emhart

Thanks. I hadn't yet arrived at the greedy lock portion when I posted the above, but I finished the article soon after and absolutely loved it. The other thing worth noting is that while it sounds like there was some regional bias toward Fred Buns at your store, they should have different combinations of dials/letters on some of their locks. Also, also, some should be reconfigurable, which leads me to the challenge:

Optimal combination of dials in the circumstance that the dials can be rearranged.

& Don't sweat dial/tumbler, dial is more specific anyway, tumbler is the generic word.

I am part way through your trajectory. I was a designer first, fell in love with html/css, eventually gave in and learned js, started to really enjoy that and have now been edging my way to the back end for a while. Now I'm job hunting at the same time and definitely feeling that desert of despair. Was glad to see your post, gives me some hope!

If you have the time, could you elaborate on those rules? I know nothing about that field, but am very curious.

Yeah, southwest of Boston we are getting wrecked. Still coming down hard, hoping it finishes up soon. I'm glad we had the warnings, and I'll be particularly glad if we lose power, which seems pretty likely at this point, since the warning gave me the chance to stock up, charge battery backups, etc.

The ad-lib appears to be included in the provided PDF.

Originally because it was fun and helped pay the bills. More and more recently I code to better understand things I'm thinking about or build small tools that are useful to me.

My inspiration for all of my work is a fear that no one else is going to look at the things I'm looking at, think about the things I'm thinking about or discover the answers I'm trying to find. This is less ego-maniacal than it sounds (I think), there just aren't many people pursuing my particular passion, so I genuinely feel like I need to do everything with it I possibly can before I die.

The rififcoup!

So named for the fabulous film Rififi, in which burglars rented an apartment, then drilled through the ceiling to the floor below. This was a direct reference to the French criminal anarchist Alexandre Marius Jacob who famously carried out just such an attack in the early 20th century. At his trial (for murder, among other things) he uttered one of my favorite quotes. He was asked what had become of him, he had traveled the world as a sailor, he was educated, how had he become a murderous anarchist. To which he replied:

"I have seen the world. It is not beautiful."

Latter idea is mentioned in the post, though...clocking in at ~7500 words I blame absolutely no one for not getting to the end haha

Yes, it is a very good idea. That's precisely how the Mas Hamilton/Kaba Mas X-series safe locks work. The dial is rotated a few times first, at which point the lock powers on and can be operated, solenoids fired, etc.

However, those safe locks get to control many other aspects of the mechanical makeup of the lock, and rely on well defined and reliable standards of production of the doors they are applied to. Consumer smart locks don't get that advantage, so the amount of power required to throw a bolt won't always be consistent. I don't know what it would take to ensure enough human power is transferred to provide enough force to always overcome a stuck bolt.