I'm currently considering upgrading the household Wi-Fi setup. Currently, I have an ADSL modem connected to a Hauwai EchoLife HG8245A router. See Figure 1.
Figure 1
The modem is currently available on Tokopedia and other Indonesian online stores for between A$12 and A$24. It makes use of Wi-Fi 4, a protocol released in 2009. However, it's now November of 2021 and Wi-Fi 6 has been in use for the past two years:
Wi-Fi 6 is the next-generation wireless standard that’s faster than 802.11ac. More than speed, it will provide better performance in congested areas, from stadiums to your own device-packed home.
Wi-Fi 6 officially arrived in late 2019, and Wi-Fi 6-enabled hardware was released throughout 2020.
Wi-Fi now has version numbers. Those old confusing Wi-Fi standard names like “802.11ac” have been renamed to user-friendly names like “Wi-Fi 5.” Here are the versions of Wi-Fi you’ll be seeing:
Wi-Fi 4 is 802.11n, released in 2009.
Wi-Fi 5 is 802.11ac, released in 2014.
Wi-Fi 6 is the new version, also known as 802.11ax. It was released in 2019.
As usual, the latest Wi-Fi standard offers faster data transfer speeds. If you’re using a Wi-Fi router with a single device, maximum potential speeds should be up to 40% higher with Wi-Fi 6 compared to Wi-Fi 5.
Wi-Fi 6 accomplishes this through more efficient data encoding, resulting in higher throughput. Mainly, more data is packed into the same radio waves. The chips that encode and decode these signals keep getting more powerful and can handle the extra work.
This new standard even increases speeds on 2.4GHz networks. While the industry has shifted to 5GHz Wi-Fi for less interference, 2.4GHz is still better at penetrating solid objects. And there shouldn’t be as much interference for 2.4GHz as old cordless telephones and wireless baby monitors are retired. Source: How-To Geek.
Figure 2 shows the current Internet speeds I'm achieving using the current Wi-Fi 4.
Interestingly, using a cabled connection from a WiFi repeater to my laptop, I achieved a faster ping, a slower download speed and a faster upload speed. See Figure 3.
The results of these tests are fairly variable. For example, a subsequent test of the Wi-Fi, without a cabled connection, gave the figures shown in Figure 4:
For a more reliable estimate, tests would need to carried out over a 24 hour period and an average taken. Nonetheless, the figures above provide a rough reference point and it's clear that the speeds fall in the slow category, given that a good internet speed is 25 Mbps for download and 10 Mbps for upload (source).
Just to complicate matters, we learn from How-To Geek that:
There’s now also a “Wi-Fi 6E” that refers to Wi-Fi 6 over 6 GHz rather than the typical 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz. Wi-Fi 6E hardware will arrive after Wi-Fi 6 hardware.
Figure 5 shows a comparison chart of data transfer rates for the various Wi-Fi formats.
Figure 5 makes it apparent that the most important factor is Internet speed because even Wi-Fi 3 offers data transfer rates of 54 Mbps, far in excess of the approximate 10 Mbps download speed of my current Internet connection. This has led me to explore the plans offered by my local Internet provider. Figure 6 shows the Internet and phone packages available.
Clearly I'm currently on the cheapest package with promised speeds of "up to" 20 Mbps that translate to half that in practice. It would seem that the "up to" 50 Mbps option would be acceptable, promising real life speeds of around the acceptable 25 Mbps. I think this combined with a Wi-Fi 6 or 6E router would offer a big improvement over current performance.
After several defeats by Stockfish 14+ (set to level 6 ≅ 2300) on lichess.org, I had a surprisingly quick and easy win today. Here is the game:
Black overextended on the king side with a pawn advance and paid the ultimate price. I invariably advance the queen pawn when playing white and this game was no exception. When I have the black pieces, I usually play some variation of the Sicilian Defence against an opening e4 from white but I'm becoming disenchanted with it. Perhaps I should try the Caro-Kann Defence? Alireza Firouzja has been using it recently in some of his games so it must have some merit. On lichess.org there are a variety of studies and one of them deals with the Caro-Kann defence. Figure 1 shows a screenshot. The study is well-presented and I should investigate more of them.
I haven't actively tried for a rating on any of the online chess platforms, preferring to play unrated games as this puts me under less pressure to perform. Maybe I should because it's very rare that I get to play anybody over the board these days. I'm making slow progress on ChessPuzzle.net and am currently rated at 1842 as of Monday, 8th November 2021.
Of course, there's nothing like over-the-board play but it's hard to come by these days.
While I was searching for chess clubs in my local area of Bintaro Sektor IX, I noticed that Utut Adianto, the famous Indonesian grandmaster, has set up a chess training school very near to where I live. Unfortunately however, it's now permanently closed. I was surprised to learn that, on May 9th 2009, Utut Adianto was elected to the People's Representative Council, the lower house of Indonesia's bicameral parliament. He became deputy speaker of the body on 20 March 2018.
Recently I was reading, on chess.com I think, how one of the best ways to improve your chess was via puzzle solving. To this end I found a relatively new site, that's free and offers a succession of puzzles to solve and rates your progress along the way. The site is https://chesspuzzle.net:
Figure 1 shows an example of the type of puzzles offered:
Figure 1
In a couple of days I've progressed from a starting level of about 1400 to my current rating of 1806 (on the 19th October 2021).
So far I'm enjoying my steady progress and finding the puzzles challenging but, given sufficient thought, quite solvable. Doubtless the level of difficulty will steadily increase. Meanwhile I continue to play a daily game against the computer on lichess.org with Stockfish set to level 6 of 8 levels:
So far I've not submitted to a rating, although I guess I should at some point. I prefer playing the computer with unlimited time control as I can relax and not feel under pressure as I would with time controls. I need to be more adventurous of course and face real opponents under time pressure. Figure 2 shows a crucial position from the last game that I played against Stockfish.
Figure 2
I had the White pieces and it was my turn to move. I hurriedly captured the pawn on c4 and, after an exchange of rooks, Black played Qa6. It was all over as Black can now penetrate to my 2nd rank and there is no defence against checkmate. If I'd played Qh4 instead and followed up with Qe2, things would have been very different. Here is the game in full:
My granddaughter bought two T-shirts last night with the Wrangler logo emblazoned on the front, similar to that shown in Figure 1. I asked her what the word meant and she didn't know. Neither, I realised, did I. I vaguely recalled that the verb "wrangle" meant to haggle over something but what was a wrangler, apart form someone involved in the wrangling process?
Well, other T-shirt designs give the clue. Figure 2 shows the Wrangler logo with the image of a horse beneath it.
In North America, a wrangler is someone employed to handle animals professionally, especially horses, but sometimes other types of animals as well. The word "wrangler" is derived from the Low German "wrangeln" meaning "to dispute" or "to wrestle". It was first documented in 1377. Its use as a noun was first recorded in 1547. Its reference to a "person in charge of horses or cattle" or "herder" was first recorded in 1888.
A wrangler is an individual involved in the process of taming, controlling and handling various animals, specifically horses. Traditionally this process involves herding cattle and bringing horses in from the paddock. Wranglers often work for other cowboys or tourists who want to ride on North American ranches. Variations of wrangling include managing herds, dude-wrangling, rodeo and managing horses as a part of stunt work in the film industry. Wranglers are also considered a subcategory of cowboys, being responsible for herding horses rather than cattle. The profession of wrangling has developed over time, as wranglers are educated to perform more activities as the tourism sector has become increasingly important in the employment of wranglers.
Wranglers also handle the horses and other animals during the making of motion pictures. A dude-wrangler is a cowboy or guide that takes non-wranglers and non-cowboys (dudes) on western riding horseback trips.
In the film industry, a wrangler is also one who professionally searches for and/or handles particular products on film and television programs, and music videos, such as custom cars or animals.
So a wrangler is a profession and it's a specifically North American term which is why I wasn't familiar with it. Of course, the name Wrangler has also been given to a type of jeep. See Figure 3.
Figure 3: 2021 Jeep Wrangler
I'll use this opportunity to look at words that rhyme with wrangler, namely:
Of these words, only "strangler" and "angler" are common, the others being rarely used nouns from common verbs. For example, the verb "entangle" is an everyday word whereas the noun "entangler" is seldom heard.
Firstly the chord progression is I ➞ VII ➞ VI ➞ V and the key of Am is illustrated in Figure 1.
SIMPLE FINGER PICKING
Next a simple thumb ➞ index finger ➞ middle finger ➞ ring finger picking pattern in illustrated in Figure 2 and Figure 3. Note the changes in the chord shapes between Figure 1 and Figure 2 (the second follows on from the first).
Figure 2
Figure 3
ADVANCED FINGER PICKING
Figures 4 and 5 show a more advanced finger picking style and makes more use of the thumb and only one finger.
Figure 4
Figure 5
SCALES
Figures 7 and 8 shows how to play the Am scale from the root note of each chord, five notes are played for each chord. Remember the Am scale goes A, B, C, D, E, F, G with no flats or sharps. However, the G as explained earlier has been changed to a G# and so we have what is called the harmonic minor scale. See Figure 6.
Figure 6
Figure 7
Figure 8
There is always room for embellishment and Figures 9 and 10 show examples of this, the first without bass notes and the second with them.
Figure 9
Figure 10
USING ADVANCED CHORDS
Figures 11 and 12 illustrate the use of advanced chords to add more colour to the sound.
Figure 11
Figure 12
I've already been practising and making steady progress.
I heard the word kitsch mentioned yesterday and this was a word that I hadn't heard in a while. As it does, my mind fell to finding words that rhyme with it. Here is what RhymeZone came up with.
absolute pitch, bogdanowicz, buttonhole stitch, field hockey pitch, ignition switch, mineral pitch, nintendo switch, pickettywitch, skeletonwitch, son-of-a-bitch, sonofabitch, sonuvabitch, submarine pitch, wassilievitch, without a stitch
Five syllables:
chabad-lubavitch, earwig and the witch, irrigation ditch, izetbegovic, lazy daisy stitch, philharmonic pitch, pythagoraswitch
Six syllables:
international pitch
There's quite a few words in that list that I've never heard of and many that I'm unsure of but before looking at some of them, let's define the word that started it all: kitsch.
noun: art, objects, or design considered to be in poor taste because of excessive garishness or sentimentality, but sometimes appreciated in an ironic or knowing way e.g. "the lava lamp is a bizarre example of sixties kitsch"
adjective: considered to be in poor taste but appreciated in an ironic or knowing way e.g. "the front room is stuffed with kitsch knick-knacks, little glass and gilt ornaments"
It is apparently a German word adopted in about 1926 and meaning gaudy or trashy. There's more to it than that but I won't go further into the etymology here.
Figure 1 is the visuwords representation of kitsch:
Figure 1
Getting back to the words that RhymeZone threw up, the first to catch my eye was blitch. A quick search returned the following from Collins Dictionary:
A blitz of glitches ie. a series of successive glitches occurring in a computer that one has no control of at the time.
New word suggestion submitted by Unknown on 19/07/2012.
A black witch (Conjurer/Rootworker/Hoodoosaint) using knowledge of African thought, African/Afrodiasporic spiritual practice, Divination, Ancestral veneration, and African healing modalities to heal and fortify themselves, their elders, their peers, and the next generation of children to be.
The phrase was coined by Daizy Latifah of TheAfroMystic.com, due to the co-opting of Black religious traditions by colonisers and cultural appropriators.
I don't know what all them basic witches are doing over there with that sage and that crystal wand, but these blitches over here? They know their shit!
by YaMamasNkindi November 06, 2018
The Urban Dictionary definition is actually taken from TheAfroMystic.com website. From these two examples, it can be seen that blitch lends itself to being a portmanteau word as words like blitz of glitches, black witch and (to use my own example) bloody bitch become fused. However, it's exact meaning is yet to be pinned down, it remains protean.
Let's look at a word in two syllable section: magwitch. This turns out to be the surname of a character by the name of Abel Magwitch in the Charles Dickens novel "Great Expectations". See Figure 2.
The following actors have portrayed Magwitch in films, an impressive list:
Figure 2
Frank Losee (1917)
Henry Hull (1934)
Finlay Currie (1946)
James Mason (1974): see Figure 3
Stratford Johns (1981)
Anthony Hopkins (1991)
Robert De Niro (1998)
Bernard Hill (1999)
Ray Winstone (2011)
Ralph Fiennes (2012)
Let's look at a word from the three syllable list: lubavich. This Jewish organisation is notorious and downright dangerous, representing a crazy extreme of Judaism. To quote from its own website:
Chabad, also known as Lubavitch, Habad and Chabad-Lubavitch, is an Orthodox Jewish Hasidic dynasty. Chabad is one of the world's best-known Hasidic movements, particularly for its outreach activities. It is one of the largest Hasidic groups and Jewish religious organizations in the world.
While the organisation might sound innocent enough, it's anything but. However, let's move on to the four syllable rhyming phrases where the phrase without a stitch was the first to catch my eye. Figure 3 illustrates its meaning.
Figure 3
Also from this section is absolute pitch defined as:
Perfect pitch (technically known as absolute pitch) is the ability to identify, without effort, the pitch of a note. Let's say someone plays a D on the piano. A person with perfect pitch—and the musical training to be able to name the notes—would be able to identify the note as a D without any reference.
For five syllable phrases we have the lazy daisy stitch as explained in the following video:
The ending ich is often at the end of Slavic surnames e.g. Shostakovich. The following excerpt is from the beginning of an article titled Are Names Ending in 'ich' Really Slavic?
The Slavs pretend that the ending ich, in which many localities and Istrian family names end, is a Slavic characteristic and therefore all the names ending in it are Slavic and all who bear those names are of Slavic origin. Such a claim is so universally accepted that neither in Istria, much less in Italy, has anyone thought to doubt that the names ending in ich are decidedly Slavic and only in the most absurd instances is it admitted that ich has caught on, as for example in Fabbrich, Mianich, Marinich, etc.
We could on forever looking at all the words that rhyme with kitsch but that will have to do it for now.
An acquaintance asked me some time ago to resuscitate an old laptop that had ceased to function. It had been running Windows. The laptop, an Asus X401U, dates back to about 2012 when it was being sold for US$280 as a cheap netbook. It has a Celeron processor running at 1GHz with 2GB of RAM and a 320GB hard drive. The graphics are integrated Radeon and eat into the already meagre memory. Most versions of this laptop came with 4GB of RAM but not this particular model. See Figure 1.
Figure 1: Asus X401U
I used a program called Rufus to create a bootable USB for installing Windows. This is a fast and powerful little program. I had managed to download the ISO for a stripped-down 32-bit version of Windows 10 that was suitable for the laptop's weak specifications. Despite many attempts I could not succeed in installing Windows. See Figure 2.
Figure 2
I then downloaded the ISO of lubuntu, a lightweight version of the fully-featured Ubuntu, and used Rufus to create a bootable USB. This installed without any problems and the laptop is at last useable again. It still takes over two minutes to boot to the startup screen but once up and running it performs satisfactorily. It's only useful for Internet browsing and simple word processing but that's often enough for many users. See Figure 3.
Figure 3
The lesson to be learned from all this is that these older laptops are ill-suited to run Windows but can be made quite serviceable by installing a lightweight Linux OS like lubuntu via a simple tool like Rufus. Once the ISO for the OS has been downloaded, Rufus will quickly create a bootable USB from which the OS can be run even without installation to the laptop's hard drive. This is useful for trialing the new OS and, if satisfied, it can then be installed on the hard drive.
