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Don
Lancaster's Guru's Lair What's New? 2008 Archive |
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April 24, 2008 deeplink respond
Our improved architect's perspective
routines are still wheel spinning getting the
fundamental math right and demoed.
Two main parameters control the correction:
A variable called kkk that is related to the
vanishing point distance that sets how much
correction, And a variable called xcen that
decides how to apportion the left and right
tilting.
The reverse solution of kkk given some more
convenient input data is not trivial. It probably
will end up looking something like this...
kkk = [ newx(oldy-ycen) -
xcen(oldy+ycen) ] / (oldx-newx)
And even that may turn out to be approximate.
Stay tuned.
April 23, 2008 deeplink respond
DUH! department: When you empty a
typical hot tub, a few gallons often remain
at the bottom. Bailing or sponging or pond
pumps are all a pain.
But a wet/dry vac works like a champ!
April 22, 2008 deeplink respond
The local auction scene seems to be going
bonkers. With zillions of new bankruptcies
and distress sales. Mostly things like
furniture manufacturers, title companies,
custom woodworkers, hardware stores,
rv services, and high end audio scams.
And the "legal notice" forced real estate
auctions in the Tucson paper seem to have
gone from one a month to five a day.
Your own custom regional auction resource
finder can be created for you per these details.
April 21, 2008 deeplink respond
A church in Gila Bend has decided not to buy
a chandelier. It seems that no one in the entire
congregation knew how to play one.
April 20, 2008 deeplink respond
The forward and reverse nonlinear transforms
for our upcoming improved architect's perspective
routines are likely to look something like this...
FORWARD:
/oldxeff = oldx - xoffset
/oldyeff = oldy - yoffset
/newx = newxeff + xoffset
/newx = newxeff + xoffset
/kkk = fullheight * tan (tiltangle)
/newyeff = oldyeff *( kkk /( kkk + oldyeff)
/newxeff = oldxeff *( kkk /( kkk + oldyeff)
REVERSE:
/oldyeff = newyeff *( kkk /( kkk - newyeff)
/oldxeff = newxeff *(( kkk - oldyeff)/kkk)
There are three variables: kkk decides how much slope
is to be corrected and also equals the vertical distance to
the vanishing point. xcen decides how the slope correction
is to be apportioned to the right and left edge. And
ycen vertically centers the tilt correction for minimum
size changes.
April 19, 2008 deeplink respond
The Gila Valley is usually regarded as a rural
technological backwater. But it holds and has
held eight centuries worth of rather amazing tech
acheivements.
Here's my selection in order of cubic
wonderment....
SAFFORD GRIDS - many thousands of
prehistoric water control projects, possibly
as part of Aguave or Mescal production.
LARGE BINOCULAR TELESCOPE -
This week's finest telescope in the world
just got its double vision.
MT. GRAHAM AERIAL TRAMWAY -
Lumber transport well over one vertical
mile high cobbed out of old bits and pieces.
MORENCI SOUTHERN RAILWAY -
No less than FIVE 360 degree loops
treacherously climbing impossible terrain.
MORENCI MINE - They sure are moving
a lot of dirt. And their bugs + solvent +
electrowin has major enrironmental and
energy advantages.
ASH CREEK FLUME - Spectacular turn
of the century trestles floated boards off
the mountain.
EMIGRANT MARBLE QUARRY -
Elaborate steam machinery on the far
side of back of beyond did some impressive
stone carving and shipment.
UBIQUITOUS COMM - The triply whammy
of web + cable + cellphones gives instant
research and com from anywhere and drives
a huge equalizing rural lifestyle paradigm shift.
TOMATO FACTORY - Acres upon untold
acres of ever expanding buildings assemble
tomatoes from the ground up. Bugs are dealt
with by the "two brick" method.
COTTON DRIP IRRIGATION - Time will
tell if this major ongoing project will be an
utter fiasco or a really big advance in water
management.
Some of these also appear on our new
Gila Day Hikes page.
April 18, 2008 deeplink respond
Whenever you "almost" have a technological
solution, or "almost" have
gotten your research
completed, there is a tendancy to go full speed
ahead anyway.
Which will "almost" always will cost you bunches
in the long run.
Make sure that what you need to continue is
fully completed before committing yourself to
stuff that may prove expensive or embarassing
when ( not if ) things go wrong.
go wrong.
go wrong.
go wrong.
April 17, 2008 deeplink respond
The old Morenci Railroad line is one of many
listings on our new Gila Day Hikes page.
This route literally tied itself in a knot and
crossed itself in as many as FIVE LOOPS!
All to gain altitude with limited max grades.
Most trains cannot deal with more than a
three percent grade.
There are several reasons why the old
postcard photos do not line up with the
current topo. Three of the upper loops
were early on replaced with switchbacks.
And that portion of Morenci Gulch was
later eaten by the open pit mine or covered
with tailings or buildings.
One impressive full loop remains.
Access is off the Back Country Byway.
The 4WD tracks are very rough; hiking
or mountain biking along the actual roadbed
is probably your best route. FM permits might
be advisable if you chose a northern approach
instead.
April 16, 2008 deeplink respond
Some partially playable versions of "lost"
InfoCom Games have recently been found.
Slashdot has an ongoing discussion.
April 15, 2008 deeplink respond
Topozone has just added some outrageous
access charges.
Free access to identical USGS
topo maps are available from Terraserver or
newly directly from USGS.
Curiously, we do not yet have anywhere near
optimal map access. You cannot pan or zoom
the real topos, and no blended overlay between
topos, aerial photos, and named destinations
seems yet available.
Google's aerial photography is spectacular
in some areas and totally useless in others.
Naturally, "others" being everywhere that
I want to go or at least look at.
And Google
does not yet have true USGS topo options.
The USGS Site provides black and white
aerial photos that are much better than
Google's worst and much worse than
Google's best.
What is really needed is a blender function that
lets you mix aerial photos and topos in any
ratio. Here's a crude demo of Pacman, AZ
I did long ago that shows some possibilities.
April 14, 2008 deeplink respond
Dilbert has apparently just been Dilberted!
They totally trashed the column, blocked
access to certain of their best users, and
generally klutzed it up.
April 13, 2008 deeplink respond
We recently saw how our Bitmap Typewriter
can do rotated text and cylindrical text.
Here's an example of Perspective Lettering
done with the Bitmap Typewriter. At present,
the process is a tad tedious, but I am working
on a newer and faster upgrade that should
also be more accurate
.
Note the infinite depth of field.
April 12 , 2008 deeplink respond
Latest GuruGram #88 is on Some Image
Post Processing Tools.
Sourcecode is available here. And additional
GuruGrams here.
April 11 , 2008 deeplink respond
I've been reposting many of my "best"
papers to WESRCH.
You can find a good sampler collection
there by searching by author.
April 10 , 2008 deeplink respond
I added some improvements to our Airbrushing
Utilities and companion Airbrushing Tutorial.
These deal with two quirks of the HSB color
space: You cannot blend through one hue
that has a 1/0 discontinuity (default = red).
And hue becomes hypersensitive very
near a true gray and can add tinting.
A new usehsb Boolean lets you pick airbrushing
in the HSB or RGB color spaces. HSB has
more color saturation. RGB avoids possible
hue shading near true grays. But is darker.
A new hueshift variable lest you guarantee
a blend through a given color. -0.16 lets
you blend through blue. +0.16 lets you blend
through green, and +0.5 lets you blend through
red. These do a simple hue phase shift and
later restoration to move the 1/0 problem.
Such fine tuning can sometimes eliminate
going "the wrong way around" the hue
circle. It should rarely be needed for most
normal airbrushing uses.
Custom fine tuning of any grays you are
blending to so they still have"hints" of
your
blend colors in them can minimize
tinting hue surprises as well.
April 9, 2008 deeplink respond
We recently saw how our Bitmap Typewriter
can do rotated text. If you want to go to enough
time and effort, you also can do lettering around
a cylinder. Per this example.
The trick is to create a group of fonts to different
point widths and different darkness values. And
then pick whatever comes closest to the original
lettering you are overwriting
.
Additional Bitmap Typewriter info has been
newly posted here.
April 8 , 2008 deeplink respond
I was asked what can be done to improve the
efficiency of a car's ICE engine. As usual,
things may not be what they seem, and tradeoffs
tend to dominate over solutions.
The theoretical efficiency of a typical ICE
is up in the sixty percent range. This limit
is set by Carnot's Law as the absolute ratio
of the burn versus exhaust temperatures.
One way to improve theoretical efficiency
is to run hotter, perhaps with ceramic
cylinders. Another is to exhaust closer to
ambient (which may trash pollution devices).
Yet another route is to add one or more
bottoming cycles between ICE exhaust and
ambient. Power utilities now do this routinely,
but cost and complexity is traded for only
a few points of improvements.
Flushing the ICE and replacing it with a
fuel cell is not nearly as good as proponents
think it is. First, because there are inherent
fuel cell efficiency limits in the 83 percent
range, second because of wiring (97%),
motor (90%), and controller (85%) losses,
and thirdly because current fuel cells
throw out the carbon which is a significant
energy source. And lastly because current
fuel cell technology is outrageously expensive
and unreliable.
In reality, an auto's ICE gets nowhere near
its theoretical efficiency. Caused by having
to run at different speeds and power levels.
And "best efficiency" not being the same as
"most power" or "least pollution" or "best
MPG". And by conventional accessory losses.
Stuff being looked at now to close the gap
between actual and theoretical ICE efficiency:
42 volt systems that allow electric valves,
On demand cooling and power steering systems.
Going hybrid (an outright joke until the stored
battery energy becomes significant). Continuously
variable transmissions. Combined 4 cycle and
6 cycle operation. Splitting the compression
and expansion into two separately optimized
tasks.
Diesel instead of Otto cycles. Drive by wire.
Multistage lean burn. Integrated alternator/
starter/regenerator. Supercaps for brief power.
Hydrogen injection (but NOT, of course, from
on board electrolysis.) Auto idle restart.
Much more in our energy fundamentals and
more energy fundamentals tutorials.
April 7 , 2008 deeplink respond
I remain very impressed with the new WESRCH
website.
As we've seen, peer reviewed scholarly journals
are clearly in a death spiral due to them having
priced themselves ridiculously out of the market
and their steadfast refusal to make any and all
older papers available free without restriction.
I've been obsessively monitoring some WESRCH
stats lately and see some surprising trends.
First and foremost, peer review may be an overrated
scam. The unmoderated WESRCH papers to
date are of consistent quality that is much higher
than your average scholarly journal.
And nobody
seems that much interested in the "rate this paper"
and "comment on this paper" feedback features.
While WESRCH now has 500 papers and 100,000
paper views, this is not yet anywhere remotely near the
critical mass needed for a "Google style" definitive
resource. Which I'd place at 50,000 papers in the
library and 50 new papers updated per day. But
the stats are improving at an impressive rate.
Curiously, the most popular and the least popular
papers don't differ that much in their download rates.
Suggesting that WESRCH is very much postee
rather than viewee dominated.
The paper title is crucial, since a viewers
actions are based on as little as 20 characters.
The most popular papers tend to become a
self-fulfilling prophesy as the rest of them
are pretty much invisible.
Paper popularity is clearly not an even
playing field. One that recently rocketed
to first place obviously had some outside
help. Such as being required coursework
or heavily linked elsewhere.
I'm saddened that they cut back on the
humor and the style on the website. It
was totally clear which two of the animated
rabbits just got laid. But it is not clear
who the foxy chicks ads are aimed at.
Chances are they would do much better
with females that a technonerd had a
snowball's chance in hell of scoring with.
This site could (and should) become a winner.
April 6 , 2008 deeplink respond
How do you deal with two auctions on the
same day?
Start by getting as much info as possible on
each auction. Especially lot lists and photos if they
are available. If you can, preview the least
valuable of the two.
Sometimes sending an associate to the second
auction can work. Other times, placing proxy
bids with the auctioneer can prove useful.
And if the main auction turns into a dud,
consider traveling between the two. But
simplest of all is to ignore the second auction.
Chances are something similar will shortly
come up anyhow.
And the auction would not
have been in second place if you really were
excited about it.
April 5 , 2008 deeplink respond
One minor hassle of our new Airbrushing
tutorial and utilities is that Paint works from
the top down and bitmaps work from the
bottom up.
This repair patch lets you enter Paint y positions
directly into your /airbrushboundaries array...
/fixpaint { /paintvsize exch store
/airbrushboundaries mark
airbrushboundaries 0 get
paintvsize airbrushboundaries
1 get sub
airbrushboundaries 2 get
paintvsize airbrushboundaries
3 get sub
airbrushboundaries 4 get
paintvsize airbrushboundaries
5 get sub
airbrushboundaries 6 get
paintvsize airbrushboundaries
7 get sub ] store } store
Use it by entering paintvsize fixpaint.
April 4 , 2008 deeplink respond
A refurb and retouching trick: A plain old Magic
Marker with permanent ink can sometimes do as
much as repainting can a lot faster and easier.
This is especially useful for minor aluminum dinks
in an otherwise black panel. And the serrated edges
of 1001A knobs sure improved dramatically on our
recent Wavetek rework.
A 3x5 file card makes a useful mask to prevent
any retouching from going too far.
April 3 , 2008 deeplink respond
A new example of our improved airbrushing
routines routines appears here. This originally had
the "wrong way around" problem in the red.
The "cylindrical" result is gotten by airbrushing
the left half and then mirroring. Some stretching
in the middle may make the final result more
realistic
.
April 2 , 2008 deeplink respond
Some additions to our recent obsolete
manual sources links: Go here for General
Radio and here or here for Heathkit.
And a superb summary of old manual links
appears here.
April 1 , 2008 deeplink respond
Few people realize that the word "gullible"
does not appear in any major dictionary or
spell checker.
March 31, 2008 deeplink respond
We go well out of our way to offer the lowest
possible and revenue neutral shipping on our
eBay items.
Group quantity weights are often
kept under one or two pound limits, and flat
rate parcels are used whenever possible.
For heavier items, UPS Ground is our
shipping of choice. We normally do not
offer premium delivery services, because
they often do not work and it will often be
the one day that we are understaffed or
whatever.
That being said, we will not tolerate anyone
who tries to nickel and dime us on shipping
or trys to tell us what is or is not suitable for
us. Try it and you are history. Outta here.
To minimize your shipping costs, order more
items from us at the same time. And be sure
to email us for the best possible rate.
March 30, 2008 deeplink respond
I was asked to comment on yet another in
an undending series of electrolysis schemes.
As usual, the system was "not even wrong"
on many different levels.
Firstoff, isn't it the tiniest bit strange that it
is enormously difficult to find an electrolysizer
manufacturer? And if you do, the will steadfastly
refuse to tell you what their product costs. And
absolutely prohibit an individual from buying
one
because of safety liability.
Which should clue you in that electrolysizers
are largely useless for converting high value
electricity ( such as grid, wind, or pv ) into
unstored hydrogen gas for bulk energy.
The reason, of course, is that a fundamental
thermodynamic property called exergy flat
out guarantees that electrolysis for hydrogen
energy ain't gonna happen.
There ALWAYS
will be more intelligent things to do with high
priced electricity than immediately and irreversibly
destroying most of its quality and value.
Going beyond the utter pointleness of their
venture, the next problem was a total cluelessness
over Faraday's Law of electrolysis. Electrolysis is
a CURRENT driven process, not a voltage driven one!
And conventional current sources are horribly and
uselessly inefficient. Switchmode techniques using
at least one inductor are usually manditory.
The next problem was a sense of scale. One amp
to a single electrolysis cell will create recoverable
hydrogen energy almost equal to a gallon of gasoline
in a mere 7000 or so HOURS of operation.
Another problem was ignoring the real problems.
Such as the need for often replenished platinized
platinum electrodes. Or stainless steel being
useless because of the hydrogen overvoltage of
iron. As found in any intro electrochem text.
Another problem are the safety issues. It is
fundamentally and ludicrously insane to turn
gaseous or liquified hydrogen loose on the
general public!
The solution instead lies in a carbon neutral
solar to liquid hydrocarbon conversion process,
perhaps based on metalloradicals. One that
avoids any staggering mid process exergy drops.
Once again, our bottom line...
If you do not understand exergy, you SHOULD
NOT be pissing around with electrolysis.
If you do understand exergy, you WILL NOT
be pissing around with electrolysis.
March 29, 2008 deeplink respond
There's a new speed reading system out that
lets you read War and Peace in seven minutes flat.
It's about Russia.
March 28, 2008 deeplink respond
We recently picked up some unusual stuff
at an aerospace plant closing auction and are
now listing them on eBay.
Some of the more interesting items include a
Nutek SMT conveyor, bellows style pumps,
odd precision tweezers, centrifuges, large
immersion heaters, lots of motors and pumps,
right angle drives, metro cart bumpers, a
fully loaded 3488A HP automatic test system,
and some high end solid state relays.
March 27, 2008 deeplink respond
Our first real-use example of our new Airbrush
Routines can be found here. I've kept the top
somewhat "stripey" to emphasize its curvature.
Yet another example of our Bitmap Typewriter
can be found here.
The rotated text is not quite as tricky as it seems.
You send the Bitmap Typerwriter output to
ImageView32, rotate it and resave. Since Paint
can give you rotations of 0, 90, 180, and 360,
each saved rotation can serve four ways.
March 25, 2008 deeplink respond
As we've seen a number of times before,
it is super important to have full service and
repair manuals on hand whenever you are
refurbing older test equipment.
I was reconditioning some older Wavetek
1001 sweep generators and was mystified
why most of the front panel controls did
not seem to do anything.
It turns out there is a "secret" back panel
connector that demands plug in jumpers
for normal operation.
This is a standard and still easily found
Molex 15 pin plug in their .062 contact
series. The docs quickly reveal the
correct programming of separately jumpering
5 to 6, 8 to 9, 11 to 12, and 13 to 14.
Note that the first three jumpers go "on the
right", while the last one goes "on the left".
March 24, 2008 deeplink respond
Updated our Arizona Auction Resources
library page.
Apparently there has been a major scam
and ripoff involving Scottsdale fine art
auctions. As near as I can tell, Caboodle
and Count Your Assets seem to be among
the many good guy victims.
And Gaige may be owing millions of dollars
to sellers and associates alike. Gaige might
possibly now be part of Becker.
Extreme caution is advised.
Your own custom regional auction finder
can be created for you per these details.
March 23, 2008 deeplink respond
Some very interesting "art based on math"
results can be found here.
March 22, 2008 deeplink respond
I was recently asked by another author what
they should do about copyright violations
Some first principles: ANYTHING you write
is IMMEDIATELY protected in the US the
instant it appears in tangible form. All that
copyright registration does for you is give
you a few additional legal rights that often
are not worth seeking out.
Naturally, copyright 2008 or whatever should
prominently appear on everything you create.
Along with any other use guidelines.
Because of a legal principle called due diligence,
you should continuously seek out any copyright
violations. If you let them slip in the past, then
you may not be able to go after a major
future offender.
Two useful monitoring tools are your own log
files and Googling yourself every now and then.
Many violations are simply not worth the hassle
of pursuing. But the usual defenses include a
polite then a stronger email demanding removal
followed by a complaint to their ISP demanding
that they be shut down immediately.
A nastygram from your lawyer can also prove of
use but heads you down the route of costs and
bad vibes. Foreign ripoffs are rarely worth
chasing after.
You do, of course, always have the right to
refuse any reuse or promotion of your work
or to charge any royalty structure you care to.
As to eBay, you can immediately shut down
anybody who steals your images or ad copy
by going through their NOCI process.
Once again creative use of your log files
can quickly spot stolen images. Sometimes
a substitute image ( perhaps of a suitably
clad individual pioneering new methods of
animal husbandry ) can prove of value.
March 21, 2008 deeplink respond
Getting technical info on older test equipment
has recently gotten a lot easier. HP via Agilent
now keeps free user and service manuals of
many obsolete instruments online.
And Tektronix long ago officially released
any and all unsupported docs to the public
domain. Many classic test equipment
firms have either folded or gone through
several reincarnations that make copyright
status a low enough risk that CD copies
can be offered.
Of the many CD manual
sources online,
I have found ArtekMedia useful for
Wavetek, and
this source useful for
Tektronix, and BAMA of value for
ham and comm gear.
March 20, 2008 deeplink respond
The "grits horticulture" thread on AMOE
might at some future point go over the edge.
The prefrered commercial grits tree is
often gritus arborus (domesticus).
Seeds and cuttings are normally tightly
controlled by the Grits Cooperative, and
is somewhat similar to hops distribution.
These are often preannual, but some
growers in San Diego and Hawaii can
get multiple years of crops by covering
them or bringing them inside whenever
frost threatens.
As to the upcoming Alabama grits harvest,
the illegal aliens are apparently being
used for flavor only.
March 19, 2008 deeplink respond
There are apparently two issues when blending
in HSB space. Red hue can be either zero or
one. Blends from say, purple to orange, may
try to go around the hue circle "the wrong way"
through blue and green rather than through red.
One possible workaround is to phase shift the
colors. A second is to extend the HSB space,
but this likely would only work on one dimensional
blends ( such as our Bitmap Typewriter ) than
on two dimensional ones ( such as our Airbrush ).
A second issue is that hue is ambiguous in a
pure gray.
Which can create unexpected
color fringing. A workaround is to make sure
any gray is slightly stronger in its predominate
overlay or underlay colors.
Ferinstance, blending aqua with a gray of 50-50-50
might produce red or orange fringing, while 49-50-50
will not.
I'm still exploring solutions here. Some may
significantly slow down pixel writing speeds.
March 18, 2008 deeplink respond
It pays to always go back to the fundamentals
of electronic servicing...
~ Always do a careful inspection.
~
Have the service docs on hand.
~ Make the most fundamental tests first.
~ Divide and conquer.
~ Make no assumptions.
~ Never jump to conclusions.
~ Cause the patient no harm.
~ Believe ( but verify! ) your measurements.
~ Seek the obvious; expect the unexpected.
and, of course...
~ ANYTHING can happen in a student lab!
Just had some problems with an HP 3310A from a
community college auction. Very clean but marked
"no output".
Amazingly, full docs were quickly found from HP.
Pilot light lit, fuse ok. Raw dc on all four supplies,
but only two of them were drawing current, as
verified by a scope ripple display. One regulator
transistor was much hotter than the others.
A dead short was found on the -25 volt supply.
I wrongly concluded it "had" to be a filter cap.
Lifted caps and found them ok. Further checking
revealed dead shorts on ALL of the supply lines!
Removing loads found the culprit: An A2 board
with TWO broken ends on TWO connectors!
The edge connectors slid sideways to short
everything out!
As to how this happened, write it off to "student lab".
BTW: The vernier drive on a 3310A can often be
improved by polishing and oiling its shaft and making
sure the main knob is tight. Its operation ultimately
depends on main dial clearance from the front
panel and any excessive potentiometer side play.
March 17, 2008 deeplink respond
Initial attempts at moving our Bitmap
Typewriter into HSB space were pretty
much disappointing. Also slow.
If you antialias red lettering over an
aqua baktground, you get gray fringing
with RGB space and orange and yellow
fringing with HSB space.
Yes, the latter is somewhat better.
Thus your choice of foreground and
background color will make a much
more significant different in legibility
than the color space you happen to be
interpolating in.
Blue or dark gray lettering over aqua
works particularly well as shown here.
One additional detail: hue becomes
ambiguous with any pure gray. Working
aqua over a 49 50 50 gray gives much
better results than a 50 50 50 gray which
may have a red hue and fringing.
March 16, 2008 deeplink respond
I was asked to comment on Heathkit...
Heathkit defined an era. Their kits were...
(1) A superb way to learn electronics.
(2) Much cheaper than buying name
brand assembled devices.
(3) Solidly engineered within realistic
economic constraints.
and...
(4) Reliable enough with good enough
support that you could not go wrong.
Heath ultimately failed because...
(1) Import assembled products became
much cheaper than kits.
(2) The evil empire collapse and aerospace
technician job dryup caused most schools
to eliminate their electronics programs
(3) Parts became so small and so complex
that ordinary soldering and assembly tools
no longer worked.
(4) The imploding collapse of the hobby
electronics magazines.
(5) An emerging "throwaway mentality"
where it became more cost effective to
replace rather than repair.
(6) Stunning improvements in reliability
and insane feature creep where things
no longer broke or wore out before they
became laughingly obsolete.
(7) The microcomputer revolution that
funneled available time and energy
into software development and
ultimately the web.
Plus, of course...
(8) an utterly and monumentally
clueless corporate buyout.
March 15, 2008 deeplink respond
It pays to stay lean and mean when attending
any auction. An empty SUV, one dolly or cart,
some tools, and somebody that wants to come
along that you do not have to pay for riding.
Chances are you will only hit it big once every
six to ten auctions or so. Dragging trucks,
trailers, or hired help around for trivial hits
or nothing at all usually makes no sense.
Parking can also be a serious problem that
gets a lot worse with a trailer tagging along.
And, if you do hit it big, chances are you
will have to return the next day with the
full proper tools and hired help anyway.
Keep your out-of-pocket costs to an
absolute minimum until you have scored
big enough that they become negligible.
Make sure that "needing a trailer" or "many
trips" or "needing a truck" is completely
justified by your current auction lot won.
Before that, avoid upscaling with trash.
After that, stuff in everything you can.
Find your auctions here, or your own custom
local resource finder here.
March 14, 2008 deeplink respond
We've already seen five major reasons
why the pulse electrolysis crowd has not
and will not get anywhere...
(1) The staggering loss of exergy that
flat out GUARANTEES that any
electrolysis from high value sources
( such as grid, pv, or wind ) flat out
ain't gonna happen.
(2) The utter futility of stainless steel
electrodes with their hydrogen
overvoltage of iron and low
energy passivated surfaces.
(3) The court case determining "gross
and egregious fraud"
(4) Misuse of frequencies millions of
times too low for water molecule
resonance.
(5) The enormous difficulties in properly
measuring pulse waveforms.
To which we can now add this sixth and major
biggie...
(6) Monumental cluelessness over
Fourier Series.
Proponents often make two "not even
wrong" assumptions that (a) there is
no direct current associated with a pulse
train, and that (b) there are clearly times
when the pulses are "on" or "off.
In reality, ANY continuous pulse train is
EXACTLY equivalent to some dc term
combined with some CONTINUOUS and
harmonically related sinewaves.
Ferinstance, you can watch a square
wave building itself up out of its
first ninenteen harmonics here.
Per Faraday's Law of Electrolysis
( which clearly ain't broke ), only the
direct current term is normally significant
and useful for electrolysis.
The other
pulse frequency components largely
contribute to system losses and little more.
March 13, 2008 deeplink respond
A subtle detail when doing a blend
in HSB space:
Make sure you go
the right way around the hue circle!
This can be a problem in getting
from blue to red. Where you want
to go through magenta, rather than
green, yellow, and orange.
I'm not sure of the best algorithm
just yet, but the obvious trip point
is a hue change greater than plus
or minus 0.5. Ovrflows above 1.0
and underflows under 0.0 obviously
must also be dealt with.
Blends work best with minor hue
shifts and may tend towards the
garish when going from a color
to anywhere near its complement.
I may try to work up some improvements
to both our Airbrush and Bitmap
Typewriter routines.
March 12, 2008 deeplink respond
Latest GuruGram #87 is on A Digital
Airbrushing Algorithm.
The ready-to-use utility appears here.
Sourcecode is available here. And additional
GuruGrams here.
March 11, 2008 deeplink respond
Updated and improved our home page.
I split out our offsite links into two sections:
A new area for video-on-demand downloads
and the original one for everything else.
March 10, 2008 deeplink respond
Stuff that works department: Its called
Mother's Aluminum Polish and Checker
Auto carries it.
I wanted to refurb some Wavetek aluminum
knobs that had heavy oxide discoloration
on them. Without hurting the delicate ink
inlays. The problem is that aluminum oxide
is one of the hardest substances known, so
it ignores ordinary scouring stuff.
You just put a little of the white Mother's
glop on and stir it with an electric eraser
till it turns black. Then wipe it off with
two or three cloths of varying cleanliness.
Surprisingly little force or time is needed.
Apparently the material loosens the aluminum
oxide so it actually becomes its own abrasive!
Meanwhile, the black skirts of the knobs can
easily be renewed with a plain old permanent
magic marker.
March 9, 2008 deeplink respond
Additional credible support for many of
the concepts in More Energy Fundamentals I
appears here.
March 8, 2008 deeplink respond
A corrupted infile in Thunderbird can
cause all sorts of problems.
One clue that all is not well is if this
file is many hundreds of megabytes or
a few gigs after a recent cleaning.
To try and repair, eliminate all unneeded
messages. Then copy the rest to a new
temporary save folder. Go into the
Thunderbird mail folder and delete
infile completely. Empty the trash.
Reboot and a new and empty infile
should be created. Move the saved
stuff back and send yourself a test
message.
Another possible problem: Sometimes
a single file will hang Thunderbird because
it is malware or extremely long. Thus, you
cannot click on it without problems.
To beat this, save copies of the previous
and the next email if they are imortant.
Then click on previous, hold down shift,
and click on next. Three sequential files
should now be selected, including the bad
one in the middle. Then click on delete.
Sneaky, huh?
March 7, 2008 deeplink respond
Eric Krieg runs an impressive Pseudoscience
Bashing Site. Our own site (now sorely in
need of updating) appears here.
And a general tutorial here.
March 7, 2008 deeplink respond
Turns out our Bitmap Typewriter also
does exceptional .GIF images. A you
can tell by our latest banner.
There is no better small font typography
possible, short of going to subpixel
techniques. The improvement can be
stunning.
More on our banner program here.
March 6, 2008 deeplink respond
Almost all of our received payments these
days are via PayPal, both for our on and off
eBay sales.
We pretty much decided to drop our own
VISA and M/C merchant accounts because
their fixed expenses are now way too high.
They are no longer remotely competitive.
Much as we like UPS, they simply cannot
compete with USPO for flat rate boxes
and for items in the one and two pound
range. So we also have dropped our
UPS daily pickup service. UPS remains
available to us for heavier items.
To pay us via Paypal, go to this link,
and select "goods" or "auction" or
"services" as appropriate.
As always, we are happy to combine
shipping rates for you to give you
the lowest possible rate.
March 5, 2008 deeplink respond
Midnight Engineering magazine is long
gone, but many of its authors and subscribers
still meet in annual Denver EntConnect
seminar weekends.
Combined with skiing, hang gliding, and
other activities.
This year's conference will be March 27th
through March 30th. A $100 discount is
available if you contact Lee Devlin and
use the top secret code word "tinaja".
I'm still undecided whether I will personally
be able to attend. If I do, I'll be puting on one
or more seminars. Possibly on energy, eBay,
or Magic Sinewaves.
March 4, 2008 deeplink respond
Many of the worst movies ever made
are downloadable from this site.
Curiously, Plan Nine from Outer Space
is conspicuously absent. This one, of
course, defined the term "mesmerizingly
awful".
March 3, 2008 deeplink respond
Just picked up some unusual items from
a hi-fi store bankruptcy
and will be
putting them up on eBay.
These include an extremely rare and
highly collectible assortment of genuine
Astatic phonograph needles in original
packaging; some cable passive headend
combiners; and demo matrix boards that
let you compare different speaker and
amplifier combinations.
Please email me if you want to get in
ahead of the hoarders on these.
March 2, 2008 deeplink respond
The reincarnation of the reincarnation of
the reincarnation of the water powered car
fiasco can be traced to
a stupidly done and
not even wrong pulse measurement combined
with a ripped off investor in terminal denial.
Typical cheap meters are average responding.
Accurate power measurement of unusual
waveforms demands true RMS measurement.
Only recently have true RMS instruments
become readily available. Even then, they
have very specific frequency and crest factor
limits that cannot be exceeded without lying
like a rug. And always underreporting.
The measurement error can approach the
square root of the duty cycle. Thus a 9:1
duty cycle pulse will read low by a factor
of nearly 3! Causing outrageous overunity
conclusions.
An unrelated incident shows us what
likely happened. An individual connected
a half wave dimmer and a 32 volt bulb to
the power line and adjusted it to normal
brightness. They measured the voltage
and current across the bulb with ordinary
meters and concluded that only 1/3 the
voltage and 1/3 the current was needed.
Thus saving 8/9ths of the usual energy!
At this point, the individual should have
seen that their result was clearly dead
wrong. Surely somebody somewhere
would have noticed this before. Even
touching the bulb would reveal that it
was no cooler.
Instead, they went out and patented
an unstable and newly illegal mainstay
circuit of 1930's industrial electronics
books and published nationally in
(coincidentally) an April issue.
Things went downhill from there.
My detailed anaylysis of their pulse
operating point showed exactly a
3:1 difference between average and
RMS that perfectly matched their
overunity claims.
March 1, 2008 deeplink respond
How good a match is pv solar to the
public utility peaking demands?
Samples of utility power demand can
be found here, here, and here.
Where a casual glance shows that
peak demand takes place at nine PM!
Our own local utility seems to peak at
5 PM. Owing to higher A/C loading.
In general, the peak power needs are
not all that much more than the middle
of the night minimums, with a range of
30% to 100% more being typical.
Also, there seems to be a broad peak
during the afternoon and a very brief
spike late at night.
Upcoming net energy solar pv can be
an excellent match to the afternoon
peak.
The evening spike probably can
and will get taken out by negawatts.
Ferinstance, LCD tv's have much lower
power consumption than conventional
CRT's did. Emerging LED Lighting has
up to ten times the efficiency of incandescent
and three times that of fluorescents.
The latest of air conditioners with variable
rate air handling are approaching SEER's
of 17. Heat pumps for hot tubs are sorely
needed.
And all excessive street and site
lighting in improper fixtures does is piss
off astronomers and let crooks see better.
Thus, net energy solar pv should be a good
match to the afternoon peak once negawatts
take out the evening one.
An argument was made on a newsgroup that
net energy solar pv can never replace other
peaking sources becuase of cloudy days and
such. The first defense here is brokering,
or buying power from unaffected areas
If the solar outages are rare enough, then
the backup peaking can become much more
expensive. And only very rarely used. Letting
the market take care of itself.
February 29, 2008 deeplink respond
Thanks to Jeff Duntemann's mention of my
More Energy Fundamentals in his blog.
Jeff often covers new developments in
alternate publishing as well as dealing with
insider secrets of computer languages.
He also has recently republished the original
Carl and Jerry series from Popular Electronics.
February 28, 2008 deeplink respond
When does Ohm's Law apply in a circuit?
A technician will answer "Always" while
an engineer will answer "Almost never".
The difference being caused by the wildly
different ways that electricity and electronics
is taught to engineers compared to technicians,
high schools, and the military.
Even technician current is backwards compared
to that on the IEEE tie clasp and cuff links.
A raito of voltage to current can be measured
and defined as "little r". Only under unusual
and unique circumstances does "little r" let
itself be defined as a "big R" whose resistance
is a measurable property of a physical device.
For openers, any reactive storage devices
can and usually will make voltage lead or
lag current. Good old "Eli the ice man".
We say that "big R" is a resistance and that
Ohms Law can be applied to a linear circuit.
But "little r" has no predictive value whatsoever
in a nonlinear, or "Non-Ohmic" circuit.
February 27, 2008 deeplink respond
The anvil test for camp coffee: If the anvil
sinks, it is too weak. If the anvil floats, it
is just right. If the anvil dissolves, it is too
strong.
February 26, 2008 deeplink respond
Highly useful info on metals and minerals
appears on This USGS Site.
The current worries about indium shortages
appear alarmist as much of the zinc ore
source is not even being processed.
February 25, 2008 deeplink respond
Revised and updated our Arizona Auction
Resources page. A tutorial appears here.
Your own custom regional auction
resource finder can be created here.
February 24, 2008 deeplink respond
Haven't got the faintest clue department: I just
received a helpline call asking what first appeared
to be some reasonable questions from somebody
working on "electrolysis efficiency improvements".
Until we got to the part where they never heard
of Faraday's Law of Electrolysis.
Which, paraphrased, says: The current EXACTLY
determines how much product you will get
per unit time .
We went through this in depth here, but let's
repeat a few key points:
CURRENT sets electrolysis. The needed
voltage is determined by the electropotential,
the terminal overvoltage, and the conductivity
losses.
STAINLESS STEEL is useless as an efficient
electrode because of the hydrogen overvoltage
of iron. Efficient electrolysizers DEMAND use
of often renewed platinized platinum.
PULSE WAVEFORMS are useless as only their
Fourier DC component contributes significantly
to electrolysis. It is exceptionally easy to badly
measure pulse waveforms.
REQUIRED CURRENT SOURCES are always
horribly inefficient unless special and custom
switchmode circuitry is used.
HOMEBREW HYDROGEN ANYTHING is
exceptionally and monumentally dangerous.
Besides being fundamentally insane.
ELECTROLYSIS IS ITSELF USELESS when
driven from high value sources such as grid,
wind, or pv and used for bulk hydrogen energy.
Caused by the staggering loss of exergy.
The bottom line is this:
If you do not understand exergy, you
SHOULD NOT be pissing around with
electrolysis.
If you do understand exergy, you
WILL NOT be pissing around with
electrolysis.
February 23, 2008 deeplink respond
Org. It usually turns out that the real surprises in
any development program happen half way through.
And that, if you get ahead of yourself, chances are you
may have to start over.
I thought I had nearly completed our new BMP
airbrushing utilities and even started their GuruGram.
Only to discover that gradient fills are much better
done in HSB space than RGB space. Ferinstance,
blending from red to green in RGB space takes you
through gray, while doing so in HSB space takes you
through orange and yellow.
HSB manipulation is likely slower and more complex.
Back to the drawing board.
February 22, 2008 deeplink respond
February 21, 2008 deeplink respond
Yes, we still have our free technical help hotline
going at (928) 428-4073. But we prefer emailing
don@tinaja.com instead. US only, of course.
Questions that cannot be immediately handled
for free can often be done with one of our $89
InfoPacks. Beyond that, consulting and seminars
are available.
But I no longer suffer fools gladly. The instant
it becomes obvious you are a card carrying
member of the Church of the Latter Day
Crackpots, my response will be abruptly
terminated.
The latest reincarnation de jour appears to
involve the Meyer Ludicrosity. Which we
dealt with here.
Summarizing:
(1) The evidence was utterly overwhelming
that Meyer was both a fraud and totally
incompetent when making even the most
fundamental of tech measurements.
(2) In many years, nobody anywhere has been
able to credibly reproduce Meyer. Doing
so, of course, would clearly violate DOZENS
of fundamental thermodynamic, electronic,
physics, economic, and other principles.
(3) Faraday's Law ain't broke. To get from
water to hydrogen, an electron needs
moved. Which, by definition, is a current.
(4) If Meyer was to work, there would have
to be some fundamentally measureable
property of water that would at least hint
at such. These measurements are made
by the thousands dialy by EIS Researchers
with uniformly negative results. There
would also have to be observable anomalies
with standard EDM Machining as well.
Qprox sensors would also not work.
(5) Pissing around with homebrew hydrogen,
besides being utterly pointless, is EXTREMELY
DANGEROUS! One former SEH poster
created that big hole in the map between
Utah and California where Northern Nevada
used to be. Their attempt at winning both the
X Prize and a Darwin Award at the same time
failed when their garage did not go suborbital.
(6) Because of a fundamental thermodynamic
property called exergy, generating hydrogen
for energy uses from high value sources
such as grid, wind, or pv flat out ain't gonna
happen. There ALWAYS will be more
intelligent things to do with electricity than
immediately and irreversibly destroying
most of its quality and value.
