l33tplaya

For one, your wrist appears to be unnaturally "bent." Second, you have too much tension in your little finger. Some leave it off completely, though I wasn't taught that way. I also don't have my fingers quite as far down on the bow as you do, but it also seems many of the maestros do have their fingers positioned as you do. Do you have a teacher? Here's an old picture you might try to emulate if you want a great Russian grip: See how relaxed his hand is? This one is more of a Russian grip... Here's a great Mnutter discussion, and a good video clip from another alter kocher, showing Franco-Belgisn grip: https://maestronet.com/forum/index.php?/topic/333745-russian-vs-belgian-vs-galamian-bow-grip/

Gestetner was a brand of stencil printers, and in my school, sat next to a mimeograph, which were very sensitive to number of copies, and ink preparation. The Gestetner wa much better at not being blurry, and could have varied ink colors. Maybe Gestetner made mimeograph machines too? For the mimeo, too wet = blurry; too many copies - if memory serves > ~ 40 = blurry. And don't get those copies wet - would run like crazy.

To Merkel: Not smug at all. I architect this stuff. Not pontificating as others have done here (in some cases, accurate, in others...BS).. I disagree: it could be practical, and something akin to it would be useful. Necessary? Depends on your risk tolerance and the tolerance of the community for the % of fakes attributed as real, and the % of bona fide units incorrectly attributed as fakes. All of the systems I have seen were dependent upon a central registry, which is far better than one maker with a file cabinet subject to losses of many kinds. The downside of such a system is that all these systems were, imv, exorbitantly priced. Some of that is likely because of the cost of maintaining such a system for a long time, but when I talked to each designer, I couldn't escape the feeling that they were mostly out to make a buck, immediately, and building up a community and any service to the community was clearly second. A maker shouldn't have to concern himself with PKI, and all the maintenance associated with a proper key management system. It's not her jam. Any system that succeeds likely needs to be priced such that it is a near no-brainer to use, at least at the beginning until a critical mass of users is registered. As far as not being trusted because of one error - a number of people still trusst bitcoin, though that has been compromised - and fixed - at least twice. Not that there aren't more secure blockchains...Another example: Target had a huge compromise, lost 163 million in recovery costs, but the total number of customers with data held by Target is now more than before that breach. Jes' sayin'.

I don't follow you around. But when I see something not explained properly, I correct it.

duplicate, system wasn't responding....

The scan would be verifiable - or not - against the ledger, which would be immutable for older entries. So no, if the blockchain was properly implemented, extremely difficult to forge. Correct. :-) "all that matters is that the archived version remains unaltered ..." So someone couldn't substitute an authentication document with an altered photograph.

Sorry duplicate, fat fingered.

The scan would be verifiable - or not - against the ledger, which would be immutable for older entries. So no, if the blockchain was properly implemented, extremely difficult to fabricate.

I have thought about this for a while. Some random thoughts: 1) As a possible aside, NFC is irrelevant: it is a communication protocol, not a cryptographic protocol. (It's also not terribly secure, which is why we want the information encrypted) 2) Any kind of chip could be removed, and placed in another instrument. I was at a CES a few years ago, and talked to someone from ...? Philips? who was co-exhibiting with someone who was demonstrating a new way to prevent painting fakery. What they did with the electronic chip was to include an electronic representation of the painter's DNA, which was recorded, with the painting, to a centralized database. So IIRC, one would check the registry as well as the chip, which was set up something like public key cryptography. Of course, a photographic representation of the painting formed one part of the unique key. Only the public key is given in the chip. The private key is retained by the maker, or perhaps the registry. In the case of the painting, there was also one color chosen that had the makers' DNA included, so if push came to shove, a tiny piece of that color could be analyzed. With violins, one could do the samething: an abstract of a high resolution photo forms one part of the key. This "abstract" is much the same way Apple uses face ID and converts it to a bunch of points forming a unique pattern. 3) If the chip is properly encrypted, it should be very hard to gain the keys to copy everything on the chip. 4) That doesn't stop someone from removing the chip and placing it elsewhere, but then the DNA from the instrument wouldn't match. The registry comparison would also fail, because a picture of the instrument plus the read key from the chip wouldn't match the stored value in the database. And the real instrument now doesn't have a chip. This system was somewhat pricey - IIRC again, ~$6 -800 for basic program, double that for deluxe, and a service fee for registry comparison. 5) There was someone at NAMM two years ago who claimed they had a RFID like chip, that wasn't RFID, and had a longer range than the chips like TrackR or Tile...He was super secretive, and to me, his claims made no sense. He would only divulge to investors. The product was expensive (~$200.) but if it actually did everything he asid, it would be cheap. Oh, and no batteries!? It would uniquely identify a violin, and a maker could include it in the corpus rather than an easily swapped chin rest, say.

Heck no. As Patrick Henry observed:

Where's the translate icon for those of us speaking only two languages? Fischers Fritze fischt frische Fische, frische Fische fischt Fischers Fritze.

Could you please 'splain the shopping references for us non-Anglophiles? Is this equivalent in the US to shopping at Ralph's vs Whole Foods or Gelson's? Is Rees-Mogg evil? The press says he's "charming."

These guys are funny....just not very good, and that seems to be the one note of their humor. Their technique is usually insipid, flawed, and poorly demonstrated. Sometimes they have good tips though. There are many better web examples.

Do tell, please. Was this a plumbing accident? A bar tussle? Or violin making with SawzAll gone horribly astray? Some of us are imagining how you might lose a front tooth, and apparently not suceeding. This time a tooth; next time, something more valuable? We would hate to lose a valued MN instigator contributor. So we also hope you will be more circumspect next time. Myself, my lip hit the handle when a gouge got "stuck" on a recalcitrant section of a back...

Like, and not just Joe's varnish. :-)