I am sick of you and your non business model!

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This is my place to rant. There are a lot of asshats out these thinking they gonna get rich on the interwebs or some such rot. Well you know something you are epic fail and are gonna do barrel roll at some point.

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I go way back on the internet, before the days of the web which of coarse to you mouth breathers is the internet. The incessant logins, sign up for out “news” sprorge plastered in the middle of my browser and insistence my adblocker be turned off is just that a TURN OFF.

Force feeding people crap is not a way to ingratiate yourselves into peoples lives. It is a sure fired way to drive people off. The sales weasels have taken over everything and frankly just made it all plain bad. I for one have been withdrawing steadily from any interest in anything on more and more sites. I look at the link, see it is from a clickbait “news site” and just ignore it.

Knock this crap off. The sales idiot and the marketing morons are just that STUPID. You are too lazy or unsophisticated to inline your advertising. GO HOME. You do not belong on the internet and your investors are doomed to failure. Do you have stock in one of these companies? Sell it, sell it now, the little babies who think everyone on the internet is an idiot are just burning your dollars into a death spiral. STOP listening to the herd, get your act together. Just because you are dealing with millions of impressions does not mean you aren’t are simply pissing off millions of users who will eventually through the effect of cumulative abuse will just tune you out all together.

Just say no! It is effective advertising companies want. Sporging a page with a zillion ads obscuring the purpose the client is there is counter effective. I go on sites, read the ads, and even click through occasionally. I am not against advertisers. However i am not just some gullet for you to cram your crap into so you can pay your bills. As soon as you make me start to feel like one then screw you and I am not coming back either!

Time for the first computer post. So I’ll tell you where my Philosophy on them came from.

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I bought myself my first computer for myself for my 21st birthday. That was over 30 years ago.  It was immediately addictive. A lot has changed since then. The main purpose of this site is for my own reflection. Stuff either becomes of interest or, things long forgotten come into focus. This site is my place to ruminate. It is after all a vanity site.

Probably the single coolest thing ever with regard to computers anyone ever put in my hands was a stack of disks that contained a very early version of Slackware. It was an amazing day. Operating systems are the fundamental core of a modern computer system. 25 years ago computers didn’t really do much. So I studied operating systems. Slackware was one of the first distributions of an operating system usually referred to as Linux. The name isn’t really correct but, it stuck and there you have it.

Much is written on the subject of so I am just going to use broad strokes. What Linux did for me was expose me to a philosophy. It would be a tedious read to get into who said what. The central theme though was all this software should just be available. People should benefit from their work and their expertise. Code once written and paid for can simply be replicated an infinite number of times. A computer is worthless without software. If something new is needed or a better way can be contrived having to reinvent the wheel instead of building on existing code is simply counter productive.

Back in the day there were huge philosophical rifts between commercial software companies and those who held the above philosophy. Funny thing is it all started over some drivers for a HP printer. So the end result of this was the creation of the Free Software Foundation. Its major asset if you will is a group of Unix tools known as the GNU tools. GNU is a self referencing acronym for GNU is Not Unix. This collection of tools is arguably the foundation of Linux. GNU tools were released under the GPL license.   GPL is another self referencing acronym with the reference to itself implied, so its the (GNU) General Public License. Its rather brilliant. The deal is, the owner maintains the copyright yet, the source code is freely distributed, anyone is free to modify it for their own personal or commercial use but, if you do use it for commercial purposes you must also release it as GPL software.

This idea was and is a game changer. Linux actually refers to the kernel of an operating system. It is a non Unix kernel that behaves in a very similar manner of Unix so much so the GNU tools were compiled for it. Now would be a good time to mention just how ubiquitous GNU tools are. At the time the Linux kernel was released into the wild most if not all versions of commercial Unix contained the GNU tools and were in widespread use. The GNU tools are pretty much a comprehensive set of tools that make well, uhm with addition of a kernel the operating system. So now the world has free unix free of restriction. Different groups and individuals started to come up with combinations of software, the GNU tools, and the Linux kernel these were called Distributions. Slackware was one of these early distributions.

So why does this crap matter. Read on and I’ll get into it briefly. This is published on a web server right? I can even tell you what kind of web server. It is an Apache web server. What most people call the internet is really just the World Wide Web. I say just, because a HTTP server or web sever is just a subset of what the internet consists of. I do go back before the days of the web and just leave it at that. One of the first common packages to be included with early distributions was the open source Apache web server. Today more than 50% of all web servers in the world are Apache server and most likely running on a Linux box. So there you go. All this E-commerce this and Social media that, its running on free software. The web as it is today simply would not exist without GNU, The FSF, Linux, and Apache. All boring operating system mumbo jumbo. So I relate heavily to all the giants who have made my life interesting just by humbly following along with their brilliance the best I can.

So my philosophy is to use as much open source GPL software as possible. It keeps costs down, the money spent goes to those producing “software as a service”. I do use and own a great deal of commercial software as well. I resent the attitude of those who provide it and pay them their money begrudgingly. Fortunately the list of must have commercial software is getting shorter. Who knows maybe the day will come when I am no longer dependent on it and can make a living or run a business without it. Its possible to do a great deal without commercial software and my network at work as you may have guessed by now runs GPL’d open source Linux and BSD. I couldn’t have built it otherwise, we couldn’t afford it.

I am not an Architect I just draw buildings

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I have the good fortune to work for a construction company. Flat line drawings are boring. For many years is was the only way to draw. The third dimension was always there. Once modelling became possible oh around the time ghz processors and gb memory pools were affordable in around 2000 my interest immediately shifted toward it. This site engraf.com is the last remaining vestige of the desire to try to make a business out of it. This image is a rendering of a view of a building. The building was an existing one. The ductwork is new. It was the purpose behind creating this model, which for the most part was never actually seen as one. So, I still get to model and work on those skills everyday. It great even if its not glamorous. Obviously it would be great fun to do more advanced work.

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I do work on stuff for my own amusement. this simple little house is an example. This image probably took a couple of hours from start to final render. I remember doing it to try out the latest install of my software. Most people do not seem to realize just how time intensive this is, nor do they have an appreciation for the body of knowledge required just to get to the point where an idea can go from thought to finished product/image.  Its not Automagical a lifetime can be spent just to become mediocre at it.

Architecture, its a living….

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I really like architecture. Never did it occur to me many years ago when learning how to draw it would become so important to me. The interest came as a result of drawing so many buildings. It was either get interested or go mad. Now it is possible I am quite mad but, its not a result of drawing for nearly 30 years.

The Engraver

 

 

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It has been a long time since I have gotten to play with my engravers. This section is for documenting odd control and embedded computer drivel. I have a this engraver in the picture, another smaller chinese made one. I also have an arduino and a raspberry pi. As soon as things settle out these are going to get a lot of attention

Ok its time for something new

I am constantly meddling in something. I have been wanting to update my website for sometime now. So this seemed to be a good thing to try this out to see if it suits me. Welcome to Engraf’s other side. I.E. not the static page. Well the static page isn’t really static but that is another topic. Anyhow I like old pictures so I though I would start it off with an old picture of Granby St. My favorite street in Norfolk this one is from the early 20th century.

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