Regularly Expressing

Category: tips

  • Pickpockets in China

    Have you ever had a pickpocket put your wallet back into your pocket without taking the money? That’s what happened to me in Beijing yesterday. He grabbed my credit cards, my driver’s license, etc. and proceeded to make massive charges.

    I actually thought I’d stopped the pickpocket, because I felt the wallet going out of my pocket and grabbed it. I checked to see that the money was still in there, and didn’t notice the cards were missing. A few hours later I discovered what was missing, then realized I hadn’t stopped the pickpocket from taking my wallet of my pocket but simply noticed him/her putting it back (crowds were too heavy to see who it was).

    The police in Beijing doubted my story. One officer asserted that no pickpocket would be so clever. Really though, passing up $20 dollars worth of Yuan in order to make tens of thousands of dollars in charges to credit cards seems like an obvious strategy (in retrospect). I’m pretty sure I’ll escape from all the fraudulent charges. I was lucky I noticed the problem as soon as I did.

    One thing I discovered is that the Chinese need pins on their credit cards. It makes me wonder. Why don’t we have the same requirement? Granted, it’s not a huge security barrier, but it would make life significantly more difficult for pickpockets.

  • Increase Your Blog Traffic

    The world needs to know when we post, and it’s difficult ways to shout “Pay Attention To Me” in a polite but noticeable way. WordPress provides a ping-o-matic service and turns it on by default, but I’ve discovered Vladimir’s Ping List. This gives a fuller default setting for pings. We’ll have to see if it makes any difference for this little blog.

  • True-Type fonts on Fedora 11

    The key insight to getting true-type fonts working was finding this page:
    http://www.go2linux.org/msttcorefonts-true-type-fonts-on-linux.

    I had to make some minor tweaks to get this to work. Here’s how my session went:

    yum -y install rpm-build cabextract xfs ttmkfdir
rpm -ivh http://dl.atrpms.net/all/chkfontpath-1.10.1-2.fc11.x86_64.rpm
wget http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/msttcorefonts-2.0-1.spec
rpmbuild -ba msttcorefonts-2.0-1.spec 
rpm -ivh /root/rpmbuild/RPMS/noarch/msttcorefonts-2.0-1.noarch.rpm

  • ODT to RTF converter

    Recently I discovered that OpenOffice can’t really generate RTF files, so I wrote my own converter. It’s rather basic, just handles italic, double space, paragaraphs, and centering. However, for what I need it for it works a lot better than the built-in OpenOffice export ability.

    The program is written in Java and you can get the jar file here: ODT2RTF.jar

    It’s completely self contained, and includes the source files. Go and have fun with it!

    If there is interest, I will expand its capabilities.

  • Natural Family Planning, the Church’s Best Kept Secret

    When I began my journey to becoming Catholic I was focused mainly on doctrinal issues, e.g. what is the nature of the eucharist, did Mary remain a virgin her whole life, did Christ intend for the Pope to be the head of the church, etc. After I was fairly far along in my studies I asked the priest, “Doesn’t the Catholic Church have some funny teaching about birth control?”

    What began as a naive question turned into a life-changing experience. I was told that the Catholic church condemns artificial birth control and surgical sterilization as sinful, no exceptions. My wife and I had a serious medical reason to avoid future pregnancies, so we followed the only option approved of by the church: Natural Family Planning (NFP). In NFP, the couple monitors and charts symptoms of fertility in order to identify fertile and infertile times. There are a number of different NFP methods. The one we learned is called “The Sympto Thermal Method” and it is taught by the Couple to Couple League.

    Learning the method consisted of attending four one hour classes, and doing some reading. In class we received counseling, studied charts, and watched presentations. We discovered that NFP was not just a birth control method, but a marriage building activity. It has some of the following benefits:

    1. 99+% method effectiveness, comparable to the best artificial birth control.
    2. For married couples, sex can easily become routine. By adding a time of abstinence, new interest is generated. I heard a comedian say, “I am over thirty. I still like sex, but I want to know what’s on cable first.” Practitioners of NFP will not generally care what’s on cable when the period of abstinence is over.
    3. Many couples have mis-matched sex drives. This simple thing can lead to a world of bad feeling. Having a regular time of abstinence is a natural compromise.
    4. Because of its very nature, NFP encourages communication about family planning and helps to make it more of a mutually shared concern.
    5. NFP does not involve putting possibly harmful chemicals or drugs in your system, so it is potentially healthier.
    6. Using NFP creates no waste products, so it is better for the environment.
    7. Many of the methods can be taught and practiced with no special equipment. This means that they can be used in third world countries without cost. The only method approved by the Catholic church is also the most practical.

    When we first started the classes, my Protestant wife was upset about the way my religious studies were impacting our lives. But soon after we started using NFP she fell so in love with the method that she wanted us to start teaching it. We’ve been at it for 16+ years and it has worked perfectly. We’ve never known anyone who had an unwanted pregnancy while using it (although we have read about such cases).

  • Safe Nontoxic Cockroach Killer

    After moving to the South I discovered how large and unpleasant cockraoches can be. I used to think those 1 inch long bugs in movies were just props. (Now I count myself lucky, in South America they can get to be six inches long.)

    I was also amazed to discover how fast they were. They can usually outrun the broom or the shoe. Even if you do succeed in hitting them with one of those weapons — well then you’ve just made a mess.

    Naturally we do our best to keep them out, but they still manage to get in. If the kids leave the door open just once they pounce, certain that a better life awaits them indoors.

    What is the best thing to use for cockroach control? I mean, how do you kill something that can live for a week without its head? I tried various things (409, Windex, spray on bleach, etc.), but the only thing that seems to work is a mixture of liquid ivory dish soap and water. Mix it together and put it in a spray bottle and you have an awesome roach weapon.

    You usually need to hit them more than once, but they are not able to dodge the stream. Apparently they don’t see it coming. While it does not kill them instantly, after 5 to 10 hits they roll over on their backs and struggle. At that point they will die within seconds and one can come back and pick them up with a paper towel. Not only does this avoid the use of toxic chemicals, but it cleans the floor (or whatever surface) too!

    How many other pesticides can you use to wash the dishes?