Member postings for SillyOldDuffer

My late father, a British electrical engineer, spent much of his career exchanging technical material with the US Navy. In 1970 I remember he and his colleagues getting into a right pickle* when they realised that American manuals referred to electrical earth as "ground". Obviously no true Brit would be able to cope with such an outrageous misuse of the Queen's English! All the manuals would have to be rewritten, just as British spellings like colour in the Harry Potter stories have all been corrected in US editions.

It must have been a generational thing because I, in 1970 only just out of nappies (ahem), was fully aware that electrical ground and earth are exactly the same thing.

English speaking nations choosing alternative words like "fall" for "autumn" is one thing, but I don't understand why we sometimes pronounce the same word in a different way. For instance , why is "buoy" said "boo-ee" in the US when it's "boy" in the UK?

Regards, Dave

* perhaps "getting into a pickle" is a reference to the well known acid bath.

An automated supermarket checkout used the modern equivalent of "Cat in a Bag" / "Pig in a Poke" on me yesterday.

"Unexpected Item in the Bagging Area"

Cheers,

Dave

My experience too but the latest versions are much better.

It's limited compared to a full blown commercial 3D CAD Pacckage but I find it meets my simple needs very well.

I wish it had an Assembly Workbench and that the Drawing Workbench did dimensions.

This took longer to upload than draw:

Sorry about the curious image size problem, assuming that you get what I see!

Cheers,

Dave

Perhaps what happened with "Fast and Loose" and "Let the Cat Out of the Bag" is that someone reused them as a joke. I can well imagine a 19th century humorist realising that Shakespeare could be applied to a belt drive system. Likewise, a sailor spotting a parallel for Cat in a Bag, perhaps he also came up with "not enough room to swing a cat", ho ho.

Wireless pioneers adapted Broadcasting to describe what they were doing with voice radio: the word originally refers to farmers chucking their seed about...

Hi Gordon,

Yes you make a good point. I could pay a private detective to get most of someone's data. Most of us aren't worth the cost of doing that though.

The difference with computers on the internet is that privacy sensitive data can be collected globally, recorded permanently, merged and amalgamated with data from other sources, and then sorted, filtered and analysed at leisure. It's cheap, automatic and impersonal. Much of the activity is no doubt benign, but not everyone in the world can be trusted.

I have a friend who adamantly took the line that no-one would notice that he was online with an un-patched XP system with no virus protection, or firewall. He compounded his problems by giving himself admin privileges and not bothering with a password. He thought a hacker was a spotty youth trying to break into business systems from his back bedroom who wouldn't bother with him. Yes such people exist.

What he actually encountered was a criminal organisation based in Russia that was using a sophisticated distributed worm to internationally scan IP addresses by the million. They were looking for insecure machines. One way of doing this is to send malformed messages over the network to see how the target machine handles the errors. It is usually possible to identify the operating system and version state of the target machine by the way it responds to corrupt messages. You don't know if this is happening or not unless you check. My firewall log shows that my IP address is occasionally been probed unsuccessfully.

Having identified a machine and operating system, the next stage is to run a series of scripts that try known weaknesses. A fairly obvious one is attempt to log in as admin with no password, and if that fails to repeat using each entry in a long list of common passwords. People aren't very imaginative. There's a lot more that can be tried to find an entry point.

My friend logged in one day to find that the baddies had logged in and encrypted his hard drive. They wanted money to unlock it. As he wasn't prepared to give them his account details he lost all the data on the machine and also had to reinstall all his software from scratch. It was a painful lesson.

He wasn't targeted because he was rich, interesting or important. He was identified because he was vulnerable, much as the weaklings in a herd get hunted by lions.

What you do to secure your system, or not, gives it a kind of electronic signature that allows weaklings to be identified. If you have also been unwise enough to store password lists on your machine, or allowed your browser to remember sensitive passwords, you can expect fireworks once they gain access.

This type of attack uses nothing more than computer time. A human is only involved when a break-in is reported. Once they are in, it becomes even more dangerous if the bad guys have access to other information about you. For example, people often use their car registrations as a password because it's easty to remember, and then they use that same password for all their online accounts. More seriously a good understanding of who and what you are and how much wealth you have makes it much easier to con you.

Anyway, I'm simply suggesting that it's prudent to take precautions. Burglars looking for work tend to avoid houses with alarms, good locks, strong right arms, and dogs. It's much the same with well protected computers.

I don't want to panic anyone. Banks, ISPs and other security sensitive services do try quite hard to protect us. The internet is fairly safe as long as we take suitable precautions.

What all this data collection means in terms of civil liberties is another dimension. In the West, despite some obvious exceptions, we are lucky to have better than averagely trustworthy governments. Let's hope they stay that way!

Cheers,

Dave

I have to say thanks to both John and Nick for making me think again about this issue.

My initial reaction was that John's modification of a picture clearly in the public domain wasn't at all unreasonable. But now Nick's explained it from his point of view I've changed my mind.

I suppose changing a digital image isn't really different from altering the sense of a typed post. I would certainly be upset if someone changed "I think MEW is wonderful" to "I think MEW is dreadful", and the new wording was apparently signed by me.

I don't suppose for a moment that John intended to cause offence. And a beneficial side-effect is that I've been educated again by forum opinion.

Regards

Dave

Only too true I'm afraid!

Which reminds me of another mystery. Why does the camera love people like film stars whilst hating me so much? All photos of me have me mid-blink, yawning, looking the wrong way, or apparently competing for first place in a gurning contest. And saying "cheese" makes me even worse.

Dave

Hi Gordon,

My main problem with what Microsoft has done with Windows 10 is that the changes I object to are more or less invisible. An analogy might be the bacteria in that good locking tasty sandwich that might be about to give me the trots!

My life experience is that naivety is high risk, best avoided. One simple way to clarify how you really feel about your computer privacy is to decide how much personal detail you would be content to share with the world by publishing it today on this forum. Now.

You only truly don't have a privacy problem if you are prepared to give us, for example, all the following and more:

• Your full name, age, postal address, telephone number and email addresses
• Your bank sort-codes and account numbers
• Your credit card numbers
• Details of Building Society Accounts and other investments
• The name of your Doctor's surgery and hospital appointments
• A full list any embarrassing medical conditions
• Your political affiliations and religious beliefs
• You and your wife's employment status
• Photographs of your family
• A full list of everything you buy or subscribe to or look at on the Internet
• A full list of all your emails, who they were sent to or came from , and when

I suggest that anyone nervous about that kind of information being harvested whilst they are using their computer should be proactive with their security arrangements. In normal use it takes time and effort to collect personal data: there's no need for us to make it easy.

I use Windows 10 for a number of reasons and rather like it. But it's a particularly strong case of buyer beware. This site seems to cover fixing the Windows 10 privacy issues quite well. None of it is difficult to do.

Lets be careful out there,

Dave

Thanks Nick, as always talent and experience count for a lot.

My own most satisfying images depend heavily on technique rather than talent. They take a fair bit of setting up and often rely heavily on post-processing. Although It's all been done better by someone else I still enjoy startling the family with "how did he do that" photos.

Here's a challenge for AJohnW who has permission do what he likes to any of my pictures: please use this self portrait to make me look like George Clooney

This is an "x-ray" photo of my mobile phone:

And proof that I cannot be trusted with alcohol and an airgun:

Cheers,

Dave

Nick_G's mention of nautical terms reminded me that "a square meal" dates to the thick square wooden plates used by matelots in the sailing navy to eat their lobscouse. The heavy plates were withdrawn because their sharp corners made them a deadly weapon in the hands of the proverbial drunken sailor.

I like Bazyle's notion that we should introduce new ones based on modern engineering. It must be happening already: 24x7; turbo-; high-octane; quantum leap; cyber-;

I went off the rails a bit with my suggestions in yesterday's post but I think there's a cast-iron case for "running like clockwork."

I really should be working...

Dave

Mostly wrong suggestions from me today I think! Sharp as a tack; Nailed it; Highly strung; Railroaded; Right as a trivet; Straight as a die; Razor sharp; Stroppy; Brassy; Burnt out; Hatchet job; and "Nut screws Washer and bolts."

Old jokes are definitely the best.

Pleased to hear from you Jerry and welcome to the forum.

Try to stay away from that domestic machinery that's intruded into your workshop. I'm pretty sure housework isn't allowed in the man cave! You could store swarf in the washing machine though...

Cheers,

Dave.

Nick, I'd be chuffed to bits if I managed to take photos as good as these. I've seen many examples in books and the web of excellent images captured with with modest kit. What's the secret?

Cheers,

Dave

Jason strikes again! I didn't realise that it's not necessary to find true North and true west. Of course half the chord must lie on the centre line. I can't wait to try it!

How about "Nose to the Grindstone", "hammered" and "screwed up"?

Thanks again guys,

Dave

It depends rather on budget and what you intend to photograph.

I take macro photographs, wildlife, family portraits, mount the camera on a microscope, and do flash based high speed photography of things like water droplets splashing. It's not a hobby I throw money at though.

I use a Canon EOS 640. This is a mid-range half-frame digital camera with all the basic controls you are likely to need. I bought it when prices dropped just after Canon brought out its replacement. Like laptops you can save a lot of money by buying last years model. Photographic Magazines will often say what the latest wonder-camera is replacing, and then I looked up what people said on the web about the previous models.

The camera came as a kit with a fairly ordinary 18 to 55mm lens, which goes from a limited wide-angle view to a slight zoom, It's good for general purpose and 'get you started' photography. Because I needed one for a family occasion at the same time I also bought a mid-range flash which is perhaps half as useful as the Canon equivalent for a lot less money. Good enough for me though.

Later on I added a Sigma 70-300mm zoom / macro lens that goes from "wasp inside flower" to "bird on a chimney" type shots. The Sigma is an affordable lens. The image quality is good but more money will get you something that gathers more light, allowing sharper photos of fast moving objects like racing cars. Not important to me so I got the cheaper lens.

Then I bought a 50mm lens. These see the world much like the human eye. The optics are cheap to produce, so you get a very affordable high quality lens good, but not ideal, for portraits. I use mine with a set of macro rings to do extreme close ups of coins. Some kit cameras come with a 50mm lens. I don't think this is a good idea because the range of photo types you can take with it is quite disappointing.

I hanker after a real wide-angle lens, (less than 18mm), but don't really need one. Lots of fun to be had with them though!

If your girlfriend is likely to get seriously serious about photography, a full frame camera is a better bet. This is because full-frame cameras need full-frame lenses. Moving later from half-frame to full frame can be expensive if you have to upgrade a lot of lenses as well.

Photography is another hobby that can get you spending loads of money. A decent camera needs a decent tripod; perhaps a printer, with own-brand ink and good quality paper; slave flashes; lights; books; black cloth; stands; filters; camera axe; nude models; colour corrected monitor; exotic locations, software. (I use gimp rather than Photoshop for photo-editing. Whilst not quite as good as Photoshop it does most things. )

Might be best to start with a basic outfit and then expand it as your interests take you.

Some people get excited about Canon vs Nikon, vs Olympus. My experience is that there isn't much to separate them, at least at my level of interest. Lenses aren't interchangeable between different makes so choose one and stick with 'em.

Enjoy,

Dave

Thanks Muzzer - good advice as always.

I didn't say so in the post, but the point I was aligning was on a 100mm diameter circular plate held by a rotary table. I tried using an edge finder to locate "North" and "West" on the plate but found it difficult to judge when the edge finder was truly at the farthest point on the circle. I admit I gave up too easily, and was left wondering if I'd missed a trick. Is an edge-finder a good tool for this?

I'm a self taught machinist and quite often end up kicking myself when I find out how the experienced chaps do things.

Thanks,

Dave

Hi Bernard,

You just gave me a mild panic attack! It got worse when I tried to prove I knew what I was talking about. Finding nothing but "wigglers" in my various reference books, I was convinced I'd blown a gasket and had somehow imagined the stupid thing was called a wobbler.

Thankfully Chronos came to the rescue. Between them and a stiff sherry I'm feeling better now!

More good news - the missing wobbler pin has been found. Nowhere near where I thought it landed.

Cheers,

Dave

There are lots of examples in ordinary English of technical jargon entering the language. As a "loose cannon" I might "go nuclear", "let off steam", "tune in", be "between the devil and the deep blue sea", or commit myself "lock, stock and barrel".

Yesterday I was aligning my milling machine ready to drill an accurately placed hole. My wobbler was spinning at 2400rpm when I bumped it causing the ball mounted pin to whiz across my garage and disappear into a pile of junk.

After a fruitless search I lost my temper and walked off the job.

Calming down later I realised that I had "thrown a wobbler" in two senses of the phrase!

Does anyone "have the bandwidth" to tell me if the phrase "throwing a wobbler" has an engineering origin or not? Are there any other examples, perhaps "flying off the handle"?

Thanks,

Dave

True, but if you have the Pro version it's probably not worth reverting to 7 unless you have software that won't run on Windows 10.

The reason is that the Pro version is for Business and Government use. These purchasers are not naive and they won't knowingly use software that leaks information. Windows 10 Pro is for the security savvy market, and, so far as I know, it does not have any of the privacy issues bundled with the consumer versions,

Five choices:

1. Pay for Windows 10 Pro
2. Use the free version but take the time and trouble to research and disable undesirable features every time Windows 10 upgrades
3. Take the risk of using the unmodified free version.
4. Switch to something else, like Apple or Linux. Bear in mind that these aren't Microsoft clones, may not do everything you need, and may have other "features" that you don't care for.
5. Choose to block upgrades. This approach is a security risk and, by being out-of-date, might also prevent you loading a much needed application upgrade. The inevitable failure of ageing hardware may give you severe culture shock if after several years, the replacement turns out to have been developed well outside your comfort zone.

What do I do? I own several computers and my solution is a combination of Options 2, 4 and 5.

Nearly all of my computing needs are met by Ubuntu.

The main reasons I use Windows 10 are: certain applications aren't available for Linux (and won't run on wine, the Windows Emulator); or I need to guarantee file compatibility with another Windows user; or new hardware only comes with drivers for Windows 10. I have an old machine dedicated to a single purpose that hasn't been upgraded for nearly 5 years. I never connect it to anything else and there will be serious bother when it breaks.

Cheers,

Dave

Good pics Neil.

Due to Lack of Moral Fibre I gave up astronomy because good seeing only happened for me during cold nights. Neither I or the batteries in my digital camera could cope with it! And even with frame stacking I never got photos as good as yours. I still miss stargazing though

100% cloud cover at the moment with a violent thunderstorm. I doubt anyone round here is looking at the sky tonight.

Cheers,

Dave

I can't spell!

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 27/05/2016 21:29:52

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 27/05/2016 21:30:43