My federated address is @[email protected]

pdfcrop --margins '-4 -4 -4 -5' --clip input.pdf output.pdf

calibre is a powerful and easy to use e-book manager. Users say it’s outstanding and a must-have. It’ll allow you to do nearly everything and it takes things a step beyond normal e-book software. It’s also completely free and open source and great for both casual users and computer experts.

PDFCrop is a Perl script that crops the white margins of PDF pages and rescales them to fit a standard size sheet of paper. It makes the printed pages far more attractive to read!

Links

https://calibre-ebook.com/

http://pdfcrop.sourceforge.net/

Introduction

As a boy I was allowed to have a penknife from about the age of 10. Since then I have tended to carry pocket knives with me on a regular basis.

I have three knives that often travel with me, though two might have become illegal in the UK in the recent past because they lock.

The knives are:

Victorinox Huntsman

Durol locking knife

Roxon KS-S501

Long notes

I have provided detailed notes as usual for this episode, and these can be viewed here.

Links

Victorinox

Victorinox website (UK)

Victorinox Huntsman (UK)

Wikipedia: Swiss Army knife

Durol

Wikipedia: Thiers, Puy-de-Dôme

Coutellerie & Couteaux - Durol (in French)

ROXON

KS-S501

In this episode I talk about the program I use to listen to podcasts.

BeyondPod which has a smart play feature where you can decide how to listen, in what order and how much of each podcast.

Paint Tools are where you begin to add things to an image. You can add a large variety of things depending on the tool, from thin lines to broad strokes, to gradients, and so on.

Links:

https://docs.gimp.org/2.8/en/

https://www.ahuka.com/gimp/paint-tools/

In this episode the HPR Audiobook Club discusses the audiobook The Terrible Business of Salmon & Dusk by Myke Bartlett

Non-Spoiler Thoughts

The terrible business of trying to listen to this book (technical difficulties abound)

We talk about the audio players we tried to get around the technical difficulties.

This book is a weird world.

The reading performance is great, and the audio quality is good (minus technical difficulties).

The is a clear distinction between characters by the reader using voice and accents.

This pushes the definition of "magical realism". Perhaps "surrealistic" is a better description.

The world is slightly more interesting than the characters.

Beverage Reviews

As usual, the HPR AudioBook Club took some time to review the beverages that each of us were drinking during the episode

Thaj: Water and Material Player which is now called Voice

x1101: Monty Python's Holy Grail - Black Knight's Reserve

pokey: Long Trail Double Bag Ale and The Rusty Wallace Formula Experience

Things We talked about

Why are two sticks of chalk important?

Does this end by not ending?

Thaj thinks this is trying too hard to be clever. Both and Thaj and x1101 think Tincture does weird better.

Is the fallen a metaphor for depression?

What is going on with The Albion?

"There are a LOT of things that can use a little more explanation."

Thaj thinks The Rainbow Thief and Adjustment Team may be inspirations for this story. Pokey raises with Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Who.

Also Kato from The Green Hornet...

We disagree about how the time travel was done.

Nero is the character we all felt the easiest to follow.

Our Next Audiobook

Murder at Avedon Hill by P.G. Holyfield

The Next Audiobook Club Recording

Right now we are working through a backlog of older episode that have already been recorded. Once that ends we fully anticipate recording new epsiodes with listener participation.

Further Recommendations

Pokey goes to the races.

Sometimes it's just easier to nuke and pave.

New (Old) phones.

Android File Explorers

Audio Book Player Link: https://material-player.en.uptodown.com/android

F-Droid link: Audiobook player now renamed Voice https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.ph1b.audiobook/

Feedback

Thank you very much for listening to this episode of the HPR AudioBookClub. We had a great time recording this show, and we hope you enjoyed it as well. We also hope you'll consider jo

My original website: http://psquirk.tripod.com

NIST initiated a competition to find and test algorithms for quantum encryption that would resist quantum decryption back in December of 2016. Two rounds of testing have been completed, and an initial group of 69 submissions have been winnowed to 15. These 15 are now in Round Three of the testing process, and it is anticipated that as many as 4 of them will be approved as standards. This news update is intended to bring you up to date on the process.

Links:

https://www.zwilnik.com/security-and-privacy/encryption-and-quantum-computing/

http://hackerpublicradio.org/eps.php?id=2860

https://letsencrypt.org/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitfield_Diffie

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Hellman

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Merkle

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy

https://gcn.com/articles/2016/12/22/nist-quantum-encryption.aspx

https://gcn.com/articles/2019/02/04/nist-quantum-semifinals.aspx

https://csrc.nist.gov/publications/detail/nistir/8309/final

https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2020/07/nists-post-quantum-cryptography-program-enters-selection-round

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/02/cryptanalysis_o.html

https://www.zwilnik.com/security-and-privacy/nists-quantum-cryptography-update-20200815/

A show about shows ?

This show came about because of an email from Dave Morriss on the 4th March 2020

The upshot of it was that Dave came into possession of an illuminated lantern that he wanted to use. He had a problem however as the lantern in question was sealed and he didn't know the working voltage of the bulb within. He asked me if there was a way of working it out.

Well first of all before I go any further I should probably say I'm not a bulb expert, however I set about doing a little investigating. What I was about to discover is that calculating this is not as straightforward as you might think.

One thing you might think to do is to use a meter to measure the resistance of the bulb. Even doing this however is fraught with difficulty because measuring the resistance of a cold bulb not at working temperature will give a misleading answer. This is because the resistance of a standard bulb changes with temperature.

I can demonstrate this by measuring the resistance of two light bulbs I have lying around the house.

One is a clear traditional Bayonet tungsten filament house bulb rated at 40W. I live in the UK so its operating voltage is 240V I used my trusty Fluke 77 Digital Ohmmeter but any meter capable of measuring resistance will do. This bulb at room temperature measured a resistance of 108 ohms

The other bulb was a Halogen E14 screw in bulb rated at 28W and its operating voltage like the previous bulb was 240V. Its measured resistance at room temperature was 144 ohms)

Diagrams Created using LibreOffice Draw "Version: 6.0.7.3"

Formulae

Calculations For (tungsten filament bulb)

V/R = I (Amps)

so 240V / 108 ohms = 2.2 Amps

V x I = P (Watts)

so 240V x 2.2 Amps = 528W

Calculations For (halogen bulb)

V/R = 240V / 144 ohms = 1.7 Amps (halogen)

V x I = W

so 240V x 1.7 Amps = 408W

As per usual I used google and come up with somebody asking the same sort of question at http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?64832-How-to-identify-voltage-of-an-unmarked-bulb yes it seems like there a forum for just about anything you can think of.

One person on the forum made the point that there really isn't such a thing as a working voltage it just depends on how long you want the bulb to last. For this reason I always turn down the brightness on any car I own that his dimmable dashboard lights changing these bulbs can be a real pain and or can be expensive.

Sometimes the stated working voltage for a bulb can be misleading for example a car bulb will often state a working voltage of 12V but is likely to be running at a higher voltage when the engine is running due to the operation of cars alternator.

Another person suggested trying to estimate the length of the filament and using this to determine the working voltage.

Yet somebody else suggested just using a variable supply and to just slowly increase the voltage until a reasonable amount of light is generated. This might be quite simple if it's a low voltage bulb and you could even use some batteries lying around connecting them in series adding one battery at a time until the required brightness is achieved.

It isn't so simple if bulb requires a higher voltage.

In the end I just passed this information onto Dave wishing him luck in his path to discovering the optimal working voltage for his lantern.

Feel free to write a comment if any of you out there have any other idea on finding the working voltage of a bulb this way it can be shared with the rest of us during the Community News, better still send in your own show.