Don  Lancaster's Guru's Lair What's New? 2010 Archive
auctions bargains books contact email home library map ?new? rss

Just made a major improvement to the nav on our home
page. Double clicking causes nav screens to appear with
rapid indexing to just about all of the better stuff on the
entire website.

The JavaScript code to open a window on a mouse click
looks something like this...

onclick="window.open('http:www.tinaja.com/
etsamp1.asp', 'etsamp', 'width=463,height=475,
scrollbars=yes,resizeable=yes,toolbar=yes,
menubar=yes,status=yes,directories=no,location=
yes')"

We kept some of the original site nav just in case a user
has blocked JavaScript. The indexing still works even if
you have disabled the right click or have blocked ad popups.

Our newly revised and updated Electrical Engineering
library page should now be complete.

Please email me with any corrections or suggestions.

One of my favorite "more obscure" semiconductor houses
remains LSI/CSI. Whose location in Lawn Guiland places them
in one of the more remote Silicon Valley suburbs.

They are big on dimmer and blender chips, encoder decorders,
motor controls, PIR interfaces, touch controls, digital locks,
stepper controllers, ac motor drivers, and such. Most prices
are quite low.

The big deal in dimmers these days is reverse phase control.
In which the output is turned on immediately on a zero crossing
and back off mid-cycle. This demands paired MOSFET or BiCMOS
drivers rather than triacs. But provides much lower RFI and
can be more transformer and fluorescent compatible.

I seem to have found a bug in the W3 Validator. In
which my http://www.tinaja.com/eeweb01.asp chokes
it with an "internal error" after several minutes.

Yet the file seems to work fine both in Firefox and
Internet Exploder.

The problem goes away if I remove several tables
of URL's from the original file.

More on website validation utilities here.

We've looked at the perils and pitfalls of pv solar panels
here. In which we have seen that not one net watthour of
pv solar electricity has ever been produced. And that the
panels to date are in no manner renewable nor sustainable.

True net energy production can be anticipated eight years
or so after the fully burdened and subsidy free panel
costs drop under twenty five cents per peak watt.

Claims of "breakeven" usually wrongly treat a subsidy as an
asset, rather than a much larger liability. For every $1000
tax credit, taxes elsewhere have to be charged much more
because of the "iceberg effect". A $1000 tax probably
requires a societial old energy burden of at least $3000, and
sometimes much more.

But there is an even sneakier and more insidious gotcha
in pv panel breakeven costs. We might call this the
"8-track factor". As in 8-track music tapes.

As with most electronics, pv panel technology is improving
at a mind-boggling rate. There is unlikely to be ANY
interest at all in today's technology a very few years
from now. Thus, a gasoline destroying net energy sink pv
panel installed today is exceptionally unlikely to serve out its
full intended lifetime .

The case could thus be made that any present pv panel unable
to break even in five years or so will NEVER break even!

Because the new stuff replacing it will be so much better.

Yet another Dreamweaver bug: If you change a URL,
The "save as" feature may not be enabled. Especially
if the new URL is the same length as the old one.

The workaround is to add then delete a space elsewhere
in the document.

I've been asked about those "penny auction" sites.

These are in no manner an auction. They are simply
a gambling "slot machine" with an utterly outrageous
house percentage take. They are also a tax on the
monumentally stupid.

In a penny auction, you buy the rights to bid, often
around a doller per bid. Prices start at one penny
and increase at one penny per bid. The final award
price is usually very low, perhaps a few hundred
dollars for a new automobile or ten dollars for a
laptop.

Let's assume the site buys a laptop for $300. How can
they make a profit if it only sells for $10? Well, each
bid was sold for something around a dollar. So, there
were 1000 bids to get from a penny to the ten dollar
final price. Their laptop sells  for $1010 and thus will
generate an outrageous profit.

The site also lets you bid on bids. Thus "squaring"
their potential return! Ferinstance, say 100 bids
normally sell for $100. They open at a penny and
close at, say $19. Thus, they sell their 100 bids for
$1919 instead of the usual $100. Their cost per
bid is, of course, ZERO!

The kicker is that most bidders lose most of the time,
blowing their bid dollars for NOTHING in return.

Is this a scam? The "house take" on this gambling
operation is so ridiculously high that there is no need
whatsoever to cheat. Yet cheating is trivially easy by
not shipping or shipping a defective or obsolete product.
Or by shilling or using automated response bots.

The entire operation is clearly online gambling, plain
and simple. At a vig that would cause a Las Vegas
Casino operator to be tarred and feathered and run
out of town on a rail.

Some stats can be found here.

They finally caught the perp who was leaving boxes
of kittens on doorsteps all across town.

And charged them with littering.

Our major revision and upgrade to the Electrical Engineering
web page is nearing completion. It is now fully formatted and
recertified.

Several hundred links still need entered and verified, and a few
minor layout glitches remain. These should get picked up in the
next few days. Please report any problems that are not obviously
waiting for editing.

Several new "click thru" directories have been added. These should
greatly ease site nav. I'm not quite sure yet how these will be
expanded to other site locations.

Here's an update on our current Magic Sinewave status:

Magic sinewaves are a newly discovered class of math functions
that can dramatically improve the quality and efficiency of digitally
derived sinewaves for such tasks as synchronous inverters, motor
drives, pv panels, and electric vehicles.

Magic sinewaves generate the fewest low harmonics consistent with
the minimum number of switching transitions for the highest possible
efficiency. As guaranteed by their underlying math.

Our main magic sinewave library is found here, an intro tutorial here,
an executive guide here, a development proposal here, an ultra fast new
calculator here, and prototype chip info here.

At present, the program is awaiting funding and available time for
expansion.  Current activities include extending the calculator for
longer sequences and expecially delta friendly three phase magic
sinewaves.

Newly competitive 16- and 32- bit low end microcontrollers are
also now being investigated for their ability to simplify time delays
that are exact to a single cycle, have 12-bit or better precision, and
require very low overhead.

Spectral analysis is being further expanded and explored. Using both
newer versions of Sigview and significantly upgraded test equipment.

A possible new class of "GGMS" magic sinewaves was discovered
a few months back that would further dramatically improve harmonic
performance. Sadly, the initial enthuasiasm for this technique may have
been unwaranted. Further exploration to date has shown only modest
performance gains. Caused primarily by introduced subharmonics caused
by the cancellation process itself. Solutions to this issue may or may not
be forthcoming.

The previous magic sinewaves certainly remain an outstanding and fully
proven opportunity.

You can email me for further details on your participation.

As we've seen a number of times in the past, there are
several good reasons to no longer accept checks and
especially money orders for your eBay selling venture.

Firstoff, checks and money orders convert what would
be an instant "outtahere by lunch" closure into what
may or may not happen weeks or months into the
dark distant future.

Second, Paypal has clearly run away with all the marbles
and clearly has become the best mainstream method of
dealing with online payments.

Third, a case can be made that anyone still using checks
or money orders just might be a felon, a flake, or an
otherwise problem oriented individual.

Fourth, many requests for check or money order payments
tend to be for very low dollar amounts. The foremost rule
to success on eBay with cheaper items is "no pissing around".

More on similar topics in our Auction Help library.

Getting circular areas to look decent on bitmapped art
can be tricky. It certainly takes a lot of practice.

This file gives you some circular patterns that are
fairly easy to use.

A second technique is to use Paint's circle or ellipse
tool to work over a white background. You can then
cut and paste a circle or ellipse segment transparently
onto your project. Note that holding the shift key
down creates circles rather than ellipses.

If you are working oversize with a high enough resolution,
you might create a red ellipse or circle and then edit
it to your needed colors. Chances are the rest of the circle
can be eliminated by suitable cutting and pasting of nearby
pixels.

Finally, powerful circle and Bezier cubic spline tools are
available in the PostScript language. You might be able to
create a PDF file and then convert it to a bitmap. Which
in turn gets cut and pasted as needed into your final art.

I'm a great fan of Ockham's Razor that says "The
simpliest explanation is often both the best and the
most correct."

Curiously, the correct spelling is in fact "Ockham"
and not "Occam". And we don't know his last name.
"William of Ockham" just tells us where he lived. As
if referring to me as "Don of Thatcher".

At any rate, I just "discovered" another local
hanging canal. It, of course, was there all the time.
Just in a place that nobody ever bothered to look.
And reachable only by cowpath.

It is astonishingly similar to a prehistoric canal
in the next canyon over that also is hung 90
feet in the air on the side of a difficult mesa.

Ockham's razor suggests strongly that this in
fact has prehistoric origins just like the other
one. There is no particular reason for anglo
pioneers to hang water works on the sides of
mesas. But if they already were there, then
"stealing the plans" may sort of make sense.

There's a curious problem involved with using dams
as hydroelectric sources:

The hydro people want to dam to be
full all the time.

The flood control people want the dam
to be empty all the time.

The irrigation people want the dam to
vary from full to empty.

The rec people do not care whether the
dam is full or empty, but they want it
to always stay at the same level.

History tells us that Alexander Graham Kerntaski was
the first telephone pole.

An expanded and updated GuruGram #92 on Bitmap
Circular Lettering is now available. With its sourcecode
here.

This picks up our latest techniques of creating a catalog
page usable for circular dial lettering and such. Per this
newest example which should appear on eBay shortly.

The concept is based on our "throw another million calculations
at it" such as we have used on our Magic Sinewaves and our
Fun With Fields projects. And expanded upon here.

Our Gonzo Utilities make it simple and fast to create
rotated text in PostScript. A page of all possible rotations
of all possible dial characters is created. Then, almost all
of them are "thrown away", leaving the good stuff.

72 rotations would give you 5 degree changes,a worst
case accuracy of 2.5 degrees, and an average error just
over one degree.

Colors in Paint or whatever are 256 times those in
PostScript and thus transferrable by a simple scaling.

After creating the PostScript utility code, a recent
edition of Acrobat is used to save as a .BMP bitmap.

The bitmap resolution is chosen to create lettering
that is two to five times oversize. The lettering then
gets reduced in Imageview32 or a similar program
to provide antialiasing. TIFF to BMP conversion
can be done in Paint or elsewhere.

The process is "good enough" for larger point
sizes. The Bitmap Typewriter can still give "better"
results at extremely small point sizes. But is
far more tedius to use if numerous rotations are
needed.

Boo Hiss, part two. They did it again.

A new theoretical ( but unproven ) method of using far
less ( 50:1 reduction ) silicon for pv panels may end up
competing with  new CIGS techniques. In which nano
wires are embedded in plastic.

But the hype headlines here are screaming 85 to
96 percent efficiency. When they really mean is
"almost as good an efficiency in unproven theory
as traditional silicon  pv".  And possibly 14 percent
real world if they are lucky.

Turns out there is only one frequency of light
( in the near infrared ) that can be efficiently converted
by conventional silicon. Longer wavelengths are ignored and
become heat. Any "spare change" of shorter wavelengths
are also ignored and become heat.

The absolute theoretical limit is around thirty percent,
and the real world cuts this in half. There are possibly
ways to beat this limit using quantum dots and tetrapods.

Compare this hype against this paper. Or this Slashdot
discussion. Or my tutorial.

Some of the more unusual features of local ag water
works are "switches" that route irrigation water to
several different locations, canals that travel along
the highest (!) portions of a mesa or bajada, and
pioneers who "stole the plans" and overlaid historic
projects directly over prehistoric canal routes.

All of which are "mountain stream" driven, rather
than involved with the Gila River floodplain.

The "Robinson Ditch" is an interesting area that
meets these criteria. And its absence of roads and
presence of cliffs may lead to some hidden surprises.

Frey mesa water can be routed to the Robinson Ditch,
to the Blue Ponds, or to Sheep Tank. The ditch itself
follows a logical but tortuous route and sometimes is
top of mesa or bajada and sometimes at the bottom.

There are hints of prehistoric ag on the satellite
images, but these are insanely easy to confuse with
the Google Maps copy protection.

More on similar topics here.

I'm in the process of doing a sorely needed revision
to our Electrical Engineering web pages.

You can monitor the ongoing process here and still
find the horribly outdated original here.

Acme Mapper and others have apparently switched to
MyTopo topo maps from accurate scans of the original
and official USGS maps. These seem "prettier" and more
uniform. And certainly display better.

But they may lack certain details.

Ferinstance, the old jeep trail that goes the "back way"
to Mud Springs is conspicuously absent. Apparently
there is reduced detail and reduced info on many of
their "free" online maps.

Apparently their"for sale" maps may have better resolution
and more detail.

Also conspicuously absent from the web is any page that
shows the available resolution and date of topo, satellite,
or aerial photo data.

And it sure would be nice to be able to transparently overlay
topo and satellite imagry in any ratio. Five spectra channels
would also be nice, as in infrared, red, green, blue, and
ultraviolet. Along, of course with stereo capabilities.

But what I really need most locally for prehistoric surveys
is plain old higher resolution. And more of it. Sadly, remote
rural areas are unlikely to have a high priority.

As we've seen before, our Bitmap Typewriter can be most
useful for improving ultra small lettering on bitmaps for
eBay product photos and elsewhere.

But the code can be a little awkward to use for rotated text
as might be needed for, say, a test equipment dial.

Instead, a useful alternative that works well at least for larger
point sizes is to note that Acrobat 9 has an ability to save
to a higher resolution bitmap.

Use the export image tiff option. With a higher resolution.

The strategy is simple enough: Create an intermediate bitmap
that has any and all rotations of any and all needed text.
Either in "raw" PostScript or using my Gonzo Utilities.

Here's an intermim example done to five degree resolution.
I'll try to work up a GuruGram on this shortly.

Boo. Hiss.

Recent developments at Bloom may or may not lead to
some improved fuel cell technology. But the 60 Minutes
coverage and other media and hype claims are clearly,
ludicrously, and absurdly "not even wrong".

The Bloom device is a stationary fuel cell that runs off
of natural gas. These have long been available but have been
only cost effective when heat cogeneration can offset all
the high costs, slow load reactions, and limited efficiencies.
Hospitals and laundries have been a useful match.

Purported potential advantages of fuel cells is that they
beat the Carnot thermodynamic limit. Yet none does so
today, and the latest of combined cycle modern power plants
are routinely now exceeding a 60 percent thermal efficiency.
A figure that will be very hard to significantly beat. The best
theoretical hydrogen based fuel cell efficiency ( not remotely
approached today ) is 83 percent.

Fuel cell sizes are not all that small or "silent" when the gas
circulation machinery and synchronous inverters are
considered. The Bloom costs are so outrageous that their
customers have to steal over half their funds from local and
federal government subsidies, grants, and tax credits.

Claims that "we saved $100,000" on electrical costs almost
certainly do not fully and properly account for amortization
and true fully burdened costs. Most especially if the true
"iceberg" costs of subsides is honestly considered. The
best use today for a fuel cell industrial user is as emergency
power backup.

Fuel cells have traditionally had short lifetimes and performance
degradion issues caused by contaminents. Extensions for fuels
beyond ultra clean natural gas have yet to be shown. Such
contaminents as the sulfur in diesel fuel are particularly
troublesome. And, even on a hog farm, biogas is pretty much
limited to running their own ventillators. And, of course, if the
fuel includes carbon, carbon dioxide is a likely byproduct. So,
many pollution issues remain unresolved.

The hype implied that the fuel cell is a power production facility.
It is not. All it is is a natural gas ( or other super clean fuel ) to
electricity CONVERTER. You still need a fundamental source of
net energy before you can convert it. And some sort of a pipe
to deliver it. And somebody else to buy the old net energy off of.

Comparing a fuel cell to a pv array is clearly ludicrous, and
even the media epsilon minuses should realize this. A fuel
cell is a method of converting existing energy. A pv panel
( at least in theory ) can eventually become a true NET
energy source.

Claiming that fuel cells can get you "off the grid" is also
ludicrous. As more and more net alternate energy sources
( which the fuel cell clearly is not ) emerge, the grid becomes
more and more important for brokering sources that may
be time-of-day or presence-of-wind dependent.

And, even if it looks like a pipe, it is still a "grid".

Much more here and here.

The worst nightmare of any Southwestern Art
Gallery: A Degrazia macrame howling coyote.

In teal.

Wesrch has a weekly news update that tracks the costs
of solar pv panels. Per this recent example.

Apparently one or more "steal money off the feds" scams
have just dried up, because prices are now in free fall.

Present panel pricing is  $3.50 per peak watt.

Putting this in perspective, this is SEVEN TIMES the
price required for a pv panel to become utterly and totally
pointless, and FOURTEEN TIMES the price needed
for a pv panel to provide net new energy.

I've got a futher analysis here.

NXP has a new ultra low cost LPC1100 ARM microprocessor,
along with a design contest and some ( almost ) freebie
development tools. Pricing approaches 65 cents each.

16 or even 32 bit microprocessors may end up the better choice
for our Magic Sinewaves if they are cheap enough. A key requirement
for Magsine sourcecode is that it can generate a time delay beyond
4096 cycles ( 12-bit accuracy ) to precisely one cycle accuracy.

With absolutely minimum overhead.

When attempted in an 8 bit envirnoment, "two stage" techniques
involving factoring are needed. Typically with most of the delay
being done by calculation and the remainder by table lookup.
Leading to "pinch points" in the code and making for much more
complex coding and possible realization restrictions.

A Magic Sinewave summary appears here. And our latest calculator
can be found here. With its tutorial here.

If you are into Italian food, you cannot be both pro
volone and anti pasto.

Made some major revisions and updates to the
Onsite Resources selection matrix on our home page.

Most of our web pages have now been upgraded and
recertified. A very few odds and ends remain and will be
attended to when and as Synergetics Partners and
Banner Advertisers permit.

Here is another one of our image postproc projects
that did not turn out half bad and should shortly be up
on eBay.

One of our key tools involved is the Bitmap Typewriter,
which gives you by far the highest possible full pixel .BMP
format fully antialiased typography.

Additional postproc tools are found here.

Further expanded our Gila Day Valley Day Hikes liibary page.

While we "only" have 260+ major entries, if you count
any and all listed possibilities, we are way beyond 400 and
certainly can claim that we now offer 365 Gila Valley day
hikes.

Which should keep you busy for a year or more.

Yes, I have personally verified the overwhelming majority
of these trips. And are reasonably certain of the accuracy
of the rest of them.

Please email me with any corrections or suggestions.

Got an email from an individual who lives near a "fast
flowing river". They were wondering how much hydro electricity
they could recover. The quick answer is "somewhere between
negligible and miniscule". Almost certainly not enough to pay
for the equipment and its amortization.

The math can be enormously simplified by a curious equivalence:
A foot pound of potential energy is pretty much the same size as
a Joule ( or watt-second ) of electrical energy . In fact, at a 73
percent conversion efficiency, they would be identical.

There are 3,600,000 Joules ( or roughly the same number of
foot pounds ) in a kilowatt hour. Or ten cents worth of electricity.

The slope of most rivers is amazingly low. Thirty feet per mile
is often considered whitewater.

Some other equivalences useful for your math: Power is the time
rate of energy consumption. A watt of power is one Joule per
second, or one watt second per second. A gallon of water weighs
about eight pounds. "Pints a pound the world around". There are
7.5 gallons or 62.4 pounds of water in a cubic foot. Water flows
in CFS can sometimes be found is sites like this one.

The usual problem with low head hydro is that enormous
quantities of water have to flow through the water wheel or
other recovery device. Which makes for outrageously large
and expensive equipment costs.

Much more in our energy fundamentals tutorials.

The latest Gurugram #104 is on Lessons Learned
During a uv Lamp Debugging.

Sourcecode is found here.

Did a major expansion on our Fundamental Factors
Underlying Recent Technical Innovation paper.

A few Wavetek manuals are newly available from the
Fluke website. Others are on BAMA or on this site.

Yet others are becoming readily available on low price
CD's such as this example.

If the last link 404's on you, search eBay on "Wavetek".

Google maps really provides a mix of satellite and
aerial photo images. In certain areas, some of thsese
can end up with exceptional hidden resolution. In
others, lower resolutions are being upgraded.

Such as this herd of elephants at five foot per inch
resolution!

Here is how you can find if "secret" hidden resolution is
available: Go to your target location and raise the thermometer
all the way. If you get an error message, you already have
exceeded the available resolution for this exact area.

If not, click on the Link button, and paste into your Browser
URL bar. Near the right end of the URL listing will be a Z=18
typically. Try replacing this with the highest Z that does not
get an error message. The elephants are at Z=23.

Try it on Pittsburgh's Point Park. In regards to this matter,
yinz guys can count da choppam sammiches.

Sadly, the prehistoric areas I am locally interested in seem
stuck at 200 feet per inch. Superb aerial photography in the
"far side of back of beyond" is likely a low priority.

Few perople realize that most electronic components
run on smoke.

Proof of this is that, if you let the smoke out, the component
no longer works.

Did a long overdue major overhaul and recertification
of our Pic a Peck of Pics library page.

A few links and books still need added along with
some final proofing and checking.

The older Pic Links and Pic Resources libary pages
have been merged into the new one.

This should be the last major library page needing
updating and revision. A very few secondary pages remain,
and a new Fractals Library is planned, among others.

Please email me with any corrections or suggestions.

We hope to shortly resume our eBay offerings on our
uv-c short wavelength ultraviolet bulbs and bulb/ballast
combinations.

While intended for germicidial apps, these should also
see use for rockhound and geology apps, as well as
replacements for classic EPROM erasers. At a fraction
of the usual pricing.

We will probably be offering mofidied units that are simply
plug and go. Apply power and the lamp lights. Remove power
and it goes out.

An approximate original schematic is found here. If you need to
reactivate the oddball original delay on dropout feature, you can
email me for details.

For most users, it is simplest to provide any safety lockouts
directly on the input power line.

Reminders here to NEVER view short ultraviolet light without
proper safety glasses, to avoid skin exposure, to prevent
fingerprints on the glass, and to dispose any end-of-life
units in an appropriate and approved manner.

The word seems to finally be getting out that the
"hydrogen economy" is a ludicrous scam of zero technical
or environmental merit.

A summary of a few of the more fatal arguments against
the hydrogen economy appears here.

One of the side effects seems to be the sci.energy.hydrogen
newsgroup degrading into nothing but totally off topic conspiracy
theories by utterly unhousebroken posters. Even the
"Meyer Denialists" seem to have vanished.

And, of course, the "water powered car" fiasco is debunked here
and here. With additional pseudoscience topics getting trashed here.

Added a new Basic Stamp page to our Book Lists.

As other lists are added or updated, a revision date
will be added to their display boxes

A reminder that buying ALL of your books via our
links supports the Guru's Lair at no additional cost
to you .

Many of the uv-c lamp ballast combinations we are
refurbing seem to have a curious common problem:
Per the approximate schematic, the rightmost 2N2222
transistor seems to be blown. And possibly done so during
preliminary product testing.

The 2N2222, of course, is a bulletproof  "cast iron" and
"gold standard" industrial mainstay. While used in
two other locations in the ballast, only the ( apparently )
gently used rightmost transistor in the schematic seems
to get trashed.

I am guessing that a startup transient does something
wildly wrong to pin 3 of the 53HD420. Creating a
destructively avalanching situation. Which could
have even been the direct cause of the SMT bankruptcy
from whence these came.

There is as much as 400 volts lurking elsewhere in
the 53HD420.

One apparent fix is to replace the 2N2222 and place
a 2200 Ohm or so resistor in its collector circuit.
This might reduce any avalanching current to the
point where it may be less destructive.

But a better approach is to defeat the entire time
delay on dropout feature by cutting the foil to the
rightmost 2N2222 collector. This converts the
ballast into a simple power-on becomes lamp-on
circuit.

Did I ever tell you my CIA incompetence story?

Bee and I had recently moved to Arizona and started
making Sunday trips that more or less continue to this
day. Sometime around 1963, we decided to explore an
apparently somewhat abandoned army air force base in
Marana. With no more than the vague hope that there
might still be an open lunch restaurant there.

We were stopped by some totally clueless klutzes wearing
no identifiable uniforms and holding enormous and woefully
obsolete huge SCR536 WWII era walkie talkies.

They obviously did not believe who we were or what we
were up to. But THEY COULD NOT STOP US BECAUSE
THEY WERE NOT THERE! As we continued, dark shadows
tracked us furtively from each and every building, again
with the obsolete walkie talkies.

Eventually, rumors of CIA involvement in Marana became
legendary.

All this from the folks who brought you the Bay of Pigs.

The theory on uv and regular fluorescent lamps
is simple enough: Warm up the filaments and then
briefly apply a higher voltage to "strike" the plasma
arc. Then switch to a current regulated lower voltage
for normal operation.

The schematic for the uv-c ballast lamp combinations
we are in the process of refurbing appears somewhat
mysterious. At first glance, it seems a resonant RLC
circuit provides "Q multiplication" for high voltage
during initial heating. And then gets largely shorted
out by the plasma for normal operation.

The only little puzzle is this: The resonant frequency
of the LC combination seems to be around 124 kHz while
the main drive waveform is a 34 kHz square wave.

Even if resonant at the fundamental, the voltage rating
of the resonating capacitor would be much too low. The
Q is apparently above 20, which could lead to 4000 volts
of maximum multiplication. And the resonance frequency
would exactly have to match the drive frequency without
getting into component tolerance problems.

What really seems to be happening?

The voltage across a series capacitor in a RLC circuit
is not obvious. It starts out equaling the input amplitude
at very low frequencies, goes through a resonant peak,
and then eventually drops to zero at very high frequencies.

If run below its resonance frequency, the entire supply
voltage and possibly more appears across the capacitor .
In this circuit, the 170 v peak square wave should be more
than enough to strike the plasma in the warming bulb.

The RLC circuit is thus  purposely run well BELOW its
resonance frequency. At resonance, the voltage
buildup would be unacceptably high. Its resonance
frequency is apparently carefully chosen to NOT be
near any harmonic of the fundamental square wave.
Thus it is purposely spotted between the third and
fourth  harmonic. And largely tolerance insensitive.

Some further circuit hints may appear here.

Got a curious email from an individual developing a
low ratio diesel fuel additive that increases mileage,
reduces emissions, cures cancer, milks cows, etc...

While apparently a competent researcher, it was
clearly far away from his skills and competence areas.
His test procedures and instrumentation appeared
a little on the thin side as well.

I told them this was well outside my range of expertise,
but that I felt that...

The claim of "lower temperatures" would
likely LOWER the theoretical Carnot
Efficiency, rather than improve it.

Competent petroleum engineers have spent
tens of thousands of manhours optimizing the
mix and performance blends of hydrocarbons.
Obvious additives have likely long ago been
evaluated and discarded.

The "miracle additives" field is rife with scams,
hoaxes, rotten labwork, and wishful thinking.
Even if it worked as claimed, there would be
a long and perilous uphill credibility battle.

The experiment with tetraethyl lead as a gasoline
additive became an unmitigated disaster.

Unless he was a SAE member, his father was
a senior SAE member, and his grandfather
an SAE member emeritus, interest in his
product would be ZERO. As would its
marketability.

More on product development in our Blatant
Opportunist library.

More on energy here and here.

One of the great unresolved issues of thermodynamics
is whether hell is endothermic or exothermic.

If endothermic, eventually hell freezes over.
If exothermic, eventually all hell breaks loose.

Our long overdue revision and recertification of our
Pick a Peck of PICS library page should shortly be
finished.

Meanwhile, you can monitor the process of the updates
with this temporary link.

The new library page will combine three of our older
PIC library pages.

A reminder that I will be giving a pair of eBay
lectures this Saturday February 6th in the Jupiter
Room of Discovery Park at 6:30 PM.

The two papers can be previewed here and here.

If there is further interest, we can also do an eBay
photography and image prep workshop afterwards.

The Discovery Park campus is near 20th Avenue and
Discovery Park Blvd ( AKA 32nd street ) in Safford, AZ.

Our testing of a large lot of ultraviolet lamps and
lamp /ballast assemblies is leading to some interesting
test setups and procedures.

The ballast schematic was traced by removing
the bulb for convenience using solder braid and
then backlighting with one of the new ultra cheap
LED flashlights. A new 2X Ottlight also proved
pricey but handy.

Splitting a ballast and bulb and adding a T5
four pin socket lets you separately isolate whether
a problem is bulb or ballast related.

The ballasts are very much a hot chassis item and
fireworks will result if you use a scope ground
improperly. I seemed to be out of stock of isolation
transformers, but I did find a 110/220/440 transformer
that was useable by splitting the 220 volt outputs and
using them at 110.

An interesting check of the crucial resonant startup
circuit can be done by using a sweep generator in the
30 kHz region. The level and be lowered to the required
less than 0.3 volts peak to peak and the source impedance
reduced to 5 Ohms or less by a 10:1 attentuator.

One issue appears to be the resonant starting frequency
differing from the driver square wave frequency. This
is still under study. We have literally hundreds of DOA
units that should be easily repairable.

A "classic" 60 Hz fluorescent startup circuit should also
give an independent check on bulb operation. Most any
transformer primary that limits ac current to 300 mils or
so at 80 volts should work. A pushbutton connects the
filaments initially and its release should produce a
high voltage flashover transient to provide the initial
plasma.

More as I find out exactly why there were so many
problems with these units from a SMT bankruptcy.

We'll get these back on eBay just as soon as we
have devices we can be proud of.

Updated and revised our Santa Claus Machine
book list. More on rapid prototyping RP techniques
are found here.

Our other book lists will be updated when and as
time and interest permit. Your support as a banner
advertiser or Synergetics Partner can speed up this
process.

Meanwhile, buying most any book via this link
lets you support the Guru's Lair at no additional cost.

Got yet another call on the homopolar motor, AKA the
Faraday disk. We looked at these here and here, while
Wikipedia has a good summary here.

These are the only known "pure" DC machine and are
characterized by extremely high currents and very low
voltages. While they do make dandy student reports and
projects, they are utterly and totally useless because of
slip ring costs, losses, and potential hazmat issues.

Understanding their operation is tricky, which leads to
all sorts of totally bogus overunity pseeudoscience claims.

One problem in understanding is that Lorenz Force equations
have to be used instead of Faraday Induction equations. A
second is that you cannot tell when or if a uniform magnetic
field is rotating. Per this classic paper. Or this simple
experiment.

I know of no commercial homopolar devices for sale, and
their last practical use was many decades ago. These days,
it is cheap, efficient, and trivial to convert regular ac or dc
levels into low voltage high current when and where needed.

Counter EMF's and conservation of energy is alive and well,
in all homopolar devices. Just as would be expected.

Did a major overhaul and recertification of our
Santa Claus Machines RP library page.

The ARA just formally announced exactly where
and when their winter regional will be.

I will be presenting a Gila Valley Dayhikes paper this
Saturday January 30th at 2:00 PM in the Gould-Simpson
Geology Building, of the University of Arizona, room 209.

Rumored to be in Tucson. AKA Nogales Junction.

The meeting is free and open to anyone with a technical interest
in caves and caving. UofA parking is mostly free on Saturdays.

Keep watching the ARA Website for emerging details .

Uploaded a copy of my one and only patent.

In general, patents are a very bad scene for individuals
and small scale startups. More details can be found in
our Patent Avoidance library.

Did a major overhaul and recertification of our
Wavelets library page.

Five library pages remain in our current update and
revalidation program.

Org, part II. A database revision to Spyware Doctor apparently
removed more of our Internet Security 2010 virus. All ugly
messages are now gone, and none of the original filenames
seem to remain present.

The only obvious remaining trace is that green wallpaper is
forced on the desktop and the Desktop Change feature is
locked out of the Control Panel. Apparently this applies only
to one user and should be fixable by creating a new user and
moving one file at a time to their account.

I'm still going to wait a few days to see what Spyware Doctor or
the newsgroups can come up with.

What would be really insidious if Spyware Doctor were
part of the scam. You do have to manually cancel their yearly
update charges. And the styles of the two are wildly different.

Did a major overhaul and recertification of our Golly
Gee Mister Science library page.

Six library pages remain in our current update and
revalidation program.

Please report any errors, omissions or corrections.
Currently updated and recertified pages should have
an eBay link to the right of the main title.

Despite some good firewalls, use of Firefox only,
passing Shields Up with flying colors, and extreme
downloading care, we managed to pick up the
Internet Security 2010 virus. Most likely from a
video download site.

The virus trashes your desktop wallpaper then gives you
all sorts of bogus and unremovable "infected" messages
to try and con you into a "we can remove this" paid
subscription. The virus is highly infuriating but not
especially destructive.

Legitimate methods of at least reducing this virus are
available through Spyware Doctor. or Malwarebytes.
Otherwise, manual removal can be dangerous and painful.

However, my first attempt at using Spyware Doctor
apparently removed most of the virus files and any
detection of them. But left the desktop wallpaper
trashed and one ugly message remaining.

If you have any suggestions on how to fix this
problem, please email me. Present strategy is to
wait a few days and see what shows up on the
newsgroups. Or if Spyware Doctor cleans up their
repair with new updates.

Most wallpaper would have a .png, .jpg, .gif, or
.bmp extension that can easily be cataloged with
the Windows XP search dog. With the theory you
could simply replace it with something benign.
Nothing obvious came up on first try here.

Again, please email me with your solution.

What is the math behind the "dollar per peak watt" holy
grail of pv panels?

Well, the dollar per peak system watt is the price level at
which a pv panel ceases to be a gasoline destroying net energy
sink and finally at long last becomes totally pointless.

Taken in pv totality, not one net watthour of silicon pv panel
electricity has ever been produced!

At this price level, the panels, of course, remain NOT in any
manner green, renewable or sustainable.

Assume you have a system that produces 1000 peak watts at
noon. And that a utilitiy's avoided cost afternoon peaking is a
dime per kilowatt hour. A one kilowatt peak panel can thus be
expected to produce five kilowatt hours per day realistically.
Equal to fifty cents worth of peaking electricity.

Per this amortization shedule, an investment for ten years at
ten percent that costs fifty cents per day would be $1135. Or
( nominally ) just over a dollar per peak watt.

Naturally, that is the total system cost, INCLUDING the
synchronous inverter, all labor, maint, compliance, and
installation. To reach this holy grail level of a dollar per
peak watt, the  actual panel costs would likely have to drop under
fifty cents per peak watt.

At the dollar per peak system watt level, it makes no sense
for a utility to buy in, because all they would be doing is selling
a conventional peaking watt for a dime and using that same dime
for buying a dime's worth of pv solar. AKA "paint it green".

In general, since the utility has much better economics than small
scale individuals, it makes even less sense for an individual to buy
in at the dollar per peak watt system level.

To become a genuine renewable and sustainable net energy source,
system costs would have to drop significantly below the holy grail level.
Perhaps a quarter per peak panel watt to actually displace traditional
peaking sources.

It likely would take many years after the quarter per peak panel
watt is reached before any long term actual energy breakeven is in fact
reached. And with new CIGS investments, net pv energy flow is bound to
get a  lot worse before it imporoves.

The California initiative ripoff alone is likely to set pv energy breakeven
back by as much as half a century!

Up to that point, the panels remain gasoline destroying net energy sinks
that are not in any manner renewable nor sustainable. And certainly
not green.

Much more here.

Some of the solid state ballast circuits for fluorescent
and uv lamps involve fascinating new engineering. Here
is an approximately correct schematic for the ballast
we are providing for several of our eBay uv lamp offers.

And a paper on somewhat similar circuitry appears here.

One key component is an ultrasonic self-oscillating half bridge
driver such as the International Rectifier IR53HD420. This
converts a pair of line power supplies into a 163 volt square
wave, typically at a 35 kHz or so rate.

The square wave is fed to an inductor. The inductor can be
much, much smaller than a traditional ballast because of the
higher frequency. It also can be quieter and more efficient.

During the preheat startup, the inductor is resonated (!) with
a suitable capacitor in series with the bulb filaments. After
startup, the inductor acts as the usual current limiting ballast.
With the bulb's plasma largely shorting out the capacitor.

The ballasts are very much a "hot chassis" circuit. An
isolation transformer is a must when viewing any scope
waveforms. Otherwise, connecting a scope ground lead is
certain to cause fireworks.

We have both short wavelength uv-c bulbs and ballasts
available here.

Corrected, improved, and updated some of the links on our
ISMM Incredible Secret Money Machine page.

So much has changed in so many ways that I've pretty much
decided to not do a revised ISMM. Unique classics should not
be messed with. Rev II will be our first full book to be scanned
and placed on The Guru's Lair.

I've also left the ISMM library content pretty much the way it
was as an archive. Although I did add a key new paper or two
along with the revalidation, format, and nav updates.

Other of my books and articles will appear as time and
funding permit. You can dramatically speed up this process
by your support as a banner advertiser, associate, infopack
purchaser, consultant's net partner, or simplly by buying any
book through this link.

Several dozen of our previous article reprints already can
be found here.

It is the greasy whistle that gets squeaked.

Our state legistlature has, in their infinite wisdom,
closed both a local state park and their fire marshall's
office.

Yeah, it is easier to bitch when your own ox is getting
gored. But the loss in state sales tax would dramatically
and clearly exceed the park's budget deficit.

The fireman certification program to date has resulted
in dramatic improvements in volunteer orginizations.
With substantial reductions in insurance premiums for
most of the state. Stopping such things as arson investigation,
school safety programs, and annual and regional fire schools
also seems equally and monumentally stupid.

Yeah, there's major budget issues. But cutting things on the
basis of who will bitch the least cannot possibly end up optimal.

Corrected, improved, and updated some of the links on our
home page.

I was recently asked for my views on "global warming".

After many decades of careful observation here in the southwest
over such things as flood and fire frequency and severity, overgrazing,
species invasion, overbuilding, water management, and drought,
I firmly believe that...

Climatic and weather VARIABILITY are dramatically
on the rise and will continue to become worse
for the forseeable future .

Much, if not most of the increase in variability
appears to me to clearly be man caused.

Business as usual will no longer hack it.

We better fervently HOPE that the majority of the
problem is in fact man caused; Otherwise, it will
surely end up MUCH harder to fix.

Yes, the situation is enormously complex. Yes, outright
mistakes will be made. Not to mention unintended consequences
and hidden agendas. But, at least to me, doing nothing would be the
gravest and greatest mistake of all.

My own feelings are that "carbon free" is a monumentally
stupid goal. "Carbon neutral" makes infinitely more sense.

And that silicon pv panels are an outright scam. When taken
in their totality, not one net watthour of pv energy has ever
been produced! As proven by not one power utility yet using them
for fully burdened, subsidy, R&D,and greenie free profitable peaking
energy. The panels remain a gasoline destroying net energy
sink and will likely remain so untill eight years or more after their
fully burdened price drops under twenty five cents per peak
watt.

Meanwhile, the entire scam is in no manner green, renewable,
nor sustainable. It ain't even close.

More here and here.

May you live in interesting times.

Did a major recertification and update to our Webmastering Library
page. This has now been combined with our older and sorely outdated
Web Links page.

About six library pages remain to be brought up to modern standards.

Updated and reverified our Consultant's Net library page.

Updated and reverified our Captain Video Secret
Mountain Labratory library.

This was one of the dustier nooks and crannies
of our Guru's Lair, so it remains mostly a historical
archive. Although I did reorganize it and add
a few new items and updates.

Much historical and engineering data is about to "poof gone"
vanish unless new web champions can be found. The impact
on this on American engineering cannot be oversstated.

For the new paradigm is that "Iffen it ain't on the web cheap
or free, it doesn't exist".

Tremendous strides are being made in some areas. Ferinstance,
All of Desert Magazine can be found here. And much of Heathkit
here. HP ( now Agilent ) is aggressively making most of their legacy
documents available free on the web. While Tektronix has released
theirs to the public domain for low cost availability.

Sometimes who owns what becomes muddled, and things can end
up as catch can. While rights to Popular Electronics and Radio
Electronics remain available ( Contact the Marana, Arizona city
council! ) , no champion has emerged to offer all of everything.
Although myself, Jeff Duntemann, and Michael Holley and others
are hosting various bits and pieces for our own nefarious needs.

But obstructionists like the IEEE and Elsivier steadfastly insist in
shooting themselves in the foot by refusing to make any and all
technical papers over three years old freely available on the web.

One recent example that begs for a champion: The first road over
the Big Lue mountains in Greenlee county ran smack into a volcanic
piton core. So they simply tunneled thru it, similar to the holes
through California's redwood trees. That photo used to be piled
six deep here in the Gila Valley. Yet I've found it impossibly
difficult to locate on the web. Surely it is public domain.

The tunnel itself is long gone, having been trashed when the
road was more recently paved. And thus a tunnel-in-the-volcano
champion is sorely needed.

More here.

Knowing which regional newspapers have the highest circulations
can be very useful in searching for auction classified listings.

This new website ranks the papers by each state.

Much more help here and here.

Added a new Video Books resource listing to our
Book Access library.

A reminder that using this library for all of your
book purchases supports the Guru's Lair at no
additional cost to you .

The URL for Apple Assembly Line online reprints apparently
changed since our earlier mention.

I do have many of the collectible hard copy originals available for
sale. email me if you are interested.

Did I ever tell you my secret fire lookout's recipe
for gourmet boiled can?

The secret lies in the 24 hours prep time and using
last night's dishwater.

Made a major update and recertification of our
Fonts & Images library.

Several of our image postprep files had been
hard to find on our website, destpite my near daily
use of them. These are newly included in the library.
and include our NOWHIT01.PSL punchthru avoider,
our KNOCKBACK.PSL white backgrounder, and
our NUBKG01.PSL background filler and optoinal
vignetter.

More use details on these appear here.

Such a deal.

Texas Instruments is selling Dick Tracy radios for $49 each.

Its called their eZ430-Chronos development system and comes
built into a sports watch. It includes full multiband wireless,
a heart monitor interface, three axis accellerometers, an
altimiter, battery and temperature sensors, and encryption
options.

Besides recording and storing eleven hours of data.

Apparently there's no GPS and its cow milking options are
still severely limited. As is its PostScript ability. Sigh.

We also have a unique five acres for sale in
an extremely remote ( think survivalist ) area
immediately adjacent to the East Fork of the
Gila River and nearly surrounded by New Mexico's
Gila Wilderness.

3 074 074 248 118 District-02N Section 11
Township 13 S Range 13W PT NH 4.7Acres

Taxes are currently $2.79 per year.

Access is by foot or horse only over National
Forest land. You can email me for more details
on this stunningly unusual opportunity. Asking
$6900 per acre with financing available.

We have a Southern Oregon Gold Hill spectacular
view property for sale. Asking $8900 per acre.

We have recently secured a new full access easement for
these 20 acres. Power is on the property. We are
now working closely with a professional land use planner
and fully expect Jackson County homesite approval.

Legal description is T36 R3W S16 Tax Lot 400.

Very attractive financing is available. Mid-size city
amenities are twelve minutes away at Medford. The
property borders directly  on the town of Gold Hill.
The Rogue River  is nearby; beaches and mountains
are an hour away.

Here's some photos...

You can click expand these. Then click again.

This steep to sloping parcel is immediately adjacent to the Gold
Hill city limits and offers absolutely outstanding views. It is in one
of the most in-demand rural areas in the country, and has really great
access both to recreation and to midsize city resources. Plus superb
climate, low crime, and good schools.

Here is a map. Property is the green rectangle "pointed to" by
Thirteenth Street.

A professional certified apprasial has just been
completed and came in at $160.000.00. Additional
apprasial details can be made available to you
under NDA by contacting us or else by phoning
(928) 428-4073.

This is the last remaining undeveloped large view
parcel immediately north of Gold Hill.

You can click here for an aerial photo and flyby.

Guided tours are newly available by contacting
annemarie@chaparralrealtygroup.com  or by
calling Anne Marie at (541) 292-3535.

Closed out this 2009 blog archive and started a
new 2010 one.

Modified and revalidated our Bitmapped Fonts
library page.

This page is largely obsolete, having been replaced
by newer code in our Fonts & Images library page.
I've kept it as a historical archive.

Specifically, our newer Bitmap Typewriter creates
ultra high quality bitmap lettering on the fly. And
works with any PostScript font in any pixel count size.

This eliminates the neet for individual instances of
each and every pixel count in each and every font.

A revised Fonts & Images should appear in a few days.

A reminder that Linksys modems and wireless modules
had a heat problem that could cause slow and erratic web
responses after long use times.

Newer units have slightly larger ventillation holes, although I
suspect they are still too small.

Workarounds are to put the unit up on blocks so there
is a minimum of one inch of clearance off the desk. And
to NEVER stack units or put papers on top of them.

Updated, expanded, and improved our Book-on-demand Publishing
library pages.

The problem with Captain Video is simply this: They
are "for real" our goodwill ambassadors to outer space!
Along with Roller Derby and Kukla, Fran, and Ollie.

In 1949, our sun suddenly became a radio star, blasting
out vast quantities of new VHF energy. In 60 years, this
has swept out one million cubic light years of space and
has been sent to roughly 2700 candidate star systems.

And still at a sensitivity level detectable with our
current technology. And new candidate star systems are
being contacted at a cube law rate, while the energy
levels are only dropping square law.

What if...

What if a candidate star system receives a perfectly
lucid twelve second clip of "Roller Derby" as the
sum total of all that is known about Earth culture?

Updated, expanded, and improved our Gila Day Hikes
library pages.

I'll be presenting an ARA paper on this at U/A Tucson
Saturday January 30th at 2:00 PM. More details here
as they get posted. All are welcome to attend at no charge.

I'll also be doing some eBay papers at Discovery Park
on February 6th. Based on this paper and this one.
In the Jupiter room at 6:30 PM. More details as they
emerge.

If you try Googling on a topic that is "too thin", you might end
up with mostly false hits or "wildly wrong" responses.

It seems that I mentioned a company with an odd name spelling
back in March of 1993 as a bizarre source of "not even wrong"
pseudoscience. Actually, they were so mesmerizingly awful that
they were clearly in the "what are they on and where do we get
some of it?" class.

Somebody Googled them, and we ended up in slots #2 and #3
in the response! They ended up calling me and insisting that I
was a source of supply for their "action at a distance" utter
hogwash.

The point being that Google works very well given a "thick"
enough subject. But otherwise can lead to the truly bizarre.

Updated, expanded, and improved our Bee's Favorites
library pages.

Updated, expanded, and improved our Math Stuff
library pages.

  ( earlier material appears here. )

 

Some fragments may appear here used to ease layout of long Dreamweaver files. Please ignore...

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