Mark's.random(musings);
Here are a collection of random thoughts I've felt like jotting down and pursuing in the past - a mixture of geeky and strange, often the product of a bored mind.
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Picking Locks the Movie Way
For the last few months I've been honing my lock picking skills, by buying up as many cheap locks as I can find. Recycle shops have been great places to grab residential door locks, and I've found some bargains on TradeMe for padlocks. However, I got to thinking about the way that locks are often picked in movies, TV shows and computer games - with a bobby pin.
3 min read, 418 words. Continue Reading...Categories: Random , Tags: Lockpicking, Fallout
Dissecting a COVID QR Code
While I was in the pub recently, at a Puzzled Pint
3 min read, 482 words. Continue Reading...event, I looked across the table at a New Zealand QR code image (used for scanning your location into the COVID tracking app) and wondered what data was encoded in the image. Thankfully, with the wonders of modern technology, it was pretty simple to disassemble the data there and then on my phone. Reordering the Alphabet
I read a simple, obvious, but strange thought on the internet the other day, that the order of letters in the alphabet is, to some extent at least, arbitrary. I'm sure there are historical reasons why the alphabet is currently organised like it is, but it got me wondering if there might be a better way to organise things to make it easier to learn and use.
3 min read, 583 words. Continue Reading...Bendy Propellers
While flying back from Christchurch to Wellington today on a prop plane, I took pictures of a propeller both at rest and while spinning.
2 min read, 283 words. Continue Reading...Categories: Random , Tags: Interesting, Propeller, CMOS
Homophones of letters of the Alphabet
My children and I were talking today about letters of the alphabet and how some of them are pronounced the same as words in the English language. We tried to list all the homophones we could think of for each letter of the alphabet, and it was interesting just how many there are.
3 min read, 517 words. Continue Reading...Categories: Random , Tags: Lists, Words, Homophone, Alphabet
Electronic Voice Phenomena
Electronic Voice Phenomena
2 min read, 368 words. Continue Reading..., or EVP, are "voices" detected and recorded by ghost hunters using electronic audio recording equipment. Categories: Random , Tags: Paranormal, Ghost, Voice, EVP
Super Powers
I've often thought, when watching fictional TV shows and movies, about the feasibility of various superheroes/aliens/spellcasters/etc and their super powers. Some of them would conceivably be possible in a variant or other of our universe and its physics, but others don't seem like they'd make much logical sense no matter how you bend the laws of physics.
5 min read, 815 words. Continue Reading...Categories: Random , Tags: Fiction, XRay, Invisibility
Flipping a Quantum Coin
I was watching a Sean Carroll video, and in the first few minutes Carroll used an Apple app to decide whether to hop left or right based on the results of a quantum event.
2 min read, 315 words. Continue Reading...Scamming Children
My eldest daughter is a bit of an addict when it comes to the online game Roblox - in fact, all three of my daughters like playing the game. Recently my eldest daughter started getting spammed with in-game messages telling her to visit a URL to get free Robux. Robux is the in-game currency for buying accessories, outfits, etc, and can be purchased with real money. In this case, the URL was short and simple to type in:
4 min read, 770 words. Continue Reading...Travel
I've spent some time travelling around a few parts of the world, although there's a lot more to see! Here are some visas from countries I've visited, in the order that I first visited them and grouped by journey, as most of my travelling has been done in long trips:
3 min read, 432 words. Continue Reading...Categories: Random , Tags: Travel, Nepal, India, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Australia, Indonesia, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Hong Kong, Greece, Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, South Korea, South Africa, Canada
Skeptics' Star Signs
Categories: Random , Tags: Skepticism, Astrology
An Alternative to our Decimal System
Our decimal system has its failings - it's not easy to do maths with. Any number that is a power of two would be a better base than base 10.
2 min read, 299 words. Continue Reading...Categories: Maths, Alternatives , Tags: Decimal, Octal
A Better Year
The daft idea of the world coming to an end when the Mayan calendar ticks over got me thinking. What if we could start again with our calendar. Would it have 7 days and 12 months?
3 min read, 556 words. Continue Reading...Categories: Random , Tags: Alternatives, Year, Month, Time
Bands/Artists I've seen Live
Over the years I've seen quite a few bands playing live, and I figured I'd try to keep a list of the live music I've seen. This list isn't exhaustive, as I've forgotten quite a few of the events I went to during my time both at University in Bristol and during my years living in London.
1 min read, 62 words. Continue Reading...The Wilhelm Scream
Categories: Lists, Entertainment , Tags: Wilhelm, Scream
Domain Names are backwards
Domain names are backwards - and I'm not the only person
6 min read, 1019 words. Continue Reading...in the world who thinks so. Categories: Alternatives, Software , Tags: DNS, Domain
Availability of Internet Addresses
There are various addressing schemes on the internet - IPv4 and the new, still not very well adopted IPv6, MAC addresses, etc. I wonder how the number of each of these fares when stacked up against the world's population of ~7 billion people.
3 min read, 417 words. Continue Reading...Return On Investment for Lotteries
I thought it would be a good idea to look at the ROI (Return on Investment) for lotteries, to get an idea of just how bad they are, on average, as an investment. Some lottery prizes are fixed amounts, whereas for others we can work out an ROI based on average payouts.
3 min read, 525 words. Continue Reading...Palindromic Times
Sitting on a bus one day in Iran, as we were driving through the desert, I was looking at a digital 7-segment clock at the front of the bus. Near the clock was a convex mirror, used by the driver to allow him to see everyone in the back. In noticed the reflection of the clock in the mirror, and it amused me that sometimes the value displayed on the mirror image of the clock would still be a valid time.
2 min read, 254 words. Continue Reading...My thoughts on the perfect OS
As a way to air my frustrations at inconsistencies and bad design decisions in the Linux OS, specifically server distributions, I put together a list of ways I thought that the OS and its many daemons could be standardised and simplified. Here are my thoughts:
2 min read, 228 words. Continue Reading...Categories: Alternatives, Software , Tags: XML, Config
Fried Chicken in London
I've marvelled at the sheer number of Fried Chicken shops in London. KFC is the obvious, archetypal Fried Chicken joint, but the range of names I've seen while commuting through London on buses got me thinking about whether there was an A-Z of Fried Chicken takeaways in London.
2 min read, 355 words. Continue Reading...Honeychurch
I've always been interested in the history of my surname. Honeychurch is a village on Dartmoor, in Devon, England.
6 min read, 1191 words. Continue Reading...Categories: Random , Tags: History, Honeychurch