BlogDogIt

In preparing to erect a random length, long-wire antenna (to enable consumption of shortwave radio waves) I was thinking that, when the time comes to actually hear the world, it might be fun to record some of the SWL sessions on the off-chance I catch a prize.

It would be nice if I could come up with something to share at The Shortwave Radio Audio Archive someday. I am also looking forward to further investigations of the HFUnderground website for some tips on where to fish in this sea of frequencies.

I was counting on using an old laptop recently equipped with Fedora 28 and Audacity recording software but right-off-the-bat I discoved a problem: the laptop had only a microphone jack for input. In order to tap directly into the audio signal that drives the radio speakers there needed to be an "AUX" or "Line-In" connection. If I were to try plugging the radio's audio signal into the microphone input of the computer it would overload the input circuit and the resulting recording would be very bad indeed. However, if I were to turn the volume on the radio way, way, way, way down I might accidentally be able to record something but I would like to be able to listen as well as record.

I know, I could buy a USB external sound card and gain the needed "Line-In" port for like 30 bucks but I wondered if my dilemma could be easily solved using what I already had on hand. An investigation led me to learn of the need for "attenuator circuitry"; an electrical way to drop the power of the radio audio to levels more amenable to the microphone input of the laptop.

Talk about a "rabbit hole"... serious audiophiles and electronics engineers abound on the internet and detailed information for building the most perfect attenuator possible is readily available to anyone willing to study. I was just looking for the bubblegum-and-bailing-wire solution but sadly this was a case of finding #TMI (too much information.)

Thanks to Rick Chinn http://www.uneeda-audio.com/pads/ for breaking it down nicely enough for me to find just enough information to decide how I'd do it. If you are like me and believe "if it's on the internet it must be true"™ then here is one more bit to throw on the pile:

In the interest of full disclosure: I have not used this device to do anything but create this spiffy graphic, but according to what I have learned, I can't imagine this would not do what I need. In the mean time I have decided to pull into service an old Windows XP machine with a proper SoundBlaster card for the recording job. Some day I hope to actually test this circuit and let you know how it does - or if you try it out first let me know how it did. #NotRocketScience
 

I promised a follow-up article to "The Truth About God" and although I know (pretty much) the ideas I wish to convey, the approach to doing so has been somewhat elusive. With today being officially "Freethought Day," I figured it best to simply begin the task and work my way toward the end. To wit...

A proposed discussion of God will probably elicit eye-rolls from the vast majority of potential readers while a minority might actually be intrigued. Those with long-held traditional beliefs may have zero desire to explore what others of differing ideals would have to say on the subject of a "Supreme Being."

Religion is big business. There seem to be more religious based institutions and houses-of-worship than coffee shops, which suggests to me that folks must need their God as much as (if not more than) their coffee. Like coffee, God seems to be available in several popular flavors: from the trendy to the traditional, chances are somebody, somewhere has a God for you.

It is this apparent discrepancy in God's identity that no doubt, turns many people away from a quest for the truth about God. With so many options on what to believe, many have determined the "safe bet" is to disregard the whole debate and live their lives like none of this matters. Others of course, will cling to their beliefs like nothing else matters. The fact of the matter is that God is Real whether we believe in Him or not .

Him. So many talk about God in the third person; like "He" is somehow apart from mankind. Big Bossman God, watching over his creation just waiting for someone to screw-up his hard work. "He sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake, he knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake." Oh wait, that's Santa Clause... "meh, same difference," some would say. Me? I really don't think God is that cute or concise.

I say God is REAL. More properly God is Reality; God is the reason for Reality. So many believers speak of God as existing somewhere "out there" - separate from "His Creation" - This cannot be. For God to be the Supreme, "He" must encompass the outermost. (Now stick with me here...) If it were possible for God to create a dwelling place that existed apart from his own essence then the space which contains that place would be greater than He. Therefor, "Everything that exists does so within this Supreme Being." Any quest for truth must begin with this undeniable fact.

Another essential fact - often overlooked, surprisingly - is that our existence is a series of consecutive "NOW" moments in time. Nothing can ever be any different than it is in each moment. A recognition of expectation that the next moment "will be" is perhaps the quintessential, defining characteristic of humanity.

Science has made tremendous strides in defining the boundaries of our universal existence to the extent of our ability to perceive. Religious beliefs are a testament to many aspects of our reality which are beyond our ability to readily perceive. A recognition that we all exist within the Reality that is God will go a long way toward understanding the truth of human equality and should bolster the cause of "COEXIST" - as if it were even a choice.

     Do you believe in God?  Yes   No   Unsure

Regardless of how you answer this question, mankind has found it desirable for you to be identified with one of these labels:

• If you answer "Yes" you are considered a Theist.
• If you answer "No" you are an considered an Atheist.
• If you answer "Unsure" you are considered Agnostic.

Given this reality:

• Many theist will have the unwavering opinion that their beliefs are true and those who do not agree are somehow wrong (or at the very least misguided.)
• Many atheist will have the unwavering opinion that their beliefs are true and those who do not agree are somehow wrong (or at the very least misguided.)
• Many agnostics will have the unwavering opinion that their beliefs are true and those who do not agree are somehow wrong (or at the very least misguided.)

This may be the one religious "Trio" we can all agree on.

A realistic examination of a human being's existence will show that any one of these labels may well be applicable to an individual at any given moment. Labels can shift when the devout worshiper has a moment of doubt or a died-in-the-wool atheist is caused to wonder (if even for an instant,) when the agnostic feels a pull from one side to the other for instance. This is certainly a topic that has worked to shape human civilization throughout history and affects us all (for better or worse) on a daily basis.

One troubling aspect of the entire debate - if we can at least agree on the "debatability" of God's existence - are the great many defining characteristics ascribed to the role of a "Supreme Deity." Whether known as God, Allah, Jesus, Mohamed, Buddha, Vishnu, Yahweh, Zeus, Jupiter, Allah, Xavier, Waheguru, Jah, Ngai, Baal or countless other "handles", people around the world have found at least some benefit in the recognition of forces that permeate the universe which appear greater than what can be entirely comprehended by mere mortals. Even the unbelieving atheist is not generally willing to disregard the fact that science, in its attempts to explain all that is, falls short in a great many troubling ways.

Many folks simply take it on "faith" that their God is real. Many claim to be looking for signs or proof before they will subscribe to such notions. Still others will entirely turn away from any such thoughts, preferring to live their lives devoid of any and all fruitless struggles and attempts to know the unmistakably, unknowable. 

Another of those timeless human conundrums is embodied in the question, "Why are we here?" Any answer to this is undoubtedly going to be in "essay" form. In many ways the world's religious institutions owe their very existence to the persistence of humanity's desire for an answer to that very question. Whether the question is asked at the personal, internal level: "Why am I here?" or on a more cosmic scale: "What does it all mean?" any answer we are likely to come up with in our present situation - particularly if expressed in a global forum - is going to result in quintessentially unresolvable matters of opinion with an "agree to disagree" outcome at best. If only it were possible to actually and truly "agree" on our rights to "disagree" this world would be a far better place (of course you may disagree with this assessment.)

I believe in absolute Truth; that there is to be found a common, universal explanation for all that "was, is or ever will be." I intend to explore this reality from the standpoint that:

1. we cannot all be right (but what if we are?)
2. we cannot all be wrong (but what if we are?)
3. we are all in this together (whether we want to be or not.)
4. knowledge of Truth is a reasonable expectation (even if many of its aspects are ultimately, unknowable.)

Oh, and yes... God is Real.

To be continued...

 

I kicked-off my Real.Video channel - named InfinitelyRemote - today with this video BlogDogIt has had imbeded for several years...

Always Remember: September 11, 2001
This video is a chilling tribute to those involved that fateful day.
Many thanks and apologies to http://footygi.com - the original source for this video. This is no longer available for viewing on that website (as far as I can determine.) It is so important to never forget what we all experienced that day.
Always remember that freedom comes with a price. God Bless America!

https://www.real.video/channel/masodo

TLDR: There was precious little reporting about the demise of DtDNS so I thought I would help spread the news. I look forward to many years with DYNU and only hope if they decide to go away they might give a little more of a "heads-up" than we got from the other guy.

Not one to let this internet fad get too far beyond my grasp, I have been obliged to explore the inner workings of the new HTML5 protocols for the construction of web pages. My studies have been mostly in the form of deconstructing some of the HTML5 games I have been installing over at the DeBurger Game Room online arcade.

It must have been within the confines of that more methodical - dare I say, logical - mode of thinking that my pet thought exercise - the previously revealed inspiration for my gravitar icon [see: Mathematical Obsession? ] - concerning geometry of circumscribed square inscribed with circle, returned once again to my center of consciousnesses. This simple geometric construct has always suggested, to my mind, some hidden, cosmic significance. Beckoning me  with those forces of the universe that can really only be explored through carefully administered mathematics.

Not one to let my inability to carefully administer mathematics hinder me in an attempt, I took it upon myself to create within the esoteric mechanics of the javascript programming language, a representation of this geometric abstraction/distraction that offered an added dimension to my usual 2 dimensional envisagement of form by the inclusion of the fourth with a suggestion of the third; an exercise I entered into with all the certainty of a theoretical physicist albeit without the typically manditory, prerequisite education.

Armed only with the preconceived notion of what I wanted to depict I - by way of the internet - became myself, a virtual cog in the machine with which the global, computational hive-mind works tirelessly to replicate itself through the dissemination of knowledge among the hairless apes in a way that stresses the inevitable futility of resistance.   

It was while immersed in the vagaries of determining the proper expansion rates of circles in comparison to squares that I happened upon a quite irrational little discovery that I have learned has been known since 1600 - 1800 B.C. Mesopotamia, as evidenced in the Babylonian clay tablet known as YBC 7289 (from the Yale Babylonian Collection. Image to the left †)  The required incantation invoked in order to bring to life my vision of the infinitely expanding, nested shapes was what is commonly referred to as "The Square Root of Two" or more precisely: "approximately 1.41421356237..."

The result of this exercise is presented within the "iFrame" below followed by the code required to draw the effect. Those who do not understand such things should stand in awe of my achievement. Those who can see quite clearly when they peer into the supplied code will rightly bust-a-gut at the hack chosen to render the desired effect. In either case, I hope that when you gaze upon this meager point-plot animation you will remember those early humanoids as well as this somewhat more recently developed model together in that same moment wherein you wonder, "what were they thinking?"

"CubeSphere" by masodo

The HTML5/javascript code to render the above animation:

† A black and white rendition of the Yale Babylonian Collection's Tablet YBC 7289 (c. 1800–1600 BCE), showing a Babylonian approximation to the square root of 2 (1 24 51 10 w: sexagesimal) in the context of Pythagoras' Theorem for an isosceles triangle. The tablet also gives an example where one side of the square is 30, and the resulting diagonal is 42 25 35 or 42.4263888... Source: Bill Casselman and the Yale Babylonian Collection.
 

It has long been my intent to continue running BlogDogIt.com on the Geeklog CMS platform; doing my best to utilize existing features and plug-ins to keep this place on the cutting edge. Not too long ago though, I waxed poetic over my wishing to do something with the platform that - to my knowledge - had never been done with Geeklog. (See:Getting Geeky With IT)

I am pleased to report that after having submitted my work to Geeklog.net, I was informed by them that my modification - which I have named "RSS Last Post" -  has been accepted and added to their official downloads section under the heading "Add-ons" subcategory "Hacks."

Get only the latest post from your favorite blogs.
Display in side block or static page.

A great deal of my blogging efforts revolve around promoting others' blogs. For many years I would use the Geeklog Portal Blocks to share their RSS feeds. I soon got the idea to attempt to extract a remote site's latest post and feature it in a static page or block and set about cobbling together this hack. In addition to showing the last post for the blog it also gets the website's logo and link if supplied to their feed (some do, some don't.)

Click the image above to visit the RSS Last Post download page and download the ZIP file - chocked full of tasty PHP Soup. Look around BlogDogIt for several examples of this hack in action.

Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception

The BlogDogIt tradition continues of creating animated GIF images using scenes from trailers for each Big Biting Pig Productions movie release. This installment of 2 image files is from their 10th movie: "It Lives in the Attic"

What's Up Those Stairs?

"It Lives in the Attic" (2016) - Big Biting Pig Productions