I have traced the paternal linage back to my great-great-great grandfather. Most of this came from the family Bible and was cross checked with records available on the web. My maternal lineage goes further back and can be seen here.
Continue reading “Wallace Family Tree”Jane Elizabeth Axtell Wallace
Forward
I think it is ironic that the people you spend most of your life knowing, i.e. your parents are often the people you know the least about. I can’t say if that is true in general, but with my parents, and my knowledge of their life, it has been. I know very little of their early years, and even of the years I grew up, my knowledge of them is just about the relationship with myself. I know very little of the relationships, the hopes, and the disappointments they felt, those things that are common in everyone ’s life. It was because of this I asked my mother to tell me about her life. I asked her to start to write down her memories. It was apparently difficult for her to do. But she made an effort. I kept at her to keep writing. This is the result. As I discover old photographs of her, and her sister and brother, this story helps those photos come alive. I don’t think she understood how important it was to me to know who she was as a person, rather than as a mother. And while I wish I had more of her story, I am grateful to her for what she was able to give.
Robert Wallace
Continue reading “Jane Elizabeth Axtell Wallace”France Trip, 1978
I had been working at FPS for about six months when I was sent, with a team, to Paris, France to install an AP120B at Dassault Aviation. This was my first trip overseas, I was 27 years old. Unfortunately, being a lowly team member on my first trip overseas I did not write a trip report. Now 40 plus years later I am scanning old slides from the trip and trying to remember some of the stories from the trip.
Continue reading “France Trip, 1978”Index to Dai Vernon Revelations videos
Volume 1
Gary Ouellet Intro
The Story Behind the Stars of Magic Series
Vernon on Think-of-a-Card, Dunninger,
Brainwave Deck
Vernon on Effects
Triumph-the Vernon Triumph Shuffle
and the Proper Presentation
Story of the Vernon False Shuffle
Practice & Improve Your Magic
Keeping Notes on Your Magic
Cutting the Aces-
Another Vernon Card Classic
Vernon on Passes, False Cuts
Irv Weiner’s Opening to Cutting the Aces
The Story is the Entertaining Part of the Trick
Story of the Ambitious Card
Vernon Performs the Ambitious Card
Vernon Explains an Ambitious Card Move
India Trip Report – 1989
MEMORANDUM
FROM: Robert Wallace DATE: October 6, 1989
TO: Jerry Peek
SUBJ: India Trip Report
CC: Larry W. Bob G. Tom M.
A Survivors Guide to India
Subtitle: “Don’t drink the water and don’t breath the air”
This is a trip report on the trip Jerry Peek and I took to India. The main purpose of the trip was to support Hinditron, conclude a sale, and sign a contract with Hinditron. This report covers the day to day activities with several embedded essays on topics of interest to anyone who might in a moment of weakness consider a trip to India.
Continue reading “India Trip Report – 1989”Germany Trip Report, June 1982
Title: Trip Report FPS DIS MTU
Cast of characters
FPS USA personnel:
Robert Wallace, Hero
Dan Gorton, Field Support Engineer
Dave Borer, S/W Applications Engineer
Israel – Trip report from 1983
Preface: This took place in December 1983. I had just turned 32.
Chapter 1
And the saints….
It started as a normal day, as normal as can be for a computer jock. I was lounging at my desk idly pondering the raindrops which glistened in the early morning light on the window. My feet were casually propped on my desk, which many would believe impossible because of the mass of printouts and pieces of computer hardware that permanently resided there. My fingertips were lightly poised on the keyboard resting in my lap. The whole posture was designed to convey the impression of work while providing the maximum rest potential.
Continue reading “Israel – Trip report from 1983”Exporting a list of your Kindle e-books from amazon
Amazon does not make it easy to get a list of the e-books you own, especially if you want to put the list into a spreadsheet. This solution uses a javascript bookmarklet, a small piece of code that you drag and drop onto your bookmark tool bar in your browser.
Continue reading “Exporting a list of your Kindle e-books from amazon”My Library
I am finally getting around to cataloging the books I own. Now that I am running Linux I found a free piece of software that does what I want: Tellico. While it is for KDE I had no problem installing and using it with a Gnome desktop. So far I have cataloged over 300 books, which has been very easy due to the internet search feature of the software.
Another feature of the software that I liked at first was the ability to output an HTML report. I wanted to post my book list on this site and I thought that would be the easiest way. It was easy, but didn’t have the format or features that I wanted. Fortunately, the software also exports to an XML file. So I exported the XML and wrote my own javascript program to display the list.
You can see the list here: robertjwallace.com/books
Re-purposing an old Windows Phone
While I was web surfing the other day I stumbled upon an article about things you can do with old phones. One of the ideas was to use it as a web cam. I thought that was a great idea so in a very short amount of time I had a new “cat” cam.
My old Windows phone is a Lumina 920. I charged it up and installed a free app called Win IP cam (there are similar apps available for Android and Iphones.)
The next step was to get a phone tripod to hold the camera. I found a nice one on Amazon Prime for $8.00. It even has a quick release plate.
While I normally just use a web browser to watch Abby, I also wanted the option of capturing the video to a file, so I googled and found a nice open-source piece of software that runs in Linux (as well as Mac and Windows), called OBS Studio. It took about a minute to get it installed and running.
So with an investment of $8.00 and a little time I now have a “cat” cam.