Jack Manassas and Company

We Don’t Make it like THAT Anymore— The changing form of Mrs. Schrader’s Frosting In 1935, Mrs. Schrader lived a couple of doors down from the girlhood home of my wife’s mother in Urbana, Illinois.  Mrs. Schrader had a well-deserved reputation as a marvelous cook, and was glad to share her recipes—And so it was that Grandmother Salome acquired this recipe, used continuously by her descendants for the past 85 years. ‘Mrs. Schrader’s Frosting’ is a rich, boiled chocolate frosting that congeals with a shiny finish.  Here is the earliest known typed recipe card, probably typed in the 1930’s or 1940’s: When I got out the recipe to make frosting for my wife’s birthday cake, I began to get out the double boiler. “What are you doing?” asked my wife. “It says we have to melt the chocolate over hot water,” I replied.  “Doesn’t that mean we need to use a double boiler?” “No, no, no,” she said.  “We don’t do it like THAT anymore.” So I took notes on how we DO do i...

20190505-Wake up and See the Martians    J. M. Greer has (again!) put up an insightful analysis of the reaction of the US Bi-Coastal Democrats to the Donald Trump presidency.   He compares it to the five stages of grieving in Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s work on Death and Dying.   For the full essay, click on this link: https://www.ecosophia.net/present-at-the-death/ But the best part is at the end.   He names the beneficiaries of our current social arrangement as “Privileged Progressives.”   These are upper-income people who make most of their money from salaries and/or investment income.   Almost every new law or proposal enacted today benefits them, and makes the rest of us a little poorer or takes power and resources away.   Amazing, and spot-on. It reminds me of the movie, “Mars Attacks.” Everywhere they go, the Martians shout through megaphones, “We come in peace,” or “We want to be your friends,” but then they blast...

Geomantic Magic Squares I am fascinated with patterns that have patterns within patterns, wherever I can find them. Fractals are like that– Simple equations that generate complex patterns, which don’t come out the same with successive runs.  Fractals are probably the way that Nature encodes the instructions for making trees.  How do the trees know how to do that?  Topic for another blog... The Fibonacci sequence and its related structures are another example of this– Awesome and wonderful, and a model that seems to be used by the ground structure of the Universe, as discussed in Chemistry by Number Theory. Well, here’s another one-- I have been reading about the ancient practice of Geomancy.  Geomancy is a traditional technique that apparently started somewhere in Africa or the Middle East.  The idea is to generate a series of four figures, each consisting of four levels of dots.  Each level can have one or two dots.  Once generated, the four ...

 I Climbed a Tree on the Back Lawn of the White House Well, not recently, but this is a true story-- The date I climbed the tree was July 4th.  I can’t remember the year, but it was in the 1960's– Probably the early 1960's.   At that time, the White House had a policy of drawing the names of a few businesses and/or government agencies from a hat, and inviting the lucky employees, and their families, to enjoy a picnic on the back lawn of the White House, and watch the 4th of July fireworks.  I don’t think they do this anymore.  It is probably my fault. On that happy year, my Dad’s company was chosen, and he showed up on July 4th with his wife and five kids in tow, and an old blanket for us to sit on.  I have vivid memories of that day. When we crossed through the gate and onto the driveway inside it, I was struck by the extreme smallness of the gravel in the asphalt driveway of the White House.  The stones were tiny, with a very u...

Keeping Track of Passwords I remember reading an article about Passwords in the 1990's.  It might have been in PC World Magazine (R), or maybe the Washington Post.  Can’t remember where it was, but at least some of these ideas came from that article.  Anyway, passwords came up again this week.  One of my legion of readers writes, “I have something like 20 passwords that I have to remember, and some of them have to be changed frequently.  I am always forgetting my passwords!  What can I do?” There are a number of password-making strategies.  The most common ones have critical weaknesses: 1) The Key to the Kingdom. This is a password so marvelously easy to remember, yet so difficult to guess, that the user sets it as his password every time he needs one.  The weakness is obvious.  If someone guesses or finds the password, he has instant access to a bank account, medical records, tax returns, emails and work accounts. 2) The...

Tonight we had a chance to view a full-moon eclipse, here in British Columbia.  But not just any full moon-- It is a Supermoon, meaning that the Moon is at its closest approach to Earth.  It is also a blood moon and a Wolf Moon--Which I don't thoroughly understand.  Anyway, I was able to take pictures, some of which came out well; I also took a 30-second exposure of the hill and sky at the end of our driveway.  The sky was absolutely clear, and the constellations and the Milky Way were amazing!  My picture looked dark until I had the computer auto-enhance it.  Looks like I even got some of the stars to show up;

First, the Reasonable Question. Why would anyone want the background color of the cells in their spreadsheet to change with different values of data? Sometimes it is convenient.   Suppose you are tracking multiple lab values across time.   Wouldn’t it be great to have a low value be blue, WNL green, and high value pastel red? With changing colors, you can tell at a glance what the data trends are for multiple measurements.  If your patient's Potassium starts low and keeps climbing, you could, for example, see a color change from Low Blue to Green to Red.  Just a glance tells you to pay attention, where bare black numbers on a white background might not catch your attention.  And if you want to pay attention to particular numbers, the data number is still going to be in the cell for review. This feature can be applied to other types of data as well.  I use it in my CE-tracking spreadsheet to keep track of multiple finicky sub-require...