…….

https://youtu.be/jmFr4Z4xFBQ

When I first heard this, I thought it was the national anthem of Israel.

Here is the real thing:

I am a computer scientist. I went to university to learn how to be a computer scientist. Some of the classes I took were named things like “data structures” “FORTRAN IV” “Assembly” and “Compilers”.

I’ve written three compilers, around four or five different interpreters, studied and understand bit manipulation.

I’ve done bit fiddling on a panel of switches to boot a computer.

With all of that, I’m a noob compared to Donald Knuth. This guy wrote the book, literally, on computer science. The Art of Computer Programming is that book.

What is more amazing than writing that book, is how that book came to exist. I’m telling this from memory, so I might get some details wrong.

At the time, the cost of publishing textbooks was high. If you wanted to drive the price up, just add a math formula to your textbook.

That little bit of math could add hundreds of dollars to the cost of making a textbook. Worse, it was typeset manually by people that might not get it right.

Donald didn’t like that. So he decided to just write some software to do it for him. But first, he needed to follow the concepts.

That concept is what we now call “write once”. You don’t define something in two different places. You define it once, and everything is built from that single source.

He wanted to write a program to typeset books that was self documenting and “did the right thing”. So he invented a new language, called “web”. He now needed a program to convert “web” files into something that a computer would understand.

He wrote “tangle”. Tangle takes a .web file and produces a PASCAL file (programming language) and a .tex file. The pascal program that was created can then read the .tex file and produce a typeset book, ready to print.

Donald taught himself typesetting. His programs and books taught me programming.

Donald needed to typeset and then print the book. To typeset the book, he needed to know the fonts that were being used and more than that, he had to know how each glyph in the font was positioned within a rectangle.

So as an example, consider the word “fit”. This word has three characters, but when printed in a professional font, the “fi” characters are combined into a single glyph that looks great to the eye.

Donald went out to get a professional font. Nobody would sell it to him for reasons. So… Donald learned how to create fonts. He invented an entirely new way of describing fonts. And wrote another book in “.web” to create metafont.

The fonts we use today are TrueType Fonts or derivatives of that format. TrueType fonts are based on the metafont format.

This is where I became interested in typesetting and fonts. I learned more than a little bit, and I’m still a noob about it.

Fonts have a purpose. Each font is designed for a particular purpose. For that purpose, they should do a good job.

There are “display” fonts and “text” fonts. Display fonts are used for big things, like headlines. Text fonts are for reading things.

If you look at the characters closely, you might notice that some characters have little “feet” or flourishes on them.

You should see the base on the bottom of the “q”. It has a sort of rounding to it. It flows nicely. These are “serifs”.

This font is based on URW’s New Century SchoolBook font. It is one of the most common fonts used in books. It is an easy-to-read font when you are looking at a wall of text.

When it is enlarged, like the image above, that readability is not as good. When we are using large characters, such as in a banner or headline, we want to use a “sans serif” font. A font without serifs.

The most famous of those is Helvetica. This is owned by Adobe. Microsoft created their version of Helvetica, called “Arial”. There are free versions that look nearly the same.

The default font that this site uses is a sans serif.

As I said the other day, I’m writing software to help with teaching English as a Second Language. We are using some texts designed for different levels. I need to be able to display text in a video meeting that was easy for my students to read.

So I picked one of the ugliest fonts I’ve ever found.

It just looks wrong. It looks like it is melted, it doesn’t have weight in any one direction. Sometimes a stroke is heavy on the left, sometimes on both sides. It is just wrong.

But its purpose is not to be beautiful. Its purpose is to be easy to read. It is.

The font is called “OpenDyslexic”. It is designed to help combat the issues of dyslexia. Since I have dyslexia, I should use it more often. I don’t.

The interesting thing is that all of my students using it were thrilled with it. They found it very readable.

Better still, my wife, the reading specialist, loves it. She loves it enough that she is going to get it installed at her school for her to use with her students.

It was a big week at the Supreme Court. The Court heard its second Second Amendment case in a year. The odds say we should get the opinion sometime around June 2024.

The left is going on about how this will be a slam dunk win for the state and gun infringers everywhere. MSNBC went so far as to say that the conservative court was retreating from Bruen because Bruen was so untenable.

There is very little chance that Bruen will be reversed. Bruen was a slap down of the inferior courts for not doing Heller correctly. What is possible is that we get an opinion that says that a person who is dangerous to himself or others can be disarmed. If that happens, I expect that the court will also specify precisely how a person is judged to be “dangerous”.

Furthermore, the Court may find that there is no history of disarming a person without due process and vacates §922(g)(8).

Of course, the Court could just vacate the Fifth Circuit court’s opinion and remand it with instructions on how to do it “right”.

Regardless, I’m not concerned about the outcome of this case. It will either be a win for The People or an extremely limited opinion. Meanwhile, the state has admitted that the criteria is “dangerous” which might mean that §922(g) gets gutted when the Range case is heard.

I recently picked up a WWII IFAK pouch to go with my WWII web gear for pistol carry. It is barely big enough for an Israeli Combat Bandage or a SWAT-T tourniquet. I’m trying to decide which is the better to have with me all the time.

I’m leaning towards the Israeli Combat Bandage.

On an interesting note, I’ve complained to Hagar that she gets much better engagement on her articles than I do on mine. I spend 3 or 4 hours writing an analysis of a case, and I’m lucky if I get 2 comments. She whips off an article in 30 minutes and has 10+ comments.

She pointed out that my non-legal articles get more feedback.

Yesterday’s rant about some moron thinking he had discovered “The Loophole” had good feedback. It felt nice.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

We look forward to your comments.

One of my clients has a strong base of developers out of his home country. His people are very sharp, very good. They deliver excellent results. If you ever need Drupal developers, I’ll put you in touch with him.

His company works with some of the best educational institutions in the country, delivering top-notch results.

He noticed that some of his developers were having issues with the pronouncing certain words. So at a company-wide meeting, he had a vocabulary list to review. I stepped in it and took over and taught that vocabulary list to the team.

The next meeting, we did a group reading. Again, to build vocabulary and comfort.

This morphed into me teaching multiple session per week of one-on-one lessons.

One minor issue with this is that I want to do it “right”. I went to my wife, a reading specialist, and asked her how to do it better.

She told me.

I looked at how she did it and what she did. Which led me to trying to do it myself.

I am NOT willing to spend two hours in prep to produce the training aids I want.

So, of course, I’m writing software. I’ll spend 120 man-hours building software, so I don’t have to do 20 hours of work.

Sigh.

I’m having a blast doing the lessons, and I am eagerly awaiting the four sessions I’m teaching tomorrow.

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The Hill starts by telling use that the Rahimi case is about “red flag” laws. It isn’t. Of all the dumb takes that they could make, this is likely the dumbest. It does have a strong emotional punch, though.

They attempt to blame “skyrocketing” gun deaths on the opinions of the Supreme Court. How dare the highest court in the land uphold the law of the land?

So the Hill proposes a solution. The states should outlaw (restrict) the sale of guns.

They explain the meaning of the three Second Amendment cases they actually know about:

How about, the court is extremely protective of the law, of the Constitution? The right they are protecting is the Right of The People to Keep and Bear Arms.

But you see, there is a loophole. “Keeping and bearing” arms is not the same as a right to buy or sell arms. Isn’t they smart! When people told their parents that brothers shouldn’t marry sisters, they didn’t expect smarts like The Hill got from that union.

This idiot then suggests that people who want to buy guns just drive over the boarder and buy them in a red state. This person is advocating a felony. You can’t buy a handgun in a different state. Well, you can, but it has to be shipped to a local FFL.

When his uncle and aunt married each other event then, the best part of him ran down his mother’s leg. He seems to think that the [xCite item=”CK44UVC7″ pos=0] should still be good law. Because of “precedent”.

Regardless, I wish Scott Budow, Democratic candidate for New York State Assembly, District 52 all the respect he deserves.

The first couple of times this came on my feed, I was unhappy. “When I die, I don’t wanna go sober.” sounds like such an unhappy ending. My lady said something about how she really liked the song. I had to listen again.

This is not about being an alcoholic.

Later, I stumbled across their video. I smiled all the way through. So many happy people in the crowd. Young, old, children, all swaying, and singing.

A song that reverberates with the crowd.

I hope you enjoy “Sober” by Little Big Town.

Recently, I wrote about my WWII reproduction web gear for around the house carry. The short of it is that I really like it. It is adjustable enough, it is comfortable.

Later this week, I’ll have a period correct medical pouch to go with it. All of this means I’ll have a functional, modernly equipped, WWII rig.

The suspenders are cool. They aren’t adjusted correctly yet because of other issues. When I stand up, I don’t feel like my belt and holster will hit the floor. The load is nicely distributed. They are nice enough that I will likely get a second pair to attach to my cartridge belt. 80 rounds of 30-06 in enblok clips is a charming option.

The mag pouch is a slight problem. It will not hold extended magazines, so I’ve used it with 7 round magazines that match WWII issue. That’s fine. The pouch has two pockets, each pocket will hold two magazines.

This is pretty impressive for the time. It means that an officer with just a side arm was carrying 29 rounds of .45 ACP into battle. Just on their belt.

For me, the location of the pouch is an issue. It slips over the web belt and then snaps to hold it in one location. The pouch is always in the same location, it is not a horrible reach, but it isn’t “right”.

With my modern gear, my magazines are carried on my weak side such that my arm comes back, grabs a magazine and in a smooth motion comes up, presenting the mouth of the magazine to the firearm. Fast and easy.

With the WWII pouch, the movement is to the front left of centerline. Opening the pouch is fast enough, though not as fast as a tension retained magazine. The issue for me is that the motion from there to the pistol is not fluid. There is a twist and jerk that sort of happens. Mostly because the magazine is perpendicular to the magazine well instead of being parallel.

In addition, my dun-lap-over covers the pouch when I’m sitting. I can still get a mag out, but no way I’m getting a mag back into the pouch while seated.

The holster is nice. It seems well enough constructed. It is universal enough to carry just about any type of full-sized pistol.

Now we come to the downside. The bleeping web belt itself.

Do NOT buy a reproduction belt for anything except standing and marching for short periods of time.

It was too thin, it was far too flexible. This meant that the hooks holding the holster to the belt came loose while the belt was attached. More than once, I have stood up, or gotten out of the car, only to find the holster dangling from just one hook. It looks bad and there is a real risk of it falling off entirely. I do not want that to happen.

The second problem with that thin belt is that the holes punched into the canvas for the eyelets will stretch under the load of holster plus 1911. Add to that a bit of torque while sitting, and I’ve had multiple eyelets rip out of the belt after less than two weeks of wear.

I’m now searching for sources for higher quality web belts. I think I’ve found one, but the cost is much higher than I’m ready to pay today.

Original WWII M1936 Webbing Canvas Pistol Belt with M1911 Colt Holster and .45 Colt Magazine Pouch is the version I purchased. Yeah, what was I really expecting for $42?

B.L.U.F.
All about networking. That “and anything else we can think of.”
(??? words)

I was asked to recommend a “Wi-Fi Router”. Unfortunately, that is not a simple question because it has implied assumptions that further complicate it.

So we start with the two primary types of networking, point to point and broadcast.

History

The original “networks” were store and forward point to point. A “message” was created on computer A. Computer A would use a point-to-point connection to transmit the message to computer B. Computer B would store that message until it connected via a point-to-point connection to computer C, wherein it would transmit the message that it had stored to computer C.

These original connections were most often done by “dial up” connections. A “modem” was used to convert digital signals to audio signals. A computer would tell the modem to dial a number, the modem at the other end would answer. The two modems would whistle at each other and communications would begin.

Conceptually, we could consider three different things to be one long piece of wire. The two modems and the telephone system make a long wire. The ability to call different computers is the same as moving the far end of the cable to a different computer.

When computers dedicated more than one port to communications, it became possible to talk to multiple computers at the same time. A computer could be receiving a message from Computer A, while sending a different message to Computer C. Everything was still store and forward.

We then created dedicated computers that had many ports. This allowed that computer to receive and transmit to multiple devices at the other end of the point-to-point connections. We labeled this a “switch”.
Read More

Another week, another change. Hagar finally got me the new fonts. I am responsible for the final look in our header. If you don’t like it, you can say so. If you like it, that would be nice to hear as well.

It has been a long week at this end of the keyboard. The kids cars needed to have their yearly inspection. Blue Haired fairie’s car failed with an “exhaust leak”. That happened for two reasons. Our mechanic had to move on short notice, he is in a different town. He lost his phone number when he moved. We couldn’t find him.

Wife found him. I got an appointment. Ended up having to take kid’s car to be fixed and re-inspected. A few hundred dollars later, it was fixed and passed inspection.

Boy’s car was up later that afternoon. They told him that he needed brake work and new tires. They were getting ready to hand over the car when the left rear brake line let go. Unsafe to travel. I had to drive out to pick him up.

My wife’s car had an ECM failure so was at the dealership being fixed. I came out to find that I had a flat tire on the truck.

In less than 24 hours, 3 out of four vehicles were offline.

We made it through, wife’s care is back. My truck will have a replacement or repair done in the next day. My son’s car should be ready for pickup today.

On top of all of this, I got interested in a couple of my articles and ended up writing until 0100 on one night and 0130 on the next night. I’m running on short sleep right now.

Enough complaining. It is a beautiful day. I have lost enough girth that I can actually practice my draw. I’m working with a shot timer for the first time. I’m only doing 8 rounds a day. It gets me up and outside. All is right with my world.

Now if only the rest of the world was not charging headlong into violence.

(Don’t you hate it when you forget how many days a month has? I do. I accidentally scheduled this for tomorrow)
This has come across my music feed numerous times. By the time Tuesday rolls around, I’ve forgotten what it was I planned to share with you.

I remembered enough to go find it.