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Don
Lancaster's Guru's Lair What's New? Archive for 2000 |
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January 2, 2001
Hopefully, we will soon be going to a new and far more modern server
that gives
us lots of opportunities to correct previous problems and add new features.
In
the works are improved search and stats, dynamic html, greatly expanded
tech
coverage, .asp files that dramatically improve site management, includes,
banner
rotations, secure site sales, and great heaping bunches more. Stay tuned.
Dec 28, 2000
Improved & expanded the JavaScript Magic
Sinewave Calculator.
This one looks best with NetScape's continuous updates rather than
Internet Exploder's "update only after function complete" style.
Dec 19, 2000
Here's a link to an "adequate supply" of Pittsburgh Streetcar Photos
WARNING: Attempting to view all of these in one session will
result
in yunz guys pronouncing "beer" as "airn". Or making
a mill outta a
chopaam sammitch and Olde
Frothingslosh Pale Stale Ale in Sliberty.
Fortunately, in regards to this matter, a desert rat like me is immune.
Skooze me while I redd up the website.
Dec 14, 2000
Just uploaded an interactive JavaScript Magic Sinewave Calculator.
Dec 9, 2000
Many thanks to Kevin Kelly and others in the Winter 2000 edition
of
the latest Whole Earth Catalog.
See our mentions on pages 43 and 44.
Dec 6, 2000
Yumpin Yimminy. Try viewing our PDF files in Adobe's new and free
eBook Reader.
You can (sort of) have them read out loud to you if
you are fluent in Sweedish. Also gives you two pages at once if your
montor and display support is big enough. Also greatly improves
laptop readibility.
Dec 1, 2000
Please welcome Timeline
as our newest Guru's Lair Banner
Advertiser.
Timeline offers a wide variety of LCD bargains, GPS options, and lots of
other
experimental tech goodies.
November 26, 2000
Have started work on a major website upgrade with a number of new
features.
Please pardon any temporary inconveniences. Yes we are working on the search
bug, the banner rotator, more buttons, more links, and several other new
features.
November 13, 2000
Just picked up great heaping bunches of Category 5 networking cable.
email me
if you want to get in ahead of the hoarders.
November 4, 2000
A reminder that our Tech
Musings and Blatant Opportunist
columns continue as
ezines on my Guru's Lair website. The
Resource Bin is now a
private consulting
service that you can personally participate in by using our InfoPack
Service.
November 1, 2000
Just picked up a surplus professional Ultralight Hand/Foot uv phototherapy
unit that's
now available at a bargain price. If you are a properly licenced medical
professional,
please email me for further details.
This is also the world's largest EPROM eraser!
Oct 23, 2000
Took the Cheby to the Leby with this definitive new tutorial on Magic Sinewaves.
Oct 22, 2000
Oops. It turns out our dual
turbine thermocouples are really type K rather than
type J. Sorry about that. But this makes them even better, especially for
kilns.
Oct 15, 2000
Just got a new load of mint 0-5 PSI fully conditioned differential
pressure
sensors. Also have superbly rugged adjustable companion pressure switches.
You can email me for details.
Sep 24, 2000
Have finally found the holy
grail of steplocked magic sinewaves. Turned out
to be astoundingly and elegantly simple.
Sept 18, 2000
Sorry about the "no subdirectory" glitch in our search
engine. The ISP is
working on it, along with several enhancements. Hope to do a major revamping
shortly.
Sept 12, 2000
The Oxbridge Media Finder is finally back in gear again. Use the
OXBRDG
button on my Home Page. One possible
Ulrich's source is www.publist.com
Sept 6, 2000
USGS Topo maps on the web have sure gotten better lately. Check out
www.topozone.com
Also note the secret gotcha in accessing 7.5 minute topos on the
Terra
Server (our AERIAL
button) site: These only click in at 4 meter and finer
resolution.
Aug 12, 2000
Just got some beautiful low pressure sensor switches 1.5 to 8 PSI.
The feds
paid over $400 each for these all stainless, high current, differential
adjustable.
Sealed and as new. Available in huge quantities. You can email
me for details.
August 9, 2000
Here's a neat trick to get wire off of large reels: Put a big Lazy
Susan on top of the
axis-vertical reel. Then recoil the wire directly onto the Lazy Susan or
into a box or
wrapping jig of some sort. Be sure you rewrap in the same direction. The
Lazy Susan
alternately spins in either direction, exactly absorbing as many radians
of phase
as needed to keep the wire untwisted.
Note that Lazy Susans for printers or monitors will usually have
an easily removed
stop that prevents continuous rotation.
August 6, 2000
Sorry about the outages. Our ISP just added several new drives. Apparently
we were getting so many hits the log files and the Webtrends files were
eating
the drives alive. These are now separate from the main drives.
August 4, 2000
Just uploaded Tech Musings
#149 on touch screens, transmission
line
transformers, PostScript proc diversion, and lots of other goodies.
August 3, 2000
A reminder that the depth and frequency of future Muse and Blat columns
depends on your participation as Banner
Advertisers.
August 2, 2000
Just uploaded the source code for Tech
Musings #149. If you want to see how
I do all the sneaky stuff in my columns. Like HTML-style buttons, active
web
links, correct gray tinting, semi-animated PDF, and bunches more.
A reminder that this source code needs our Gonzo Utilities disk file accessible.
July 29, 2000
The glitch in the free Levy-Latham
NSN's seems to be corrected. To access
any NSN, go to any Levy-Lantam auction, and click on any ALL NUMBERS
NSN in any lot. After access, substitute your NSN in the url, then reenter.
I'll try to work up a tutorial on other NSN sources in a future Tech Musings.
July 28, 2000
Please note that we do ~NOT~ offer foreign sales or support in any
way, shape
or form. One of the many thoroughly time-tested reasons is that certain
of our mil
surplus products require our contractually signing end user agreements.
On certain
of our items for sale, it conceivably could be a felony to transship these
items to
foreign nationals. As would shipping them to a US address used by a foreign
national.
Because of my time constraints, foreign mail is returned unopened
and foreign
email is ignored. Foreign eBay bidders are automatically disqualified.
July 24, 2000
Just got a medical grade 1/3 hp 1 SCFM @ 50 PSI compressor and a
great
heaping bunch of Variacs (some real, some fake), and some mint 155 mm
Howitzer and M1 tank nameplates. Email
me if you want to get in ahead of
the hoarders on these unusual and hard-to-find items.
July 20, 2000
A sneaky trick called Showpage Diversion lets you take existing PostScript
or Acrobat PDF files and provide watermarks, undercolor, standardized
borders, renumbering, etc.... Here's the new Sourcecode
and a Demo.
Read the sourcecode in a WP or editor, then send to Distiller.
July 18, 2000
Added a Fitness
Quiz, some medical community comments, and an Aerobic
Rate
Chart to our DONTSICK.PDF
tuitorial in the Blatant Opportunist
Library.
July 15, 2000
Summer storms have been giving our ISP fits, so the Webtrends reports
may
be out of date or inaccurate for a while. We are averaging a thousand unique
viewers per day and around 400,000 hits per month. You are welcome to participate
in our success by becoming a banner
advertiser. Check out this free
tutorial.
July 10, 2000
Found a new synthesis algorithm for Delta Friendly Magic Sinewaves.
Steplock limits appear to be set by "one edge controls one harmonic".
For instance,
a normal steplock-24 would have 6 pulses and 12 transitions. Indirectly,
these 12
transitions can control harmonics 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21,
and 23.
A delta steplock-32 would have 8 pulses and 16 transitions. Eight
of the transitions are
used to force delta friendliness and control harmonics 3, 9, 15, 21, 27...
The remaining
eight transitions can control harmonics 1, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23.
July 5, 2000
Just got great heaping bunches of new sensors in. Honeywell solid
state units in 0-1
PSI differential and 0-30 PSI absolute. Mint Penn A/C overpressure units.
Even minter
low pressure all-stainless pressure switches perfect for tank controls.
Also gauges that
sense a breath of air. You can email me
for further details.
June 22, 2000
A reminder about our InfoPack service that gives you instant consulting answers.
June 5, 2000
Latest Blatant Opportunist #61 is a tutorial on Steplocked Magic Sinewaves.
June 4, 2000
Here's how to scam the ~complete~ NSN info on many fed items: Click
on
my LEVYLATH button. Then select
auctions and pick an auction. Try
items at random till you find one with an all-numerals NSN. Click on it.
Now replace the NSN in your url box with the one you want and reclick.
Compared to using DRMO3, you get the complete buying history, costs, etc...
June 3, 2000
Completed this phase of the
magic sinewave catalogs. This should give you
a useful sampler of normal, power, enhanced, and delta friendly variations.
Additional catalogs will get uploaded when and as funded by Banner
Advertisers
or Associate Partners.
The complete catalog also can be made available in CD ROM form,
along with
full generation source code. email me
for details.
May 30, 2000
Got some unusual surplus scientific instruments. Including a cloud
height
clinomenter (doubles as a hobby horse), a premium Smar brand 2300 PSI all
stainless pressure transmitter, and a beautiful and huge Wallace &
Tiernman
0.01% (!) absolute pressure gauge. You can email
me for details.
May 28, 2000
Fixed (I hope) the Tech
Musings library page so all older files can be accessed.
The missing recent files should get uploaded shortly.
May 25, 2000
And two more magic sinewave
catalogs. The first gives you one
hundred
constant power increments with zero harmonics through the 22nd. The
second demos carrier
suppression that also zeros the usually strong 23rd
(and, of course, the 24th) harmonics.
As usual, source code and consulting services are availible if you email me.
May 23, 2000
Added another amazing step locked Magic
Sinewave catalog. This one has
ZERO harmonic energy from 2 through 22! email me for support
details.
May 19, 2000
Just got a surplus pair of Gigatronics 610's. Please email
me if you have
any interest in these outstanding instruments for a fraction of the usual
$10K asking price. Also have some new accellerometers, mass flowmeters,
and bunches of thermocouples of all sizes and types. Plus another like-new
complete Kepro printed circuit
plate-thru lab.
May 17, 2000
Upgraded and improved the tentative
catalog of Step-Locked
Magic
Sinewaves. Managed to eliminate an apparently "unneeded"
pulse in the
three phase friendly sequences for even better efficiency. Several more
big time "breakthrough" sequences should follow shortly. More
help
is available through our InfoPack
and Magic Sinewaves programs.
May 16, 2000
Netscape users may have been experiencing blank screens on our eBay
buttons. This was apparently caused by eBay changing their internal
links.
I fixed the home page and will get the others shortly.
Curiously, my first eBay email was apparently competently answered.
The
clueless followup thanked me for having fixed a problem that still existed.
May 10, 2000
Uploaded a tentative
catalog of Step-Locked
Magic Sinewaves. There's
still some fine points to be resolved (especially with yet unposted larger
amplitudes), so your comments and testing are welcome.
These offer ZERO amplitude to the first TWENTY-TWO harmonics!
They are also "delta friendly"and easily drive three phase loads.
May 6, 2000
Several of you have asked about our eBay
photos. These are usually
a high resolution scan of the actual item being offered. The scan is then
watermarked and such enhancements as clarifying lettering and shadow
adjustment are sometimes made. Details are in IMAGIMAG.PDF
Custom photo prep work is available. Email me for details.
May 4, 2000
As I mentioned before, my print columns have been discontinued
because of low pay or slow pay by magazines in severe (and likely
terminal) financial difficulties. Not paying attention to the wants and
needs of their readers has apparently finally come home to roost.
The Blatant Opportunist
and Tech Musings will definitely
continue
online in greatly enhanced and improved formats.
Resource Bin has
been taken private and is now available to you on
a custom and individual basis. You can email
me or visit our InfoPack
Library Page for further details.
April 22, 2000
A reminder that new banner
advertisers are welcome so long as I
can honestly endorse them and genuinely believe in their products.
We are in the process of upgrading the banner
system and hope to
have full autorotation and detailed stats in place very shortly.
April 15, 2000
May have just found the holy grail of Magic
Sinewaves. Am checking
out an (apparently) brand new synthesis proceedure that lets you force
any number (!) of low harmonics to precisely zero while still being three
phase friendly. A full catalog will shortly be uploaded. You can email
me
for advance details. Development partners are currently being sought.
April 6, 2000
Levy Latham is apparently
taking over most of the military auctions.
Two of their latest website additions are online auctions and incredibly
detailed NSN info. The latter lets you find out how much the feds paid
for something, WHEN (!) they bought it, and who they bought it from,
and commercial part numbers. All sorts of great hidden info here.
March 28, 2000
Just got a whole load of high tech swizzle sticks. Otherwise known
as
NDT eddy current probes. You can email
me for more details.
March 22, 2000
Wonder of wonders, the feds will be permanently turning OFF the GPS
selective availability as of May 1! This means that cheap GPS receivers
will now be ten times more accurate. The expensive ones, of course,
knew how to beat SA for years.
March 16, 2000
Added Adobe's PDF Search
Engine to our home page "mauve" links.
Since virtually everything technical is in PDF format, this is an incredibly
powerful way to pick up what most other engines miss.
March 11, 2000
Latest Tech Musings 148
is on new algae hydrogen sources, Taylor
Series,
surplus updates, lithium polyumer batteries, and understanding
nonlinearity.
March 9, 2000
Urgent: If you live near Sacramento, CA and can do some McClellan
DRMO
triage for me for a reasonable fee, please email
me immediately.
March 8, 2000
The "next big thing" on the web is certain to be SVG, short
for Scalable
Vector Graphics. Get the fundamentals from www.w3.org
and brand new
and free beta browser plugins from Adobe
Systems.
March 6, 2000
Latest Blatant Opportunist #60 is on eBay insider selling secrets.
March 1, 2000
Repaired and expanded the Webmaster Library page.
February 25, 2000
I'm getting these strange couldn't-find-a-pig-in-a-dishpan emails
looking for
the Digimatic PIC source code. It is linked
here and found here.
Sadly, the
original author is deceased.
February 23, 2000
Here's how to get from a Levy-Latham
NSN to the feds NSN without paying the
thousand dollar per year access bounty: Click on my DRMS4
button. Enter 6630
as the NSN prefix. Click on NORTHEAST. Get a list of items. Click on any
blue
item. Erase the last nine digits and either copy or type in your desired
NSN.
Apparently the NSN and the rest of the stock number are unreleated.
Let me know
if you find a cleaner or more convenient solution.
February 19, 2000
Poptronix has just told me they do not want to run the Tech
Musings column any
more. These and newer columns will most definitely continue here in ezine
format.
The columns have recently been improved with more links, color, and images.
Additional Banner Advertisers
are welcomed to ease the transition.
February 15, 2000
Latest Tech Musings
#147 is on pendulum accelerometers, servo
& feedback concepts 404
log file error extraction, listening in on the
bats in your belfry and
using synchros and selsyns.
February 9, 2000
Added some Servo and
Feedback books to our Book
Access Page.
Also USB Complete
and State of the World 2000.
February 6, 2000
Just got a whole load of PMI 1/3 horsepower (!) pancake servo
motors.
Also some premium Barnes GC-like SAE AA hydraulic pumps. These do
need some refurb, so let me know if
you are interested in a lot buy as is.
February 4, 2000
Uploaded Tech Musings
#144 on thermocouples,
thermometry,
gambler's ruin, and
favicon.ico.
January 22, 2000
Just got a very few MINT kiss-your-ass-goodbye nuclear radioactivity
circular slide rule collectibles (also handy for dealing with pesky
neighbors), and some nice ceiling fan lighting kits.
Let me know if you have any interest in these.
January 16, 2000
Latest Tech Musings #146
is on pulse electrolysis myths, sneaky
capacitor switching techniques,
Acrobat url extraction, electrochem
books, and more.
January 14, 2000
Archived the 1999 What's New files as WHTNU99.HTML
January 13, 2000
Please welcome Diversified
Engineering as our latest Banner
Advertiser. They offer a variety of superb PIC related development
and educational boards.
January 10, 2000
Expanded the "mauve" search engine listings on the home
page.
Added a web discovery of the week feaature.
This is usually some
exciting new site I have found that eventually will get linked.
January 8, 2000
Here's a secret way to find at least some of the DRMO to Levy-Latham
inventory transfers: Click on the DRMS4 button on my Guru's
Lair home
page. Sort on bid number then date. Set output format to **NOT** print
the site name. (!) This seems handy for finding otherwise unavailable
acquisition costs. The transfers are usually sale 99005.
December 24, 1999
Some Electrochemistry Books have been added to our Book Access links.
December 19, 1999
Just added some Thermoelectric
Power Generators and highly collectible
Circular
Slide Rules to our Live
Auction page.
December 12, 1999
Oops. The Contactless Charger components we covered in Muse
142 were
really TDK parts, rather than Toko. More details at www.component.tdk.com.
Panasonic also has a PHS charger system at
www.panasonic.com.
December 2, 1999
Latest Tech Musings
#145 is on four point Bezier curve fitting, PIC
Digimatic
interfaces, Magnetorheology demos, and bunches of other goodies. The
print version of this column supposedly is now in Poptronix
magazine.
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