The Resemblance is Uncanny
Politics

The Resemblance is Uncanny

by Al
written by Al

On the left is Felicity Jones playing the part of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the movie ‘On the Basis of Sex’. On the right is the real Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It’s simply amazing the resemblance!

Not!

Let’s contrast that to Christian Bale playing the part of Dick Cheney in the movie ‘Vice.’

Dick Compare

Bale is on the left, while Cheney’s on the right. Outside of the evil smirk on Bale’s face, they are amazingly similar. It just shows what a good job they can do recreating the likeness of a character when they want to.

But the two movies have very different goals. One is meant to build up a woman while the other is meant to take down a man. Hence, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is shown as a woman much more beautiful than she really is while Dick Cheney is imaged as a much eviler version of himself.

Here’s some corroboration of the message of the movies from a couple of critics.

First is from a review about ‘Vice’ from Owen Gleiberman from Variety:

Yet even when he’s playing it straight, which is most of the time, McKay treats the movie as a slightly cracked burlesque. He turns history into a rollicking circus for liberals, inviting us to revel in Dick Cheney’s Greatest Hits Of Infamy. “Vice” takes a lip-smacking vengeful glee in shining a light on all the dark things that Dick Cheney did behind the scenes, from recklessly grabbing command of the military decision-making process just moments after the first attack on 9/11 (this included Cheney’s wild order to shoot down any planes deemed suspicious) to lining up favors for his cronies in the oil industry to finding arcane “legal” ways to justify the trashing of the Geneva Convention. None of this will come as news to anyone who regularly consumes the front page of The New York Times. Nevertheless, the pop catharsis of “Vice,” to the extent that the movie provides one, is in actually seeing Dick Cheney throw his weight around, elbowing the wimpy, clueless George W. Bush (Sam Rockwell) out of the way as he effectively assumes the role of president.

Here’s what Danielle White from the Austin Chronicle thinks about Vice:

It’s another effort to solidify her sainthood. However, it’s also an easily digestible outline of Ginsburg, her career, and why her work is so important. It’s a biting piece of herstory that we need right now.

And if you read the reviews, you will find that both reviews are pretty sympathetic to the cause.

Leftist Hollywood pulls this sort of thing all the time. They build up their leftist icons while vilifying those on the right. They understand that most peoples view of history will be shaped by the entertainment that they watch and not by the facts and they do their best to mold that entertainment into something that supports their corrupt ideologies. Until those of us on the right find a way to combat this, we will always be behind.

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Technology

Rotating Log Files with Easylogging++

by Al
written by Al

I was looking for a logger to use in some of my C++ projects and came across Easylogging++. It’s pretty easy to use and has a decent feature set, but like so many open source projects it’s a bit lacking in the documentation area. I wanted to set it up to do log rotation when the log file exceeded a given size but how to do this was not really clear. I played around with it this morning and finally figured out how accomplish what I wanted to do, so I’m sharing the code here in case anyone else is trying to solve the same problem.

First the setup process:

  1. Download EasyLogging++ from the repository on GitHub at https://github.com/zuhd-org/easyloggingpp#configuration
  2. Unzip the file and copy the easylogging++.cc and easylogging++.hh into your projects source directory.
  3. Right-click on your project’s header file directory and select ‘Add > Add Existing Item’ and select easylogging++.hh.
  4. Right-click on your project’s source file directory and select ‘Add > Add Existing Item’ and select easylogging++.cc.
  5. Right-click on your project and select ‘Properties’ then select ‘C/C++’ > ‘Preprocessor’. Add ‘ELPP_THREAD_SAFE’ to the ‘Preprocessor Definitions’ section. Make sure you do this for both the Debug and Release sections.
  6. At the top of your main source file add the text ‘INITIALIZE_EASYLOGGINGPP’ to initialize the logger.

That’s it for the setup. The developer did a really nice job with this. It couldn’t be easier to setup.

To actually use the logger in your code, you will need to configure the logger. That can be accomplished by loading a config file and calling reconfigureAllLoggers as follows: 

   const el::Configurations conf(R"(logger.conf)");

   el::Loggers::addFlag(el::LoggingFlag::StrictLogFileSizeCheck);

   el::Loggers::reconfigureAllLoggers(conf);

The config file that I used is as follows:

  • GLOBAL:
    FORMAT = “%datetime %thread %level %msg”
    FILENAME = “D:\Win10_Workspaces\LogTest\LogTest\Logs\Logs.log”
    ENABLED = true
    TO_FILE = true
    TO_STANDARD_OUTPUT = false
    SUBSECOND_PRECISION = 6
    PERFORMANCE_TRACKING = false
    MAX_LOG_FILE_SIZE = 2097152 ## 2MB

I won’t describe it here because the Easylogging++ site does a pretty good job explaining it. For the purpose of this tutorial though the important line is the MAX_LOG_FILE_SIZE. When your log file exceeds this value a new log file will be generated and the old one will be archived.

To setup the software up for rotating logs you will need to install a callback function to do the job. That’s accomplished using the call:

el::Helpers::installPreRollOutCallback(PreRollOutCallback);

This function will be called any time your file size hits the MAX_LOG_FILE_SIZE limit that you’ve set in the config file.

The callback function that I put together is as follows:

void PreRollOutCallback(const char* fullPath, std::size_t s)
{
   char newPath[256];

   ver++;

   std::string str(fullPath);

   std::string pathNoExtension = str.substr(0, str.find_last_of('.'));

   sprintf_s(newPath, sizeof(newPath), "%s_%s_%d.log", pathNoExtension.c_str(), GetDateTime().c_str(), ver);

   rename(fullPath, newPath);
}

All it really does is rename the existing log file with the date and a version number. When the call returns Easylogging++ will generate a new log file with the default name.

And that’s it. I’m including a download for a sample project that does all the above and creates three thread to demonstrate Easylogging++ multi-threading capabilities.

I’d like to give credit to the developers, Zuhd Web Services. They’ve done an excellent job with this and it’s great of them to share their work with others.

Source Files:

Code is signed by Al Carnali

LogTest.zip
LogTest.zip.sig
Hash: 59AC89D5FAB6B6207F9EF81E210AF4CE3FA475A4A2A96C8297B2D61BCBC0A9DA

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Politics

Low Expectations

by Al
written by Al

This crazy lady thinks we should eliminate library fines because they are a hardship for our ‘most vulnerable’ citizens. Once again, more liberal insanity.

Why should anyone listen to advice from a librarian that admits to having paid $500 in fines over the last few years. The woman is so irresponsible that she can’t even make sure that she returns the books that she’s borrowed on time, yet want’s us to believe she’s so intelligent that she knows better than the rest of us.

Why should anyone listen to advice from a librarian that admits to having paid $500 in fines over the last few years. The woman is so irresponsible that she can’t even make sure that she returns the books that she’s borrowed on time, yet want’s us to believe she’s so intelligent that she knows better than the rest of us.

Fines have never been there as a way for libraries to collect revenue. There main purpose is to make sure that books are returned in a timely matter so that they are available for all to borrow. There secondary, and much more important purpose, is that they teach responsibility. When I was a kid, we looked at taking books out from the library as a privilege. I was taught to take care of the books that I was loaned and to return them in a timely matter in the same condition in which they were borrowed. These are simple lessons in life that start to teach children about handling the responsibilities they will face as an adult. They help kids to form good habits that will last them a life time. If you learn to return a book on time or face a nickel a day fine, you will probably have the skills required as an adult to properly manage a credit card, purchase and pay for a house and save money for retirement.

Poor people will continue to remain poor unless they learn the skills required to live a successful life. You do a disservice to them when you treat them like children that are not capable of handling the challenges of life that the rest of us face.

We keep lowering standards instead of trying to make people rise up to meet those standards. It’s not good for them and it’s not good for society.

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Peppermint
Reviews

Peppermint

by Al
written by Al

Once again an example of critics injecting their politics into movies. Peppermint isn’t high art by any means but it’s a solid vengeance flick that should be judged with that in mind. The movie is well constructed, entertaining and well acted, yet it only gets an 11% average review by the critics on Rotten Tomatoes, while the audience rates it at 74%.

Here’s a few examples of what the critics had to say:

Alternate-reality Trumpian racial panic where MS13-inspired street gangs are a global threat somewhere on the scale of HYDRA. The shambling end result plays like a Lifetime movie conceived by Steve Bannon. – Bob Chipman – Geek

Peppermint is jaw-droppingly ugly, horrendously violent, implicitly racist and routinely handled. – David Stratton – The Australian

And my favorite:

The big issue: What a horrible time for a movie about a white lady indiscriminately gunning down legions of Latino men. – Sean Collier

So it appears the real reason for the bad reviews was not so much the quality of the movie but the fact that drug cartel consisted mostly of Latinos. How dare they give the impression that Latino gangs are often involved in drug sales and violence; everyone knows that’s not true.

Just for kicks, I went back to Rotten Tomatoes did a search on The GodFather, another movie that shows members of an ethnic group involved in criminal activities. The critic’s rating was 98%.

Here are some of The GodFather reviews:

Francis Ford Coppola’s adaptation of Mario Puzo’s bestseller remains the great American epic of the immigrant dream turned family business. – Sean Axmaker – Stream on Demand

To permit us a glimpse at The Mob, with all of its ethnic insularity, is like giving a chronic gambler a chance to wander above the false mirrors that overlook every casino. – Gene Siskel – Chicago Tribune

With all due respect to this 1972 classic, Vizzini was right: Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line. – Kevin A. Ranson Movie Crypt.com

So I guess the rule is that it’s OK to make a movie that shows bad Italians but it’s not OK to make a movie that shows bad Latinos.

Reviews should be about the movie; it’s construction, it’s look, feel and atmosphere, the acting and most important, whether or not it was entertaining.

You might not like it’s politics, but Peppermint is an entertaining movie and if the critics had any integrity, it would have received a much higher score.

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Politics

Fake News

by Al
written by Al

An article in the UK Daily Mail had the following title, “Black 12-year-old boy mowing lawns for the summer has the POLICE called on him by a customer’s neighbor”. They followed it with a quick summary of the article which included, “It is similar to another incident in San Francisco, where a white woman dubbed ‘Permit Patty’ called the cops on a black girl, 8, for selling bottles of water.”

OK, if you don’t go any further you are now left with the impression that those horrible, racist people in America are once again discriminating against a poor little black kid. If you continue scanning the article, it becomes apparent that this is not true. Further down in the article, they show this picture of the neighbors who called the police on the boy:

Lesbian Couple?

Two women, one who is clearly black. Possibly a lesbian couple?

If a black women calls the police on a black boy is she racist?

Why did the Daily Mail feel the need to tell us it was a ‘Black 12 year-old boy” but never tell us it was a black woman that probably made the phone call? If it weren’t for the photo, we would never know this important detail.

Further reading provides some even more interesting information, “Both Reggie’s mom Brandy Fields (left) and Lucille Holt (right) were furious the neighbor called the cops on the youngster.”

Two moms. More lesbians?

Could this just be a cat fight between a couple of crazy lesbian couples and have nothing to do with a boy mowing the lawn?

I don’t know if that’s true or not, but there’s more reason to believe that than to believe that there was racism involved in this incident.

This is why people hate the media. Instead of reporting the news, they push an agenda.

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Some Times You Just Get Lucky
Photography

Some Times You Just Get Lucky

by Al
written by Al

UPS delivered a Sigma 150-600mm lens for my camera today. I decided to test it out by going into the backyard and taking a couple of pictures of a tree or the neighbors house. As luck would have it a hawk was just sitting in the middle of the hill.

The lens is huge and heavy, but not as big as a lot of lenses in it’s class. I was hand holding it for the hawk photo and had a hard time keeping it steady enough to get the hawk in focus. I took about fifteen shots and about a third of them were usable. I’m not blaming the lens, something this big really needs a tripod or mono-pod to keep it stable. Thanks to image stabilization and random chance I was able to get a decent shot.

I’m hoping to take this with me hiking since most wildlife is pretty skittish and most of my wildlife photos feature the ass end of deer and birds as they flee from me. I may need to do some serious weightlifting first if I want to be in shape enough to lug it around all day.

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Diversity Morons
Culture

Diversity Morons

by Al
written by Al

I’ve been thinking about putting up a new antenna for my HF radio and did a Google search to see what was available in the way of masts. A hit came up for Home Depot which carried the Channel Master – Universal 25 ft. Indoor/Outdoor Telescoping Mast. Picking up a mast at Home Depot would be quick and easy so I clicked on the link and here is what I found in the description…

Person Wires

Just incredible. We’ve gotten to a point where using the term ‘guy wire’ apparently isn’t inclusive enough so we have to call them ‘person wires’ instead. I wonder what moron made this decision. These people are just frigging insane.

Next time I go to the supermarket I’m going to check out the cookie aisle and if I find they’re selling lady fingers I’m going to lodge a complaint.

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Anti-Trump Artists Fill A Room With Vermin (and they brought some rats with them too)
Politics

Anti-Trump Artists Fill A Room With Vermin (and they brought some rats with them too)

by Al
written by Al

The New York Daily News reports that the guerrilla art group, Indecline rented a hotel room at the Trump International Hotel on Central Park West and filled it with rats, McDonald’s wrappers and a Donald Trump impersonator as part of a so called art exhibit. They also displayed pictures of some of their heroes on the walls, including such greats as Communist Party Leader Angela Davis, Western civilization hating professor Howard Zinn and multi-millionaire socialist, Noam Chompsky.

This obviously wasn’t art and these obviously aren’t artists (although I’m sure many on the confused left would feel otherwise.) These are nothing more than dangerous children, holding their breath and throwing a temper tantrum because they didn’t get their way in the last election.

As usual with pathetic leftists, they didn’t even have the guts to show their faces; choosing to wear masks during the whole exhibit. Probably best for all of us because I’m sure they’re as ugly on the outside as they are on the inside.

I wish that the police could hunt them down and bring charges against them, but I’m sure some wack job leftist judge would dismiss the case saying it was within their first amendment rights and not caring that the hotel was damaged by their actions.

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Goodbye Dish Network
Personal

Goodbye Dish Network

by Al
written by Al

As cable companies come, Dish Network is the best of the bunch. Sadly, it’s time for me to leave them.

I’ve been a Dish customer for about twenty two years. When we first moved into the house, I assesed our options and ruled out both Comcast (maybe it was Road Runner back then) and Direct TV as being way too expensive. Dish on the other hand, seemed reasonably priced and had attractive packages so they became the provider of choice.

It’s been a good relationship, but in recent years it seemed like the price just kept going up and up. To deal with it, every time there was a price increase, I would cut back programming a bit to keep the price within reason. Last year, I cut back big time and had only the locals, a few cable channels and HBO. Even with that, it was costing me almost $75 a month.

In Friday’s mail, I received this notice from Dish:

“Starting with your next bill, you will see two changes that will result in a $5 monthly increase. The first change is a $3 increase on your core programming package. The second is a $2 increase on your local channels package”

Eighty a month for minimal programming. It was time for me to leave.

Most of the time we spent on Dish was watching the locals and HBO. I could get HBO through Amazon for $15 a month and I had already installed an outside antenna this summer so I had the locals covered. The only thing missing was the ability to timeshift.

After some research, I came across the TiVo Roamio OTA. The nice thing about the Roamio OTA is that the price includes a perpetual TiVo subscription. All of their other units require sending them $15 a month to access the program guide which was not going to happen. At $399 it wasn’t cheap, but I calculated that it would pay for itself in six months time. So I headed off to Best Buy, purchased the unit, did the installation and cancelled my Dish subscription.

So far the TiVo is looking good. It can record up to four streams simultaneously and is pretty easy to use. Picture quality is excellent.

I really don’t understand what is in the heads of the executives at Dish. By all accounts they are losing subscribers at a really fast pace. You would think they would do their best to keep the loyal customers that are still with them. Even if their costs have gone up, it seems to me that it makes more sense to make a bit less profit from current customers than to raise your prices and lose them. I’m sure the accountants ran the numbers and thought this was the best solution, but reality might come back and bite them big time. Anyway, I’ve moved on. It’s been fun, but I can tell when I’m not wanted.

(The photo at the top of the page is my dish installation. I installed it myself on top of a post that once held a large satellite dish. The cables run underground about a hundred feet and then enter the house. It was done this way because my wife didn’t want an unsightly satellite dish on the side of the house. Excuse the background. It’s winter here and things aren’t looking there best.)

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