October, 2017 archive
Meta: A Little BASH Script for Scaling Media 0
You may have noticed that I rescale embedded media to 500 pixels in width. When I started blogging, 800×600 monitors were still not uncommon, and 500px seemed a sane choice. I’ve maintained the practice for consistency’s sake.
At one time, I maintained a spreadsheet of common dimensions and their scaled values. I could enter the existing values and it would calculate the scaled ones, then I could save it with the additional data.
Ultimately I replaced the spreadsheet with a command line alternative, which works quite nicely (if you can remember high school math, you’ll recognize the equation; piping the output to bc is necessary because BASH by itself can parse only integers):
Code:
echo 500/[original width]*[original height] | bc -l
This outputs the proportional height.
Here’s an example:
Code:
bash-4.3$ echo 500/640*423 | bc -l
330.46875000000000000000 <---I round the output to the nearest integer
Trumpling Weinstein 0
At the Boston Review, Bonnie Honig sees both similarities and differences between Donald Trump and Harvey Weinstein. The similarities she perceives are not surprising, but the differences are chilling.
Here’s a bit:
(snip)
. . . Trump has changed the rules of the game. Trump would never offer to get treatment to save his job. He would never ask for a second chance. If you are emailing your friends asking for support, if you say you will seek treatment, if you are hoping for another chance, you are already—in Trump’s grade school terms—a loser: reality’s victim, not its maker. The game is over.
Follow the link for the rest; it is quite worth your consideration.
The Gettysburg Depress 0
Werner Herzog’s Bear imagines a Trumpled Gettysburg Address.
Russian Impulses 0
Josh Marshall takes a long and thoughtful look at the Russian cyber-disinformation campaign to exacerbate American cultural and political divisions and defeat Hilary Clinton. Here’s a striking bit:
One Thing Is Not Like the Other Thing 0
Randye Hoder points out similarities between the conduct towards women of Donald Trump and Harvey Weinstein because of Weinstein’s contributions to Democratic candidates and causes.
She then notes a crucial difference:
. . . there’s only one difference that matters: We didn’t make Harvey Weinstein president.
Click the link to follow her path the this conclusion.
Fancy Words Don’t Make Stupid Smart 0
When I was a corporate trainer, we fought gobbledygook all the time. It was quite a challenge to get trainees to internalize a growing awareness of this verity.
A Sign of Sporting Sanity 0
The Austrian state of Tyrol, which contains the city of Innsbruck, has voted against bidding to be the site of the 2026 Winter Olympics.
The Olympics long ago went from being a celebration of athletic prowess to become a branding frenzy of corporate greed, in the process morphing into more trouble than they are worth.
And then there’s the tantalizing question of which is more corrupt, the IOC, FIFA, or the NCAA.
QOTD 0
Robert Goldsborough:
. . . too often, what we refer to as humility is only false modesty strutting on the parade ground.
Goldsborough, Robert, The Bloodied Ivy (New York: Bantam Books, 1989), p. 167
