Humorous science fiction

Science fiction has always been an attractive genre to read for me. Arthur C. Clarke’s or Isaac Asimov’s writings are imaginative and uncommon stories. Lately, I have discovered two authors that blend science fiction with humor. These have been a blast to read. The culprits are Douglas Adams and Rob Grant. If you can find yourself a copy of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by Adams, or “Colony” and “Incompetence” by Grant you are in for some peals of laughter....

November 29, 2024

USB converters: do not change your names

You need to connect 3 USB cables to an Ubuntu 22.04 workstation. These 3 USB cables are 1 UART 232TTL USB converter cable and 2 RS485 USB converter cables. You have needed to reboot this workstation a few times. Or connect and disconnect the cables and you noticed that the naming (/dev/ttyUSB0, /dev/ttyUSB1, /dev/ttyUSB2) of the cables as serial ports are changing in your Ubuntu OS. Because you are running a program that is using this names you would like them to stay fixed for each cable....

November 22, 2024

My favorite websites

Let’s start compiling a list of spots in the World Wide Web that I have found useful, enjoyable and/or humorous. In this first time, we will add 4 entries in no particular order of importance. Go to my About page. Cheers!

November 20, 2024

Example of memory palace with Japanese vocabulary

Let’s say that you want to memorize vocabulary in a new language. For example, I want to know how to say a few Japanese words: Yes - Jai No - Iie Thank you - Arigatougotzaimasu I’m sorry - Gomennasai Excuse me - Sumimasen Imagine entering your house and a man breaks the entrance with a karate chop shouting Jaaaaaaaaiii! The karateka is nodding a yes with exaggerated head up and down movements....

November 9, 2024

Believe the science

What we know, we know subject to correction; we know it because all, or at least the weight, of the evidence supports it, but we are not and cannot be certain that new evidence will not sometime invalidate what we now believe is true. Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren. Until Albert Einstein came along with his theory of relativity, there was a concept called aether, or ether, that was used to describing the behavior of light....

November 1, 2024

Recovering what never was

You found a new job opportunity that could double your income. But, to get it, you need to pass the loathsome certification exam in 3 months. Furthermore, you have years you do not study (bad, you should be constantly learning). Moreover, you work from 8 to 5. But OK, let’s leave aside the scolding. How will we recover our study habits? Bro, I never had one! OK, Joe, if you never had these, let’s ask some questions to evaluate our state....

October 30, 2024

Rotating a video in Linux

Let’s say you stupidly recorded a video vertically, and when you copy it into your PC the video is saved horizontally. So, you have a vertical video, which in itself is a blasphemy already, playing horizontally. Let’s rotate this video so that it continues its sinful vertical ways. Or you can get yourself a visit to the neck doctor. After me. Let’s use the wonderful ffmpeg. There is the so-called transpose parameter that you can pass:...

October 25, 2024

Syntopical reading: How to be less wrong in my career?

I had this question: How to be less wrong in my career? To answer that question, I reflected on what I have done so far in my career and read the books below. The following are my notes from the books. Note from the syntopical reading of the following books How to read a book by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren Seven habits of highly effective by Stephen Covey Smartphone, dumbphone by Allen Carr The easy way to mindfulness by Allen Carr Good sugar, bad sugar by Allen Carr Atomic habits by James Clear The subtle art of not giving a fuck by Mark Manson So good they can’t ignore you by Cal Newport Ikigai by Hector García The art of learning by Josh Waitzkin The advice to follow your passion is an addiction....

October 23, 2024

Invisible in the Start menu

When you install a drawing program in Linux and suddenly… (ಠ_ಠ) Imagine you have installed an application in Discover in your Kubuntu 22.04. For whatever reason, you cannot find it when you are supposed to be seeing it in the start menu. Fear not. So, it happens that for an application to be shown in the start it needs to be added in the directory /usr/share/applications. There are 2 questions here:...

October 18, 2024

Spectacle: How to report a KDE bug?

Once upon a time, le moi was writing his Friday article. This poor soul needed a few screenshots and lo and behold his Spectacle tool presented a not so spectacular behavior. Spectacle required the following actions to make one screenshot: open Spectacle -> Area: Rectangular Region -> click on Take a New Screenshot, the mouse pointer disappears, then open again Spectacle from Super -> click again, take a New Screenshot, then I could see the pointer normally....

October 11, 2024