On this date 165 years ago, Iowa was admitted as the 29th state of the union. Don't know if we should celebrate or mourn.
ranamacar
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Trusting others in bad times.
Back in the late '90s, when those of us who fell into the category of "survivalist" were discussing preparations for Y2K and the potential collapse that may have happened (remember, hindsight is always 20-20. If you didn't live through it, don't judge it), we got into the topic of "trade goods".
It started when someone declared that gold was the only thing of real value (sound familiar?) and should be the top priority in preparing for trade if the economy fell apart. My standard answer to that is, "You can't eat gold." As I see it, most transaction between people on a daily basis are going to fall in the "less than $100" range. We'll ignore the fact that I'm using fiat currency as a reference, because dollars are easier to understand. Gold is not a practical form of exchange at that level, simply because it has very high value for its size. An ounce of gold has about the same value as a good rifle ($600-$1000), or a tailor-made suit. Since most people aren't going to be making such purchases on a regular basis, you need some way to break down that ounce of gold, which isn't much bigger than a book of matches. Then you need some way to verify that it is actually gold and not some alloy or painted lead. This is where the issue of trust entered the discussion.
Since gold is impractical, silver was brought up as a daily-use currency. Less value for its size, but you still have the issue of purity and trust. Other metals were brought up and the two that really put trust to the test were lead and brass. As in ammunition. Should you use ammunition as a barter item, knowing there is a chance that it could be used against you? Would you trade a stranger anything for a spare pistol and ammo for it, knowing that he could come back and use it against you or yours? Food was a good option, base the "new economy" on the calorie content of what you had to trade. We never did come to a consensus on the issue, Y2K came and went while we were still arguing about it, but the question of trust still lingers.
How do you decide who to trust? In small towns, it's easier to get information about someone and their reputation. Once you get a bad reputation, the only people who will deal with you are others with a bad reputation. Trust is a bitch to earn, but almost impossible to regain once lost. I've seen people move from the city into small towns, set up businesses and try to run them like they did in the city. They generally last about three years before they're bankrupt. All it takes is a handful of pissed off customers and word-of-mouth will kill a business in a small town. I've also seen folks set up shop, run an honest business, treat their customers well, and thrive. For some odd reason, the ones that thrive all have firm religious roots.
"Trust your neighbor, but brand your cattle" is a phrase you'll see on posters in ranch country. "Trust but verify" was the phrase used in the nuclear disarmament talks. When the SHTF, trust and honor will become valuable once again. I advise everyone to start working on both as preparation.
ranamacar
It started when someone declared that gold was the only thing of real value (sound familiar?) and should be the top priority in preparing for trade if the economy fell apart. My standard answer to that is, "You can't eat gold." As I see it, most transaction between people on a daily basis are going to fall in the "less than $100" range. We'll ignore the fact that I'm using fiat currency as a reference, because dollars are easier to understand. Gold is not a practical form of exchange at that level, simply because it has very high value for its size. An ounce of gold has about the same value as a good rifle ($600-$1000), or a tailor-made suit. Since most people aren't going to be making such purchases on a regular basis, you need some way to break down that ounce of gold, which isn't much bigger than a book of matches. Then you need some way to verify that it is actually gold and not some alloy or painted lead. This is where the issue of trust entered the discussion.
Since gold is impractical, silver was brought up as a daily-use currency. Less value for its size, but you still have the issue of purity and trust. Other metals were brought up and the two that really put trust to the test were lead and brass. As in ammunition. Should you use ammunition as a barter item, knowing there is a chance that it could be used against you? Would you trade a stranger anything for a spare pistol and ammo for it, knowing that he could come back and use it against you or yours? Food was a good option, base the "new economy" on the calorie content of what you had to trade. We never did come to a consensus on the issue, Y2K came and went while we were still arguing about it, but the question of trust still lingers.
How do you decide who to trust? In small towns, it's easier to get information about someone and their reputation. Once you get a bad reputation, the only people who will deal with you are others with a bad reputation. Trust is a bitch to earn, but almost impossible to regain once lost. I've seen people move from the city into small towns, set up businesses and try to run them like they did in the city. They generally last about three years before they're bankrupt. All it takes is a handful of pissed off customers and word-of-mouth will kill a business in a small town. I've also seen folks set up shop, run an honest business, treat their customers well, and thrive. For some odd reason, the ones that thrive all have firm religious roots.
"Trust your neighbor, but brand your cattle" is a phrase you'll see on posters in ranch country. "Trust but verify" was the phrase used in the nuclear disarmament talks. When the SHTF, trust and honor will become valuable once again. I advise everyone to start working on both as preparation.
ranamacar
Friday, May 1, 2009
Future posting and binaries
I have a few projects underway that may be of interest to others who are interested in knowing how to defeat modern surveillance technology. Where feasible I will post them here, but I may refer interested readers to other parts of the Internet that may require some explanation.
Usenet.
One of the original parts of the Internet that pre-dates the World Wide Web by quite a few years. Usenet is a collection of "newsgroups" which are open to public viewing and posting. This means that you'll typically have to wade through a lot of spam in order to find any usable information. "Binary" newsgroups are designated to be used to share files between readers. Most other newsgroups are best thought of as public bulletin boards where you can post a note and anyone on the Internet can read it and respond to it. Posting binary files to a non-binary newsgroup is considered bad form and will attract negative attention in populated forums. Type "rec.guns" into a Google search and you'll see what a newsgroup looks like. Google doesn't like binary groups, so you'll have to find a "newsreader" program (i.e. Forte Agent for M$ Windows, Pan for Linix, Mac I don't have a clue about) in order to get the most out of them. Most ISPs carry the common newsgroups, but there are free servers out there that carry all 200,000+ groups. Forte APN is cheap, www.teranews.com is free, and they both carry all of the groups. There is a newsgroups that covers just about anything you can imagine. If I have a large binary file (pictures, diagrams, etc.) I may post it on a newsgroup and send you there to find it. Warning! Some servers only keep a file available for a limited amount of time, since they have to store the file on their machines. Depending on the group and it's throughput, this could be as little as two weeks.
Torrents or Bit Torrents.
In the good old days of Napster, you could open up access to your hard drive to anybody in the world and share everything with everybody. Peer-to-peer sharing really pissed off the music industry, so they effectively shut that down. What evolved were "torrents" and "torrent servers". instead of uploading all of your files to Napster's servers, where other users could copy your files, torrent servers keep track of who is offering to share specific files (identified by a 25 character "hash file") and setting up direct peer-to-peer file sharing. Since the servers aren't storing the information being shared, they have a legal "out" when it goes to court. Piratebay is going through some hard times right now, but the system is still working. You'll need a Bit Torrent program to download files, and a good torrent server to find the torrents on- I reccomend isoHunt - the BitTorrent and P2P search engine as a place to start. They are on a secure server (the https in the address) and they don't track searches unless you're signed in. Speed varies by how many people are sharing (seeding) a file and how many are downloading (leeching) that file as well as your Interenet connection speed. Large files are not a problem with Bittorrent, and they are available as ling as someone is willing to share them.
More later.
ranamacar
Usenet.
One of the original parts of the Internet that pre-dates the World Wide Web by quite a few years. Usenet is a collection of "newsgroups" which are open to public viewing and posting. This means that you'll typically have to wade through a lot of spam in order to find any usable information. "Binary" newsgroups are designated to be used to share files between readers. Most other newsgroups are best thought of as public bulletin boards where you can post a note and anyone on the Internet can read it and respond to it. Posting binary files to a non-binary newsgroup is considered bad form and will attract negative attention in populated forums. Type "rec.guns" into a Google search and you'll see what a newsgroup looks like. Google doesn't like binary groups, so you'll have to find a "newsreader" program (i.e. Forte Agent for M$ Windows, Pan for Linix, Mac I don't have a clue about) in order to get the most out of them. Most ISPs carry the common newsgroups, but there are free servers out there that carry all 200,000+ groups. Forte APN is cheap, www.teranews.com is free, and they both carry all of the groups. There is a newsgroups that covers just about anything you can imagine. If I have a large binary file (pictures, diagrams, etc.) I may post it on a newsgroup and send you there to find it. Warning! Some servers only keep a file available for a limited amount of time, since they have to store the file on their machines. Depending on the group and it's throughput, this could be as little as two weeks.
Torrents or Bit Torrents.
In the good old days of Napster, you could open up access to your hard drive to anybody in the world and share everything with everybody. Peer-to-peer sharing really pissed off the music industry, so they effectively shut that down. What evolved were "torrents" and "torrent servers". instead of uploading all of your files to Napster's servers, where other users could copy your files, torrent servers keep track of who is offering to share specific files (identified by a 25 character "hash file") and setting up direct peer-to-peer file sharing. Since the servers aren't storing the information being shared, they have a legal "out" when it goes to court. Piratebay is going through some hard times right now, but the system is still working. You'll need a Bit Torrent program to download files, and a good torrent server to find the torrents on- I reccomend isoHunt - the BitTorrent and P2P search engine as a place to start. They are on a secure server (the https in the address) and they don't track searches unless you're signed in. Speed varies by how many people are sharing (seeding) a file and how many are downloading (leeching) that file as well as your Interenet connection speed. Large files are not a problem with Bittorrent, and they are available as ling as someone is willing to share them.
More later.
ranamacar
Saturday, April 25, 2009
IR LED ballcap
I'm a veteran tinkerer. I mess with all kinds of technology, and may have some insight into how this could be accomplished.
I'll try to describe how to put one of these together. I'll write it out as if I'm describing it to a bunch of Cub Scouts who've never even seen a soldering iron (I have some experience doing that), so it may be overly simplistic or seem to be condecending to those of you who have tinkered with electronics before.
The basic idea is to rig a ballcap with a series of Infrared LEDs in order to cause any surveillance cameras pointed at the wearer to see a "flare" instead of the wearer's face. This is made possible by the fact that most digital cameras used for surveillance use "low-light"Charge-coupled Devices (CCD's) to capture the image and these CCD's are sensitive to infrared (IR) light. The camera will "see" the IR light better than visible light, causing it to register a bright spot where the IR is coming from compared to the area around it.
Supplies needed.
IR LEDs- eBay has them. $5.00 for 50- enough for five ballcaps or one cap and spares to play with later. LEDs are Light Emitting Diodes and like any other diode, will only let electricity flow in one direction. Think of them as check valves. This means that each LED is going to have a positive and a negative leg. The negative leg is ususally indicated by being shorter or by having a wide part near the body of the LED (if I remember correctly- most of my tinkering is done with salvaged parts, so I just check them before use)
Power supply- the LEDs I've seen on eBay run on 1.5- 1.6 volts direct current (VDC). Amazingly, this is what you'll get out of a standard or alkaline battery. Since you want to be able to wear this on your head, we'll try to save weigh and use a single AA battery. If your LEDs need a different voltage, just stack up batteries (positive to negative) and add the voltages until you get what you need.
Switch- in order to save battery life, you want a way to turn things on only when you need them. Any small switch will work with 1.5VDC.
Wire- you need to get the power to the LEDs somehow. Ten, 5mW LEDs will draw 50mW (milliwatts- thousandths of a watt), so any wire you can work with will do. Keep it small to save weight- look for some scrap phone wire or sacrifice an old ethernet cable. Solid copper will work better than stranded wire, but is harder to solder.
Attachment- for semi-permanent use, a hot glue gun would work just fine. If you want to do a "covert" job, you'll have to tear out some stitching and re-sew the bill of your ball cap.
Soldering Iron- you'll need a low-power soldering iron to make the connections. Use a 15 or 20 Watt iron to aviod burning up the LEDs. If you've never used a soldering iron before, practice connecting two pieces of wire laid side-by-side until you're comfortable with it. Basically you need to heat up both wires while resting the solder on them (not on the iron) until the solder flows between them. Remove the iron and let the solder cool before moving the wires. I should warn you that soldering irons run over 700 degrees F, so be careful what you let them touch.
Solder- use fine (.020-.040 inch) rosin-core solder. Do not use plumbing solder- it has an acid flux core that will corrode your connections.
OK, now for the fun.
Checking a convienient ballcap, I've found that the bill has plenty of room for ten LEDs spaced an inch apart. On a clean, protected area of the kitchen table, lay out your ten LEDs in a line, about an inch apart. Keep them all oriented so that the negative legs are all on the left side. If they don't want to stay put, use some Fun-Tack, Play-Doh, or anything else you can find to keep them from rolling around.
Take a piece of wire about two feet long and solder one end of it to the negative lead of the LED furthest to the right. Strip back some of the insulation (about a half-inch gap) two inches from the LED and solder the bare copper to the negative lead of the second LED. Repeat until you have all of the LEDs' negative leads daisy-chained together. Take a second piece of wire, this one a few inches longer, and do the same thing to the positive leads. This should stiffen up the whole mess and make it easier to work with later.
Solder a short piece of wire to the negative end of your AA battery (the flat end). This may take some trying with a low-power soldering iron, just give it time. Solder the other end of this wire to one of the posts on your switch.
Solder the free end of your negative-lead wire to the other post of your switch.
Solder the free end of your positive-lead wire to the positive end of your AA battery.
If you have a digital camera or even a cellphone with a camera, you can check your work by pointing the camera at the LEDs and turning on the switch. The IR LEDs are invisible to your eyes, but the camera should show them as bright spots. If they all light up on the first try, congratulations, you're doing better than I usually can. If some of them don't light up, try de-soldering them and switching the leads around- you may have put it in backwards. If none of them light up, check your battery and switch.
Once you have it working on the table, all that's left is to mount it under (or in) the bill of a ballcap. I say under the bill of the cap because any camera that can see your face would have to be able to see under the bill of a cap. It would also draw less attention if they weren't visible during the day. Use a hot-glue gun to attach the LEDs pointing out, being careful to not cover the front of the LED with glue. Keep the bare leads seperated to avoid short-circuits. Personally, I'd use the leads to hold the LEDs in place, covering them with a glob of hot glue to provide insulation. Tack the wires as needed and stick the switch and battery wherever they'll be comfortable for you while you're wearing the cap.
If I can figure out this damn CAD program, I'll try to post a wiring diagram and maybe even a sketch of how I see this being put together. Feel free to improvise and improve. Use a battery holder instead of soldering directly to the battery. Drill holes in the bill of the cap and mount the LEDs the way you want to. Play with it- that's the fun of tinkering!
ranamacar
I'll try to describe how to put one of these together. I'll write it out as if I'm describing it to a bunch of Cub Scouts who've never even seen a soldering iron (I have some experience doing that), so it may be overly simplistic or seem to be condecending to those of you who have tinkered with electronics before.
The basic idea is to rig a ballcap with a series of Infrared LEDs in order to cause any surveillance cameras pointed at the wearer to see a "flare" instead of the wearer's face. This is made possible by the fact that most digital cameras used for surveillance use "low-light"Charge-coupled Devices (CCD's) to capture the image and these CCD's are sensitive to infrared (IR) light. The camera will "see" the IR light better than visible light, causing it to register a bright spot where the IR is coming from compared to the area around it.
Supplies needed.
IR LEDs- eBay has them. $5.00 for 50- enough for five ballcaps or one cap and spares to play with later. LEDs are Light Emitting Diodes and like any other diode, will only let electricity flow in one direction. Think of them as check valves. This means that each LED is going to have a positive and a negative leg. The negative leg is ususally indicated by being shorter or by having a wide part near the body of the LED (if I remember correctly- most of my tinkering is done with salvaged parts, so I just check them before use)
Power supply- the LEDs I've seen on eBay run on 1.5- 1.6 volts direct current (VDC). Amazingly, this is what you'll get out of a standard or alkaline battery. Since you want to be able to wear this on your head, we'll try to save weigh and use a single AA battery. If your LEDs need a different voltage, just stack up batteries (positive to negative) and add the voltages until you get what you need.
Switch- in order to save battery life, you want a way to turn things on only when you need them. Any small switch will work with 1.5VDC.
Wire- you need to get the power to the LEDs somehow. Ten, 5mW LEDs will draw 50mW (milliwatts- thousandths of a watt), so any wire you can work with will do. Keep it small to save weight- look for some scrap phone wire or sacrifice an old ethernet cable. Solid copper will work better than stranded wire, but is harder to solder.
Attachment- for semi-permanent use, a hot glue gun would work just fine. If you want to do a "covert" job, you'll have to tear out some stitching and re-sew the bill of your ball cap.
Soldering Iron- you'll need a low-power soldering iron to make the connections. Use a 15 or 20 Watt iron to aviod burning up the LEDs. If you've never used a soldering iron before, practice connecting two pieces of wire laid side-by-side until you're comfortable with it. Basically you need to heat up both wires while resting the solder on them (not on the iron) until the solder flows between them. Remove the iron and let the solder cool before moving the wires. I should warn you that soldering irons run over 700 degrees F, so be careful what you let them touch.
Solder- use fine (.020-.040 inch) rosin-core solder. Do not use plumbing solder- it has an acid flux core that will corrode your connections.
OK, now for the fun.
Checking a convienient ballcap, I've found that the bill has plenty of room for ten LEDs spaced an inch apart. On a clean, protected area of the kitchen table, lay out your ten LEDs in a line, about an inch apart. Keep them all oriented so that the negative legs are all on the left side. If they don't want to stay put, use some Fun-Tack, Play-Doh, or anything else you can find to keep them from rolling around.
Take a piece of wire about two feet long and solder one end of it to the negative lead of the LED furthest to the right. Strip back some of the insulation (about a half-inch gap) two inches from the LED and solder the bare copper to the negative lead of the second LED. Repeat until you have all of the LEDs' negative leads daisy-chained together. Take a second piece of wire, this one a few inches longer, and do the same thing to the positive leads. This should stiffen up the whole mess and make it easier to work with later.
Solder a short piece of wire to the negative end of your AA battery (the flat end). This may take some trying with a low-power soldering iron, just give it time. Solder the other end of this wire to one of the posts on your switch.
Solder the free end of your negative-lead wire to the other post of your switch.
Solder the free end of your positive-lead wire to the positive end of your AA battery.
If you have a digital camera or even a cellphone with a camera, you can check your work by pointing the camera at the LEDs and turning on the switch. The IR LEDs are invisible to your eyes, but the camera should show them as bright spots. If they all light up on the first try, congratulations, you're doing better than I usually can. If some of them don't light up, try de-soldering them and switching the leads around- you may have put it in backwards. If none of them light up, check your battery and switch.
Once you have it working on the table, all that's left is to mount it under (or in) the bill of a ballcap. I say under the bill of the cap because any camera that can see your face would have to be able to see under the bill of a cap. It would also draw less attention if they weren't visible during the day. Use a hot-glue gun to attach the LEDs pointing out, being careful to not cover the front of the LED with glue. Keep the bare leads seperated to avoid short-circuits. Personally, I'd use the leads to hold the LEDs in place, covering them with a glob of hot glue to provide insulation. Tack the wires as needed and stick the switch and battery wherever they'll be comfortable for you while you're wearing the cap.
If I can figure out this damn CAD program, I'll try to post a wiring diagram and maybe even a sketch of how I see this being put together. Feel free to improvise and improve. Use a battery holder instead of soldering directly to the battery. Drill holes in the bill of the cap and mount the LEDs the way you want to. Play with it- that's the fun of tinkering!
ranamacar
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