Author Archives: bluedepth

White Christmas?

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Today in Kalamazoo Michigan we have a high of 43 and a low of 28. There is no snowpack on the ground, the ground is bare. Again we have a no-snow Christmas. We’ve had these for a few years now, and looking at the forecast, by Sunday we’ll have a high of 57 degrees and it’ll rain.

Things that used to be aren’t any longer, the seasons are shifting around, and even our USDA zone is changing and has over the past few years. More than that, you can feel that something is terribly wrong with the world. You can see it in the people, you can see it in the sky, the weather, the birds, and the remarkable and tragic lack of any sort of insect out there.

This is the season of hope and wonder, so I won’t harsh it, but we all know deep down what I would write if it wasn’t the holiday season.

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Yesterday at work I was laughing with a coworker about seeking out a baby name. It struck me that I haven’t used bibliomancy in a long while. That’s a kind of fortune-telling with a dictionary. You close your eyes, grab a nice big dictionary, open it to a random page, point at a random spot and then look. Yesterday’s word was hoof. LOL. Todays word? Nadir. So there you have it, the lowest point or the point opposite to where the top-most point is, depending. What does it mean? Maybe the meaning will become clear in time. Or not.

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Now that I’ve been censored and gagged on Facebook, I thought I would revisit the challenge of creating a page which only featured statuses, the shorter versions of things that I post, informal with looser English than my usual long-form entries. They all should appear under the “Chatter” menu on the main page of my blog. This I suppose will be a test of that feature.

Alternatives

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Censorship reminds me that there are a few things really worth buying into for your online peace of mind. The first is a VPN. You should not connect to the Internet without a VPN. There are many great options to choose from, there is NordVPN and Private Internet Access, or PIA. I strongly suggest that people buy a year’s worth of service from a VPN provider and then connect to it every time you use the network.

I also can strongly suggest that people download the Signal application on your Smartphone or Tablet. Signal uses End-to-End Encryption so that whatever you want to talk about is secured from your device to the other device, preventing anyone on the network who may be snooping in, from reading your private conversations.

Since Twitter censored one of my tweets, which resulted in me losing faith in their service, I downloaded the entire Twitter archive for my account and then I set virtual fire to it, burning it to the ground. I then (mostly) left Facebook and found a different community in the Federated Universe or Fediverse based on ActivityPub technology, specifically the Mastodon system. Mastodon is a lot like Twitter, only with better filters and controls and a generally better group of people. After Facebook slapped their gag on me, I went right over to my Mastodon instances and laughed it up.

It goes without saying that everyone should get at least some rudimentary apps for your privacy downloaded into your phone and set up. If you install Signal, it will offer to show you people on the system who are registered, and I will pop right up!

Another Smartphone app that is worth your while is Bridgefy. It allows you to use Bluetooth as a short-range communications radio, about 30 feet. The neat part of Bridgefy is that it creates a Bluetooth Mesh, allowing messages to spread across Bluetooth from participant to participant, so if you are in close proximity with others, and everyone has Bridgefy, you can have an ad-hoc mesh network where you can communicate with your phones without the need of the Internet. This is really important if the government or the Internet providers try to control the flow of information by active denial of service. While the Internet provider can simply just turn off their data services, they cannot touch Bluetooth radio. The Bridgefy app really leverages large populations of people, enabling long-range communications over the mesh network. It is really something everyone should have, just in case.

Censored and Silenced on Facebook

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Today on Facebook I posted a share to my Friends of Friends about how I had suspected that a thick stripe of politically motivated sponsored stories on my Facebook feed had appeared, and that I suspected them all of being Russian trolls. Ever since 2016, when Facebook was the fertile ground for the first Russian meddling in our presidential election, and then there was Cambridge Analytica, that now when I spot a political sponsored post, I immediately suspect Russian meddling.

Russia attacked my country. A silent war, not a shot fired, but it was Russia none the less. And so, in the spirit of that attack, on Facebook, I referred to them as “Filthy Russians”, because they meddled where they should not have. I don’t need to prove the meddling, Robert Mueller did that in his report, after all. Everyone can see it for themselves. So, this phrase, “Filthy Russians” was flagged by Facebook as hate speech.

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Here it is, the service I hate to use slapping me with a gag for 24 hours. I regard this as a badge of pride. Facebook was the platform that refuses to take responsibility for Russian meddling, they are the ones at the center of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and here they are silencing me as I call out Russian trolls who are just starting to ramp up their attacks on my country again, now that we are on the edge of 2020.

I have let my blog go fallow for far too long. As I was considering this image from Facebook, it struck me that it would be a great conversation piece to start talking about defending ourselves against Russian aggression. But how would we start to defend ourselves? A great place to start is having everyone who is going to have a sponsored page on Facebook register their citizenship with the service so that we can see if the source of the sponsored messaging come from our fellow Americans, or say, as we suspect, from Russian trolls. I think that would be a great place to start.

So I can browse through Facebook, but I cannot comment or post for the next 24 hours. Fine. I can of course post on my blog whenever I feel the whim and nobody can slap a gag on this blog. I have been kicking around the notion of sharing from the blog and posting links to Facebook anyways. I pay for this after all, why not make more use of it?

The Future of Power?

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The California PG&E outage is a clear note about what happens when you ignore your infrastructure and you don’t have a regular preventative maintenance schedule. PM can cost a lot, but as we see in California, does it really?

I started wondering about alternatives to high tension power lines in California. You couldn’t really bury any of it, with so many quakes, maybe. So what else? Microwave transmission? Maybe make it auto-aiming so if there is a quake and the tower moves a little, it can reacquire the source faster? Or perhaps spread out the generation stations, like solar reflector installations, to distribute the load and increase the production rate…

But then these ideas lead me to truly knackers ideas. If you are going to go this far, why not just also install immense Tesla coils and then outfit cars with wireless AC receivers and then the entire automobile fleet can be electric and not need charging, since you can skip batteries, it’s much easier and cheaper.

But if we did — then we might be able to use addressable frequencies per vehicle or overlay a data stream on top of the power itself, so a car that did a hit and run or is involved in an OJ chase could be remotely turned off. But man, with enough coils dotting the landscape, powered by solar reflector stations you could drive from coast to coast with ease. We could possibly make covered tunneled roadways and then increase the speed, then automate the entire thing so after you get past human reaction limits, your car can accelerate to a comfy cruising speed of 350mph or higher.

I want to trade an immense battery bank for honeycombed graphene and kevlar car bodies so I’m traveling safely even if I impact at ridiculously high speeds. Or I want a car that automatically fills with a gassy rubber filler and ejects the passenger compartment upon a catastrophic impact event, like we have with fighter jet ejection systems. And an adorable theme-able packed parachute, maybe Hello Kitty? 😉

But an entire truck fleet that is automated and powered by solar reflector stations and tesla coils. Zero emissions. Poof, just like that. I suppose I like solar reflectors more because they mean business. Plus you could put the parabolic mirrors on gantries say twenty feet up, and then have open pasture underneath for cows, chickens, and sheep. Or grow shade-happy crops?

These power stations might, if there are enough of them, raise the albedo of the local area and then you nip greenhouse effect at the beginning of the cycle. You’re channeling the incoming solar radiation elsewhere. It isn’t heating up water or pavement or farmland. It’s being soaked up by hungry devices like trucks and cars and trains.

I sort of wonder what an airplane with a wireless AC box would look like? Different jet technology, based on electrics not on jet fuel. And the tons of carbon saved. You could replace the jet fuel with new safety equipment, like foam bursters and ejection systems in case of some sort of failure in the air. The plane just falls apart, the cabin fills with sticky goop, and it parachutes to earth safely.

We would be free of oil completely. It would rewrite the entire narrative.

Apple iOS 13 or How To Kill An App

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Apple released iOS 13.0 a few days ago, and then a series of iterative updates from there. The last I checked, we are now up to iOS 13.1.2. They have updated the Reminders app, and in doing so, and making the updates non-functional across their entire platform across the version barrier of iOS 12 and 13, iOS on iPad and iPadOS, and Mojave/Catalina they have, with a single stroke, killed their Reminders app for me. I was looking forward to the update to Reminders, maybe replacing the rather dull Toodledo app on my devices, and then they did it. Reminders only works if you “Convert” and if you do, it’s a one way deal. So now there is little to no point in actually using Reminders since it doesn’t work everywhere I am any longer, but it does push me further into using Toodledo and reinforces my purchase of another year of premium service with Toodledo.

I have just fielded a question about Exchange and sent items in iOS 13. It appears that iOS may not be successfully chaining Exchange emails into conversations. I will have to look into that today.

Chesapeake Beard Company’s Mercury Beard Balm, 2oz.

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I encountered the Chesapeake Beard Company during a beard competition event at the Old Dog Tavern here in Kalamazoo, Michigan. They had a table set up, and they had an array of products available. Amongst all of their products, the Mercury line appealed the most. I bought both the oil and the balm, but the scents are nearly the same, so I’m only reviewing the balm. The product comes in a glass jar with a plastic lid. The balm is waxy, yellow in color and has the same consistency as the Viking Revolution balms, slightly firmer than Honest Amish and somewhat looser than the Reuzel.

The scent is the strongest of all my balms and oils and the fellow selling the product sold it as a homage to Freddie Mercury, that one of his favored drinks was a kind of Cherry and Rum flavored cocktail. This balm screams black cherry and a light undercurrent of rum running underneath. The fragrance is amazingly strong and has significant staying power. They use fragrance oils instead of other more easily diffused scents like linalool or vanillin. Much like how Honest Amish is an “exploding pumpkin pie,” Mercury by Chesapeake Beard is an exploding cherry pie. The scent is overwhelming and delightful. You likely wouldn’t use this balm if you were attempting a formal dress event where strong fragrances are frowned upon, but if you were in any other situation, this balm would be a home run. If you like cherries or if someone you know prefers cherries, this balm might be the perfect way to condition your beard and have a wonderful experience along for fun. I estimate that the fragrance lasts at least three to four hours long, significantly longer than any other balm, except perhaps the Honest Amish one.

It is worthwhile to note that they have renamed this product to Rhapsody, but they do include the old name, Mercury, on their website.

Reuzel Wood and Spice Beard Balm, 1.3oz

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The Reuzel Wood and Spice Beard Balm is a brand new fragrance from the Reuzel company. They immediately get top-choice amongst my beard products because they were the first ones I had, and they have performed admirably for me. The tin is just like the standard Reuzel, a screw-top aluminum canister with the product within. The Reuzel Wood and Spice Balm, much like its predecessor, suffers from the same unusual crystallization in the wax that the standard Reuzel suffers from. The solution is to warm Reuzel products up to melting and then let them gently cool. This fixes the problem for both the standard Reuzel and this one. The front has the recognizable Dutch pirate and on the back the ingredient list.

The balm itself is stiff, waxy, and quite solid. It scrapes with the back of the thumbnail readily and melts with ease when you work it in your hands. The color is bisque, and the scent is wonderful and subtle. The fragrance is warm with vanilla, wood scents, and spiciness that lends a kind of forest-guide warmth to the user. There are notes of butterscotch as well, which really appeals to me. It is a remarkable departure from the standard Reuzel fragrance, but still quite pleasant to use.

When pairing this balm with oil, either unscented, which would be best, or even the Honest Amish Premium Oil would work as both have notes of woodsy warmth that would compliment each other nicely. I can definitely see this becoming a standard entry in my beard care kit.

Bossman Magic Beard Balm, 2oz.

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Bossman Magic Beard Balm comes in a tin container, two ounces, much like all the other balms that I have reviewed. The product is not tested on animals, made in the United States, Austin, Texas, to be specific, and is made of only natural ingredients. The tin has labels on the obverse and reverse with directions and ingredients clearly written out. The tin itself doesn’t have screw grooves, so it is only secured by friction, this is not a problem when it comes to balms that I have experienced.

The balm is paper white in color and the scent, “Magic” smells clean and soapy, with notes of warmth, exuding cleanliness. The consistency is waxy, and the top lid claims that it will actively relax beard hairs. I’ve found it to be delightful to use, the scent lasts about an hour or so, and it has done well for my uses. This scent would pair best with unscented beard oil, and not a scented one unless it would be paired by a beard oil from Bossman themselves with matching scents.

I am looking forward to exploring more of the scents that Bossman sells, they have a four-scent pallette where Magic is just one of the available kinds. They also make a beard wash and beard oil, but I haven’t tested either yet.