Old man, old cars, and old whisky
This is basically an elevator trick with four jacks, although you could use Aces but then the name wouldn’t make sense.
Display the four Jacks face up on top of the face down deck. Use the Braue add on technique to switch out two of the Jacks for two indifferent cards, as you flip the Jacks face down onto the top of the deck. The order of cards from the top down is Jack, indifferent card, indifferent card, Jack.
Continue reading “Jumping Jacks”I have a need to connect to my office using Sonicwall’s netExtender. Once connected I need to use RDP to open a remote desktop session to my work computer. But for some reason I ran into two issues on my AMD-based HP home desktop. First I was unable to get the netExtenderGui to run. It kept throwing errors. And second, I was using Remmina for the RDP client and discovered that it did not support dual monitor displays.
After some googling and yahooing, with a bing or two thrown in I had a solution.
Continue reading “Remote Desktop in Linux (zorin/ubuntu)”I like a good mathematical card trick. While they usually involve too much dealing of cards, they still can be entertaining, or at least puzzling. I have a friend who is a retired mathematician who taught a Rutgers University and these are a few that I liked showing him.
Continue reading “Mathematical Card Tricks”The basic premise is that there are three doors, behind one is a prize. The contestant makes a guess as to which door has the prize. In this case the odds of winning are one in three. But after the guess is make the host of the game opens one of the two remaining doors, showing no prize behind it. The question is should the contestant change his guess from the original door to the remaining closed door.
Continue reading “Monty Hall Paradox”So, in ditching Windows I had to find a solution to my Windows-based X-10 home automation. On Windows I had a CM19a USB based transceiver for issuing X-10 commands to the X-10 modules controlling my house lights. I used a piece of software named Alex10 to command the CM19a, and a Philips Hue Bridge emulator (HA-Bridge) to allow me to give voice commands via my Amazon Echo.
The HA-Bridge software was a Java program with a web interface, so it ported over cleanly from Windows to Linux. What I had to find was something to replace the Alex10 software. Searching the Internet I found some software that did exactly what I needed, Mochad.
Continue reading “Mochad, HA-Bridge and CM19a on Zorin”I finally decided to drop Windows from all of my home computers (currently three systems) and move them all over to Linux. I had already moved two of them, one that I use for a home theater, and one I use for general work. The third was being used for general work and for controlling my old home automation system.
Continue reading “Moving from Windows to Linux”I love the material of Larry Jennings. The first effect in “The Classic Magic of Larry Jennings” is the effect “Always Cut the Cards”, where the aces are lost in the deck by cutting, and then magically assemble back on top of the deck. In the book this is accomplished with a crimped card on the bottom of the deck and using Marlo’s Unit Upjog Addition.
Continue reading “Always Cut the Cards”I recently helped some friends develop their websites. Both are wordpress sites, one was a redesign of a very old hand coded site with a custom coded CMS, the other a new site from scratch.
Continue reading “New websites”This is another method for stacking the deck for straight poker, dealing out five hands.
Crickets, birds singing, and wind. I love being out of the city.