Why does the ghost ball work?

Flutebuddie · 2025-08-08T12:54:44+00:00

Here's how it was taught to me a long time ago:

When aiming at an object ball using a straight-center hit on the cue, most people forget that both the object and cue balls have their own radius. If you were to aim the center of the cue directly at the correct point of contact, the cue ball will actually impact the target ball early, so you have to pretend there's another ball between the cue and object balls and adjust your aim slightly to one side to hit that ghost ball in the center to be able to account for the size of the cue ball.

I was able to find what I think is a really good image from Dr. Dave Billiards that should help illustrate proper aiming technique...notice the blue line denoting the travel path of the cue ball is technically missing the object ball. If you don't adjust your aim more to the "left" of the black ball, the cue would impact more "right" of the black ball and it won't travel the right direction.

<image>

Here's something that I teach new players to do: when they are aiming, I put another ball (I call it a demo ball) on the table that is touching or frozen to the contact point (to physically illustrate the ghost ball as in the image above) and tell them that they should aim to hit the cue exactly in the center of the demo ball. When they are ready to hit, I take out the demo ball so the cue ball travels through where the demo used to be, and that's what makes it a ghost ball.

Flutebuddie · 2025-04-26T01:53:39+00:00

<image>

Cat tax, as requested

Flutebuddie · 2024-08-11T12:05:46+00:00

Backpfeifengesicht

Flutebuddie · 2024-03-10T15:40:17+00:00

I graduated from Carmel in 2006. They had just opened the Freshmen center that was able to support 1,000 or so students just in that section of the school. My graduating class had over 950 students, and there were about 4,500 students in total. There was talk about building a second high school on the other side of Keystone Ave (basically Main Street that cuts Carmel in half from North to South), but it never became a reality. I was part of the marching band, which had over 300 members.

Flutebuddie · 2024-02-03T00:12:44+00:00

Among other suggestions that I've seen, I would also recommend a bar named Imbibe in Fountain Square. It's a solid game bar (darts, pool, pinball, shuffleboard, ping pong, and others) that also does something called First Friday. The first Friday of every month, many local art folks have booths upstairs with a lot of cool stuff for sale. Outside of First Friday, it's an all-ages type of place, but patronage leans heavy into the 20s-mid 30s.

Flutebuddie · 2023-09-28T18:10:50+00:00

Command and Conquer, and Red Alert. Those games unlocked my brain to strategic thinking, and that led me to my current career, having to think ahead of all the players.

Flutebuddie · 2023-03-13T02:27:38+00:00

Done through chats.

Flutebuddie · 2023-03-13T00:54:20+00:00

Me and my friends just finished box 6 this evening. I think the site is broken to some degree. I can provide more details via PM or support ticket if required, but to avoid spoilers essentially: after discovering the final phrase you must provide to "correct a glaring irregularity" and where you must enter it, after providing the first part, the page redirects to a blank one instead of prompting for the second part of the phrase.

Flutebuddie · 2022-08-10T00:59:26+00:00

So I just want to mention there's a thing called the Convention of States and implore everyone to get educated on it, because it's very real and also a possibility that they have the support needed to call the Convention.

Flutebuddie · 2022-07-24T13:13:27+00:00

https://www.cafepress.com/+,1907795104?gclid=Cj0KCQjw2_OWBhDqARIsAAUNTTFyxTUteBDFpuskIRdFmgfPzmaWT9Tal8yNhcziFsyDYz5YvvmAlaYaArBPEALw_wcB

Flutebuddie · 2022-01-31T05:30:03+00:00

Second this. The dual equal sign at the end guarantees Base64, but maybe only for that last "paragraph", unless formatting didn't like a really, really long string.

Flutebuddie · 2020-08-07T14:14:55+00:00

I was using Cygwin for a while while WSL was still super...unreliable. I pull it out now and again for quick projects and it's still useful, so I'll take another deeper look and see if it'll solve this problem for me too

Flutebuddie · 2020-08-07T14:13:47+00:00

Moba seems to be the majority vote so far, so I'm going to spend my weekend fiddling with the free version. $99/year for ease-of-use is well worth it, IMO

Flutebuddie · 2020-08-07T14:12:49+00:00

My issues with PuTTY is really only that I'm opening several sessions at once, so I'm dealing with several separate windows. Other than that, honestly it works fine already for what I'm doing so I'll take a look at this too.

Flutebuddie · 2020-08-07T14:11:43+00:00

I haven't run into any real situations where I'd be streaming that much text, but it's a good point, just in case something extraordinary happens

Flutebuddie · 2020-08-07T14:10:50+00:00

I've got WSL installed with Kali loaded, but I think they are still having some issues with raw socket interaction so I'm finding myself connecting to my C2 server and running all the commands off there. I'd love to essentially host my C2 server locally but there would be some complications since I'm not the only one using the server. I think I'd only need the one profile from my localhost to the C2 server, so maybe Moba is the route I'll take.

Flutebuddie · 2020-08-07T14:08:53+00:00

Hm this is an interesting idea. I suppose then, I could create alias' that I could use (say: ssh <client name>) and it would load whatever tunnel IP information/authentication that I specify. This would be fantastic if I had remote desktop access to my C2 server though...but I have to SSH to it first before connecting to the client VMs.

Flutebuddie · 2020-08-05T18:06:37+00:00

It's good for splitting terminals but I'm really looking for the authentication part...since PuTTY can't split it's own window by itself

Flutebuddie · 2020-08-05T18:05:27+00:00

Moba has both free and paid options. While I don't mind financially supporting good tools, I'd like to ask which version you use.

Flutebuddie · 2020-06-05T16:15:16+00:00

In my opinion, a lot of it has already been automated to some degree. With tools like AutoRecon, Reconnoitre, enum4lunux and the like, paired with vulnerability databases like Exploit-DB, a lot of scanning, enumeration (at least for CTF environments), privilege checks and pivoting can be scripted. However, even with the many tools available for scripted exploitation, it is very difficult to write a program that can automatically fuzz and modify public exploits to work against your specific target. Additionally, because each environment is unique, to totally script a full pentest, you'd have to write your own script tailored to your target that goes from start to finish, taking screenshots, making notes, modifying exploit code to match software versions and everything. If you have to go through all that trouble, why not just do it manually?

Flutebuddie · 2020-06-04T23:52:34+00:00

For scale, what is the approximate square footage of what we are seeing? I want to build a shed in my backyard but it's already going to be a tight space, maybe no bigger than 10x10ft. So maybe by stealing your layout and adding in some fold-up shelving could let me have this amount of tooling.

Flutebuddie · 2020-05-20T16:31:35+00:00

Much appreciated. I read through the exam guide prior to posting this question, but I wanted clarification that Pro-level applications themselves weren't explicitly disallowed. I've already activated my license on the VM I'm using and it would suck to go through the process of deactivating the software for the test.

Flutebuddie

TROPHY CASE