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Lancaster's Guru's Lair What's New? 2006A Archive |
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( This is the first portion of the 2006 What's New archive.
You can click here for more recent material. )
July 2, 2006
Beware the eBay Dutch Auction trap!
If you bid on all "n" items offered, you
may end up paying a lot more than you
expect. The rule is this: Never bid on all
"n" items in a Dutch Auction! Always bid
only on "n-1" or fewer items.
Ferinstance, say you are the only bidder on
a ten item Dutch offering. The opening price
is one dollar. Just to be sure of winning, you
bid two dollars on all quantity ten.
If you are the only bidder, you will end up
paying one dollar each for your first nine
items. But ELEVEN DOLLARS for the
tenth item!
More on eBay buying here.
More on eBay selling here.
And bunches more on auctions in general
can be found here.
July 1, 2006
Oops.
A very few of the larger rolls of desoldering braid
we have up on eBay seem to be removed from
service and may end up somewhat shy of their full
length.
We'll be weight checking each roll before shipping.
All shipped rolls are now guaranteed "substantially full".
All braid is guaranteed pristine and fully usable.
June 30, 2006
More on our "scan the baggie" compromise
image technique. After some experiments,
it is real hard to not get lots of "sugar" and
similar poly artifacts when scanning through
plastic.
Worse yet, you cannot sharpen your image
because it dramatically makes the sugar
worse.
If at all possible, remove the items from the
baggie and pile them on the scanner. The
results will be ridiculously better. Even if
you have to open and reseal the package.
With cropping, the final image still suggests
looking through a baggie. Minus the sugar.
A further complication: If you just dump
the items on the scanner, you'll also be
dumping dust and whatever onto the scanner
glass. So, carefully wash all items before
scanning.
Once again, the advantages of the "scan
the baggie" technique are that the photos
can be done much faster. And that you get
multiple views of the item in one image.
June 28, 2006
Speaking of the Alvin Pile, Alvin has his
own website up that can be linked here.
Two current items deserve mention.
The first is a lightly used SunRaise
Thermography machine that almost certainly
will close at a tiny fraction of its $1800
price new. Thermography creates those
"raised print" effects using conventional
print shop rubber based inks. Surprisingly,
the ink need not still be wet. Anything under
an hour after printing works just fine.
The other item is even more intriguing.
This is a Baxter hypothermia machine
which normally costs many thousands of
dollars and is used for cold water treatment
of physical therapy. Unlike ice packs, the
circulating temperature is carefully regulated
preventing frostbite and similar problems.
The non-medical uses are even more
intriguing. What can you do with a
circulating source of carefully controlled
cold water? Environmental chambers,
chillers, etc etc etc...
This one is likely to go for a pittance.
Two are available and they are apparently
unused military surplus.
You can contact Alvin directly for more
info.
June 27, 2006
Started listing our electronic distributor
components on eBay, with the first 40 or
so items listed and three already sold out.
This is a liquidation, so one box at a time
gets opened and triaged. The best stuff
goes to eBay, the seconds to a holding
area, and the thirds to the Alvin Pile.
These are mostly "new old stock" conventional
electronic components by major US name brand
suppliers plus some foreign. Some of them are
a tad dated, but I will not list anything that is not
still genuinely useful.
Prices are presently between one-sixth
and one-tenth of normal. We ask that you
combine orders as much as possible to
permit continued use of low unit pricing.
In general, all components are guaranteed
to be useful and most are in "as new"
condition. Outer packaging, however, may
include mild to moderate storage
cosmetics.
A lot of onsie twosie items will be offered
as collections in 50 drawer cabinets. Any
item that goes into these assortments is
absolutely first class and mainstream. No
salting or junk is added. If for no other
reason, we have great heaping bunches
more first rate components than we do
storage cabinets.
We will be most happy to find the best
combined shipping rate for you. We can
often beat the UPS calculator on eBay
because we have daily pickup.
Be sure to email us for the best possible
shipping deal.
June 26, 2006
A reminder that our web pages are intended
for "medium" type size and no underlining.
Be sure to check your browser settings if
anything doesn't quite look right.
And please report any typos or obvious
problems by emailing me.
June 25, 2006
Refurb Log:
Finding the value of ultra small components
can be quite a challenge. One route is to use
a modern DVM and actually measure the
resistance or capacitance values.
Many capacitors use a three digit plus letter
code. The first two digits are the value of
the capacitor. The third digit tells you how
many zeros to add to the first two. And the
final letter (when used) can tell you the
tolerance.
Ferinstance, a 225K capacitor would be
2200000 picofarads or 2.2 microfarads.
With a tolerance of ten percent. Things
can get confusing for very low values.
A 100K would be a 10 picofarad cap
while a 101K would be 100 picofarads.
The only tiny problem is that caps have
become so small that there is no longer
any room on them for four letters.
One tip on DVM capacitance measurement:
Chances are you will get a nonzero reading
from the probe leads and strays. Be sure
to "fixture compensate" and subtract this
value out when making low pf measurements.
Avoid any resistive loading of any cap
being tested. Especially from fingers.
June 24, 2006
Another advantage of our "scan a baggie"
eBay photography ploy of a few days ago
is that you get a half dozen or more aspects
of the items being offered all in one image.
It's real tricky to get something like a rocker
switch to reveal all its features in a single
image. But a baggie of them in a group portrait
works like a champ.
More eBay photography secrets in our
Auction Help library page.
June 23, 2006
What are the engineering "magic numbers"
for baseline calculations on electric and
hybrid vehicles?
A useful electric car summary appears here.
Firstoff, a kilowatt of power is pretty much the
same thing as a horsepower. While a "real"
horsepower is only 746 watts, the efficiency
losses of the motor, controller, and wiring
can make real world horsepower and their
input kilowatt hours very nearly equal.
A "typical" electric vehicle under reasonable
road conditions would normally draw something
centered on 20 kilowatts. If you got 40 miles
in that hour, your electrical energy consumption
would be half a kilowatt hour per mile.
Thus a pure electric car with a range of 300
miles would need something like 150 kilowatt
hours delivered from the batteries. Or more
like 250 kilowatt hours at the input to the
charger, allowing for charging and battery
inefficiencies.
A normal home electric system is something
like 100 amps at 220 volts or 20 kilowatt hours
per hour if used at full capacity. Assuming
that you have other uses for your electricity,
it would thus take the better part of a day to
recharge a decent performing electric vehicle
at home.
While the five cents per mile sounds rather
attractive, you also have to add in the battery
amortization costs, which are likely to remain
enormously higher.
More in our Energy Fundamentals tutorial.
June 22, 2006
One of my earliest research projects was
for an automotive miles-per-gallon meter.
Way on back in 1962.
In those days, all we had were germanium
transistors (uphill both ways barefoot in the
snow) and slide rule accuracy was something
you strived for but never acheived.
Doing any kind of division got tricky. The
approach was to sense speed with a
highly modified dc motor that went between
the speedometer cable and the speedometer.
In which every third commutator bar was shorted
and everything else eliminated.
The flowmeter was a paddle type design that
had enough problems that the project got
shelved. But the theory was that you step
charged a capacitor in up to 40 (wow!) levels
for a readout of 0 to 40 miles per gallon.
What really amazes me is that we still do
not have miles per gallon meters available.
Yet I strongly feel that proper use of such
a meter could make as much as a TWENTY
PERCENT savings in your gasoline costs.
These days, all of the needed input data
should be kicking around inside the MPU,
so the implementaion cost would be rather
trivial.
Possibly three readouts: a digital one with
actual MPG to a tenth, a large LED whose
color varied from red to green, and an
optional sound feedback system.
Biofeedback at its best.
June 21, 2006
Here is the recommended and certified
test procedure for cowboy camp coffee:
Drop an anvil in it. If the anvil sinks, the
coffee is too weak. If it floats, it is just
right. If it dissolves, it is too strong.
Similar ongoings in MARCIA.PDF
June 20, 2006
Just barely started listing all of our
new electronic components inventory
to eBay.
One of the dilemmas is that many of
these items are either low cost or
one-off, and that I simply cannot
justify the time for our usual very high
image quality.
Here's a compromise method that
looks like it will barely be acceptable:
Carefully clean both the scanner
glass and the parts baggie. Put
the best surface down and scan.
Bring the image up in Imageview
and center on a very nice typical
component. Rotate the image so
this component is sort of right side
up, but preferably at a 20 or 30
degree lean.
Crop to somewhat beyond the
typical part. Do a minimum retouch
on the part itself, but very little
more to the background.
Follow up with the usual gamma
correction, size correction, a very
minimal sharpening, and JPEG
conversion.
Here's an example.
And here are several more tutorials
on professional image prep.
June 19, 2006
How much energy is needed to move
an automobile? A good summary can
be found here. And a good metric to
english converter program here.
You first have to split the problem at
the wheels. External losses are the
rolling resistance, the air resistance,
accelleration, and hill climbing.
Internal losses are whatever happens
between the raw fuel source energy and
what actually reaches the wheels.
They use a Porsche 911 Carerra for their
examples.
The rolling resistance of tires and such
is surprisingly independent of speed and
typically might be 180 Newtons or 40
pounds of force.
The wind resistance varies with the square
of speed and might range from 40 Newtons
at 22 miles per hour to 360 Newtons at 67
miles per hour.
Combining the two translates to about 2.9
horsepower at 22 miles per hour up to 22
horsepower at 66 miles per hour.
The power for accelleration is very much
higher. For their example car going from
0 to 60 mph in six seconds, 100 additional
horserpower are needed.
Additional power is needed for hill climbing.
For their example of a 5% grade at 66
miles per hour will demand an additional
24 horsepower.
A reminder that these figures are at the
wheels. An ICE runs about 33 percent
efficiency, but after accessories and
drive train losses, only 15% or so makes
it to the wheels.
Electric and fuel cell vehicles have their
own restrictions. Figure 90 percent motor
efficiency, 85% controller efficiency and
97% wiring efficiency for a gross efficiency
of 74% before acessories and drive train
losses. Plus weight and range penalties.
Fuel cells based on hydrogen have a maximum
theoretical efficiency of 83 percent, but none
available today even remotely can dream of
approaching this figure. Note that fuel cell
inefficiency compounds against motor, controller,
and wiring inefficiencies.
I feel that practical fuel cell systems are unlikely
to end up more than a very few percent more
efficient than the latest of ICE designs.
More in our Energy Fundamentals tutorial.
June 18, 2006
Updtated, corrected, and expanded our
Offsite Resources Home Page feature.
June 17, 2006
Those Walmart Auctions are an interesting
variation on a theme. Every few weeks or so,
an old Walmart gets replaced by a new one.
Something like three months after the old
store or distribution center closes, an auction
of all remaining fixtures and dregs gets done.
Bonnette is the usual auctioneer. Stores in
rural locations tend to be underattended.
No inventory is ever sold. Only shelves,
pallet racks, auto shop machines, displays,
snack bar stuff, and similar items.
The auctions tend to move very fast and
in large lots. A very few regulars travel
around the country and scoop up unheard
of bargains. IF you happen to need great
heaping bunches of larger and longer
specialized used store fixtures.
Loading and shipping are major problems,
and removal times are sometimes sorely
limited.
One exception to the very low prices are
the food prep stuff. Things like popcorn
machines and hotdog cookers go for many
hundreds of dollars.
As with all auctions, the opportunties
lie in what others miss. Most of their
white elephants are a perfectly normal
gray elephant color.
Ferinstance, highly specialized display
light fixtures are easily converted into
light box tents for eBay photography.
A huge and utterly grotesque retail bicycle
display system can be bought for $10 and
then stripped for fifty ready-to-sell and
individual bicycle stands.
And the $15 complete set of clothes
changing booths has panel after panel
of imitation wood that is easily converted
into a backyard shed or whatever. After
removing the sellable large mirrors.
The totally stripped checkout counters
went unsold. And easily could have been
gotten for $5 total. They still had perfectly
good motor powered conveyors in them.
As always, opportunity is where you find
it. And is greatly enhanced by seeing
value that others miss.
Much more on our Auction Help page.
June 16, 2006
A useful strategy useful for both eBay and
live auctions can be based on the fact that
nobody likes to break a twenty, and people
will go far out of their way to avoid spending
a hundred or two.
Thus you are often best off setting the max
price you are willing to pay just above a
currency threshold, rather than just below.
Ferinstance, a bid of $103.50 is much more
likely to win than one of $97.00. Always
using oddball penny amounts when suitable.
Some Arizona auction houses are found here,
with a tutorial here, additional auction help here,
and your own custom regional auction finder here.
June 15, 2006
Those alphametic puzzles we provided you
with "instant" solutions for in PUZZLE1.PDF
can be monumentally insidious time wasters
when done the old way.
Per this infuriatingly interactive web site.
Surprisingly, the classic started-it-all problem
of SEND + MORE = MONEY has a totally
deterministic solution requiring no permutations
or trial and error at all. Thusly...
M must be 1 because of a forced carry4.
S + carry3 + 1 must equal 10 but not 11.
S is thus 8 or 9 but O must equal 0.
Column 2 must carry and N must equal
E + 1. This also forces S to 9 only since
column 3 cannot carry. Substituting (E+1)
for N greatly simplifies understanding
this step and the ones that follow.
For column2 to work, R must equal 8 with
a Column1 carry.
Leaving D + E = Y. Y min is 12 or 13 since
a carry is needed and 0 and 1 are taken. E
cannot directly be 8 or 9 and cannot be 7
because N = E +1 also cannot be 8. An E
of 6 makes D an illegal 7 bcause of N.
E values of less than four cannot force a
carry. Thus, E is 5 and N = 6 and D is 7.
Leaving you with a Y of 2.
Only eight of the ten digits are used,
with 3 and 4 absent and unneeded.
June 14, 2006
Just bought the entire inventory of a classic
electronics parts store. Most of this will be
third partied out. Tons of stuff.
Not ROHS, of course.
Plesae email me with your needs.
June 13, 2006
GuruGram #67 is on Puzzle Solving with
PostScript.
Sourcecode is found here. Much more is in
our PostScript library.
June 12, 2006
Despite the record number of recent and
upcoming auctions on the Arizona Auction
Scene, there really hasn't been all that
much that great for me recently.
What made for good auctions in the past?
Huge ones certainly where multiple days
and thousands of lots utterly overwhelmed.
Belden and Rubbermaid in particular.
Auctions where the auctioneer made a
really stupid mistake, like moving a high
tech telecom auction to a remote Arizona
rural community nobody could get to.
Auctions where others failed to recognize
value. Such as the quarter million dollar
pile of Adept sliders that everybody else
thought were home electric draperies.
Auctions misdescribed where a "sewing
machine" auction really had bunches of
robotics and automation gear and great
heaping piles of inventory as secondary
lots. And I was the only tech bidder.
And one time gambles, such as a zillion
boxes of water soluble swimsuits, gotten
from Holloman AFB in a half price offer
when it failed to make the minimum bid.
Ultra tedious and hot auctions that went
waay beyond reasonable times. And whole
rooms of stuff were literally given away
to the very few bidders still present.
But mostly plain old blind luck.
Much more on our Auction Help page.
June 11, 2006
The "add six inches to your mortgage" email
spam scams seem to be coming out of the
woodwork again. One offers a $241,000 for
$232 per month @ 4.1 % interest and similar
"opportunities".
How can you spot these scams and how do
they work?
Firstoff, mortgage calculations are not rocket
science, and there are dozens of websites that
will do this for you at no charge. My favorite
here is http://www.hsh.com/calc-amort.html
Where we see that the payment rate for a
conventional fixed rate $241,000 mortgage
at 4.1 percent interest for 30 years would be
$1164.45 per month.
For an "interest only" or "infinite" mortgage,
you can simply use the first month's principle
payment. Or $832.42 in this case.
There are many different ways to scam a
mortgage. The simplest involve hidden
charges, adjustable rates, overappraisal
ploys, or balloon payments.
But whenever the monthly payments are only
a tiny fraction of true costs, this should be a
red flag warning that you are about to be had.
Two of the more blatant scams are to not be
a mortgage company at all. Instead phishing for
sensitive financial info on applications to do
an identity theft. A second is to deny receiving
several month's payments and then forclosing
to steal the property.
As some sucker said, "There's a P.T. Barnum
born every minute". Watch out for them.
June 10, 2006
Added several new Craig's List entries to our
Auction Help page. Made some other updates
and corrections.
June 9, 2006
There seems to be more press interest in new
compressed air powered cars and scooters.
Unless some genuine breakthroughs can be
brought to the table, these seem to me to
be wishful thinking, a total lack of understanding
thermodynamic fundamentls, or outright scams.
The energy density of compressed air is very
low, possibly in the 15 watthour per liter range.
This compares badly against lead acid batteries
at 30 watthours per liter, and gasoline at 9000.
The efficiency of compressed air is very low.
On the generation end, no means of efficiently
isothermally compressing air is known. Elaborate
multi-stage compressors and intercooler exchangers
are needed to even approach decent efficiency. And
those invariably have giant heat fins for their losses.
The trick is to compress air without heating it.
Similarly, most compressed air motors are horribly
inefficient, typically in the 30 percent range. And thus
worse than an ICE. An efficient compressed air motor
would likely have to have many stages or variable
displacement. Or exotic control of injection volume.
It would have to exhaust its air silently at room
temperature with zero positive pressure. For
all possible loads.
And there is also the exergy problem in converting
high value kilowatt hours of electricity into low value
kilowatt hours of stored air. Instantly and irrecoverably
destroying most of the energy value and quality.
As is guaranteed
by thermodynamic fundamentals.
The experiences of long term players in this field are
telling. The fire service has hesitated in going from
150 BAR to 300 BAR for its airpacks because of the
law of diminishing returns. While the fire service
would dearly love to use compressed air for vent fans,
fast cutters, rescue saws and such, they have not
been able to do so because of the ridiculously low total
energy in an air pack bottle. Yes, we can inflate a lift
bag or run a tiny air chisel. But that is about it.
Machine shops welcome compressed air solely
because of its portability and convenience. But
any time that serious tail twisting is required,
hydraulics is substituted. Even with its pathetic
energy density, most shop air is produced on
demnd. With the compressor kicking in after
only a few seconds of use. Note that shop air
is under 1 watthour per liter energy density.
Safety is a serious issue. Both the fire service
and the scuba folks require extensive certification
and training to use compressed air. Even then,
filling a Scott or MSA air bottle remains one of the
scariest tasks on the fireground. Turning this
technology loose on the unrestricted general
public seems utterly insane to me.
Much more in our Energy Fundamentals tutorial.
June 8 2006
When they marianade shrimp, how do they
tie all those little strings on?
June 7, 2006
The Arizona Auction Scene has just gone bonkers.
Unlike a normally quiet June, there's something
like two or three auctions per day for the entire
month. Everything from airplane parts to walmarts
to machine shops to distress electronics done in
by ROHS to great heaping bunches of the usual.
Your own custom regional auction finder service can
be created for you per this link.
Much more on our Auction Help page.
June 6, 2006
Refurb Log:
Apparently the internal connector on many
Tempsonics sensors is a 7 pin Molex Microblade
2 mm with six pins in use. Direct access simplifies
finding older strange or expensive connectors.
Connector is part 51004-0700 and crimp terminals
are 50011-8100. We are still working on finding
some useful test setups so we can relist the dozen
or so older and longer sensors we have in stock.
June 5, 2006
Several researchers have asked about
the effects of clock stability and jitter on our
Magic Sinewaves. While not fully investigated
to date, stability issues are not expected to
become terribly significant when forty or fewer
harmonics are forced to zero.
Which does raise an interesting possibility:
What if the clock is intentionally FM modulated
at the first uncontrolled harmonic frequency?
Can this do some sort of cancellation and
ease filtering requirements?
A related question is whether Magic Sinewaves
can be developed "backwards" to simplify or
improve power factor correction and quality
upgrading circuitry.
Much more in our Magic Sinewaves library.
And in this tutorial and this development
proposal.
June 4, 2006
One of the problems in bringing older service
and repair manuals and such to the web might
be called copyright limbo.
In which the original owners have gone bankrupt
or merged, or simply could not care less about
their older products. Yet the legal threat remains
that somebody somewhere owns the copyrights
and might cause all sorts of problems to anyone
freely posting their content on the web.
Tektronix has long ago carefully placed all of their
obsolete test equipment manuals in the public
domain, and these are readily available on CD's
at low cost from a dozen web sources.
HP/Agilent has instead chosen to freely post many
of their early equipment manuals on the web. But
sadly, not everything is available. While certainly
positive and welcome, this sort of compounds the
problem with their clear statement of IP intent.
Radio Electronics (Poptronix, Popular Electronics,
et al...) has made free reprint rights available for the
web available at least to certain webmasters. This
site does hold downloads of many of my earlier
construction projects.
As we saw a few months back, older electronic
data sheets are now being made available from
such sources as...
http://www.partminer.com (12 Million)
http://www.datasheets.org.uk (5.20 Million)
http://datasheetarchive.com (2-3 Million)
http://www.alldatasheets.com (1.07 Million)
http://www.chipdocs.com (701,010)
http://datasheets4u.com (523,031)
http://www.datasheetcatalog.com (280,758)
http://chipcatalog.com (253,733)
One obvious remaining problem is Heathkit. As
far as I know, there has been no formal release of
copyrights on Heath manuals and other docs. The
same goes for SAMS photofacts.
It sure would be nice to have a master clearinghouse
for all early technical info on the web. While at the
same time fully respecting any current and any
aggressively enforced valid copyright claims.
June 3, 2006
Found an interesting FINDCHIPS.COM website.
Enter any integrated circuit part number and it
checks several dozen major electronics distributors
for availablity and (often) actual pricing.
June 2, 2006
And what gets worse in going from a printed
story to a web document? Perhaps in comparing
and contrasting MUSE153 against MSINEXEC.PDF.
(continuing our previous posts).
While screens and printed pages are now pretty
much comparable in convenience and legibility,
we do not yet have the killer ap that is going to
completely blow both ebook readers AND all
books and magazines out of the water But
we can expect its arrival very soon.
The web signal to noise ratio is utterly appalling.
As a magazine column author, sought out and
possibly sole source unique material was a norm.
On the web, you have 350 million competitors,
almost all of whom huckster worthless trash.
Author payment rates for magazine columns have
long become utterly abysmal. Compared to totally
nonexistant on the web. Alternate (and usually
indirect) payment methods are now a must.
Printed story authors were usually treated with
extreme respect. Web authors are invariably
attacked by clueless and tactless individuals
making ad-hominum challenges from their
unhousebroken newsgroup venues. None of
whom ever post factual critique.
While deadlines may have been the bane of
author and editor alike, the "Oh boy, my
latest copy of Supermag just arrived" created
a strong expectation in many readers. There
is no comparable web experience, except
possibly for RSS.
The perceived value of a web file is much
lower than the printed word; It is also much
more easily stolen, and anything even
remotely approaching IP solutions has yet
to be found.
A whole era of useful printed documents just
before word processing became common is
likely to be lost entirely because of the cost
and commitment needed to convert them
electronically and bring them up to current
web standards.
Nobody builds anything electronic on their
own any more. It has become impossibly difficult
and not in the least cost effective to do so.
Heathkit is gone, colleges have dropped most
electronics programs, and ham radio is a
ludicrous geriatric parody of what it once was.
Previous gatekeepers of valuable technical
information have priced themselves out of
the market. To the point of which bad content
drives out good.
Your thoughts welcome. email me.
June 1, 2006
The new LED Journal "the magazine of solid
state lighting" is now in print and freely
available. Temporarily forgetting that all
trade journals are clearly doomed, this one
seems off to a good start.
The journal is also directly downloadable
as a .PDF file.
Meanwhile, Maxim is newly offering highly
efficient LED Drivers with power ratings
to 150 watts and beyond. Both DC and
ac power line operated.
Some color and lighting fundamentals
appear here and here. And a "lots of
LED's from a computer port" sneaky
stunt here.
May 31, 2006
So, what gets better in going from a printed story to a
web document? Perhaps in comparing and contrasting
MUSE153 against MSINEXEC.PDF.
A profound but seemingly trivial difference is that
web documents are landscape and printed magazine
pages are portrait. Horizontal scrolling is difficult on
the web but convenient on the magazine page, and
vice versa.
A magazine page set very specific size limits on
how big something had to be. There is no such limit
on the web, provided you use the minimum space
needed to do the job. And avoid excess.
Magazine articles often needed a coalition of readers
that demanded a variety of topics per story. The web
lets you tightly focus on one specific concept.
Magazine stories demanded narrow colums for
ad compatibility. Much time was involved in layout
and column text justification that could have been
much better spent in reaserch and content creation.
There is little point or benefit to fill justification on
the web. Because single columns are the norm.
With care, even the need for hyphenation can be
completely eliminated. And new vertical leading
can easily be added to make each paragraph
an easily conceived bite sized chunk.
Tight positioning of text and figures is very difficult
in a magazine article, while a web file lets you
intimately relate any figure to its corresponding
description. This is an exceptionally profound
improvement.
Many of the more obvious web benefits are, well,
more obvious. Color is free and the norm. The
info is available forever if you want it to be and
can be corrected and updated at any time. You
have a worldwide audience 24/7. Full document
searching of every word is easy, and most any
need for a detailed index is gone.
Linking to anything, anywhere, anytime is another
biggie. Particularly for supporting or background
info. Or to provide more or less detail. And web
files store in much less space, do not normally
degrade with time, and are rarely misplaced or
eaten by the pup or out on loan to a single user.
As is the turnover time going from concept to
publication. Which has dropped from months to
minutes. Figures are easily mangified for more
detail and disability aides such as additional
magnification or text reading are easily done.
There is no particular deadline tyranny in that
anything can usually be published at any time.
You are also free to make your own mistakes,
rather than having to pay an editor to make
them for you.
Your thoughts welcome. email me.
May 30, 2006
NEWBIE.PDF passed its group beta test last night
on a batch of unsuspecting volunteer firemen.
Natually, firemen being firemen, the high points of
the evning were the giraffe humpings.
As a group or class project, this seems to work
best by copying the problems onto mystery cards
(orange for simpler absolute newbie problems and
red for for the slightly more difficult questions for
those that have surfed the web at least once).
Teams of four to six per workstation seem about
right, becuse interaction is super important..
And the giraffes didn't seem to mind at all.
Many thanks for the several emails suggesting
corrections and adjustments. Some of these have
already been made to the story.
May 29, 2006
GuruGram #66 is a Newbie's Intro to the Web.
Sourcecode is found here. Much more in our
Webmastering library.
May 28, 2006
Got to remembering some curious incidents way
back in the early sixties. Where the technical
editor of ELECTRONICS NOW repeatedly
kept warning me not to put too much text into
the figures for my stories.
I will admit at times that there were as many as
two paragraphs that might have gone as long as
eight to ten words each. At that time, it was
enormously expensive to put words into line art.
Any story would get split into two channels - one
for typeset text and a second for art. The only
time they got back together was during final
pasteup. And then, of course, the pasteup person
(often a student on summer break) would be
working upside down.
Which got me to thinking how much things have
changed in technical communications. I'll try
to look at this in more depth in a day or two.
Meanwhile, you might want to compare and
contrast MUSE153 against MSINEXEC.PDF.
Or against my very first major story. Or
this all time classic.
May 27, 2006
Final Score: Prudes 3, Nudes 0.
The last remaining wild hot spring in the
Greater Bonita-Eden-Sanchez metropolitan
area has just been demolished.
May 26, 2006
A reminder that many of our "deeper"
files are demos or historical archives.
While we try to properly label the access
on these, a random Google search will
sometimes find them and mislead you
into believing you are viewing current
info or still available items for sale.
In particular, NAMENUMS.PDF is a
historical archive that has not been
updated for many years. The web has
largely eliminated any need for printed
directories of this type.
I've added an Acrobat Note to this file.
I will try to add others that seem to
cause additional problems.
We've left the ads on our older Hardware
Hacker, Tech Musings, Blatant Opportunist,
and Ask the Guru archival reprints as well.
Needless to say, most of these items are no
longer available or may be priced differently.
May 25, 2006
The "water powered car" and "improved
electrolysis" scams seem to be once again
coming out of the woodwork.
Here are the facts...
~ There is a fundamental thermodynamic
principle called exergy that absolutely
guarantees that electrolysis for bulk
hydrogen energy flat out ain't gonna
happen. There ALWAYS will be more
intelligent things to do with electricity
than instantly and irrevocably destroying
most of its quality and value. Especially
from high value grid or pv sources.
~ A kilowatt hour of electrical energy is
ridiculously more valuable than a kilowatt
hour of unstored hydrogen gas because its
thermodynamically reversibly recoverable
energy fraction is insanely higher.
~ Electrolysis "efficiency" is largely meaningless
because the "efficiency" gets used to destroy
quality and value. Further, the amortization
costs tend to utterly dominate the total
production costs. Electrolysis is pretty much
the same as 1:1 exchanging US dollars for
Mexican Pesos.
~ Virtually all commercial hydrogen is produced
by the reformation of methane. The only time
electrolysis is even remotely considered is for
extreme convenience factors when the value of
the generated hydrogen grossly exceeds its
stored energy value.
~ Manufacturers of large electrolysizers will
not even tell an individual how much their
units cost, let alone sell them one.
~ It is enormously difficult to correctly measure
the energy content of unusual electrical
waveforms. At the very least, true rms
instruments with credible crest factors are
an absolute must. It is similarly enormously
difficult to properly measure the output fraction
that is in fact dry STP hydrogen gas.
~ A properly designed electrolysizer DEMANDS
the use of often renewed platinized platinum.
Stainless steel designs are worthless because
of the hydrogen overvoltage of iron found in
most any intro electrochem book.
~ Few people realize how rare and unusual an
electrolysizer is. In a decade of attending
industrial distress sales, I've run across
exactly one. Which sold for $1700 and
could only produce a pitiful few cc's of gas
per minute. Try to find one sometime.
~ Electrolsizers raise EXTREME safety issues
that are far beyond what most individuals
comprehend or what your friendly local
hazmat folks will permit. At least one
sci.energy.hydrogen newsgroup poster
tried for both a Darwin Award and the X
Prize at the same time. Sadly, his garage
did not quite reach suborbital status.
And, of course....
~ Faraday's Law ain't broke.
May 24, 2006
One of the more subtle reasons that I've
consistently done a lot better at industrial
bankruptcy and distress auctions rather than
regular "people" style auctions is that there
is absolutely zero of the bad vibes associated
with family deaths, sickness, losing the family
farm, sibling squabbles, et al. And the whole
dismal scene that surrounds them.
Other advantages are that "contents of room"
and "contents of shelf" opportunities abound.
Especially with the unsorted stuff that special
expertise may be required to recognize unique
value. And that much inventory is new or near
new, in usable quantities, and properly cared for.
And that industrial auctions typically get way
behind and entire rooms are literally given
away to the very few remaining bidders who
have the patience and stamina to make through
it to the bitter end.
Much more on our Auction Help page.
May 23, 2006
It is super important to be aware of the math
limitations of any digital computing platform
you are working on. If quantization and roundoff
errors become significant, you get deviations
in your answers. If they dominate, you get trash.
PostScript, of course, is my favorite general
purpose programming language. There's also
a rumor out that PostScript can also sometimes
be used to dirty up otherwise clean sheets of
paper. Although it is beyond me why anyone
would want to severely restrict themselves in
such an insanely limiting manner.
At any rate, PostScript uses 32-bit math. Which
is more than "good enough" for virtually any
graphics layout need. This translates to an
internal accuracy somewhere around eight
decimal places, and an external reporting
of six.
Two examples: PostScript was more than good
enough for me to discover the fundamental
secret of Magic Sinewaves. But it had the
disconcerting habit of giving me a slightly
different result if you used a reported answer
in a new calculation. So I went ahead and made
up some JavaScript calculators that had a
full 64-bit math capabilities. The fifteen or more
decimal places completely eliminated any
strangeness.
Naturally, I still used PostScript to actually
write my JavaScript programs for me.
My ongoing investigation of parabola minimum
guessing also gave PostScript fits as it gave
me wildly wrong answers if the parabol points
differed by only tiny amounts. The workaround
here was to simply scale the data enough to
give useful results.
It's not clear how much work it would be to
actually write an interpreted double precision
math package for PostScript. It certainly could
be done. But who would use it for what remains
unclear.
May 22, 2006
Just noticed that Apple Assembly Lines is
now up on the web for free download. The
entire and complete set. This was by far the
finest of the "bare metal" Apple II programming
journals.
I do have most of these available in hard
copy if you want to buy them as collectibles.
You can email me for details.
May 21, 2006
Fitting data points to a curve can be
tricky, and we've previously looked
at many options.
Such as a Circle through three points,
a Parabola through three points, Cubic
Spline through four points, Cubic Spline
Circle Approximation, Power series
curve fits, hyperbolic spline fitting, and
Bezier Curve fit through fuzzy data.
Much more in our Math Stuff, Magic
Sinewave, GuruGram, and PostScript
libraries.
I've been reviewing the parabola fitting
to see if it cannot speed up some of our
Magic Sinewave analysis stuff. If you are
very near a solution, progressive moving
of a pulse edge should bring you through a
minimum that is closely approximated by
a quadratic.
The dilemma is that if the curve deviates
very much from a simple parabola further
from its minimum, its predictive value is
useless. Present investigation involves
finding out how far away you can be and
still seek a useful minimum.
At any rate, here is the key math. You
can either verify this yourself with
some simple algebra, or else steal
it from the web. You are first attempting
to have three data points on a parabola...
y3 = Ax3^2 + Bx3 + C
y2 = Ax2^2 + Bx2 + C
y1 = Ax1^2 + Bx1 + C
These are fairly easy to solve for...
A = (y3-y2)/(x3-x2)(x3-x1) -
(y1-y2)/(x1-x2)(x3-x1)
B = ( y1 - y2 + A(x2^2 -
x1^2) )/(x1-x2)
C = y1 - Ax1^2 - Bx1
Finding the zero slope quickly tells us
the minimum (assuming a down-pointing
parabola) will be at x = -B/2A and that
the corresponding y value at the minimum
will (as everywhere else) be Ax^2 + Bx + C.
Other expressions for B are possible by
noting that (x1^2-x2^2) = (x1+x2)(x1-x2).
May 20, 2006
It's literally a little out of our league, but we
picked up a bunch of NFL flag football
goodies from a plastics bankruptcy auction
that include belts and flags, along
with bulk rolls of flagging material.
These should shortly go up onto eBay.
Meanwhile, please email me if you have
any interest in these items.
May 19, 2006
It sure must be frustrating for the
astronomers and their science and
engineering support who are actively
searching for extrasolar planets.
On one hand, the tools and techniques
have dramatically improved in the past
few years. On the other, the search
seems to be the equivalent to rock
climbing while wearing welding goggles,
a bomb squad flack suit and boxing gloves.
Nature Magazine for May 18th describes
a solar system a mere 41 light years away
with three rocky planets and an asteroid
belt. The outermost which, while much
larger than Earth, lies in the habitable zone.
Here's the CNN Summary and the Slashdot
discussion.
Meanwhile, the extrasolar planet total
is rapidly approaching 200, and the new
discoveries are now pouring in at a one
per week and rapidly accellerating rate.
Per this site.
41 light years, of course, is near enough
that "they" could be warily watching
Roller Derby and Captain Video . Not
to mention Kukla, Fran, and Ollie.
It's Howdy Doody time!
My own predictions: We will know about
many thousands of extrasolar planets and
quite a few habitable ones within a year or
two. And that such planets will end up as
common as dirt.
But that the earth-moon systems required
for climatic stability will remain exceptionally
rare indeed.
May 18, 2006
We're pretty much sold out of our stainless
steel hose reels. But we do have three left
that need some fairly minor repairs that we
have up as a Dutch Auction lot on eBay.
This is an outstanding deal, but we are going
to strictly limit it to local pickup only and
commercial shipping unavailable. We are
further going to insist on personal inspection
manditory.
No exceptions.
May 17, 2006
Always remember that you have no friends
at an auction! Least of all the auctioneer.
Listen to everything, volunteer nothing.
Be invisible till it is time to be in the
auctioneer's face.
Dress down to the point of being shabby,
but always wear one very distinct hat or
other piece of clothing. If more than five
percent of your bids win, you are bidding
far too high. Always stop bidding if anyone
is bidding against you and you even remotely
approach fair value.
Always stay for the end of the auction. In
some cases, utterly spectacular bargains
will result. Especially if the area has to be
cleared for a new tenant or whatever.
Sometimes you can also make really great
deals on unbid or unsold items after the
auction or during quiet times.
Don't sweat bidding on tons of garbage to
get one or two items. You can usually find
someone to take (or even pay for) the
dregs after the auction. And abandoining
stuff often is not that big a deal.
Stay alert through numerious sitdown and
meditation breaks, sensible food and drink,
mild painkillers, and frequent restroom use.
Much more on our Auction Help page.
May 16, 2006
There's been some press lately about
huge new pv power plants here in the
desert southwest. At least to me, they
make no sense whatsoever in their
as-promoted form. At least not at the
present time with presently available
technology.
The largest online grid pv facility in the
world is up in Springerville AZ. You can
monitor its real time stats by going to
http://greenwatts.com/pages/solaroutput.asp.
Apparently their graphs require something
IE specific, because they do not show up
properly in FireFox.
At any rate, today's production was an
impressive 17,000 kilowatt hours, which
was somewhat above their daily average
for this month. Definitely world class.
Now, a research facility on an emerging
technology is not in any manner expected
to be competitive or show any profit.
Especially if it has "Hey - we're green!"
pr promotional value written all over it.
Conspicuously absence in their current
figures are their avoided peaking cost
which I'd guess somewhere around six
cents per kilowatt hour.
And their current amortization burn rate
on which I have no accurate figures. But
if you go to an Amortization Calculator,
you'd find that the avoided cost output of
$17,000 x .06 = $1020 per day is enough to
amortize at most only a total facility cost of
slightly over three million dollars.
Assuming ten percent financing over twenty
years and neglecting maint and labor.
I would guess the de-facto costs of running
this plant to be outrageously higher
than this figure. Somewhat telling is that
expansion plans have been put on hold
because panel costs are now much higher
than they were two years ago.
And that, of course, would be for breakeven
only. Where you have an elaborate
smoke and mirrors "paint it green"
situation that in fact uses 100 percent
existing conventional energy. Six cents
of amortization in and six cents of
electricity out is a wash.
The physical and economic facts any huge
new facility would have to recognize are...
~ There are no particularly compelling
economics of scale for really huge pv
plants. Especially on locally cloudy days.
~ Conventional silicon pv never has
been, is not now, and is highly unlikely
ever to become a net energy source
that is renewable and sustainable
under unsubsidized proper total system
full burden amortization.
~ Prices of conventional silicon pv panels
are skyrocketing because (A) their
underlying source of cheap silicon no
longer exists, and (B) because of the
demand caused by individuals scamming
outrageous federal and state subsidies.
~ The latest of CIGS pv technology does have
the promise of moving us much closer to
renewability and sustainability. I strongly
feel that it would be unthinkable for a new
ultra-large long term pv plant to commit
itself to conventional silicon whenever a
ridiculously better technology is imminent.
Much more in our Energy Fundamentals tutorial.
May 15, 2006
We found some excessive wear on one of our
older rod style Temposonic position sensors, so
we've pulled all of this style devices from our
listings until we can come up with a decent test
sequence.
Our refurb backlog is now quite a few months,
so we are unlikely to relist these any time soon.
May 14, 2006
Finally got a straight story directly from
Cunningham Auctioneers. They simply
leased out their old yard to a second tier
charity auctioneer. They most definitely
will be continuing industrial on-site auctions.
Any loose or leftover items will be sold by
Auction and Appraise on a consignment
basis. The two firms remain separate
and independent entities.
Meanwhile, Auction Advantage is
apparently dropping their house auctions
and going on-site onlly. Their use of an
old church school seemed absolutely
ideal as an auction base site. But I'd
guess the Benson auctioneering market
is highly competitive (American West,
Crawford, Robinson, Tingle, LaGuerre
et al...) and that discretionary income
in the Benson area is largely unknown.
May 13, 2006
One recurring urban lore myth at the
alt.online.marketing.ebay newsgroup is
that using dropshippers is an instant way
to effortless riches.
Uh, a much better term would be dropshitting.
Problems with dropshitting include...
(1) There are far too many fingers in the pie.
(2) The sell/buy ratio is ludicrously too low.
Always seek out 30:1.
(3) Other competitors are certain to panic and
utterly trash prices.
(4) Opportunities for personal value added are
sorely limited.
(5) The merchandise is typically overpriced
worthless garbage.
and, of course...
(6) It is YOU that get hung out to dry on the
inevitable no ship, late ship, or wrong ship.
Tested and proven useful sources of supply for
eBay sellers that meet the required 30:1
sell/buy ratio include privitized military surplus,
dotbomb bankruptcies, industrial distress sales,
and community college auctions.
Links and details on these appear on our Auction
Help library page.
A custom resource locator can be built for your
regional area per our Auction Resource
Locator info page.
May 12, 2006
GuruGram #65 is a Magic Sinewave Executive
Summary.
Sourcecode is found here. Much more in our
Magic Sinwave library.
May 11, 2006
Many problems with trojans and malware
and other nasties invading your computer
should be solvable by adding a simple and
effective traffic monitor to your system.
One that plots your usage patterns versus
time and summarizes what was sent to who
when.
Yet I know of no such device. And ISP's
report to me that such systems cost many
thousands of dollars and have complex
use restrictions.
I'd suspect that a simple Ethernet sniffer
with some reasonably swift software would
be all that was really needed.
If you know of any such solution that is
simple and cheap, please email me.
============================
So far, one reader suggested Snort.
I'll have to look into this.
May 10, 2006
We've been getting 50 to 100 "undeliverble"
messages a day lately from email that we
obviously never sent. All from artificially
generated return addresses such as
alex234523453@tinaja.com.
The most probable cause is someone spoofing
our email address. Most likely mid-European
judging by the timing of the messages and the
utterly vapid worthlessness of their copy.
What can you do in a similar circumstance?
First and foremost, NEVER NEVER NEVER
use Internet Explorer!!!! Always use the
infinitely better and (at least so far) much less
vunerable FireFox and Thunderbird free
alternatives instead.
Second, have trojan defenses in place. Such
as a decent firewall and several anti-virus
and malware programs resident and active.
If you are on a cable modem or otherwise
are always internet live, try disconnecting
for all but your minimum and absolutely
essential use times, and see if there is any
change in the number or pattern of emails.
It is of utmost importance to verify that you
are not in fact the unexpected source of
the bulk email through malware running
in a background mode on your own machine.
A final solution presents a dilemma. If
you are running a business, it pays to be
able to accept ANY incoming email
address. Such as orders@tinaja.com
or support@tinaja.com. Without having
to try and guess each and every possible
way a customer may want to reach you.
Otherwise, limiting yourself to a very
few valid email addresses will make all
of these bogus returns invisible to you.
Be sure to communicate with your ISP
and work closely with them. They may
be able to provide other solutions as well.
May 9, 2006
My favorite restaurants? Locally, Toni's Kitchen
is best, but since Toni left, the ambience sucks
and they are a tad pricey. Classic home cooking
with an Italian and mid-European focus. Superb
Pizza.
Best view and buy is Branding Iron's Monday
taco night. Giving profound new meaning to the
term "limited menu".
The Pretzel Rolls at The Breadbasket in Sierra
Vista, of course, are in a class by themselves.
Sadly, these sell out by 07:02:18 each morning.
355 West Wilcox Drive. SE of the fort main gate
by about 400 feet.
Rodney's midblock across from the railroad park
in Willcox is definitely a BBQ with attitude, but
has dropped slightly from his peak. Be sure to
check out the Rex Allen painting on the wall.
Best BBQ in Arizon forever and ever is Joes in
Gilbert. On Gilbert Road just north of all the
fake front business district buildings. Music tends
towards Porter Wagoner and Bob Wills; Avant
Garde stuff like Hank Williams is strictly verboten.
For decades, I've really liked the Siameese Cat
on the northwest corner of Baseline and Price in
Tempe. As well as the superb Dim Sum in
Chandler's C-Fu.
And, while I am not sure of the name or address,
there's a great Italian/Armenian restaurant just
South of Falcon Field in Mesa. Probably some
address similar to 4463 East Mckellips Road. On
the Southeast corner of Mckellips and Higley.
In Tucson, most any eegees is hard to beat for fast
food. Superb slushes. And my favorite Japenese
would be Sachiko. Of the two locations, I prefer
the 3200 East Valencia site.
For a Tucson or Phoenix deli, Schlotsky's is quite
good. This is apparently a nationwide chain.
May 8, 2006
A reminder that there is at least one
source of energy research grants that
aggressively seeks out both individual
and small scale startups. And that the
submission deadline is nearing.
http://www.energy.ca.gov/contracts/smallgrant/
for further details.
May 7, 2006
May 6, 2006
Which is not to say that a quick buck cannot
be made on scrap broken traffic lights.
But it sure looked grim for a while. I bid on
dozens of pallets of "flashers" sight unseen
at a Phoenix auction. Hoping they were
wigwags that volunteer firemen would find
useful on eBay.
The boxes showed up with all of the flashers
being really out-of-date traffic light control cards,
Worse yet, all of the boxes were clearly marked
BAD in large letters.
Such are the vagaries of high margin surplus
speculation. Worse yet, the few items that I
checked at random were either hand-wired
triacs or high specialized and obsolete cards
that would have taken zillions of hours to
repair All units obviusly were smoked.
I was about to admit major defeat and throw
the whole works on the Alvin Pile ( a fully
automatic garbage disposal system that pays
me $200 per month ), when I decided to make
one last check.
Lo and Behold, the majority of the remaining
units held standard ultra rugged solid state
relays! These were easily stripped and tested,
Amazingly the failure rate of the relays
themselves was ZERO with not one bad unit!
We still have a very few of the older relays
up on eBay, but basically they flew outta here
Apparently I priced them waaay too low.
Talk about blind luck.
Some of the fallout was a solid state relay
tester that I'll try to get into a GuruGram
format as soon as I get out from under our
current ongoing projects.
May 5, 2006
As we've seen in Stalking the Wild Paradigm,
some areas are open to individuals and small
scale developers, while others clearly are not.
Obvious examples are anything automotive
(where a MINIMUM of three generations of
SAE membership is entry level), anything
medical, and, of course, anything related in
any manner to personal aviation.
I just turned down what should have been some
fast and easy consulting from an individual who
wanted to "improve" traffic lights. Who did not
realize the layer upon layer of bureaucracy
involved, the chronic budget shortfalls and time
extensions, the few big companies who utterly
and totally dominate the industry (Eagle, Crouse
Hinds, TCT, EPAC, PEEK, and a very few others),
and, of course, the NEMA and UL and other
certification and qualifications that cost many
thousnds of dollars and take years to complete.
If this individual is series about developing
better traffic lights (arcane degrees and very
specialized expertise is involved), they would
best be advised to seek out one of the big
firms and see about working for them.
Modern controllers are incredibly sophisticated
and easily communicate with each others.
Chances are that existing programming options
are waaaay beyond anything an outsider might
be able to dream up.
There also, amazingly, is quite a bit of traffic
light stuff on the web for enthuasiasts and
collectors. Such as Traffic Light Wizard.
There is even a Traffic Light Web Ring.
May 4, 2006
Made some revisions and corrections to our
Bezier Curve through Four Data Points tutorial
that appears as GuruGram #59.
May 3, 2006
One of the more obscure tools in my Gonzo
Utilities is our Curvetracing Routine.
These use some "fairly weak" cubic splines
to draw smooth curves through any number
of data points. Per this example's figure one.
Data format is [x0 y0 ang0 x1 y1 ang1 x2 y2
ang2 ... xn yn angn] curvetrace. The x and
y values are the current data point, while the
ang is the angle in degrees that you are going
through that current point. A separate tension
parameter lets you further adjust the curve's
smoothness or enthuasiasm.
A few years back, an important addition was
made: If you enter "999" as your angle for
an intermediate data point, then some fancy
code will try to guess at your best angle.
This can be far faster and less tedious.
It does this by temporarily fitting a circle to
the pre-and-post data points and then
finding the needed tangent slope for you.
Also, if your initial data points are 0 0, then
you will append an existing path. Otherwise
you will start a new one. Should you really
need a new path that starts at 0,0 you can
use 0, 0.00001 instead.
The actual latest curvetracing utility can be
found here, along with a demo. At present,
you'll have to manually add this to the start
of your program. I'm a tad gun shy about
making any changes to the original Gonzo
code.
Much more in our PostScript library.
May 2, 2006
Here is an "Oh No, Not Another One."
entry in the wierd new engine sweepstakes.
At present, there is around a 2:1 difference
between theoretical (64%) and actual (32%)
ICE internal combustion engine efficiencies, so
a lot of slop remains, and significant improvements
are almost certain to emerge.
I'd personally give the most credence to those
that split the four cycle or go to six cylcles of
more or less normal construction. And, of course,
to such obvious improvements as electric
valves and on-demand accessories.
Designs with lots of strange geometry or
exotic seals are less likely to make it out
of the starting gate. The key test of course
is whether the proponent is an SAE member,
their father a senior SAE member, and their
grandfather a SAE member emeritus.
No one else need even bother to apply.
One of the interesting side effects of all this
is that fuel cells may now be falling further and
further behind state-of-the-art ICE efficiency.
And just may forever remain so because more
dollars and smarter dollars are being thrown into
improving ICE efficiency.
May 1, 2006
GuruGram #64 is an intro tutorial on using
our Gonzo Utilities to create Engineering
log log plots and graphs.
Sourcecode is found here. The actual utility
appears here along with its demo.
Much more in our PostScript library.
April 30, 2006
A "click to expand" feature can be added
to any .PDF file figure or art cut simply by
using the Linking Tool in any full version
of Acrobat. Clicking takes you to a url of
your choice.
If you are writing your own PostScript code
to be distilled, you can avoid any manual
tool use by building a routine similar to
this one directly into your program...
mark
/Rect [ llx lly urx urry]
/Border [ 0 0 0]
/Color [ .7 0 0 ]
/Action <</Subtype /URI /URI
cururlname>>
/Subtype /Link
/ANN
pdfmark
Here llx and lly are the lower left corner
of the area to be clicked on in current units.
urx and ury similarly define the upper right.
And cururlname is where you want to click
to.
More details in the PDFMark Reference
Manual.
April 29, 2006
April 28, 2006
I've always been a big fan of "rules of thumb"
Which are sneaky ways of quickly approximating
reality.
Ferinstance, calculating the electrolytic capacitors
for a power supply can be a pain. Unless you
remember that in an 8300 microfard capacitor
the volts of ripple equal its amps of current in a
full wave 60 Hertz (120 Hz ripple) supply.
I've also found that "rules" of one percent of
everything that happens in the US happens in
Arizona and one percent of everything that
happens in Arizona happens in the Gila Valley
can be remarkably accurate in estimating
a wide variety of goings on.
But my favorite rule of thumb is the one that
us Hazmat specialists use: Hold your thumb
extended at arm's length and close one eye.
If you can still see the scene, you are too close.
April 27, 2006
Picked up a bunch of classic utility switchgear
that include some superb 110v THREE PHASE
kilowatthour meters, some combined kwh
and demand meters, and some fairly
collectible time overcurrent relays.
These are all "switchgear mount" in
"ammo can" cages, so they are super
easy to interface with ordinary connections
and require no special plugins. Many include
large "paddle style" switches.
email me if you have any interest in these.
The power meters in particular should be
superb for bench testing of VFD motor
drives, alternate energy research, and such.
April 26, 2006
Dr. Jerome F. MacDonald is the senior
member of a design team that has long
been working in the Dairy Science division
of the US Department of Agriculture.
They have come up with a communications
input-output (I /O) and interchange code for
computers and terminals. The coding is
simple, effective, and easy to use. It’s now
spreading rapidly to to other government
agencies and now is becoming an industry
wide standard.
In fact, the code now has an Electronics
Industries Evaluationary (EIE) status and
should shortly go international.
Thus, the old MacDonald farm interface is
now an EIE I/O.
More at http://www.tinaja.com/glib/marcia.pdf
April 25, 2006
This week's Science Magazine for April
14, 2006 seems to be chock full of goodies...
~ A new Books in the Digital Age book
that further develops our "Who Needs
Book Publishers and what have they
done for us recently" theme.
~ Double Perovskites as Anode Materials
for Solid Oxide Fuel Cells lets the cells
operate with natural gas and allows some
contaminents, eliminating the need for
the Hydrogen Ludicrosity.
~ Catalytic Alkane Metathesis are some
newly discovered catalyists that eventually
MAY promise to make gasoline a renewable
resource. But not yet quite prime time.
~ Zinc Oxide Piezoelectric Nanogenerators may
provide a means for generating micropower
electricity from within the human body.
April 24, 2006
Assume you are an intern working on a SETI
program at a somewhat advanced civilization
on Iota Rectuli IV.
Strong evidence of rocky planets have recently
been discovered nearby in a minor arm of your own
second rate galaxy sometimes called the "Milky Way".
A mere fifty light years or so away.
Amazingly, one of these planets suddenly and
recently became a "radio star" with substantial
output at the VHF frequency range. Your recent
careful analysis has shown detailed comb structure
with strong harmonics related to both 60 Hertz
and 15.750 kilohertz.
Between the latest of advanced signal processing
algorithms and some exceptionally rare viewing
conditions, out pops a prefectly lucid and clear
ten second video clip of ROLLER DERBY!
As the sum total of everything known about
human civilization. We can assume that
"Captain Video" and "Kukla, Fran, and Ollie"
are yet to be discovered.
What report, if any, would you submit to
your supervisor?
