Archive
Circle Of Miles And Taxes
Gas taxes in the state of Washington based on http://dor.wa.gov/content/findtaxesandrates/othertaxes/tax_mvfuel.aspx we’re taxed about .67 per gallon of gas sold. A lot of our property taxes go for highway projects as well. Changing to the system of miles traveled will cause in the short term a drop of state tax revenue. And, you know they will try and replace that lost income. Keep incentives for purchasing electric cars and charge declining flat tax based on purchase price over the life span of the car. Transportation and autonomous vehicles will become a reality. Uber is experimenting in Ohio and has made an autonomous beer delivery run.
Take a look at a map and draw a circle in a 100 mile radius from your home you’ll be surprised at how much there is to do and see right where you live. We don’t get much out of our home zone. And, within that zone lies our commute paths. To and from work. And, on weekends an occasional trip across the mountains. Other than taxation for miles driven, possibly tracked by gps, laws will have to be assessed to see how to protect our privacy. New laws either need to be created or old ones enforced to protect our privacy and our home locations. From the metric centric point of view, the correlations provide a unique challenge for all of us. Just random thoughts. J
Electric hybrids are supposed to be more efficient and at this time our state don’t tax based on miles driven.
People who work in SF, sometimes live 2-3 hours away from the job. Would self-driving cars change that? Not sure but If I were to take an automatic vehicle I would hope that there would be lanes of traffic to account for autonomous driving.
10 years into the future a self-driving car will be smaller and lighter. They will go forward and back and from side to side. The rules of the road will have changed because these little things would get crushed. You’ll start out in the morning leaving in your self-driving car. You strap in and pull down the table in front of you and get comfortable for the commute. On your head are the latest in 3D real vision. You’ll Watch a little news, reply to email and take a quick 3d selfie to post on the airwaves channel. Life is good.
Arriving stress free at work your self-driving car drives directly to the parking garage elevator where you are whisked away and delivered promptly to your office. Lunch is 3d printed ham and cheese on rye. . Life is good.
On the way home, put your 3D real vision on get lost playing the latest game. Arriving home safe and rested, Life is good.
Perhaps flex time. Commute every other day in the self-driving cars. It is and will happen as roads get more congested.
What solutions would you offer for autonomous and self-driving vehicles?
My Brother A Hero To Me
At the start of last week my brother Marshall (Larry) went in for
unrelated incident and when tested had a huge cancer tumor. They were
going to operate but decided his lungs would not hold up as they were
already damaged. Somewhere along the way between blood thinners and
not he had a stroke which took out his speech abilities. Prognosis not
being good for surviving surgery and what not, at his wish, we brought
him home, where he is being made comfortable. His grandkids and
immediate family are all here and we’re all deeply grateful for your
many prayers. Things happen so quickly we forget how cherished each
moment is. My thanks and hugs to all.
Sadly around 11:00 PM 6/4 he passed away. I’m really sad and
heartbroken at my brothers loss.
Marshall, you were my idle growing up. The brotherly love was always felt. Even when it hurt. 🙂
It was just you, me and mom for the longest time and that always created a special bond between us. Being the big brother wasn’t always easy but you were there nevertheless. Mom would say, Larry take your brother as it was often herd and it made you mad sometimes but there I was.
I’m such an introvert that I grew into my little world and you were trying to get me out of that space. You knew that and told me the many texts, phone calls and postings will never replace face to face or personal communications. But, that’s what things were the past couple of months.
I’m the eldest of the family now, but, I don’t think I’ll ever fit those big shoes of yours. All, I can try and do is place family first and do the best I can to be as generous and giving as you were. All my love and my heartbroken self, thanks for all you were. Whom am I now going to call for sage advice…
My Brother My Hero
I found this Marine Poem on the internet, while it may not say everything I does say you.
“So you took a different path
one that is more true
not the path that makes this easy
but the one less traveled through
the war was big
at times was rough
the battles we fought
the world may judge
but even though
they’ll never know
the world will always thank you
rest in peace
because your loved
dream good dreams
your days were tough
rest your mind
you fought enough
0h brothers, how we’ll miss you!
I promise that I will never forget
the things that you have done
even when i find myself
no longer with my gun
and please forgive my hidden feelings
my body tends to hide
they’re trapped inside this awful prison
enslaved by my pride
and never again will i say
my pay grade can out rank you
because you got to heaven first
and I’m on earth beneath you
so till the day we meet again
and my life on earth is through
guard those gates of heaven
until i can relieve you
until then…
oh brothers, how we’ll miss you! ”
Davis Dolezal
My life is like a butterfly with poem Joseph T. Renaldi !!!!
SECURITY and PRIVACY :- Twitters Privacy Update Policy
SECURITY and PRIVACY :- Twitters Privacy Update Policy
Security and privacy should be important for everyone. Just now I noticed that the privacy policy for tacking on twitter has changed. I would encourage you
to edit your values and turn off all tracking. When I first looked all values were checked!
Giving up your right to privacy I think is a security risk. But, discern for yourself what you wish to do. 🙂
What are your thoughts on data tracking?
Joseph
CYBER-ATTACKS :- We’re too late! Engage clocking device then notify the fleet and return to base.
CYBER-ATTACKS
We’re too late! Engage clocking device then notify the fleet and return to base.
Future cyber-attacks won’t be done by man. Cyber-attacks will be performed by AI. Various AI trained by machine learning will vulnerability check and then drop helper bots on vulnerable networks and computers along the way. Undetected, these additional bots will further the attack by increasing the depth and breadth that gives worldwide impact to such attacks. Quite possibly it will run on one of the major cloud platforms where global staging of bits that do the damage are housed and can go undetected for a long time. Not only are they asking for ransom but the biggest ransomed users will start demanding global ID’s in hopes of stopping these types of attacks. In fact I believe that the attacks will increase until that nefarious plan succeeds. Granted, personal activities that are initiated by you either via an email link, or some other source of link, or do some kind of application install causes most of the issues. But not all. More education in this area would help.
Not only will these attacks continue, but the online games that millions of kids of varying ages use every day, have live chat rooms.
Why is that important? And, how does that relate to cyber-attacks?
Chat rooms are being used in games to organize others as groups in the games and to make trades for items gathered during game play. That’s easy enough. But, with young kids for the thought of getting extra game items or items for free, will click on, download and install some application only to find out their password was stolen, game assets drained and have been locked out of their account. Not quite the same as recent cyber-attacks that have struck around the world, but a personal attack nevertheless and ones that often go unreported. And, just maybe a yet to be detected bot? (Parental setup and security control of a kid’s computer is another topic)
Most online games and platforms for game play state that those under certain age should not have access unless they have their legal guardian’s permission. I wonder how many pass up reading the access rules! Kids seem to have more computer knowledge than parents and many don’t bother following up after setting up a kid on a platform. A lot use Facebook whom are under the age of 18. The smart kids will gain access quite easily.
This should bother everyone. Kids really don’t know how old or who the person’s on the other end of the chat are. Their susceptible to screen chatter and are not on the guard when someone might be asking probing questions such as do you have pets. What’s your school’s mascot name? Etc, add your own and it can be scary indeed. The social engineering aspect that kids face can be challenging. They exist and everyone has vulnerabilities.
Kids are now playing augmented reality games on smart devices and as the games move to 3d glasses, uncontrolled augmented reality games could be a catalyst for cyberattacks. Couldn’t it? Meet me at the cemetery our job is to grave rob. The prize is located 6 feet down and looks like a sack of shingles If found will be worth 20,000 bit coins. Hey we’re having a 100 person march tonight in support of macaroni and cheese school lunch Thursdays. Meet us at the school with a can of orange paint for a chance for a secret Santa surprise.
Perhaps none of this will be like that if we’re aware and teach our kids. But what if things like that have happened and are continuing to happen?
I mean parents can’t sit and watch everything a kid does online or can they? Are you a parent with school age kids? Kids that use the internet that play games such as ROBLOX.COM? And, other free online games? They are fun but I would be very concerned if you did not check into and understand what these online games are. As mentioned most have chat rooms to communicate with others in a game. But, kids really don’t know how old the persons on the other end of the chat are. Maybe an AI Trained chat bot that we help train!! Nice. And, that has recently happened.
Some possible solutions.
- Create automatic sandboxes for running games either on desktop or place browser functionality into a sandbox no matter who the vendor of the browser.
- Deliver all email with links and active content turned off by default.
- Allow easier access to mail headers and provide mail header tracing for validation and research.
- Remove cross site cookie tracking and web beacons. Less tracking would eliminate targeted threats.
- Allow 3d glasses to work only within 20 feet of a matched base station.
- A drive for personal photos and documents that could never be used or locked by unauthorized sources. Cloud as backup perhaps?
- Two factor authentication where the parent receives the code to login. Could be too much but is a good idea if it would work.
- And, while not mentioned above fix IoT security. This will help as well.
However, removing tracking will be difficult as it generates millions of dollars for advertisers. Media watching and usage changes are taking the industry by storm. Many have given up cable and are doing so at a rapid pace. Desktop usage has gone down as users become more mobile. Advertisers large and small still need a way to push advertisements to consumers.
Just a few years ago bandwidth was more expensive and users did not want all the extra ads being displayed. Application availability was sparse and not many that good. Bubble popper was my favorite and could be heard in many restrooms. Now at the speed of thought and light our devices via tracking, application usage, site participation with voice activation and weather are presenting the prepared “Just For You” items that tracks across owned devices. The metrics!!! Damn, the metrics.
We all need knowledge of how to protect ourselves and our families in the digital age from current and future cyber-attacks. The rapidly changing false headlines this past year could have been a cyber attack. Couldn’t it? Makes us all Wanna Cry.
Perspective is what it is.
SQL :- Many Flavors (PostGreSQL).
SQL :- Many Flavors (PostGreSQL).
Recently I installed PostGreSQL on windows so, I can work on a little project that I’ve been wanting to do. The objective was to learn PostgreSQL and since I’ve started to dig into the free software DAZ Studios (DAZ3D) I wanted a better understanding of the data in the tables and wanted to be able to learn various configurations of PostgreSQL,
By default DAZ Studio installs pgAdmin3 LTS as the graphical interface manager. But, there is a new pgAdmin4 1.4 that I’ll eventually be switching too for viewing data tables. For now as pgAdmin30 is out I’ll use that for this article mainly because that’s what DAZ Studio utilizes. After all items are connected I’ll show you how to create external connections via ODBCmanager for 32bit and 64bit connections. With those connections, I’ll show you how to connect to Excel and SSRS reporting. I’m keeping the examples short for now and in the future I will be posting more complex ideas and samples of how to work with the data to enhance more control over content management.
Installed PostgreSQL By DAZ
It is not necessary to actually download PostgreSQL as DAZ Studio installs a version in to the default setup as in the below image. I won’t go over DAZ Studio setup here.
And, to run the PostgreSQL graphical interface program you can select the pgAdmine3.exe
Download and Install PostgreSQL
If you want more power then what the DAZ studio installed version you can download
and install from here.
DAZ STUDIO CMS Version
Once you get here with your installation or DAZ defaults, you will need to connect PostgreSQL to your DAZ content database. From within DAZ studio you can find the
default port that DAZ Studio has used for setup. I’ve kept things at the default but you can change to suit your environment.
To get the port number to use for PostgreSQL for DAZ Studio select Edit preferences or “F2”. Select the CMS Settings tab and you’ll see the installation folder and the Port number that daz uses to communicate with the database.
To connect PostgreSQL to DAZ Studio I’ll keep the default port at 17237.
Although I’ve already connected to DAZ3D CMS database in this image, the application displayed should look like this.
Next we will want to add a new server in this case is 127.0.0.1 which is the local machine.
Fill out the values like this. If you want a password on the database you can add one here.
I named my Server “MyDaz” and used the user name of “dzcms” a name to use that I found
on DAZ3d forums.
After setup if you’re not familiar with PostgreSQL make sure you use DAZ Studio Interface to backup your database.
DAZ Studio Query Tables
To show connectivity is working I’ll show you a couple quick methods for displaying data from within tables without major coding. 🙂
From the PostgreSQL interface you can choose to view rows
Selected Content Table Rows (100 rows) is the default. On real large databases you’ll want to limit the number of results returned.
And, you want to select rows it’s similar with a slightly different interface. Select the “Select Script”
Just a few ways to query the data in the tables.
PostgreSQL ODBC Driver Installation
To access PostgreSQL form other windows applications you will need to install ODBC drivers for PostgreSQL for both 32/64bit versions.
You can find them at https://odbc.postgresql.org/
And since I’m running 64bit windows I’ll just download the MSI version for now and the 32bit if required. And, I’ve downloaded the code so I can see how it is constructed. https://www.postgresql.org/ftp/odbc/versions/msi/ get both
Psqlodbc_09_06_0200-x86.zip and Psqlodbc_09_06_0200-x64.zip as I’ve noticed that some apps that I’ve tried to connect with like 32bit versus the 64bit version.
Download and virus checked. And, unzipped into a folder. Always read the readme file.
PSQLODBC.DLL – A library to talk to the PostgreSQL DBMS using ODBC.
ODBC Setup Screens
Select Next
Select Check BOX- Select Next
Select to install documentation or just select next.
Select Install
After installation complete select Finish.
Both installations for 32/64bit follow the same installation and setup style.
Create DSN for ODBC driver assocation
You can search for this “What is a DSN (Data Source Name)?” or go to this link https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/966849/what-is-a-dsn-data-source-name
further explanation of what a “DSN” name is.
From windows “RUN” type the following for 64BIT DSN creation.
I chose Unicode for my DSN.
From windows “RUN” type the following for 32BIT DSN creation.
When you select finish you can create your DSN name that will be used in other applications.
The name of the database is defined when you connect using pgAdmin3. The ports, server name and user name are the same as used
for PostgreSQL database attachment.
You can actually create this with corresponding names based on 32/64bit naming conventions.
Using “DSN” created in Excel
After you open up a new sheet in Excel, select item “From Other Sources” located on the “Data Tab”
We can select the “From Data Connection Wizard” and from there select the ODBC DSN.
Select next after ODBC DSN
What is nice about this method we get a list of tables that we can work with.
Select a table
Choosing next gives us this screen.
Review make adjustments if needed and select Finish
You can paste into existing sheet or create a new sheet.
As this isn’t really a tutorial on using Excel, I thought I might add that you can sort columns filter and organize
And, by filtering you can see what purchases you made for a given date much faster then having to track this down.
Column Filter By Date
Using “DSN” Created in SSRS
Not many people have SSRS or the desire to create reports with SSRS. This isn’t a full blown tutorial on using SSRS, but on
creation of the data sources. Either Shard Data Sources or Shared Data Sets and using those to connect the DSN for reporting
from DAZ Studios CMS database.
After opening up Visual Studio I’m using 2013 here. right click on Shared Data Sources
Create a name for your Shared Data Source with type as ODBC, then select edit.
Select the PostgreSQL30_32 item after testing the connection select OK.
Your connection string will be “Dsn=PostgreSQL30_32” Select OK on the Shared Data Source Properties screen.
I’ll create a new report.
Select the newly created “Shared Data Source” and select next. If you have a query
already created and is syntax checked enter that as your query string. You can select next or
enter the query builder where if there are errors will show you.
Product ‘4422’ is one that I’ve been using in my postings about DAZ3d Content Management. Or you could just drop the
WHERE clause and return all records. And if you enter the query editor you can select tables or views to work with for this report
this is the selection returned form query editor
SELECT store_id, name, guid, last_update
FROM dzcontent.product
From that Here is a simple created report from or DSN through created report.
Create Simple Tabular Report
Select how items are grouped
Jump to the end and select finish
Simple report with adjust column headings
Article Recap
Hopefully I’ve kept this article simple and easy to use. I like the follow along approach an article like this offers.
- PostgreSQL up front information
- Setup and installation of ODBC drivers
- Simple Excel Report Process
- Simple SSRS Report Process
Also, these steps for using PostgreSQL aren’t only meant for usage with DAZ Studio. You can use theses tips to install ODBC for
other usages as well. You could also set this up with Microsoft access.
My goal is to build a mini accounting system for my content. Knowing how much I paid in relation to content in my database and content on my machine
will help me out if I ever get to that PAID ARTIST category. 🙂
If you see errors or omissions please let me know. Comments are always welcome.
Thank you,
Joseph
3D ART :- DAZ Studio Content Organization PART 1
3D ART :- DAZ Studio Content Organization
MANAGE CONTENT DIRECTORIES
Even before using DAZ Studio content organization has been an issue. Because of that I’ve setup my workflow to download, virus check etc., Organize purchased and not purchased items and making sure that Items I do have appear in the content database(s) with appropriate meta data that helps describe my content. Someday I’ll be exporting from DAZ into formats for usage within Unity and Unreal environments, and that management can even be more tedious. I also follow the same and similar formatting rules for using light room, Photoshop and processing my GoPro videos’ So, it’s good to identify and setup a workflow or a workflow that has few well thought out steps so you’ll continue using a method.
Another thing, content is expensive and to not protect it like other assets is crazy stupid. Along with your time to setup organize and process can be very time consuming. So, I’ve started to take a look at how I can organize my content the automated way. With this in mind, this posting covers simple hard drive organization first and foremost and what to look for in the zip files you get from various sources that you’ll be using in DAZ3D. From my usage of DAZ3D, and reading the forums I’ve seen the pattern and structure that exists for content downloads.
The best way to learn is to dig in on this issue. Hopefully you’ll find the information useful as well. Before I get to content structure on my
PC, I thought I would start with some break down of zip files and their organization for DAZ and Renderosity which are two sites I’ve purchased content and downloaded free content from.
ZIP File Structure and DAZ Content Downloads
I’m sure that not all sites follow the same format and organization for producing packaged ZIP files for import, either using the DIM :- Daz Install Manager or by manual installation. My topic also covers stuff after January 01 2017 as that’s the month I started using DAZ and don’t really have much older content but this posting should fit for multi methods.
Daz studio names content manually and DIM downloaded zip files with IM99999999-01_NameOfProduct.ZIP. If there are more than one to install for same SKU# It will be IM99999999-02_NameOfProduct.ZIP etc. This is nice as the product SKU# and name is included in the in the name.
For Example This file is called IM00004422-01_MedievalFurniturePack.zip that I manually downloaded. Searching for 4422 in the product store
When you select the product image https://www.daz3d.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=4422 displays the page Medieval-Furniture-Pack. Which is also part of the name.
https://www.daz3d.com/medieval-furniture-pack
That makes it easy when you want to look up content pages. It could be important if you want to search for something. If the dashes “-” are missing when trying to run the url you’ll recive a 404 error so just add the “-” back in.
By changing the number
https://www.daz3d.com/downloader/customer/files/prod/4422/
A link like this and you will be taken to the product page where you can download related items that I’ve found to include templates, or additional usage documentation.
XML Manifest
Included in the root portion of the zip file is an Manifest.dsx text wise is an XML file as *.XML file which is basically a text file organized kind of like the hierarchy of a folder structure.
\\content
\\Runtime
\\Libraries etc.
The outer tags just tell DAZ Install what version the install manage is and the GlobalID is an identifier called a GUID that identifies the product id.
SIDE NOTE: Powershell can use $myGuid = [guid]::NewGuid()
<DAZInstallManifest VERSION="0.1"> <GlobalID VALUE="7449d014-cc18-e696-c9d6-a90a165153f6"/> <File TARGET="Content" ACTION="Install" VALUE="Content/ReadMe's/MedievalFurnitureREADME.htm"/> THE REST OF THE FILES ….. </DAZInstallManifest>
Some ZIP Files have an additional file called Supplement.dsx. This particular ZIP doesn’t include one. In it's simple form it looks something like this: <ProductSupplement VERSION="0.1"> <ProductName VALUE="Medieval Furniture Pack"/> <InstallTypes VALUE="Content"/> <ProductTags VALUE="DAZStudio4,DAZStudio3,DAZStudioLegacy,Poser9,PoserLegacy"/> </ProductSupplement>
I’ll show why this could be helpful.
Now if you look at the hierarchy you can see that the manifest values are showing DAZ Install Manager where to install content.
Actually it is pretty straight forward way to organize and get thinking along the lines of organizing and managing content.
If you’re included to. 🙂 you can download a tool from Microsoft called XML Notepad. Its free and that makes
The tool even cooler. Here is the Manifest.dsx for IM00004422-01_MedievalFurniturePack.zip. I’d post a link, you just never know if a link is active or not.
Who knows all of this could change in the future. But, for now this has helped me understand the structure of content and how to manage this content
I also bring up the Manifest.xml file now, as I’ve built a tool that will read thru content folders without manifests and generate manifests for that content
Regardless of where you found freebies and made purchases. I’ve actually used PowerShell for this process as I’m still new to python. I’ve been recreating the same process with Python so hopefully someday can be ran as a python script via DAZ.
DAZ Install Manager-DIM
And, using DIM as it’s called installs the content into the default “Content Files Install To:”
If you downloaded to the default download folder
And looking at that folder for SKU# 4422 (been using all along for this article) You can see the same structure of zip file from above along with its manifest.
Again no supplement file from content downloaded using DIM.
If you notice there is IM00004422-01_MedievalFurniturePack.dsx which is essential an *.XML file that I mentioned.
Included in ZIP(if one were to exist) <ProductSupplement VERSION="0.1"> <ProductName VALUE="Medieval Furniture Pack"/> <InstallTypes VALUE="Content"/> <ProductTags VALUE="DAZStudio4,DAZStudio3,DAZStudioLegacy,Poser9,PoserLegacy"/> </ProductSupplement>
Product download had dramatically more information and is the same name as zip download with *.dsx extension. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <ProductSupplement VERSION="0.1"> <ProductName VALUE="Medieval Furniture Pack"/> <ProductStoreIDX VALUE="4422-1"/> <UserOrderId VALUE="24410813"/> <UserOrderDate VALUE="2017-04-05T20:19:08Z"/> <InstallerDate VALUE="2013-02-22T19:49:20Z"/> <ProductFileGuid VALUE="9857ba43-ad04-d6b1-a258-80799256b889"/> <InstallTypes VALUE="Content"/> <ProductTags VALUE="DAZStudio4_5,DAZStudio4,DAZStudio3,DAZStudioLegacy,Poser9,PoserLegacy,CloudAvailable"/> </ProductSupplement>
Having 2 different essentially supplement files is not good unless that’s how it’s intended to be. From my short example above
There is a <GlobalID VALUE=”7449d014-cc18-e696-c9d6-a90a165153f6″/> and <ProductFileGuid VALUE=”9857ba43-ad04-d6b1-a258-80799256b889″/>
The names are different but I wonder if they are being used for the same purpose and should be the same name and GUID value. One could
be a ProductID and the other could be VendorID I’ll see If I can find out.
Content Organization Hard Drive
Organizing your hard drive is much like the ordering of content free and otherwise. You go to a site order. :-). After the purchase
You can download your content into a decent organized folder structure. I keep mine by order # if purchased and free by “content creator” If
There is a name found.
After my downloads are complete, I run from Powershell command line tools to extract, create manifest and create DUF files for text files.
I start by reading thru the unzipped files and zip to the passed in variable
$CopyFromFolder = “Drive:\Downloads\Purchase from DAZ”
$CopyToFolder = “Drive:\Downloads\Purchase from DAZ\UnZipped”
OR
$CopyFromFolder = “Drive:\Downloads\Purchase from Renderosity”
$CopyToFolder = “Drive:\Downloads\Purchase from Renderosity\UnZipped”
Files are unzipped into folders based on ZIP file names.
That’s it for now. Next time I’ll go over the Powershell that does the work.
Comments are welcome.
Thank you,
Joseph
