Old magician who likes old cars, and old whisky
Note: this article was written by ChatGPT.
Have you ever looked back on a situation and wondered, “What was I thinking?” That feeling of acting impulsively, without your usual logic, is often caused by what psychologists call an amygdala hijack. This reaction can make people vulnerable to emotional manipulation—and it’s exactly what romance scammers count on.
Continue reading “The Amygdala Hijack: How Scammers Exploit Your Brain in Romance Scams”In today’s digital world, WhatsApp scams are becoming increasingly sophisticated. To help combat this, I’ve created a simple tool that lets you analyze any WhatsApp conversation for potential scam indicators. The tool extracts your conversation and copies it to your clipboard so you can easily get it analyzed by Claude.ai.
Continue reading “Analyze WhatsApp Scams with This Simple Tool”The United States federal tax system, with its complex forms, massive bureaucracy, and army of auditors, could be dramatically simplified through a revolutionary yet practical approach: eliminating direct federal tax collection in favor of a state-based system. This isn’t just a pipe dream – the framework for such a system largely exists in current state tax operations.
Continue reading “Revolutionizing US Tax: A State-Based Approach”I have been a fan of the TV program “Person of Interest”, which has two fictional AIs in the cast. Lately a new AI has come on the market, “Deepseek”, so for fun I had the following conversation with it.
Are you familiar with the tv program “person of interest”
Yes, I’m familiar with Person of Interest! It’s a science fiction crime drama television series that aired from 2011 to 2016. The show was created by Jonathan Nolan and produced by J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot Productions.
Continue reading “Casting AIs in Person of Interest: Who Fits?”Read about my experience with a typical romance scam. This started with a Facebook message, moved to WhatsApp, and then to crypto currency using an “app” named HTX-Web3 (HTXWeb3). I was smart and limited my losses to a level I was willing to lose. You can read about it on “I was scammed“.
There are probably hundreds of methods for achieving the “Sandwich” effect, where the selected card is found between two face up court cards. Here are some that I have learned over the years.
All of these, unless otherwise noted, start with the court cards removed and face up on the table. In the descriptions below I use the red kings.
Continue reading “A few Sandwiches”I use gThumb for organizing and viewing my photos. One feature I wish it had (version 3.8) was the ability to list un-tagged images. I recently figured out a way to do that. I search for all images, then tag them all with the tag “temporary”. Then using the find (search) dialog I search for those images that only have the tag “temporary”. The first step of tagging all images takes a while but after that it makes it easy to find “un-tagged images.” Those are the images with only a “temporary” tag.
I keep getting ads for Topaz up-scaling software, and have wondered if it is any good. Not that it matters, since I am running on Linux computers, and Topaz is Windows. But recently I found an open source up-scaler program names Upscayl, which runs on Linux, Windows, and Mac. So I installed it to do some testing. First thing I discovered is that my built in graphics card wasn’t powerful enough to run the software. So I had to buy a Nvidia GPU. I bought the least expensive one I could find, and it runs the software just fine.
Continue reading “Up-scaling images.”Someone asked me if I could code the faro simulator as a stand-alone windows app, so they could use it without being on-line. So I did 🙂
You can download a zip file containing the file faroSetup.exe at http://robertjwallace.com/faro/faroSetup.zip
Download the zip and unzip the file to get the installer. Run the installer. It should work, but use it at your own risk. It doesn’t access anything on your computer or track anything. Note that when you run the installer you may get a “Windows protected your PC” message. That is just telling you that Microsoft sees me as an unknown publisher. If you get the message, click the more info link and then click the run anyway button.
While not the most glamorous, or largest, or most expensive control panel, this meets my needs perfectly. I wanted a small control panel, using Home Assistant, mounted by my front door that I could use for controlling my garage door, to turn off all the lights, etc. I wasn’t interested in spending any money for a tablet to mount or a touch screen. My solution was to re-purpose an old Android phone I had laying around. By having this right by the door I don’t have to pull my phone out of my pocket and start up Home Assistant to do the set of things I want to do leaving or entering the house.
Continue reading “A wall mounted control panel for home assistant”