judging by the abstracts that were shared with me, those papers should have been rejected by the editor and never sent out to referees in the first place.

And now here I am, being asked to work as a volunteer editor for the same journal. Should I accept it, in the hope that I would be given the editorial autonomy to reject papers up front, in the hope of improving the journal’s standards?

Probably a bad idea.

I may be an atheist but…

Personal, Religion No Responses »

Oct 022015

Today, I left the “Atheist” group on Google+.

south-park-s10e13c08-kill-the-wise-one-16x9

Not really sure why I joined the group in the first place. I do not believe in supernatural friends. It is not the wrath of a make-believe entity that makes me refrain from doing evil. I am not necessarily happy about, but I am comfortable with the thought of a finite lifespan, followed by the same oblivion that also preceded my existence. I grieve for lost loved ones but I do not feel compelled to imagine that they are somewhere in a “better place”.

That said, while I reserve the right to mock religion (even as I feel it is my duty to defend, risking life and limb for if necessary, the rights of others to believe!) I certainly do not go out of my way to offend the faithful.

Nor do I need peer support to maintain my convictions. My conclusions concerning the existence of deities are a result of a great deal of thought and I feel secure in my views without the need to have them affirmed by others.

And I most certainly do not need to equate specific religions with the worst stereotypes, nor do I feel compelled to call religious people “religitards”, “fucktards” or other, even more obscene epithets that are used routinely in the aforementioned Google+ group.

Indeed, reading some of the conversations there I was suddenly reminded of a dystopian vision of the future that once was shown in the South Park cartoon series: centuries from now, a devastating world war being waged between the Unified Atheist League and the United Atheist Alliance… (who are then both attacked by the Allied Atheist Alliance of sentient sea otters.)

Too much security

Computer Security, Personal No Responses »

Sep 212015

Today, I spent a couple of hours trying to sort out why a Joomla! Web site, which worked perfectly on my Slackware Linux server, was misbehaving on CentOS 7.

The reason was simple yet complicated. Simple because it was a result of a secure CentOS 7 installation with SELinux (Security Enhanced Linux) fully enabled. Complicated because…

Well, I tried to comprehend some weird behavior. The Apache Web server, for instance, was able to read some files but not others; even when the files in question were identical in content and had (seemingly) identical permissions.

Of course part of it was my inexperience: I do not usually manage SELinux hosts. So I was searching for answers online. But this is where the experience turned really alarming.

You see, almost all the “solutions” that I came across advocated severely weakening SELinux or disabling it altogether.

Since I was really not inclined to do either on a host that I do not own, I did not give up until I found the proper solution. Nonetheless, it made me wonder about the usefulness of overly complicated security models like SELinux or the advanced ACLs of Windows.

These security solutions were designed by experts and expert committees. I have no reason to believe that they are not technically excellent. But security has two sides: it’s as much about technology as it is about people. People that include impatient users and inadequately trained or simply overworked system administrators.

System administrators who often “solve” a problem by disabling security altogether, rather than act as I have, research the problem, and not do anything until they fully understand the issue and the most appropriate solution.

The simple user/group/world security model of UNIX systems may lack flexibility but it is easy to conceptualize and for which it is easy to develop a good intuition. Few competent administrators would ever consider solving an access control problem by suggesting the use of 0777 as the default permission for all affected files and folders. (OK, I have seen a few who advocated just that, but I would not call these folks “competent.”)

A complex security model like SELinux, however, is difficult to learn and comprehend fully. Cryptic error messages only confound users and administrators alike. So we should not be surprised when administrators take the easy way out. Which, in a situation similar to mine, often means disabling the enhanced security features altogether. Unless their managers are themselves well trained and security conscious, they will even praise the administrator who comes up with such a quick “solution”. After all, security never helps anyone solve their problems; by its nature, it becomes visible only for its absence, and only when your systems are under attack. By then, it’s obviously too late of course.

So the next time you set up a system with proper security, think about the consequences of implementing a security model that is too complex and non-intuitive. And keep in mind that what you are securing is not merely a bunch of networked computers; people are very much part of the system, too. The security technology that is used must be compatible with both the hardware and the humans operating the hardware. A technically inferior solution that is more likely to be used and implemented properly by users and administrators beats a technically superior solution that users and administrators routinely work around to accomplish their daily tasks.

In short… sometimes, less is more indeed.

Arctic Shipwreck

Personal, Programming No Responses »

Sep 212015

Back in my misguided youth, I spent a couple of years developing game programs for the Commodore 64.

It all started in 1982, when a friend of mine and I dropped by at the office of a newly formed company, Novotrade. We heard somewhere that these folks have a new personal computer in their possession, one with a whopping 64 kilobytes of random access memory (an almost unheard-of amount at the time), and they are looking for programmers.

It was all true. The Commodore 64 was there and they were indeed looking for talented programmers. Thus we got to meet Ferenc Szatmári (a physicist-inventor who later on had a profound influence on my life) and others, who explained the deal: Novotrade was about to enter into a business relationship with a British company, the idea being that Hungarian programmers will be writing game software for Commmodore’s brand new personal computer. As part of this arrangement, a prototype Commodore 64 (of West German manufacture, with serial number 000002) was already there, available for us to study.

As it is well known, the Commodore 64 went on to become one of the most successful personal computers of all time. Our games did not fare that well; truth to tell, they weren’t that great. The games we ended up developing were “chosen by committee,” so to speak, from game ideas sent in by the public in response to a Novotrade-managed contest. Still… we were proud of introducing some rather novel programming techniques. Specifically, highly efficient graphic algorithms were developed by two of our teammates, Imre Kováts and Márton Sághegyi, which allowed us to create 3D-ish full screen animations like a moving horizon or a floating iceberg.

Floating iceberg? Yes… one of our games was called Arctic Shipwreck, and it required the player to balance an iceberg by moving a friendly mammoth around while trying to avoid stepping on some poor survivors of a shipwreck… until rescue arrived. Oh, and there was a rather nasty bird of prey, too, that occasionally came and plucked a survivor for lunch.

Not very entertaining, to be honest. Yet for some reason, this game remains much liked by the dwindling community of Commodore 64 enthusiasts. Most recently, it was featured in a nice German-language article on TrueGamer.de; the author of that article, Boris Kretzinger, also interviewed me via e-mail for C64 Scene, an electronic magazine published in the form of Commodore 64 disk images (!).

Featured on XKCD

Personal, Physics, Pop culture, Space No Responses »

Aug 282015

Hey, I just noticed that our resolution of the Pioneer anomaly made it to an xkcd comic:

Wow. Who knows, if things continue like this, we might even end up on The Simpsons or The Big Bang Theory.

Windows 10 impressions

Computers, Personal No Responses »

Aug 152015

In the last few days, I upgraded two of my laptops to Windows 10. So far, I have been most impressed by the results.

The first laptop is my current “travel” laptop, an ASUS X202E. It is a touchscreen notebook that originally came with Windows 8. I got it real cheap just over two years ago. It turned out to be a much better machine than I expected (despite Windows 8!) so I invested a little extra money and upgraded it with a solid state drive. I also upgraded it to Windows 8.1 when it became available.

The second laptop is closer to five years old I think, an old LG netbook with an Intel Atom processor and only 1 GB RAM, with Windows 7 Starter. I bought it because it was tiny (I like small machines) and real cheap. I used it for a few years as my travel laptop, great for presentations, e-mail, or connecting back to my main desktop via Remote Desktop, but not much else.

The Windows 10 upgrade became available on both machines a few days ago (although I had to fight with the LG netbook a little bit to make it happen; the reasons were unrelated, a bad driver that interfered with the machine in other ways, too.)

To make a long story short: the upgrade ran flawlessly on both machines.

On the ASUS, after the upgrade my touchpad was not responding, but before I could begin investigating the reason, a dialog popped up and informed me that the touchpad driver is being upgraded and indeed, after a reboot, the touchpad was working fine again. All my settings were properly preserved, including an add-on (8GadgetPack) that restored the Windows VISTA/Windows 7 style on-screen gadgets that I have become quite fond of, and which Microsoft removed from later versions of Windows, ostensibly for security reasons.

Encouraged by this, I also started the upgrade process on the netbook. My expectations were not high: I was quite prepared for it to fail on this somewhat obsolete machine. But no… it did not fail. It completed the upgrade sooner than I expected and once again, everything worked just fine. The netbook, of course, remains an underpowered machine, but after it finished configuring itself and its initial indexing tasks ran to completion, the machine became reasonably responsive.

All in all, kudos to Microsoft. This upgrade process through Windows Update far exceeded my expectations. And Windows 10 finally corrects the misguided design decisions of Windows 8. The best way to summarize my Windows 10 impressions is this: on a machine without a touch screen, you don’t miss the touch screen.

EDIT: I almost forgot one thing: the much-criticized privacy settings in Windows 10. Unsurprisingly, “free” comes with strings attached: by default, Microsoft collects a lot of information from your computer. Many of these settings can be turned off (make sure that during the installation process, you don’t accept the defaults) but there are concerns that even with the settings off, Microsoft collects some information that they really shouldn’t. How concerned should we be? After all, if you turn on the “OK Google” feature in your Chrome browser, Google becomes an invisible listener to every conversation in the room. So perhaps it’s true that the era of privacy is over. Still… I turned most of those settings off. Even if it does not protect my privacy, at least it saves a little bit of network bandwidth…

Liberal or NDP?

Canada, Personal, Politics No Responses »

Aug 102015

I was once a conservative voter. I voted for the Progressive Conservative party even when virtually no-one else did. I even voted for Kim Campbell back when the PC party was reduced to two seats in Parliament in an historic defeat.

But that was then. Today, we have a party that is conservative in name only: its label has been hijacked by right-wing radicals. The political sins of this government are innumerable, and I wonder if there are enough cats in the world for Mr. Harper (a cat lover) to adopt as a form atonement.

In the past few elections, I voted Liberal. I actually like our MP, Mauril Bélanger, and I was reasonably comfortable with the Liberal Party’s center-right stance.

On the other hand, I was quite disappointed with Mr. Trudeau’s stance on C-51 and his general lack of charisma. The NDP’s Mr. Mulcair, on the other hand, is quite charismatic, and to the extent that I followed it, his performance as Leader of the Opposition was impressive.

So, I hesitate. Liberal or NDP? I am also inclined to vote “strategically”, as I consider both these parties far preferable to Stephen Harper’s Conservatives. But I’d still like to know what I am voting for.

Which is why, when the link showed up in my Facebook feed, I decided to complete a questionnaire by isidewith.com, only to find out that both the Liberal Party and the NDP are a close match for my political views:

So far so good, but the rest of this list of parties alarms me. A 75% match with the Green Party I can live with, but the Communists, at 70%? What’s wrong with me (or this survey)? If anything, I’d have thought that my views are more Libertarian, but there I only got a 44% match. As for the Conservatives though, the 7% match does not surprise me: as I said above, this party is conservative in name only.

Meanwhile, even as I mull over the pros and cons of voting Liberal vs. NDP, I continue dreaming about a center-right party that favors rational thinking over ideology…

Harper’s cats

Canada, Cats, Personal, Politics 2 Responses »

Aug 082015

Today is International Cat Day (sadly, it is also the anniversary of the death of our beloved cat Szürke).

This means it is also a good opportunity to remind my (Canadian) friends of my Web site, http://catsforharper.ca/, which documents the sins of Stephen Harper’s government, and offers a means to vote by assigning a number of cats (between 1 and 9) that Mr. Harper would need to adopt to atone for each particular political sin.

I chose this whimsical way to express my disagreement with Mr. Harper, in part, because I do not believe in the politics of hate. I do not dislike Mr. Harper; I dislike (some of) his policies, and these are numerous enough for me to hope for either a Liberal or an NDP victory this fall. (Yes, I know, be careful what you wish for and all that…)

In any case, my friends, shame on all of you who have not yet registered, or registered but not yet voted. (Needless to say, if you ran into any technical issues while trying to register or vote, don’t hesitate to let me know. Oh, and in case it needs to be said, only I see your e-mail addresses when you register, and I have no plans to use your addresses to sell you penile enlargements or Nigerian investments.)

Three

Cats, Personal No Responses »

Jul 212015

And now we are down to three cats in the house.

Our long-haired kitty, Fluffy, came to the end of her life today. Having lost nearly all her mobility due to not one but two tumors (one near the heart, another one compressing her spine), and often lying in her own waste in the past week, we came to the conclusion that it was time to let her go.

So today, a very kind and compassionate Dr. Lianna Titcombe of Claire Place Mobile Veterinary Services came to our house and euthanized Fluffy, after we said our final goodbyes.

I knew what was happening, I have been through this before, I know there are people in the world going through suffering unimaginably worse than ours. Yet it still broke my heart.

Fluffy was a stray that we adopted her back in 2008. She looked like a miniature mammoth with her winter fur.

In contrast, yesterday she was more like a rag doll: wherever you put her down, that’s where she stayed, her once luscious fur matted with urine.

But her eyes were still hers. And her purring motor was still in excellent working order. And she still enjoyed the final treat that we gave to her before she was sedated.

Damn, my heart breaks still.

Home office panorama

Computers, Personal No Responses »

Jun 212015

Someone on Quora asked if hackers really need multiple computers. Well… I am not technically a hacker (in the bad sense of the word) as I do not use my skills for illicit purposes, but I certainly have multiple computers, as this panoramic picture taken from my home office chair demonstrates:

Here is what’s in this picture:

Two older, dual-core workstations that I still keep hooked up for test purposes.
A monitor (currently off) with a KVM connecting the four computers on this desk. Under the monitor, three laptops (my current travel laptop, a still more or less current netbook, and an older laptop that I don’t really use anymore.)
Two more computers: my main server and its standby backup. On top, a wireless access point; behind (not visible) two network routers and several concentrators, as well as an older monochrome laser printer. Behind on the floor, there is also a UPS.
Underneath it all: several cardboard boxes containing vintage calculators and various bits of computer parts.
A filing cabinet. (On top, not seen, some radio frequency equipment, a multi-standard VHS VCR that I still occasionally use to digitize old videos, and a turntable record player.)
Several pieces of radio frequency test equipment, owned by one of my clients. On top (not visible) my tablet.
Underneath, my main workstation, with 2×24 TB (mirrored) external storage. A UPS is behind the workstation.
My main monitor and keyboard. Under the monitor, a photo printer, and my old smartphone (still functional, with a data-only SIM card that I keep as a backup Internet connection. My current smartphone is the one I used to take this picture.)
A laser printer and scanner. Underneath, under the desk, some boxes of paper, manuals, etc.
My “hardware” desk, with boxes of parts, a soldering iron, a test power supply, a couple of multimeters and other equipment. Under the desk (not seen) more computer parts and more radio equipment.
My secondary monitor and keyboard. An oscilloscope is sitting under the monitor.
Two more computers: an older Windows 98 machine that I keep around as it can connect to legacy hardware (including the old “winprinter” style laser printer seen here, as well as an EPROM programmer) and a backup of my main workstation. A UPS is also visible.

Not seen in this picture (behind me and/or above) are bookshelves full of technical books and literature, folders containing MSDN subscription CDs/DVDs, three additional older computers (not hooked up, but functional) and additional computer parts, lots of cables, etc.

Most of this equipment is “in use”. Out of the 7 desktop computers shown, three are currently powered (but two are powered 24/7, a server and my main workstation.)

Come, give a kiss to grandpa!

Food, Personal No Responses »

Jun 102015

A great many years ago, my uncle Jóska once played a joke on the family. He found a large utility scrub brush somewhere, and at the most unexpected moments, he held it under your nose and said, “Come, give a kiss to grandpa!”

What he really meant, of course, is that the scrub brush looked like the grandfather of all toothbrushes. Even so, “give a kiss to grandpa” became kind of an inside joke in our family whenever we encountered something that was unusually oversized.

Like an oversized piece of caramel candy.

When I was a child, one of our favorite candies was the “cow caramel” candy, a Polish product, a caramel candy that, unlike most caramel candies, was neither sticky nor chewy; rather, it just crumbled in your mouth without sticking to your teeth or palate. Oh, and it was very tasty, too.

This “cow candy” is still manufactured, and it is routinely available even in Canada at European deli shops. Although we try to keep our candy consumption at a minimum for all the obvious reasons, my wife and I remain regular buyers.

So imagine my surprise when the other day, my wife comes home with the grandfather of cow candies: a giant, mega-size (it says so on the label) cow candy that looks just like the regular cow candy, except that it’s much bigger.

But, I can attest, just as tasty. We cut this one in half and enjoyed it earlier tonight, but not before I snapped a picture, showing the “regular” cow candy and a Canadian quarter for size comparison.

A beautiful mind no more

Mathematics, Personal, Society No Responses »

May 242015

John Forbes Nash Jr. is dead, along with his wife Alicia. They were killed on the New Jersey Turnpike when the taxi, taking them home from the airport, crashed into a guardrail and another vehicle after the driver lost control while trying to pass.

Nash and his wife were returning from Norway, where Nash was one of the recipients of the 2015 Abel prize.

News of this accident made me shudder for another reason. Less than two weeks ago, when I was returning from Dubai, my taxi driver not only answered a call on his cell phone, he even responded to a text while driving. I was too tired to say anything at first and then thankfully he came to his senses… but his behavior made me feel decidedly uncomfortable in his vehicle. Next time, I will not hesitate to tell the taxi driver to stop immediately or call another taxi for me.

Home again…

Aviation, Personal No Responses »

May 142015

I have been neglecting my blog in the past two weeks, but I had a good reason: I was traveling again.

I was once again in Dubai, where I spent some time on the 14th floor of an office building. From that building, I noticed another, very strange edifice with barely a window on its first few floors, and some absolutely giant fans on its roof. I was wondering what it was: a telephone exchange? A data center? No… a central air conditioning plant for a city block. Wow.

Later that evening, we walked to a restaurant in downtown Dubai, and I had a chance to stare at one of the city’s newest attractions (I don’t know how long it has been around, I only just noticed it now), a red streetcar. Lovely.

I only spent a day in Dubai before heading off to Abu Dhabi in a rental car. Rather than purchasing a new GPS (or an expensive map for my old Garmin) I decided to rely on Google Maps on my phone. Not that I really needed to; once I found my way out of Dubai, I was quite familiar with the route and the location of my Abu Dhabi hotel. Indeed, I found the hotel without difficulty, and early next morning, I found myself staring at a surprisingly faint desert sunrise, the Sun obscured by sand and fog:

I spent four days in Abu Dhabi, working hard. Having my own transportation really made things easier, not just to commute back and forth between my hotel and my client’s office, but also to do mundane things like going to a supermarket for some fresh fruit or a bottle of Coke purchased at a tiny fraction of the hotel price.

Four days fly by like nothing, and all too soon, I found myself on the highway again, heading back to Dubai. This time around, I used my phone not just for navigation but also as a dash cam:

This turned out to be a big mistake. Barely more than ten miles from my hotel, just as I was entering the thickest parts of the freeway spaghetti in Dubai, my phone went dark. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why a phone’s battery gets depleted when the phone was plugged in just fine. (I solved the mystery today through some experimentation: the use of two applications, but especially the continuous HD video recording overheated the phone, and it stopped charging the battery as a precaution.) Anyhow, I was left to my own devices, so it was with no small amount of pride when, maybe 20 minutes later, I got out of the rental car in front of my hotel, having found the place from memory, driving through downtown Dubai like a native.

The same evening, I took the rental car back to the Dubai Mall, once again navigating flawlessly to the right parking lot, finding the rental agency’s kiosk, and completing the return of the vehicle exactly as planned, nailing the timing spot on for my next meeting.

The next evening, I once again went to the Dubai Mall, but this time on foot. The hotel is about a mile from the Mall. Normally, walking a mile is no big deal, but try doing it in 36°C weather! I felt very brave. Not only did I walk to the Mall, I also walked back from the Mall, after I did some shopping (some gifts and once again, some groceries). On the way back, I paused for a moment, looking at (and listening to) the cacophony of non-stop large scale construction right across the Mall:

I spent two more days in Dubai, again very busy. On Sunday, I checked out of my hotel, heading to that same 14th floor office again… and en route, I got wet. There was rain! Not a lot of rain to be sure but still, any rain is a delightful experience when you are in one of the driest places of the entire planet.

Finally, Sunday evening arrived and once again I was heading back to Dubai airport. Heading home.

Halfway through the flight, I looked out my window and saw a half moon over a deep blue sky. It was beautiful.

And then, after a grueling 14.5 hour nonstop flight, I was at Washington’s Dulles airport again, going through a surprisingly quick, efficient, and painless border and customs inspection (the concept of international transit does not exist at North American airports.) As I was walking towards my Ottawa departure gate, I encountered a delightful little facility:

Yes, a rest room for canines! As the door was open, I was even able to take a peek, although for some reason, my phone camera was badly out of focus:

Even in this blurry picture though, perhaps it is clear that the room contains a piece of a fence, some fake grass, and a plastic fire hydrant replica, offering maximum comfort for canine companions. It really gave me a good laugh!

And then, after a brief delay (our aircraft was late inbound), I was flying again. Less than 90 minutes later, I was at Ottawa airport, and soon in a taxi, heading home.

And I am still playing catch-up. So many little things pile up in two weeks!

Another good-bye, this time from a cat

Cats, Personal No Responses »

Apr 222015

Alas, Poppy, the 20th century cat, is dead.

We just learned that this beautiful little cat, who stayed with us for a few weeks several times in the past 15 years when her owner was out of town, is gone. She was not young; her exact age was unknown, but she was at least a couple of years old when she was adopted back in 2001. So she was definitely a 20th century cat. While some cats do live 20 years (in rare cases, even 30 years) or more, the average age of a house cat is more like 15 years or so, therefore it is not surprising that it was Poppy’s turn. But sad nonetheless.

Especially sad today, as I learned only a few hours ago that a beloved relative, aunt Éva, wife of my late uncle Jóska, passed away just yesterday, after a brief illness.

Here is the last picture of Poppy that I took, less than nine months ago when she was in our house for the very last time:

Poppy was one of the most beautiful cats I’ve ever known: tiny, with an asymmetric color pattern dividing her face. It always took a day or two for her to acclimatize (I learned always to release her upstairs, where she felt less trapped) but afterwards, she was friendly, gentle, and got along very well with our own cats, too.

Poppy’s owner used to use a cardboard carrier to transport her. This is what the carrier looked like over 10 years ago:

In the past ten years, I often repaired this carrier using packing tape and even duct tape. Somehow, it managed to hold together. We were wondering if the carrier would outlast the cat. Now we know.

Good-bye, aunt Éva

Personal 1 Response »

Apr 222015

It looks like this is a depressing week of final good-byes in my blog.

I just learned that aunt Éva, wife of my late uncle Jóska, passed away after a brief illness. She was 72.

Aunt Éva was a very private person. I was sure that I had a picture of her somewhere, but I cannot find it anywhere. Perhaps it’s never been digitized? I don’t know.

I last met aunt Éva two years ago, when I was in Budapest for a family visit. We threw a little party at my Mom’s small apartment, and I was delighted when aunt Éva honored us by dropping by briefly. This was a big deal, as she usually avoided such events. I was very grateful that she made an exception to the rule on this one occasion.

I remember her very well, her black hair, her features, her voice. Along with my uncle Jóska, they always treated me like one of their own three children whenever we visited them. I miss both of them.

Android trouble

Communication, Computers, Personal No Responses »

Mar 312015

Last evening, I decided to update my rooted Samsung Galaxy S3 smartphone.

I did not expect to stay awake for much of the night, struggling to revive a “bricked” phone.

In the end, though, all is well: my phone is alive and once again, for the first time since the 4.3 update, it is both rooted and encrypted.

What exactly does LinkedIn know about you?

Internet, Personal No Responses »

Mar 312015

Social networking sites know a lot about you, and LinkedIn is no exception.

The other day, I noticed a cute tool (for all I know, it was around for years; I don’t visit LinkedIn that often) that graphically summarizes my LinkedIn connections. Here it is:

I was a bit surprised by the number of connections I seem to have from the San Francisco Bay area. I am also wondering about the correct interpretation of the Seniority plot. If you have a lot of senior connections, is it because of your own seniority, or is it because these were all your would-be bosses, but you were never able to find a good position and form good relationships with co-workers?

Then again, as far as I can determine, others may not even be able to view this graphic. That is, unless you are silly enough to post it to your blog for the world to see! Oh… what?!

First spring sighting

Cats, Personal No Responses »

Mar 262015

Meet MJ, a neighborhood cat. (Before we learned his name, we called him Pajamas, because of the night attire like appearance of his coat.)

MJ is a famous cat; he even shows up, along with his buddy Misty, on a Google Street View frame.

We’ve known MJ for a decade. He’s a lovely cat. He also likes to explore the neighborhood… even though he lives on the other side of a wider neighborhood street, he regularly appears at our doorstep late evenings, saying hello, sometimes begging for some food.

We haven’t seen MJ since October. He always disappears for the winter months; our guess is that his owners keep him indoors, or perhaps he just doesn’t feel like roaming too far in the dark, icy cold of an Ottawa winter.

But this morning, walking by MJ’s house, I spotted him:

Yay! This is the surest sign yet that spring may happen this year, despite all the snow and ice that still surrounds us. I just hope I’ll soon spot Misty, too. I asked MJ about his buddy, but he wouldn’t say. Hope Misty is okay.

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