Category: Random Nonsense

Sometimes I just feel compelled to share nonsense, random thoughts, and sometimes just stuff I want to save

Old DVD player – what should I salvage?

We own two DVD players.  Well, three.  Well, four – but one is a portable DVD player for trips and one is a replacement for one of the first two.   The first two are really old – and were just failing.  They had problems loading DVD’s or just even turning on.  I was curious what I would find inside.

Of interest I found a bunch of small motors, a few LED’s, springs, magnets, tiny mirrors, rubber belts and super tiny precision rods.

There are obviously lots of little capacitors and whatnot.  What else should I pull out of these things?

Note to self

If I could send a message to myself when I was a kid, to blow my own mind, here’s what I would tell myself:

One day you will own several computers known as “laptops,” the least of which is more powerful than the biggest most bad ass mainframe under the control of any company or government.  You will own a telephone/movie and music player/computer that can wirelessly communicate with anyone in the world who also has a similar device, which is pretty much everyone.  That telephone/computer will be so small you can carry it in your pocket.  It will have enough “hard drive” capacity to hold every song on every single cassette tape you own, more processing power than your IBM, and better resolution than your monitor or television.  It will be able to pinpoint your location anywhere in the world and give you real time directions to anywhere.  You will have cable TV that plays Doctor Who at least three times a day.  You will have a machine that will automatically archive those shows for you.  Your “laptops” and phone will be able to access something called the internet.  It’s like a BBS system – only nearly every computer in the world is interconnected.  You will be able to look up any fact about anything at all on your phone.  There will exist affordable robots that can make anything you wish out plastic, just draw it on your computer and send it to your robot.  You will own TWO of them.

Wibbly wobbly timey wimey.  (That will make sense one day).

Playing chicken

Marty, STOP READING NOW.

is selling over at Amazon – but as I procrastinate purchasing it, the price has been falling.  From about $60 to $52 – with the non-Amazon options as low as $42 or so with shipping.

So, do I pull the trigger now or wait for it to drop a little more?  I don’t often buy DVD’s what with a Netflix subscription and all.  But, any time I have watched a movie (or show) more than a few times, it’s probably worth having a copy.  I’m not a completist or collector – I don’t own any other seasons, but this last one has been so freaking good.

Facebook, why are you so damned creepy?

It seems every time I visit a website it already knows my name.

When I walk into a favorite lunch hang out and I’m greeted by name, that’s nice.

When I walk into a store I’ve never been in before and they greet me by name and drop the names of a few friends…  well, I get a creepy icky feeling and want to leave.

Default Series Title

Occupational Hazards

I love coming up with ideas, poking holes in those ideas, and trying to think of every way I can to make the idea fail.  For even more fun, I like to try to twist ideas into things that they were never really meant to be.  If an idea stands to that kind of poking and prodding, maybe it isn’t so bad.  Playing my own devil’s advocate, as it were.  I find this activity endlessly entertaining.  It’s like a little game – Can I disprove the idea?  Can I find an exception?  Can I twist it so that it does something more or different than intended?  Are one of these failure modes more interesting than the intended purpose?

So much so that I feel compelled to do it all the time – even with other people’s ideas.  Ideas can be like children and people can be similarly possessive or protective of them.  So, I suppose it’s not entirely surprising that this little game of mine isn’t always welcome.

Why do I mention any of this?

Upon seeing the phrase, “only good things come from CC” I was immediately tempted to think of the most evil possible application of CC.1

  1. Sorry @kio! [↩]

Brute force

So, a brute force password attack would mean trying every combination of keys until you hit upon the proper combination for a password.

Here’s the stupidest, but cool in a bloody-minded sort of way, use a possible OpenSCAD randomizing function:

A script that generates a pile of random keys so you can brute force attack a lock.1

  1. See?!  I can think of a frivolous use for anything! [↩]

OpenSCAD and randomness

A quick google search tells me that OpenSCAD doesn’t have a random number generator.  That’s a bit of a bummer.  I was just thinking how cool it would be to have an OpenSCAD file that would give you little variations on itself every time you generated an STL.  I’m thinking snowflakes, giant fingerprints, and other things that have a little bit of chance and chaos built in.

Or, perhaps some kind of Mad Libs-esque system where you tell it to create an alien or monster figure and you get a random number of eyes, heads, noses, arms, legs, and tails.

Now, I figure with CloudSCAD it wouldn’t be terribly difficult to add a little bit of javascript that can include a random number with given parameters…  So, it’s at least possible.