Old man, old cars, and old whisky
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.
My simple question is how does this software compare to scaling in Gimp. For example, if I take an image and scale it 400% in Gimp, how does that compare to scaling the image 400% in Upscayl.
So I took an image I have of a hummingbird.
I will upscale it and then crop it to the same dimensions, 1920×1080 pixels.
Here is the new image up-scaled by Gimp.
And here is the image up-scaled by Upscayl.
Upscayl did create a sharper image. Interestingly, the image it created is at a lower resolution, 300×300 ppi, where Gimp left the image at 350×350 ppi. But the Upscayl image is slightly larger, 1.3MB compared to 1.2MB
So let’s try 800%. Here is the file size before cropping.
Here is Gimp’s output cropped to 1920×1080.
Upscayl has a feature called “Double Upscayl” which runs the upscayl twice on the image. Running Upscayl takes longer that Gimp, especially if doing the double upscale. Here are it’s results. So first I left the scale factor at 4x and checked the “Double Upscayl” checkbox. This resulted in a much larger image, since it first did a 4x, and then another 4x. That is a 1600% scale factor. That isn’t what I wanted, but here is that result. First the uncropped image size.
And the cropped image. At this level of zoom you can see that the AI has sharpened the feathers too much.
Ok, now lets run Upscayl at 8x, without the doubling checkbox checked.
Here is the uncropped image size, it matches the 800% Gimp scaled image.
So what do I think? Well it certainly looks promising. Upscayl has different algorithms you can choose. I was using the ultrasharp. I also suspect that the image subject will make a difference. Does the image have blurry areas; how does it do with people; what about text in an image, etc.
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”This post serves as my personal record of the steps required to integrate an ESPresense ESP-32 device into my Home Assistant setup. Additionally, I hope it will be helpful to others. The screenshots included were taken in February 2024 and might have been updated since then.
Continue reading “ESPresense and Home Assistant”Boy the world has changed! When I was young if you wanted to learn magic you had to hang out at a magic store. A real brick and mortar building. To get to the real good stuff you had to make friends with the magician behind the counter and prove your worth. If you were lucky they might show you something more than “Scotch and Soda”. They might recommend a really good hardback book on magic, but those books weren’t cheap. You had to pay your dues, so to speak.
Today you have the Internet. The brick and mortar stores are almost completely gone. I miss them.
Anyway, while I was surfing the web I found this self-working coincidence trick that looked interesting. Now like a lot of these tricks on the Internet, this one had several “kickers” to the coincidence effect. Go ahead and take a moment to look at it. It is at https://youtu.be/9KhQrR5uqN8?si=2rnxeBWteVBaXC7m .
Continue reading “Faro coincidence”This is another lie detector plot. I have another that I also perform which you can read about at https://robertjwallace.com/lie-detector/. This one is easier.
Start by having a card selected and controlled to the bottom of the deck. The convincing control is a good method which you can learn here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78aZh6eUneI&pp=ygUSY29udmluY2luZyBjb250cm9s
False shuffle and/or cut keeping the card on the bottom.
Set the deck down and ask the spectator to cut around two thirds of the cards to the side, to eliminate them. This cut is key. The bottom part of the deck must contain at least 15 cards, but not more than 23.
Pick up the remaining cards and explain that you are going to use the deck to determine the card by asking the spectator to name their card, but allowing the spectator to either lie and name a different card, or to tell the truth and name their card.
Demonstrate by dealing out the cards, spelling the phrase “your card is the”, dealing one card for each letter face down in a pile. Drop the remaining cards on top of those and ask the spectator what their card was. They can lie or tell the truth. Pick up the pile of cards and spell the name of the card they named, one card per letter.
For example if they say the “eight of clubs” you would deal out “e”, “i”…”s” with one card per letter down to a pile, then drop the remaining cards on top.
Now pick up the pile and deal the cards in the same manner, spelling out the phrase “did you lie or not” (14 letters). Turn over the last card dealt (the “t”), and it will be their card, showing whether or not they lied.
So why does the pile need to be between 15 and n cards? Well this is because of the number of letters in the names of the cards. Cards can be spelled out with from 10 to 15 letters. So to spell out the longest card name without running out of cards you need at least 15 cards. Now after the first deal of “your card is the”, the position of the chosen card is equal to the number of cards in the packet minus the number of letters in “your card is the”. The number of letters is 13. That means the chosen card will be at the 2nd from the top if the packet has 15 cards, for example. For the trick to work, that position must be within the number of letters in the name of the card that the spectator names. This is so that the chosen card is dealt by on the second deal. Since the spectator’s smallest name contains only 10 letters, the chosen card must be within the top ten cards after the first deal. The largest number of cards for that to happen is 23 (23 – 13 = 10).
To visualize this algebraically:
n = number of cards in the packet
c = the location of the chosen card
At the start with c at the bottom of the packet, c = n.
After the first deal of “your card is the”, c = n – 13.
After the second deal, c = n – c + 1. Since, from the last step, c = n – 13, this is the same as c = n – ( n – 13) + 1. This will always equal 14 for n = 15 to 23.
Then after the third deal of “did you lie or not”, c with be the last card dealt.
The one aspect of the Erdnase Stack that I have never liked is the undercut and throw during the second part of the stack. Below is the description of the four card stack for a five handed game with that step in bold:
FOR any game in which cards are dealt singly. Three of the desired cards are placed on top, one on bottom. Under-cut about one-third deck, injog top card, run two less than twice number players, out-jog and shuffle off to last card, so that it will be left on top. Under-cut to out-jog, forming break at in-jog, run one less than number players, throw to break, run one, in-jog running one less than twice number players, out-jog and shuffle off. Under-cut to in-jog and throw on top. Under-cut to out-jog, run one less than number players and throw balance on top. This gives the four desired cards to the dealer in four rounds.
Erdnase, Expert at the card table
Normally during an overhand shuffle you don’t simply cut a block off and throw it to the top. Instead, what I do is what was done in the first halve of the stack, namely, undercut to the out-jog and form a break at the in-jog. Then as I start the second part of the shuffle, I let the cards below the in-jog drop onto the top of the deck as I run one less than the number of players. This effectively hides the throw and reduces the right hands shuffling motion.
I think it makes the shuffle more deceptive.
This is a mathematical based trick that is explained at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eI7o95rGT9c. It is the revelation of two chosen cards using Jokers that were pre-set in the deck. I like good self working tricks and this is a good one. However I wanted to be able to perform it without having to use Jokers.
Continue reading “Variation on trick that fooled Pen and Teller”