Category: Tech

Scotty, We Need More Bandwidth!

Transporter Room at the Star Trek Original Series Set Tour in Ticonderoga, NY

An idle thought I had was about the transporters on Star Trek. If matter is digitized in some way and transmitted over an analog frequency through space, the data rate needed to pull that off would have to be incredible.

So, what is the current SOTA data rate from space? No surprise, it’s with the James Webb Space Telescope.

The maximum throughput is 28 Mbps, equivalent to the best ADSL Internet service. There are also a couple of side channel links running at dialup modem speed.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/james-webb-telescope-communications

However, during the Artemis 2 Moon mission, the data rate was almost ten times faster. By using lasers, communication ran at a maximum of 260 Mbps.

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20250010065

Which is still well below the download speed I’m seeing right now from the porch.

In November, Voyager 1 will achieve the amazing milestone of being 1 light-day away from Earth. What’s the current data rate between Voyager 1 and Earth? An extremely modest 160 bps download to Earth/16 bits up.

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voyager/instruments/

In other space news, the Perseverance Rover is about to complete a total of 26.2 miles, a marathon distance, on Mars.

https://gizmodo.com/how-far-has-nasas-perseverance-rover-traveled-on-mars-the-answer-may-surprise-you-2000759104

By using the Mars orbiters for communication with Earth, the Perseverance data rate is up to 2 Mbps.

https://www.l3harris.com/sites/default/files/2021-02/L3Harris-IMS-EO-Sellsheet-Rover.pdf#

What Say Thee, AI?

Dear Google Search AI: Can Cloudflare interfere with IMAP?

Yes, Cloudflare can interfere with IMAP (and SMTP/POP3) login if the mail subdomain is proxied (orange-clouded) in DNS settings.

- Cloudflare's standard proxy only handles HTTP/HTTPS traffic, so proxying mail traffic blocks the connection, causing login failures in apps like Outlook or Gmail.

- In the Cloudflare DNS dashboard, ensure the A/CNAME record for ://yourdomain.com is set to "DNS Only" (grey cloud) rather than "Proxied" (orange cloud).

- Correct Mail Subdomain: Ensure your email client uses a subdomain (like mail.example.com) that points directly to your mail server's IP, not the proxied root domain.

- Verify MX Records: Ensure your MX record points to a hostname that is not proxied. If you are seeing errors, it is likely because the mail client cannot reach the server's actual IP address.

That seems to be the likely cause of the problem I had today. With this in mind, I should be able to change the server entry for my e-mail accounts in a way that will avoid interacting with Cloudflare.

But wait, there’s more! Accessing the site on Firefox has this problem:

Error Code: SSL_ERROR_NO_CYPHER_OVERLAP

Everything is still, after all of this time, so freakin’ delicate with computers and the Internet. One little tiny thing can cripple everything. As a learning experience, I will stay away from Cloudflare, once and for all.

I’ve Changed My Mind

Bluehost has really pissed me off. If they don’t make me happy, I won’t wait until Trump is out office to shut down this site. I’ll do it before my plan renews at the beginning of next year.

What did Bluehost do to make me so mad? Here are a couple of comments I left for them on LinkedIn.

I am a 16-year customer, on a Bluehost chat right now, and I am not pleased. All of sudden, without prior notice, I need to buy a security certificate, just to log onto my email accounts with Thunderbird?! This is unacceptable!

SIXTEEN YEARS a customer, and out of nowhere you clobber my email client access without prior notification. Less marketing and more management, please! Send me a promo code for a Wildcard DV SSL to make me happy.

Follow-up: The LinkedIn complaint got a response. Cloudflare being the only change I have made in the past day, I put it on the table as a possible cause of the problem. Initially it seemed to be unrelated, because it should only affect website access, but now we aren’t so sure. Cloudflare is in the process of being deactivated. It remains to be seen if, assuming the process completes and Cloudflare is decoupled from my domain, e-mail client authentication works again. As I used to say at work, “Let’s swap all the tires until we find the flat one.”

Further Follow-up: Mail client access is working again for both sending and receiving messages. I’m waiting to hear what was broken and what fixed it.

Follow-follow-up: Bluehost doesn’t know. They’ve offered a suggestion as a workaround in case the problem returns, but that’s all it is. For the moment, it seems that Cloudflare, that should only touch WWW access, is mucking with MX access on my domain.

There is also the fact that whoever I was initially chatting with, AI or human, they guessed wrong and pointed me to a rabbit hole that would have caused me to buy an extra service that I don’t need. Major support points lost on that one.

The site is back to a “D” performance grade on Pingdom. 🙁 I will take reliability over performance every time.

Got My Flare On

I was busy watching silly cartoons today, rather than posting silly stuff here. I did, however, make a change to the site, by adding Cloudflare integration. It’s been enabled before, but there were some resulting issues that I didn’t feel like figuring out, so I disabled it.

Response time lately has been rather sluggish, and sometimes slower than merely “rather.” So, I’m giving Cloudflare another try, to see if it can speed things up.

If Pingdom is a valid test, the site’s speed rating has gone from “D” to “A”.

A day later, something went terribly wrong. Don’t know if Cloudflare was the cause, but it’s at least a possibility.

I’ve Changed My Mind

Exciting All EPSON Blog Post!

I continue to obsessively play experiment with the new Epson ET-2985 printer/scanner. Thanks to the low cost of ink tanks vs. ink cartridges, I’m not afraid to do some printing for fun.

This is a high-resolution image that I thought would be good for a printer test. (Enlarge everything here, of course.)

Painting by Norman Saunders based on a drawing by Bob Powell

The top print was made on regular copier paper. The bottom is on matte photo paper/card stock. You can see the better quality paper is a superior white.

Photo taken with Google Pixel 8a

This test was very interesting. When I went downstairs to check on the printout that specified matte photo paper, it hadn’t yet printed. The tiny display screen was asking for confirmation that the special paper was installed. Very impressive. After confirming, it started printing.

The most obvious difference between the two prints is the color shift in Robin’s cape and, especially, his vest. The regular paper on the left is a better match for the original image, but I prefer the way it looks on the thicker paper.

Now I will turn my attention to the Epson EF12 mini-cube projector I bought a few years ago for $700. That’s the cost of two replacement lamps for the vastly superior JVC projector I bought in 2013. (It was delivered on “Shelter in Place Friday,” after the Marathon Monday bombings!)

The JVC lamps last up to 2000 hours, while the Epson has a laser that lasts up to 20000 hours. Considering the JVC has 6000 total hours of use on it after thirteen years, I’ll undoubtedly be dead before the Epson’s laser wears out. Technology marches on.

I finally have a copy of the complete 1966 Marvel Super Heroes cartoons that’s worth keeping. I’ve been playing them on the EF12 from a USB stick.

Given the superior quality compared to previous bootleg collections taken from VHS copies, the cartoons must have been ripped from a UK DVD set, which is the only official DVD release the series has ever had.

Animation frame adapted from a drawing by Jack Kirby and Chic Stone

Not every cartoon looks that good, but even the lesser quality prints are good enough for me to no longer wish for an official release from Disney. The cartoons have excellent voice work and music, and I enjoy the very limited animation that’s based on stats from the comic books.

There are, however, some embarrassingly bad scenes with original animation, not taken from the comics. I must agree with Denro, who said, “You may have identified why the series hasn’t been released in hi-definition in the US.”

Drawing by … Roy Lichtenstein? 😉

P.S. I forgot to mention the projector screen is also from Epson. The ES3000 cost $200 when I bought one in 2013 to go with the JVC projector. The screen is still available today, but it now costs $330.