All Posts | Mindless Dreck

Raves September 11, 2026 4 min

The Fall of WordPress

How Elementor finally killed WordPress for me, and many other web developers.

Raves August 30, 2024 1 min

eBay POCSAG HAMNET DAPNET Pager Battery

It took some tooth pulling, but I finally identified the battery used in the POCSAG pagers you can get on eBay from China. They don't come with the battery because of shipping hassles. It's an 802040 LiPo cell, 3.7v 600-700mAh. There's plenty of them on Amazon. Update: Wait til the pager comes in. T

Disaster Preparedness May 7, 2018 1 min

Ten For Survival - What Do You Know?

Presented by NBC in 1958, "Ten For Survival" was a ten episode series about man and the atomic age. This rarely-seen episode "What Do You Know?", hosted by Chet Huntley, examined public perception of the survive-ability of nuclear war. Two "average citizens" give opinions concerning various Civil De

Rants August 20, 2017 1 min

FireFox Green Bars On Video

If you are getting green bars on video using FireFox this is the solution. I've found too many old sites with instruction on turning off hardware acceleration in Flash, but no one uses Flash any more. Duh. The reason you're getting green bars on your videos in FireFox is your video card is old. You'

Disaster Preparedness April 28, 2016 3 min

PDS Tornado Watch: The Particularly Dangerous Situation That Wasn't

On April 26, 2016 the Storm Prediction Center issued a PDS Tornado Watch that included a large portion of the North Texas area. This is a special kind of watch issued only in a Particularly Dangerous Situation. That is to say when computer models are predicting the possibility of extraordinarily sev

Disaster Preparedness June 2, 2015 4 min

EMP 102: Details Missing From Discussions On EMP

EMP or Electromagnetic Pulse seems to be a pretty hot topic among disaster preparedness enthusiasts these days. For those who don't know, EMP happens when a powerful electrical disturbance in the upper atmosphere races towards ground (more precisely, THE ground), causing massive power surges in elec

Energy October 3, 2014 6 min

Why Is LFTR So Important?

Why is the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) so important? A question no one ever has to ask me, but I feel the need to tell everyone the answer in great detail every time I'm engaged in conversation. Last night, a very dear friend of mine suggested I should list the answers to that very questi

Raves September 17, 2014 4 min

Free Cell Phone Service Redux

It's been a while since I've posted on my adventures in Free Cell Phone Service. Some things have changed recently, so I thought I should post an update. For some time I have been relying on a combination of Google Voice and Spare Phone over a WIFI connection to make and receive phone calls. Unfortu