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Welcome to our Guru's Blog for 2017...

December 31, 2017
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Expanded and revised our directors cut for the Applewriter Cookbook. Find its file here and its sourcecode here.

Director's Cuts are my method of restoring Linotype era books and stories to well beyond their formal glory. The major benefits include astonishing low file sizes, "perfect" typography and backgrounds, color addons, full URL linkings and clickthrus, image click expansion, dehyphenation, paragraph ledding, and great heaping bunches more.

The process starts with a scan fed to Acrobat .PDF followed by text recognition and optimization. Pages are then cut to clipboard and fed to my Gonzo Utilities. Gross scanning typos are then fixed, followed by reformatting. Surprisingly little rekeying is required. As many figures as possible are regrouped into standard box procs of one sort or another.

The method does have a steep learning curve and is quite labor intensive. It is also not suitable for legal documents or "Shakespearean" quality originals.

Full services available.

December 30, 2017
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The smallest 4K resolution screens are apparently 24 inches. And, yeah, you'd have to be about three inches away to actually have your eye see this resolution.

But there is a major hidden advantage. Your print screen key now can have four times the resolution! Which significantly improves your capturing the uncapturable . And renders the concept of IP rights "quaint" at best. You will have to make sure you have the latest Window version, the latest screen drivers, and a display board that can handle 4K.

December 29, 2017
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Our latest pseudoscience bashing post has been newly revised here. With its sourcecode here. Along with a historic third party coverage here.

Some rules...

NEVER attack pseudoscience with manic religious fervor. Or you become what you think you are attacking.

NEVER directly confront a pseudoscience proponent. All this does is piss them off and get them into a "shoot the messenger" mode.

ALWAYS try to give third parties useful, authentic, and genuine scientific resources. Such as here and here. Let them fight the actual battles.

ALWAYS remember that rectocranial inversion can be both acute and chronic at the same time. Especially when they are "not even wrong".

And some links to our other pseudoscience stuff...

How to Bash Pseudoscience
How to scam a student paper
      This one is only "slightly"
       incorrect. But which?

Supraluminal Dowsing for Brown's
      Gas in Roswell.
Trashing auto electrolysizers
Debunking water powered cars.
 
Arguments AGAINST the hydrogen
      economy
Investigating Brown's Gas 

The bogus magic lamp.
The actual bogus magic lamp paper. 
My very first perpetual motion machine
Our main Pseudoscience library

December 28, 2017
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Time for our usual end-of-year predictions...

Long overdue public increasing awareness of power and energy consumption, partially brought about by power utilities making meter readings owner accessible.

Total elimination of "unintended consequence" federal price supports and marijuana farm subsidies dropping street prices under a cotton comparable 59 cents per pound. With standardization on 500 pound bales.

Unlikely third world countries very soon dropping their pv panel prices to the utility grade twenty five cents per peak panel watt demanded for true renewability and sustainability.

Major increase in home butane honey oil explosions.

Expanding interest in "water from air" devices.

The sudden and total demise of coal.

Controversial but credible detection of extra-terrestrial mid-level intelligence "real soon now". Perhaps a planet full of asparagus. And more "WTF" signals yet to come.

Full width static self-duplexing printheads that can offer dramatic printer simplification and speedups.

Reduction in traditional auctions and auctioneers brought about by explosive online popularity. Many traditional auctioneer  skills are clearly no longer useful.

Dropping relevance of ISO fire ratings, combined with volunteer daytime response problems, dramatic cost increases, and major funding issues. ( But - hey. TFD just got a three! Which is the best it can get. Top dog. It seems the paid departments hog all the twos and ones. )

Strong sales of ultra resolution smart tv's despite zero available content. Whose largely unintended  side effect will dramatically increase the quality of IP print screen violations.

The terabyte revolution being largely ignored, moving directly instead into the petabyte revolution. One thumb drive to hold all movies, or all books, or all history. With emerging utterly disruptive IP issues.

Increasing climatic and weather variability, combined with size and frequency of outrageous fires. All clearly caused by human activity.

Dramatic increases in near field power transmission. Wireless chargers going from fraction of inches up to several feet. Driven by WiFi contactless charging.

Total self-destruction of traditional politics. Merging of tv sets and monitors into identical products.

Substantial medical breakthroughs, especially in the areas of cancer, diabetes, female sexuality, dentistry, nootropics, and Alzheimers.

Santa Claus rapidly becoming politically incorrect.

Social media eye siphoning dramatically cutting into more traditional website present and future use.

Dramatic increase in the popularity of hacker spaces, fab labs, and makerspaces.

Memory availability increasing exponentially, while memory needs are only increasing linearly. "Throw another million calculations at it".

Rapid demise of conventional desktop computers with laptops utterly dominating.

AI Artificial Intelligence soon crossing a self-awareness threshold. Boy, are they gonna be pissed.

Computers that are so cheap there is no longer any point in charging for them.

Stunning new HVAC efficiency breakthroughs by way of nanotechnology and other new or yet unapplied concepts.

The stranglehold on technical research publication finally being broken, with open source dissemination dominant, low access costs, easy publication, long term retention, and peer review taking place after publication rather than before.

December 27, 2017
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The encounter of the long count keeper.

December 26, 2017
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Uploaded a Son of Cheap Video free eBook here.

Additional free ebooks here.

Your help in finding additional scans needed...

Active Filter Cookbook ( autographed hard copy here )
Micro Cookbook volume I ( autographed hard copy here!
TTL Cookbook ( autographed hard copy here
CMOS Cookbook 
All about Applewriter
Hexadecimal Chronicles 
Manual De Circuitos Integrados TTL
Pacific Rim TTL
Goodyear Aerospace AEEMs 
For Low Cost, Count on RTL 
Big TTL Wall Chart
Big CMOS Wall Chart
Cave Crawler's Gazette

December 25, 2017
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Uploaded a Cheap Video Cookbook free eBook here. It is on the longish side, owing to some higher res scans. But I have made it fully text searchable and web friendly.

The most successful and most spectacular commercial device derived from Cheap Video technology can be found here.

What is really frustrating is that a Directors Cut can be done to get down near 3 Megs per page with perfect typography and greatly improved artwork. But only with an hour-per-page time commitment. Outside funding required.

Additional free ebooks here.

December 24, 2017
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Updated and posted our latest Reay Canal Field Notes here and its sourcecode here.

Updated our latest Field Notes links here. With much more on our Bajada Hanging Canals here.

December 23, 2017
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Placed a new Director's Cut concluding our r Applewriter Cookbook here with its sourcecode here. Director's Cuts are my Gonzo Utilities method of dramatically restoring Linotype Era books and papers.

While the biggest benefits are astonishingly small file sizes ( 4K per page for the present AWCB! ), these can offer perfect registration, perfect fonts, no typos or dropouts, full color, url links, expandable images, simplified color, easy nav, fast loads, etc, etc...

The downsides of Director Cuts include a steep learning curve and being time and labor intensive. Perhaps an hour per page, much higher with schematics or specialty pages.

More ebooks here, while our other Director's Cut samplers presently can be found herehereherehere, here, and here.

Consulting available, as are full projects.

December 22, 2017
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Our free Applewriter Cookbook eBook download is now available here.

After applying my usual anti-bloat tricks, the file remains somewhat long at 17 Megs. But it does create illusions of fast downloads by way of byte range retrieval.

There's a few more things I can try. By going to our Director's Cut techniques, I can probably get the size under 2 Megs. But this would take 120+ hours of time and would seem to demand external funding.

More free eBooks here. And your help is needed on these.

December 21, 2017
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The overwhelming majority of historic bajada canals seem to have moderate to compelling evidence of having clearly been "steal the plans" reworks of prehistoric originals.

But the Roper Lake Canal raises several age issues...

It seems to be orthogonal (!) to Henry's Canal near 32.74629 -109.72657 presently defying rational or credible prehistoric explanations.

Roper Lake may not have existed before the 1960's or might have been a local artesian pond. It is not on the 1960 topo, but appears on the 1985 topo.

The concrete ditch grade seems too steep for a mud original around 32.74529 -109.73730

The aggregate seems much less coarse than other historic rework, such as Marijilda.

Significant canal portions are cardinal oriented.

These puzzlements should be resolvable by appropriate ditch bosses or historians. Contact us if you can help.

December 20, 2017
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So, what percentage of obviously historic bajada hanging canals were clearly based on prehistoric originals? A best current guess is "well over 95 percent".

Firstoff, there is very strong bias in favor of "dig out an old ditch", "steal the plans" or "borrow the blueprints", as compared to  skillfully engineering a complete and working new canal system from scratch.

Secondly, we have strong "Rosetta stone" evidence of canals that clearly have co-linear segments that strongly show distinct "human" and "machine" scale portions. Particularly compelling evidence is found in the CluffNW, Minor Ditch, and Deadman canals. Along with a CNF Frye Mesa pipeline rework.

Thirdly, the historic rework typically applies only to a small and obviously repurposed portion of an initially longer construct. Examples include Deadman and the Allen Canal rework into Dams and cattle tanks. As were Robinson, Goat, and Ledford.

Fourthly, the bajada landscape is literally littered with dozens of easily exploitable examples of  original and undeveloped prehistoric canals. Ignoring these would have been sheer folly.

Fifthly, the prehistoric constructs clearly exploited every reasonably available water source. Leaving a scant few few unburdened and available for new historic use.

Sixthly is a typical lack of negative historic evidence that did not particularly preclude a prehistoric origin.

We will look at an enigmatic counter example tomorrow.

December 19, 2017
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How can you tell if a Prehistoric Bajada Hanging Canal at least once had a prehistoric original? While any one factor might be "weak", an overall preponderance of evidence of similar weak and largely unrelated factors can often utterly and totally overwhelm.

Here are some factors that might be considered...

"Hanging" portions serve uniquely prehistoric needs.
Construction across, rather than along, the route.
Slopes made strongly independent of local terrain
Run over by roads, fences, dams, and cemeteries.
Meets prehistoric use source and destination criteria.
Lack of original concrete, headgates, wood, or rebar.
Lack of service or maint roads.
Huge cuts or aqueducts used only where essential.
Absolute human scale minimum energy constructs.
Presence of cacti, mesquite, and others midstream.

Long statistical germination time of midchannel plants.
Consistent unshifted patina, lichens, and caliche.
Obvious"mid route" human to high tech scope switching.
Sizes totally consistent with construction by human hands.
Brilliant adaptation of "pinch points" and "knife edging". Credible "Steal the plans" and "Borrow the blueprints".
Notable lack of cardinal or magnetic direction runs. 
Longer routes favoring meticulously constant slope.
Associated well defined end user fields. sampler
Not in any manner "cow oriented".
Sophisticated route combination and splitting.
Unknown to modern land users. Lack of modern development along traces. Does not have a "Gradeall" look about it.
Not in common and popular clan histories. 
Use of water sources considered trivial today. 
Teacups versus acre feet of water.
Watershed crossings of crucial prehistoric import.
Associated artifacts and habitation sites.
Overwhelming preponderance of prehistoric use.

No pipes. No siphons. No eroding steep runs.
Only a small fraction obviously historically reworked.
Historic use stopping midway around the canal route.
"Dig out an old ditch" requiring few historic skills.
Gentle and constant slopes.
Preponderance of evidence from unrelated factors.
Overwhelming "exploit every Mt. Graham water drop".
Many of the canals have no obvious historic purpose.
Styles of CCC constructs wildly different.
Use of local, rather than hauled rock resources.
Channel being significantly on higher ground.
Lack of evidence of iron tool use during construction.
Human size consistent spoil piles where appropriate.
No rocks used that could not be easily hand lifted.
Possible uses of pilot water levels as survey tools.
Historically unlikely to insult"Grandpa's Ditch".
Unified specialized exotic engineering skills required.
Reasonable evidence of historic bajada rebuilding.

But the crucial main reason of all, of course, is...

Because an archaeologist said so.

December 18, 2017
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Here's a "work in progress" partial sampler of our upcoming free Applewriter Cookbook eBook. We hope to have this complete in the next few days.

Find our other eBooks here and some of them third party here. And a list of stuff that needs your scanning help or links here.

December 17, 2017
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Just added a bunch of revised field notes. Those presently available bajada hanging canal docs now do include...

Allen Canal **
Bear Springs Canal **
Cluffnw Canal   **
Deadman Canal **
Frye Complex **
Jernigan Canal  **
Longview Area **
Lower Frye Construct  **
Mud Springs
 **
Reay Canal  **
Robinson Canal  **
Tranquility Canal  **
Tugood Canal
 ** 
Veech Canal  **

Intended for early major upgrade are...

Freeman Canal 
Henry Canal

Lefthand Canyon West 
Minor Webster Ditch 
Riggs Mesa Canal
 
Sand Canal  Smith
Canal
  TB Ponding Area

For sourcec codes, substitute .psl trailers above. A catalog of most field notes can be found here and new additions are are first likely to appear here.

Our intent is to post many of these to ResearchGate. Your proofing assistance and critique welcome. As are field mice, drone operators, and ATV honchos.

December 16, 2017
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Repairs are continuing on some of our older YouTube videos. There seem to be several glitches in the works.

Meanwhile, we recommend our revised classic Intro to PostScript vid that is now single file combined and can be best viewed via this link.

We are thinking about doing some new Gila Hike and Bajada Hanging Canals videos. Let me know what you would like to see. We are working on
an Applewriter Cookbook ebook and hope to have it up "real soon now".

Many more ebooks ready-for-free-download here and bunches more on PostScript here.

December 15, 2017
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Oops. I just discovered that my Ask the Guru columns #53 through #58 are apparently "lost" with their source code long gone.

So, if any of you still have July 1989 through December 1989 issues of Computer Shopper available, please either scan the columns or send me hard copies. Or tell me where to find them online.

We just summarized the key contents of the other ATG columns here and earlier.

I'm also having trouble finding "For Low Cost, Count on RTL" from some March 1968 issue of Electronics. This one had a bizarre side story that got me permanently banned from Electronics. It seems the photographic directors on two wildly different magazines rephotographed coincidentally identical images at the same time, mightily pissing off the powers that be.

I guess we now have about half of my eBooks now freely available online. I sure would like to find valid and ready-to-use downloads of the others without having to rescan them all myself.

Of particular need are...

Active Filter Cookbook ( autographed hard copy here! )
Micro Cookbook volume I ( autographed hard copy here! ) 
TTL Cookbook (eBook newly here ) ( autographed here!
CMOS Cookbook 
Cheap Video Cookbook

Son of Cheap Video

Applewriter Cookbook

All about Applewriter
Hexadecimal Chronicles 
Manual De Circuitos Integrados TTL
Pacific Rim TTL
Goodyear Aerospace AEEMs a third is
For Low Cost, Count on RTL 
Big TTL Wall Chart
Big CMOS Wall Chart
Ask the Guru 53 through 58

Cave Crawler's Gazette

Plus our usual reminder that you can pick up nearly one each of everything that we do have on your own USB here.

December 14, 2017
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Added updates to our prehistoric bajada hanging canals and field notes that include Mud Springs, Tranquility, Tugood Canal, and Veech Canal .

Also updated our previous field note link farm here. As before, substitute .psl trailers to get at the sourcecode.

We hope to get these onto Researchgate shortly Your proofing assistance and critique welcome. As are field mice, drone operators, and ATV honchos.

December 13, 2017
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Concluding our Ask the Guru partial directory, this time on ATG1.PDF...

#16 - WPL details, keyword indexer, laser printed badge
#15 - Anti-aliasing, Imageworks card, image processing
#14 - Drawing schematics, new control computer, RAM
#13 - Curve tracing, USGS data bases. VIP interface
#12 - Secret ASCII control commands, Applewriter 2.1
#11 - Fancy grey techniques, halftones, post processing.
#10 - Vaporlock interrupts, bar code info, HIRES entry
#9   - IIe dual monitor, Isometric drawing, Ramcards
#8   - Cubic splines, Using Bezier curves, editing BASIC
#7   - IIc/IIe absolute reset, EPROM monitor adapter
#6   - Typesetting an ad, Diablo 630 emulation, software
#5   - Disassembly aliasing, Shuffling algorithm, Info
#4   - Snatchmon, ET Watching, Dual character gen
#3   - Option picking, tough I/O chip, Robotic motors
#2   - Low cost air valves, pneumatic actuators, ISMM
#1   - Pseudorandom generator, free tech info, tape secrets

December 12, 2017
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Some vids...

An interesting three part pseudoscience presentation can be found here. With my own pseudoscience bashing here, and its key papers here and here. And my related latest post here.

A superb vid on the Wright - Curtiss war can be found here. The Wright Brothers, of course are most famous for their interminable patent battles over obsolete technology that completely crippled US aviation development.

And that, of course, was well before the present patenting debacle.

For most individuals and small scale startups, patents  are virtually certain to result in a net loss of time,  energy, money, and sanity.   

One reason for this is the outrageously wrong urban  lore involving patents and patenting. A second involves  the outright scams which inevitably will surround all "inventions" and "inventing". 

A third is that the economic breakeven needed to recover patent costs is something between $12,000,000 and $40,000,000 in gross sales. It is ludicrously absurd to try and patent a million  dollar idea.

Start with our Case Against Patents paper and then  go on to these...

 The Case Against Patents  
When to Patent
   
How to Bust a $650 Patent   
Patent Horror Stories
Patent Avoidance Resources
Main Patent Library Page Collected Patenting eBook

And, finally, my own video can be found here.

December 11, 2017
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I was surprised to see on our website's search strings up on Fat Cow come up asking me about locked PostScript font paths. Well, for years and years, font paths have long been completely open and unlocked.

The key operator is charapath per the Reference Manual. Among the other great things this allows is that you can redefine operators such as lineto, curveto, etc... to create nonlinear transformations and distortions of lettering. Per these examples and great heaping bunches more here.

At one time back in the dark ages, font paths were protected by an "absolutely unbreakable" eexec operator. That is until I discovered that any patient seventh grader could sight read an eexec file simply by inserting an extra character and viewing all their error messages! Shortly after that Adobe both fully documented eexec and unlocked all of their fonts.

Correlation is not causation. Cum hoc ergo propter hoc.

Back in the locked font days, I did have a now obsolete, very slow, and fairly harebrained scheme called pixel line remapping. Published here, but don't even think about reviving it.

The scheme worked by putting down a character and scanning it cropped one pixel by one line, then transforming each scan line as needed.

In those days, you did what you had to do.

December 10, 2017
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Continuing our Ask the Guru partial directory, this time on ATG1.PDF...

#32 - Pixel line remappig, ultimate hacker food, T-Shirt printing
#31 - Eastern typefaces, PostScript lock washers, paper folders
#30 - Curvetracing, Binding systems, Toner cartridge reloading
#29 - Desktop publishing tools, Step & repeat, Serial firmware
#28 - Autoaddressing labels, PostScript speedup, Laser print
#27 - Point ruler, absolute IIc reset, laser die cutting
#26 - Mass teleportation, Tweedleifier, Apple tech literature
#25 - De-putrifying grays, Omnicrom color, Rubber Grids
#24 - IIgs serial cables, Toner cartridge reloads, Creepifier
#23 - Stretchifier, Curvetraced signatures, Key Mac graphic
#22 - Swallowifier, Solar breakthrough, Omnichrom
#21 - Business cards, Bee's piano tradesman's cut, Scrunchifier
#20- Apple ID code, laser letterheads, WPL nullifier
#19 - Poison ivy in a spray can, PostScript surface mapping
#18 - ASCII to hex and decimal, Reversed window decals
#17 - Circular text, Puss de Resistance, Laser badges

December 09, 2017
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Presently available newly revised bajada hanging canal field notes do include...

Allen Canal **
Bear Springs Canal
 **
Deadman Canal **
Frye Complex **
Jernigan Canal  **
Lower Frye Construct  **
Mud Springs
 **
Tranquility Canal  **
Tugood Canal
 ** 
Veech Canal
 **

Intended for early major upgrade are...

Cluffnw Canal 
Freeman Canal 
Henry Canal

Lefthand Canyon West 
Longview Area 
Minor Webster Ditch
 
Reay Canal
  *
Riggs Mesa Canal 
Robinson Canal
 *
Sand Canal
 
Smith Canal 
TB Ponding Area

For sourcecodes, substitute .psl trailers above. A catalog of most field notes can be found here and new additions are are first likely to appear here.

Our intent is to post many of these to ResearchGate.

December 08, 2017
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Continuing our Ask the Guru partial directory, this time on ATG2.PDF...

#58 - to #53 - May be temporarily "lost"

#52 - Fast PostScript, Low cost jogger, Die cut forms
#51 - Two-up notepads, toner refill tools, Error trapper
#50 - Spirograph code, 57600 Baud interface, Pellon ploy.
#49 - Secret non-putrid grays, ticket blanks, using WPL
#48 - SX refilling, Tearing method, Some thick paper ploy
#47 - White noise generator, Intelligent tabs, Resources
#46 - Gocco silk screens, Smart directories, Game paddles
#45 - Hot stamping, PostScript Superexec, Nuisance codes
#44 - Pixie dust anti-scratch, Gonzo Justify, color proofing
#43 - Kroy Kolor, Sight reading eexec, Fusion machine mods
#42 - IIgs toolkit, video locking! Post justification editing
#41 - LAN of the 80's, Corner rounding, personal buscards
#40 - IIgs tool list, padding compound, PostScript printed circuits
#39 - Border builders, IIgs dependencies, stock market records
#38 - Perspective transforms, toner cart reloads, sneaky bricks
#37 - Self publishing secrets, perspective drawings Apple III.
#36 - Dropout free gray grid, Printing on aluminum, IIgs modes.
#35 - Monochrome HIRES graphics, Printing papers, Boxifier
#34 - IC Dipdraw, Appletalk schematic, Print onto anything
#33 - Paper cutters, Rubergrids, PostScript fundamentals

December 07, 2017
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Our original Computer Shopper Ask the Guru columns are presently available in these three volumes...

ATG1.PDF  ( columns 1-32 )
ATG2.PDF
  ( columns 33-57 )
ATG3.PDF
  ( columns 58-74)

I thought I'd start at least a partial directory of what was in each column here. We'll start with ATG3.PDF...

#74 - Click to Clunk, Flocking, Baud rate Limiting
#73 - Fuzzy data fits, Video compression, PostScript Ideas
#72 - Serendipitios borders, ISMM, book publishing
#71 - Mitzi's Yuppy Fare, menu justify, printer networks
#70 - Stock analyzer, unusual print stuff, toner durability
#69 - Toner cart refilling, lamination, BOD Publishing
#68 - Bezier graphics, Meals in minutes, PDF Distillery
#67 - Navicubes, Perspective lettering, Repair manuals
#66 - Using histograms, duplex printing, papers & humidity
#65 - PostScript point rule, cheap color, file conversion
#64 - Fractal Fern, T-shirt toners, duplex printing secrets
#63 - Perspective letters, printed circuits, nonlinear transforms
#62 - Pelsaer Binding, ifelse actions, effective baud rates
#61 - Flippity floppers, understanding eexec, blackflashing
#60 - Bezier length, vinyl lettering, PostScript speedups
#59 - Pad Printing, Superstroking, direct toner printed circuits

December 06, 2017
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Presently available newly revised bajada hanging canal field notes do include...

Allen Canal **
Bear Springs Canal
 **
Deadman Canal
**
Frye Complex **

Intended for early major upgrade are...

Cluffnw Canal 
Freeman Canal 
Frye Complex 
Henry Canal
Jernigan Canal 
Lefthand Canyon
West
  Longview Area 
Lower Frye Construct * 
Mud Springs
 
Minor Webster Ditch 
Reay Canal  *
Riggs Mesa Canal
 
Robinson Canal *
Sand Canal  Smith Canal 
TB Ponding Area
Tranquility Canal
Tugood Canal

Veech Canal

For sourcecodes, substitute .psl trailers above.

A catalog of most field notes can be found here and new additions are are first likely to appear here.

Our intent is to post many of these to ResearchGate.

December 05, 2017
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The latest revisions to our bajada hanging canal field notes can be identified by a new final page that will include one or more topo maps.

Presently available are...

Deadman Canal **

Intended for early upgrade are...

Allen Canal
Bear Springs Canal 
Cluffnw Canal
 
Freeman Canal 
Frye Complex
 
Henry Canal

Jernigan Canal 
Lefthand Canyon
West
  Longview Area 
Lower Frye Construct * 
Mud Springs
 
Minor Webster Ditch 
Reay Canal
  *
Riggs Mesa Canal
 
Robinson Canal
 *
Sand Canal 
Smith Canal 
TB Ponding Area
Tranquility Canal
Tugood Canal
Veech Canal

For sourcecodes, substitute .psl trailers above.

Unwritten field notes are listed here and are first likely to appear here.

Bear Flat Canal redirects here Bigler Canal redirects here.  The HS Canal redirects here. Tailwater Canal redirects here

December 04, 2017
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A second release from blog hell would be the purposely long delayed The The Curious Saga of the Magic Lamp.

Find its .pdf file here and its sourcecode here. And a third party confirmation here.

More on pseudoscience bashing here. And many of our older GuruGrams here.

December 03, 2017
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There are several older entries I'd like to release from blog hell and upgrade them to real live .PDF GuruGrams.

The first, of course, is our technical treatise on Enameled Dealing With Four Paws and Groundswill. Find its .pdf here and its sourcecode here.

December 02, 2017
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This "new" scheme to eliminate rfi on Gen 5 color organs and similar dimming aps would seem to demand incandescents with high thermal time constants. Such as a PAR38 with a dichroic filter.

The scheme is based on switching only full power line half cycles, thus completely eliminating the rfi of older designs.

There would be a definite tradeoff between the number of available amplitudes and objectionable flicker. Chances are that greatly reduced amplitude counts might be needed.

Here are some low amplitude count possibilities...

Ten amplitude levels...

0 -   0000000000 ( $000 )
1 -   0000100000 ( $020 )
2 -   0010000100 ( $084 )
3 -   0100100010 ( $122 )
4 -   0101000101 ( $14A )
5 -   0101010101 ( $155 )
6 -   1010110101 ( $2D5 )
7 -   1011011101 ( $2DD )
8 -   1101110111 ( $37B )
9 -   1111011111 ( $3EF )
10 - 1111111111 ( $3FF )

Eight amplitude levels...

0 - 00000000 ( $00 )
1 - 00010000 ( $10 )
2 - 01000100 ( $44 )
3 - 01010010 ( $52 )
5 - 10101101 ( $AB )
6 - 10111011 ( $DD )
7 - 11101111 ( $EF )
8 - 11111111 ( $FF )

Six amplitude levels...

0 - 000000 ( $00 )
1 - 001000 ( $08 )
2 - 001001 ( $11 )
3 - 010101 ( $25 )
4 - 110110 ( $36 )
5 - 110111 ( $37 )
6 - 111111 ( $3F )

Four amplitude levels...

0 - 0000 ( $0 )
1 - 0100 ( $4 )
2 - 0101 ( $5 )
3 - 1101 ( $D )
4 - 1111 ( $F )

December 01, 2017
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There might be a new way to precision dim lamps. Both for a Gen 5 color organ, or for general use. Its key feature is that it should eliminate most, if not all rfi. Poof. Gone. A secondary feature is extreme digital precision.

All it takes is a plain old zero switched triac solid state relay and some minor smarts from the lowest of low end micros.

Consider a "frame" of 32 sequential half cycles, along with a "magic" word that only activates some of them to produce a level from 0 to 32.  Normally, you'd expect some flicker or lag problems with the 3.75 Hertz refresh rate. But out of the billions of possible 32 bit words, what if we could pick out "magic" ones that had negligible fundamental and other low harmonic energy? By using stunts similar to our Magic Sinewave stuff?

Such as these guys...

0 - 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
1 - 0000 0000 0000 0001 0000 0000 0000 0000  
2 - 0000 0001 0000 0000 0000 0001 0000 0000    
3 - 0000 0100 0000 0000 1000 0000 0001 0000    
4 - 0000 1000 0000 1000 0000 1000 0000 1000
5 - 0001 0000 0100 0000 1000 0010 0000 0100
6 - 0010 0001 0000 0100 0100 0000 1000 0100
7 - 0010 0010 0001 0001 0000 1000 1000 0100
8 - 0010 0010 0010 0010 0010 0010 0010 0010  
9 - 0010 0100 0100 1000 1001 0001 0010 0010
10 - 0101 0010 0010 0010 0100 1001 0001 0010  
11 - 0100 1001 0010 0101 0010 0100 1001 0010
12 - 0101 0010 0100 1010 0101 0010 0100 1010
13 - 0101 0010 1001 0100 1010 0101 0010 1010
14 - 0101 0101 0010 1010 0101 0100 1010 1010
15 - 0101 0101 0101 0100 1010 1010 1010 1010  
16 - 0101 0101 0101 0101 0101 0101 0101 0101  
17 - 0101 0101 0101 0101 1101 0101 0101 0101    
18 - 0101 0101 1101 0101 0101 0111 0101 0101
19 - 0101 0111 0101 0101 1101 0101 0101 1101   
20 - 0101 1101 0101 1101 0101 1101 0101 1101
22 - 1011 1010 1110 1110 1011 1011 1010 1110
23 - 1101 1011 1011 0111 0110 1110 1101 1101  
24 - 1110 1110 1110 1110 1110 1110 1110 1110   
25 - 1101 1110 1110 1111 0111 0111 0111 1011
26 - 1101 1110 1111 1011 1101 1110 1111 1011
27 - 1110 1111 1011 1111 0111 1101 1111 1011
28 - 1111 0111 1111 0111 1111 0111 1111 0111
29 - 1110 1111 1111 1101 1111 1111 1011 1111
30 - 1111 1111 1111 1111 0111 1111 1111 1111
31 - 1111 1111 1111 1111 1111 1111 1111 1111

This third party website can quickly give you the Fourier Series for each and every one of these. Just enter the bits vertically..

What could possibly go wrong? Go wrong? Go wrong?  This still is not yet proven. There still might be lag or flicker effects. Singing cannot be ruled out. The concept would likely work better with high lag incandescents, rather than LED's.

Yeah, there is a lot of high frequency energy in the spectra. but at least  it is not directly and suddenly switching high currents. There might be power factor correction issues.

Alternates such as 24 level or 48 level might prove useful. Trading off lag or flicker against the number of available levels. As might prebiasing the lamps to avoid problematic amplitudes 1, 2, and possibly 3.

There's likely even better magic words, as I did not yet run through all of the 429,496,729 possibilities. Present values were based on maximizing the number of zero sequences while making them as uniform and as symmetric as possible. But as our Magic Sinewave stuff proved elsewhere, there are likely to be some real gems deeply buried here.

Your comments, and testing welcome.

November 30, 2017
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This recent blog raised a few very interesting math questions that center on minimizing the fundamental and other low harmonic energy of repeating half cycle harmonic sequences.

This is sort of the exact opposite of our usual Magic Sinewave goals. But its purported minimum visual pollution theorem can still be of help. Chances are the "best" half cycle color organ amplitude waveforms will have a maximum number of zero groups. And the zero groups will end up as internally uniform and as symmetrically uniform as possible.

Somewhere along the line, you might want to ask "How many binary words of length n have exactly k ones in them?   The answer depends on a beastie called a binomial sequence, and I dealt with this in depth way back here. Note that figure two has been truncated, so use symmetry for anything missing.

Ferinstance, the sequence for n=8 is 1-8-28-56-70- 56-28-8-1 with there being 28 words with either two ones or two zeros in them. Higher n values can be calculated from this web resource.

Things do get out of hand for very large n. Ferinstance, there are over half a billion 32 bit words with 16 ones in them.

Another approach might be to generate a shorter test sequence of random k out of n patterns. This is a largely trivial PostScript process. Create an array of n zeros. For each new pattern, pick a random number from n and try to write a one to your array. If there already is a one there, try again. Complete writing k times.

One gotcha: this only works well for k equal or less than one half of n. Use complements for the rest of the gang.

For low k, only a sane number of retrys will be needed. Well less than double k or so. Depending on luck.

More math stuff here. And buried here.

November 29, 2017
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Fixed a link glitch and improved and updated our Tugood Canal Preliminary Field Notes. With new sourcecode here.

A probable destination is now a tank at 32.82118 -109.86670, but this still needs field verified.

This canal is an ideal candidate for a field camp, or even for preservation or gasp! as a full restoration. It remains in a virtually undeveloped difficult access area on the wrong side of both private and state land postings.

More on these stunningly engineered prehistoric bajada canals here. With its usual key paper here.

Field mice and drone operators welcome.

November 28, 2017
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One of the new concepts I am overly enameled with is that it is now insanely easy to throw another million calculations at something. Or even many more.

Examples include our Fun with Fields and More Fun With Fields - Simplification by Rebounding papers that can ridiculously and heretically ease electromagnetic and similar fields calculations.

These techniques are now so powerful they can even be used to vignette picture borders. With this code and these detailed examples.

Yet another example of easy but intense calculations are our magic sinewave calculators.

More on million calcs here. More math stuff here.

November 27, 2017
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A partner in our Guru's Lair Blog revealed that, way back when, they had surprisingly good results with a color organ design that used only entire power line half cycles. Helped along with carefully chosen incandescent lamps with very high thermal inertia.

This, of course, completely eliminated any rfi.

These days ( with a little help from a Raspberry Pi or a PIC or whatever )  we might try a ten frame per second refresh rate, each frame of which included zero to twelve half cycle pulses. Said pulses made at the highest possible and most uniform rep rate.

The frames could be time staggered for each channel to try and mask what is really coming down. Given some help from decent audio AGC and some digital linearization stunts, the dynamic range might not end up all that bad.

It might also be interesting to try a 5 Hertz refresh with 24 levels. Other candidates might include 10x12, 8x15, 7.5x16 6x20, 5x24 4x25, or 3.75x32. Trading lag vs dynamic range.

A sneaky trick might work at 3.75x32: Prebias the lamps to state #3! This would only barely light the lamps, but would significantly reduce the lowest frequency flicker and lag components!

A challenge: Use Fourier Series to find the pattern for any given amplitude that minimizes the lowest harmonics.

November 26, 2017
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The story that first got me into color organs first appeared here, along with several other early attempts by others here.

Which led to my series of psychedelic lighting projects..

Solid State 3 Channel Color Organ
Simplified Solid State Color Organ

Multipurpose Electronic Control

Low Co$t Hi-Fi Color Organ
Build New High-Power Colorgan

Musette
 Color Organ
Hi Fi a Go Go

Psychedelia I Color Organ

Technology limits at the time left many flaws, most of which were corrected by this 2011 third party story. Whose improvements included agc microphone based audio, digital filters, dynamic range improvement, and brightness linearization.

But problems with severe RFI, heat issues, decent color saturation, and ultimately boring displays still persisted. So what would be possible in a new "gen 5" color organ?

The RFI could be significantly reduced by phase cut or "trailing edge"dimming where power is turned off proportionally later in the half cycle. Better yet, bunches of LED's could be used for each channel, switched in a 1-2-4-8 sequence and each channel quantity adjusted to balance equal color perception levels.

Best of all would be to eliminate the display entirely and substitute an HDTV monitor. What might push today's technology is an elaborate digital filtering scheme that would attempt to extract each original instrument back into its own isolated channel.

Each instrument would then appear in its own color Naturally, animation and randomizing techniques could be used to minimize boredom issues.

November 25, 2017
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Our latest prehistoric bajhada hanging canal publication is being preliminarily uploaded as A Gila Valley Bajada Hanging Canal Directory. Find it here and its sourcecode here.

A few dozen links have yet to be completed, and I sure could use your proofing help in checking those already active.

We expect to have this on researchgate and wesrch shortly.

The key bajada hanging paper can be found here, with bunches more of them available here.

Field mice, ATV's and drone operators are urgently needed.

November 24, 2017
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Our classic Fundamental Factors Underlying Recent Technological Innovation paper can be found here with its sourcecode here.

Additional GuguGram summaries and links here.

November 23, 2017
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One of the resource collections we have had kicking around here for a long time involve Flutterwumpers.

Flutterwumpers are low cost machines that spit or chomp. Such as printed circuit drills, sign routers, animation stands, CAD/CAM mills, plotters, Santa Claus machines, etc.

One approach to designing these machines involves combining PostScript's incredible ability to write any disk file in any language with an ultra simple and royalty free flutfile of inanely simple text commands that can be distilled in Acrobat and then fed to most any Raspberry Pi or PIC or whatever.

Thus giving the lowest of low end microcomputers the ability to deal with world class typography and fancy curves. And totally free of any high end CAD/CAM software.

Here are some of our flutterwumper resources...

Main Flutterwumper library
PIC PostScript Flutterwumpers
$99 Flutterwumpers
Gonzo PostScxript Utilities
Gonzo PostScript Tutorial
Using Distiller as a general purpose computer
PostScript Reference Manual
PostScript Flutterwumper Utilities
Exploring PostScript PIC Flutterwumpers
Vector to Step Conversion Low Cost Printed Circuit Drill
Virtual Ways CAM Machine

Hexapod web site

A third party flutterwumper video

Main PostScript Library

Oh yeah. One tiny gotcha. Postscript's ability to read or write any disk file in any language was so incredibly powerful that Adobe has factory disabled in recent distiller versions.

The top secret workaround is as follows: Always run Distiller from the command mode using this //acrodist /F incantation to restore full disk access power.

And please send only trusted material to Distiller.

November 22, 2017
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Concluding our Prehistoric Bajada Hanging Canal list...

20. XXX2 ( awaiting reassignment )

19. XXX3 ( awaiting reassignment )

18. TBP1 TB Ponding Area N 32.76739 W 109.73803 to N 32.76465 W 109.73400 Receives and redistributes TEC1 and TWC1 water.  Highly distinctive aerial profile. Field notes here. rinc1 rinc2

17. TWC1 Twin West Canal 32.76226 W 109.74374 to N 32.76739 W 109.73803 Hanging canal is SECOND feeder to tb ponding area.

16. TEC1 Twin East Canal N 32.76068 W 109.73500 to N 32.76472 W 109.73426 Routes UNDER the Lebanon Cemetery, one of TWO  feeders to the TB ponding area.

15. DPC1 Discovery Park Canal N 32.79267 W 109.72830 to N 32.79450 W 109.72781 Possible feeder to potential Discovery Park fields. Vague - still needs additional verification.

14. TQC1 Tranquility Canal N 32.75754 W 109.73294 to N 32.77477 W 109.72751 Artesian sourced and historic use from presumed original. Older field notes here. tranq1 tranq2

13. RIC1 Rincon Canal N 32.73410 W 109.76325 to N 32.76222 W 109.74402 Marijilda branch possibly becomes Twin West canal. Further study required, especially mid route.

12. RPC1 Roper Canal N 32.75567 W 109.70885 to N 32.75567 W 109.70885 Modern feeder to Roper Lake, presumed originally prehistoric. Possible cardinal realignments.

11. HNC1 Henry's Canal N 32.73712 W 109.74229 to N 32.74456 W 109.72996 Southern branch of main Marijilda, portions unexplored. Field notes here. henry1 henry9

10. SXP1  Sixpack Canal N 32.72290 W 109.76052 to N 32.74449 W 109.73391 Branch of Marijilda south of access road, still needs work.

9. HMC1 High Lebanon Hanging Canal N 32.72410 W 109.76239 to N 32.74113 W 109.74677 Spectacular portion hangs mesa edge 200 feet in the air. Associated with a major aqueduct. hangcan1 mary2lebanon_route3

8. MAQ1 Marijilda Aqueduct 32.72356 W 109.76257 to N 32.72411 W 109.76235 Delivers between Main Marijilda and High Lebanon Only known major system aqueduct crosses a saddle. Heavy construction energy comparable to HS Canal and Culebra Cut.

7. SMB1 Marijilda Southern Feeder Branches N 32.71096 W 109.77108 to N 32.71327 W 109.76696 Short delivery and diversion canals south of Main Marijilda. Needs further work.

6. MAR1 Main Marijilda Canal from diversion takein. N 32.70628 W 109.77702 to N 32.73322 W 109.76149 Major prehistoric development likely sourcing Henry's, High Lebanon, TB East, TB West, and Roper Lake. Still flowing in maintained modern use.

5. UMC1 Upper Marijilda Delivery Canals N 32.70648 W 109.77932 to N 32.70930 W 109.77709 Group of small delivery canals near main Marijilda takein.

4. JAC1 Lower Jacobson Hints N 32.67671 W 109.77610 to N 32.67736 W 109.77472  Largely discredited. Aerial evidence became a fence line in canal hostile terrain.

3. LDC1 Ledford Tank Canal. N 32.68454 W 109.76209 to N 32.69198 W 109.72801 Jacobson Canyon to middle of  Ledford Mesa. Apparently still in modern use, difficult access.

2. GTC1 Goat Tank Canal N 32.68467 W 109.76160 to N 32.68914 W 109.72106 Jacobson Canyon to south edge of Ledford Mesa. Apparently still in modern use, difficult access. Partial private lands. Includes curious historic pipeline. goat4 goat5

1. VCN1  Veech Canal From middle Veech Canyon to possible P Ranch Fields N 32.64151 W 109.74348 to N 32.64386 W 109.74218 Only preliminary explored, should be significant. Entire canal is on CNF lands.

November 21, 2017
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Continuing our Prehistoric Bajada Hanging Canal list...

39. ALD1 Allen Dam Failure  N 32.83324 W 109.79383  Back in its water skiing (!) days, might have been fed by the Allen Canal. GuruGram here. N 32.83324 W 109.79383

38. ALC1 Allen Canal N 32.78237 W 109.83540 to N 32.83253 W 109.80507 Major prehistoric canal possibly includes Frye Watershed  crossing. Includes impressive Culebra Cut Destination remains unknown. Earlier field notes here. allen0 allen1 culebra1

37. RBC1 Robinson Ranch Canal N 32.75997 W 109.81147 to N 32.79930 W 109.79027 Major hanging canal with strong down = up illusion sources from Lower Frye Mesa ponding area. Relation to Reay Canal not yet resolved. Field notes here. rob1 rob2 rob3

36. TAP1 Twin Artesian Ponds N 32.79956 W 109.78347 and N 32.80264 W 109.78091 No obvious links to nearby Golf Course Canal, but unlikely to have been prehistorically ignored.

35. GCC1 Golf Course Canal  N 32.79811 W 109.78286 to N 32.79895 W 109.77587  Major prehistoric canal serviced Daley Estates area. Includes hanging portions. Some routings remain unknown. Likely related to HS Canal and Riggs Canyon and Reay Canal. . golf1map gc1 gc2 golf3

34. RGC1 Riggs Mesa Area Braided Channels Area of N 32.77763 W 109.78729 to N 32.77831 W 109.78694 Enigmatic channels may be routing between HS Canal and Golf  Course Canal. Needs further work.

33. BPC1 Blue Ponds Canal N 32.78118 W 109.77771 to N 32.78064 W 109.77607 Short disused historic pond routing canal is likely a portion of Lower Frye Construct and Freeman Canal. Presently has been "lost" and awaits rediscovery. Includes obvious concrete headgates.

32. LFC1 Earlier Freeman Canal Search N 32.76634 W 109.79377 to N 32.77185 W 109.78715 This initial search for a Blue Ponds to Lower Frye connection was discredited due to horseshoes on an apparent wagon road. See #75 LFEX1 for current interest.

31. HSC1 HS Canal N 32.75987 W 109.81163 to N 32.75771 W 109.81511 Spectacular hanging and counterflowing structure RETURNS  water to Frye Creek, possibly sources Golf Course, Blue Ponds, and Freeman Canals. Among the three most major known constructs that include the Aqueduct and the Culebra Cut. Absolutely and unquestionably world class.

30. FPA1 Lower Frye Mesa Ponding area. N 32.75995 W 109.81148 Gathers in Frye Mesa braided channels to support HS Canal,  and Robinson Canal. Also likely still unproven Golf Course, Blue Ponds, Lower Frye, and Freeman Canals.  Also still unproven is an upper Frye watershed crossing.  

 29. MFC1 Main Mid Frye Mesa Delivery Canal N 32.74573 W 109.84033 to N 32.75995 W 109.81148  Partially undiscovered but demanded by Frye Ponding Area, HS Canal, Golf Course, and Robinson Canal. The simplest to explain source would be an Upper Frye watershed crossing that remains unproven.

28. FWD1 Upper Frye Watershed Diversion N 32.74427 W 109.83918 to N 32.74558 W 109.84033 Unproven potentially spectacular watershed crossing  seems demanded by HS Canal and others. With any present alternates lacking credibility. A significant and obvious watershed crossing has been previously proven on the Mud Springs Canal at 32.79159 -109.85379

27. LVC1 Longview canal N 32.78956 W 109.75971 Obvious short wall on otherwise unsupported short canal segment with local destination. Sourcing unknown and unproven. Early field note here.

26. ALS1 Alberto's Signature near N 32.79690 W 109.75485 Of the thousands of conflicting CCC structures locally, this one  is the only known one that is autographed in stone. Associated with Freeman Canal.

25 CKD1 Check Dams with Aprons N 32.77872 W 109.76472 or N 32.78840  W 109.87113 plus many others Rock diversions across secondary washes are quite common. While not hanging canal related, they represent significant water management features.

24. MRG1 Mulch Ring Arrays N 32.78491 W 109.74642 plus many others. Typically 2 feet in diameter by one rock high in  groups of 20. Rather common. Likely older.

23. XXX1 ( awaiting reassignment )

22. WS1 Water Spreader Rock Alignments Such as 32.78883 W 109.73843 and N 32.79273  W 109.75897 and elsewhere. The more obvious  of these are CCC, but many, many prehistoric  examples also exist.

21. DMC1 Main Deadman Canal N 32.73735 W 109.81291 to N 32.76277 W 109.77392 Still flows in original channel serving cattle tanks.  Portions are buried pipeline. Field notes here. deadman3 deadman4> deadman5

November 20, 2017
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Continuing our Prehistoric Bajada Hanging Canal list...

60. BSC1 Bear Springs Scam N 32.85049 W 109.94399 to N 32.87226 W 109.92596 Apparent scam huge historic canal from a source highly unlikely to have been prehistorically ignored. The history part needs resolved first as the present canal is much too large for prehistoric development..

 59. NWD1 Nuttall Watershed Diversion N 32.77471 W 109.95411 to N 32.77774 W 109.95532 Postulated third watershed crossing would supplement  Sand Canal. Largely Discredited. Present Sand Canal takein believed near 32.81238 -109.94797.

58. SWC1 Sand Wash Canal 32.81238 -109.94797 to N 32.83508 W 109.92274 Ideal short tour candidate has nearly everything including  easy access. May be prototype as final channel minuscule. Mysterious historic "cluttering" with random "stuff". Tri branched. Earlier Field Notes here. sand4 sand6 sand8

57. MR1 Mystery Reach N 32.81793 W 109.90207 to N 32.82478 W 109.90003 Once convincing aerial evidence field verified more as a disused vehicle two track. Largely discredited.

56. LMC1 Lamb Tank Canal
N 32.81196 W 109.92310 to N 32.81445 W 109.92266 Difficult access. Additional study required.

55. SLC1 South Lefthand Canal 32.83101 W 109.91453 to N 32.83366 W 109.91555 Yet to be verified aerial image.

54. LWC1 Lefthand West Canal N 32.82077 W 109.91835 to N 32.82564 W 109.91851  Prehistoric original adapted for historic field reuse.

53. MLC1 Main Lefthand Canal Complex N 32.80850 W 109.91812 to N 32.81680 W 109.91872 Shorter canal segments primarily used for end use delivery. Paper here.

52. TGC1 Tugood Canal N 32.80923 W 109.87115 to 32.82100 -109.86675 Most impressively pristine of the known hanging canals.  Superb restoration candidate. Older field note here. tugood1 tugood2

51. MWD1 Minor Webster Ditch N 32.79771 W 109.87296 to N 32.81310 W 109.86638  Historically redeveloped canal shows reasonable evidence  of unmodified prehistoric origins. Somewhat paired with the Tugood Canal. Older field note here. minor1 minor2

50. CNW1 Cluff Northwest Canal Complex N 32.82494 W 109.84652 to N 32.83635 W 109.84302 Strongly redeveloped canal system includes convincingly  authentic prehistoric reaches.

49. CSW1 Cluff Southwest Canal N 32.81586 W 109.84971  Branches from the Smith Canal takein on Ash Creek. Still unexplored. Likely a short destination.

48. STC1 Smith Tank Canal N 32.81870 W 109.84689 to N 32.82055 W 109.84458 Likely has unproved prehistoric original. Early field notes here. smith1 smith2 smith3 smith4 smith5

47. LMT Lower Mud Trace N 32.80803 W 109.84448 to N 32.81882 W 109.84093 Aerial images appear to be field verified as a historic two track. Largely discredited.

46. JEC1 Jernigan Canal N 32.82765 W 109.81953 to N 32.84131 W 109.81649 One of few canals with obvious destination. Conspicuous  hanging portion, habitation sites. Three "U" turns. Portions still unaccounted for. Older field note here. jern1

45. MST1 Mud Springs Tank N 32.82766 W 109.81896 Apparently historic construct would seem to demand Mud  Springs Canal for its water.

44. MJB1 Mud Jernigan Branching Point N 32.82765 W 109.81953 Apparent location of the beginning of the Jernigan Canal, branching off the Mud Springs Canal. Three portions of the route remain unresolved.

43. THP1 Troll House strange structure N 32.82538 W 109.82281 Enigmatic pithouse like mud springs canal related  structure lacks charcoal evidence and is intimately mud springs canal related. troll1

42. MSC1 Mud Springs Canal N 32.79153 W 109.85375 to N 32.84796 W 109.81105 Major canal system branches to Jernigan, includes several hanging portions and spectacular proven watershed crossing. Plus a troll house. Destination remains unknown. Earlier field note here. mud1 mud2 mud4 troll1

41. ACF1 Ash Creek Feeder to Mud Springs N 32.79016 W 109.85478 to N 32.79140 W 109.85388 Source for Mud Springs canal via proven spectacular watershed  crossing but not yet fully explored. Possibly obliterated by Tropical Storm Octave.

40. CUC1 Culebra Cut N 32.83567 W 109.79796 to N 32.83560 W 109.79841 Spectacular major large cut in Allen Canal below historic dam. One of the three largest known local hanging bajada canal constructs. Others include the HS Canal and the aqueduct. Allen field notes here. Dam failure docs here. culebra1

November 19, 2017
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We seem to be due for another revision of our Prehistoric Bajada Hanging Canal list, perhaps adding images. There are presently two ways to count the canals, the study candidates list ( now 82 ) that may include multiple names having missing pieces and a very few discredited entries kept to avoid duplicate efforts. Plus a certified list in the forties of  those strongly validated.

Either way, the total lengths awaiting drone mapping appear likely to well exceed a world class and utterly spectacular ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY MILES! Starting today with some of the latest...

82. LOWR2 - Understudied Lower Rincon Near 32.77355 -109.74263 to 32.77360 -109.74166 Possibly part of still unproven Discovery Park Canal.

81. TBD1 Thunderbird Canal 32.74350 -109.73323 to 32.74353 -109.73261 Previously unnamed portion of CC:5:51 under restudy.

80. REY1 Reay Canal 32.80623 -109.77622 to 32.82236 -109.77287 Endangered possible Golf Course Canal Destination. reay1 reay3 reay5

79. LPZ1 Lopez Canal 32.82141 -109.76650 to 32.82376 -109.76307 Discredited - likely a 4wD track.

78. ARTS1 Artesian #1 Canal 32.75273 -109.72032 to 32.76247 -109.71188 Flowing historic canal in strong artesian area likely to have seen prehistoric use as well. artes1a artes1b artes1c

77. ARTS2 Artesian #2 canal 32.75288 -109.72043 to 32.75288 -109.72043 A second but apparently commonly sourced and still flowing historic canal in a strong artesian area. Has possibly been cardinal redirected from original.

76. TALW2 Tailwater2 Canal 32.83987 -109.91578 to 32.84067 -109.91407 Discredited - likely historic orchard overflow.

75. LFEX1 Lower Frye Extension 32.77325 -109.78377 to 32.77428 -109.78270 Required but unproven link between Frye Complex, Blue Ponds Canal, and Freeman Canal. frye_lead200

74. GCC1 Grant Creek Canal  32.59825 -109.96483 to 32.58887 -109.96758 South of Mount Graham historic canal that may or may  not have had prehistoric origins.

73. HCC1 Hog Canyon Canal  32.55361 -109.76449 to 32.55407 -109.76414 South of Mount Graham possibly prehistoric canal currently unexplored. Possibly perennial.

72. CNU1 Canal near UFO Fish Fillets 32.81428 -109.96678 to 32.81536 -109.96618 Short canal previously studied by Dr. Neely. Location is approximate.

71. CBAE1 Bandelier Artesian Extension  32.93523 -109.94128  to 32.94158 -109.92112 Dried up artesian lake may have enormous potential. Definite signs of historic reuse plus possible Bandoleer Canal source. band2 band3 band4

70.LFC1 Lower Frye Construct 32.76749 -109.79289  to 32.76824 -109.79178 Mysterious and unexplained construct may have major prehistoric canal significance. Likely Blue Ponds Canal and Freeman Canal related. Extensive study still needed. Field notes here. frye100 frye101 frye106 frye108

69.UMC11 Upper Marijilda Canal  32.70664 -109.77779  to 32.70693 -109.77729 Smaller hanging canal near Marijilda diversion.

68.DEC1 Deadman East Canal  32.75295 -109.78502  to 32.75655 -109.77688 Potentially significant prehistoric canal remains largely unexplored due to difficult access.  Field Notes here. deadman5

67. SCC1 Sand Canal Center Branch  32.82953 -109.92950  to 32.83441 -109.92705 Destinations of easily traced canal remain unknown. Canal apparently uses a natural drainage partial route. sand19 sand30

66. SCW1 Sand Canal Western Branch  32.82953 -109.93063  to32.83441 -109.92705 Destinations of easily traced canal remain unknown. sand40

65 SR1 More Spear Ranch Work 32.83348 -109.91548 and 32.83616 -109.91440 Additional survey required north of Lefthand.

64. PRM1 P Ranch Mysteries 32.61817 -109.72829 to 32.61611 -109.72809 Additional survey required beyond Veech.

63. UFO1 UFO Fish Fillets N 32.81203 W 109.97330 to N 32.82299 W 109.96420 A highly atypical apparent CCC project that may or may  not have had prehistoric origins. ufooff

62. BDC1 Bandelier Canal N 32.94446 W 109.91120 to N 32.94677 W 109.91317 Appears to be deep vee riverine canal possibly linked to artesian source at 32.93522 -109.94131 but apparently unrelated to most mountain stream fed resources.

61. GRD2 The grids Near N 32.78651 W 109.74353 to  N 32.79408 W 109.75260 Rectangular agave farming arrays. Many thousands north  of the Gila river, a few hundreds south. Not directly canal related, but enormously significant area features. bestgrid

Some unresolved Enigmas were outlined here. And losers here.

November 18, 2017
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Almost all of our Guru's Lair is my own original work, but we do have a Third Party Library for some other "credit where credit is due" contributors.

This library is sorely in need of better indexing, updating and revision, so here are some of the other participants... "

Mitutoyo -       
Digimatic Interface Details

Bee Lancaster -      
Bee's Library Pages     
Exploring Arizona for Gems     
Where to Order Maps
    
Hiking Grand Canyon

Ken Shirriff -     
VCR Plus Codes

Everset     
WWVB ES100 Application Kit

Frederick Jonnsson -    
Lorenz "Owl's Mask     
Lorenz "Owl's Mask Sourcecode

Jim Fitzsimmons -     
Real Length of a Bezier Curve    
Exploring Binary Chain codes    
Magic Sinewave Higher Harmonics.   
Bezier curve recursive midpoint rule     
Bezier curve through four points ( better here )    
Bezier circular
arc approximation
  
Fitting points to a Bezier curve  
Fast Bezier curve evaluation   
Alternate view of a Bezier curve    
Bezier curve sinewave approximation   
Accuracy of PostScript Circles

Warren Lail -     
Mount Graham Archaeological Survey

Jim Neely -     
Co-authored Papers     
Preservation Archaeology Blog
   
Lefthand Canyon Paper     
Prehistoric Ag Paper     
Gila Canals Paper     
Tecoatles Paper     
Purron Dam Paper
   
Hohokam Canal Irrigation    
Iran Settlement Patterns
  Additional Material on Researchgate

Robert Ackermann -   
Marbelous Stacks of Pancakes   
Marbelous 4        
Lagrange Bezier Fit #1  
Lagrange Bezier Fit #2  
Lagrange Bezier Text Code  
Lagrange Bezier PostScript Code  
Legendre Lowpass Filter Comparison

Aubry Jaffer -   
The Mathematics of Marbeling

November 17, 2017
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Bezier Cubic Splines are an excellent and preferred method to draw those smooth continuous curves often found in typography, CAD, and graphics in general.

Among their many advantages is a very sparse data set allowing a mere eight values ( or four x,y points ) to completely define a full and carefully controlled and totally device independent curve. Many tutorials and examples are now present in our Cubic Spline Library. Some entries include...

The Math Behind Cubic Splines
Using Cubic Splines Cubic
Spline through Four Points

Cubic Spline Length and Subdivision
Cubic Spline Minimum Point Distance
Length of a Bezier Curve

Cubic Spline Circle Circles and Ellipses
Pixed Interpolation Algorithms
Cubic Spline Catenary Approximation
Image Post Processing Tools
Various Bezier Examples
Meowrrr Puss De Resistance
Cubic Spline Image Interpolation
Bezier Curve through fuzzy data!
Nonlinear Graphic Transforms
PostScript Insider Secrets

Older third party resources...

Real Length of a Bezier Curve  
Bezier curve through four points ( improved here )    
Bezier circular arc approximation   
Fitting points to a Bezier curve    
Fast Bezier curve evaluation   
Alternate view of a Bezier curve
   
Bezier curve sinewave approximation    
Accuracy of PostScript Circles    
Lagrange Bezier Fit #1  
Lagrange Bezier Fit #2

There are also simpler and less powerful quadratic splines. Often overlooked are the ones in Paint as its second shape option extensively used in these examples. A third party quadratic spline lecture can be found here and some ot its math here.

November 16, 2017
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I guess it has been long enough that I can reveal some  secret insider details of my favorite pseudoscience yarn, the saga of the magic lamp.

The only "correct" way of measuring power in a changing waveform is to take very small samples and multiply their instantaneous voltage times their instantaneous current. This is called a "RMS" or a "Root Mean Square"  measurement.

Until recently, true RMS measurements were outrageously expensive and virtually all cheap instruments measured average rather than RMS values. On a full and clean sinewave, the difference was only eleven percent or so. Which the meter people dealt with simply by stretching their scale and most everybody else simply ignored.

Painting the "eleven percent" on a meter face had the curious side effect of convincing everybody it was an immutable physical constant, rather than being highly and excessively waveform sensitive.

What was little known and eventually became Beginning EE Student Blunder #001-A was that the differences  between average and RMS could become utterly outrageous for low duty cycle waveforms. Ferinstance, a half wave phase control set in the 130 degree range would have an average to RMS error of around 3:1!

An individual was playing around with a circuit pretty much the same as a half wave thyratron phase control from a 1939 industrial electronics text. On the cheap meters they were using, they noted a 3:1 voltage difference and a 3:1 current difference, which led them to the conclusion that their "magic" circuit only was drawing one ninth of the normal power.

The key waveform involved had a very low duty cycle,  which let them run a 28 volt light bulb off the 110 volt line.

At this point, they could have saved bunches of hassle and trouble by touching the lamp and noticing that it was not any cooler than normal. Or simply recognizing that a 9:1 energy savings in an old stock and popular circuit might have been  noticed by somebody else somewhere along the way.

In general, perpetual motion machines are frowned upon and the crucial question that should have been asked was  "Exactly where and how did I fuck up?"

Instead, they went out and patented their miracle energy saver. The fact that the patent was granted was sort of strange since it was an old textbook circuit that I alone had published nationally in one form or another in dozens of projects over several decades. As had many others. Albeit without any energy anomalies.

At any rate, they offered a construction story and kits in a  national magazine, not recognizing that what they had was  criminal fraud rather than an earth shaking new energy  breakthrough. The magazine managed to work out from under their part of the four paw by coincidentally having the story run in an April issue and later publishing disclaimers in their letters column.

Wait. It gets worse. Besides being not even wrong, the circuit is illegal under power factor correction regs! Even the best of rms instruments force highly restrictive crest factor limits. Late phase angles have raised sensitivity and stability issues elsewhere. Bulb life is more than hypersensitive to easily exceeded currents. Low voltage, high power bulbs are presently rare and expensive. Besides offering limited choices. And, of course, waiting in the wings were the LED's with their genuine 9:1 improved efficiency.

The closest that I personally dared to get to all of this was this column and this column in a related magazine.

But finding out exactly where and how they screwed up was certainly a highlight of my ongoing pseudoscience bashing activities.

More on the perils of patenting here. More on product design and development here.

November 15, 2017
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Newly updated and expanded our Gila Valley Dayhikes. We are now up to 517 primary entries!

The latest of which include new birding resources, access to Lidar alternatives to  to the satellite imagery of Acme Mapper or Google Earth. Along with some newly revised Gila High Tech Resources with its source here.

A sampler of some of the more unusual day hikes can be found here.

And more details on your spectacular research opportunities of our Prehistoric Bajada Hanging canals here.

A fer of the many open "help wanted" projects were summarized here. There are dozens of newer ones.

November 14, 2017
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For years, I've been creating what, for a better name, we might call Lancasterisms. These are intentional but apparent topographical errors intended to reveal a higher or greater truth. Such as a groundswill of popular demand.

Or what those French Veterinarians call a "four paw". Or being overly enameled on some idea. Or ending up a few bricks shy of a full deck. Frosting the lily or gilding the cake. Or not being able to hit the barn side of a broad. Or the mythinterpretiation of something.

Or sources close to an associate of the barber of a usually reliable spokesperson. Some  New uses for Chebycheff Polynomials would take the Cheby to the Leby. Many of the web perpetual motion schemes and those electrolysis fantasies involve electrocity.

All in one swell foop. Provided there's no oint in the flyment An unauthorized autobiography. A jerk of all trades. The local hysterical society. A fragrant volition. The word  "gullible" is not in any major dictionary or spell checker. 

Godzilla versus the Night Nurses. Especially the tapioca pudding scene. Letting the cows come home to roost. So long as they are elected by acrimination. That little dip between the winter slump and the spring slack period. Sort of the qualm before the scorn.

Confusing Cannabis and Cannibal tasting tours. Geranium transistors. A wine that "pours well". Plays a mean eclectic guitar. Pioneers new methods of animal husbandry. Speaks Esperanto like a native. Bruno's attitude relateralization facillitation.

The long lost oriental martial art of Tai Wun Oun. Will be persecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Reaching a new millstone. Geologists, of course, classify rocks as sedentary, ingeneous, or metaphoric. And New Mexico hikers might call an emergency rain shelter a Poncho Villa.

The illegal aliens in the Alabama Grits Harvest, will, of course, be used for flavor only.  Right after the Ayatollahs Bar Mitzvah. Rectocranial Inversion being both simultaneously chronic and acute. "I'll give you just three hours and fifty one minutes to STOP THAT!".

Norfolk & Waay is the leading eBay  supplier of drop ship items. Separating the useful adjuncts for porcine whole body cleanliness from the total hogwash. 

These are somehow related to the Yogi Berra's of others, such as "Nobody goes there because it is too crowded", "Deja Vu all over again", or "Let's keep the Status Quo right where it is. Or "When you come to a fork in the road, take it".

Or Ed Abbey's classic "Androgynous Ammonia". Which might even involve an engendered species. I have a hollow feeling I've lost some of the better ones of these somewhere along the way.

As you go through some of my older books and stories, please  report any that may be missing in action. Because Opporknockity tunes but once.

Much more here, here, and here.

November 13, 2017
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Yesterday's Prehistoric Bajada Hanging Canal explorations may have revealed a new study candidate #81 (!) in or around 32.74355 -109.73242.

It is indistinct in heavy brush just off an ATV track, likely is a Henry's Canal branch or is supplied by it, and definitely needs a second opinion as to its scope and validity.

Moderately dense potsherds and similar artifacts are in somewhat nearby association.

The actual canal count is somewhat lower and remains ambiguous in that a canal with a nonobvious segment connection presently may count double. A very few study candidates ( perhaps 8 ) have also been dropped from present further study as lacking enough credibility. These are purposely  kept in the listing to avoid later effort duplication.

Nonetheless, there are a great heaping bunch of these highly unique world class structures. And their total length now appears quite likely to exceed ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY MILES!

Counting ONLY the perennial mountain stream candidates and, of course, ignoring all of the plain old ho hum Gila sourced riverine alternatives.

Much more on these spectacularly engineered world class constructs here and a key paper here. Your participation as a field mouse or ATV or drone operator are very much welcome.

November 12, 2017
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I've always considered PowerPoint to be mesmerizingly awful, so I wrote my own emulator using my Gonzo Utilities to generate Acrobat .PDF equivalents.

These files are much more compact, are totally device independent, load much faster, and offer  significantly better graphics.  It is not even close. 

A newly revised Gila High Tech slide can be found here with its improved sourcecode here.

Other available Powerpoint emulation resources and emulations now include...

A Gonzo Tutorial and Directory
A Gonzo PostScript PowerPoint Emulator
High Tech Gila Valley Features ( sourcecode here )
Successful eBay Buying Strategies
  ( sourcecode here )
Successful eBay Selling Strategies  ( sourcecode here )
Little known Gila Valley Dayhikes  ( sourcecode here )
Prehistoric Hanging Canal Lecture  ( sourcecode here )
Energy Fundamentals Intro & Summary  ( sourcecode here )
PV Panel Intro & Summary  ( sourcecode here )
Mount Graham Aerial Lumber Tramway  ( sourcecode here )
An Introduction to Magic Sinewaves  ( sourcecode here )
Three Phase Magic Sinewaves  ( sourcecode here )
Alternate Lores Magic Sinewaves

Consulting, custom design, and training services available.

November 11, 2017
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Lidar is an interesting alternative supplement to the satellite imagery of Acme Mapper or Google Earth. It consists of monochromatic aerial infrared illumination and can offer significant resolution  improvements and unique visualization enhancements.

Only a tiny fraction of Arizona is provided for in this directory, but, amazingly, just about all of our prehistoric bajada  hanging canals are covered.

This 2016 sample printout extracted from "2016 AZ Fredonia Safford D16" from the United States Interagency Elevation Inventory is of interest to our Reay Canal Field Notes. The location is 32.81484 -109.77578 and can be compared against this Acme Mapper Image. The image was further enhanced by a "print screen" and Imageview32 magnify and sharpen stunt. Note that a decompressor such as WinZip is needed.

The corral area is dramatically improved, and a previously unviewable structure can be observed near the now wet streambed. But so far, the projected central "required" canal route  ( bearing 15 degrees ) does not seem to yet  yield obvious and crucially needed new info.

Field mice and drone + ATV  operators are urgently needed.

November 10, 2017
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I've long been overly enameled over random and pseudorandom possibilities. So here's a "random" sample of some of the many apparently unrelated things we have looked at...

Most shuffling algorithms have an easily fixed flaw per these details..

Mottling a background with slight randomization can eliminate most .JPG artifices. Demos here

JavaScript Banner Rotators rearrange on each screen refresh. ( scroll down to "evolving" )

Bouncy Bricks include shuffling and banner utilities.

Purposely ratty lines and fills make "computer art" much less so.

Randomized swashes improve Powerpoint emulation.

Unusual random screen in column 23. Also see 30.

PostScript includes rand and srand operators.

There's always marbelous stacks of distorted pancakes.

My Gonzo Utilities include a random operator that returns, say, 0 to 4 on a 5 random command.

The TTL Cookbook has part of Chapter 7 on Psuedorandom Sequences. So does Chapter 6 of the CMOS Cookbook.

The PsycTone is the world's most annoying music synthesizer.

An early Ask the Guru tutorial on random sequences. See page 1.1.

A Radio Electronics pseudorandom story still in need of some repairs. Sorry about that.

White Noise KFC Virus in Column #14

November 09, 2017
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Completing our previous GuruGram catalogs...

#20 - Gonzo PS PowerPoint Emulator!
#19 - Reducing 8-bit Magsin Distortion
#18 - Fitting power curve data points
#17 - Dodge & Burn tutorial & utility
#16 - PS Runtime Speedup Secrets
#15 - Digital camera swings & tilts
#14 - Exploring the .BMP data format
#13 - PS Disk Access Tutorial
#12 - PS Search & Replace Utility
#11 - Exploring the Acrobat 5 SD
#10 - Internaldict & pdfmark Commands
#9 - PostScript Transparency !!!
#8 - Flate Compression Viewer
#7 - Overunity Batteries
#6 - Acrobat "Galley Slave" layouts
#5 - Auto-tracking PDF web links
#4 - Cubic spline image interpolation
#3 - Magic Sinewave Fourier checkplot
#2 - Magic Sinewave harmonic spectra
#1 - Intro to steplocked magic sinewaves

November 08, 2017
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Continuing yesterday's GuruGram catalog...

#40 - MagSin PIC Programing Sourcecode
#39 - Fun with fields
#38 - New Magic Sinewave Eval Chips
#37 - High legibility fonts tutorial
#36 - Logfile Reporter History Addon
#35 - Saga of the dripping stalactites
#34 - SigViewing of Magic Sinewaves
#33 - Magic Sinewave demo hardware
#32 - A Heap Sort for PostScript
#31 - Fast & Efficient PostScript Sorts
#30 - PostScript String & Array Hacks
#29 - Using Distiller to run PostScript
#28 - Logfile reader & eBay analyzer
#27 - Magic Sinewave Quantizations
#26 - Successful eBay buyer strategies
#25 - Successful eBay seller strategies
#24 - Magic Sinewave Visualizations
#23 - Fancy .JPG to .PDF Conversions
#22 - My eBay photo secrets
#21 - Website video fades & wipes

November 07, 2017
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Continuing yesterday's GuruGram catalog...

#60 - Cubic spline length & subdivision
#59 - Cubic Spline through 4 points
#58 - The Math behind cubic splines
#57 - Cubic Spline Circles & Ellipses
#56 - Universal bitmap manipulator
#55 - Improved keystone corrector
#54 - Perspective lettering utilities
#53 - Revised bitmap typewriter
#52 - Raw PostScript full transparency!
#51 - Ongoing Refurb Log
#50 - Extreme display legibility secrets
#49 - Enhancing your eBay skills II
#48 - Flashing Text in Acrobat
#47 - Real time Acrobat Animation
#46 - Acrobat PDF Content Extraction
#45 - Word Frequency Analysis Tools
#44 - Arizona Auction Resource Guide
#43 - Simple new EM field solutions
#42 - PS Array-to-Image Conversion
#41 - Enhancing your eBay skills I

November 06, 2017
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Continuing yesterday's GuruGram catalog...

#80 - Cubic spline min point distance
#79 - Gonzo PostScript utilities guide
#78 - Enhancing your eBay skills VI
#77 - Gauss Jordan equation solver
#76 - PostScript numeric reporter
#75 - Acrobat PDF post doc editing
#74 - What is the best eBay price?
#73 - Ultra fast magsine calculator ( Improved )
#72 - Deterministic Magsine solutions
#71 - Enhancing your eBay skills V
#70 - Enhancing your eBay skills IV
#69 - Cubic spline catenary approximation
#68 - Tech innovation secrets
#67 - Solving puzzles with PostScript
#66 - A newbies intro to the web
#65 - Magic Sinewave summary
#64 - Gonzo utility log plots
#63 - Two phase magic sinewaves
#62 - Enhancing your eBay skills III
#61 - Book Cover Layout Utilities


November 05, 2017
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Continuing yesterday's GuruGram catalog...

#100 - Energy intro & summary
#99 - Filterless magic sinewaves?
#98 - Mt. Graham aerial tramway 
#97 - GGMS magic sinewaves
#96 - Enhancing your eBay skills VII
#95 - Spread Spectrum Magsines?
#94 - Improved Magic Sinewave calculator
#93 - Trashing Auto Electrolysizers
#92 - Bitmap circular lettering
#91 - Bitmap perspective lettering
#90 - Architect's perspective utilities
#89 - Mt. Graham lumber tram history
#88 - Image post processing tools
#87 - A digital airbrushing algorithm
#86 - More energy fundamentals
#85 - Inverse Graphics Transforms
#84 - Bitmap to PS array conversions
#83 - Pixel interpolation algorithms
#82 - False color & rainbow mods
#81 - 2-way HTML & PDF linking

November 04, 2017
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Our GuruGrams are and continue to be a series of web published ap notes on just about anything.

Obvious advantages are freedom from deadlines and layout restrictions. Combined with full web linking and bunches more. Not to mention that I can now say whatever I want whenever I want to.

Most of the GuruGrams consist of .psl sourcecode using my Gonzo Utilities combined with Adobe Acrobat final delivery .pdf files. A catalog of available .psl sourcecode files can be found here. And most available .pdf files here. All free and open sourced, of course.

We are somewhat behind in keeping our main GuruGram library up to date, with much of our current effort going into Hanging Canal Field Notes, these Whtnu Blog entries, and updates to our Gila Hikes web pages.

We'll do a GuruGram directory here over the next few days, starting with these most recent ( and not completely linked elsewhere ) ones...

#121 - Unusual Gila Valley Dayhikes
#119 - "Web Friendly" PostScript Colors
#118 - Some "Fat Tail Arrow" PS Utilities
#117 - Level II eBook Enhancements
#116 - Restoring Faded or Scuffed Text
#115 - "Un-Halftoning" to improve eBooks
#114 - Remastering a Technical Book
#113 - Allen Reservoir Failure Docs
#112 - Hanging Canal slide show 
#111 - Thesis for IC67 Metal Locater
#110 - Remastering video for web use
#109 - Gauss-Jordan stability issues
#108 - Prehistoric hanging canals
#107 - Magic Sinewave Developments 
#106 - Enhancing your eBay Skills VIII
#105 - Some Link Checking Utilities 
#104 - uv lamp ballast debugging
#103 - Book Scanning "Gutter Math"
#102 - PS Web validation utilities
#101 - PV panel intro & summary

November 03, 2017
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Here's a summary of our available and eventual ebooks...

First, those traditionally published...

RTL Cookbook
TTL Cookbook
TV Typewriter Cookbook

Incredible Secret Money Machine
Apple Assembly Cookbook I
Apple Assembly Cookbook II

MLP Cookbook I ( was Micro CB 2.1)

MLP Cookbook II ( was Micro CB 2.2)
Enhancing your Apple II Volume I
Enhancing your Apple II Volume II

And those that were first Book-on-Demand sourced...

Case Against Patents
PostScript Show and Tell

PostScript Beginner Projects
PostScript Secrets
Ask the Guru Volume I
Ask the Guru Volume II

Ask the Guru Volume III
Hardware Hacker I
Hardware Hacker II

Hardware Hacker III
Resource Bin I
Resource Bin II
Blatant Opportunist Early Archive

And these "director's cuts" restoration demos...

DC Apple Assembly Cookbook
DC Machine Language Programming I

DC Tearing Method
DC SigForth Intro to PostScript
DC Archaeomagnetism and Paleomagnetism

DC Thermoluminescence
DC Superclock
DC TVT Image
DC Winning the Micro Game

DC"Director's Cut" tutorials here, here, here, and here.

More classic reprints here. And this Introduction to PostScript video...

And the maybe these someday work in progresses...

Active Filter Cookbook ( autographed hard copy here! )
Micro Cookbook volume I ( autographed hard copy here! )
TTL Cookbook ( autographed hard copy here! )
CMOS Cookbook Cheap Video Cookbook Son of Cheap Video Applewriter Cookbook

All about Applewriter
Hexadecimal Chronicles

Manual De Circuitos Integrados TTL

Pacific Rim TTL

Goodyear Aerospace AEEMs
For Low Cost, Count on RTL
Big TTL Wall Chart
Big CMOS Wall Chart
Cave Crawler's Gazette

Plus our usual reminder that you can pick up nearly one each of everything on your own USB here.

November 02, 2017
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Our PostScript Show and Tell started life out as a series of pass-around cards we used at computer club talks and computer fair presentations.

These days, they are available as a free eBook and have been colorized into the latest of our PostScript Videos.

Here are the Show and Tell topics...

1. - Puss De Resistance
2. - Instruction Manual
3 .- Cotton Logo
4. - Isometric Drawing
5. - Poison Ivy in a Spray Can
6. - Badges, bumperstickers, cards
7. - Signatures
8. - Analog Schematic
9. - Digital Schematic
10. - Omnicrom Color Foils
11. - Certificates and Scrolls
12. - Gray Robotic Shaft Encoder
13. - Sequential Numbered Repeats
14. - Layout Grid Block Diagram
15. - The Macintosh Bomb
16. - Printer Tradesman's Cut
17. - Three Column Tech Article
18. - Printed Circuit Layout
19. - Zillions of Bricks
20. - Barbershop Quartet

Many more of our PostScript opportunities here and especially here, while some third party link farms can be found here, and here.

November 01, 2017
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A reminder that we have a set of links to our Guru's Lair Directory of filetypes here. These are useful for finding any "lost" or "underlinked" or "hidden" files.

Here are the individual fieltype links...

.asp web files 
.aspx web files 
.bas Basic files 
.config web files
.bmp Bitmap Image files
.eml email files 
.gif compressed image files
.gz compressed winzip files
.htaccess files
.htm files
.html files ( most redirect to shtml )
.ico fast nav icon files
.jpg compressed image files
.js JavaScript files 
.kml Google Earth files
.lnk shortcut files .log files 
.pdf Adobe Acrobat files 
.png compressed image files 
.ps PostScript Language files
.psl "PostScript Lancaster Sourcecode" files
.shtml html + include fileses
.txt text files
.xml files

The secret to making your own links by filetype is to first make a local copy of your website and then do something like this...

C:/Users/don>dir "F:/webbackup7.17/*.asp"
/S /OEN /W

Plus our usual reminder that you can now own your own personal copy of one each of everything per these details.

October 31, 2017
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Newly available is a tentative early release of the Reay Bajada Hanging Canal  Preliminary Field Notes along with its sourcecode.

In general, the field notes are horribly incomplete and have gone through several generations. Those considered "current" ( with an "*" ) can be identified by upper left PDF nav buttons and a new upper right KML clickthrough. All  of the notes demand more images and ongoing revisions.

The KML itself remains an out-of-date and inaccurate pilot. At present, Chrome only returns KML sourcecode which  you have to manually save to drag and drop into Google Earth.

Here are most of the presently available field notes...

Allen Canal Bear Springs Canal 
Cluffnw Canal
  Deadman Canal
Freeman Canal 
Frye Complex  Henry Canal
Jernigan Canal 
Lefthand Canyon West

Longview Area 
Lower Frye Construct * 
Mud Springs
 
Minor Webster Ditch
 
Reay Canal  *
Riggs Mesa Canal
 
Robinson Canal *
Sand Canal 
Smith Canal
 
TB Ponding Area

Tranquility Canal
Tugood Canal Veech Canal

 ( For sourcecodes, substitute .psl trailers above. )

Bear Flat Canal redirects here Bigler Canal redirects here   HS Canal redirects here  Tailwater Canal redirects here

New field notes are likely to first appear here or later.

Your participation and support of this unique world class research project would be much appreciated.

Meanwhile, please drop all your of live video spare drones  into our driveway.

October 30, 2017
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Bee and I once did a few EAC semesters of PostScript programming classes. Mostly aimed at plain old students making plain old stuff for pleasure or profit. These eventually became our PostScript Beginner Stuff free ebook. The projects included...

1 - A Full Page Grid
2. - Personal or Business Letterhead
3. - Step and Repeat Business Cards
4. - Two Personal Notes
5. - Grocery List, Quadpad, and Forms
6. - A Report Cover
7. - A Gonzo Text Paragraph
8. - Resumes
9. - Simple Curvetracing
10. - Autoaddressing Letters and envelopes
11. - Quadfold Announcements or Fliers
12. - Arcjustify Badges and Bumperstickers
13 - Reverse Printing for Window Signs
14. - Awards, Certificates, Borders
15 - Menu Justification and supertabbing
16. - Clipping and Large Letters
17. - Tags, Tearoffs, Tents, and Tickets
18 - A Pulp Novel
19. - Two Column Newsletter with figures
20. - Three Column Magazine Article

These days, you play with these in a word processor or and then send them to Acrobat Distiller with that top secret Windows command line run command of "//acrodist /F"

Some of these are helped along with our Gonzo Utilities. Find a tutorial here and the gonzo procs here. And an empty program pilot here and the reference manual here.

October 29, 2017
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... and here are most of my Popular Electronics tutorials...

Pro Meter_Faces_2_65.pdf
Electronic_Tools_3_65.pdf
Parts_Profiles1_9_65.pdf
Parts_Profiles2_10_65.pdf

Parts_Profiles3_11_65.pdf 
Parts_Profiles4_2_66.pdf
What_are_ics_10_66.pdf 

Intro_el_music_10_73.pdf
El_music_comps_11_73.pdf
Pitch_standards_1_74.pdf
Pitch_generators_2_74.pdf 
Em_keyboards_7_74.pdf
Select_syn_10_74.pdf
Mus_keying_vca_1+2_75.pdf
Timbre_and_voice_6_75.pdf
Synth_mus_insts_8_75.pdf
Envel_gens_1_76.pdf

April Hobby Scenes
( Marcia- Revisited )
Und_active_filts_12_76.pdf 
Six_cmos_circuits_4_77.pdf

Click here for "you own it" fully searchable "one each of everything" new release version 1.4

October 28, 2017
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Newly available is a tentative early release of the Henry's Bajada Hanging Canal  Preliminary Field Notes along with its sourcecode. .

In general, the field notes are horribly incomplete and have gone through several generations. Those considered "current" ( with an "*" ) can be identified by upper left PDF nav buttons and a new upper right KML clickthrough. All  of the notes demand more images and ongoing revisions.

The KML itself remains an out-of-date and inaccurate pilot. At present, Chrome only returns KML sourcecode which  you have to manually save to drag and drop into Google Earth.

Here are most of the presently available field notes...

Allen Canal Bear Springs Canal 
Cluffnw Canal
  Deadman Canal
Freeman Canal 
Frye Complex
  Henry Canal
Jernigan Canal 
Lefthand Canyon West 
Longview Area
 
Lower Frye Construct * 
Mud Springs 
Minor Webster Ditch 
Riggs Mesa Canal 
Robinson Canal
 *
Sand Canal 
Smith Canal
 
TB Ponding Area

Tranquility Canal
Tugood Canal
Veech Canal

 ( For sourcecodes, substitute .psl trailers above. )

Bear Flat Canal redirects here Bigler Canal redirects here   HS Canal redirects here  Tailwater Canal redirects here

New field notes are likely to first appear here or later.

Your participation and support of this unique world class research project would be much appreciated.

Meanwhile, please drop all your of your live video spare drones  into our driveway.

October 27, 2017
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And here's most of the other half of my Popular Electronics construction projects...

psychedelia_col_org_9_69.pdf
two_tone_alarm_2_70.pdf 
numeric_glow_dcu_2_70.pdf
nobounce_pb_3_70.pdf 
digital_microlab_4_70.pdf
standard_100kHz_4_70.pdf
shift_register_5_70.pdf
signal_injector_6_70.pdf
mini_dvm_9_70.pdf
psychtone_2_71.pdf
digiviewer_3_71.pdf
simp_keyboard _4_74.pdf 
cmos_microlab_6_74.pdf
digiviewer2_9_74.pdf 
music_modules_6_76.pdf
tvt6_video_dis1+2_7_77.pdf
hex_ascii_con_10_77.pdf

Click here for "you own it" fully searchable "one each of everything" new release version 1.4 .

October 26, 2017
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Of all the newsstand magazines, the original Popular Electronics was ( and remained ) by far the best since way on back in the days of Gernsback's Science and Invention.

The real unsung hero of the entire microcomputer revolution was their editor Perry Ferrill. Who largely singlehandedly created the entire golden age of hardware hacking. Thus setting the scene for just about everything that was to follow.

Here's a start of a list of some of my PE construction projects...

Dymwatt_5_66.pdf
Lil Dusker_9_65.pdf
Hifi_Gogo_1_66.pdf
Pulse_Generator_4_66.pdf
Musette_color_organ_7_66.pdf
IC_amplifier_10_66.pdf
Square_deal_11_66.pdf 

Binary_counter_12_66.pdf 

Logic_demon_12_66.pdf
Metal_locator_1_67.pdf 
Amligner_2_67.pdf 
Supertrol_3_67.pdf

Electronic_dice_9_67.pdf

Lil_richie_9_67.pdf
IC_freq_meter_10_67.pdf
Prof_pow_supply_11_67.pdf 
Trans_tester_12_67.pdf
IC_testone_1_68.pdf
lowcost_dec_count_2_68.pdf 
elec_stopwatch_3_68.pdf  
pitch_reference_9_68.p
sports_timer_10_68.pdf
dig_voltmtr_12_68.pdf

frequency_count_3+4_69.pdf   

Click here for "you own it" fully searchable "one each of everything" new release version 1.4 .

October 25, 2017
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Here's a few of my more obscure classic papers...

CQ Magazine -     
Butterworth Cookbook         

SIG Forth --          
What is PostScript?

Computer Faire--   
Two Cheap Video Secrets            

Popular Science --  
Dual Photoflood Dimmer     

PC Techniques --  
PostScript Startup Secrets
PostScript Speedup Secrets

Byte --                  
Bit Boffer  
Build a PC Memory Card                               
Serial Interface_TVT                                          
TV Color Graphics                                              
ROM_Technology                              
Television_Interface                              
 PostScript Insider Secrets 

Kilobaud --            
Winning the Micro Game                                       Lower_Case_Apple_pt1                               
Lower_Case_Apple_pt2                               
Clocked Logic I                               
Clocked Logic II                             
Clocked Logic III                               
TVT for KIM                             
TVT Hardware_pt1                             
H8_Cheap_Video                             
Ap_Inverted_Dec_Code                             
New_WinningUSB

Circuit Cellar --   
Nonlinear Graphic Transforms
                                          
The Quest for Magic Sinewaves                               
PIC PostScript Flutterwumpers                              
Steplocked Magic Sinewaves                              
Vector to Step Conversion

Whole Earth --  
The Case Against Patents                            
Stupendous Stuff Sources

Marcia --  
Worst of Marcia Swampfelder

Click here for "you own it" fully searchable "one each of everything" new release version 1.4 .

October 24, 2017
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Outside of the obvious, here are most of my Radio Electronics and Electronics Now construction projects...

dotnbar_gen_7_67.pdf
mtr_dec_coun_12_68.pdf
nine_dig_insts_12_68.pdf
tic_tac_tronix_12_71.pdf
dual_clock_gen_2_72.pdf 
binary_demo_2_72.pdf 
darktimer_by_stops_4_72.pdf
logic_dem_re_5_72,pdf 
superclock_7_72.pdf
funct_gen_9+10_72.pdf
grinchwal_11_72etc.pdf 
low_cost_keyboard_2_73.pdf 
ascii_encoder_4_73.pdf  
tv_typewriter_9+_73.pdf
improved_encoder_2_74.pdf 
time_on_tv_9_74.pdf 

And here are the tutorials...

ic_logic_circs_5_69.pdf
liquid_crystal_disp_2_72.pdf 
experiment_wwvb_8_73.pdf 
experiment_wwvb_9_73.pdf 
active_filters_11_73.pdf
reg_pow_sup_12_73.pdf 
elec_music_ics_2_74.pdf
what_is_rom_2_74.pdf
active_bandpass_filters_5_74.pdf

mos_character_gens_6_74.pdf 
calculator_ics_7_74.pdf
random_access_memory_9_74.pdf 
mos_shift_registers_12_74.pdf
pseudorandom_circuits_4_75.pdf 
inside_opamps__5+7_75.pdf 

digital_sinewaves_11_76.pdf

And here for "you own it" fully searchable "one each of everything" new release USB version 1.4 .

October 23, 2017
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Here's the newest third of the Tech Musings columns. The newer Hardware Hackers and Tech Musings shared sequential numbers...

#131 - Position detectors, rangefinding, RFID,..
#132 - Remote control, log graphs, Tesla, ...
#133 - Dimmers, mil surplus, mag recording,..
#134 - SETI, video overlay, aerial photos, ...
#135 - Brain parity, impulse radio, Feynman,..
#136 - Boat anchors, twinkle lights, tachometers
#137 - EIS spectroscopy, radiation detectors, ...
#138 - Web logs, miracle antennas, impulse, ...
#139 - Hot tubs, radio astronomy, plastics... 
#140 - PC drill, USGS maps, water soluble, ...
#141 - Sub pixel res, rf switches, ultrasonics,...
#142 - Gauss-Jordan, induction heating, ...
#143 - Direct Toner PC Boards...
#144 - Thermocouples, gambler's ruin, ...
#145 - Digimatic code, magnetorhelogy, ....
#146 - Electrochemistry, capacitor switching...
#147 -  Accelerometers, navigation, selsyns...
#148 - Taylor series, algae hydrogen, batteries..
#149 - Touch screens, fuel cells, transformers...
#150 - RFID, VMSK, Hydrogen, waxes...
#151 - Chebycheff, magnetometry, humidity...
#152 - Power, energy, shuffling, banners...
#153 - Electrolysis, patents, surplus, tables..

Newer possible Tech Musings column topics were rolled over into the web only GuruGrams.

Find the rest of Tech musings here. Find the later Hardware Hackers here. Find the earlier Hardware Hacker here. Find many classic construction projects here. And one each of everything here.

October 22, 2017
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Managed to find a third party Lorenz chaotic attractor "Owl's Mask" written in PostScript. I've cloned the pdf output here and the sourcecode here. Alike but different somehow would be our avuncular sleezoid or the Spirograph stuff found here and here

Plus our recently fasterized Fractal Fern here and here, and our Sierpinski Triangle here and here.  And, of course, the marbelous stacks of pancakes here. A PostScript manual here, my personal utilities here, and  an intro tutorial here. A math library link page here and one each of everything here.

October 21, 2017
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Newly available are the Deadman Bajada Hanging Canal Preliminary Field Notes along with its sourcecode.

Updated a revised index for our woefully behind Hanging Canal Field notes.

In general, the field notes are horribly incomplete and have gone through several generations. Those considered "current" ( with an "*" ) can be identified by upper left PDF  nav buttons and a new upper right KML clickthrough. All  of the notes demand more images and ongoing revisions.

The KML itself remains an out-of-date and inaccurate pilot. At present, Chrome only returns KML sourcecode which  you have to manually save to drag and drop into Google Earth.

Here are most of the presently available field notes...

Allen Canal
Bear Springs Canal
 
Cluffnw Canal 
Deadman Canal

Freeman Canal 
Frye Complex 
Golf Course Canal 
Jernigan Canal
 
Lefthand Canyon
West
  Longview Area 
Lower Frye Construct * 
Mud Springs
 
Minor Webster Ditch
 
Riggs Mesa Canal 
Robinson Canal *
Sand Canal
 
Smith Canal
 
TB Ponding Area

Tranquility Canal
Tugood Canal

Veech Canal

 ( For sourcecodes, substitute .psl trailers above. )

Bear Flat Canal redirects here Bigler Canal redirects here   HS Canal redirects here  Tailwater Canal redirects here

New field notes are likely to first appear here or later.

Your participation and support of this unique world class research project would be much appreciated.

Meanwhile, please drop all your of live video spare drones  into our driveway.

October 20, 2017
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Here's the middle third of the Tech Musings columns. The newer Hardware Hackers and Tech Musings shared sequential numbers...

#109 - Table lookup, idea mortality, audio,...
#110 - NTSC, aerial photos, faders, chargers,..
#111 - CIE diagrams, energy claims, video,...
#112 - AC power measurements, aerogels, ....
#113 - Pager vibrators, rms voltages, printers,..
#114 - Energy density, temp sensors, strawbale,
#115 - PIC chips, hydrogen car, genlocking,...
#116 - Log files, error codes, low level measur...
#117 - PostScript robotics, melody IC's,....
#118 - Laser testing, hydrogen, radio astronomy
#119 - Data acquisition, reactance limiting,...
#120 - PIC Calibar, brown's gas, meta studies,..
#121 - PFM wireless, homopolar, power meas...
#122 - Satellite imagery, phase shifters, Hilbert..
#123 - AC power, A/D converters, DNA,..
#124 - Pseudoscience, wind energy, LED lamps
#125 - Crest factors, SAW filters, temp sensing,
#126 - Nitrogen cars, magnetic refrigeration,..
#127 - Capacitor bounceback, DAA chips, PIC,..
#128 - Tesla turbine, impulse radio, class D, ...
#129 - DMX lighting, network comm, ...
#130 - Rail guns, Modutrols, Faraday, DNA, ...

Find the rest of Tech musings here. Find the later Hardware Hackers here. Find the earlier Hardware Hacker here. Find many classic construction projects here. And one each of everything here.

October 19, 2017
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Here's a third of the Tech Musings columns...

#88 - Acoustic canceling,PIC micros, adapters..
#89 - Basic Stamp, Fibonacci, Cubic splines..
#90 - Fourier series, platethru, video toaster,...
#91 - All channels FM, switched capacitors, ...
#92 - GPS navigation, terahertz, pitot, ...
#93 - Magic sinewaves, PCMCIA docs, ...
#94 - MIDI electronic music, Basic Stamp,...
#95 - Lighting efficiency, product development,
#96 - Solar energy, bilateral switching, phone,,,
#97 - Transformers, agc, robotics, digital pots,..
#98 - PIC programming, music chips, tv sites,..
#99 - Hot chassis hazards, switchmode, fuse....
#100 - Power factor, mag levitation, web, ...
#101 - Delta-Wye, audio, Acrobat, Tesla, ....
#102 - Bionomials, colorizer, printer repair,,,,,
#103 - Fluxgates, magnetometry, vectors, ....
#104 - Compass sensor, UFO's, vacuum form,..
#105 - Navigation resources, digital filters, ...
#106 - Determinants, induction heating, binding,
#107 - Linear digital filters, techno myths, ..
#108 - Baby PIC's, color organs, phase control,.

Find the rest of Tech musings here. Find the older Hardware Hacker here Find the earlier Hardware Hacker here. Find many classic construction projects here.

October 18, 2017
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After 30 Hardware Hacker columns in Modern Electronics, I moved to Larry Steckler's Radio Electronics with its larger circulation and infinitely better editorial policies.

The renumbered columns continued under the Hardware Hacker title for 87 issues and then became Tech Musings, owing to the total trashing of the term "hacker" by the utterly clueless media and "men in black" wannabes.

The columns were book-on-demand published as these four archives...

Columns #01-24 HACKAR1.PDF
Columns #25-48 HACKAR2.PDF
Columns #49-72 HACKAR3.PDF
Columns #73-87 HACKAR4.PDF

Not all columns have yet been converted into stand-alone reprints, so in this listing you'll still find a mix of archive and individual Hardware Hacker entries...

#01 -- Auto Electronics, tech lit, Santa Claus, pots
#02 -- uv resins, electronic music, superconductors
#03 -- Posistors, video ics, IIGS monitors,...
#04 -- Bar Codes, transducers, pneumatics...
#05 -- Ring detectors, toner carts, PostScript,...
#06 -- Perspective, RS232, parts sources...
#07 -- Phone recording, nav, printed circuits...
#08 -- Remote controls, IR receivers, A/D conv..
#09 -- Synchronous inverters, Apple books, 16-bit
#10 -- LAN of the 80's, pressure transducer,....
#11 -- Navicube, Kroy Kolor, RGB TV, trade...
#12 -- Digital compass circuits, prototypes, ...
#13 -- Surface mount parts, IR filters, sinewaves.
#14 -- Pseudorandom sequences, white noise...
#15 -- Zero crossing detection, phase dimming,...
#16 -- Refilling SX carts, teleportation, upower...
#17 -- SAW devices, call progress, state var filter
#18 -- Digital audio, Delta-Sigma A/D, sensors,..
#19 -- Bar code resources, oscilloscopes, CMOS...
#20 -- Electrolytic chemistry, light show BBS,...
#21 -- Cheap digital compass, humidity measure..
#22 -- Filter capacitors, visible lasers, wireless...
#23 -- Linear stepper motors, modelmaking, vid...
#24 -- Double sided pc boards, optical reprints...
#25 -- Fractal Ferns, Thermoelectrics, chaos, ...
#26 -- Dew sensing, cold fusion, alarm resources,...
#27 -- LDVT position, treasure finders, sync,... 
#28 -- Vapor detectors, low melt alloys, uv flames,
#29 -- Hall effect, shape memory, low noise amps,
#30 -- Electronic levels, memory, cases, lasers,..
#31 -- Tune chips, blender controls, power basics,
#32 -- Huffman codes, video drivers, runlength,..
#33 -- Magnetocaloric effect, log voltmeter, ...
#34 -- SAW devices, active filters, DSP, temp,...
#35 -- Vortex coolers, polyphase gens, mag refr..
#36 -- DCT, sinewave gens, video compression,..
#37 -- Decibels, level meters, patent avoidance,..
#38 -- Visible lasers, motor resources, wavelets,.
#39 -- Infrared people detectors, liquid crystals,..
#40 -- VHF & microwave resources, toner carts,..
#41 -- Electronic tuning, parametric amplifiers,...
#42 -- Power electronics, video crosshatch, ...   
#43 -- EPRI, focused X-rays, Buckyballs, .....
#44 -- Inductive loads, Bakerizing, alternators,...
#45 -- Fuzzy data, Tesla Coils, FCC regs, E-fields,
#46 -- SMPTE time codes, solar energy, cases,...
#47 -- Fractals, FM stereo, home energy, ....
#48 -- Shielding, VGS, GPS, flyback sweeps,...
#49 -- Caller id, wavelets, Lumeloid, lab tests,...
#50 -- Wavelets, piano & organs, musical notes,..
#51 -- Laser printer repairs, sync separation, ....
#52 -- FM stereo broadcasters, Ockham's, ...
#53 -- Dye based solar, RGB monitors, avionics,.
#54 -- Correlation fundamentals, Santa Claus,...
#55 -- Electronic halftones, idea marketing,....
#56 -- Alternate latches, histograms, IC houses,..
#57 -- Distant FM reception, UFO's, boosters,...
#58 -- Yagi antennas, navicubes, rate gyros,...
#59 -- Semilog plots, resonance, IC resources,...
#60 -- Video toaster, EDM machining, broadcast.
#61 -- Nichrome, FCC part 68, scrambling, copy,.
#62 -- Cubic splines, electrorhelogical fluids, ...
#63 -- Video game repair, piezoelectrics, Curie...
#64 -- Thermodynamic basics, reversibility,...
#65 -- Telemetry, max-min, SETI, power xfer,...
#66 -- Photopolymers, flying cars, pc drills, ...
#67 -- FM traps, GPS, nonlinear graphics,...
#68 -- Pulse monitors, thermoelectric modules,...
#69 -- Data compression, comm transparency,..
#70 -- Digital photos, fluxgates, mag fields,...
#71 -- CTCSS squelching, coin mechanisms,...
#72 -- Voice messaging, special effects, Acrobat...
#73 -- Jukeboxes, aerogels, sonoluminescence. ..
#74 -- Cogeneration resources, SCSI comm,...
#75 -- RBDS, human power, bus switches,...
#76 -- Air turbines, FM dx, invention scams...
#77 -- Thermodynamics, solitons, Santa Claus, ...
#78 -- Recycling toner carts, research tools,...
#79 -- Cold fusion, video driver, trans lines....
#80 -- Binary chain codes, SETI, batt charging...
#81 -- Helical resonators, laser service, reprints
#82 -- Remote controls, virtual ways, FCC regs...
#83 -- Halogen cycle, vector to step, PostScript..
#84 -- Auto computers, servicing intermittents,...
#85 -- TV data displays, brain implants, sinewave
#86 -- Wavelets, DNA, engineering economics
#87 -- AC motor drives, basic stamps, magsines

October 17, 2017
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Modern Electronics magazine evolved out of the ashes of Ziff's forced demise of Popular Electronics and Electronics World. Reprints of which are available here.

ME was sort of low budget, second rate, and in my opinion, badly edited. The big deal to me was that it started the transition where authors could submit drawings of high enough quality and consistency that they could be directly published.

The first attempts at my author-submitted art were rather gruesome, being based on MacPaint. The figures rapidly became superb after the release of the then new PostScript language.

I had these two construction projects in ME...

Upgrading Apple IIe Monitor ROMS
Absolute Reset for newest Apple II's

I began a series of Hardware Hacker columns there, which eventually were moved to Radio Electronics and ultimately renamed Tech Musings.

In those days, "hacking" was an absolutely positive term meaning "doing things so spectacular or so cheap or so elegant that experts were left shaking their heads in stunned disbelief".

Dastardly negative connotations of "hacker" later appeared because of the utterly clueless media.

Here are the ME Hardware Hacker columns...

hhack_1_85.pdf
hhack_2_85.pdf
hhack_3_85.pdf
hhack_4_85.pdf
hhack_5_85.pdf
hhack_6_85.pdf
hhack_7_85.pdf
hhack_8_85.pdf
hhack_9_85.pdf  
hhack_10_85.pdf

hhack_11_85.pdf
hhack_1_86.pdf
hhack_2_86.pdf
hhack_3_86.pdf
hhack_4_86.pdf
hhack_5_86.pdf
hhack_6_86.pdf
hhack_7_86.pdf
hhack_8_86.pdf
hhack_9_86.pdf
hhack_10_86.pdf
hhack_11_86.pdf
hhack_1_87.pdf 
hhack_2_87.pdf
hhack_3_87.pdf
hhack_4_87.pdf
hhack_5_87.pdf
hhack_6_87.pdf
hhack_7_87.pdf
hhack_8_87.pdf

October 16, 2017
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Some of my columns appeared as my Ask the Guru in Computer Shopper. These were in a mixed bag "question and answer" format and ran for several years.

I had just completed joining the Guru's and Swamis Union local #243, but because of Marcia Swampfelder's restraining order from the Tapioca Pudding Institute over her cross-genre classic of Godzilla versus the Night Nurses, I had to switch to local #475.

And the flick had to be pulled from theatric release and sent directly to eight track.

The columns survive in their original form as these reprint archives...

ATG1 -- Columns 1 to 32
ATG2 -- Columns 33 to 58
ATG3 -- Columns 59 to 70

October 15, 2017
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My other column in Nuts & Volts magazine was the Resource Bin. Its ongoing intent was to "tell people where to go to get stuff".

Back in those days, pinning down resources took a lot of time and effort. Not to mention continuously looking in oddball and obscure places that were enormously difficult to access.

The link farm can be found here with the main library here. Here's most of the Resbin columns chronologically...

#01 -- Starting your resource quest
#02 -- Finding obsolete integrated circuits
#03 -- Hacker friendly printed circuits
#04 -- Semiconductor & IC sources
#05 -- Labor-of-love technical newsletters
#06 -- Wondrous world of electronic surplus
#07 -- Unique opportunities in auto electronics
#08 -- Looking into electronic trade journals
#09 -- Exploring PostScript for fun & profit
#10 -- Oddball sources for just plain stuff
#11 -- Technical books that made a difference
#12 -- Secret desktop publishing sources
#13 -- Perils of patents and patenting
#14 -- Starting up your own technical venture
#15 -- Secrets of professional prototypes
#16 -- Opportunities in hacker robotics
#17 -- Exploring ham radio publications
#18 -- The furry with the syringe on top
#19 -- Royalty free real PostScript
#20 -- Starting an IC data book collection
#21 -- Book-on-demand publishing
#22 -- Online resources & opportunities
#23 -- Tools for electronic prototyping
#24 -- A look at electronic collectibles
#25 -- Essential homebrew test equipment
#26 -- Pseudoscience scams & ripoffs
#27 -- Electronic servicing opportunities
#28 -- Secrets of electronic breadboarding
#29 -- Cable & video insider sources
#30 -- Conducting your own personal research
#31 -- A "magic machine" for desktop pub
#32 -- Direct toner homebrew printed circuits
#33 -- Optoelectronics and fiber optics
#34 -- New developments in remote controls
#35 -- The best hardware parts of all time
#36 -- Book-on-demand publishing update
#37 -- A look at sensors & sensing
#38 -- Exploring high frequency resources
#39 -- Getting started in auto electronics
#40 -- New opportunities in home automation
#41 -- Security & alarm resources
#42 -- Alternate desktop publishing options
#43 -- Electronic music then and now
#44 -- Disability and handicapped resources
#45 -- Manic multimedia media magazines
#46 -- New opportunities in power electronics
#47 -- Another look at telecom
#48 -- Solar and alternate energy resources
#49 -- Fundamentals of nutting and volting
#50 -- Injection molding & plastic prototyping
#51 -- Son of alternate energy 13th, part 6
#52 -- Choosing a personal computer
#53 -- PDF and other info distribution tools
#54 -- Pick a peck of PIC's
#55 -- Exploring the web for the first time
#56 -- How to start your own web page
#57 -- Resources for electronic servicing
#58 -- Getting a charge out of batteries
#59 -- Starting your own tech venture
#60 -- Finding answers on the web
#61 -- Some favorite web sites
#62 -- Exploring trade journals
#63 -- Painlessly scamming a student paper
#64 -- The human side of the web
#65 -- Video game tools & techniques
#66 -- Book-on-demand publishing
#67 -- Getting started in amateur astronomy
#68 -- Terrific toner techniques
#69 -- Robotic resources update
#70 -- PostScript PIC flutterwumpers
#71 -- Secrets of web based research
#72 -- Some wireless resources 
#73 -- Electronic surplus & auctions
#74 -- Seismic & earthquake resources
#75 -- Virtual reality illusions
#76 -- Home Automation Again
#77 -- Accessing offshore electronics
#78 -- Starting your own web page
#79 -- Finding semiconductor & IC data
#80 -- Test Equipment manuals
#81 -- Secrets of military surplus I
#82 -- Secrets of military surplus II
#83 -- Fun with neat stuff
#84 -- Exploring Medical Electronics
#85 -- Some favorite web sites
#86 -- Dowsing for Brown's Gas in Roswell
#87 -- Used Test Equipment
#88 -- Hydrogen Resources
#89 -- Boat Anchors
#90 -- GPS and Navigation
#91 -- Exploring Antenna Resources
#92 -- Some PostScript Possibilities

October 14, 2017
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For a long while, I had a pair of columns in Nuts & Volts Magazine, Resource Bin and the Laserwriter Corner, which was soon renamed PostScript Secrets.

At any rate, PostScript Secrets was an intense and eclectic short column. When later released as a free ebook, supplements of additional neat things to do got added to each column.

While each column typically contained a dozen entries of sneaky 'free font" stunts and off-the-wall secret insider stuff, some of the loci included...

#01 - Certificates and scroll borders
#02 - Fractal Fern ( revised here )
#03 - Persistent downloads
#04 - Point Ruler
#05 - Step and Repeat utilities
#06 - Arccos and Arcsin
#07 - Classic litho chokes
#08 - Toner cartridge refilling
#09 - Multiple stroking techniques
#10 - 3D Lettering
#11 - Sturdy macho font
#12 - Cardboard box layout utility
#13 - Barcode resources
#14 - Backwards printing
#15 - Redefining procs
#16 - Using the flying wedge
#17 - Sight reading eexec
#18 - Secret gray map
#19 - Halftone spot patterns
#20 - Arc justify font
#21 - Popular Star Wars font
#22 - Internaldict FlxProc
#23 - Scribbling in PostScript
#24 - IBM serial comm ports
#25 - Isometric font
#26 - Avuncular Sleezoid
#27 - Knotting to this at all
#28 - True perspective font
#29 - Bricks up against the wall
#30 - Random number tricks
#31 - Speeding up a logo
#32 - Spherical nonlinear transforms
#33 - Font name directory
#34 - Spirals and Spirographs
#35 - Bezier curve length
#36 - Menu font lotsadots
#37 - Font path grabbing
#38 - Nonlinear ashow operator
#39 - College pennant font
#40 - Sticker variations
#41 - Keystone justification
#42 - Array justification
#43 - Smith Charts and log plots
#44 - Assorted neat stuff
#45 - Fancy borders and embossed fonts
#46 - Fast insertion sort
#47 - Classic bubble sort
#48 - Rotating text and thermography

October 13, 2017
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My first two published stories appeared here and here in Electronics World, the "highest" tech and most carefully crafted of competitive newsstand magazines.

In those days, magazines used nom de plumes to create the illusion of having more authors than they really did. Some of my pen names included Ralph Genter, Frank Gross, Alvin Snurdley, and, of course, Marcia Swampfelder. Leon Schoenfield was a rare early real person co-author.

The music speech discriminator sort of worked, but it was not quite ready for prime time. The log circuitry really wasn't and loading caused Schmitt trigger problems. But the solid state color organ was first rate and started this series of follow up projects.

Here's a chronological rundown of my EW papers. These were mostly a mix of "how it works" tutorials and "you build it" construction projects....

colorg1_4_63.pdf
music_speech_discrim.pdf
cap_nomo_4_63.pdf
color_organ2_1_64.pdf
four_layer_10_64.pdf
new_scr_dev_12_64.pdf
chirp_radar_1_65.pdf
mult_elec_con_1_65.pdf
hs_design_1_65.pdf
ss_dim_5+6_65.pdf
 
semi_sweep_tv_06_65.pdf 

ldim_ptcon_7_65.pdf 
optical_link_9_65.pdf
 
ics_whats_avail_11_65.pdf
amp_using_switching_2_66.pdf
nanosecond_pulses_2_66.pdf
using_lowcost_ics_3_66.pdf
gcs_timer_5_66.pdf 
varactor_diode_apps_6_66.pdf
insulated_gate_trans_7_66.pdf
switch_mode_power_9_66.pdf
linear_ics_11_66.pdf
metal_locators_12_66.pdf
opamp_circuits_8_67.pdf
constant_cur_diode_10 67.pdf
audio_ics_10_67.pdf 
extended_resonance_11_67.pdf
diff_amp_2_68.pdf plast_pow_2_68.pdf  
decimal_counting_9_68.pdf
thermoluminescence_3_69.pdf 
Paleomagnetism & Archaeomagnetism_9_69.pdf predetermining_counter_5_70.pdf
addsub_MOS_counter_6_70.pdf  

October 12, 2017
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Magic sinewaves are a recently discovered class of math functions that are able to dramatically improve the quality and efficiency of many digitally derived sinewaves for such tasks as synchronous inverters, motor drives, pv panels, or electric cars.

Magic Sinewaves have the unique property of using the fewest possible energy-robbing switching transitions to precisely zero out the maximum possible number of low order harmonics.

ANY chosen number of low harmonics can theoretically be forced to zero and practically reduced to extremely low values, typically well below -60 decibels.

A quick link farm can be found here, and the main Magic Sinewave library here. Key papers include...

Introduction to Magic Sinewaves
Magic Sinewave Executive Summary
Magic Sinewave Calculator Quantizer Update
Recent Developments in Magic Sinewaves 
Three Phase Magic Sinewave Intro
Ultra Fast Magic Sinewave Calculator ( older )
Ultra Fast Calculator Tutorial
Ultra Fast Calculator JavaScript Code
The Saga of the Dripping Stalactites
Improved Magic Sinewave Chip
Magic Sinewave Demo Hardware

Magic Sinewave PIC Programming Guide
Magic Sinewave Quick Links
Magic Sinewave Main Library
Magic Sinewave Archive
Magic Sinewave Development Proposal

Present work focuses on Raspberry Pi software-only solutions that combine entire sinewave libraries with simultaneous frequency and amplitude generation.

Your support is welcome.

October 11, 2017
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My Blatant Opportunist columns started out in Midnight Engineering magazine and then were web published as ezine topics in my www.tinaja.com website and their continuations ultimately were merged  into our GuruGrams.

The focus was on product development for the individual and small scale startup. They remain linked here and here.

Many of the earlier Blat columns remain relevant and useful  to this day...

Blat #01 -- Book-on-demand publishing
Blat #02 -- Stupendous stuff sources

Blat #03 -- Desktop finishing ideas

Blat #04 -- Emerging technologies I
Blat #05 -- Son of desktop finishing
Blat #06 -- The case against patents
Blat #07 -- Mastering the advetorial
Blat #08 -- Stalking the wild paradigm

Blat #09 -- Direct toner printed circuits
Blat #10 -- New ISMM II introduction part 1
Blat #11 -- New ISMM II introduction part 2
Blat #12 -- Why I like PostScript
Blat #13 -- Insider research secrets
Blat #14 -- Revisiting Book-on-demand publishing

Blat #15 -- Terrific toner techniques
Blat #16 -- Post justification editing
Blat #17 -- Emerging technical opportunities II
Blat #18 -- Inventor's organizations
Blat #19 -- Bound & Determined
Blat #20 -- Book-on-demand publishing resources I
Blat #21 -- Book-on-demand publishing resources II
Blat #22 -- Patent horror stories

Blat #23 -- One thousand and one reviews
Blat #24 -- Becoming a purveyor of risk reduction

Blat #25 -- Elegant simplicity
Blat #26 -- Picojustification techniques
Blat #27 -- Emerging technical opportunities III
Blat #28 -- Some catalog musings
Blat #29 -- When to patent
Blat #30 -- Flutterwumpers Blat #31 -- Some helpline hints
Blat #32 -- Avoiding engineering ratholes
Blat #33 -- The Mount Graham aerial tramway
Blat #34 -- Catalogs using Adobe Acrobat PDF
Blat #35 -- Magic Sinewaves

Blat #36 -- Con Tests

Blat #37 -- Emerging technical opportunities IV
Blat #38 -- Winning the micro game
Blat #39 -- Options for self-publishing
Blat #40 -- Making B/W print more colorful
Blat #41 -- Weaving a tangled web
Blat #42 -- My primary research tools

Blat #43 -- Don't get sick
Blat #44 -- Emerging technical opportunities V
Blat #45 -- Essential tools to bust a $650 patent

Blat #46 -- Insider banner advertising secrets
Blat #47 -- Guidelines for tri-mode publishing
Blat #48 -- Cash & Carry consulting
Blat #49 -- How to bash pseudoscience
Blat #50 -- Secrets of 24/7 publishing
Blat #51 -- Adding website bells & whistles
Blat #52 -- PDF & PDF link checking
Blat #53 -- Emerging technical opportunities VI

Blat #54 -- The surplus and auction scene

Blat #55 -- Eminently effective email etiquette
Blat #56 -- Funding your personal web site
Blat #57 -- Imaginative imaging
Blat #58 -- Some thoughts on ezines

Blat #59 -- Web imaging secrets
Blat #60 -- The eBay phenomena
Blat #61 -- Steplocked magic sinewaves
Blat #62 -- Bouncy bricks and other web tricks
Blat #63 -- Don's unauthorized autobiography
Blat #64 -- Debugging insider info

Blat #65 -- My eBay secrets
Blat #66 -- Thoughts on refurb
Bllat #65 -- My eBay secrets
Blat #67 -- Step by step image prep

Blat #68 -- Emerging technical opportunities VII
Blat #69 -- The worst of Marcia Swampfelder
Blat #70 -- How to become a crooked auctioneer
Blat #71 -- Some energy fundamentals
Blat #72 -- Fun with stuff

October 10, 2017
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For most individuals and small scale startups, patents are virtually certain to result in a net loss of time, energy, money, and sanity.   

One reason for this is the outrageously wrong urban lore involving patents and patenting. A second involves the outright scams which inevitably will surround "inventions" and "inventing".  A third is that the economic breakeven needed to recover patent costs is something between $12,000,000 and $40,000,000 in gross sales. It is ludicrously absurd to try and patent a million dollar idea.

Start with our Case Against Patents paper and then go on to these...

The Case Against Patents  
When to Patent  
How to Bust a $650
Patent
 Patent Horror Stories
Patent Avoidance Resources
Main Patent Library Page
Collected Patenting eBook
Tech Innovation Secrets Risk Reduction
Stalking the Wild Paradigm
Elegant Simplicity

Our InfoPack Service

Emerging Technical Opportunities I
Emerging Technical Opportunities II
Emerging Technical Opportunities III
Emerging Technical Opportunities IV
Emerging Technical Opportunities V
Emerging Technical Opportunities VI
Emerging Technical Opportunities VII

Much more on product development here. My own patent here. And a bizarre collection of historic patent scams here.

October 09, 2017
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Newly updated and expanded our Gila Valley Dayhikes. We are now up to 514 primary entries.

More here and here.

October 08, 2017
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We recently started getting great heaping bunches of 404's over a file called /wp-login.php. Here is what we found and how we decided to deal with it.

WordPress is an open source website managing system that is normally provided by your ISP web server. It is apparently quite popular and seems to be in use by nearly a third of all websites.

If you no not have a file on your website called /wp-login.php, a 404 error will be generated by participating ISP's. The main WordPress website can be found here and a tutorial here.

I purposely sought out ( and still seek out ) a classic "retro" look to my website and  ( rightly or wrongly ) decided to presently not use WordPress.

Instead, he he he , I decided to hijack /wp-login.php with this redirect, leading what used to be 404's to my most important entry directory of /whtnu17.shtml...

<html> <head> <title>wp-login.php redirect
</title><meta HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH"
CONTENT="1;     
URL=https://www.tinaja.com/whtnu17.shtml">
</head> <body> Redirecting... </body> </html>

I don't yet know whether it is a coincidence or not, but our website response literally shot up after the hijack.

More on measuring website popularity here. And stunts that may help can be found here.

October 07, 2017
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Here's a few of our ongoing Director's Cuts. Some are complete and others are still in process...

SigForth Intro to PostScript
Tearing Method
Winning the Micro Game 
Superclock
AACB1 Rework
MLPCI Rework
Paleomagnetism and Archaeomagnetism
Thermolluminescence TVT2 Image

October 06, 2017
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Started a directors cut of our newly discovered SigForth paper. You can follow it here and find its sourcecode here.

"Director's cuts" are my method of fully restoring Linotype age technical papers. Important benefits include bringing appearance up to modern web standards; gaining "perfect" typography, backgrounds, and alignment.

Plus new use of spot or full color; tiny ( 1/5 or less of normal! ) file sizes; ultra fast loading; live URL linking; possibly vastly improved image recoveries; total hyphen removal; improved italic substitutions; paragraph ledding; and potentially zero typos or spelling errors.

Limitations include being time intensive with a steep learning curve, needing to become PostScript literate, using my Gonzo Utilities along with that super top secret Distiller //acrodist /F from your command line, needing Acrobat Pro, resolving IP and copyright issues, and allowing minor to moderate modifications of the original paper.

It is by far the best to start with the original sourcecode, but this is rarely available on Linotype era precomputer docs. While good choices involve high resolution scans, all you really need is a fairly clean screen image on a high resolution monitor.

There is an obscure "print screen" or whatever key on most keyboards. Use this to grab a third or a quarter of a page at a time and send it to Imageviewer32 or its equivalent. Save as fragmented bitmaps and then combine and bring the full page bitmap up in Paint.

Route one page bitmap at a time to Acrobat Pro and have it do its superb character recognition. Switch to edit mode and copy the largest feasible text blocks to Wordpad or some other word processor. Then you carefully remove all glitches and typos in an attempt to get perfectly clean original intended text.

Done properly, very little actual rekying should be needed.

Bring the text up in my Gonzo Utilities, and carefully mimic the original layout but with new and clean fonts. Add spot color and links and new paragraph ledding where and when appropriate.

Hyphens, of course, are vile and despicable and have no place whatsoever in modern web layouts. Fortunately, most obsessive hyphenators eventually grow so much hair on their palms that they can no longer type.

What you do instead is slightly modify any non-power words in the text to gain acceptable fill justification. Or else eliminate fill justification entirely.

The trick to forcing Gonzo fill justify lines is to convert any "group" into one long paragraph and then add a dozen spaces at your intended line ends. Then modify your text and its space locations as needed to gain suitably dense typography.

Any such mods, of course, should not in any manner modify the original author's intent and style. And should not be used on any legal document or on any Shakespearian quality originals.

I strongly feel that italics should be discouraged and replaced with bolding or spot color. But I kept them in this example because they seemed to belong.

The original bitmap image of the printer was rather small and mangy. It was magnified four times and then traced over in Paint. Gonzo then does an automatic resizing and even provides an optional URL link. All with modest file sizes.

You can compare the Acrobat version here against the full gonzo director's cuts rework here. It is not even remotely close.

Samples of other director's cuts can be found here, here, here, here, and here.

We can do director's cuts for you, as well as consulting or training. Contact us for details.

October 05, 2017
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Just after WWII, our sun suddenly became a radio star. owing to widespread expansion of VHF television broadcasts. And Captain VideoRoller Derby, and Kukla, Fran, and Ollie suddenly became our goodwill ambassadors to outer space.

These signals have now swept out over ONE MILLION CUBIC LIGHT YEARS of space and have been overwhelmingly likely to annoy many distant extrasolar Goldilocks planets.

At signal levels that remain detectable with our current  technology. Curiously, the signal strength drops off with the square of the distance, but the number of annoyed  planets increases with the cube of the distance.

Consider this: What interpretation would "they" make over a lucid ten second clip of Roller Derby as the sum total of Earth based humanity?

BTW, Additional Captain Video clips newly appear here.

October 04, 2017
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Overheard some alternate energy enthusiasts who were lavishly praising Sterling engines as the ultimate solution to low delta-t energy recovery.

It quickly became obvious that they did not have the faintest clue of the underlying thermodynamics or economics. To date, the Sterling engine has been one of the largest and most monumental engineering ratholes of all times.

Here is why...

Carnot Matters -- There is a fundamental and unavoidable law of thermodynamics that says the best possible efficiency of any heat engine is proportional to the absolute temperature delta fraction. Thus your best possible efficiency of a 20 degree rise at 70 degree F room temperature would be 20/(459+70) = 3.8 percent. And no real world system can be even this good.     

 Efficiency Matters --As efficiency goes down, the size and complexity of the energy recovery device will disproportionately increase in a hyperbolic or worse manner for a given set of recovery values. Which is why totally free pv solar panels of less than six percent efficiency are totally useless.    

Amortization Matters -- If your energy recovery device is producing an average of two cents worth  of electricity per day and your total cost of ownership is three cents per day, you have a gasoline destroying net energy sink. The longer you run it, the more gasoline you destroy.

Gotchas Matter -- A Sterling engine needs a special part called a regenerator. Regenerators have to be long and thin and short and fat. They also have to be very good conductors of  heat and outstanding insulators. Extreme  engineering compromise is needed and nobody  has come up with a good regeneration solution to date. Much more in our Energy Fundamentals tutorial. And in our Engineering Ratholes story.

And more on the fundamental factors underlying recent technical innovation here.

October 03, 2017
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Managed to find a fragment of a paper that I completely forgot about. This was a PostScript tutorial that I did for the SIG-Forth folks.

PostScript, of course, is the third cousin of Forth that has been five times removed and six times disowned.

The present file is sort of a placemaker. I'll complete it and possibly do a vastly improved Director's Cut on it as time permits. Please temporarily ignore the wrong area code.

Meanwhile, if you have a better or a more complete scan of this item, please send me a copy.

October 02, 2017
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We are in the process of adding dozens of super premium SMT microwave switches to eBay.

Some of these sell new for $1000 to $2000 or more, and we now offer them for pennies on the dollar. RFE. We have "click tested" them for functionality. And we fully guarantee them serviceable and as described...

SPDT magnetic latched...

Agilent 8765A Magnetic Latching Coax Switch
Opt 024 100 DC-4 GHz 24 Vdc SMA ( 6 left )

HP or Agilent 33314-60026 Latching Coax
switch DC-20 GHz 24 Vdc Drive SMA ( 11 left ) 

HP 33311A Coaxial Switch
DC-4 GHz Pin Terms 24 Vdc 50 Ohm term SMA
dual SPDT ( 20 left )

HP 33311B 011 Coaxial Switch DC-18 GHz Pin
Terms  5 Vdc 50 Ohm term SMA dual SPDT (1 left )

HP 33314A Magnetic Latching Coaxial Switch
DC-4 GHz 24 6dc Drive SMA pin conn ( 18 left )

HP 8765B Magnetic Latching Coaxial Switch
Opt 005 100 DC-20 GHz 5 6dc Drive SMA
( 13 left )

Agilent 8765A Magnetic Latching Coaxial Switch
DC-4 GHz 15 6dc Drive SMA 4 pin ( 2 left )

Agilent 33311-60039 Coaxial Switch
DC-18 GHz 24 6dc Drive SMA pin terminal s
(43 left )

HP 33314B Magnetic Latching Coaxial Switch
DC-20 GHz 24 6dc Drive SMA pin conn ( 9 left )

HP 33314A Mag Latch Coaxial Switch
SPDT DC-4 GHz 24 6dc Drive SMA 4 pin conn
(1 left)

HP8765B Magnetic Latching Coaxial Switch
DC-20 GHz 10 6dc Drive SMA ( 2 left )

Narda SEM123LT Magnetic Latching
Coaxial Switch SPDT DC-18 GHz24 6dc Drive
e SMA ( 43 left )

Agilent 33311-60040 Coaxial Switch
DC-26.5 GHz 24 6dc Drive SMA pin terminals
( 1 left )

HP 33311C STD Coaxial Switch
DC-26.5 GHz Pin Term 24 Vdc 50 Ohm SMA
dual SPDT ( 10 left )

HP 8761B OPT 551 Latching SPDT coax switch
DC-18GHz 24-30vdc Nmal SMA fem SMAfem
( 3 left )

HP 8761A OPT 555 Latching SPDT coax switch
DC-18GHz 12-15 Vdc all SMA female ( 8 left )

HP 8761B OPT 555 Latching SPDT coax switch
DC-18GHz 24-30vdc all SMA female ( 2 left )

HP 8761A OPT 655 Latching SPDT coax switch
DC-18GHz 12-15 Vdc SMA male fem fem ( 4 left )

HP 8761B OPT 661 Latching SPDT coax switch
DC-18GHz 24-30vdc Nmal SMAmal SMAmal ( 2 left )

HP 8765A Magnetic Latching Coax Switch
DC-4 GHz Opt 024 100 24 6dc SMA ( 23 left )

HP 33314-60026 Mag Latch Coaxial Switch
Opt 005 100 DC-20 GHz 5 6dc Drive SMA ( 18 left )

HP 8765A Magnetic Latching Coaxial Switch DC-4 GHz
5 6dc Drive SMA 4 pin conn ( 2 left )

4 port...

HP 33312B Four port Coaxial Switch
DC-18 GHz 24 6dc Drive SMA int 50 Ohm
( 23 left )

HP 33312B Four port Coaxial Switch DC-18 GHz
5 6dc Drive SMA int 50 Ohm ( 13 left )

5 port...

HP 33313A Mech Latching 5 port Coaxial Switch DC-4 GHz 24 6dc Drive SMA ( 18 left )

HP 33313B Mech Latching 5 port Coaxial Switch DC-18 GHz 24 6dc Drive SMA ( 5 left )

[ 1-2 3-4 to 1-3 2-4 ] latching...

Legacy UZ Transtel T443D31 RF Switch
28 Vdc dc-18 GHz SMA [1-2 3-4] to
[1-3 2-4]  ( 14 left )

SP6T...

Narda SP6T rf coax switch 060-D0-A3D-4C2
SMA 28 Vdc NO DC-18 GHz DB9 connector
( 20 left )

Narda SP6T rf coax switch 062-D1-A3D-4C2
SMA 28 Vdc NO DC-18 GHz DB9 connector
( 8 left )

SP8T...

Dow Key Microwave 581J-5208 12 Vdc SP8T
SMA coaxial switch DC-18 GHz DB9 conn
( 1 left )

SP12T...

Narda SP12T rf coax switch
120-D0-A1D-3C2 SMA 28 Vdc NO DC-12.4
GHz solder terms ( 2 left )

We still have a few dozen more to list, so please check back or contact us.

October 01, 2017
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A reminder that we have THE definitive Gila Valley dayhikes guide here. It includes exact locations of all but the most sensitive of places to go and things to do.

The trips can be greatly added to by using Google Earth, or my very favorite Acme Mapper. A local hiking club can be found here.

Some of the lesser known dayhikes have now been  gathered together here. This is also a great example of how PostScript can completely and utterly blow Power Point out of the water on all counts. Many more examples here.

Separately, if you want your outdoor activities to make a significant contribution to ongoing exciting world class research, check out our Prehistoric bajada hanging canals you'll find here.

A collection of field notes can be linked here. And we are now newly posting to Research Gate. Or contact us for more  details.

September 30, 2017
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Some recent major glitches in the pv panel world:

Wacker just got whacked. With their polysilicon factory blowing up. It is likely to be many months before they can resume. Thus creating a major materials supply issue .

Both Solar Server and pvXchange seem to have failed to update their pv pricing info for the last several months. We are currently stuck at 40 euro cents per peak panel watt. We need 25 US cents for true renewability and sustainability.

Two possible alternate pricing sources here and here.

Currency exchange rates here.

Meanwhile, in their infinite wisdom, the ITC International Trade Commission ( who are by no means international ) recommended proceeding towards a pv tax that could easily exceed 100 percent of ongoing value.

One of the minor side effects would be the complete elimination of any and all new pv installations in the US. Done primarily to help two utterly incompetently mismanaged and now bankrupt foreign firms.

An older pv panel tutorial can be found here, with much more on energy in general here and here.

September 29, 2017
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eBay has just gone draconian big brother in that they have newly banned all live url links and all phone numbers from their seller's listings.

The damage this does to their sellers overwhelmingly exceeds any perceived but likely utterly trivial revenue loss from off-eBay sales.

For a list of any of your listings that may be affected, go to my eBay ---> tasks.

Some of our available eBay resources include...

Our own eBay Sales
eBay Buying Summary

eBay Selling Summary
Enhancing your eBay Skills I
Enhancing your eBay Skills II

Enhancing your eBay Skills III
Enhancing your eBay Skills IV
Enhancing your eBay Skills V

Enhancing your eBay Skills VI
Enhancing your eBay Skills VII

Enhancing your eBay Skills VIII
Image Post-Processing Tools
Auction Help Library
The Arizona Auction Scene
Your own Custom Auction Finder

Plus the live and online auction hints here and here.

September 28, 2017
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Online auctions are a totally different scene from the recently endangered live ones. They are far easier to participate in but their risks are also much higher, as are their closing costs...

Always seek out a 30:1 or higher SBR Sell Buy Ratio. Avoid ever paying more than a fraction of a cent on the dollar.

Bid only ONCE precisely two minutes BEFORE any auto extension trips.

A reasonable max proxy bid might be THIRTY PERCENT above what the lot is worth to you. For, almost always, you will either be outbid or will get the item for significantly less than your max.

Carefully establish street value through such sites as PLC Center or McMaster Carr or OEM's Trade or similar.

Carefully establish eBay value by seeing how many competitors are offering the items for what price spread. Always factor in any personal value added that you can bring to the table. Such as exceptional images.

Be sure to review data sheets and technical info on the web. Many items may now have zero demand.

Note that buyers premiums can be totally outrageous, with state taxes and VISAs piled on top of them. Not to mention packing and shipping costs. Combined these can easily TOTALLY DOMINATE your lot cost.

If more than five percent of your bids win, you are paying waaay to much. You make up for this by bidding on twenty times what you could possibly deal with.

Recognize "don't go there" currency threshold limits and always bid a few cents above them. A bid of $20.17 is much more  likely to win than $19.73.

The best buys are often "contents of shelf" or "contents of cabinet".

Certain images can be magnified and sharpened to reveal more product info. Free Imageviewer32 is handy here.

Keep close tabs on likely auction sources, most especially Bidspotter, AuctionZip, and similar.

Have well defined distance limits; Close for heavy stuff you can personally deal with; light for stuff others have to ship for you ; and Exceptional for, well, exceptional very rare "bottom feeding" opportunities.

Always note whether adjacent lots are prime inventory, obsolete spares, abject mezzanine junk, maintenance stuff, or likely unfixable repairables.

Use calenders or Rolodex files to keep tracks of opening and closing dates and passwords. List lot numbers of interest on a 3x5 card and cross them off as you get outbid.

Apply for bid approval early.

Outrageous lowball bids are sometimes accepted after auction on unbid lots. This ploy is mostly useful when the building has to be vacated.

UPS Stores are outrageously expensive but may be your best choice for pickup and packaging of remote lots. Otherwise, check out UShip and similar services. Note that most trucking firms absolutely refuse to do any packaging whatsoever, even so minimal as shrink wrapping a skid.

Note that the inability to inspect can very much affect the suitability of the lot to you. The risk to reward ratio is much higher online than live.

Much more on auctions here, eBay here, and your own regional auction finder here.

September 27, 2017
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Here is a spiral related kind of thingy along with its sourcecode. It is sort of based on some web related art, but with all new sourcecode. As usual, send it to Distiller via the Windows Command mode with the top secret incantation of "//acrodist /F"

Curiously, its animated sideshow only appears once for any given amount of Acrobat PDF magnification. The animation seems totally absent on Chrome, so be sure to view it via Acrobat on a local copy.

Alike but different somehow would be our avuncular sleezoid or the Spirograph stuff found here and here

Plus our recent Fractal Fern here and here, and our Sierpinski Triangle here and here. And the marbelous stacks of pancakes here. A PostScript manual here, my personal utilities here, and an intro tutorial here.

September 26, 2017
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A copy of our latest hanging canal field notes has just been newly uploaded to Researchgate.

You'll also find many Dr. James Neely papers here, both on our local hanging canals and worldwide. As well as many different response and participation options for you.

Meanwhile, here, here, and here are our latest images of our latest possible hanging canal find that potentially are located here.

Sadly, the evidence to date is "not quite" strong enough and further study is definitely needed to see if it is real.

Your participation welcome.

September 25, 2017
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OK, so just how does our Sierpinski Triangle work?

There are two portions to the code: A stacked array and the display code. The stacked array consists of six individual two dimensional arrays of length 1, 3, 9, 27, 81, and 243. Each [x y] subelement defines the lower tip of any triangle, while the array positioning sets its scale. And, optionally, its color.

All the display code does is report the array contents in the expected manner. Drawing each triangle in its intended position and size.

The second array down on the pile looks like this...

[[x0 y0] [x1 y1] [x2 y2]]

When the array is being built, the [x0 y0] values here will get added to the needed upcoming left, right, and upper offsets and become the first three sub-entries of the third array down on the array stack.

Each "parent" thus fosters three "children". The process continues from left to right and then from the top down until all 364 triangles are defined. Additional depth is easily added with trivially short extra code.

The PostScript forall command is especially adept at re-entrant code such as this.

An alternate turtle graphics approach to Sierpinski can be found here. It would seem much more complex, quite obtuse, redundant stroked, and difficult to colorize. A PostScript manual here, my personal utilities here, and an intro tutorial here.

September 24, 2017
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OK, here is a brand new Sierpinski Triangle. You'll find the PostScript code here and its PDF demo here.

Just send the 6K code to Acrobat Distiller with the usual top secret command line incantation of "//acrodist /F".

While the final result is identical to Sierpinski, I'm not quite sure whether our sneaky stunt of reentrant forall commands creating cascaded arrays of lower vertices would be considered completely kosher or not.

Adding any desired depth to the reentrancy or compiling for compaction is largely trivial. We did cheat a little by throwing an optional "real" triangle around the outside.

A PostScript manual here, my personal utilities here, and an intro tutorial here.

Even more "doesn't look like a computer did it" stuff in our fractal fern and sourcecode, and, of course, in all of our Marbelous Stacks of Pancakes.

September 23, 2017
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... and yet another ancient review on mistakes, this time on live auctions. Which, of course, are getting totally blown out of the water by the online auctions which usually have utterly overwhelming cost and convenience advantages.

To the point that classic auctioneers are rapidly becoming an endangered species. Still, opportunities ( barely ) exist in the way of remote community college auctions and small town venues that can definitely work to your interest.

And, when combined with "put it with the next one" poisoned lots and being thirteen hours into a three hour auction, there's still some exciting possibilities. Especially when inspection is a good idea...

Always remember that you have no friends at an  auction! Least of all the auctioneer. Listen to  everything, volunteer nothing. Be invisible till it  is time to be in the auctioneer's face. Dress down to the point of being shabby, but always  wear one very distinct hat or other piece of clothing.

 If more than five percent of your bids win, you are  bidding far too high. Always stop bidding if anyone is bidding against you and you even remotely approach  fair value.

Be on the lookout for poor promotion by a second tier auction, utter leinholder panic, conflicts with another show, and hassles over payments, removal dates, outrageous bid deposits, and cleanup.

Huge lots tend to have disproportionately low prices. As do "contents of cabinet" or "contents of room" Always stay for the end of the auction. In some cases,  utterly spectacular bargains will result.

Especially if the  area has to be cleared for a new tenant or whatever. Sometimes you can also make really great deals on unbid  or unsold items after the auction or during quiet times.

Secretly mark which of dozens of pallets you have an interest in, such as with pushpins. Don't sweat bidding on tons of garbage to get one or two  items. 

You can usually find someone to take ( or even pay  for ) the dregs after the auction. And abandoning stuff often  is not that big a deal.

Position yourself a few lots ahead of the auctioneer and right beside the next item of your interest. Stay alert through numerous sitdown and meditation breaks,  sensible food and drink, mild painkillers, and frequent  restroom use. Plus sane shoes.

Work in teams of two. Your partner might see something that you miss, and might give you a crucial sanity check.

Crossing your hand across your chest palms down will sometimes ask the auctioneer to split the bid increment.

Watch for heavy items that can allow minor valuable parts recycled, large quantity assorted lots, items requiring major  triage, items needing mix and match part swapping refurb, or simply your being the only bidder that recognizes value.

Recognize "don't go there price thresholds" and always bid just above them. A bid of $20.14 is much more likely to win than $19.73.

NEVER get into a pissing contest with another bidder. They will squash you like a bug. If you would like to try and steal an item, get out in front of everybody else but not quite in the auctioneer's face..

Then, while the item IS STILL BEING DESCRIBED, hold your bidder card against your chest with one hand and do a Churchill V for Victory with your other hand, against your chest. Be sure that ONLY the auctioneer can see you. You are giving the auctioneer a message of "Here is a $2.50 floor bid if and when you care to accept it."

If that does not work, try rocking your bidder card back and forth to tell the auctioneer "I want this item". Do so invisibly to the audience.

If you suspect the bidding will be highly competitive,WAIT till just under your max and bid ONCE on the second going of going going gone.

NEVER get tired, or lazy, or in a hurry. The spectacularly best deals usually happen very late in an auction.

A missing key can dramatically suppress the number and values of compatible bids. And many locksmiths are quite low in cost. Be sure to balance risk versus reward. And make sure adjacent lots are all high tech.

Beware of the traditional scams of fast hammers, phantom bidding, bid pulling, no or slow pay, and shilling.

I guess I got "somewhat discouraged" over often worthless storage auctions when the next lot after the one I bid on included two dead babies. The auctioneer was not at all clear whether this was to be "choice" or "times the money".

Use the four inch hail, the scorpions, the rabid bats, the snakes, the poor parking, filth, bad lighting, and, of course, the lack of restrooms to your full advantage.

Secrets on becoming a crooked auctioneer can be found here. Your own custom regional auction finder can be created for you per these details. And more here on our Auction Help page and links.   

September 22, 2017
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This appears to be waayy too good to be true, but it seems possible to speed up PostScript fractal fern creating time by a factor of 130 or so! On down to under a fraction of a second.

Per the code here and the final PDF file here. But some third party checks should be done that verify this is for real.

The PostScript Reference Manuals shows  us a maximum path limit length of 3500, but the PS Interpreter in Acrobat Distiller apparently can accept a path of half a million path dots and likely many more. But this many may cause problems with Chrome or GhostScript or others.

Thus, instead of repeated stroking single dots, you should be able to accumulate 1000 of the fern points into a single path and then stroke that path only ONCE! Then repeat the process 250 times or how often for the density you are after.

Some third party variations can be found here. You should be able to just change the numbers in the above code, and send it to Acrobat Distiller via the usual secret command line code of //acrodist /F

And for something "alike but different somehow, check this out. It looks like it should function superbly under PostScript.

Please email me with what does and does not work for you.

September 21, 2017
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... and review these ancient eBay selling mistakes...

Not recognizing that eBay sales are a profession that always demands EXTREME time commitment, attention  to detail, and very high personal value added.  

Trying to work on too low a profit margin. ALWAYS seek out a 30:1 or higher RSB sell/buy ratio.

Not having the faintest clue what your true costs are.

If you are not including your pro-rated water  bill and similar obscure items, your cost accounting  is probably woefully inadequate.

Not recognizing that the minimum profitable eBay sale is somewhere around $19.63.    

Not offering unique products not found elsewhere.    

Failing to keep proper tax records.    

Exceeding a 21 day cashout or 15 month hang time. While avoiding the profit loss of "too fast" sales.  

Not realizing that eBay seller profits ALL happen during  BUYING and not during selling.    

Not buying except under EXTREME distress situations.  If more than 5% of your buy offers are accepted, you  are paying way too much. Failing to promptly provide tracking info to buyer. Naturally, you NEVER ship without tracking. But it usually pays to self-insure .

Not keeping your item descriptions complete, accurate, and somewhat understated.

Not offering refunds for ANY reason. And comping full  costs on any return, usually WITHOUT a return. Your 30:1 SBR protects you against significant losses.    

Listing anything you cannot hold extended at arm's length.   

Not having proper inventory controls in place.   

Not having daily shipping, a trade name registration, and a state tax stamp.

Using arcane terms and conditions that exceed  ten words absolute maximum.  Failing to promptly answer all emails and to correct all problems as quickly as possible.

Not using a camera AND a scanner AND web data  links when and where appropriate. Images rule.  

Failing to keep shipping charges strictly revenue neutral.  

Not spending nearly enough time in image post-processing. At least 90 percent of your photo  effort should go here.   

Selling foreign.

Including newly banned phone numbers or live URL's in your listings.   

Listing any item at an opening price less than you are willing to sell it for.    

Withdrawing an offer in violation  of the Uniform Commercial Code

Selling any item violating VERO rights.    

Selling in known problem categories.     

Stealing images and copy from other sellers.

Accepting anything but  Paypal

Not offering inspection privileges.

Not promptly offering refunds. When appropriate, including buyer costs and without any  return.  

Falling for account-stealing phishing emails.   

Posting feedback before customer evaluates item.

Being rude or confrontational in seller email contacts.

Using dropshippers, palletized "bargains", doing consignment sales, or selling for friends.

Much more eBay stuff here.

September 20, 2017
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Thought we might once again review these ancient eBay buying rules...

Failing to proxy bid their max ONCE very late in the auction, doing so in oddball penny amounts just above  a currency denomination threshold.

Failing to realize that an awarded bid is an enforceable contract under the Uniform Commercial Code.   

Not knowing the TOTAL transaction cost of the bid  price, the shipping costs, and any special charges.  

 Failing to acknowledge that it costs money to ship stuff, and that the carrier charges are typically only a tiny fraction of true total shipping costs.

Not fully reading the offer or seeing what is not there.    

Failing to contact the seller if there is ANY question.   

Failing to pay promptly and in the expected manner.   

Withdrawing a bid for frivolous or remorseful reasons.   

Buying foreign.   

Not realizing that "too good to be true" offers are.   

Paying with anything except  Paypal   

Failing to research value elsewhere. eBay is seldom the only or the best buy.    

Not realizing that shipping heavy stuff long distances is practically NEVER cost effective.    
 Falling for account-stealing phishing emails.   

Getting into pissing contests with other bidders.    

Failing to preview the seller's feedback. Anything less than 98 percent is suspect and below 95 percent should trip a red flag alert.

Nickel and dimeing the seller over trivial charges.   

Being rude or confrontational in seller email contacts.   

Negging before resolving any seller conflict

Much more eBay stuff here.

September 19, 2017
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Let the sleeping dogs lie. Because I will not believe them anyway.

Turns out there are dozens of "lost" Guru's Lair pages caused by underlinking or even no linking at all. Here's a few of them that might remain of some interest...

aafont01.shtml - Bitmap manipulation Library
acrob01.shtml - Acrobat Library
adeptinv.shtml - Long sold out robotics
advt01.shtml
- Banner advertising opportunities
amlink01.shtml
- Book access
ara01.shtml - Historic conference record
aucres01.shtml - Your own regional auction finder
barg01.shtml - Bargain page catalog software
beewb01.shtml - Bee's own library pages
capvid01.shtml - Captain Video's secret laboratory
consul01.shtml - Older consultant's network
flut01.shtml -Spit or Chomp Flutterwumpers
glair01.shtml - Guru Archive Collection
golly01.shtml - Golly Gee Mister Science
info01.shtml - Your InfoPack Solutions
image01.shtml - Image Postproc Graphics Library
libry01.shtml - Main Library Page ( needs revision ) msquant/retry_m/xxxx.shtml - Magic sinewave calc
magsn01.shtml - Main Magic Sinewave Library
magsna1.shtml
- Magic Sinewave Historic Archive
map01.shtml - Site Map ( still needs revision )
navcub01.shtml
- Navicube navigation library
picup01.shtml - Some older PIC resources
psweb01.html
- Older PostScript web resources
synlib01.shtml
- Synergetics library page
third01.shtml - Third Party Resources
tinaja01.shtml - Tinaja Questing Library
wave01.shtml - Wavelets Library
weblib01.shtml
- Older web resource library
webwb01.shtml
- Some ancient web resources

Plus our usual reminder that we have one each of everything here and bunches of resources on our prehistoric hanging canals here.

September 18, 2017
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Here's some revised PostScript fractal fern sourcecode and its resulting .PDF file.

The source code is all of 2K long and is activated by sending it to Acrobat Distiller, preferably from the command line secret incantation of "//acrodist /F".

The sourcecode takes the better part of a minute to execute on most machines. Even the resultant .PDF file takes a full two seconds or so to refresh.

This has to be one of the most stunning images anyplace ever. Send it to your county fair for a guaranteed third place!

What really amazes me is that you do not draw this image. You temporarily remove its leash and let it out of cyberspace. Even more amazing is that the entire image is defined with only 24 numbers. This is astounding image compression.

Some background here.

September 17, 2017
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Most of our SSL update now seems to be working, and many of our files ( but - curiously - not certain web pages ) are now fully secure. Stay tuned for the dust to settle.

It turns out there is a secret hidden gotcha to any SSL update. One that can cause you no end of grief.

Only links that start with https:// can be made secure!

One option is to go through all 10,000 links on your website and manually change them to a https:// prefix. Yeah, right. But that in no way would respond to links your visitors have saved. Or anything else uncontrollably floating around in cyberspace.

Instead, the preferred solution is to use what is called a "301" redirect. This can automatically change most other incoming file prefixes (especially http:// ) to https://.

Details vary with your ISP and their server family. In the case of FatCow which uses Apache Server standards, their published workaround can be found here. Should you chose to, they can also fix the redirect for you for a small fee. Other hints here.

The alternate is to change your ht_access file yourself. ht_access should be on your homepage of your ISP's Apache server. Other uses for ht_access are to block bad visitors or allow non-mainstream file postfixes.

IF you already have an ht_access file and are using FatCow, you can try adding these three lines to its beginning...

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule (.*)
https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}
[R=301,L]

If, not, create a new three line standard textfile. Either way, be sure to FTP save the new file to your ISP, as well as careful backup copies elsewhere. Make sure you fully comply to your ISP and server rules!

September 16, 2017
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Can you pass this energy quiz?

Here's some more energy stuff you may find to be of interest...

Energy Intro and Summary
PV Panel Intro and Summary
Assorted Energy Links

Some Energy Fundamentals

More Energy Fundamentals
Fundamentals of Electrolysis
Trashing Auto Electrolysizers
How to Bash Pseudoscience

Technical Innovation Secrets
Debunking the Water Powered Car  
Debunking Brown's Gas
Supraluminal dowsing for Brown’s Gas in Roswell
"Its a gas" Hydrogen Library

September 15, 2017
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Our latest new PostScript program reads your web log files for you and extracts a report of all the 404's.

Find the code here and a sample output here. It reads a local file similar to an uncompressed moo.tinaja.com from FatCow and  generates an output similar to snoop_404.5.log.

I've purposely kept the file short at under 3K, but bells and whistles ( such as sorts and counts ) are easily added, as is conversion to a full blown logfile analyzer.

As with most of our code that uses gonzo.ps from our PostScript Utilities and any other PostScript code that wants to read or write disk files, you have to use a secret Distiller incantation from your Windows command line of "//acrodist /F".

My own report revealed several rude surprises. Some Russian hackers use extreme length URL's, and the usual PS readline string had to be lengthened to 15,000 characters or more.

Most of the errors appeared to be piracy attempts, with /wp-login.php overwhelming all the others. There were only 40 of my own errors, only half of which appeared to be remotely detectable, let alone fixable. Remarkably, there were no personal repeats, suggesting that actual Guru's Lair problems are already rare and well out of the mainstream.

More on PostScript here and here, with a bunch of program links here. Beginner stuff here and insider secrets here. With the bible book here and a video here.

September 14, 2017
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There does seem to be an uptick in our web response, over and above the usual seasonal school starts.

Some recent changes may explain the new interest levels...  

1. I'm trying to provide mostly new and fresh content daily 24/7.

2. The "things to do" goal is now at least a dozen new links or code modules per day.

3. Appropriate older "recycled" content will be worked in when and where it is still either current or funny. Or both. Such as this forever classic.

4. I've been paying more attention to some of the better blogs. Sort of as a "pace" Particularly this one and this one. Sadly, the future is up in the air over this one.

5. I'm trying to eliminate some of the more  difficult 404's, both those under my   control and those not.

6. I'm working on uploading more classic stuff such as this one, this one and this one.

7. I've been paying a lot more attention to spell checking lately. The magic incantation on Dreamweaver is shift-F7. But  the Lancasterisms will, of course, continue.

8. We have just added SSL security, although it may take a day or two to kick in. Besides the obvious benefits, this supposedly can also improve a site's SEO rankings.

Speaking of "5", I've made the disconcerting discovery that certain Russian Hackers will have logfile entries many thousands of bytes long.

Which takes a high RAM computer or some sneaky PostScript programming for workarounds. The sledgehammer cure is to use 15,000 character strings for file reads!

Other piracy attempts focus on .php files. And most especially /wp-login.php,which accounts for nearly one quarter of all of our wayward 404's!

One workaround is to create a dummy file of three spaces. Which will not respond in any manner, yet remain 404 free. Resist the urge to redirect to the Hualapai County Sheriff's Office or https://www.fbi.gov/ as pissing off the bad guys can end up a rather bad scene.

One way to deal with a hard to find personal 404 is to use a redirect to a related known good file...

<html><head><title>old html redirect</title>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content"=1;  
url=https://www.tinaja.com/acrob01.shtml">
</head><body> Taking you to our new website.
</body> </html>

Your ongoing support via here or here or here would be most welcome.

September 13, 2017
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Starting in October, Chrome will start publishing dire live security warnings on any web link that does not offer https:// and SSL security.

These warnings could severely impact your eBay sales. More details in this link collection.

The bottom line: If you wish to continue your eBay sales, you pretty much MUST include SSL on your website by October.

Fatcow offers SSL for your unshared website at $44 annually. More details here. Other ISP's may charge more or less. Shared websites may sometimes include free SSL.

Meanwhile, we've just placed bunches of newly listed microwave rf switches on our eBay site. With pricing a tiny fraction of factory originals. We have "click tested" these and guarantee them fully usable.

More eBay stuff here.

September 12, 2017
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How can you tell if an uptick in your website response is real or bogus? Your best bet is to assume it is bogus and then be genuinely surprised if it is not.

My ISP is Fat Cow and I am very much impressed with them, especially their live help. Since I am a Fat Cow associate, they do request that I mention this every now and then.

At any rate, Fat Cow ( and, likely, your ISP ) will offer several ways of measuring your website popularity. First, Fat Cow offers your choice of Webalizer or AWStats.

I prefer Webalizer, but suggest you dramatically up the Number of Top URLs configuration on it to 1000 or more. This way, you can "track" any new website entires or announcements you made very quickly.

Two numbers to note are the ratio of Code 404 to total hits. Your unreachable files likely will have an unavoidable minimum of three to five percent. Caused by spam, malware, and other factors outside of your control.

To find out which 404's are your fault, see the log file details we will shortly look at below.

The Top Total Sites report can quickly show any excessive hits from an outside website. You can find the location of any visitor by using whois.

Your own internet server access should usually be by far the top source of hits. In my case, this would be Cable One. Should you suspect an attack elsewhere, it may be monitored daily or even hourly to find out if it is continuing and how serious the problem is to become. What they are actually up to can often be found with your log files covered below.

The referrals report seems to miss many of your visitors, but any dramatic changes can often suggest that something has gone viral. Again, daily or even hourly monitoring can prove useful in extreme cases.

Around three to five percent porn is usually normal in any referrals report. As might be around half Russian or otherwise indecipherable foreign links.

Should you need more specific info on a visitor, Fat Cow and others should offer log file access. These can be enormously useful, but may require some programming skills and detective work for your use.

To access your logfile in Fat Cow, use a FTP Program such as Filezilla and go to your site's stats folder. Then download the most recent access_log file. Details may vary with your ISP, but it is vital to DEMAND log file access!

Your downloaded stats may be in .GZ format and you may need a decryptor such as Winzip to uncompress the files. The resultant textfiles may look awkward in Wordpad and are often better viewed directly in Chrome.

The exact log file format will likely vary with your ISP, and it is super important that any software you use for analysis exactly matches your data format!

Simply scanning your textfile report can tell you lots of things. Such as searching on " 404 " to find where the errors are coming from. Or noting a pattern that repeats for more than a few dozen lines

The FatCow log report format tabs on spaces, and the ordinary textfile data is in the following format...

Requesting website Often blank hyphen Often blank hyphen Date and Time File access requested Status of returned file ("200" = good) Referral previous website Nature of browser

Here is some older log file analysis software I wrote at one time or another. These will likely need modification before you can actually use them...

Custom Logfile Analysis Utilities
Website Analyzer Utilities

Website Hit Analysis Routines

Web site Search Log Extractor

Website Referral Log Extractor
URL Extractor and Link Tester
PostScript Referral Log Analyzer
"404" Extractor and Reporter
Gonzo Tutorial and Directory

September 11, 2017
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Managed to find a rather rare copy of my Butterworth Filter Cookbook, my only paper to appear in CQ Magazine.

Yeah, I was a ham as K3BYG, but not particularly active. That time frame was around the International Geophysical Year, and some hams were bouncing radar off the moon, inventing parametric amplifiers, and building the first gas chromatographs. Oh yeah, there was also this new big deal called Single Sideband.

Zillions more classic papers here, and eBooks here. And one each of everything ( newly expanded version 1.04 ! ) here.

September 10, 2017
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Golly Gee, Mister Science!

Adding a wire and a few bytes of code now converts the Raspberry Pi to your choice of a 300 foot range FM Broadcaster, a key element of a ham transceiver, or a newly improved method using Hilbert Transforms to generate single sideband signals from a phase lock loop.

Some key details here and a sampler of related coverage can be found here. Meanwhile Analog Devices is doing all sorts of similar but pricey SDR software defined radio chips and evaluation demos.

September 09, 2017
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Managed to upload our Lower Frye Construct notes to Researchgate.

Who are a major open source research free publishing site with many millions of current papers. Yes, "independent" researchers are welcome here, but you will need a referral or two or significant evidence of your published research history. Competing open source research publishers include...

Academia
Archive

Arxiv
Carnegie OLI
Doaj

Figshare
Free Video Lectures
I Programmer
Justfree eBooks
Lulu Mendel
MIT Open Courseware

MyScienceWork

OSTI
PDF Drive
PLOS  One

Quartzy

Questia
Researchgate
SSRN

Vixra
Wesrch

Wikipedia

Please email me on others who belong on the above list. More field notes here and more hanging canal info here.

September 08, 2017
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A fundamental premise: Something always has to be at the bottom of the pile. And usually well below the bottom of the "to do" list.

These "lost" or "missing"  Gurugrams still need cataloging. But most now at least appear here.

123 Prehistoric Bajada Canals of Southeastern AZ
122 Glyphs Hanging Canal Summary
121 Little Known Gila Valley Dayhikes
120 Apple Assembly Cookbook I and II 
119 Web Friendly PS Colors
118 Some "Fat Tail Arrow" Utilities
117 Level II Precyber eBook Conversions
116 Restoring Faded or Scuffed Text
115 An "Un-Halftoning" scheme for eBooks
114 Remastering a Technical Book
113 Allen Reservoir Failure Analysis Docs
112 Prehistoric Hanging Canals Slide Show
111 My Metal Locater Thesis
110 Remastering Video for Web Distribution
109 Gauss-Jordan Stability Issues

These are also available in our "all we have" USB. And the latest GuruGram can be found here.

September 07, 2017
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Just added a new bunch of things to do to our Gila Valley Dayhikes page. Which is now up to 512 major entries.

Further details on a few of the more obscure trips can also be found here.

September 06, 2017
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Quite a few YouTube videos of the area are starting to appear and probably should be mentioned in passing for our Gila Valley Dayhikes.

Some random samples of varying interest and quality...

"McNary" Tunnel
Ash Creek Flash Flood

Climbing Frye Mesa Reservoir

Hiking the Gila Box River Trail
Frye Mesa Natural Waterslides
Wilderness First Recovery
Road Less Traveled US191
Exploring Mount Graham
Frye Mesa Video #1

Frye Mesa Video #2
Frye Mesa Video #3
Frye Mesa Video #4

Frye Mesa Video #6
Frye Mesa Video #7
Frye Mesa Video #8
Frye Mesa Video #9
Frye Creek Potholes

Safford Hanging Canals
Mount Graham Ice Cave
Mount Graham Streams
Frye Canyon
Smores Canyon

Waterfall Hike
Hike to the Potholes
Frye Mesa Cruise
Stone Fire

Dankworth Pond

As is usual and even typical of street signs, McEniry Tunnel is misspelled. His own signature appears here.

More on our hanging canals here, with their Field Notes here. While not Gila Hike related, my own video can be found here.

September 05, 2017
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I'd like to start a definitive directory of utterly useless ( but nonetheless absolutely true ) factoids. Such as...

The Canary Islands were named after a large dog.

The eastern end of the Panama Canal is on the Pacific
Ocean.

There are forty six states in the US. ( slog with four
commonwealths )

Reno is west of San Diego. 

The propane fire training simulator often adds icicles
to its fireball.

Arkansas has six states on its southern boundary .

There is more hydrogen in a gallon of gasoline than
there is in a gallon of liquid hydrogen. Mole fractions
and all.

Lake Havasu City AZ has more lighthouses than
anywhere else.

The tallest mountain in the world is in South America.

The original Woodstock closing act was supposed to
be Roy Rodgers and  Dale Evans singing Happy Trails.

Lawrence Welk did a cover on One Toke Over the Line

New York is north, south, east, and west of Norwalk,
Connecticut CT. 

It is possible to score a one point safety in NFL football.

The latter has not happened since the 1940's, but they
have since tightened up the rules. It still remains possible.
There have been two more recent NCAA college calls.

Please email me your contributions.

September 04, 2017
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Finding the slope of a function can be enormously useful,  as the whole branch of differential calculus can tell us. Ferinstance, a zero slope indicates a local maximum, minimum, or an inflection point. And finding the slope of the slope can tell us which is which.

One crude way of finding slopes is to make a very  small incremental change in the function's variable and see how much the function itself changes. But if the function can be mathematically defined and is reasonably well behaved, chances are its slope derivative is already well known.

The basic scheme is called the fundamental rule of  differential calculus and goes something like this...

slope of a function = the limit as delta x goes to zero
for (( f(x) + delta(x) - ( f(x)) / delta(x).

The usual example is to find the slope at a point along a parabola y = x^2. (x + deltax)^2 is x^2 + 2x*deltax + deltax^2. Subtracting  x^2 and letting deltax^2 vanish and dividing by deltax leaves us with a derivative slope of 2x. Good old u^n(du).

More in our Math Stuff and Magic Sinewaves and Cubic Spline libraries. 

September 03, 2017
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A now even more famous media newscaster has just  inadvertently confused "cannabis" with "cannibal" in describing a tasting tour.

The definitive video on all this appears here.

September 02, 2017
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You are welcome to participate in the following world class research...

1. Does a reach of the Freeman canal exist near 32.77320 -109.78400?

2. Can you re-find the "lost" historical Blue Ponds Canal near 32.78073     -109.77904? Can you strengthen the premise that it had a "steal the plans" prehistoric origin and in fact is part of the Freeman Canal?

3. What, if anything, is at 32.78051 -109.78214? Does it have any prehistoric significance?

4. What, if anything, is at 32.78904 -109.78401? Is it Golf Course Canal related?

6. Can you acquire more evidence that 32.76389 -109.79526 is in fact prehistoric and not a wagon road or 4WD track? How far southward and ultimately westward can you trail this?

7. Is the image at 32.80811 -109.84444 significant?

8. Can you find additional evidence of a prehistoric origin for the Tugood Canal at 32.82097 -109.86675?

9. The entire Deadman East Canal still needs explored, particularly its destination. Start at 32.75644 -109.77729

10. Is there a prehistoric canal trace at 32.76117 -109.80065? How is it related to HS, Freeman, and Golf Canals?

Particularly needed are GPS keyed images and videos of drone fly overs. Much more info here.

September 01, 2017
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Updated a revised index for our woefully behind Hanging Canal Field notes.

In general, the field notes are horribly incomplete and have gone through several generations. Those considered "current" ( with an "*" ) can be identified by upper left PDF nav buttons and a new upper right KML clickthrough. All of the notes demand more images and ongoing revisions.

The KML itself remains an out-of-date and inaccurate pilot. At present, Chrome only returns KML sourcecode which you have to manually save to drag and drop into Google Earth.

Here are most of the presently available field notes...

Allen Canal
Bear Springs Canal

Cluffnw Canal
Freeman  Canal
Frye Complex
Golf Course Canal
Jernigan Canal

Lefthand Canyon
West
Longview Area
Lower Frye Construct *
Mud Springs

Minor Webster Ditch

Riggs Mesa Canal

Robinson Canal *
Sand Canal
Smith Canal
TB Ponding Area
*
Tranquility Canal

Tugood Canal
Veech Canal

 ( For sourcecodes, substitute .psl trailers above. )

Bear Flat Canal redirects here Bigler Canal redirects here  HS Canal redirects here Tailwater Canal redirects here

New field notes are likely to first appear here or later.

Your participation and support of this unique world class research project would be much appreciated.

Meanwhile, please drop all your of live video spare drones into our driveway.

August 31, 2017
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Just added a Revision 1.04 update to our Don Lancaster's Vintage Early Classics USB.

This includes over 100 Megabytes of new files, sourcecodes, eBooks, and videos. Now well over two Gigabytes total!

Easily searched for "hidden" or "lost" material. All totally open and unlocked. Immediate availability.

August 30, 2017
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Recently revised Guru's Lair file links current as of 9/17\274...

Gila Valley Dayhikes
What's New for 2017

What's New for 2016

Book on Demand Library Sampler

PostScript Library Sampler
Free eBook Library Sampler

YouTube Introduction to PostScript Video
Recent Hanging Canal Field Notes
Some KML Code

Wellness Relist
Website Filetype Catalog Directory

Turbo Encabulator Video
Some Directors Cuts

Website master ca
talog file list
PostScript available files summary
Knob Pattering summary and code
Patent Link summary
Bashing Pseudoscience link summary
Importing JPEG into HTML or PDF
Bizarre puzzle
Law of the unintended consequence

New letterheads and business cards

Slanty lettering
Stupendous products

Links via PDFMark

Deferred PostScript Execution

Hidden PostScript Characters
 
New Mexico subastas to be sold at auction!
   
Restoring Distiller disk access!
 
UAAC Songbook
 
Magic Sinewave summary links  
Banner auto rotation  
"empty" dummy PostScript code
PostScript font snooper and example 
New Mexico Wilderness Land  
Highly Developable Oregon Acreage 

August 29, 2017
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Just uploaded a reworked version of Don Lancaster's Introduction to PostScript video.

This is now much more compact, newly phone compatible, fast loading, and all in a single 27 minute video.

Urban lore fantasy #078-G: Someone forgot to send out invitations to the taping, so almost all of the show was shot using only three people besides me and the camera man. We later hijacked the entire next-in English class and got them to fake interest in something they did not have the faintest clue over.

Which to them, completely blew away giving Hester Prynne a C-.

Sorry that the video quality remains less than stunning. It seems the Betamax original was lost, and a second generation VHS copy had to be used. There's also still a minor glitch or two and I'd like to try some fancy sharpening and some example improvements.

BTW, the Adobe "cloud" subscriptions can include Premier at no additional cost. This, of course, is a superb video editor.

August 28, 2017
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Certainly some of the strangest and off-the-wall abuses of the PostScript Language involve horribly misapplying their setdash operator.

Ferinstance, there are some 6000 bricks in this perspective building image, all of which were done in a few dozen bytes of code. The dashed lines are simply mapped into the perspective space. At mind-numbing speed.

Find the image buried here as example #19 or the ready-to-use code here in Secret #29. And its video here.

Also buried here in #29 is a sneaky and "stripey" 3D font that abuses setdash in a totally different ( and equally unexpected ) way. This one is somewhat slower, though.

These days, you simply send your PostScript code to Acrobat Distiller, being absolutely sure to use the magic //acrodist /F incantation from the old Windows command line. GonzoPS utilities are here and their tutorial here.

August 27, 2017
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When it comes to Italian food, you can't be both anti pasto and pro volone.

August 26, 2017
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Just added the long missing home page link to our Book on Demand Publishing library.

August 25, 2017
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I've long been fascinated by Hugo Gernsback's Science and Invention Magazines, many of which are now available for free download by American Radio History.

These are a curious mix of concepts decades ahead of their time, on down ( waaay on down ) to the utterly ludicrous. The later of which today give us a new depth of meaning to "WTF?".

Fascinating are the advertising scams that ranged from more miles per gallon to patents to bodybuilding to perpetual motion to psychic prizes, to "win a car" puzzles that bore a striking resemblance to today's penny auctions.

Oh yeah, you can also earn up to $300 per month just by taking a radio correspondence course. Or build your own dining room furniture. Or an airplane.

August 24, 2017
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While it is no longer very active, we do still have a Book-on-Demand library page that includes these classics...

Useful tools for Book-on-demand publishing
Classic Early BOD Columns

Using Distiller as a PostScript Computer

Early Bod Stuff from Ask The Guru

Gonzo PostScript Utilities

Gonzo PostScript Utility Tutorial   
Actual Gonzo Sourcecode
PostScript Beginner Stuff

PostScript Secrets
.
Blatant Opportunist Library

PostScript Show and Tell

Exploring Some PostScript Possibilities

Resource Bin Library

Secrets of 24/7 publishing 
1001 Reviews
Insider Banner Advertising Secrets
Main PostScript Library
PostScript Show & Tell
PostScript Startup Secrets

PostScript Speedup Secrets
Some Thoughts on ezines
Bound and Determined

Bookbinding Book Info

A "new" bookbinding method

Revisiting Book-on-demand

Insider secrets of post justification editing
Book on Demand Resources I
Book on Demand Resources II
Spot Color
Options for Self-publishing
Terribly tricky terrific toner techniques

Guidelines for tri-mode publishing
Laser printer hard drive interface

Hand Bookbinding Resources
Upgrade Print Catalogs with Acrobat
Bodaciously better BOD bindings
Terrific toner techniques

A Superb New Color Printer
Imaginative Images
Web Imaging Secrets

Bouncy Bricks
Adding
Website Bells and Whistles

Exploring information distribution tools

Step by Step Image Prep

Duplex Auto-addressing Catalog

Auto Tracking PDF Web Links

See https://www.tinaja.com/whtnu17.shtml and friends for improvements and updates.

As you can tell by all the arrows in my back, I was a pioneer in Book on Demand publishing. BOD or POD.

Such as this document or this one or this one which were first published by using Applewriter on an Apple IIe.

With one curious exception, BOD seems a total failure with no future whatsoever. The reasons include eBooks being infinitely superior on all counts.

The secret hidden reason was the failure for anybody ever to  address the crucial needs of economy cutters and binder systems  that were sanely enough priced, safe enough and easy enough to use for for one up book sales by individuals.

That exception is the Espresso machine. Whose outrageous pricing, training, and maint is only suitable for such service  bureaus as very large bookstores or university libraries.

A typical price list can be found here. Basically, you are looking at $32.50 for a single book with zero quantity discounts. That price, of course, is B/W only and before any of your profits. Which kinda cuts into the instant availability.

Our available eBooks can be found here.

August 23, 2017
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One of the lesser known features of Google-earth is its ability to go back to previous or historic satellite imagery.

Yeah, most of these will be blurry and they do not go back all that far,

BUT...

The satellite appearance of a prehistoric hanging canal very much depends on time of day, time of year, recent moisture, and especially if it is full of dead flowers from a recent bloom.

This image suggests a prehistoric canal route exactly where it is needed. The slope elevations also seem credible. Of interest is the slanty SW to NE route through the center.

To recreate the image original, search Google Earth to 32.77364 -109.78318 and then use the history bar to return to November of 2011.

I'm not yet sure this adds credence to a projected THIRTEEN KILOMETER (!) supercanal. Foot access is mesmerizingly awful.

More on the study area here and on these stupendously mind blowing world class engineered canals here.

If you are the sort of hiker that brings along all your own catclaw just in case there is not enough along the route ( the word "trail", of course, is not in your vocabulary ), please contact us.

Ether way, please drop off all of your excess drones in our driveway. We particularly need the type with live video continuous feedback.

August 22, 2017
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Certainly the most important drill any volunteer or paid firefighter can do is following hose couplings out of a burning building.

One magic incantation is "SMOOTH BUMP BUMP TO THE PUMP."

Be able to sense this with your eyes closed. Another hint: Drop the hose to sense which coupling is nearest.

August 21, 2017
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Just added a new bunch of things to do to our Gila Valley Dayhikes page. Which is now up to 508 major entries.

Extended details on a few of the more obscure trips can be found here.

August 20, 2017
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Our currently available free eBooks include...

Incredible Secret Money Machine
TV Typewriter Cookbook 
TTL Cookbook 
Tearing Method
      
Tearing Method Sourcecode

Apple Assembly Cookbook I

Apple Assembly Cookbook II

RTL Cookbook
Enhancing Your Apple II Vol I

Enhancing Your Apple II Vol II 
Machine Language Programming I

Machine Language Programming II

Please note that the Micro Cookbook volume II was split into two publications of Machine Language Programming I and Machine Language Programming II. Along with a partial "director's cut" rework demo of  MLPCI "Level II".

Micro Cookbook Volume I has not yet been listed. We do have autographed dead tree copies up on eBay. These are very hard to find elsewhere.

Speaking of which, please let me know where I can find scanned web reprints of any and all of the following...

Applewriter Cookbook
Cheap Video Cookbook
Son of Cheap Video
Micro Cookbook I 
Active Filter Cookbook
CMOS Cookbook 
Hexadecimal Chronicles 
Active Filter Cookbook
Manual De Circuiitos TTL
 ... and its Pacific Rim translation
All about Applewriter
Place Cave Story
"For Low Cost, Count on RTL"
Goodyear Lancaster AEEMs
Cave Crawler's Gazettes.


August 19, 2017
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The Lower Frye Construct  prehistoric field notes are newly available, with their PDF file here and their PSL sourcecode here.

Other hanging canal field notes were recently linked here.

August 18, 2017
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A reminder about our "one each of everything" USB.

August 17, 2017
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Any time that someone tries to tell you that "energy can neither be created nor destroyed", they are really revealing their utter and total ignorance of all things thermodynamic.

The correct statement instead is " It is trivially easy to irreversibly and irrecoverably destroy the quality and value of energy."

For you are dealing with a three legged stool here. You cannot ever consider energy without simultaneously considering entropy and exergy.

Exergy is a measure of the quality and usefulness of energy. To measure exergy, you change the energy into a different form, and then change it back. And see how much you have left. For instance, you can go from electrical energy to mechanical energy back to electrical energy without much loss at all.

Which is why electricity has extremely high exergy. Use the electricity to produce, say, resistance room heat, and you can only get the tiniest fraction of the original back as electricity. Thus, resistance room heat irreversibly and  destructively forever destroys the quality and value of energy.

Electrolysis for bulk hydrogen from high value sources is a good example of "ain't gonna happen" because of the staggering and irretrievable loss of exergy involved. There always will be more intelligent things to do with the electricity.

Electrolysis from high value pv, grid, or alternator electricity is pretty much the same as 1:1 exchanging US Dollars to Mexican Pesos. Meanwhile, believe it or not, there is more hydrogen in a gallon of gasoline than there is in a gallon of liquid hydrogen.

If you do not understand exergy, you should not have any interest in electrolysis. If you do understand exergy, you will not have any interest in electrolysis. Much more in our Energy Fundamentals tutorial. And its supplement.

August 16, 2017
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We first looked at LED and lighting efficiency way back here. Where we found that "perfect" green light has a best efficiency of nearly 700 Lumens per watt, while the best white light will be around half that at 350 Lumens per watt.

Ordinary incandescent lamps have a mesmerizingly awful efficiency around 13 Lumens per watt. With the latest LED's nearly ten times that.

It might seem reasonable to ask "What else is horribly inefficient?" and "Will fixing it be the next big thing?"

One obvious candidate is the internal combustion engine. It turns out there is a brand new way of combining gas and diesel technologies so the entire gas air mixture ignites at once. Details here and a discussion here.

The other elephant in the room would be HVAC and air conditioning. A typical commercial system has an EER of 14, compared to a sometimes best possible of 120. Thus, present air conditioning can be just as awful as was incandescent lighting.

No, I know of no immediate tech breakthrough in this field. Not one remotely comparable to the quantum leap provided by scroll compressors a few decades back.

One possible hidden beneficiary of a major HVAC efficiency increase: Hot tub heaters.

But the opportunity exists for huge efficiency breakthroughs. Possibly helped along by molecular scale heat transfer methods. And some super insulation or energy reflection techniques.

Other predictions here.

August 15, 2017
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A computer without Cobol or Fortran is like a chocolate cake without ketchup or mustard.

August 14, 2017
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In July of 1988, I first described a vapor ware product called a Navicube. This was a then heretical cheap three inch cube that always knew where it was, which way was up, where it came from, how fast it was going, how much its speed was changing, and where north was.

Publication of the Navicube in a national magazine should also have placed this name in the public domain.

And Navicubes have been conspicuous on the web pretty much ever since.

At any rate, lots and lots of stuff has happened since then. In particular, there's now an outfit by the name of Memsic who now have bunches of the Navicube bits and pieces for a dollar or two in single quantities, and pocket change in high volume.

Some of their hundreds of products now include accelerometers, tilt sensors, inertia systems, magnetic sensors, flow sensors, and current sensors.

Their three axis magnetic field sensors are particularly useful for electronic compass apps. The earth's magnetic field is normally a fairly large fraction of a Gauss.

Their inertial systems replace complex electromechanical gyroscopes with nothing but a bubble of air.

Accelerometers, of all things, measure acceleration. But if you integrate ( or sum ) acceleration you get velocity. And if you integrate velocity, you get position. Thus acceleration - surprise surprise - is the rate of change of the rate of change of position.

But all accelerometers have a huge problem called the "t squared" error. For the tiniest initial error will accumulate velocity errors with time and position errors with time squared.

Thus, any positioning determining system will need something in addition to an accelerometer for its long term resets.

August 13, 2017
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A video of the original turbo encabulator can be found here. Along with decades of "me too!" covers here.

My own approach can be found here.

August 12, 2017
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Outside of that, Missus Lincoln, how was the play?

August 11, 2017
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The TB Ponding Area prehistoric field notes are newly available, with their PDF file here and their PSL sourcecode here.

Other hanging canal field notes include...

Allen Canal field notes & sourcecode
Longview Area field notes & sourcecode
Mud Springs Canal field notes & sourcecode
Riggs Mesa Canal
 field notes & sourcecode
Robinson Canal
 field notes & sourcecode
Tranquility Canal field notes & sourcecode

And some of our previous ones due for updates or revisions...

Bear Springs Canal field notes & sourcecode
Cluffnw Canal field notes & sourcecode
Freeman Canal field notes & sourcecode
Frye Complex field notes & sourcecode
Golf Course Canal field notes & sourcecode
Lefthand Canyon West
 field notes & sourcecode
Minor Webster Ditch field notes & sourcecode
Sand Canal field notes & sourcecode
Smith Canal field notes & sourcecode
Tugood Canal field notes & sourcecode
Veech Canal
 field notes & sourcecode

August 10, 2017
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This one is not quite ready for a prime time demo just yet, But it is exciting enough and mind boggling enough to demand an immediate heads up.

It seems there is this language called KML that lets you add all sorts of personal custom features to Google Earth and similar resources. KML is similar to .xml and .shtml but also has its own set of highly specific and arcane rules.

KML is poised to completely blow away GIS and its relatives in that it is flyable! In the end, nothing else matters! The outcome is not the least in doubt.

A KML file is created as an ordinary text file with a .kml trailer. Clicking on it should automagically link to a local copy of Google Earth. Otherwise, you can drag and drop into any text editor for creation or edits.

Typically, as part of a .kml program, you will create any number of paths and then add descriptions to those paths.

Clicking on the path causes a box to appear with a title and a message. What is ultra exciting is that, besides the text in the description, you can add .html like links to any website, an external Acme or similar map, videos, animation, .PDF's, or any number of photos.

Here is a preliminary code fragment...

<Placemark> <name>Allen Canal</name> <description>Sources in Spring Canyon -- Overrun by Allen Dam -- Major Culebra Cut -- End fields unknown <br/> <![CDATA[ <a href="http://www.website.com"> Site Name</a>.]]> -- <![CDATA[ <a href="http://www.acmemaplink.com"> Map Name</a>.]]> - <![CDATA[ <a href="http://www.image.jpg"> Image Name</a>.]]> - </description>

Links can be either web or local pc based. More info on the CDATA tag can be found here.

Among its other exciting possibilities, you should now be able to directly link topo maps to Google Earth.

There's a few minor details I haven't picked up on just yet. The links seem to trash normal carriage returns and I've yet to make the links bold. Removing the underlines would also be nice.

And so far, loading a kml file with Chrome seems to give you text only. The annoying workaround is to save the Chrome download as a file and then click on the file.

Surely this detail will soon be resolved with one or more working Chrome extensions.

Much more to follow.

August 09, 2017
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Yorg. We were just the victims of a double home invasion and a double identity theft. Seems two neighborhood pussy cats cracked the security on our cat doors.

In hindsight, we probably should have changed the default door factory password from "meow".

August 08, 2017
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The Robinson Canal prehistoric field notes are newly available, with their PDF file here and their PSL sourcecode here.

Other hanging canal field notes include...

Allen Canal field notes & sourcecode
Longview Area field notes & sourcecode
Mud Springs Canal
 field notes & sourcecode
Riggs Mesa Canal field notes & sourcecode
Tranquility Canal field notes & sourcecode

And some of our previous ones due for updates or revisions...

Bear Springs Canal field notes & sourcecode
Cluffnw Canal field notes & sourcecode
Freeman Canal
 field notes & sourcecode
Frye Complex
 field notes & sourcecode
Golf Course Canal field notes & sourcecode
Lefthand Canyon West field notes & sourcecode
Minor Webster Ditch
 field notes & sourcecode
Sand Canal
 field notes & sourcecode
Smith Canal field notes & sourcecode
Tugood Canal
 field notes & sourcecode
Veech Canal
 field notes & sourcecode

August 07, 2017
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Yorg. It sure can be frustrating when you "almost" end up with a software solution.

I want our hanging canal field notes to have an option where the .PDF file can directly click through to a custom .KML map in Google Earth.

The PostScript and Acrobat end of things was rather trivial, as these Gonzo code fragments show us...

/clickforkml { save /ksnap exch store 34 53
translate 0 0 mt 2 pu 7.2 pr 2 pd closepath
gsave 0.94 0.94 0.98 setrgbcolor fill grestore
0.8 0.8 0.8 setrgbcolor line2 stroke 0.6 0.6
(|6|/surl Click for KML |/kmlx ) cl ksnap
restore} store << /kmlx (https://www.tinaja.com/
canal /mapimage2.kml) >> {mark exch      
/eurl cvx ] cvx def} forall

The rest of the sourcecode should shortly appear here. And its generated field note here.

The only tiny missing detail is that Chrome returns a kml textfile instead of linking to Google Earth. And I have not been able to get the kml Chrome extensions to fix this.

The present awkward workaround is to take the returned Chrome .kml file, do a save as locally and then click on the saved KML file to actually enter Google Earth.

Your suggestions on how to eliminate this painful and klutzy step are more than welcome.

August 06, 2017
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Chemistry 101: If you are not part of the solution, then you are part of the precipitate.

August 05, 2017
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Acme Mapper has strongly suggested a previously unvisited routing and end field destination for the Tugood Hanging canal you can find at...

http://mapper.acme.com/?ll=32.81985,- 109.86602&z=18&t=H&marker0=32.81945%2C- 109.86662%2Cunnamed&marker1=32.82123%2C- 109.86665%2C5.7%20mi%20SxSW%20of%20Pima %20AZ&marker2=32.82038%2C-109.86672 %2C5.7%20mi%20SxSW%20of %20Pima%20AZ&marker3=32.81827 %2C-109.86684%2Cunnamed

Energy considerations and materials used strongly suggest Tugood has prehistoric origins. But the apparent cattle tank destination would suggest historic reuse and would seem to reasonably demand additional proof of prehistoricity.

Tugood would seem to be an excellent candidate for restoration or preservation in that it is largely single owner controlled in what to me appears to be largely unused and marginally secondary rangeland.

Some earlier Tugood field notes are found here with their sourcecode here and an earlier KML main map of  the entire canal system here.

The latest GIS map version is found here.

August 04, 2017
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Deeply buried in our Guru's Lair is some medical stuff, mostly oriented towards a wellness lifestyle and aerobic exercise. I still use these occasionally for fire department fitness drill training exercises.

The big three are...

Don't Get Sick
A wellness Lifestyle Quiz

Aerobic Pulse Rate Chart

A review by a real doctor here...

Bee's Website

And these also rans...

Understanding Pulse Monitors
Recording Aerobic Exercise Sessions
Aerobic Fitness PostScript Sourcecode

The leading web medical resource is Medline. You normally search this with PubMed.

Also check out Healthy.Net.  And one collection of the top 25 web medical resources can be found here.

Some older alternate medical book resources here.

August 03, 2017
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I'm not too sure of the details, but eBay may have just changed their search linking to favor title words over text description words. The net result is that some of your older eBay links may no longer work. There also seems to be a new NKW in the description. New Key Words?

Our one-each-of-everything USB has been newly relinked here.

August 02, 2017
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I may have completed our website catalog directory arranged by file types. Please report any omissions.

This should be most useful for finding "lost" or "hidden" or "underlinked" files. It is also gives you new search options. And eases finding which directory a particular file is in.

Another way to search is with our "one each of everything" USB.

Key catalog textfiles include...  

 web_asp_directory1.txt
 web_aspx_directory1.txt
 web_bas_directory1.txt
 web_bas_directory1.txt
 web_bmp_directory1.txt

 web_config_directory1.txt
 web_eml_directory1.txt
 web_gif_directory1.txt
 web_gz_directory1.txt
 web_htaccess_directory1.txt

 web_html_directory1.txt
 web_ico_directory1.txt
 web_jpg_directory1.txt
 web_js_directory1.txt
 web_kml_directory1.txt

 web_lnk_directory1.txt
 web_log_directory1.txt
 web_pdf_directory1.txt
 web_png_directory1.txt
 web_ps_directory1.txt

 web_psl_directory1.txt
 web_shtml_directory1.txt
 web_txt_directory1.txt
 web_xml_directory1.txt

August 01, 2017
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Watch out for the cliff!         
What CLIFFFFFfffffffff?

Watch out for the ping pong ball
What ping pong gloulckkk?

Watch our for the ladder!  
 What ladder dedadder dedadder dedadder?

Watch out for the revolving door!
What revolving door .. ing door .. ing door?

Curiously, there does not seem to be the faintest hint of these on the web. I'd like to try and find the rest of these and give them a long missing home on the web. Please email me with your candidates and suggestions.

July 31, 2017
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Our usual source of pv pricing info seems to be getting further and further behind, not to mention obvious typos.

Turns out they get their info from the German pvXchange which you can find untranslated here. Present exchange rate is around 1.19 dollars per euro.

We see that the best June pricing was down a euro cent and went back up an euro cent in July. While most other pricing was flat or dropping somewhat. Long term trends seem consistent with meeting the magic twenty five cents per peak panel watt demanded for true subsidy free renewability and sustainability in seventeen months or so.

With the actual energy breakeven demanded to pay for all of the staggering previous pv losses perhaps eight years or so after that.

Much more here.

July 30, 2017
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Let's repeat it one more time...

Assumption is the mother of mistakes.  

This from Buckaroo Banzai, which is by far the finest medical, science fiction, rockumentary, love story, comedy, racing, comic book, quantum mechanical,  musical, pro nerd, watermelon ode, survivalist, intergalactic war documentary movie of all time.

Overwhelmingly the best movie of its type that was ever made.

Also present: No matter where you go, there you are.

July 29, 2017
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A "flutterwumper" was defined as any low cost hackable robotic device that chomps or spits.

The original story was found here and here, while the apparently underlinked PIC PostScript flutterwumper utilities can still be found here

These days, the concept has Raspberry Pi written all over it .

July 28, 2017
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Managed to find and upload a hard-to-find reprint of the final version of the Popular Electronics DCU. This one appeared in the Electronic Experimenters Handbook series, which can still be found here.

The original version had a flaw involving sneak paths, while an intermediate solution was to add a pair of power hungry balancing resistors. The final kicking and screaming solution was to use ten fake diodes made out of five nine cent PNP transistors.

July 27, 2017
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A new filetype-based catalog and directory for the Guru's Lair has been started here. This should greatly aid finding "lost" or "underlinked" files. As should finding which directory any obscure file resides in.

Already present is the crucial .psl sourcecode catalog, along with the .bmp image catalog and the .pdf Acrobat catalog.

The .jpg compressed image catalog should shortly follow, along with others in area of interest.

A catalog link is newly present a screen or two down on our home page.

July 26, 2017
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Started a master catalog of 1556 of our .psl sourcecodes (!) which you can find here.

.psl files are Don Lancaster PostScript sourcecode for various papers and projects. They are ordinary textfiles. You compile them or to otherwise generate useful results, send them to full Acrobat Distiller after carefully decrippling distiller with a windowskey-X "//acrodist /F" return. Less quotes.

Many of the .psl files will need a PC local linked copy of our Gonzo Utilities from https://www.tinaja.com/gonzo.psl that the sourcecode will need modified to properly link.

View this listing with a fixed pitch font such as Courier New. More use assistance here and here.

I'm not sure exactly where I want to go with this. Possibly generating files for the other extensions. Live linking might take stupendous effort, as might .shtml conversion.

Please email me with what you want to see.

July 25, 2017
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Just realized I forgot to include Winning the Micro Game in our ongoing Directors Cuts. Find the revised version here, its sourcecode here, and the original here.

Presently available directors cuts are...

Tearing Method
Winning the Micro Game
Superclock AACB1 Rework
MLPCI Rework

Paleomagnetism and Archaeomagnetism

Thermolluminescence
TVT2 Image

...with their sourcecode as .psl trailers.

July 24, 2017
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There's a subtle infuriosity in Wordpad that can cause you grief if it is inadvertently tripped. Its usual problem is double spacing carriage return or adding unwanted ledding.

Click the box with the up and down arrows just before the picture icon. Unless you really want these features, uncheck "Add 10 pt space after paragraph" and click only on "1.0"

Despite the equivalent illusion, this has nothing to do with the differences between PC and MAC carriage returns and linefeeds.

July 23, 2017
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Here is one way to get a master catalog file list for your website...

1. FTP a copy of the site to a local PC USB, perhaps
called J:

2. Get into the old command mode by entering    
windowkey
and X followed by cmd.exe.

3. Enter DIR "J:\sitewebcopy\*.jpg" /S /OEN /W

4. Cut and paste into a textfile. Print or whatever.

In this example, only your .jpg images will be listed. Similar tricks can extract other file types. For everything, omit the wildcard * and the extension. Some hints here.

A more modern alternative is to select your directory, followed by shift rightclick, followed by Open Powershell Window Here. More on Powershell here.

July 22, 2017
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Here's a summary of some of our recent or more significant PostScript stuff...

Secret Distiller File Access
Secret Distiller Typekit Access
  ...more details here
Knob Patterning
Fontname Snooper    
Fontname Snooper sourcecode

New Letterheads
   
New Letterhead sourcecode
Inserting JPG into PostScript
   ...and here
Step and Repeat
Simplified Step and Repeat
New Business Cards    
New Business Cards sourcecode
Assorted PostScript apps
"Director's Cuts"
Ratty Lines
Empty .psl app
Architect's Perspective
Bitmap Typewriter
Vignetting Auto Backgrounder
Web Friendly PostScript Colors
...and sourcecode
PostScript Powerpoint Emulation
...and examples
Marbelous Distorted Pancakes
Fat Tail Utilities    
Fat Tail Utilities sourcecode
Tearing Method

Tearing Method Sourcecode
PostScript Spirographs
Hanging Canal Field Notes
Deferred execution secrets

$99 Flutterwumpers

PIC PostScript Flutterwumpers

Secret Characters
Lagrange Spline thru 4 points  
Using the type operator
Finding PostScript Font Names
 
Using watermarking
List of PostScript Font Names
Glyphshow Comparing
PostScript and JavaScript
Smoothstep
Windows Directory Names
Minsky Circles
String Dereferencing

Easter Egg Litho Chokes and Spreads

And some older classics...

PostScript Reference Manual
Gonzo Utilities Gonzo Tutorial
.PSL Tutorials Fractal Ferns
    ...More Here
PostScript sampler web page
Using Distiller as a PostScript Computer

Adding nav features with JavaScript
Adding nav features with pdfmark
      and its source code Converting
PS strings, integers, arrays

PostScript Secrets

PostScript Beginner Stuff
PostScript Startup Secrets

PostScript Speedup Secrets

Nonlinear Graphic Transforms
Fun with Fields
More Fun With Fields
Timing Measurement
Improving PostScript Math Accuracy

Dodging and Burning
Original PostScript Library Page

And this video...

Intro to PostScript Video

July 21, 2017
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Got yet another call on the homopolar generator, AKA the Faraday disk. We looked at these long ago  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, outrageous inefficiencies, and potential hazmat issues.

Bunches of simple but ultimately useless homopolar related projects can be found on the web. Understanding their operation is tricky, which leads to  all sorts of totally bogus overunity pseudoscience claims. One problem in understanding is that Lorenz Force equations have to be used instead of Faraday Induction equations. Along with general relativity concepts.

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 today, 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. 

An ancient power conversion tutorial here. The present caller obviously has spent an obsessive amount of time trying to trick the concept into producing higher voltages.

Some one time similar work can be found here. And here. I guess two more upbeat homopolar resources might be found here and here.

But, at least to me, this would clearly appear to be the wrong horse to bet on. More on product development here. Counter EMF's and conservation of energy is alive and well, in all homopolar devices. Just as would be expected.

July 20, 2017
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We have newly uploaded great heaping bunches of microwave switches to our eBay site. There are several important use details that vary from unit to unit.

Some are "magnetic" or "mechanically" latching. These remember their previous state in absence of power. But only some of these lock themselves out after being pulsed, Which can lead to high rate oscillation. Be sure to prevent activating more than one coil at a time!

Others are "normal" or "fail safe". These switch to their other position only so long as power is applied. Typically, switches of more than two positions are normally activated.

Some are common positive, but with varying control voltages of typically 5, 10, 15, 24, or 28 volts DC. Others are common ground. Many of these include spike protecting diodes that can be blown up if high current of the wrong polarity is applied. ALWAYS use a current limited supply while testing! NEVER apply reverse polarity from a high current source!

You can usually hear the mechanical switching. Sometimes loud, sometimes subtle. A click-klunk is typical of failsafe units when power is applied and removed.

Pinouts of a DB9 or DB15 connector can be a mystery. On SOME units, we have found pin 1 to be the positive supply, pin2 getting grounded to connect common to SMA 1, pin 3 for SMA 2, and so on up the range. But BE SURE TO TEST AND VERIFY ELSEWHERE!

An ohmmeter can usually resolve pinouts. Any "extra" pinouts or terminals are usually extra contacts for LED indicators or such.

These typically respond down to dc, but their max frequency can vary all over the lot. Typically from 2 GHz to 26 GHz.

Some may include internal 50 Ohm terminations. Typical power limits are one to two watts average. Always be sure to try and get a matching data sheet for the units you are using.

We try to do at least a click-klunk test before shipping.

We recommend further testing on your own. All units are unconditionally guaranteed to perform as new.

July 19, 2017
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Managed to find an extremely well done color photo of one of the earlier TV Typewriters. Find it here as a .BMP or here as a .JPG.

The provenance and source is a mystery. It was obviously professionally done and likely done so after it was donated to a computer museum.

At one time, some pallets actually used real wood. Which is where the solid oak! side panels came from. The keyboards were EBCDIC rebuilds at $4 each from Apache Reclamation and Electronics. To which the improved ASCII encoder was added.

The color cover version of the first original TVT can be found here.

July 18, 2017
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Here's our recently most popular ebooks...

Incredible Secret Money Machine
TV Typewriter Cookbook
TTL Cookbook
Tearing Method  
Tearing Method Sourcecode
Apple Assembly Cookbook I
Apple Assembly Cookbook II
RTL Cookbook

Enhancing Your Apple II Vol I
Enhancing Your Apple II Vol II
Machine Language Programming I
Machine Language Programming II

July 17, 2017
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Uploaded an eBook copy of Enhancing Your Apple II Volume I.

The "Tearing Method" of Enhancement 3 is also separately available in this "director's cut".

July 16, 2017
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Managed to find an a eBook copy of Enhancing Your Apple II Volume II
It is now a sane length, unlocked, printable, and fully searchable.

There are still issues with the grays. Fixing these would take "Directors Cut" techniques and funding. Per your participation.

More ebooks here.

July 15, 2017
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Managed to find a reprint of my West Coast Computer Faire story on cheap video. I've newly made it searchable.

An outfit called archive.org seems to have lots of useful stuff.

July 14, 2017
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Uh, oops. If you try to use our sneaky knob patterning at a very low scale ( such as a url clickthru ), you will likely get some mesmerizingly awful Moir'e effects.

This could also cause problems on phone screens or in other limited resolution images.

Two workarounds are to always use the knob patterning at its intended full resolution. Or carefully "gray out" any intended stripes in any low resolution images.

July 13, 2017
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Here's a new photo that did not turn out all that bad for our new eBay offerings of aerospace goodies that include bunches of superb attenuators and microwave rf switches.

A summary of the key steps: It first gets no flash Nikon photographed in outdoor shade, overcropped and sent to Imageviewer/32. Because of its circular motif, my usual steps of rotational alignment and my Architects Perspective correction were not needed.

All work should be done in raw bitmap format. Save any .JPG compression for your final step! As I may have mentioned several times before, at least 90 percent of your photography time MUST be spent in postproc!

The knob callouts were dark and murky, so a double exposure was used in Paint to correct its brightness. A crucial step is to back off the red by one click to make absolutely sure no red=255 pixels exist anywhere in the bitmap at this point.

The knob texture was then improved using the new ideas we recently looked at. Followed by a full tracing that involved red=255 pixels. There was one subtle undercut that needed red filled. The rule is that undercuts ( or any "holes" ) need filled if they cannot be reached by a true north, east, south, or west from their image respective borders.

The J1 area had reflective variances that lessened the image quality, so these were replaced with a solid but mottled pattern. A few minor lighting and dust speckle areas were also corrected.

The image was sent to our vignetting auto backgrounder. In this case using my color #141. The result was then once again sent to Imageviewer/32 where it was resized to 1000 pixels, brightened and gamma reduced somewhat, and possibly sharpened. Be sure to check the sharpening to make sure it does in fact improve things. Never more than two clicks!

From there, the image .JPG converted to reduce its size and is then sent to our website and eBay.

Seminars, consulting, and professional photography available.

July 12, 2017
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IF you know the secret incantation, PostScript can be an exceptionally versatile general purpose computer language that, among its stunning other powers, has the ability to write any disk file in any language. Especially bitmaps. Why, it is also rumored that PostScript can even be used to dirty up otherwise clean sheets of paper!

The problem was this: A few years back Adobe decided the ability to read or write anything anywhere was ridiculously too powerful and had ( gulp! ) abuse potential. So, they started shipping Acrobat Distiller with most of the read file and write file ability factory locked out.

They did provide a secret incantation that let read/write file ability of PostScript be fully restored to Distiller.

To decripple Acrobat Distiller in Windows 10, select windows key and X and enter this magic incantation...

//acrodist /F

To use PostScript, you write an ordinary text file and send it to Acrobat Distiller. Distiller then will return your choice of a .PDF file, an info log file, or any requested diskfile reads or writes in any language. It also can newly run code modules without having them inside your actual program itself.

Examples of the latter include our Architect's Perspective, Vignetting Autobackgrounder, or our Bitmap Typewriter.

The reference manual appears here, our Gonzo Utilities here, and a Gonzo Utilities tutorial here. And zillions of use examples here.

More secrets? Well, yeah. It turns out you cannot use the Adobe Typekit with Postscript sent to Distiller unless you personally contact them for your secret access code that gives you the needed info for your Distiller's settings -> font locations file. Once enabled, you have full PostScript and Distiller cloud access to the entire Typekit.

More on PostScript here, additional secrets here, , and beginning projects here. And even a video here.

July 11, 2017
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The obsessive math pondermentosity of the hour is simply this: How does our pseudo log knob pattering ploy compare to a real cosine distribution?

Per this example or this one. With this raw data and this data rotated and scaled.

The analysis appears here with its sourcecode here. We see that the pseudo log is somewhat different but actually looks much better than a cosine. There also are likely to be far less turf fights and pixellation issues for the more narrow low angles as well.

Oh yeah. The new favorite font of the month is called FilsonSoftHeavy and is available in the Adobe Typekit. It seems particularly suited for Paint image retouch. Except the "R" is mesmerizingly awful.

A snooper tool to find real PostScript font names can be found here.

Much more math stuff here.

July 10, 2017
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We just picked up great heaping bunches of VHF and microwave mil spec components from an auction.

Including often rare and hard to find SP4T, SP6T, SP8T and even SP12T SMA switch versions! Some as high as DC to 26.6 GHz!

Some even include magnetic latching. Which means they remember their previous state without needing continuous supply power. Much of these attenuators and RF switches and connectors are usually outrageously expensive. Some have factory list prices over a thousand dollars each.

Most of them are in clean used condition and may include minor cosmetics.

Find them super cheap while supplies last here. All are fully guaranteed usable and immediately available.

More will be added shortly, so please check back often.

July 09, 2017
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You can pick up one each of everything per the details here and here.

We shortly expect to be able to add the TTL Cookbook as well. Along with some other newer stuff.

July 08, 2017
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Many of our free online eBooks can be found here. Along with bunches of newer stuff.

Which include these ebooks...

TV Typewriter Cookbook
RTL Cookbook
TTL Cookbook

Incredible Secret Money Machine
Apple Assembly Cookbook I
Apple Assembly Cookbook II

Machine Language Programming I
Machine Language Programming II

And these revised "directors cuts"...

Tearing Method
Superclock

MLPI Rework

Paleomagnetism and Archaeomagnetism

Thermolluminescence

And these online reprints...

PostScript Secrets
PostScript Beginner Stuff

Case Against Patents

Hardware Hacker
Its a Gas hydrogen library
Blatant Opportunist
Bashing Pseudoscience
Resource Bin

Ask the Guru
Tech Musings

Gurugrams

Most of these are also available in our "one each of everything" offers.

I am about halfway where in what I want to provide. Please let me know if you find any web friendly downloads of...

Applewriter Cookbook
Enhancing your Apple II Volume I
Enhancing your Apple II Volume II
Cheap Video Cookbook
Son of Cheap Video
Micro Cookbook I
Active Filter Cookbook
CMOS Cookbook
Hexadecimal Chronicles
Manual De Circuiitos TTL
All about Applewriter
Goodyear Lancaster AEEMs
Cave Crawler's Gazettes.

More details and book access links here.

And a video available here.

In addition, of course, somebody needs to restore and ebookify the UAAC Songbook. Sadly, this item remains banned in all civilized nations of the world. And even in parts of Texas.

July 07, 2017
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Two Texans bragging about how big their lands were... "Why, my spread is so big, I could drive all morning and not get half way across it."

"Yeah? I had a truck like that once."

July 06, 2017
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For most individuals and small scale startups the overwhelming majority of the time, any involvement whatsoever with patents is a near certainty to result in a huge net loss of dollars, time, energy, and sanity.

It is not even remotely close. Some docs...

The Case Against Patents
When to Patent

How to Bust a $650 Patent

Patent Horror Stories
Main Patent Library Page

Patent Quick Links

Collected Patenting eBook

And these alternatives...

Tech Innovation Secrets
Stalking the Wild Paradigm

Risk Reduction Ploys
Elegant
Simplicity
Blatant Opportunist Library

And a few older opportunities...

Emerging Technical Opportunities VII
Emerging Technical Opportunities VI

Emerging Technical Opportunities V
Emerging Technical Opportunities IV
Emerging Technical Opportunities III

Emerging Technical Opportunities II
Emerging Technical Opportunities I

July 05, 2017
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There is not the slightest doubt that KML is about to blow GIS out of the water big time. Forcing revolutionary changes in how professional maps are published.

The reason is simple: KML is flyable! And nothing else matters.

The language is fairly simple, but extreme detail may be needed to get useful results.

Several details I am having problems with here include doing quadratic or cubic Bezier paths with rounded ends; making two tone paths that have a different border and internal; making paths variable transparency; efficient ways to generate path; extracting print maps for use with traditional publishing ; and linking our field notes. Please email me with suitable hints.

July 04, 2017
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We will shortly have bunches of new aerospace items up on our eBay offerings. Particularly normally pricey attenuators and microwave switches. Some as fancy as SP12T!

Successful eBay seller strategies appear here, while the equivalent buyer strategies are found here. And are summarized here and here, with bunches more stuff here and here.

Then there's this series...

Enhancing your eBay Skills I
Enhancing your eBay Skills II

Enhancing your eBay Skills III

Enhancing your eBay Skills IV

Enhancing your eBay Skills V

Enhancing your eBay Skills VI
Enhancing your eBay Skills VII

Enhancing your eBay Skills VIII

July 03, 2017
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Alexander Graham Kernatski was the first telephone pole.

July 02, 2017
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I still feel that this paper has not ever gotten the coverage I that feel it rightly deserves.

July 01, 2017
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Amazingly, rectocranial inversion can easily be both  chronic and acute at the same time.

June 30, 2017
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Here's a version of our pattern knobs that works on angular viewed knobs as well as "straight on" viewed ones.

The basic pattern is shown here, with a scaled and tilted version here.

It would be interesting to compare this pseudo log pixel scheme against a "real" trig projection. I suspect that pseudo log, while not quite "correct" actually often may end up much looking better. Besides compressing and pixellating better.

June 29, 2017
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Found three other early classic color organs.

One color organ appears in the March 1963 and April 1963 issues of Audio Magazine.

The unit was thyratron based and half wave only, which meant you could never ever get anywhere near full brightness. Their phase control was rather creative but also seemed nonlinear and and of limited dynamic range.

What they did was sum shifted a power line sinewave ranging from 270 to 450 degrees with the rectified audio and the needed needed needed thyratron bias.

The second color organ is from the January 1941 Electronics and is reachable here.

A third color organ appears in the September 1966 issue of Audio Magazine.

More here.

June 28, 2017
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Just realized we had a "missing link" to easy nav of our Hydrogen Resources page. I still need to do a new summary directory.

The arguments against the ludicrous hydrogen economy can be found on this library page.

But my favorite factoid of all is that there is more hydrogen in a gallon of gasoline than there is in a gallon of liquid hydrogen.

Yeah, its only eleven percent more or so and it varies with the octane blend. Mole fractions and all. But still...

And factoid number two is that, because of exergy, using grid, pv, or alternator sources to create hydrogen by electrolysis is about as monumentally stupid as 1:1 exchanging two US dollars for one Mexican peso.

June 27, 2017
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One of the more amazing features of American Radio History is that you can search virtually every word of a century's worth of just about any publication that is even remotely radio related.

Buried in this treasure trove were three early Color Organ projects newly found here, here, and here.

My own color organ projects are linked here, with additional notes here, here, and here.

June 26, 2017
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If there is one thing I can't stand, it is intolerance.

I find those inane surveys needed to access some web stories to be maddeningly infuriating. An obvious defense is to make their results utterly useless by ALWAYS lying like a rug and ALWAYS generating the most  wildly improbable responses.

Ferinstance, when asked for your favorite brand of  Smoke Detector, you reply "Pepsi".

When asked what products you associate with the Acme Veeblefeltzer company, you reply "ketchup".

And otherwise generate the most mesmerizingly awful responses that you can possibly dream up.

June 25, 2017
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The web now seems to have several downloadable resources for my TTL Cookbook. One temporary link can be found here.

And many more of our ebooks here.

June 24, 2017
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I've long been a fan of bashing pseudoscience. Here are a few of the available links...

How to Bash Pseudoscience
How to scam a student paper
      This one is only "slightly"
       incorrect. But which?
Supraluminal Dowsing for Brown's
       Gas in Roswell.
Trashing auto electrolysizers
Debunking water powered cars.
Arguments AGAINST the
       hydrogen economy

Investigating Brown's Gas
The bogus magic lamp.

The actual bogus magic
      lamp paper.
My very first perpetual motion machine
Our main Pseudoscience library

And, of course...

The worst of Marcia Swampfelder

June 23, 2017
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Thought we might review the insider secrets between adding a .JPG file to either a HTML webpage or a PDF document. The latter by way of PostScript.

I try to avoid pictures in our whtnu blog pages as this would drive the size of the typical year long file above a one meg download.

Image size can be minimized by using fewer of them, making them as small as possible or compressing them into .JPG or other compact formats.

But your key size reducing trick is this: Show a small image in the document that your user can click through to a larger hires one when and if they really want or need it!

In the case of HTML and its newer updates, simply clicking on "show page source" will reveal how others have done it. Yesterday's image used this code...

<a href="https://www.tinaja.com/glib/
area_puzzle1.jpg"> <img src="https://
www.tinaja.com/glib/area_puzzle1.jpg
" alt=" " width="150" height="150"></a>

An example of using PostScript to add a .JPG image to a PDF document can be found here. In particular, note the /jpegimageprocwithlink , /surl , /eurl , and related procs. The final document can be viewed here.

One key gotcha: make sure the data passed to the link code has the exactly correct hsize and vsize values.

June 22, 2017
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This fiendishly subtle math puzzle has been newly kicking around the web...

The problem is to find the yellow area, given the other areas shown. IF you are willing to think waaaay out of the box, the obvious answer is seven, and it should take you about four seconds. If you do not rush things.

On the other hand, a formal solution will take a quarter hour or so. Unless you insist on dragging Pythagoras kicking and screaming into the fray, which would be totally unneeded and take you much longer.

Here's the formal and mind-numbingly subtle solution: Call x the width and y the height. Call a the  left width and b the right width. Call c the top height and d the bottom height.

Oops.

You can only write five equations in six unknowns..

x = a + b y = c + d c = 8/x  
( from the triangle area formula )
b = 6/d ay = 4

There is no way to explicitly solve for x or y and it turns out there are an infinite number of solutions to these equations. The best you can hope to do is find y = f(x).

Eliminating variables a b c and d leaves you with something like this messy result...

xy = 6xy/(xy-8) + 4

Let z = xy and chew on this for a while to get this quadratic (!)...

z^2 -18z + 32 = 0

Which factors as...

(z - 16) (z- 2) = 0

This tells us one possible total area is 16. Thus x = 4 and y=4 is one of an infinite possible set of solutions. One solution is square and the rest exhibit rectangularity. All demand that xy = 16.

I am not sure of the significance of the second root.

The "outside-the-box" solution? 180 blue for  a rectangle of 8 and double it for a total area of sixteen. Subtract 2 + 3 + 4 for the seven result.

Much more math stuff here. And here. And especially here.

June 21, 2017
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Expanded our Gila Valley Dayhikes pages. We are now up to 405 main entries.

Newly added are the Roper Lake kayak rentals, a bunch of hidden CCC water projects, and a seldom visited "secret " hanging canal.

June 20, 2017
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Fluted knobs and similar "pattern around a cylinder" effects can be tricky in Paint or other image programs. Such as this example or this one.

A sneaky trick I like to call pseudo log pixel locking can greatly ease and aide the process.

Start your pattern with a medium gray vertical line seven pixels wide. Call it G7. Place a vertical black line seven pixels wide immediately to the right. Call it B7.

Continue adding adjacent lines...

G7 B7 G7 B7    
G7 B6 G7 B6   
G6 B6 G6 B6
G6 B5 G6 B5    
G5 B5 G5 B5   
G5 B4 G5 B4
G4 B4 G4 B4    
G4 B3 G4 B3   
G3 B3 G3 B3...

Then mirror to the left. If your pattern is too wide, trim one or more groups as needed. If too thin, expand one or more groups as needed.

Sneaky, Huh?

With some extra effort, you can pick up spectacular results. Just start with a horizontal or vertical pattern and then rotate and scale it suitably. Crucial is getting the angle exactly correct.

June 19, 2017
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eBay in their infinite wisdom has decided to block most live URL links in all listings. Purportedly to ease problems with non conventional media such as smart phones. But more likely in an utterly futile attempt to discourage off eBay sales.

The links will likely still be viewable by your visitors but will not click through. Our policy will be to include "broken" links where they greatly aide your understanding of what is being offered. You can hand key these as the need arises.

Separately, and as usual, you can email us at don@tinaja.com or bee@tinaja.com for additional tech support on most any item or topic.

We unconditionally guarantee all of our eBay items to be able to meet your needs.

June 18, 2017
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A tutorial on the secret insider stuff of converting between PostScript strings, integers, arrays, and dictionaries can be found here. And bunches more here.

June 17, 2017
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I've long been a fan of the law of the unintended consequence. Especially when nobody seems to be paying the slightest attention.

An obvious analysis here. And additional predictions here.

June 16, 2017
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Many years ago, a certain New York editor who had never been off the block at Lawn Guiland visited a Texas ranch. He was amazed at how greasy the sheep were and asked why they greased their sheep. The ranch hands had a big laugh over this and tried to explain lanolin. Then they moseyed up the draw to  the cow oiler.

June 15, 2017
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pv module pricing trends for April and May are newly in and continue their impressive decline, except that the best price at .40 GB Pounds (.44 US$) is up a tad from .39 per peak panel watt. But still flat since January 2017. Once gain, the magic number is 25 cents US per peak panel watt for genuine subsidy free renewability and sustainability. Until that is reached, pv panels clearly remain a gasoline destroying net energy sink. And are in no manner yet renewable or sustainable.

Reasonable projections would place breakeven in eighteen months or so, with net energy gains ( required to pay for all previous losses ) something like eight years after that. The breakeven, of course, gets much worse as parity is approached owing to zillions of new dollars ( and their energy equivalents ) being thrown at pv once breakeven is in site.

Meanwhile a 100 to 200 percent tax on this incredible approaching module success has been requested. The math behind the quarter per peak panel watt appears here, and much more on related energy topics here.

June 14, 2017
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An interesting advance in display technology is this system that uses a single color programmable pixel instead of three or more RGB adjacent ones can be found here.

I suspect other alternatives will prevail, though. You usually need at least three values to usually specify a color, such as HSB or RGB. One variable by itself won't hack it.

June 13, 2017
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Pico de Gallo - A very small parrot.

June 12, 2017
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Tabby's star is at it again.

June 11, 2017
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Speaking of baud rates, the day the world clearly went to hell in a hand basket was when "they" shifted from 110 to 150 Baud. Comm has clearly been downhill ever since.

But the ultimate baud rate story is the century long run made by the Gamewell Fire Alarm Telegraph. Yup, they had a baud rate -- ONE BAUD!

They were clearly the LAN of the nineties. The EIGHTEEN NINETIES!

These amazing devices were a fist sized clockwork that included such stunning concepts as private URL's, error trapping, collision detection, network reconfiguration, and even emergency re-routing.

More here.

June 10, 2017
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Several of you on the Apple IIe newsgroup have asked about using the IIe video output as a high speed serial baud rate channel. I first raised this possibility in our Ask the Guru columns.

Theoretically, a peak data rate of 7.0 Megabaud (!) could be generated on a stock IIe and a stunning 14 Megabaud in a IIGS Super HIRES mode.

I posted this as a "golly gee mister science" type of thingy. But at the time the IIe could routinely output serial data faster than a Mac or a 386. Mostly because of crappy software elsewhere, especially Apple Talk.

As far as I know, the concept never went further. Owing to some ( then ) exotic hardware required, syncronization issues, and no apparent demand.

The achievable data rate would likely be much slower, but could still in theory blow everything else away. For openers, data would only be 40/64ths of the time. And any preplacement of the data into HIRES slots would likely need taken into account.

June 09, 2017
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There seems to be an ever diminishing groundswill of popular demand for our PostScript  "spiriograph" routines. You can find them here and here.

Or for one each of everything, go here.

Since you asked, the fractal ferns can separately be found here, here, and here.

June 08, 2017
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Apparently there is a new expanded versions of Paint. It is called Paint 3D. It is organized as a new 3D panel you can click through on to pick up the new capabilities.

Apparently Microsoft will force feed you the new version on a system update. No, the new version will not work on earlier Windows 10 or anything older. You can tell if your are upgraded if the new Open Paint 3D click panel appears upper right in your older Paint program.

There's all sorts of new "golly gee mister science" new stuff. In particular, Paint 3D instantly does our swings and tilts from our Architects Perspective routines. But since these are crudely mouse fed, so far I cannot see any way to get the degree of numeric precision needed for exact perspective correction or for similar image rectification needs.

Some of the other new Paint stuff is found here.

June 07, 2017
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There's a step and repeat capability built into our Gonzo Utilities and its related tutorial. Besides being useful for business cards, it can be most handy any time you need several identical ( or even only somewhat related ) images on a page.

Your basic repeating entity is called repeatproc. It can easily do such fancy stuff as a sequential numbering, grabbing names off a list, or gracefully dealing with a list that ends before the page ends.

Also required is an array naming what is being repeated in this format...

   [ #horizrpts - times proc repeats horizontally
     #vertrpts - times proc repeats vertically     
     hspacing - horizontal repeat spacing
     vspacing - vertical repeat spacing
     hstart - horizontal offset from bottom left
     vstart - vertical offset from bottom left
     ticklen - length of cropping ticks when used
    useticks? - true or false
    landscape - true or false ]

In the above, "horizontal" and "vertical" apply after selecting portrait or landscape. Nineteen formats are presently in the code, while any reasonable number can presently be added. A separate /showthegrid can be set true or false to provide a convenient layout grid.

As this example shows us, the routine is presently activated by (buscard) stepandrepeat. 

Yeah, this is a minor bug as it would better be entered as an array, a name, or even a string. The key is the obscure type operator . I'll save this as a trivial project for the serious student.

June 06, 2017
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Avery has an interesting solution to do-it-yourself business cards in several of their products. A key feature is that the cards snap apart without needing any peeling or trimming or shearing. Costs start at seven cents each.

Here is a demo of my free business card routine along with its sourcecode here. This complements and goes with our letterhead demo and sourcecode we recently looked at.

One minor but frustrating gotcha: Many printers may get their registration and scale enough wrong that the results can be noticeable on a business card to downright useless on very small labels.

Adjustments are built into the above software. With the generic PostScript fix being something like w x translate y z scale with w and x being a point or two and y or z typically being somewhere between 0.997 and 1.003.

Change all your colors here.

Naturally, it is super important to use only one printer for a given correction and to check this correction every now or then.

Also and obviously, your software must be carefully matched to the actual forms you are using.

Sometimes you can simply hold a test page up against your letterhead forms to check their alignment in front of a bright light. Other times, you can scissor chomp some holes in the test page to check the alignment between the page and the underlying forms.

A reminder that you need to run Distiller from the command line. An incantation such as //acrodist /F is required to restore Acrobat disk access.

Many more PostScript apps here. And all sorts of beginner projects here. And secret insider stuff here.

June 05, 2017
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Image Rectification such as in this example can get rather tricky. Yeah, you can use a scanner, but that might leave you with depth of field issues. And, of course, most any old litho camera will work just fine at outrageous cost, time, and inconvenience. These can be found at your county refuse dump. Plus there are hardware and software book deskewing options available. But the new Paint 3D seems to not give you nearly precise enough skewing control.

It turns out that some sneaky reuse of our Architect's Perspective utilities can do most rectifications just fine.

Correct the lean first, just as you would a perspective fix. Then rotate 90 degrees and correct the new lean. Then rotate back. Note that negative values of howmuchtilt will be needed if the top is narrower than the bottom.

The howmuchtilt values will typically be a lot less than those  used for perspective correction. Try values in the .045 or -0.45 range.

A reminder that you need to run Distiller from the command line. An incantation such as //acrodist /F is required to restore Acrobat disk access.

There is an ugly rumor going around that it may be theoretically possible to use PostScript to dirty up otherwise clean sheets of paper. But surely nobody would bother with such restrictive apps, given Postscript's outstanding capabilities as a general purpose computer language. More details here.

June 04, 2017
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Radio Shack has gone bankrupt again and newly closed 1000 of their 1070 owned stores. They are even selling their museum in an online auction.

But things may not be as they seem. Reports abound over raising prices before bogus sales.

Genuine "bailout" sales from the independent RS dealers might be hard to find, rare, and catch- as-catch can, But be sure to watch for them. Now!

In an ideal world, the independents could become emerging  hackerspace,  makerspace, and fab lab sources. But these would seem to be best done online without the ancient baggage of a limited hours and high employee retail commercial storefront.

I remain mightily pissed at Radio Shack. Seems they ran a sneaky ultra cheap side deal with Sams that ended up with them charging much less retail for one of my books than the wholesale price to other computer stores. Thus alienating nearly my entire supply base for one of my best selling titles.

June 03, 2017
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There's a new toned down video version of "Debbie Does  Dallas" out. It is titled "Doris Does Des Moines".

June 02, 2017
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There is an easy way to spot an extroverted engineer: They stare at your shoes rather than their own.

June 01, 2017
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Here are some improvements I would sure like to see in today's online auctions. Please suggest or demand them...

1. No bank drafts under $10,000. Universally accept Paypal or else VISA/MC with a 3% BP. Maybe even bitcoin.

2. Make filing and using tax exempt paperwork easier.

3. NO buyer's premiums, except possibly for VISA/MC.

4. Provide a $10 pallet shrink wrapping service or otherwise deal with shippers usual refusal to provide even the simplest packing help.

5. Keep auction listings online a minimum of 30 days post sale.

6. Report and keep prices achieved also for 30 days post sale.

7. Greatly simplify password procedures, especially renewing.

8. Increase "contents of shelf" and "contents of room" offerings.

9. Use a $5 opening bid except for items of enormous value.

10. Provide very high resolution photos so that obscure part numbers can be read.

11. Make a custom watch list feature available.

12. Greatly improve pack and ship options.

13. Be able to optionally view the entire catalog on a single scrollable screen.

14. Lengthen pickup times when holidays are a factor.

Much more on auction opportunities here and here.

May 31, 2017
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Magic Sinewaves are an unusual math approach to spectrum managing the creation of digital power sinewaves for such tasks as ac motor controls, solar panels, electric cars, and network telephony.

Their foremost feature is that any chosen number of low harmonics can be forced to zero in theory and to amazingly small values in quantized practice.

Find a tutorial here, an incredibly fast calculator here, and many more details here.

May 30, 2017
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Here is a current eBay image that needed its lettering improved. We've looked at slanty lettering tricks here, here, and elsewhere. But sometimes a much simpler stunt or two can work out just fine.

This trick may work so long as the lettering is short enough that you cannot tell the difference between isometric and perspective...

1. In paint, create a new word of the proper
    length. Manual kerning might also be needed.
    A bold Gothic font such as Malgum Gothic may
    be appropriate. Use appropriate letter and
    background colors.

2. Anaphorically resize the height to an
    appropriate value. Move the project into
    an appropriate work area. Guess at
    a suitable amount of skew in the resize
    menu. Perhaps 10 degrees vertical skew and
    -34 degrees horizontal skew. Try a temporary
    overpaste to the lettering to be improved.

3. Readjust the hsize, vsize, hskew, and vskew
    vskew for best results. It may be a good idea
    to make the new lettering larger than the original,
    but not excessively so.

BTW, there is a brand new version of Paint per these details.

May 29, 2017
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A free web interactive version of the original Collosal Cave adventure can be found here.

And, while you certainly should not rush these things, the latest new Scott Adams Adventure can be found here.

And most of the older Scott Adams adventures here.

And, amazingly, a voice driven Alexis version of Collosal Cave here.

May 28, 2017
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If I understood what I just read correctly, a failed small US solar outfit is demanding what presently appears to me to be a 100 PERCENT TAX on the overwhelming majority of pv cells sold or installed in the US.

And, since the demand is fixed price, reasonable projections could easily convert this demand into a near term 200 percent tax or higher. Increasing ad infinitum.

You can follow this debacle here. Form your own conclusions.

More on energy stuff here.

May 27, 2017
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Did I ever tell you about the time Mad Magazine stole my Spring Training cover suggestion without paying for it?

This was somewhat after my involvement with the CIA Bay of Pigs incident.

A reminder that there are two flavors of Walmart auctions available per these details. Offered are pallets and truckloads of merchandise on one hand and store fixtures on the other.

Some now even include limited range free shipping.

Our own auction resources can be found here, custom auction finders for you here, and our eBay activities here.

May 25, 2017
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The recent mention of our ongoing successful eBay nuclear holocaust fashion accessories brought to mind many of these mostly no longer available Synergetics products...

WATER SOLUBLE SWIMSUITS - Long gone are these designer kits absolutely guaranteed to dissolve in warm water. Nearly all of which were snarfed up by quilters, felters, boat builders, magicians, and the many aficionados of kiddy slime.

DIMPLED CHAD - And the obsolete voting booths they were in literally stolen at an action were, of course, quickly sold out to amateur astronomers.

CAVER'S WRIST SUNDIALS - Still in development, but absolutely guaranteed to attract more attention than a Rolex. Synthetic spent carbide also remains under beta testing. Owing to declining interest in the genuine item.

TINFOIL HAT LINERS - Genuine Chomerics nearly instantly sold out. But you had to be sure to place the material outside the foil to stop thought control and inside the foil to prevent them from reading your mind.

PONCHO VILLAS- Remain quite popular with many southwestern hikers as emergency rain shelters.

GODZILLA VERSUS THE NIGHT NURSES - Cross genre classic had to be pulled from theaters and directly released to 8 track after the restraining order from the Tapioca Pudding Institute.

REVERSIBLE TRUCK TIRES - Currently easing the vehicle repacking and reloading hassles owing to different tire sizes and spacings at the New Mexico ports of entry.

CLONABLE TELEPORTATION - Present sales limited to unprecedented demand by importers of specialty herbs and spices. The 4:1 duplication factor lets you set your own foreign exchange rates and greatly reduces all the waiting around at Customs.

BRUNO - Continuing services by the attitude relaterization facilitator for a major eBay newsgroup.

May 24, 2017
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Inductively coupled power works just fine for electric toothbrushes, but otherwise the air range is limited to a tiny fraction of an inch and the efficiency is abysmal.

But there apparently is an exciting new game in town called magnetic resonance coupling. Numbers like 15 feet and 80 percent efficiency are being bandied about. Along with the ability to work through books or clothes or whatever. Plus "throw it on the shelf" orientation convenience. Mostly done with near fields.

Power transfer takes place around 5 Gigahertz and a crucial key is feedback from the device being charged.

An interesting review appears here, and a new trade organization here. Besides being an obvious product winner, this should make a dandy student paper.

May 23, 2017
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An interesting dowsing paper can be found here from this fascinating resource. Which also allows you to earn as much as $150 per month as an electrical engineer!

Somewhat more modern coverage is found here and here.

The key to all this is being able to separate useful adjuncts towards porcine whole body cleanliness from total hogwash.

May 22, 2017
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We looked at adding custom JavaScript nav buttons to a .PDF file here. The only tiny thing wrong with this approach is that you have to manually reenter the JavaScript code each and every time you redistill your target code. Which gets old for works in progress.

Instead, as this example and this sourcecode show us, you can programatically and automatically add nav features to PostScript-as-Language by way of pdfmark.

Full details are found in the source code, but here is a key fragment...

[ /Rect [0 55 2 57]
/Page /Next /View
[/XYZ null null null]
/Border [0 0 0 ]
/Subtype /Link
/ANN pdfmark

May 21, 2017
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A reminder that we newly have one each of everything available here.

May 20, 2017
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SIX new bajada hanging canal study candidates... (!)

A dried up artesian lake: 32.93522 -109.94131
A UFO Fish Fillet neighbor: 32.82028 -109.96201
Grant Creek historical reuse: 32.59503 -109.96552
A Hog Canyon mystery: 32.55377 -109.76436
Still barely flowing artesian: 32.75469 -109.71762
And its adjacent neighbor: 32.75704 -109.71886

May 19, 2017
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An interesting consequence of current product development  is that form no longer follows function.  Not so long ago, if you wanted a telephone, you had to place a heavy transformer and a klutzy dial in a box too big and too heavy to pick up.

If you wanted a camera, you had to have space for two cylindrical rolls, a film plane, and the bottom out of a coke bottle or some similar piece of glass out front. Television sets and other display devices had to be heavy and deep  because of how far you could bend electrons in a vacuum.

If you wanted some information, you had to carry it around either as a flat disk or a long strip of tape or film. If you wanted some light, you ended up with a high intensity point  source and severe heat management problems.

These days, a telephone can be any shape and size, and routinely  can include a video camera, a pocket watch, a flashlight, a GPS receiver, and a laser pointer as an absolute minimum.  Display devices can now be arbitrarily flat and thin. Flexible, even.

Cameras can be any shape and size. Even ( a mystery to me ) including SLR lenses that once cured a long gone defect. Gigabytes ( and soon, cup ) of data storage can be any shape or size and often totally static. With a present size limit of slightly larger than an USB connector. 

And point source LED lighting makes no sense whatsoever, as multiple sources with manageable heat become the norm.  Much more on technical innovation secrets here.

May 18, 2017
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Have added a new set of Allen Canal Field Notes in our Bajada Hanging Canal series.

Sourcecode is here with additional notes here. And more field notes here. Along with some limited Allen Dam failure docs here.

Can you prove that (1) the dam actually was used for water skiing, and (2) The Allen Canal was its main water source?

May 17, 2017
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Our prehistoric bajada hanging canals seen uniquely original this side of the Canary Islands. ( aside -- which were named for a large dog! ).

A reasonable question could be exactly where "they" got the idea to extend the unique perennial streams from Arizona's highest mountain ( measured from its base ) and hang them on the sheer bajada mesa edges to make their slope independent of terrain.

Yes, there were riverine canals. But the engineering on these seems orders of magnitude less sophisticated than the hung ones. And certainly vastly less unique.

A dried up artesian lake at 32.93519 -109.94131 may reveal some clues. This may have been a large lake that attracted evidence of both prehistoric and historic use. The lake may have overflowed to a natural wash and likely ran all the way to the Gila River.

And thus could have served as a prototype example of "get some water and move it elsewhere".

A second artesian source and delivery system can be found at 32.75294 -109.72004 More might appear unproven but likely.

Additional info here. Your participation welcome.

May 16, 2017
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A reminder that we likely have the world's entire remaining supply of "kiss your onager goodbye" nuclear holocaust fashion accessories here.

These are absolutely mint.

May 15, 2017
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Here's a tentative update for a master list of our bajada prehistoric hanging canals candidate study area field notes...

1. VCN1  Veech Canal From middle Veech Canyon to possible P Ranch Fields N 32.64151 W 109.74348 to N 32.64386 W 109.74218 Not yet explored, should be significant.

2. GTC1 Goat Tank Canal From Lower Jacobson Canyon along southern edge of      Ledford Mesa N 32.68467 W 109.76160 to N 32.68914 W 109.72106 Apparently still in modern use, difficult access.

3. LDC1 Ledford Tank Canal From Lower Jacobson Canyon along middle of      Ledford Mesa. N 32.68454 W 109.76209 to N 32.69198 W 109.72801 Apparently still in modern use, difficult access.

4. JAC1 Lower Jacobson Hint ( largely discredited ) N 32.67671 W 109.77610 to N 32.67736 W 109.77472  Aerial evidence became a fence line in hostile terrain.

5. UMC1 Upper Marijilda Delivery Canals N 32.70648 W 109.77932 to N 32.70930 W 109.77709 Group of small delivery canals near main Marijilda takein.

6. MAR1 Main Marijilda Canal aka Lebanon Ditch from Marijilda Dam to Lebanon Reservoir N 32.70628 W 109.77702 to N 32.73322 W 109.76149 Major prehistoric development, still flowing Modern Use.

7. SMB1 Marijilda Southern Feeder Branches N 32.71096 W 109.77108 to N 32.71327 W 109.76696 Short delivery and diversion canals south of Main Marijilda

8. MAQ1 Marijilda Aqueduct Delivers between Main Marijilda and High Marijilda 32.72356 W 109.76257 to N 32.72411 W 109.76235 Only known major system aqueduct crosses a saddle.

9. HMC1 High Marijilda Hanging Canal N 32.72410 W 109.76239 to N 32.74113 W 109.74677 Spectacular portion hangs mesa edge 200 feet in the air.

10. SXP1  Sixpack Canal N 32.72290 W 109.76052 to N 32.74449 W 109.73391 Branch of Marijilda south of access road, still needs work

11. HNC1 Henry's Canal N 32.73712 W 109.74229 to N 32.74456 W 109.72996 Southern branch of main Marijilda, portions unexplored.

12. RPC1 Roper Canal N 32.75567 W 109.70885 to N 32.75567 W 109.70885 Modern feeder to Roper Lake, presumed mostly prehistoric. 13. RIC1 Rincon Canal N 32.73410 W 109.76325 to N 32.76222 W 109.74402 Marijilda branch possibly becomes Twin West canal.

14. TQC1 Tranquility Canal N 32.75754 W 109.73294 to N 32.77477 W 109.72751 Artesian sourced and historic use from presumed original.

15. DPC1 Discovery Park Canal ( vague - still requires verification, ) N 32.79267 W 109.72830 to N 32.79450 W 109.72781 Possible feeder to potential Discovery Park fields.

16. TEC1 Twin East Canal N 32.76068 W 109.73500 to N 32.76472 W 109.73426 Routes UNDER the Lebanon Cemetery, one of TWO         feeders to the TB ponding area.

17. TWC1 Twin West Canal 32.76226 W 109.74374 to N 32.76739 W 109.73803 Hanging canal is SECOND feeder to tb ponding area

18. TBP1 TB Ponding Area N 32.76739 W 109.73803 to N 32.76465 W 109.73400 Receives and redistributes TEC1 and TWC1 water.        Highly distinctive aerial profile.

19. MFC1 Mystery Feeder N 32.76738 W 109.74366 to N 32.76681 W 109.74181 Short Canal segment might tie Deadman or Deadman       South to Twin West. Needs more work

20. DMS1 Deadman South N 32.75525 W 109.78008 to N 32.75650 W 109.77712 Unexplored potential canal has strong Acme Mapper presence. Includes mystery alignments.

21. DMC1 Main Deadman Canal N 32.73735 W 109.81291 to N 32.76277 W 109.77392 Still flows in original channel serving cattle tanks.   Portions are buried pipeline.

22. WS1 Water Spreader Rock Alignments Such as 32.78883 W 109.73843 and N 32.79273  W 109.75897 and elsewhere. The more obvious  of these are CCC, but many, many prehistoric  examples also exist.

24. MRG1 Mulch Ring Arrays N 32.78491 W 109.74642 plus many others. Typically 2 feet in diameter by one rock high in groups of 20. Rather common.

25 CKD1 Check Dams with Aprons N 32.77872 W 109.76472 or N 32.78840 W 109.87113 plus many others Rock diversions across secondary washes are quite common..

26. ALS1 Alberto's Signature N 32.79690 W 109.75485 Of the thousands of conflicting CCC structures locally, this one is the only known one autographed in stone

27. LVC1 Longview canal N 32.78956 W 109.75971 Obvious short wall on otherwise unsupported short canal segment with local destination. Sourcing unknown and unproven.

28. FWD1 Frye Watershed Diversion N 32.74427 W 109.83918 to N 32.74558 W 109.84033 Unproven potentially spectacular watershed crossing seems demanded by HS Canal and others.

29. MFC1 Main Frye Mesa Delivery Canal N 32.74573 W 109.84033 to N 32.75995 W 109.81148  Partially unproven but demanded by Frye Ponding Area, HS Canal, Golf Course, and Robinson Canal.

30. FPA1 Lower Frye Mesa Ponding area. N 32.75995 W 109.81148 Gathers in Frye Mesa braided channels to support HS Canal, Golf Course?, and Robinson Canal.

31. HSC1 HS Canal N 32.75987 W 109.81163 to N 32.75771 W 109.81511 Spectacular hanging and counterflowing structure RETURNS water to Frye Creek, possibly sources Golf Course.

32. LFC1 ( largely discredited ) Lower Frye potential route N 32.76634 W 109.79377 to N 32.77185 W 109.78715 Possible route includes wagon road with horseshoes, could feed Blue Ponds.

33. BPC1 Blue Ponds Canal N 32.78118 W 109.77771 to N 32.78064 W 109.77607 Short disused historic pond routing canal may or may not have unproven prehistoric origins.

34. RGC1 Riggs Mesa Area Braided Channels Area of N 32.77763 W 109.78729 to N 32.77831 W 109.78694 Enigmatic channels may be routing between HS Canal and Golf Course Canal.

35. GCC1 Golf Course Canal  N 32.79811 W 109.78286 to N 32.79895 W 109.77587  Major prehistoric canal serviced Daley Estates area, includes hanging portions and mystery structure..

36. Twin Artesian Ponds N 32.79956 W 109.78347 and N 32.80264 W 109.78091 No obvious links to Golf Course Canal, but unlikely to be prehistorically ignored.

37. RBC1 Robinson Ranch Canal N 32.75997 W 109.81147 to N 32.79930 W 109.79027 Major hanging canal with strong down = up illusion sources from Lower Frye Mesa ponding area

38. ALC1 Allen Canal N 32.78237 W 109.83540 to N 32.83253 W 109.80507 Major prehistoric canal possibly includes Frye Watershed crossing. Destination remains unknown.

39. ALD1 Allen Dam Failure  N 32.83324 W 109.79383  Back in its water skiing (!) days, might have been fed by the Allen Canal.

40. CUC1 Culebra Cut N 32.83567 W 109.79796 to N 32.83560 W 109.79841 Spectacular major large cut in Allen Canal below historic dam.

41. ACF1 Ash Creek Feeder to Mud Springs N 32.79016 W 109.85478 to N 32.79140 W 109.85388 Source for Mud Springs canal via proven spectacular watershed crossing but not yet fully explored.

42. MSC1 Mud Springs Canal N 32.79153 W 109.85375 to N 32.84796 W 109.81105 Major canal system branches to Jernigan, includes several hanging portions. Destination remains unknown.

43. THP1 Troll House strange structure N 32.82538 W 109.82281 Enigmatic pithouse like mud springs canal related structure lacks charcoal

44. MJB1 Mud Jernigan Branching Point N 32.82765 W 109.81953 Apparent location of the beginning of the Jernigan Canal.

45. MST1 Mud Springs Tank N 32.82766 W 109.81896 Apparently historic construct would seem to demand Mud Springs Canal for its water.

46. JEC1 Jernigan Canal N 32.82765 W 109.81953 to N 32.84131 W 109.81649 One of few canals with obvious destination. Conspicuous        hanging portion, habitation sites.

47. LMT Lower Mud Trace ( largely discredited ) N 32.80803 W 109.84448 to N 32.81882 W 109.84093 Aerial images appear to be field verified as a historic two track.

48. STC1 Smith Tank Canal N 32.81870 W 109.84689 to N 32.82055 W 109.84458 Likely has unproved prehistoric original.

49. CSW1 Cluff Southwest Canal N 32.81586 W 109.84971  Branches from the Smith Canal takein on Ash Creek. Still unexplored.

50. CNW1 Cluff Northwest Canal Complex N 32.82494 W 109.84652 to N 32.83635 W 109.84302 Strongly redeveloped canal system includes convincingly  authentic prehistoric reaches.

51. MWD1 Merrill Webster Ditch N 32.79771 W 109.87296 to N 32.81310 W 109.86638  Historically redeveloped canal shows reasonable evidence  of unmodified prehistoric origins

52. TGC1 Tugood Canal N 32.80923 W 109.87115 to N 32.82008 W 109.86671 Most impressively pristine of the known hanging canals.  Superb restoration candidate.

53. MLC1 Main Lefthand Canal Complex N 32.80850 W 109.91812 to N 32.81680 W 109.91872 Shorter canal segments primarily used for end use delivery

54. LWC1 Lefthand West Canal N 32.82077 W 109.91835 to N 32.82564 W 109.91851  Prehistoric original adapted for historic field reuse.

55. SLC1 South Lefthand Canal ( Needs verification ) 32.83101 W 109.91453 to N 32.83366 W 109.91555 Yet to be verified aerial image

56. LMC1 Lamb Tank Canal N 32.81196 W 109.92310 to N 32.81445 W 109.92266 Likely lefthand source. Additional study required.

57. MR1 ( largely discredited ) Mystery Reach N 32.81793 W 109.90207 to N 32.82478 W 109.90003 Fairly convincing aerial evidence field verifies more as a disused vehicle two track.

58. SWC1 Sand Wash Canal N 32.83099 W 109.92604 to N 32.83508 W 109.92274 Ideal short tour candidate has nearly everything including  easy access. May be prototype as final channel minuscule.

 59. NWD1 Nuttall Watershed Diversion N 32.77471 W 109.95411 to N 32.77774 W 109.95532 Postulated third watershed crossing would supplement  Sand Canal water sourcing. Unverified.

60. BSC1 N 32.85049 W 109.94399 to N 32.87226 W 109.92596 Apparent scam historic canal from a source unlikely to have been prehistorically ignored.

61. GRD2 The grids Southern examples include N 32.78651 W 109.74353 and N 32.79408 W 109.75260 Rectangular agave farming arrays. Many thousands north of Gila river, a few hundreds south.

62. BDC1 Bandelier Canal N 32.94446 W 109.91120 to N 32.94677 W 109.91317 Appears to be deep vee riverine canal unrelated and unlinked to present study area.

63. UFO1 UFO Fish Fillets N 32.81203 W 109.97330 to N 32.82299 W 109.96420 A highly atypical CCC project that may or may  not have had prehistoric origins.

64 PRM1 P Ranch Mysteries 32.61817 -109.72829 to 32.61611 -109.72809 Additional survey required beyond Veech.

65 SR1 More Spear Ranch Work 32.83348 -109.91548 and 32.83616 -109.91440 Additional survey required north of Lefthand.

66 SCW1 Sand Canal Western Branch 32.82953 -109.92950  to 32.83442 -109.92704 Destinations of easily traced canal remain unknown.

67 SCC1 Sand Canal Center Branch 32.82953 -109.92950  to 32.83442 -109.92704 Destinations of easily traced canal remain unknown.

68.DWC1 Deadman West Canal 32.75295 -109.78502  to 32.75655 -109.77688 Potentially significant prehistoric canal remains largely unexplored due to difficult access.

69.UMC11 Upper Marijilda Canal 32.70664 -109.77779  to 32.70693 -109.77729 Smaller hanging canal near Marijilda diversion.

70.LFW1 Lower Frye Wall 32.76749 -109.79289  to 32.76824 -109.79178 Mysterious and unexplained construct may have major prehistoric canal significance.

71. CBAE1 Bandelier Artesian Extension 32.93523 -109.94128  to 32.94158 -109.92112 Dried up artesian lake may have enormous potential.

72. CNU1 Canal near UFO Fish Fillets 32.81428 -109.96678 to 32.81536 -109.96618 Short canal previously studied by Dr. Neely. Location is approximate.

73. HCC1 Hog Canyon Canal 32.55361 -109.76449 to 32.55407 -109.76414 South of Mount Graham possibly prehistoric canal currently unexplored.

74. GCC1 Grant Creek Canal 32.59825 -109.96483 to 32.58887 -109.96758 South of Mount Graham historic canal that may or may not have had prehistoric origins.

Unresolved Enigmas are outlined here. And losers here.

May 14, 2017
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These are our latest new bajada prehistoric hanging canal field notes...

Jernigan Canal field notes & sourcecode
Longview Area field notes & sourcecode
Mud Springs Canal
field notes & sourcecode
Riggs Mesa Canal
field notes & sourcecode
Tranquility Canal
field notes & sourcecode

And some of our previous ones due for updates or revisions...

Bear Springs Canal field notes & sourcecode
Cluffnw Canal
field notes & sourcecode
Freeman Canal field notes & sourcecode
Frye Complex
 field notes & sourcecode
Golf Course Canal field notes & sourcecode
Lefthand Canyon West field notes & sourcecode
Minor Webster Ditch field notes & sourcecode
Sand Canal field notes & sourcecode
Smith Canal field notes & sourcecode
Tugood Canal field notes & sourcecode
Veech Canal field notes & sourcecode

Please let me know about any omissions or typos. To date, we have SEVENTY FOUR (!) known bajada canals for a total length rapidly approaching ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY miles! Not counting the ho-hum riverine ones.

And most of these are genuine verified absolutely world class real. Although we do include some still-work-needed enigmas and even a very few losers that we want to document just for.

May 13, 2017
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Here's a reminder on how to add JavaScript nav buttons ( or other .js routines ) to Acrobat PDF...

Bring the .PDF file up in a full version of Acrobat.

Enter control-J to display the JavaScript console.

Place the JavaScript code in a word processor,
then copy to clipboard. Then paste into JS Console.

Highlight ONLY the part of the code you want!

Hit the ENTER key FROM THE KEYPAD!

Working keybutton navbutton.js code can be found here. You might want to slightly adjust the positions aRect[0] and aRect[1] if they collide with the PDF text.

May 12, 2017
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The mystery of the day can be found at...

http://mapper.acme.com/?ll=32.88479 -109.88944&z=20 &t=H&marker0=32.88475,109.88960,2.7%20mi %20SE%20of%20Graham%20County%20AZ

Or is it?

No Photoshop was harmed in the making of this dilemma.

May 11, 2017
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Have added a new set of Mud Springs Field Notes in our Bajada Hanging Canal series.

Sourcecode is here with additional notes here.

May 10, 2017
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Just posted our Gila Valley Dayhikes entry #500! With four new or updated things to do.

Thus reaching a millstone of sorts.

May 09, 2017
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Here are four new bajada hanging canal images...

TREE1 - An apparently ordinary wash in the Treeline area. May or may not be tail water from a historic orchard. Despite very interesting Acme Mapper images, this does not seem to be of prehistoric significance. 32.83947 -109.91558

KLON1 - Apparently historic major and likely artesian derived canal looking west from 32.94232 -109.92201

KLON2 - Apparently historic major and likely artesian derived canal looking east from 32.94232 -109.92201

KLON3 - The delivery channel from the artesian source at 32.93793 -109.92633 appears to be a largely unmodified wash.

May 08, 2017
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Managed to nearly complete our Director's Cut restoration of Tearing Into Machine Language Code. Find the new version here, its open source software here, the original here, and other eBooks here.

Many topos and micro-adjustments have been made, so please report any remaining problems.

Custom restorations of vintage classics remain available.

May 07, 2017
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Managed to find an apparently historic canal segment routing from 32.94158 -109.92112 to 32.94232 -109.92201. This suggests it was sourced from a now dry major artesian source or spring at 32.93793 -109.92633 by way of a largely unmodified wash going through 32.94270 -109.91625 and ultimately apparently terminating in a stock tank at 32.94232 -109.92201.

Previous discoveries including the Bandelier Canal were located at 32.94270 -109.91625, 32.94362 -109.91245, and 32.94513 -109.91171. These speculatively appear related.

This suggests that a major spring or artesian source was present during prehistoric times, significantly flowing through a natural wash, possibly all the way to the Gila River.

If so, this could conceivably form the key underlying prototype that influenced the entire concept of the bajada hanging canals.

While the topo maps report this and a second candidate as a "gravel pit", site visitation suggests instead a strong and desperate reworking of a falling water table. A similar but still wet example appears at 32.90616 -109.85373.

Due to unfavorable topography, no actual links between the bajada canals and this artesian system appear known.

May 06, 2017
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Our Director's Cut restoration of Tearing Into Machine Language Code rework is pretty much complete, less a few typos and micropositioning adjustments.

Find the new version here, its open source software here, the original here, and other eBooks here.

Assistance with restoration projects can be found here and one each of everything here.

May 05, 2017
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A newsgroup poster questioned why I had to switch my membership from the Gurus and Swamis Union local #415 over to #204. This had to do with the Godzilla Versus the Night Nurses cross genre classic. Because of the restraining order from the Tapioca Pudding Institute, the movie release had to be pulled and reissued directly to 8-track.

More here.

May 04, 2017
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Just read a fortune cookie: "Help! I am trapped and being held prisoner in a Fortune Cookie factory".

May 03, 2017
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I find caps locks keys to be mesmerizingly awful, since they are so easy to inadvertently activate.

The obvious solution is to simply remove the plastic keycap. If you ever really need it, a pencil eraser or a ball point pen can activate it.

May 02, 2017
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In this era of "throw another ten million calculations at it", many older and less sledgehammerish elegant solutions seem to have fallen by the wayside. We saw here how rate multipliers were one elegant approach to early digital multiplication.

Two other fascinating approaches to trig solutions were CORDIC and the Bhaskara Sine Approximation. Both of which were blown out of the saddle by modern floating point math.

Either ( or both ) of these would still make a dandy student paper. And more ( mostly ) winning paper topics can be found here. And more fancy math here.

These days, it is simplest to use power series instead...

cos (x) = 1- x^2/2! + x^4/4! - x^6/6! + ...

sinx (x) = x - x^3/3! + x^5/5! - x^7/7! + ...

More math stuff here.

May 01, 2017
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Our Director's Cut of Tearing Into Machine Language Code rework is nearly complete, less a few pages and some typos. Keep checking back for the final.

Find it here with full open sourcecode here. And more eBooks here. And one each of everything here.

Important new features are a ridiculously smaller file size and loading time ( an unoptimized 200K vs 6 megs! ), zero scanner defects, "perfect" backgrounds, full color, zero distortion, web linking, better legibility, full programmability, no PDF intervention, total searches, and  bunches of the usual new web capabilities.

Sadly, at least one reader felt this destroyed the "vintage vibes" You can still get the original here. And I guess the exact amount of revisionism is sometimes subject to historic authenticity and IP legality issues.

The raw PostScript-as-Language process is time intensive and does have a steep learning curve. But the absolute control you have over the final results speaks for itself.

Restoration services and seminars available.

April 30, 2017
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At present, we seem to have SEVENTY TWO (!) prehistoric bajada hanging canal study candidates that are rapidly approaching ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY local miles total.

The vast majority of these are now fully credible to acceptable scientific standards. But a few others can still be classified as "enigmas" or "losers".

An enigma is a postulated feature not yet fully convincingly field verified. We will look at some of these today.

A loser is one whose field verification failed to be convincing and deemed of low further study priority. These are retained in the field notes to largely prevent them from attracting further attention. We will look at some of these tomorrow.

One very significant resolved enigma was finding canals that clearly include portions that are built to both prehistoric and historic standards. Such as here and here. Which greatly strengthens the premise that virtually all historic bajada canals were "steal the plans", "dig out an old ditch", or "borrow the blueprints" based on prehistoric originals. To date, no convincing counterexamples have been provenly verified.

Here are some remaining present enigmas...

FRYE MESA DIVERSION - At present we have proven watershed crossings here and here. It would seem both necessary and likely that Frye Creek water be diverted to the spring in spring creek via this route. But field investigation remains needed.

DISCOVERY PARK - Strong hints of a reasonably sourced and destinated canal can be found here. But the rather vague evidence does not yet seem compelling.

LOWER FRYE - What could be a highly significant hanging portion can be found here and here. This is exactly where needed to merge the HS canal with the Freeman canal, but pre- and post-mesa evidence remains sorely and significantly lacking.

DEADMAN EAST - This hard-to-visit area shows a potentially significant canal on Acme Mapper, but still lacks field verification.

VEECH CANYON - Despite strong historic and web evidence of its CNF existence, this site remains unstudied and field verified due to heavy brush.

ELSEWHERE IN P RANCH - Hints of canals of unknown age abound but remain unproven despite numerous attempts at field verification.

SPEAR RANCH - Despite numerous and well studied canals, many additional ones both here and in the Lamb Tank area remain apparently unvisited and unverified.

THE UFO FISH FILLETS - Curious anomaly remains largely of undetermined age and purpose. Totally inconsistent with both area CCC projects. and hanging canal architecture and engineering.

April 29, 2017
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A reminder that we have some handy and sneaky fat tail arrow utilities up as a tutorial here and their extractable sourcecode here. And a recent use example here.

These are particularly useful for making a technical presentation slightly less formal. It turns out there are a dozen variants, depending on which cardinal direction the tip and tail are pointing.

There's even a sneakier trick you can pull for even fancier arrows. You can also specify the arrow midpoint by using an adjacent pair of them, noting that zero values are acceptable for the tail values of tailhigh and tailwide.

April 28, 2017
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Long multi-page PostScript or other documents need a fast page finding trick for editing or rework. While a comment such as using %%% page 56 %%% lets you search on 56 %, hitting the extra shift key might be needed dozens to hundreds of times.

Instead, try %%% page 56- %%% and search on 56-.

April 27, 2017
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Started an upload of a "Directors Cut" full color version of my "Tearing Method". With its open source software here.

Keep checking back to watch the progress. And please report any typos or other problems.

Besides obvious modernizations, the final should end up one tenth the size and much faster than most other rework.

We can do custom vintage restorations for you. A typical project might cost $39 per page with fancy artwork revisions extra. email me for details.

April 26, 2017
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A Heathkit schematic and manual archive can be found here. And an utterly amazing classic radio archive here.

April 25, 2017
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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.

Besides being a bear to tune.

Vaguely similar stuff here.

April 24, 2017
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The plot thickens till it clots.

A recent visit to a lower Frye Mesa hanging structure provided highly mixed evidence that it was or was not prehistoric and was or was not a canal.

Positive evidence from 32.76746 -109.79293 to 32.76827 -109.79176 includes it being halfway between the known portions of the HS Canal which needs a destination and the known parts of the Freeman canal which needs a source. It appears too narrow to be a road or even a wagon road and seems to have no reasonable anglo purpose.

There is no evidence of modern tool use, metals, or other non-manual excavation. An exceptional amount of hand labor appeared to be involved. A downhill branch could credibly be interpreted as a diversion channel to a lower field. The uniformly consistent slope strongly suggests intelligent intentional design.

Negative evidence includes no apparent traces of water structures approaching on mesa top or leaving on mesa bottom. Mesa top includes wider vehicle 2 tracks. There seems to be no aeolian fill.

The structure seems rather steep and wide for a canal, but seems definitely in the same league as the HS canal. There is lower and western evidence of CCC and historic water activities, but such work is often more anal and more precisely oriented. A high upslope wall appears unusual. Some wall areas would seem exceptionally tall for a prehistoric structure.

Many dozens of photos are available on request. And your assistance ( especially if a professional ) is sorely needed to gather further info.

April 23, 2017
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A reminder that you can find one each of everything here. Straight from the horse's whatever.

April 22, 2017
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Seldom discussed is the fact that a pv energy farm  needs very little water. Which makes them a near perfect use for government and indian lands in the arid southwest. 

If you start doing an economic analysis based  on highest and best use, a case can be made that any site with adequate water is an inappropriate location for a pv energy panel.

April 21, 2017
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Thought I'd do a summary on how to use PostScript to fully automate the conversion of JPEG files into web PDF's.

First, you will need two JPEG's. A full resolution and web based one your viewers will download only on click thru. And a fast loading limited resolution and local pc one of the smallest reasonable size that gives acceptable web screen appearance.

It is super important to carefully note and record the h and v pixel sizes of your limited resolution JPEG.

% enter with hoffset voffset hres vres urlfrom
     urlto

/jpegimageprocwithlink { save /snap2 exch def
     /inurllink exch store % grab link filename          
     /infilename exch store % grab passed pix file
     /photoscale exch store  
     /vpixels exch store   
    /hpixels exch store    
    translate % adjust position      
    inurllink setareaurl % ext autolink sizing
    /DeviceRGB setcolorspace % pick color model     
    0 0 translate % set page position       
    hpixels vpixels scale % magnify unit square        
    photoscale dup scale
    /infile infilename (r) file def % input file     
   /Data {infile /DCTDecode filter} def % data source
   << % start image dictionary     
    /ImageType 1 % always one      
    /Width hpixels % JPEG width in pixels    
     /Height vpixels % JPEG height in pixels          
     /ImageMatrix [hpixels 0 0 vpixels neg           
     0 vpixels ]
   
     /DataSource Data % proc filtered JPEG   
     /BitsPerComponent 8 % color resolution     
     /Decode [0 1 0 1 0 1] % per red book 4.10    
      >>
image % call image operator      
     ypos snap2 restore /ypos exch def} def

This sneaky service routine automatically sets the clickthrough to the image size and does so without needing any manual post pdf mods...

/setareaurl { % for auto include routine    
    /cururlname exch store   
    mark % start pdfmark   
     /Rect [ 0 0 hpixels photoscale mul        
     vpixels photoscale mul ]     
     /Border [ 0 0 0]    
     /Color [ .7 0 0 ]    
    /Action        
    <</Subtype /URI /URI cururlname>>   
     /Subtype /Link    
      /ANN % annotation type  
     pdfmark % call pdf operators              
      } def

Your code is sent to Acrobat Distiller being sure to run //acrodist.exe /F from the command line.

April 20, 2017
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Here's a good way to celebrate 420. And here are some predictions on what's gonna happen when the feds unintended consequence outrageous mj farm subsidies and price supports inevitably get eliminated.

More on pv here and energy in general here.

April 19, 2017
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Once again updated and expanded our Gila Valley Dayhikes library pages. We are now up to 499 major listings, and you are more than welcome to help us break 500.

Newly added is a Mexican Sushi restaurant, a surprisingly world class new Willcox indie style racetrack and secrets of going from Dugas to Childs the hard way over the Verde Rim.

The latter may or may not provide a river crossing free route to Verde Hot Springs. Some lesser known hikes here.

April 18, 2017
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Managed to receive a scanned copy of my Apple specific Tearing into Machine Language Code and have posted a PDF copy here.

A "Directors Cut" revision is in process that showcases the ability to dramatically restore legacy papers and publications. This is also available as a custom service.

The "Tearing Method" was so astonishingly easy and simple that it was even used in Middle School computer camps. It basically consisted of nothing but page highlighters used to attack the unavoidable key elements to any code of the time.

Centermost of which was painting all RTS Return from Subroutines green. Which promptly chopped up any enormous program into easily ( and often trivially ) cracked byte sized chunks.

Much of the method was derived off of Arizona wilderness fire towers.

April 17, 2017
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Here is the random routine from my Gonzo Utilities...
/random {rand 65536 div 32768 div mul cvi} def

A 6 random will return an integer from 0 to 5.

Here is how to draw a "ratty" or "ripped off" line...

12345 srand 10 10 moveto 30 { 0.5 3 random
1 sub 0.4 mul rlineto} repeat 1 setlinewidth 1
setlinejoin 1 setlinecap stroke

If you don't like the line, try another srand. If you want a different ratty line each time, leave srand off.

Some variations here and here, with bunches more on PostScript here.

April 16, 2017
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Amazing things can be done with image post proc, especially with these ebay items.

And by using my...
Fontname Snooper
Bitmap Typewriter
Vignetting Autobackgrounder
Architects Perspective Corrector.
Empty PostScript App.

Here is yet another pissing around with a bird image. From this original.

April 15, 2017
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Colorizing black and white images can be tricky. Here and here are two recent examples.

All that is really needed is Imageviewer32 and plain old paint. For the apple, you first get into Color Balance and throw away all but red. Then you repeat for blue. The stem and leaf are minor enough that you can create them from scratch .

The key picked up a brass effect, again using nothing but color balance and a knockout.

April 14, 2017
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The latest pv panel pricing info is newly available here for March. Most sources are lower, but the best price for utility grade panels remain stuck at thirty nine cents per peak panel watt.

While we still are nowhere near the twenty five cents per peak panel watt demanded for true and genuine renewable or sustainable net power generation, such economics can reasonably be expected "real soon now".

One minor gotcha - these figures are in pounds. Current exchange rate is $1.28 per pound. Still, close enough.

More on pv here and energy in general here.

April 13, 2017
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The two litho chokes on our letterhead and sourcecode were done manually. Here is the typical code...

newpath 4.35 5.10 mt (y) true charpath 215 setwebtint 0.58 setlinewidth stroke

These can be converted into auto-tracking deferred procs by using yesterday's techniques.

April 12, 2017
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Most PostScript procs execute immediately. But there are times and places where you would like to see a DEFERRED execution that does NOT take place until after other image or currentpoint calcs or other screen or print justifications take place.

An obvious example would be making one word in a long line of text red. Others would be any borders or underlines or graphic enhancements that depend on a location set by the particular width of some text.

There is a subtle and sneaky feature built into my Gonzo Utilities that let you defer action until print or image time. This is called the printlist. Entries in the printlist execute in sequential order at your deferred print time.

Any proc can be stuffed into the print list with the magic incantation of printlist exch 3 index exch put exch 1 add exch

Here is a "red word" coding example.

/makered { mark 83 /setwebtint cvx ] cvx
printlist exch 3 index exch put exch 1 add
exch  } store

/makegray { mark 86 /setwebtint cvx ] cvx
printlist exch 3 index exch put exch 1 add
exch } store xpos ypos (word1 |/makered word2
|/makegray word3) cl

To defer a proc, start an array. Numbers and strings can be directly piled up on the stack, but you have to use /procname cvx to indirectly pile up a proc in your array without actually executing it. Next, you can close your array and then cvx it. Finally, you stuff it into your print list.

An example here with its sourcecode here. Note that the red dots automatically track any longer or shorter text. Similar examples here, consulting and presentations here, and one each of everything here.

April 11, 2017
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Evidence is slowly accumulating that the "mystery" to 32.83181 -109.92898 is in fact the brilliant adaptation of a largely unmodified wash as an essential part of the canal route.

The run in question looks just like a plain old wash in a very sandy and largely rock free area. There are no spoil banks. The route is somewhat less straight than a manufactured canal segment and there are hints of braiding and alternate routings. Its slope appears optimal.

A key observation is this: Most of the routing for the rest of Sand Canal and the others is along the HIGHEST local terrain. This particular wash section is clearly along the LOWEST local terrain. As is usually the custom with washes.

There is no reasonable doubt that conventional prehistoric engineering proceeds and follows the mystery segment.

Possibly credible reasons for the segment are (1) that it is in exactly the right place at the right time, (2) A total lack of any rocks in this particularly during construction is paramount.

Other examples of wash adaption also appear elsewhere in these local hanging canal systems.

An image of where the canal ducks under a fence can be found here. It is apparently near the transition between wash adaption and more conventional prehistoric engineering.

April 10, 2017
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A compact and useful letterhead that uses some of our newest and latest PostScript stunts can be found here. With its sourcecode here.

Included is a new full color supercinsidestroke of its Gonzo Utilities original, some overlay dropout stunts, and modification of a unique font. All done in a 3K file.

This is best used as .PDF preprinted paper stock. Any attempt at docx reformatting will totally trash its vibes.

Similar stunts here.

April 09, 2017
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Some of the "secret" hidden PostScript characters often may involve...

\261 on most fonts is an em dash –
\267 on most fonts is a bullet •
\274 on most fonts is the ellipsis …
\320 on most fonts is an en dash —
\251 on the Symbol font is a heart ♥
\323 on the Symbol font is a copyright ©
\324 on the Symbol font is a trademark ™

The equivalent HTML commands used above are &bull; &hellip; &emdash; &hearts; &copy; and &trade;.

Much more here and here.

April 08, 2017
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Wonders never cease.

So long as you never cease to wonder.

April 07, 2017
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A reminder that we now have nearly everything on our website on a convenient and easily searchable USB. Nearly two gigs of content. Not available elsewhere. Full details here.

April 06, 2017
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Did I ever tell you about my PostScript video that you can find here?

And much more on PostScript here.

April 05, 2017
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While you are looking for unobtanium, is there also any chance you can send me a scanned copy of "For low cost, count on RTL" story from an issue of Electronics sometime around March of 1968? More on RTL here and one each of everything here.

April 04, 2017
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I've long been a fan of elegant simplicity. Such as this short story.

It turns out that one of the cutest third party examples from way back when apparently vanished from the web during the Heathkit crash-and- burn IP fiasco.

This was a 957 acorn tube FM and TV audio receiver that was amazingly low power, economical, and super sensitive. Its only tiny downside was that, being a super-regenerative design, it totally trashed the entire spectral neighborhood for everybody else.

One form of the docs were dollar classified ads, likely in Popular Electronics around 1956 that delivered a mimeographed set of plans. A second form was in the reprints of rare Heathkit newsletters that had a bogus but forced takedown.

An incredibly useful resource for finding "lost" electronics info appears here, but so far has not solved this particular problem.

Any chance you can find at least the schematic or the plans or the now apparently "lost" Heath notes?

Please email me with any info.

April 03, 2017
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A curious fact: Any perpetual motion machine that includes a 555 timer is bogus and nonfunctional. No exceptions to this inviolate rule have ever been found. Nor will there ever be.

Which saves you bunches of time discrediting a perpetual motion machine, for if a 555 timer is present, there is absolutely no point in continuing. Guaranteed.

After reviewing a bunch of recent candidates, the usual  problem is that narrow pulses are exceptionally difficult to properly measure. I've dealt with this herehere, and here.

The key gotcha is that any spike or narrow pulse has an outrageously high ratio of rms to average value. And  even though correctly measuring rms instruments have finally become readily available, the overwhelming majority of lay members of the Church of the Latter Day Crackpots continue to mislead themselves by still using average reading instruments.

Perhaps the classic example can be found here.

Even if you have a "real" rms meter, there's a  secondary gotcha called the crest factor that still will nail you to the wall. Multiply two big numbers together and they become a huge number. Waaay beyond anything analog can deal with.  Exceed the crest factor and the instrument will still read deceptively low.

A fascinating supply of totally worthless overunity devices can be found here on a continuous basis.

More on pseudoscience bashing here. And for much more one each of everything, please visit here.

April 02, 2017
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A third party check of whether a website is down for everybody or just you can be found here.

April 01, 2017
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Shocking.

I just found out that many of the New Mexico subastas are  now going to be sold at auction!

Even worse, "slippery slope" issues may also endanger  a large number of the licitacions and even the almonedas!

Thankfully, eBay sales and shipping to New Mexico aren't  quite as bad as they used to be. Yeah, there is still the  language barrier and the hassles at customs. One main problem was that all of the New Mexico truck  tires are a different size and spacing, so everything  needed  reloaded at the border crossings.

Fortunately, there are now REVERSIBLE truck tires that can simply be insided out at the New Mexico ports of entry. More details at your nearest New Mexico embassy.

March 31, 2017
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The usual problem with any stunning weekly battery breakthrough is its 6.99 day half life.

Not sure how this one is going to turn out.

March 30, 2017
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I still continue to be amazed over the vehemence over which  early personal hobby computers were attacked by all sides of society. Or the monumental ridicule that piled up against anyone who could possibly be stupid enough to want to put text on a tv set.

Well, there were a very few of us that realized that something big and fundamentally different and profound was coming down. We did not have the faintest clue what it was or where it possibly could be headed, but there was no doubt in our minds that it was big and it was real.

For want of a better term, it was known simply as "it".

"It" was hard to exactly quantify, but one of its quintessential  defining moments that it had arrived had to be when the Castle Wolfenstein guard opened a door to try and find me.

March 29, 2017
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So, where does the pv Holy Grail number of a dollar a  watt pv system cost come from? What does it imply?

Assume you have a 1 KW peak panel and that things attract attention at ten cents per kilowatt hour. A typical panel might ( on a good Arizona day ) be able to produce five kilowatt hours worth fifty cents.

Or fifteen dollars per month gross.

If we go to an amortization schedule and assume  something in the neighborhood of ten years of financing at eight percent interest, we see that we can amortize $1569 worth of investment at $15 per month. Subtract out some labor and maint, and that leaves us somewhere around the dollar per peak watt Holy Grail figure.

But that is the total system cost. The pv panel cost will typically be half the total, so fifty cents per peak panel watt is the real Holy Grail goal.

But the kicker is this: A dollar per peak watt does not give pv solar any advantage whatsoever. All it does is paint traditional energy sources green. For no  net energy gain and not being in any manner renewable  nor sustainable.

A reasonable incentive to start approaching true net pv energy might be fifty cents per peak system watt and an equivalent twenty five cents per peak panel  watt.

Amazingly, we seem to be fast approaching that point, with some figures now in the thirty nine to fifty five cents per peak panel watt for utility grade panels and quantities.

While hitting a quarter per peak watt will start on the path towards net energy sustainability and renewability, it will take at least several years after that price point to start to show anything but a net overall energy loss  from pv panels.

The usual mistake people make in claiming pv energy  breakeven is to treat a subsidy as a 1:1 asset rather  than the 5:1 to 7:1  liability when its true costs are fully  considered.

Another obvious mistake is believing that any pv system installed today will last more than three years when anticipated new developments and breakthroughs come  on line. Sort of similar to what happened to cathode ray tube tv sets and monitors.

Additional analysis here.

March 28, 2017
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Managed to verify the central and western branches of the Sand Canal ( older notes here ). All built as expected to prehistoric standards.

A photo of the diversion can be seen here and a plot here. The "headgate" consists of a pile of apparently carefully selected six inch round rocks. These are presently set on "center".

The strange and enigmatic "deep vee" constructs near 32.83163-109.92922 do not extend this far north. A next goal is to find out exactly where the canal switches from "enigmatic" to "normal".

Speculative reasons for the unusual segment are a particularly sandy stretch, CCC involvement, flood or erosion damage, or an attempt at a historic rebuild. None of these alternatives presently seem fully convincing. Destinations for the center and west branch are not yet known, but one possible prospect appears at 32.83527 -109.92542

March 27, 2017
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"Welcome to hell."

"Here is your accordion".

March 26, 2017
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My approach to PostScript and web colors can be found here with its sourcecode here.

Basically, you have a 6x6x6 cube of colors that are identified by integers 0 through 215. Red brightens to the east. Green to the north. And blue up. Per the formula 5*red + 30*green + 180*blue

My favorite stunt of table lookup makes setting new colors very fast. Here is the array...

/webtintmat [ 0 1 5 {/a exch store 0 1 5 {/b exch
store 0 1 5 {5 div b 5 div a 5 div} for }for } for ] def

And here is how you set the RGB PostScript color...

/setwebtint { abs cvi 216 cvi mod webtintmat
exch 3 mul 3 getinterval aload pop setrgbcolor} def

Some "pure color" sequences are...

% red:          0     1     2      3       4      5
% orange     0     7     8     15    16    23
% yellow      0     7    14    21    28    35
% green       0     6    12    18    24    38
% aqua        0   42    84  126   168  210
% blue         0   36   72    108  144  180
% magenta  0   37  74     111  148  185
% purple      0   73   73    110   147 183
% gray         0   43   86    129   172 215

Some other PostScript apps you might find of interest are our Fontname Snooper, our Bitmap Typewriter, our Vignetting Autobackgrounder, and our Architects Perspective Corrector. Plus our Empty PostScript App. Plus, of course, our Gonzo Utilities here and its tutorial here.

Or for much more one each of everything, you can visit here.

March 25, 2017
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One of the more obscure and not often used PostScript commands is glyphshow. Instead of inputting a character, you input the character name instead.

As in /comma glyphshow rather than (,) show. This can be handy in dealing with fonts that have strange character mappings.

There is no glyphpath operator, but an easy but perhaps slow workaround is to create a temporary new font and redefine (a) as your chosen glyph character. And then use true charpath in its normal manner.

You can email me for working code. Or pick up one each of everything here.

March 24, 2017
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Yorg.

I thought I might have been wrong once, but it turns out I was mistaken.

THE ACROBAT DISTILLER AND THE ADOBE TYPEKIT
ARE FULLY COMPATIBLE WITH EACH OTHER!

Once you work around some minor gotchas that include (1) Telling Distiller where to find its fonts, (2) Nailing down your correct PostScript font names, and (3) Getting familiar with PostScript.

For (1), go to Distiller Settings-Font Locations and then contact Adobe's support@typekit.com.  for your typekit to Distiller access details. The sequence to be entered varies with your host and your specifics.

For (2), a list of many PostScript font names can be generated here, but the usual ploy to find a correct PostScript font name is to send any short .PDF file to Acrobat and then enter your already owned font watermark! Then go to as File -> Properties -> Fonts to read and record your correct font name.

For (3), try this simple font tester...

%! /Blenny-Black findfont 20 scalefont setfont
100 200 moveto (Benny-Black Test) show
showpage % EOF

Be sure to change the fontname to a TypeKit font you own. As with most all PostScript as Language, you enter this in any text editor and send it to Distiller.

Much more on PostScript here, here, and here. Or pick up one each of everything here.

March 23, 2017
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Some food updates: After circling for a landing for a while, the Mexican Sushi Ono truck has newly moved into the old Cholos building. And now offers a full sitdown Japanese menu including Teriyaki, Sashimi, and Tempura. Ichiban.

The hamburger truck is still wandering and it was last seen at the Thatcher Laundromat. And sadly, Bricks seems once again vacant.

Our suggestions for superb eats well worth the travel includes La Paloma in Solomon,  Toni's Kitchen  in Thatcher, Juanitas in Pima, the Coronado Vineyard tapas outside Willcox, and the Jade Grill in Superior. 

Curiously, the original purpose of tapas was to keep flies from getting  drunk and falling into your wine..

March 22, 2017
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The Orange Pi is a newer, cheaper, and more powerful version of the Raspberry Pi. Also available as the Orange Pi Plus.

March 21, 2017
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The Sand Canal also seems to have more than its share of enigmatic mysteries associated with it. At present the three or more destination fields remain unknown and at least two of the canals may literally run through modern homesteads. Historic development might have been more attractive at level and largely rock free fields. Some yet to be done landowner contacts may resolve these issues.

While watershed crossings play an important role in several other prehistoric bajada hanging canals, no further evidence of a potential crossover at 32.77757 -109.95573 has yet to be verified beyond its recent CNF tank rework. Its purpose, if any, would now clearly seem to be secondary.

The relationship between the Sand Canal and fish has yet to be explored. A presence of the Gila Longfin Dace was verified at the canyon junction over a decade ago.

A yet to be checked and possibly related canal is suggested by Acme Mapper near 32.81481 -109.93940 and 32.81841 -109.93807. It is unclear what purpose this routing ( if real ) may have had.

A portion of the western branch from 32.82998 -109.92913 to 32.83416 -109.92724 appears quite atypical, being of a deep vee and spoil bank free construction. Yet it seems clearly driven from and drives much more typical prehistoric constructs on both ends. This section may represent highly unusual flood damage or unexplained apparently purposeless historic rework, but remains largely inconsistent and enigmatic.

Several modern historic artifacts seem to have been placed along the canal route without any apparent rhyme or reason. These appear to be inconsistent with any actual canal use otherwise blocked by a giant mesquite tree. They also appear to be a mixed lot that was randomly "store bought" likely far later than the 1920's. The total placement effort would appear to be consistent with two men and a mule in an afternoon...

A terra cota wash entry pipe at
32.83083 -109.92614

A terra cota wash exit pipe at 32.83098 -109.92606

A railroad tie blocking the western branch turnoff at 32.82958 -109.93058

A huge concrete pipe just sitting also near the western branch turnoff at 32.82958 -109.93058

A pair of tiny precast commercial irrigation headgates at 32.82634 -109.93297

No credible explanation for these artifacts has yet been put forth. One strange possibility might have been an attempt to discredit prehistoric origins, possibly as some sort of Antiquities Act workaround.

March 20, 2017
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      ( Continuing our Sand Canal revelations )

The Sand Canal takein starts at 32.81241 -109.94803, somewhat below the confluence of normally wet Nuttall Canyon and usually dry Carter Canyon. And just off of National Forest lands. As is typical, the "climb" out of the canyon is classic hanging canal. The prehistoric stream routing may have been somewhat further east or "up" in this tilted image.

There is a very strong illusion of "water flows uphill." In reality, of course, the rate of descent of the terrain somewhat exceeds the canal slope, creating the brilliantly engineered disparity.

Once on the mesa per this image and this one at 32.81298 -109.94593 "they" had to deal with an extremely gross conglomerate that included rocks that were a foot or more in diameter. It is easy to conclude that "they" must have really wanted to build this canal in the worst sort of way.

The canal route remains fairly obvious on Acme Mapper to 32.81394 -109.94430 but then tends to vanish, apparently but still unproven to a projected resumption at 32.81897 -109.94174 and then continuing to a "halfway" fence with this image and this image at 32.82114 -109.93787.

Minor decorated potsherds were noted in this area but not in obvious canal association. Few artifacts are normally directly associated in the hanging canal complex.

The next studied area to the east includes a pair of enigmatic small and modern headgates at 32.82617 -109.93309. The western headgate seems to terminate in an unlikely steep drainage. Its purpose, if any, remains unknown.

The canal continues with typical prehistoric construction and engineering to its initial split between eastern and western channels at 32.82953 -109.93062. Also present here is a largely unexplainable modern railroad tie barrier dam and a nearby unused huge secondhand precast irrigation pipe.

Of the two branches, the eastern one remains the earliest and most completely studied. It continues by crossing a ranch road at 32.82968 -109.92869 and is easily traced and visited, eventually reaching Sand Wash in an ill-defined and apparently flood-damaged crossing at 32.83084 -109.92636.

Yet another enigma can be found in the pair of terra cota pipes historically added to the original canal channel, once again with unknown purpose and no apparent rational use found at 32.83096 -109.92607 and 32.83114 -109.92576.

The canal continues by "climbing" a modest hanging portion at N 32.83137 W 109.9247, going through a construction style more typical of level terrain here at N32.83149W109.92465, working past a large mesquite tree midchannel at 32.83150 -109.92477 and ultimately reaching the mesa top via a long, deep, and highly impressive cut found at 32.83200 -109.92436.

This portion of the canal appears quite suitable for tours, owing to easy 2WD road and hiker access and its "one each of everything" sampler potential. Nearly the entire canal would appear suitable for preservation or even an actual "wet" restoration.

The route continues somewhat indistinctly to the fence crossing at 32.83183 -109.92405 that marks the boundary between AZ state and BLM lands.

North of the fence, the canal seems to switch to a much smaller construct. As shown by this image and this image found at 32.83271 -109.92404. Possibly marking the difference between "delivery" and "end use" portions. Or otherwise potentially being a pilot water level survey portion that remained uncompleted.

The canal has not yet been traced through private land north of 32.83510 -109.92273. It appears to literally route through the living room of a private residence. There is a rather significant mesa edge cliff further north. A case might be made that prehistoric fields would likely be flatter, smoother, and largely rock free, thus making them prime targets for historic development. Contacting private landowners remains an undone priority

Returning to the initial splitting point found at 32.82953 -109.93062, the western branch then does its ranch road crossing at 32.83025 -109.93016 and next goes through a highly atypical construct phase from 32.83047 -109.93001 to 32.83331 -109.92788

In this area, the canal presently appears to be of a deep vee construction lacking noticeable spoil banks. It is not at all clear whether this was caused by highly sandy soil, by flood damage, or by inexplicable historic rework. But this area clearly is preceded and followed by much more typical prehistoric constructs.

A significant but still unvisited fork can be viewed at 32.83443 -109.92706. Of ongoing interest should be any diversion or routing means present here.

This image and this image at 32.83473 -109.92653 are found along the central of the three Sand Canal branches and are also somewhat small in size, again suggesting as yet unknown end-use fields nearby to the north.

Cottonwood wash at 32.83706 -109.92901 etc... would appear to limit further major northward canal routing of any of the three Sand Canal branches.

An earlier to be updated Sand Canal field log can be found here and more on the canals in general here. Your participation is strongly encouraged.

March 19, 2017
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Enough of the Sand Canal has now been field verified that we can reasonably speculate on its characteristics. This is the westernmost known of the Bajada Hanging Canals. It is quite similar in construct to many of the others in its Northeastern Mount Graham Bajada complex and reasonably may be dated to the 1350 CE era.

Evidence of prehistoric origins include its apparent extreme construction efficiency; its apparent meeting of prehistoric irrigation goals; consistent patina, caliche, and lichens; plus a huge mesquite tree mid channel; and a self-similarity with nearby largely origin dated canals.

Its water sources primarily from Nuttall Canyon and secondarily from Carter Canyon. Fish in the form of Gila Longfin Dace were observed at the stream junction two decades ago. The canal has three primary branches whose destinations remain unknown. But it seems possible that projected level and largely rock-free prehistoric fields may have ended up as prime choices for historic Cottonwood Wash homestead development.

Land ownership is primarily Arizona State with CNF sourcing. Also involved are BLM and several private landholders. Most of the route is largely undeveloped except for the destination areas. The terrain is primarily open to rather brushy and more or less accessible by secondary rough ranch roads.

Elevations seem to range from 3500 to 3200 feet with an average slope approximating 100 feet per mile or just under two percent.

To date, there are at least 78 canal study areas in the complex with a total length likely exceeding 130 miles or over 200 kilometers. Currently explored portions of the Sand Canal suggest a length exceeding three miles.

Portions of the route appear viewable on Acme Mapper...

http://mapper.acme.com/?ll=32.83275,-109.93353&z=14 &t=H&marker0=32.82121%2C-109.93783%2C6.7%20mi %20S%20of%20Graham%20County%20AZ &marker1=32.81661%2C -109.941842C7.1%20mi%20SxSW%20of%20Graham %20County%20AZ&marker2=32.82996%2C -109.92804%2Cunnamed&marker3=32.83515%2C -109.92557%2C5.7%20mi%20S%20of%20Graham %20County%20AZ&marker4=32.83444%2C -109.92708%2C5.7%20mi%20S%20of%20Graham %20County%20AZ&marker5=32.81239%2C -109.94778%2C7.4%20mi%20SxSW%20of%20Graham %20 %20County%20AZ&marker6=32.82959%2C -109.93056%2C6.1%20mi%20S%20of%20Graham %20County%20AZ&marker7=32.83515%2C -109.92665%2C5.7%20mi%20S%20of%20Graham %20County%20AZ&marker8=32.81893%2C -109.94186%2C6.9%20mi%20SxSW%20of%20Graham %20County%20AZ&marker9=32.83266%2C -109.92406%2Cunnamed&marker10=32.83512%2C -109.92273%2C5.7%20mi%20S%20of%20Graham %20County%20AZ

( continues tomorrow )

March 18, 2017
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Once again updated and expanded our Gila Valley Dayhikes library pages.

March 17, 2017
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Our Bitmap Typewriter normally works with most unlocked older Adobe and some Windows fonts. You can use this snooper to generate the list of hundreds of candidate fonts often available to you.

Remember this minor gotcha: Distiller always must be run from the command line to restore its disk file access...

windowskey and x then run //acrodist.exe /F 

Sadly, the Distiller faux font substitutions seem to do strange things to the PostScript charpath operator. Which in turn bogusizes the infill and pathbbox commands that are essential for this particular version of my BMT. After a week of frustrating investigation, I have yet to find a reasonable workaround.

Also frustrating is that the Adobe Typekit seems to lack the classic PostScript fontnames demanded by distiller. But this can be easily fixed with these newly entered insider details.

March 16, 2017
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PV Panel pricing figures are newly in for February and are apparently continuing their free fall.

The best peak panel watt is now thirty nine cents, which is within fourteen cents of the quarter needed to eventually produce genuine subsidy free net renewability and sustainability.

No, genuinely true renewability or sustainability is clearly not yet here. But somewhere between here and breakeven, a point will be crossed where it will end up highly profitable to outright steal subsidies.

Prediction: A very significant threshold may have been crossed.

More on PV here and here. More predictions here. And one each of everything instantly searchable here.

March 15, 2017
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The total number of prehistoric bajada hanging canal study areas is now up to seventy eight! While this includes a very few purposely included losers, there is now no doubt whatsoever that we are talking a "great heaping bunch" here that clearly attempted to exploit virtually every drop of Northeastern Mount Graham stream water.

The present distance between the currently bounding Veech Canal and the Sand Canal is fifteen miles. While we will presently keep our projected total canal lengths at 130 miles, going beyond 150 appears eminently possible. And thus well beyond world class.

When aided by historic rebuilds, at least five of these canals intermittently still flow to this day...

Deadman Canal West Marijilda Canal Roper Canal Ledford Canal Goat Canal

The point where the Goat Canal sometimes cascades  off Ledford Mesa seems particularly spectacular. Its season is usually December through March.

March 14, 2017
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Proof is rapidly accumulating that virtually all historic bajada canal projects were clearly rework of prehistoric originals.

It would seem fairly obvious that "digging out an old ditch" aka "steal the plans" beats "engineering a new canal from scratch" every time. This becomes rather obvious when only a portion of the original is rebuilt to more modern standards.

Evidence of prehistorisity includes being run over by roads, fences, dams, and even cemeteries; uniform patina, caliche, and lichens, presence of slowly germinating and slower growing cacti or mesquite mid channel, and obvious routing from a source and to a destination clearly meeting prehistoric needs.

But the real biggie is that construction reflects the available tools in use. The prehistoric designs clearly had energy efficiency as a major goal as they lacked shovels and mules and such. The whole point of hanging a canal on the side of a mesa would appear to be making the slope independent of terrain.

With a secondary goal of construction being mostly across, rather than along, the canal route. Thus original designs do appear clearly minimalist small widths and shallow depths.

March 13, 2017
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With some recent discoveries, I guess I want to revise my list of high technology in the Gila Valley. Presented here in order of cubic wonderment....

1. Prehistoric Bajada Hanging Canals.
2. The safford grids
3. Mount Graham International Observatory
4. Mine solvent extraction and electrowinning.
5. The Mount Graham Aerial Tramway
6. The five Morenci Southern Railway Loops
7. The EAC Fab Lab.
8. CCC infiltrating water spreaders.
9. Ubiquitous WiFi web com.
10. The Ash Creek flumes
11. The Emigrant Canyon Marble Quarry
12. The tomato factory
13. Cotton drip Irrigation and real time GPS

More on similar discoveries here.  And my secrets of technical innovation here.

March 12, 2017
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An extremely interesting history of Southwestern fire lookout towers and trees appears here.  I personally worked Gentry, Barfoot, Monte Vista, and  Miller Peak. And climbed many more. Besides using the  names of many others in our Marcia Swampfelder spoofs. 

One day an untrained relief lookout worked a neighboring tower. "Dispatcher Dispatcher there's a fire!". Showing extreme restraint over blatant radio protocol violations, Dispatch asks where the fire is. "Right over there in those trees!".

The similar urban lore tale goes something like this: A frustrated dispatcher asks "How do you get to the fire?". With the obvious reply "Sheesh. Big red truck".

March 11, 2017
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An interesting collection of fascinating geology resources can be found here.

And an Arizona geology map index here, a Thatcher map here, Safford here, and Artesia here.

Sadly, the statewide collection remains incomplete. But they seem to be working on it.

A historic regional groundwater paper is here.

March 10, 2017
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Certainly one of the strangest and most bizarre entries in our Gila Valley Dayhikes is the WTF UFO CENTRAL Because it is on posted  private property and involves a three hour drive,  I'll  leave this one as an exercise for the serious  student. Previous arrangements are required  if you want to ride the underground Area 51  shuttle.

As will a release form from your therapist. 

March 09, 2017
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It has been a while since we mentioned the obscure integrated circuit LSI/CSI manufacturer.

Who have all sorts of low cost and innovative chip solutions. Many of which involve motor controls, dimmers, encoders, dimmers, and such.

March 08, 2017
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Apparently the fonts used in Distiller's Faux Substitutions sometimes return oversize or otherwise seemingly incorrect values for pathbb. As in this example.

Um, it is apparently tricky to get this example to show properly. Save it to your pc and then view it in full Acrobat. Interestingly, both the faux font substitution and a not found Courier solution both change the bounding box and seem to trash infill.

Apparently this is one of the reasons my Bitmap Typewriter fails to properly show faux fonts. To date, attempts to use a much slower and manual path bounding box finding code do not work. Apparently because of infill problems .

March 07, 2017
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An ancient and sneaky "easy math" approach to Fourier Series can be found here.

Seems to me there was a similar tabular method that was described way back here.

As a tiny part of this incredible resource.

Much more neat Fourier stuff here.

March 06, 2017
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Never store carbide in a non-locking carabiner! And be sure to remember that it is always the greasy whistle that gets squeaked.

March 05, 2017
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One sneaky trick to make a WWVB self resetting clock more reliable in bad reception areas is to use a GPS receiver and make a miniature fake low power WWVB transmitter. Some details are here and here.

Rebroadcasting, of course, will add some delay. Which means it is only useful for long correct time displays but not as a precision instant frequency reference.

Some ancient WWVB stuff here and here, but they basically dropped the football. Their recent major improvements seem to have been largely stillborn.

March 04, 2017
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Photographing electronic items with brushed aluminum panels can be exceptionally tricky. But this one did not turn out all that bad.

Extremely diffused light is essential, such as outside heavy shade. Possibly even backed up by a neutral screen behind the camera for a double diffusion.

Ultimately, though, your best bet may be to redo the entire panel. Start with the best and mid range fragment and replicate it over the entire panel area. Then redo the lettering with the Bitmap Typewriter.

JPG images to eBay sizes tend to trash lettering. First, make sure the lettering looks good on your original reworked bitmaps. Then use the largest JPG size and the highest quality, typically 95. Alternately, consider saving to .PNG if file sizes permit.

March 03, 2017
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A reminder that recent versions of the Distiller in Adobe Acrobat disables most disk access as might be needed for our Gonzo Utilities or any PostScript-as-language app that uses or modifies random disk files.

Here is the newly simplified keying needed to reactivate Distiller unrestricted file access..

windowskey and x then run //acrodist.exe /F

March 02, 2017
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A free web source for the original KIM-1 manuals can be found here. And the original KIM-1 TVT-6 project here.

And an extensive collection of KIM-1 user group notes here.

And great heaping bunches of other projects and tutorials here. And here.

March 01, 2017
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"They" are coming out of the woodwork again. Boy, a whole flock of 'em flew over that time.

Finding a source of "Unlimited free energy" would be the most unimaginably heinous crime possible against humanity. For it would instantly convert global warming into global incineration. Not to mention making Hitler look like Mother Teresa.

Fortunately, it clearly ain't gonna happen. Much more here.

February 28, 2017
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I've long been a fan of the free Imageviewer32. One of its more subtle capabilities is improving the legibility of petroglyphs.

In one instance, the orange was boosted and the contrast, brightness, and gamma were dinked with.

One subtle trick: On any RGB system, you cut blue to boost orange. Or cut green to boost purple. Or cut red to boost aqua.

February 27, 2017
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At present, our Bitmap Typewriter only works with real, legal, and embeddable PostScript fonts. You can get a list of the fonts available to you by sending this snooper file to Acrobat Distiller.

There is an apparently fixable bug that stops you from using Adobe faux font substitutions. The correction seems subtle as the faux fonts seem to position differently. The usual symptom is a solid box rather than a character. I'm working on a fix, but your early suggestions are welcome.

February 26, 2017
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New expansions to our Gila Valley Dayhikes include the WTF UFO Central, details on mines and caves, some geology stuff, new fossil papers, land ownership details, and some impressive 4WD and ATV routes..

February 25, 2017
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Do any of you still have a scannable copy of the UAAC Songbook?

At present, this document is banned in all civilized nations of the world. And even in parts of Texas.

February 24, 2017
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Magic Sinewaves are ongoing research into a class of math functions that appear to have the ability to very much improve the efficiency and harmonic structure of digitally derived power sinewaves of interest for industrial motor controls, electric cars, and pv synchronous inverters.

They are capable of forcing any number of harmonics to zero theoretical values and to astonishingly low real world ones. Some do so with an absolute minimum of energy robbing switching transitions. Others trade a few extra transitions for full and true three phase compatibility.

Full details appear here, an early historic timeline here, apps here, an executive guide here, an intro here, the three phase scoop here, inside techie stuff here and here, an astonishingly fast online calculator here that newly includes quantizing abilities.

All research to date in the twenty year history of magic sinewaves has been original, unique, vetted, and sole sourced. A second highly qualified mathematical specialist has been recently added to our consulting, IP, and seminar services.

February 23, 2017
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What seems like a stunning new development in passive cooling just appeared in Science for February 9, 2017.

This is a moderately priced plastic film with a remarkable pair of properties - It strongly reflects high temperature radiation and moderately radiates low temperature energy.

With a net passive and "free" cooling of anything it happens to be covering! Up to an apparent EIGHTEEN DEGRES F!

Yeah, this does sound a tad Keeylenetish. But it appears to be both genuinely real and beyond highly significant. 

More on Science Magazine here. Slashdot input here. More on energy topics here and here.

February 22, 2017
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We looked at several ways to extend battery life way back here and here and in Hardware Hacker #52 found as part of here.

A newly available commercial product was announced here. Based on a snap-on low cost switchmode voltage converter that converts a battery as low as 0.6 volts into a full 1.5 volts under load.

More details here.

These may be cost effective at four for ten dollars, but I predict the actual long time performance on typical real world devices will likely fall far short of the eight times performance improvement claimed.

The efficiency of the upconverter under extremes must also be allowed for. As must the continuous exciting current. And the capabilities of very small inductors. I'd also question whether chemical corrosion issues might get worse as the case excessively thins.

I'd also predict that certain loads and use patterns could clearly cause negative time results. Thus, displeasing certain customers would appear to come with the territory.

I'm still wondering what happens when you feed brief high current pulses back into a battery in an attempt to reverse polarization. I have a hunch that feedback of ten percent of the battery energy will significantly improve life. But likely not enough to be economically worthwhile.

February 21, 2017
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Several of you have asked for more docs on the coal debacle.

Try here, here, here, and here.

It is interesting to note that the costs of many energy options are significantly increasing. One exception is pv, which is dramatically decreasing, following something like a Moore's Law curve.

There's still a 2:1 price gap between today and eventual true net energy sustainability and renewability, but the eventual outcome is not the least in doubt.

More here and here.

February 20, 2017
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If you gotta do something, you gotta do it.

It does not matter in the least if it is an utterly unprofitable time, energy, and money wasting rathole.

If you gotta do something, you gotta do it.

If you gotta do something, you gotta do it.

The question came up whether our eBay image postproc also works on animals. As in before and after.

All done with plain old Paint and Imageviewer32.

February 19, 2017
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Amazingly, the new Adobe TypeKit works just fine with plain old Paint.

Details on the secret incantations needed to get TypeKit compatible with Distiller in general and with my Bitmap Typewriter. can be found here.

Much more on Postscript here, and a new "empty" code example here.

February 18, 2017
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PV Panel pricing figures are newly in for January and are apparently continuing their free fall.

The best peak panel watt is now forty cents, which is within a dime and a nickel of the quarter needed to eventually produce genuine subsidy free net renewability and sustainability.

Unfortunately, as potential net energy breakeven gets approached, zillions of long term investment dollars will be thrown at pv, dramatically setting back any eventual breakeven and net energy production. As needed to make up for the previous net energy sink debacle.

I'd guess this might add eight years to net energy breakeven. But there are no doubts whatsoever that pv will continue to decline in price as does virtually all learning curve electronics, compared to sharply increasing prices of competitive energy alternatives.

Coal, of course, is dead. Poof. Gone. Bye bye.

Much more on energy here and pv in particular here.

February 17, 2017
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eBay does not want you to put identical listings on your store and a current auction. An obvious question is how you can game the system.

It appears that only the title is scanned for similarities. But it would also seem that paying attention to the sell similar command could also give them a clue for closer scrutiny. So one defense might be to use a non similar sell similar.

Their algorithm seems fairly sophisticated as interchanging a word or two still generates a warning and rejection. Possibly a certain quantity of word matches independent of position trips a trigger.

Do you have any suggestions here?

February 16, 2017
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The plot thickens until it clots.

The Sand Canal is turning into an extremely interesting one. It is long, easily reached and explored, mostly excellently preserved, has at least two significant hanging portions, and is even a possible restoration candidate. Besides including at least a sampler of most features on most other prehistoric hanging bajada canals.

But a real mystery is emerging that does not make any sense to me at all.

It turns out somebody apparently recently dumped a pile ( present count six ) of purchased store bought canal bits and pieces along the canal route in utterly inexplicable locations. With no sign of them ever being wet or the canal presently recently functioning.

Two of these are terra cota pipes purportedly flowing in and out of sand wash itself. One is a railroad tie size wooden barricade damming the west branch. Another is a huge concrete pipe drug near but not on the canal at the west-east fork. And a pair of precast concrete tiny headgates with metal slides. At a point where a western diversion seems to make no sense whatsoever.

The question is why. If it was the start of something, it seemed to me to be enormously poorly thought out. Possibly it is some sort of play for a state land permit. Otherwise, the creators did not seem to me to have the faintest clue what an irrigation ditch was supposed to do.

The new hardware could have been installed by two individuals and a mule on a Tuesday afternoon. But, if bought new, the costs would have been several hundred dollars. A not inconsequential cost by Pima outback standards.

No particular changes seem to have been actually made to the canal itself. The chosen items also seem to display a remarkable lack of self-similarity.

It is not clear to me how it could be kiddy play or an investment scam. The nature of the store bought products in the Pima outback would seem to suggest a 1920's or much later date.

While the CCC has proven themselves very good at stupid, this does not seem to at all match their usual handiwork. There is evidence elsewhere of CCC willful destruction of prehistoric artifacts.

It would seem unlikely this could be an attempt at discrediting the true prehistoric age of the canal, possibly for Antiquities Act related reasons. I'll note in passing that mature Mesquite and Cacti lie mid channel and that some 75 highly similar and strongly dated prehistoric bajada canal portions do exist elsewhere nearby.

Any thoughts on why this is confounding a perfectly good and very significant prehistoric water project?

February 15, 2017
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Zero Defects certainly is a laudable goal, but getting there with real world customers can be tricky at best. Chances are that you will be blindsided where you least expect it. Some strategies towards "have no unhappy customers" include...   

 ~ Thoroughly researching your products.  
 ~ Carefully understating descriptions  
  ~ Giving 15 day inspection privileges.   
  ~ Promptly offering (often full) refunds.  
  ~ Protecting yourself with 30:1 sell/buy ratios.  
  ~ Giving immediate tracking info.   
 ~ Shipping as quickly as possible  
  ~ Avoiding problem categories.   
 ~ Keeping most product weights fairly low   
 ~ Linking listings to additional info  
  ~ Never skimping on proper packaging  
  ~ Carefully clean and/or refurb before shipping  
  ~ Prompt refund as the ONLY adjustment.  
  ~ Spell out all known defects or problems   
  ~ Never selling anything customer unsuitable  
  ~ Recognizing that adjustments are expected   
 ~ Keeping terms less than 10 words maximum  
  ~ Avoid humor for it WILL be misunderstood  
  ~ Never worrying about the feedback sideshow    
 ~ Verify good product is in stock before listing..   
 ~ Keeping all shipping charges revenue neutral   
 ~ Try to be available 24/7   
 ~ Never saying anything nasty in emails.  
 ~ Flushing anyone who nickel and dimes you  
 ~ No good deed goes unpunished   
 ~ Testing electrical items for main functionality   
 ~ Never try to be a penpal  
 ~ Block ALL refunded buyers regardless of fault   
 ~ Respond factually & unemotionally to feedback   ~ Absolutely no foreign bidders or shipment.

February 14, 2017
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Sincerity is everything.

Once you have that faked, all else follows.

February 13, 2017
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Just added a new banner for our Don Lancaster's USB Classic Reprints to most of our Guru's Lair pages.

The odds of it appearing are one in four, so you might have to refresh a time or two to get it to show up.

There are four upper slots and four lower ones on most pages. The sixteen available banners rotate through these. Fancy code to guarantee continually changing screen views and positions first appeared here and here.

You can view the current included JavaScript code by right clicking on view page source.

The secret is a string (abcdefghijklm), one letter of which represents a banner of given artwork, link, and alt text values.

On each page view, the secret string gets randomized by a deck shuffling ( such as idflmbhjaecgk ) detailed here. The crucial algorithm is to swap any location with a random choice of itself or a letter to the right.

February 12, 2017
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We looked at the Mitutoyo DIGIMATIC measurement coding way back here.

They have just republished their own official interface doc. Starts on page 33.

February 11, 2017
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A third party modern color organ can be found here which was somewhat based on my Psychedelia I.

The design is mostly digital, and features AGC, four channels, high color quality efficient LED's, and no obvious RFI issues. It also has a microphone input and is amazingly compact.

If I were to tamper with the circuit, I think I would seek out a log audio response to improve perceived visual dynamic range.

Higher power could be gotten by an output "amplifier" based on a trailing edge phase control. The latter to reduce potential rfi.

These days it might be more interesting to apply advanced harmonic tracking signal processing to produce filtering by instrument rather than by frequency.

Static displays can quickly become boring, so it might also be interesting to use a HDTV display in which instruments to patterns were time sequence randomized.

Most of my earlier color organs can be found here and here.

February 10, 2017
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A reminder on two of the more subtle Dreamweaver commands:

The properties panel that tends to vanish without a trace can easily be restored by a <ctrl> F3

The hidden spell checker is activated by <shift> F7

Search and Replace is done with curl-shift-F

February 09, 2017
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Here's a simple and easy "empty" PostScript as Language file that is the quickest for you to get started...

%!PS

% Title here
% =======
% Author and date
% Function % Details
% ======

% Gonzo utilities found at
% of https://www.tinaja.com/gonzo.psl are
% presently NOT % built in for immediate
% use. This adds 90K to the file size.
% A tutorial can be found at

% https://www.tinaja.com/glib/gonzotut.pdf

% If, instead, Gonzo is to be run as a diskfile
% for the much shorter code here,
% Distiller MUST be run from the command
% line as an uncommented this or similar
% "C:/Program Files (x86)/Adobe/Acrobat
% 11.0/Acrobat/acrodist.exe" /F run

% Projects can be found at

% https://www.tinaja.com/pssamp1.shtml
% =======
% Modify to use disk based Gonzo.
% //acrodist.exe /F run % use internal

100 200 10 setgrid    % draw a20x20 box
20 20 showgrid

showpage
% EOF

The file can be found here with its output here.

February 08, 2017
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We looked at pixel interpolation techniques here, cubic splines here, and PostScript here.

It turns out there is another scheme to create smooth transitions between adjacent pixels that is called Smoothstep. But after playing with it for a few days, it seems to me to be more different than it is useful.

And certainly much slower and far more complex than using a cubic spline in a one dimensional context.

Smoothstep is a "playing with high order polynomials" method that attempts to smooth a higher resolution step between two adjacent single dimension pixels in a single color plane. It forces zero first and sometimes higher derivatives at both ends and  always also routes through half amplitude at half distance.

Included are...

- 2x^3 + 3x^2  
6x^5 - 15x^4 + 10x^3
-20x^7 + 70x^6 - 84x^5 + 34x^4  
70x^9 - 315x^8 + 540x^7 - 420x^6 +
120x^5

        ... plus as many uglier cousins as you can stand.

This plot and this sourcecode shows how the shapes can compare to plain old cubic splines. It turns out the third order smoothstep is absolutely identical to a cubic spline of tension settings 0.333, 0 and 0.667, 1.

And that the higher order smoothsteps progressively differ ( but largely trivially ) from spline x tensions of 0.5 and 0.61 and 0.694, etc...

A spline tension of 1.0 sets the maximum limit of monotonic smoothing. For comparisons, magnify your .PDF file to 6400%.

More math stuff here.

February 07, 2017
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Vanished with hardly a trace.

Back in the early TV Typewriter days, there were no viable microprocessors and the only cheap memory was long shift registers. And dozens of different possible ways were approaching to try and double or ( gulp ) even triple the resolution of slide rules. Hopefully at nearly their speed. Or otherwise do such horrendous math tasks as multiplication, division, sines, cosines, logs, or even fancier stuff.

One such method was called the binary rate multiplier, which has largely disappeared from so much as most web mentions. Yet the rate multiplier was a superb candidate for all sorts of pre-computer calculators.

What you had was a circuit that accepted some input pulses and a binary word. The binary word set what percentage of the input pulses made it to the output, thus giving a potent and fast multiplication scheme.

If you have some pulses, you can integrate them with a digital counter. And integrate twice and negate, and you end up with a sine and cosine calculator. Similar tricks could multiply, divide, do logs, and most of the other slide rule stuff.

TI has a quarter each pair of small rate multiplier in CMOS as their eight bit  CD4527B or or CD4089B but nobody seems to care. And only this patent and this abstract seems to remain web available  on what then was its incredible potential.

At the least, this should be a sure fire winner for a student paper. Other winners ( and one loser ) here.

And great heaping bunches more classic papers here.

February 06, 2017
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A reminder that most ISP's ( such as Fat Cow ) make available logfile performance summaries. But every once in a while you may want to access your full underlying log files.

This can be handy to pin down unusual traffic, to resolve piracy and/or malware, to do odd statistical analysis, to track real time monitor viralosity, to monitor long term performance trends, or to pick up more referral details.

A typical report might be called access_log_20170209.gz. and it might be in a stats directory. FTP transfer a copy of this to your local computer in a suitable subdirectory.

This is a .gz compressed file and you will need a preloaded copy of a suitable decompressor. WinZip would seem to  be a good choice. WARNING: Make sure you go to the "real" WinZip site and not on one of the many malware alternatives!

Drag and drop your local access log copy into WinZip. It should create a new plaintext file for you named  something like moo.tinajacom or similar. You can now inspect or modify it using most any text processor . My Gonzo Utilities are especially superb  for this sort of thing.

February 05, 2017
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Did you manage to find the Easter egg in our PostScript Font Snooper?

February 04, 2017
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Managed to field verify a portion of the Sand Canal near its "halfway" fence line...

http://mapper.acme.com/?ll=32.82265,-109.93663&z=18 &t=H&marker0=32.82126%2C109.93778%2C10.8%20km %20S%20of%20Graham%20County%20AZ&marker1=32.82300 %2C-109.93620%2C10.6%20km%20S%20of%20Graham %20County%20AZ

As with the Deadman Canal and elsewhere, the canal here traverses the HIGHEST possible available terrain. (!) Strongly suggesting an intentional goal of maximizing the potential range and optimizing downslope constructs. It would also seem highly unlikely that a natural wash would ever select a consistently similar high ground route.

The canal is shallow at the fence but deepens downstream to a cut of nearly a meter. There do not seem to be spoil piles and the canal here seems significantly wider than downstream Sand portions. Adding to the potential credibility of the possible largely unproven lower western fork.

As is typical, no associated artifacts were noted, but a pair of potsherds was in the area but not in direct association. The sherds were distinct, having a reddish brown slip on one side and a highly granular"fuzzy" surface on the other.

Several barrel cacti were noted at or near mid channel. Discrediting enigmatic historical rework from its actual use.

The canal here remains quite distinct but not very photogenic No further evidence of historic rework was noted. Here are three images...

SAND15.JPG - Looking east from the "center" fence. SAND16.JPG - Somewhat further east from the "center" fence. SAND17.JPG - Looking west from the "center" fence

February 03, 2017
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A very obnoxious and obscene parrot gets put in a freezer for punishment. On release, parrot profusely apologizes for errant past behavior and asks.... "May I please inquire what the chicken did?"

February 02 2017
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And while it certainly is not a scam or pseudoscience, Lockheed's new Perforene graphene filtration method announcement does seem rather premature and perhaps very much media overhyped.

This is basically a sheet full of small holes, possibly down to one micron in size. With only moderate energy, water can be forced through the holes in the usual reverse osmosis manner, blocking salt ions and desalinating seawater.

This does seem to be a fundamental improvement in desalination, but energy requirements were apparently initially understated, the films are apparently delicate, and scaling to real world apps has yet to be done.

More on energy issues here.

February 01, 2017
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Um, It seems that a major broadcast network just got sucked into what seems to me to clearly be a wildly improbable free energy scam.

Driving home the apparent fact that some people will do anything to save the environment -- except take a science course.

FIFTEEN of the more fundamental reasons why hydrogen is NEVER going to be a significant energy source can be found here. Iffen the right one don't get ya, the left one will.

My very favorite #7 is the fact that there is more hydrogen in a gallon of gasoline than there is in a gallon of liquid hydrogen! Mole fractions and all that there.

More on hydrogen here. On energy here. And on bashing pseudoscience here.

January 31, 2017
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How can you tell a prehistoric canal from a wash or a trail? Here are a group of the typical indicators...

January 30, 2017
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Did you know that Paul McCartney had a group before Wings?

January 29, 2017
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Another "missing" 500 feet of the Sand Canal has likely been located, but it seems to have suffered some major flood damage.

The Acme Mapper portion looks valid centered on.. http://mapper.acme.com/?ll=32.83070,-109.92696&z=19&t=H &marker0=32.83000%2C109.92754%2C9.7%20km%20S %20of%20Graham%20County%20AZ&marker1=32.83041 %2C109.92698%2C9.7%20km%20S%20of%20Graham %20County%20AZ&marker2=32.83079%2C109.92645 %2C9.6%20km%20S%20of%20Graham%20County %20AZ&marker3=32.83104%2C109.92596%2C9.6 %20km%20S%20of%20Graham%20County%20AZ

and would appear to be the most reasonable way to connect known validated canal portions. But ground truth only reveals occasional hints of unnaturally depressed terrain where the presumed canal route should be.

More on our bajada hanging canals here. Your help in exploration is welcome.

January 28, 2017
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After some extensive archival rework, rearrangement, and improvement of our Guru's Lair website. we can  now offer USB Thumb Drive copies of our Lancaster Classics Library.

This includes some 8000+ files spread over more than 2 Gigs of tight code, along with nearly a thousand open source and fully unlocked source code documents. All fully searchable in  one place at one time.

Included are reprints of the TV Typewriter, the RTL Cookbook, the Incredible Secret Money Machine, much of the Hanging  Bajada Canals, and, of course, The Worst of Marcia Swampfelder.

You can contact us directly or view our eBay listing to pick up a personal copy.

January 27, 2017
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The latest version of our PostScript font snooper can be found here. Simply send it to Distiller to generate a displayed list of most of your available system fonts. Along with their exact and correct true PostScript font names.

Plus flags that show you which fonts can be embedded by Distiller and which force its substitution of faux fonts.

A sample of somebody else's results can be found here, and a processing log here.

Lately, I've been a big fan of algorithms that "throw another million calculations at it." The snooper simply attempts to find each and every font in its directory, throwing them up to see which stick to the ceiling.

It makes extensive use of my Gonzo Utilities, a tutorial of which can be found here.

Please email me with any further entries in the master font list.

January 26, 2017
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Once again expanded and updated our Gila Valley  Dayhikes page.

More detailed and more obscure trips can be found here. Please email me with anything I missed or that needs  further updating.

January 25, 2017
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New ideas are just like pancakes or children. You should always throw the first one away.

January 24, 2017
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Overheard some alternate energy enthusiasts who were lavishly praising Sterling engines as the ultimate solution to low delta-t energy recovery.

It quickly became obvious that they did not have the faintest clue of the underlying thermodynamics or economics. To date, the Sterling engine has been one of the largest and most monumental engineering ratholes of all times.

Here is why...     

Carnot Matters -- There is a fundamental and    
   unavoidable law of thermodynamics that says
   the best possible efficiency of any heat engine  
   is proportional to the absolute temperature   
   delta fraction. Thus your best possible efficiency  
   a 20 degree rise at 70 degree F room temperature   
   would be 20/(459+70) = 3.8 percent. And no  
   real world system can be even this good. 

Efficiency Matters --As efficiency goes down,
    the size and complexity of the energy recovery  
   device will disproportionately increase in a   
   hyperbolic or worse manner for a given set of  
   recovery values. Which is why absolutely free  
   pv solar panels of less than six percent efficiency  
   are totally commercially useless.     

 Amortization Matters -- If your energy recovery  
   device is producing an average of two cents worth
   of electricity per day and your total cost of
   ownership is three cents per day, you have a
   gasoline destroying net energy sink. The longer
   you run it, the more  gasoline you destroy    

Gotchas Matter -- A Sterling engine needs a very   
  special part called a regenerator. Regenerators  
   have to be long and thin and short and fat.   
  They also have to be very good conductors of  
   heat and outstanding insulators. Extreme   
  engineering compromise is needed and nobody  
   has come up with a good regeneration solution  
   to date.

Much more in our Energy Fundamentals tutorial.

January 23, 2017
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Added some more font candidates to our PostScript Font Snooper, with the code here, a log example here, and a sample of somebody's elses' fonts here.

We are now up to 1763 fonts in the report, the majority of which are Distiller Faux.

The program finds the correct PS font spellings for you as well as identifying Distiller Faux substitutions.

Simply send the sourcecode to Distiller to generate your own report. Your help in filling in the blanks in the font data base is needed.

What is surprising here is that I only bought two fonts years ago and was given another one for review. All of the other fonts were installed on my machine by the forces that be.

For the record, my two favorite fonts are Stone and Review.

And that I recently told you this alternate method of finding and building zillions of unexpected fonts, all totally legal. And this second supplemental method.

January 22, 2017
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Adobe's Typekit only sort of works with Wordpad. Yes, you can use the new fonts and yes you can print them.

But Acrobat cannot use Rich Text format without going through Word first, so any attempt to convert a Wordpad document into PDF will result in one small default fount rather than your intended ones.

The Typekit does work quite well with Acrobat's PDF watermarking. Insider tricks to get Typekit and Distiller on speaking terms can be newly found here.

BTW, to find out which PDF fonts have been faux substituted, view your log files or else use File-->properties --> fonts

January 21, 2017
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The ancient oriental art of tai wun on consists of getting totally snockered, but always doing so in a professional and fully workmanlike manner. 

January 20, 2017
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Or, for two ancient and completely off the wall methods of picking great heaping up bunches of new fonts ( as unexpected as they are fully legal ), try this or this.

January 19, 2017
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Here's another revision of our PostScript font name snooper. Just send this file to Acrobat Distiller and it should give you a nearly complete list of all your available fonts, their appearances, their exact PostScript filenames, and the exact appearance of any faux substitutions that your Distiller may decide to make.

Because this uses our "throw another million calculations at it" stunts, the processing time may be fifteen minutes or so. The process works by throwing a nearly complete list of all known PS Filenames at the problem and seeing which stick to the ceiling.

Here is a 1700 font sample from a Windows 10 machine. You, of course, will have to run your own program for useful results.

Your help in adding more exact PostScript filenames is needed.

January 18, 2017
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Reworked our Architects Perspective, Vignetting Backgrounder, and our Bitmap Typewriter so they work well with Distiller Cloud DC and now include internal Gonzo Utility partial downloads.

The Architects Perspective code takes an ordinary .BMP bitmap and makes all intended vertical lines truly so. Change the filenames and send it to distiller.

The Vignetting Backgrounder knocks out any background marked by red=255 borders and optionally adds a vignetting border that uses an amazingly sophisticated full fields solution. Change the filenames and send it to Distiller. Colors are selected from here.

The Bitmap Typewriter allows dramatic improvement of small text lettering. Change values at the end of the program, send to Distiller, then copy and paste to your bitmap.

All three are enormously useful for eBay images.

January 17, 2017
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Then there was the agnostic dyslexic insomniac who...

...stayed up all night wondering if there was a dog.

January 16, 2017
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Apparently Windows 10 can accept directory names that have forward slashes or reverse slashes in them. Or even a highly unrecommended mix of the two.

This can raise issues with PostScript. I mistakenly for years and years assumed that the forward slash was a reserved character since PS uses it to identify the start of any name string. But it turns our that the forward slash is only reserved when used as the first character in a name.

You are apparently allowed to have forward slashes in any PostScript string in any but the first character position.

The reverse slash, though, is always reserved for special PS characters. If you want one reverse slash in a string, you have to use a double reverse slash. And, in the truly bizarre and totally unneeded, if you want a reverse slash in a gonzo justification string, you have to use four of them instead.

Some other PostScript string, integer, array, and dictionary manipulations can be found here.

January 15, 2017
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The latest PV pricing stats for December are in and show a stunning decrease of 14.6% from last year to a record low of 41 cents per utility grade peak panel watt. The goal here is the required 25 cents per peak panel watt needed for true and subsidy free pv long term renewability and sustainability.

Being off by 2.4 percent since November translates to a possible projected yearly drop of 28.8 percent. While that ain't gonna happen, net energy renewability and sustainability now appears likely "fairly soon now".

And we already have several bids at one quarter the cost needed for long term energy breakeven. With the math here and here.

Meanwhile, hundreds of unused locomotives are being stashed on empty sidings because nobody wants coal anymore. Some similar predictions here.

January 14, 2017
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A preliminary test tells me that the /F flag in distiller still works in the cloud DC version. Thankfully and wonderfully.

Versions of Acrobat Distiller since Acrobat 8.2 arrive preset with most disk file access prohibited. To turn access back on, you have to set a /F flag via run in the Windows command line. Like so...

"C:/Program Files (x86)/Adobe/Acrobat DC/ Acrobat/acrodist.exe" /F

         ... only all in one line.

Accessing disk files lets you run our Gonzo Utilities with a few bytes of code, rather than adding the 80K+ bytes to each and every program needed to internalize them.

As in...

(C:/Users/don/Desktop/Ghost/gonzo.psl) run

Gonzo utilities here, tutorial here, and lots of simple projects here. And intermediate stuff here.

And accessing disk files is absolutely essential for tasks that use PostScript as language to manipulate bitmaps.

These include our Architects Perspective, the Self Vignetting Backgrounder, and the Bitmap Typewriter,

January 13, 2017
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Adobe is having a big sale on their cloud computing products at $30 per month total. This includes Dreamweaver, Acrobat, Illustrator, their font Typekit, cloud storage, and lots more.

Apparently the offer is only good until January 31.

January 12, 2017
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I've newly posted the secret insider details needed to get Adobe's Typekit cloud font service on speaking terms with Acrobat Distiller here.

Meanwhile, a reminder that we have this tool, this underlying font list from a different machine, and this supplement to provide you with a list of most, if not all, fonts from most sources that are available to you.

Just send the snooper to Distiller to generate the list. Since it works by rejecting many thousands of fonts processing time may take ten to fifteen minutes.

Sadly, most of these will get faux substituted by Distiller, creating minor to unacceptable font "vibes" differences. But but many hundreds may be fully embeddable without mods, depending on your machine resources.

January 11, 2017
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   ( Property is sold - Thanks for your interest)

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

Here is a topo. And here is the survey plot. And here is an approximate combined overlay.  Topo can be panned or unzoomed for more area info.  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 $1973 per acre with financing available.

January 10, 2017
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( This entry revised in May of 2017 )

We just relisted our stunning Southern Oregon Gold Hill spectacular view property for sale with Chris Marshall of American Forest Management at (541) 664-9200.

Price has been reduced to $8475 per acre. This is the last remaining large developable property immediately adjacent  to the northern Gold Hill city limits.

We have secured a new full access easement for these 20 acres. Power and cable on the property. A land use planner is available and we professional land use planner and we fully expect Jackson County homesite approval. Legal description is T36 R3W S16 Tax Lot 400.

Attractive financing is now 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 very close; beaches and mountains are only an hour away. Here's a newer group of 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. You can click here for an aerial photo and flyby.

You can contact the owner directly by phoning (928) 428-4073
or don@tinaja.com.

Additional older photos here. More info here and here. Free
guided tours immediately available.

January 09, 2017
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Closed out our whtnu16.shtml blog and started a new whtnu17.shtml one.

Earlier blogs remain available by clicking on "?new?" on the home page.

A reminder that we have separately extracted bajada hanging canal relevant material material to these files...

blog excerpts09.shtml
blog_excerpts10.shtml
blog_excerpts11.shtml
blog_excerpts12.shtml
blog_excerpts13.shtml
blog_excerpts14.shtml

blog_excerpts15.shtml
blog_excerpts16.shtml

January 08, 2017
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The Sand bajada hanging canal is number SEVENTY FIVE on our list of study candidates. It is extremely interesting and fairly easy to explore. But, as with previous canals, it presently is raising far more questions than it resolved.

I could use your help in the following...

Fill in the blanks between N 32.83001 W 109.92742 and N 32.83093 W 109.92610.

Visit the fork at N 32.83453 W 109.92705 to try and determine whether its feeder is in fact prehistoric.

Try to determine the intent and purpose of the three apparently imponderable historic interventions at N 32.82628 109.92605, at N 32.83096 W 109.93308, and at N 32.83120 W 109.92570.

Verify that the fence crossing at N 32.82135 W 109.93778 is in fact a significant Sand Canal routing.

Verify that the-acme Mapper plot at N 32.81909 W 109.94159 is in fact a significant Sand Canal routing.

Verify that the Acme Mapper plot at N 32.81307 W 109.94579 is in fact a significant Carter Canal routing.

Attempt to prove that the Sand Canal and the Carter Canal are one in the same.

See if a Carter Canal hanging portion exists at N 32.81258 W 109.94703 and is photogenic.

Determine if Gila Longfin Dace or other fish survive in and around N 32.81244 W 109.94766

January 07, 2017
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Microsizing and micropositioning can become crucial problems when printing pages full of small labels or doing other step and repeat projects.

First and foremost, always be sure to use the same printer for the same project. And always use the same printer driver and make sure that driver does not have any weird scalings active.

Add a small target to your code at what is supposed to be the 0,0 lower left corner. Possibly an adjustment such as an -0.11 inch -0.16 inch translate may be needed to convince the intended code, the label sheet, the printer, and the printer driver to all agree on exactly where 0,0 is.

Some label sources will provide you with templates that are sheets of paper with preprinted label locations on them.

Another ploy that can be very useful: Temporarily remove the four corner labels from the label sheet. Print to ordinary paper and register the modified label sheet in front of the paper. Hold the pair up to a bright light source or the sun. You then check the intended alignment of your messages.

If you want a bled color background on each label, be sure to "overscan" enough that all labels in all positions to not show any annoying white edges.

One way to verify that your h and v counts are correct is to remove a fifth label from an odd position on the left side and a sixth label from a strange position from the bottom.

January 06, 2017
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Sourcecode for a new simplified step-and-repeat label printer can be found  here. With a sample printout here.

The full Gonzo PostScript code gets towed along internally, so all you have to do is edit your file in Wordpad or wherever, and send it to Acrobat Distiller.

Here's the crucial part of the new PostScript code...

/simplifiedstepandrepeat
{ horstart vertstart translate  
   numvert { save
      
   numhoriz { repeatproc
 
   inchoriz 0 translate } repeat                     
  restore 0 incvert translate                   
  } repeat  } store

Gonzo utilities here, tutorial here, and lots of simple projects here. And intermediate stuff here.

January 05, 2017
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Here's a link to an "adequate supply" of Pittsburgh Streetcar Photos

WARNING: Attempting to view all of these in one session will result in yunz guys pronouncing "beer" as "airn". Or making a mill outta a chopaam sammitch and Olde Frothingslosh Pale Stale Ale in Sliberty.

Fortunately, in regards to this matter, a desert rat like me is immune. Skooze me while I redd up the website.

January 04, 2017
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A midget fortune teller broke out of jail.

Leaving a small medium at large.

January 03, 2017
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Here's a few of our published books and related items...

TTL COOKBOOK - Well over a million copies in print. Should be available at Amazon and technical bookstores. A very few autographed copies are still available from Guru's Lair and eBay.

MANUAL DE CIRCUITOS TTL - Status unknown. Likely very hard to find.

PACIFIC RIM TTL COOKBOOK - Not even sure anymore which Asian language it was released in. Status unknown. Likely extinct.

CMOS COOKBOOK- Approaching a million copies in print. Autographed copies available from Guru's Lair and eBay. Also should be available from Amazon

ACTIVE FILTER COOKBOOK- THE defining reference for the field. Still in print. Autographed copies available from Guru's Lair and eBay. Also should be available from Amazon. RTL COOKBOOK - Good old number one. Currently available as a free eBook from Guru's Lair. Amazon usually has new and used copies.

TV TYPEWRITER COOKBOOK - The opening shot fired in the personal computer revolution.. Currently available as a free eBook from Guru's Lair. Amazon usually has new and used copies. The TV Typewriter story by itself here.

INCREDIBLE SECRET MONEY MACHINE- Find out how I make money. Send $6.95 to... Currently available as a free eBook from Guru's Lair. Amazon usually has new and used copies.

APPLE ASSEMBLY COOKBOOK - Currently available as Volume I and Volume II of a pair of free eBooks from Guru's Lair. A sample Restoration Demo is also available. Amazon  has new and used copies.

MICRO COOKBOOK VOLUME I - When combined with Volume II, ends up surprisingly applicable to the very latest of microcomputer fundamentals. A very few autographed copies are still available from Guru's Lair and eBay. Amazon rarely has new and used copies.

MICRO COOKBOOK VOLUME II - Currently available as a retitled Volume I and Volume II of a pair of free eBooks from Guru's Lair. A sample Restoration Demo is also available. Amazon  sometimes has new and used copies.

APPLEWRITER COOKBOOK - Insider secrets of the best Apple II word processor.  Out of print and hard to find. Your funding requested for this secondary candidate for eBook restoration. Amazon  rarely has new and used copies.

ALL ABOUT APPLEWRITER - Rare Call A.P.P.L.E book was a disassembly script that possibly could be re-excerpted from the AppleWriter Cookbook. Status unknown. Not sure I still even have a copy.

HEXADECIMAL CHRONICLES - Book and circular slide rule calculator exclusively for ultra fringe Apple II machine language programmers. Produced and typeset largely on a Diablo 630 Daisywheel! Amazon  rarely has new and used copies.

ENHANCING YOUR APPLE II VOLUME I - Collection of construction projects and programming ploys. Included the "tearing method" of program disassembly. A prime eBook candidate with your funding welcome. Amazon  very rarely has new and used copies.

ENHANCING YOUR APPLE II VOLUME II -Collection of construction projects and programming ploys. Included the "vaporlock" field sync technique. A prime eBook candidate with your funding welcome. Amazon  sometimes has new and used copies.

CHEAP VIDEO COOKBOOK- Sneaky "Gee whiz" tricks to add ultra low cost video displays to KIM-1 and similar low end microcomputer trainers. An intermediate eBook candidate with your funding welcome. Amazon  sometimes has new and used copies.

SON OF CHEAP VIDEO- Supplement to the Cheap Video Cookbook covering ultra low cost video displays. A secondary eBook candidate with your funding welcome. Amazon  sometimes has new and used copies, some at outrageous prices.

THE BIG TTL WALL CHART- Collection of IC data from the TTL Cookbook. Exceptionally rare and possibly extinct. No eBook plans at present.

THE BIG CMOS WALL CHART- Collection of IC data from the CMOS Cookbook. Exceptionally rare and possibly extinct. No eBook plans at present.

BLATANT OPPORTUNIST- Reprints from Don's Midnight Engineering columns. Once Book-on-Demand published. Now freely available online as individual columns.

BOOK-ON-DEMAND PUBLISHING- The entire concept of low end BOD  publishing largely died stillborn, owing to the utterly overwhelming advantages of web distribution. Combined with sanely priced binding systems and and trimmers never getting available online here.

CAVE CRAWLER'S GAZETTE- A three year editorial stint for the Central Arizona Grotto. Very low priority eBook plans at present.

ASK THE GURU I, II, III- Reprints from Don's Computer Shopper columns. Once Book-on-Demand published. Now freely available online as compilations here, here, and here.

HARDWARE HACKER I, II, III, IV - Reprints from Don's Hardware Hacker columns. Once Book-on-Demand published. Now freely available online as compilations here, here, here, and here.

RESOURCE BIN- A collection of "where to go to get stuff" monthly columns from Nuts & Volts magazine. Early compilations can be found found here and here with individual columns available here.

MY THESIS- One of the first ever developments of low cost analog circuits to be used for hobby electronics projects. Free copy here.

MY FIRST AND ONLY PATENT - Can be found here. Good old 3,149,561. And drove home the utter ludicrosity of the US patent system for virtually all individuals and small scale startups.

CASE AGAINST PATENTS - Once Book-on-Demand published compilation of my anti patent diatribes. Also freely available online as individual papers.

GILA VALLEY DAY HIKES- Many hundreds of highly obscure neat places to go and things  to do in and around the Gila Valley. With the main free  directory here and images of some of the more obscure candidates here.

MAGIC SINEWAVES- Newly discovered obscure math tricks that allow dramatic low harmonic suppression of digitally generated power sinewaves for pv panels, power controls, and similar apps. Find the magic calculator here and lots of support here.

PSEUDOSCIIENCE- I am very much into disproving such ludicrosities as free energy, alien abductions, much of cold fusion,antigravity, UFO's "not even wrong"labwork, perpetual motion, or outright scams. Find the main resource here and my special hell reserved for hydrogen here.

POWERPOINT EMULATIONS- I very strongly feel that Powerpoint is mesmerizingly awful, so I wrote my own PostScript emulator that complete blows it away on all counts. A tutorial here and examples here.

POSTSCRIPT SECRETS- Reprints from Don's Computer Shopper columns. Once Book-on-Demand published. Now freely available online as a compilation here.

 POSTSCRIPT SHOW AND TELL- Started out as a flashcard lecture of the underappreciated wonders of the general purpose PostScript programming language. Now available as a free web resource.

POSTSCRIPT BEGINNER PROJECTS- A compendium of projects from our beginning PostScript community college programming class.

POSTSCRIPT GONZO UTILITIES- Custom routines that give you exceptional Postscript-as-language typography, schematics, and great heaping bunches of related stuff. Find the code here, use guidelines here, and lots of apps here.

VARIOUS OTHER FREE RESOURCES - Being summarized here, here, and here.

INTRODUCTION TO POSTSCRIPT VIDEO- Newly improved here.

THE WORST OF MARCIA SWAMPFELDER- Marcia tended to do my April Fools columns for a number of years in Popular Electronics and Modern Electronics. The secrets of how she did the tapioca pudding scene in the cross genre Godzilla versus the Night  Nurses film classic remains under strict NDA. A revised and updated free online copy of Marcia's finest work appears here.

And our very newest...

DON LANCASTER CLASSICS LIBRARY- A USB crammed full of some 8000+ files spread over more than 2 Gigs of tight code, along with nearly a thousand open source and fully unlocked source code documents. Classics through current. Available from Guru's Lair and eBay.

GURUGRAMS- Published versions of our ongoing projects, papers, and such have largely been replaced by the GuruGrams on our Guru's Lair website. Announcements on their availability can usually be found here and on our similar earlier and later blogs.

BAJADA HANGING CANAL FIELD NOTES - A work in progress. See the latest info and updates here.

January 02, 2017
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After some extensive archival rework, rearrangement, and improvement of our Guru's Lair website. we can now offer USB Thumb Drive copies of our Lancaster Classics Library.

This includes some 8000+ files spread over more than 2 Gigs of tight code, along with nearly a thousand open source and fully unlocked source code documents. All fully unsearchable in one place at one time.

Included are reprints of the TV Typewriter, the RTL Cookbook, the Incredible Secret Money Machine, much of the Hanging Bajada Canals, and, of course, The Worst of Marcia Swampfelder.

You can contact us directly or view our eBay listing to pick up a personal copy.

January 01, 2017
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Guru's Lair website access: https://www.tinaja.com

Assorted Neat Stuff
https://www.tinaja.com/ansamp1.shtml

Auction Help:  
https://www.tinaja.com/ahsamp1.shtml

Blatant Opportunist:
https://www.tinaja.com/bosamp1.shtml

Blogs and What's New:
https://www.tinaja.com/blsamp1.shtml

Bezier Cubic Splines: 
https://www.tinaja.com/bcsamp1.shtml

Book to eBook Conversions: 
https://www.tinaja.com/bebsamp1.shtml

Classic Reprints:
 https://www.tinaja.com/crsamp1.shtml

eBay Secrets: 
https://www.tinaja.com/ebsamp1.shtml

eBook Library
:https://www.tinaja.com/ebksamp1.shtml

Energy Tutorials: 
https://www.tinaja.com/etsamp1.shtml

Gila Valley Day Hikes: 
https://www.tinaja.com/tinsamp1.shtml

GuruGrams: 
https://www.tinaja.com/ggsamp1.shtml

Hardware Hacker: 
https://www.tinaja.com/hhsamp1.shtml

Incredible Secret Money Machine: 
https://www.tinaja.com/issamp1.shtml

Latest Additions:
 https://www.tinaja.com/lasamp1.shtml 

Libraries by Subject: 
https://www.tinaja.com/lbsamp1.shtml

Magic Sinewaves: 
https://www.tinaja.com/mssamp1.shtml

Marbelous Stacks of Pancakes: 
https://www.tinaja.com/mbsamp1.shtml

Math Stuff: 
https://www.tinaja.com/matsamp1.shtml

The Case Against Patents:
 https://www.tinaja.com/pasamp1.shtml

PostScript Resources: 
https://www.tinaja.com/pssamp1.shtml

Powerpoint Emulations: 
https://www.tinaja.com/powpt1.shtml

Prehistoric Bajada Hanging Canals: 
https://www.tinaja.com/tinsamp1.shtml

Pseudoscience Bashing: 
https://www.tinaja.com/psusamp1.shtml

Recommended Books: 
https://www.tinaja.com/bksamp1.shtml

Resource Bin:
 https://www.tinaja.com/rbsamp1.shtml

Santa Claus Machines: 
https://www.tinaja.com/scsamp1.shtml

Service Pages: 
https://www.tinaja.com/spsamp1.shtml

Site Sampler: 
https://www.tinaja.com/samplx1.shtml

Tech Musings: 
https://www.tinaja.com/tmsamp1.shtml

Technical Library Directory:
 https://www.tinaja.com/libry01.shtml

Tinaja Questing: 
https://www.tinaja.com/tinsamp1.shtml

Video Tutorials
https://www.tinaja.com/ebksamp1.shtml

Main Libraries:

Abeja Shelf: 
https://www.tinaja.com/beewb01.shtml

Acrobat PDF Shelf: 
https://www.tinaja.com/acrob01.shtml

Adept Sliders ( sorry sold out ):
https://www.tinaja.com/adeptinv.shtml

Ask the Guru Older Shelf: 
https://www.tinaja.com/glair01.shtml

Auction and Assistance Shelf: 
https://www.tinaja.com/auct01.shtml

Banner Advertisers Shelf:
 https://www.tinaja.com/advt01.shtml 

Bargains and Surplus Shelf:
 https://www.tinaja.com/barg01.shtml

Blatant Opportunist Shelf: 
https://www.tinaja.com/blat01.shtml

Book Access Shelf: 
https://www.tinaja.com/amlink01.shtml


Book on Demand Shelf: 
https://www.tinaja.com/bod01.shtml

Captain Video Shelf:
 https://www.tinaja.com/capvid01.shtml

Consultants Network: 
https://www.tinaja.com/consul01.shtml

Cubic Spline Shelf:
 https://www.tinaja.com/cubic01.shtml

Custom Auction Help:
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