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Gravity….

I hear this a lot… nobody really knows what gravity is…  well, then how come you haven’t asked?
Obviously I know exactly what gravity is! And you should trust when I tell you this because I wouldn’t lie about something this important.
OK.. enough with that nonsense. Let’s get to the point.

It’s a matter of perspective… the wrong one!

I believe scientists have the wrong perspective when thinking about gravity. They treat it like a force (and I guess that’s OK) but I say it’s more like cause and effect.  For example, there is a lot of debate on the expanding universe and asking if there is enough matter so gravity can cause the universe to collapse in a big crunch. The problem with that line of thinking is that gravity is only gravity BECAUSE the universe is expanding!

Matter is like a surfer riding the wave of expansion. (see my post on waves) That surfer causes a little indent in the wave front as he is pushed along. When another surfer gets close, the indents they both create merge and slide together, getting a little bigger as they combine. Get enough surfers together and the indent becomes very large and hard to escape.

If the universe stopped expanding then the surfers would stop… their indentations would go away and gravity would cease to exist. Good thing that won’t happen! The expanding universe is a lot like a ripple in a pond, toss a rock in and watch the expanding ring. We are all surfers riding that expanding ring. In a pond there are other forces trying to slow that wave down but in the higher dimensions of the universe there is no friction… no other force slowing the wave. It will continue to radiate out forever or until the wave form is so stretched out that it collapses.  So the idea that gravity could slow or reverse the expansion of the universe is false.

Can you see the multiverse now?

We are surfers on an expanding wave. Atoms are held together by our perspective because their individual waves are crossed and grouped only on our expanding wave front. If they were not then they simply would not exist from our point of view. Anti-matter is just the opposite crest or peak and if those two could meet up, the wave form would collapse. Anyway, ripples in the pond are rarely alone. There are always concentric rings expanding out. Our 3d universe is just one wave crest on an expanding 4d wave. Other wave crests are a given, both in front and behind us and each one of those will also have it’s own set of atomic surfers. Or perhaps the atoms riding those individual wave crests can influence other crests if they share the same 4th dimensional wave.

Also, why would we even expect to be the only wave in the pond? There could be countless individual rings of waves in the greater-universe and each one could be expanding at a different speed. That different speed would be the cosmic speed limit for that universe… the speed of light! It would effect everything including mass and gravity.

We already know… gravity is not what it appears to be

One “problem” with conventional ideas of gravity are the galaxy spiral arms. Computer models cannot explain the arms as they are orbiting too fast and should fly apart. But what if gravity is not a force that goes out forever and for any distance, but is limited to the indentation all the surfers create… like a bowl of gravity. A spinning spiral arm in a galaxy spread out on a flat table will have to hold itself together by some attractive force, but a galaxy spinning in a bowl can easily remain in that bowl.

This is all completely and totally true… says I. And I should know (in my opinion)

Everything… as in EVERYTHING, is a wave! 

YES! That’s right everything you know, and everything else. Even your body and what your brain thinks! It’s all a collection of waves.

Ocean waves – Light waves – Electromagnetic waves – Brain waves….

You hear about waves a lot but I believe there is nothing else

Atoms are mostly empty space and everything you touch and see is made from atoms so everything is mostly empty space. When you touch something you are not really touching it. The atoms in your finger get close to the atoms in the object but the atomic forces repel your finger. You get really close… but the atoms do not touch! When you look at something, what you are seeing is electromagnetic waves that were reflected by atoms in the “object” you are looking at.

Here’s the kicker…. (and as of now, totally my opinion)

Atoms are nothing more than waves!

I believe atoms are nothing more than multi-dimensional waves. They are standing waves because of our perspective as entities made of other standing waves

It’s all a matter of perspective! Imagine surfing on a light wave travelling the speed of light. The crest of the wave you are riding on seems to be standing still. You seem to be standing still and  the light wave you are riding stretches out behind you… or is it in front of you? Maybe both!

Atoms are simply a combination of other-dimension waves that have locked together… some proton waves, a few neutron waves and a collection of electron waves. By our perspective these waves are moving right along with us so they appear to be something solid and grouped together (kind of). Normally these waves don’t like to mix and repel each other (like when you try to touch your finger atoms to coffee cup atoms) but under the right energetic conditions (fusion) those waves are forced to cross and lock together.  Because where these waves collect together in “space” are surfing along with us, they appear like objects hanging in space.

When thinking about different dimensions… if you took a 3d nail and pounded it though 2d space. The 2d people who live in 2d space would see a mysterious floating 2d circle. If a 4d person puts a 4d nail through 3d space… well, the 3d people who live in 3d space (that would be us) will see a 3d circle floating in space (AKA a ball or globe!) If the 4d people shot a (tiny) high frequency 4d wave through 3d space, then it would be like a fuzzy ball hanging in 3d space.. doesn’t that describe an atom and it’s parts? Anyway, you can take my word for it.. or read this cool old book: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions

You know what else….?? and this should blow your mind…. Gravity is also just waves. Well, more like waves playing on waves. Check out my next post!

 

Neutrogena Light Therapy Mask Hack

OK… Nutrogena did something a little sleazy here. They sell an acne light therapy mask and include a battery pack with 30 uses. After 30 clicks of the button you have to buy a new battery pack.
This is nothing more than a 4-pack of AA batteries, a 10 minute timer and a 30 use countdown. There is no reason to create waste and force you to trash this battery pack other than greed. This is only a power source. They could have easily made the unit count down 30 and then tell you to change the batteries. I’m thinking maybe they wanted to guarantee customer satisfaction and some people may use weak or cheap batteries… but they could have made a low battery detector and prevented the unit being turned on when the batteries were low. It would have been easier than the countdown timer and display.

The AA calls included in the pack are a cheap brand but good quality. After 30 uses, the batteries are in need of changing but to force you to trash the whole unit and buy a new one is a bad idea IMO.

Now this project is a little advanced for the typical use and there are others who have posted hacks on Youtube with a different (easier) approach. I just wanted to show off what I did here and explain what I found.

I used an eeprom programmer to read, re-program and write the code and changed the uses left to 99…. and it works!
All I have to do is remember to change the batteries around 60 and 30 uses left. Or better yet, use rechargeable Ni-MH batteries and charge them up probably every 20 uses.

See that display?? You see that right. It has 98 uses left!

This IC is a standard eeprom AT93C46 and contains some basic information. One bit of information is how many uses it has left.

I used a miniPro TL866cs Universal Bios Programmer to read and program the eeprom. The 8-pin eeprom has to be removed from the PCB, programmed and then soldered back on.

The EEPROM is an 8-pin SOIC AT93C46

This is the screenshot of the data I read on the IC chip:

Below is the data I changed and the re-programmed the EEPROM
You can see the changes in RED

2012 “The most precise measurement ever made of the speed of the universe’s expansion is in, thanks to NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, and it’s a doozy. Space itself is pulling apart at the seams, expanding at a rate of 74.3 plus or minus 2.1 kilometers (46.2 plus or minus 1.3 miles) per second per megaparsec (a megaparsec is roughly 3 million light-years).”

2016 “A new series of papers published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society finds the value to be 71.2 km/s/Mpc, which supports a change over time of the Hubble constant. The observation was performed by an international group of astronomers that used the Hubble Space Telescope to look at how massive galaxies bend space-time, acting as gravitational lenses.”

 

They are getting closer! The correct answer is more like 70.761 km/s/Mpc

I calculated this number with the following assumptions:

A mega parsec = 3,262,000 light years = .003262 BLY
Age of the universe  = 13.82 BLY
Speed of light = 299,792.458 km/s

This is based on what I believe the universe is, why it is expanding and why the speed of light is a constant.  I am not a theoretical physicist… or a physicist… or an astronomer… or astrologist 😉 … Just someone who knows nothing about this stuff but likes to think  about it a lot anyway.

How to include videos in eBay listings 2017

Ebay is blocking active content in listings starting in June 2017. Still, with just weeks to go, their instructions for including videos in your eBay descriptions tell you to use flash.  After speaking with customer support, I was directed to this web page: http://pages.ebay.com/sell/itemdescription/bestpractices.html
There, in the “Including a Product Video” section the following instructions can be found:

 <video width="320" height="240">
 <source src="movie.mp4" type="video/mp4">
 <p>Here is a video of the product</p>
 </video>

This is unacceptable

1) It’s ridiculously small 320 x 240

2) In Chrome at least, all it does it place a black rectangle on the screen and you have to right click to turn on controls before you can press play.  Regular eBay users would NEVER figure that out.

3) “Here is a video of the product” will only display if the browser cannot show the video…???

You can tell eBay is really interested in helping people display video in their descriptions…..

Below is the improved code I eventually settled on

Of course you can adjust to any size you like.

<video width="640" height="480" controls="true" poster="http://YOUR-URL.com/poster.jpg">
 <source src="http://YOUR-URL.com/YOUR-VIDEO.mp4" type="video/mp4">
 Your browser does not support embedded video
</video>

In the VIDEO tag, controls=”true” is added to turn on the play, pause, volume, etc… (kind of important)!! And the poster tag links to a photo that you want to show in place of the black rectangle. I recommend making your own images the same size as the video and including text of some kind telling people to press play. Since the play button look and location can change depending on code and browser make sure you photo does not point to specific places for the controls.

Unfortunately I did not find any way to display YOUTUBE videos with this method. You need to upload the video files to your own server or find a video hosting site that allows you to link directly to the video file (mp4)

It took me some time to find out why SSL was not working. I had an installed security certificate but I was not getting the little green security lock icon and my checkout pages were not using HTTPS:// locations.

I edited config.php and admin/config.php
In both you just need to change the http://YOUR-URL to https://

// HTTPS
define('HTTPS_SERVER', 'https://YOUR-URL/admin/');
define('HTTPS_CATALOG', 'https://YOUR-URL/');

Then in settings you need to enable SSL

SSL_Settings OpenCart

STILL…. SSL was not working. After some digging I found there are 2 more files that need editing

system/config/catalog.php
system/config/admin.php

In both you need to change the following:

$_['site_ssl'] = false;

To:

$_['site_ssl'] = true;

That’s it!

I needed to add the Order ID for guest checkout in the success page for my OpenCart installation v2.2.0.0

I did not find an extension to do this and the first set of instructions I found did not work. Eventually I got it working using a combination of solutions.

First, you need to edit the success.php file in  catalog\controller\checkout\

Change this:

if (isset($this->session->data['order_id'])) {
 $this->cart->clear();

Into this:

if (isset($this->session->data['order_id'])) {
 $this->load->model('checkout/order');
 $data['orderDetails'] = $this->model_checkout_order->getOrder($this->session->data['order_id']);
 $this->cart->clear();

Next, you need to edit success.tpl in catalog\view\theme\YOUR-THEME\template\common\

Under the line <h1><?php echo $heading_title; ?></h1>  I added the following:

 <?php if(!empty($orderDetails['order_id'])): ?>
 <h2>OrderID=<?php echo $orderDetails['order_id']; ?></h2>
 <?php endif; ?>

That’s it! When a new order is placed the success page will display the Order ID under Your order has been placed! If the page is refreshed the information goes away because the variable no longer has any value and would generate an error.