Every now and then while working on an app or simply automating some recurrent dev tasks I ran into ImageMagick which you can get installed via brew install convert.

The tool is incredibly powerful and as all Unix command-line tools have more switches and order of using those switches and gibberish sequence of characters than a pack of cats times their lives and power of their cousins' lives.

So this post is for the occasional desperate moment that I figured how to do something very simple and specific for which I have the guarantee that next time that I want to do the same or very similar thing I won't remember how I did it before.

Once you installed you can call convert followed by arguments. Chances are that before you actually convert anything you need to re-organize or find your files that will be subject to the conversions. Let's document that part first. There are millions of ways to that, the below is what worked for me.

If you have all images in multiple folders a…

There's so much to unpack here... however, the best way to make you live my brain phases is to take you through the journey I had.

The Filini's gang on the last day of February, clearly a special leap one, decided to go to BDOS. It's really fun and offers a lot of variety in cross country efforts. Really good for building up muscle structure and develop jumping skills.

After the ride, which by the way was super as my (now found) Garmin shows.

The last three jumps are off the Super Charge segment, my favorite kamikaze trail at BDOS. Anyway... we get back to the car after our traditional ~10 miles of fun and sweat. I am fairly methodical when it comes to save time. Leaving my bike stuff container a mess means waste more time later on it to clean, fix, search, unpack and all that. Therefore, because time is opportunity and wasting time is...well wasted opportunities, I put everything back as I usually do and particularly doing a better job then normally with my devices.
My de…

If you have seen in this action movies when the hero of the moment hits the hydrogen valve and the care suddenly flies over the asphalt then you have a form a HHO system and just didn't know the name. The official pose of those systems (EFIE) demand a slide style like this one :-)`

Lab HHO generators are expensive. For a project that I am investigating, I needed a gas to propel a certain number of revolutions in a mechanism I am working on. Since my mechanism is wheel shaped I naturally thought of generating fumes via a HHO generator. I didn't want to spend a ton for something that I wasn't sure that was going to be an essential item of my research so I figure:

How hard would be to build one, DIY style? Well... that's what this post is all about. Let's build and test one. Before we get our hands dirty let's learn some basics knowledge so we know what's going on.

As with all DIY projects:
BE CAREFUL, USE PROTECTIONS AND DON'T BLAME ANYONE BUT YOURSELF I…

I have my name on a very large number of patents across multiple nations. I have built from scratch projects, products, teams and services. So naturally often I get texts like:

Hey Mario... "Hey, I have a startup idea that I want run through you" or "How do I patent something in the cheapest way possible" and more rarely "I am looking for an investor in my idea. Want to hear about it?"


Let's start from the last one. I am an angel investor in several ventures. Usually I invest between 25K to 100K. It largely depends on how crowded is the space and the risk level based on what is already been done. Typically on 100 "things" I hear about, 10 finally go through an informal due diligence and 1 or 2 end up in a formal due diligence process. And the survival rate of those 1 or 2 depends on what is discovered that the founders didn't know.

In those things it is paramount the most key quote of every startup-er: you don't know what you don'…

Just a bit over two years ago, as of this writing, I started an activity that has become my passion. Mountain Biking. I learned a few things over this period of time that I want to share away for the next newbie around the root/rock/bush/drop emm... corner.

My first bike was a K2 Sport XS. Although it was in nice shape it was clearly 3 times smaller than my 5.7' body requires. I was also 219 pounds so I guess it balanced out the fact that I could barely get from point A to B regardless of the bike's frame.



My second bike was a HUGE improvement over the the first. A SuperFly 100/AL Elite bought as lightly used by a local teacher. It served as a wonderful intro to understand a lot better what works and what doesn't for me and the trails that I usually ride.



My current bike is a fantastic BMC Speedfox 02 2018 size M with 27.5 wheels size (specs).

At this point I am far enough in the game of biking to have a few certainties at least for people for the equivalent experience and…

A friend (Suveen) asked how do you do that? Break something complicated in meaningful, non tedious and smaller tidbits of knowledge. Well... It's not an exact science my friend, but here's my framework. I shared this on FB since that is where he asked the question. Reposting here for future questions of the same nature.






And that is how I do it. But at the end whatever works based on what mess you are dealing with works. It's not science, it is just wisdom and a ton of experience burning your own skin in the game of life.

;mE