Lets talk about passwords, Again. Mk III Mod 7a.

The evergreen topic, because most corporate IT I’ve worked with is now insisting on new passwords every 90 days. And people who use the same password with a rolling number at the end just grate on my nerves. Very smart people, some of them, but misguided.

Our latest requirement is 8 characters (can it be more? doesn’t say it can. Probably. Check it.)

Upper and lower case letters, numeric symbols (0-9), punctuation: :,.!(){}[]) and Special, ie Shift-Number: !@#$%^&*, etc.

So lets take my birthday, which I have never used for a password, and see what we can do:

October91956 – more than 8 characters, but that’s ok. Needs punctuation or specials or both.

I’ve read the starting with a capital letter and ending with a 4 digit number are so common that malefactors expect to find it. So lets not give them either.

()ctober9!(%^ – 4 out of 5, no capital letters, but lowers, a numeral, special and punctuation.

0ct()beRgIgsG isn’t bad

RoktuberIX56 isn’t bad either.

Remember to start with something you’ll never forget, that you can remember how you transformed, and that you can write a perfectly underestandible plain-text hint for and leave some where you can see it any day, without revealing a thing.

“Geologic Birthday” would be good for RoktuberIX56…

The never ending (opportunity to excel) of Windows

So here I am back in the world of Windows full time again. Win7 to be exact.  And I’ve learned a bunch of peachy-keen stuff about Windows that I never knew before, as well as confirming things I’d forgotten. Some is new with Win7 Some shows that my beard and smug expression mark me as a *x user (Star-x, splat-x, wild-card-x: Linux, Unix, FreeBSD: things that work like Unix. As Porco says, ”Pig, chicken, what’s the difference?”)

First and most important, Windows is not Unix, doesn’t work like Unix, isn’t trying to be Unix. If you insist on using it like Unix you’ll be doomed to disappointment. You won’t enjoy what it does well. It will defy you and fail to meet your expectations. So forget about Unix and stuff based on it.

Probably most important, in Unix everything is a file and data in a file is something there are many ways of getting at, using, understanding, etc. There’s a panoply of command line instructions in any text window that can be strung together to get data out of files, display it, aggregate it, average it, do all sorts of things with it, including writing it out into files. Its a giant tinkertoy set. Plug stuff together, try it, see if you like it, change it, try again.

Unix is completely honest, it won’t forgive you any mistakes. Delete something and its gone. Open a new file with the name of an old one and the old one is quietly removed.

So lets talk about Win7. If you’ve been running WinXP for the last 10+ years, you’ll see mostly familiar things, but there’s new puzzles on top of the old.

1) Windows default, like the Mac default, is to not show file extensions. No .txt, .doc, .xls and so forth. Boo! As a totally committed nerd, I treasure my extensions, I know what they mean and I consider them part of the file name. I wouldn’t consider Blah, Blah, Blah and Blah to be half as useful as Blah.txt, Blah.jpg, Blah.cpp, and Blah.sh. Each of those extensions means something specific about the file, and distinguishes it from Blah.doc, Blah.png, Blah.java, and Blah.bat.

So the first thing you need to do is get file extensions displayed: Open a Windows Explorer (ie GUI window). In the menu bar directly above the window contents, on the left, you get a choice of “Organize v”, “[] Open”, “Burn”, and “New folder”. There’s more on the right side but its not important right now. Left click on “Organize v” and you’ll get a menu of pretty standard editing commands, (cut, copy, paste, undo, redo; Select all; Layout >, Folder and search options, Delete, Rename, Remove Properties, Properties, and Close. Note that the little black triangle in “Organize v” has the same meaning as the little black triangle in “Layout >”. It means there’s a further menu. You’ve also noted that “Folder and search options” is what distinguishes “Organize v” from something you’d expect to be called “Edit / Files”.

Select “Folder and search options” and you’ll get a window named “Folder Options”, with three tabs: “General”, “View” and “Search”. We’re heading for the View tab. Under View, in a box labeled ”Advanced Settings” are two ‘folder’ icons associated with radio-button choices between two described courses of action, and a list of characteristics with a check box to the left of each. In particular, you’ll want to UNCHECK

“Hide extensions for known file types”.

You’ll also want to change the folder “Hidden files and folders” to the “(o) Show hidden files, folders and drives” radio button.

My personal belief is that you’d do better if you also unchecked

“Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)” and

“Hide empty drives in the Computer folder”

Click on “[ Apply ]” at the bottom of the window. Then “[ OK ]“, which means ‘Close’.

In that same GUI window you opened, go to Computer – Local Disk (C:). Now there’s a bunch more content shown, because $Recycle.Bin, Config.Msi, MSOCache, ProgramData, Recovery and System Volume Information are all visible.

But you’re not out of the woods yet. \AppData is a very important folder where apps put stuff they think you’ll care about. Its in C:\Users\yourNameHere\AppData. The folder is invisible until you tell the GUI Folder and Search Options to stop hiding it. But you still can’t see it in a Command window. To see it there, you have to use “dir /a” possibly other variations as well, I’m not an expert. But “dir /a”
will find AppData. It will also find NTUSER.* files that the GUI doesn’t display.

You’re going to want to know how to see this stuff from Command windows, because the GUI will show you “Junctions” (ie symbolic links) in a directory, once you tell it to stop hiding things, but you can’t click into them and have the click follow the link to wherever it points. Nor can you see where it points from the GUI. For that, you need the Command window and “dir /a”

One other gift in Windows 7 is the Library concept, for computers which are shared by multiple users. The Windows 7 Library views gather multiple physical directories and make them visible in one virtual directory called a Library. There is no physical object containing Junctions to the files, or at least I haven’t found it yet. But there is a control in each Library to aggregate two or more directories into a Library view. So, for example, you get a Documents Library which consists of the contents of C:\Users\YourNameHere\Documents and C:\Users\Public\Documents.

So the Operating System which has C:\Windows, C:\Program Files and C:\Program Files (x86) now also has C:\Users\Public\Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures, Recorded TV and Videos, as places to hide executables or parts of executables. Along with C:\Documents and Settings, which has a Junction to C:\Users….

2) Windows has 2 mouse buttons, so things that Macs might do with a Command, Control, Shift or Option-click, may simply be waiting for you to hit the right hand button on the mouse or pad. Its all good – spelling corrections are there, for example. Click on ‘WinXP’ which is underlined in red, above, and Windows 7 suggests “Wimp” and “WinPE”. Seriously. “WinXP” is a typo, “WinPE” isn’t. (show of hands: How many of you know what WinPE *is*?) Add “WinXP” to the dictionary, there, with the right button.

3) “dir” in Command: is not the same as “ls” in sh or BASH. For one thing, dir takes the path and THEN the switches. Delimited by forward slashes. Vice ls which gets dash delimited switches before the path.

But wait, there’s more! ls (return) gives the current directory contents. So does dir (return). ls * gives the contents of the level below the current, while dir * gives the current level again. Dir has no syntax for adding a wild-card to the end of a path and looking into the contents of directories without knowing their names. You musk specify the name, unless you use /s, which causes the specified directory and ALL SUBDIRECTORIES to be displayed. So there simply is no way to say ls */*, you have to Dir and Dir the subdirectories, (or use a foreach dir in a command window, or learn PowerShell.)

So there’s some steps to you can take to see your account and directory, but unless you load Cygwin, you’re not going to see *x type behavior. Embrace the change.

Bill

Trending up: Windows7, Agile Methodologies, Scrum, Python. Everything else? Down!

Linked-in are now listing ala-carte qualifications which one can endorse one’s acquaintances on, or be endorsed by them. No surprise, 20 people say I’m good at “hardware”, which is my highest endorsement. What I want to draw your attention to here is that if you hover your pointer over each of the possible qualifications, Linked-in will show you a working definition and the year-to-year trend on people who say they do-have-know-practice-are-qualified-in the specific item.

Not so surprising, people saying they know ‘hardware’ are down year on year… also C, C++, software engineering, Perforce, customer support, regression test, unit test, and so forth. VMware is 0% – neither up nor down over last year.

Agile Methodologies are up, Windows 7 is way-up, Python is up, Scrum is up. The other 44 categories, on my list, not including VMware at 0 and Windows 8 which doesn’t have a year on year trend, are down.

So, among people who list qualifications similar to mine, the majority and growth area are Python users, on Windows 7, employing Scrum and Agile project management methods.

Your choice whether that’s:

a) what everyone wants;

b) what people looking for work think they need;

c) some cross section of professionals on Linked-in.

I think its worth noting in passing, but not worth a lot of study. But it is a curiosity.

An example that pleased me: The difference between an abstract class and an interface, in Java:

Here’s the punch line:

In Java, Prussia can extend (“be a”) one of the super-classes, Holy, Roman or  Empire, but only one. Prussia can implement the other two as interfaces, but only with methods and fields uniquely its own. If Prussia is to be Holy, be Roman and be an Empire, the strictly hierarchical relationship of those three super-classes has to be worked out separately and in detail, in advance. I can only imagine Herr von Bismark would approve.

 

And the whole magilla:
1) What is the difference between an interface and an abstract class?

An abstract class defines data (fields) and member functions but may not, itself, be instantiated. Usually, some of the methods of an abstract class are abstract and expected to be supplied by a sub-class, but some of the methods are defined.  Unless they are final, they can be overridden, and they can always be overloaded. Private parts of an abstract super class, for example, data, are not available to a subclass, so access methods (public or protected) must be used by the subclass. An abstract superclass is “extended” by a subclass. A given subclass may only extend one super-class, but a super-class may extend another super-class, in a hierarchy. (This avoids the complexities/difficulties of multiple inheritance in C++)

An interface is a proper subset of an abstract class, but has a different scope and use. An interface has ONLY abstract member functions and static, final, fields, aka constants. Any subclass has to provide all the variable fields and code which implements an interface. The implementing class cannot override the interface’s member signatures – the signatures are what the interface *is*. It is possible to overload an interface’s signatures, adding or subtracting variables, changing return or variable types, but the overloads do not satisfy the requirements of the interface. The implementing class(s) must contain actual member functions to satisfy all of the signatures in the interface, because there is no default, no code in the interface.  As used above, a given class ‘implements’ an interface, it does not ‘extend’ it. These limitations to an interface allow a given class to implement more than one, which retains most of the utility of multiple inheritance without, as it were, opening Plethora’s bag. (grin)

For example: In Java, Prussia can extend (“be a”) one of the super-classes, Holy, Roman or  Empire, but only one. Prussia can implement the other two as interfaces with methods and fields uniquely its own. If Prussia is to be Holy, be Roman and be an Empire, the strictly hierarchical relationship of those three super-classes has to be worked out separately and in detail, in advance. I can only imagine Herr von Bismark would approve.

Do I need to upgrade my fuel pressure regulator, for Euro/Asian “tuner” cars?

I saw this on Flickr and couldn’t stop myself from replying.

POTD – Do I need a fuel pressure regulator?

Do you really need an aftermarket fuel pressure regulator?

We see people fitting these when they really could save their money. That is not to say they don’t have an important place, but often the stock regulator will be up to the task. To give you some perspective, we have seen 500 kW at the wheels from an EVO 9 that still uses the factory FPR!

STM | Speedtech Motorsport Ltd
Performance Vehicle Specialists
www.speedtechnz.com/

Nice picture, clear thought. I’m most familiar with the VW/Bosch set-up, with three pipes at the fuel tank. Supply pipe (1) goes from the tank to the pump, pump output goes to the regulator, bypassed fuel from the regulator goes back to the tank (2), unused fuel from the injector rail(s) go back to the tank (3).

Therefore the pump is moving buckets more fuel than is being used, all of which flows through the pressure regulator. Also, the filter is filtering the fuel over and over. So the size of all the fuel system components upstream of the injector spritzers is much larger than the volume of fuel consumed would require. Compare to an engine oil-pump, where its more about volume, not the precise pressure at the furthest point. Thrashing the oil through the oil pump consumes a modest amount of engine power, at idle, but the engine’s speed range varies by a factor of 5 to 10, so you have to do something to limit pressure at the high end, or live with pretty low pressure at the low end. Nothing is perfect and its all tradeoffs.

The fuel injection system varies the time(s) the injector spritzer is on, and constant pressure with variable timing make variable, controllable, fuel volume. For perfect combustion, you want to regulate the weight of fuel (number of molecules) to match weight of oxygen in the air (number of molecules). That’s why the injection system air-sensors are “mass sensors” and not *volume* sensors. A modern engine’s computer probably makes a density correction for fuel temperature.

The wholesalers who sell gasoline to your neighborhood station do a temperature correction when they fill the station’s tanks, because they charge a fixed price per weight of fuel. Volume is easy to measure, but the energy in the fuel is a direct function of weight. All the “barrels” of crude oil and refined products are interpreted as being at a standard temperature. Only the unwashed and uneducated end user pays money for fuel by volume. And that’s why the British Thermal Unit (BTU) is the amount of energy it takes to change the temperature of a *weight* of water (1 lb) by 1 degree F (59.5 to 60.5). And Air Conditioners are specified by “Tons”, which refers to the cooling power of a weight of ice over a 24 hour period. But I digress.

So, bottom line, you need a fuel pressure regulator and it needs to be big enough to accept the flow rate from your fuel pump. They work as pair, providing a variable volume of fuel at a constant pressure. Note that the volume/time varies directly by engine speed – make the engine go 5 times faster? You’ll need 5 times as much fuel. 10 times faster? (Honda S2000, 9000 rpm?) 10 times as much fuel. HOWEVER. The fuel consumed is not only less than the pump and regulator handle, its less than the regulator sends to the injectors. Because the point where the constant pressure matters is where the injectors plug into the fuel rail(s).

So, just as the pump has to move more fuel through the filter and regulator to make the desired volume at the regulated pressure, the regulated pressure side of the system has more fuel flowing through it than it actually sprays into the engine at any given time.

If you make 3 or 4 times stock output power, thus flowing at least 3 or 4 times the weight of fuel and oxygen through the engine, you might start to need a bigger fuel pump, and regulator, and rails, and injectors. Unless the extra oxygen comes from NOx, or an oxygen tank, a 4X increase in power probably means a turbo or mechanical supercharger. Porting, polishing, blueprint balancing, big valves, savage cams, even higher compression pistons are likely to work just fine with the stock fuel pump and regulator. And if you upgrade to a larger volume regulator, you’re wasting your money unless you upgrade the pump and filter, and possibly the hose size as well.

McLaren’s Porsche-designed, TAG-Turbo engine, 1983-1987, an annotated bibliography

Annotated bibliography for the TAG-Turbo engine that Porsche designed for the McLaren Formula 1 team. TAG put up the money for the design work, Porsche were subcontractors. McLaren/Project 4 engineer John Barnard specified what he wanted and explored tradeoffs with Porsche, but he was the customer and they had to make him happy. The result was an engine that won three world championships in the 4 years and a bit that it was used. Won a crushing 12 of 16 races in one year. Delivered dependable power and to the decimal point fuel economy. And might have been a contender in a 5th year if the Honda of similar size hadn’t come with Ayrton Senna, as a package.

 The Autocourse History of the Grand Prix Car 1966-91 /116618Ae by Doug Nye
This is the best single reference I’ve found. Nye’s encyclopedic followup to Setrights’s earlier “History of the Grand Prix Car” volumes is technical journalism at its best. He give the year by year narrative, but also digs deep for topics like “The Remarkable Mclaren TAG Turbo MP4/2s 1984-86″ From pages 148 to 159, and “TAG Turbo” in the “Racing Engines” run down, all of page 214 and 3 lines on 215. If you’re limited to one book, this is it.

 The Anatomy and Development of the Formula 1 Racing Car from 1975 by Sal Incandela
Incandela has the nuts and bolts stories a gearhead wants with almost as much detail as Nye, and both different biases and possibly different sources. The narrative history for 1984-86, pages 49 to 84, includes 10 items important enough to be indexed under “Porsche”. 9 other entries, in other parts of the book, are also indexed “Porsche”. The McLaren TAG MP4/2s don’t get a detailed run down, but he covers the Renault RE-20 and Brabham-BMW BT-52 in some depth, for perspective. Besides photos, this book includes useful, detailed, black and white line drawings from the Italian motoring press.
My copy is the third edition, presumably some material was added or revised.

 Turbo Years: Grand Prix Racing’s Battle for Power by Alan Henry
Henry has a regular job covering Formula 1 races for the automotive press. In this book he puts together an overall narrative of how engine technology and engine related politics changed F1. Its a nice perspective if you’re particularly interested in one engine or another, since the engines, and the cars, are the center of the story. Drivers, teams, sponsors, FOCA vs FIA, all secondary. The text is presented in chapter-per-season, and he doubtless uses his own practice and race-day coverage as a starting point, but the engine story gets more than typical weight. Chapters “1984″, “1985″ and “1986″ are pages 164-232.

 AUTOCOURSE -THE WORLD’S LEADING GRAND PRIX ANNUAL 1984/85 by Maurice (Editor) Hamilton
Here’s the gold standard of race-by-race, season-by-season Formula 1 coverage. Not cheap when new, this is for the hardcore fan, with ads by car makers, car part makers fuel and oil companies… The season’s winner writes the introduction each year, So Lauda gets his third and last, and he, in an MP4/2, is the front cover photo. Broad drivers, cars, teams, engines and technology coverage. Everything from soap opera to lock-washers may be covered. For the engines topic, page 33 has tables of publicly known specs on every engine used that season, to compare and contrast. Doug Nye has a technical run-down on pages 44, 45 and 46. The treat is independent engine maker Brian Hart writing about racing engines, pages 62-64,68 and 72. 2 page photo spread of a TAG Turbo in or near racing condition, not a car show prop, on pages 62 and 63.

 AUTOCOURSE 1985-86 by Maurice (Editor) Williams
And here’s a second year of the gold standard. Alain Prost gets to write his first introduction. The engine spec tables are on page 34. A lovely exploded view of the MP4/2B on Page 46. Lots of story / trivia / blow-by-blow description for each race too. Something to take notes on while you read.

 AUTOCOURSE 1986-87 by Motorbooks International
Here’s Prof. Prost’s second championship year, on the trot after his first. That’s some rare talent, and having a great engine, great team and well understood car doesn’t hurt. Only Michael Shoemacher has exceeded Prost’s total of 41 F1 victories, with Ayrton Senna in 3rd place with 31, Lauda tying Stewart tying Clark at 27. I don’t have this volume myself, after the two previous years’ coverage, I didn’t really need to add more information. But if you’re shopping, this is definitely one to be interested in. People put crazy prices on these books – if you can get 1984 for $250 and 1986 for $25 you’d be foolish not to go for 1986.

 The new Formula One: A turbo age by Niki Lauda
Now we’re at the “interesting” rather than “required” titles – Niki Lauda wrote this book before the 1984 season, so he knew what he was talking about, but the really interesting stuff for the TAG Turbo fan hadn’t happened yet. The chapter on engines goes from page 66 to page 128 and discusses turbo and “atmo” engines up to the break between the 1983 and 1984 season. Its a wide ranging discussion at the most fascinating level – a world famous racing and development driver covering technicalities, personalities and companies he knows well. And hopes to show himself the best user of. No-one could have forecast the fairy-tale season he and Prost were about to have. Or the convergence of rotten luck, for Lauda, that would follow in his final year.

 McLaren: Grand Prix, Can-Am and Indy Cars by Doug Nye
This is a useful and business-like book, and if your interest in McLaren ends in 1983, everything you need is here. So the TAG Turbo is covered, in the MP4/1e development form. Like Lauda’s book, this one wraps up just BEFORE the amazing 1984 season. The longest and most thorough McLaren corporate evolution coverage is here, really important because John Barnard was a principal of Project4 and came on board at McLaren when McLaren Cars and Project 4 merged as McLaren International. With car’s named “MP4″ as in McLaren / Project 4. So the development story is here, again. But given that you’ve read Nye’s, “History of the Grand Prix Car” and possibly the 1984 Autocourse, you may start noticing repetition.

Dubshed 2012 – nice pictures!

A way, way cool photoblog. My favorite is the Golf 1 (aka Rabbit in USA) with the light blue and orance engine compartment.. looks like an air cleaner behind the head, and I don’t see any spark plug wires… diesel?  Wires and plugs on the back side with the intake and exhaust? Whatever. A very pretty job. Got the total “Euro” look going too – no bumper whatsoever. Mmm. Memory’s of my grandparent’s Karman Ghia – Anything that got past the bumper meant real bodywork with welding and painting…

Dubshed 2012.