Chilly willy today.
It was 40F at midnight, and it isn’t much warmer [41F and 99%RH]. Damp too.
Plenty to do today, but I’m aiming for indoor stuff. I just hurt too bad in the cold and damp. Wife is planning and packing for a girl scout camping trip, and we’re discussing whether to take the Mr Heater Little Buddy or not. If it was today, it would be a sure thing. Given that this is Houston, it might be back to the 80s by next weekend.
I feel like I’m coming down with some sort of chest thing. I was coughing all day yesterday. I feel just a bit ‘not quite right’ in my head and throat. It’s the joy of the season, 40F degree fluctuations in temperature and dampness, combined with too little sleep and I get sick. Kids are back in school, so that vector may be at work too. Joy.
Well, I better get to doing something. I’ve got ebay shipping to do if nothing else.
n
I feel like I’m coming down with some sort of chest thing. I was coughing all day yesterday. I feel just a bit ‘not quite right’ in my head and throat. It’s the joy of the season, 40F degree fluctuations in temperature and dampness, combined with too little sleep and I get sick. Kids are back in school, so that vector may be at work too. Joy.
Flu season has been pretty grim in Austin. My wife’s former employers’ struggles with the exploding caseload led the 10 PM newscast a few weeks ago. If you were at the Goodwill Outlet on 35 in the past few weeks, chances are you picked up something.
If you can access VA benefits, my wife is at the outpatient clinic at the Met Center, just down the street around the corner from the surplus store, a couple of blocks south of 71. Unlike the Indian GPs increasingly staffing the place (cough), she’s full time M-F.
A bit surprisingly, I haven’t been to Austin in a couple of months. I was getting up there about once every 3 weeks on average. I’ve got one item waiting for pickup from TxDOT, but the contact there will hold stuff forever, and even if he doesn’t, it’s too inexpensive to warrant its own trip.
I’ve been hitting my local GW outlet, which is a completely different experience from Austin. Mostly clothes, some housewares, and the occasional surprise.
n
Anyone have an issue with the latest FF update? On my wife’s pc (win7) it continually crashes tabs, and I know that because there is a new tab manager… Mainstream sites too.
n
Anyone have an issue with the latest FF update? On my wife’s pc (win7) it continually crashes tabs, and I know that because there is a new tab manager… Mainstream sites too.
I don’t have a problem on my primary desktop running Firefox 72 on Windows 7, but the machine is pretty old tech — GT240 512 MB GPU and a Q6600 Core2 CPU. I have 16 GB RAM, however.
The only other machine left with Windows 7 is my wife’s 2009 MacBook Pro. I’ll upgrade the Firefox and check later.
In the mean time, try turning off the GPU support in Firefox. You’ll have to dig around for that one.
Driver support for Windows 7, especially for GPUs, has sucked for a while due to the impending EOL situation. I guess Microsoft is serious about Wednesday, but I’m still not 100% convinced.
If it isn’t a company laptop. you’ll have to consider the alternatives if Redmond doesn’t back down on 1/14. My 2007 MacBook Pro runs Pop! OS 18.04 well enough that I didn’t put the machine on EBay for parts.
No flash. Flash is harsh and would need be filter balanced against the incandescent lighting that was being used. Unless I used off camera flash (I have the equipment) there would be a decided lack of shadows making the image appear to be very flat.
As it is I have to do a lot of white balancing and color balancing to make the images look correct. Then because of the high ISO there is some denoising of the images that must be done. Too much and the details blur, too little and the noise becomes objectionable.
Just three spots (one red, two white), same vertical axis, about 20 degree angle to the stage, stage left (my right). Not very well lit, ISO 4000, about 1/200, f 2.0 on an equivalent 200 mm lens, handheld. Very small venue. Close to the stage, slightly stage left as that is where the aisle is located and where the lights are located.
At one time was an old garage that has been converted into small theater, a couple of meeting rooms, etc. Small town stuff. The chap guiding the entire operation has done an outstanding job.
And a correction on the movie title, “Runnin’ from My Roots”. I was incorrect in my original post.
As it is I have to do a lot of white balancing and color balancing to make the images look correct. Then because of the high ISO there is some denoising of the images that must be done. Too much and the details blur, too little and the noise becomes objectionable.
They need you on “Doctor Who”. The photography on the season premiere was awful, particularly the moment when the Doctor delivers the “Doctor. The Doctor” line in an episode designed to be a James Bond riff.
I don’t have a problem on my primary desktop running Firefox 72 on Windows 7, but the machine is pretty old tech — GT240 512 MB GPU and a Q6600 Core2 CPU. I have 16 GB RAM, however.
UPDATE: I’m seeing some weirdness from Firefox 72 on my primary desktop booted into Linux Mint 19.3 this afternoon in order to build LineageOS for my corporate-free phone. As soon as I allowed the browser update to happen, responsiveness on the restarted Firefox went down. Video playback is very weird.
To be fair, it could be the Android build consuming CPU time. Memory is not a problem on this machine, however, and swap isn’t even touched.
Isn’t the Firefox browser the one under attack and recommended to update ASAP?
From @ayj yesterday:
question, why the conversion? do you plan to maintain software in 2040? your childrens are in that business?
Planning to be bought? Technical people doesnt decide that, financial people do, and, they dont care if it is COBOL, Fortran II or Ruby on Rails, whatever.
my two cents only, remember, since W2K nothing relevant changed on Windows, except, how they charge you, and since SAGE, on IT maybe
CPU and compiler technology has changed significantly in the last 20+ years. The Intel cpu comes with very impressive double precision vector processors built into it for some incredible speedups. Our software could take advantage of this, perhaps a significant speedup. But we are stuck on an old Fortran 77 compiler because the new Fortran compilers are crap and not very backwards compatible.
And as far as accountants running a business, see Boeing for some very bad decisions over the last decade. Accountants will drive a company to the bottom, engineers will drive a company down the road.
And yes, I plan to be working on our software in 2040. I’ve been working on it since 1975. Actually, I started putting together the three ring binder user manuals with all the tabs for a quarter ($0.25) each in 1973.
No problems with FireFox here on my Win10 machine. Lots of tabs open, everything is just fine. Have the latest FF with the emergency update – 72.0.1 .
Over The Hedge: Hot Tubbing
https://www.gocomics.com/overthehedge/2020/01/12
Is any one wearing swim suits ?
Lynn
forgive me, it was only my two cents on items that nobody ask me, but, (yes but) I have friends with the same business (not plant simulators or similar, business ERP) and they face the same thing, they made it with Delphi etc etc, and the question is relevant 2040? yes, ok.
We here are all old farts (nice colloquial thing) and for me only, I dont think I will be working on this on 2040, 82 years? no way maybe you are younger.
I know compilers etc etc, again, time ago I asked you about a one year project without revenue, we agreed that it was not a project, it was hobby, question is, improving is going to generate more revenue or to maintain busy and happy your developers? )
I had IT people and time to time I made the latter.
My wife, practical as all woman, said time ago and repeat every time, if you are not rich now, you are not going to be rich in the future, so, enjoy.
But, again, nobody requested my opinion, forget
Thanks, Ray. When I commented last night, I looked at the pictures on my phone, which has a very good display, but of course small. Just now, I looked on my desktop monitor, which is also good, and lots bigger. Excellent pictures, especially under the conditions.
I really didn’t think you used flash, but sometimes stage lighting can be harsh, and flash can fill the shadows. I agree that it tends to flatten the light, but most people are so used to looking at people in pictures with a high ratio of front light that photographers get complaints when more dramatic lighting is used. I think these pictures are just what people should see.
The lighting you describe is remarkable. I went back and looked for evidence of the red light, but couldn’t find it. Doesn’t mean it isn’t there. I was never good at stage lighting, but small amounts of red can make faces look good without shifting the balance too much. At least as far as the eye is concerned. Photography might be another issue. I have never done any serious stage photography.
I used to try to advise amateur photographers to use fill flash if they were forced to photograph faces in direct sunlight. Some actually listened. Now, of course, even point and shoot cameras have modes that make this easy.
The pictures I see now of families and senior photo shoots are orange. Seems to be a trend. Of course anyone with a camera, heavy vignette, with blurring is now a photographer. Get oddball colors and just convert to B/W and everyone is amazed. I convert to B/W because I like the effect at times.
But the orange, seriously? I guess my Kodachrome background taints my desires. I like to strive for accurate color.
orgive me, it was only my two cents on items that nobody ask me, but, (yes but) I have friends with the same business (not plant simulators or similar, business ERP) and they face the same thing, they made it with Delphi etc etc, and the question is relevant 2040? yes, ok.
We here are all old farts (nice colloquial thing) and for me only, I dont think I will be working on this on 2040, 82 years? no way maybe you are younger.
I know compilers etc etc, again, time ago I asked you about a one year project without revenue, we agreed that it was not a project, it was hobby, question is, improving is going to generate more revenue or to maintain busy and happy your developers? )
No worries, comments are constructive !
Yup, I will be 60 in a couple of months. Getting old !
I would really love to convert the 850,000 of F77 code to C++. Really C with a few C++ items such as references, etc. But the beginning index change of 1 to 0 is a potential killer. I have been meaning to check out fable but have yet to try it out.
http://cci.lbl.gov/fable/
We make seven figures of income off this software per year. If we are not continuously working on it then it will decay.
My wife, practical as all woman, said time ago and repeat every time, if you are not rich now, you are not going to be rich in the future, so, enjoy.
I am not sure what rich is. I am making more money now from two of my businesses than I ever imagined. I can always spend more though.
I would really love to convert the 850,000 of F77 code to C++. Really C with a few C++ items such as references, etc. But the beginning index change of 1 to 0 is a potential killer. I have been meaning to check out fable but have yet to try it out.
Python 2.x went EOL at the beginning of the year. Like a lot of Python 2.x projects it looks like the Fable people decided that a Python 3.x port wasn’t worth the effort.
We had to eat the cost of leaving scons because that developer didn’t want to mess with converting Python 2 to 3.
No problems with FireFox here on my Win10 machine. Lots of tabs open, everything is just fine. Have the latest FF with the emergency update – 72.0.1 .
I haven’t seen anything odd on my Windows 10 laptops with 72.0.1.
Firefox uses the GPU by default, and it is sensitive to video card driver quality.
I’ve noticed that NVIDIA in particular has given Windows 7 short shrift since the speculative execution bugs surfaced. Older drivers were not updated to compensate for the changes to the CPU drivers Microsoft sent out over the last couple of years.
I am not sure what rich is. I am making more money now from two of my businesses than I ever imagined. I can always spend more though.
During the 2008 election, my weed head partner at the Death Star was being a jerk (well, more than usual), implying that I was not into the impending Immaculation because of what my wife did for a living, making us “rich”.
He nearly passed out when I responded by showing him that most of us who worked on the floor were in the top 7% percent of taxpayers and that he was in the top 6% because his paygrade was a notch above mine. I think he’s still in denial about the tax increase he received from Obama as a “rich” person.
CPU and compiler technology has changed significantly in the last 20+ years. The Intel cpu comes with very impressive double precision vector processors built into it for some incredible speedups. Our software could take advantage of this, perhaps a significant speedup. But we are stuck on an old Fortran 77 compiler because the new Fortran compilers are crap and not very backwards compatible.
You need to get the intern working on the Linux port.
RHEL 7 would be a good target, but the current Fedora would let you experiment with the very latest compiler tech.
We had to eat the cost of leaving scons because that developer didn’t want to mess with converting Python 2 to 3.
scons ?
CPU and compiler technology has changed significantly in the last 20+ years. The Intel cpu comes with very impressive double precision vector processors built into it for some incredible speedups. Our software could take advantage of this, perhaps a significant speedup. But we are stuck on an old Fortran 77 compiler because the new Fortran compilers are crap and not very backwards compatible.
You need to get the intern working on the Linux port.
RHEL 7 would be a good target, but the current Fedora would let you experiment with the very latest compiler tech.
The world is not moving to Linux desktops. The world is moving to mobile.
And we can port our calculation engine back to Unix any day of the week. We used to support it on HP-UX, SunOS, RS/6000, and Apollo Domain using the f77 and cc compilers. The user interface is a whole nother matter since it is hard linked to the Win32 API.
These guys are running ads in security magazines–
https://www.firstrespondertech.com/public-security-market/
They promise
There is a serious lack of detail on their pages though.
One of their other products is a “short term” pepper spray, and they’re working on a pepper spray antidote. I’ll believe those when I see them, and likely before wifi based explosives detection…
n
Shortwave is pretty good tonight. If the online guide is reliable, I’m getting stations out of India, Cuba and Tennessee are booming in.
The whole low end of the dial is alive.
n