Archive for the ‘Tools’ Category

Intro to Electronics

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

Glenn Reynolds put out a call to his readers for introductory texts on electronics, aimed especially at children.

This gives me the chance to recommend my favorite text on any subject [emailed to Reynolds, but a day late. Don't know if he'll get around to posting it.]

Stuart Hoenig and Leland Payne, How to Build & Use Electronic Devices Without Frustration, Panic, Mountains of Money, or an Engineering Degree
A very gentle introduction centered on wonderful little doodads called op amps, which vastly simplify the design of just about anything that handles analog signals. This was written just after IC op amps became widely and cheaply available at Radio Shack. Many chapters on various kinds of sensors, including some biomedical stuff.

There’s a chapter on discrete devices, such as naked transistors, “if you must use them”.

There’s a brief intro to digital interfacing, but this was before PCs became widely available, so the digital world gets very short shrift — and this is, in my opinion, a good thing. It trains you to deal with the real signals, the actual measurements. Digital should properly only be introduced after you have a solid grounding in analog. [Insert obvious CRU snark.]

HtBaUEDWFPMoMoaED is shamefully out of print, but many used copies are available. They shouldn’t be; they should all be grabbed up and militantly hoarded.

Hoenig and Payne need to either authorize a reprinting, or just put it on line. Yeah, it’s a bit out of date, but everything here still works.

This is my wilderness backpacking electronics text (you never know when you may need to fabricate a telemetry pack from a handful of bark, pebbles, and bear droppings) because it’s much smaller and lighter than the rightfully famous Art of Electronics, which is my preferred desktop reference as well, but which would be pretty heavy slogging for any but a fairly advanced teen.

“My Lips”

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

Here’s a thing,” from David Thompson:

New Instrument: Eigenharp

Sunday, October 11th, 2009

The Eigenharp looks the kind of thing you’d see in a Mos Eisley bar.

It seems to be an almost infinitely adaptable synth interface in a very convenient package. I’m not a musician, so I can’t speak authoritatively, but I’m guessing it takes a long time just to figure out how to control what kind of sound you get out of it.

One very interesting point: it can be used as a wind instrument, via a bassoon-mouthpiece-looking “breath pipe”.

Private demo showing off capabilities:

“We Are As Gods, And Have To Get Good At It.”

Friday, October 2nd, 2009

Stewart Brand proclaims “Environmental Heresies“, over at TED.

There are TED presentations that make you gasp with awe and wonder. The audience laughs and claps throughout, simply because the charts and graphs are so enlightening.

This is not one of them. It is cold, dry, and sobering. The audience is silent. I’m not going to try to summarize, you really need to see the whole thing.

I don’t agree with everything here — Brand believes in AGW, for instance, and is reflexively socialist — but overwhelmingly, the message is good, and Brand presses the need for local, even personal control and power. (Brand understands very well the difference between the two.) As I say, his socialism is reflexive, but the message is inherently capitalist.

The amazing thing is, he sees so clearly that even though his politics color his presentation, he still tells the truth.

“Refuse to Bow, and They Will Make You”

Saturday, September 12th, 2009

[I am unable to post on a regular basis, but will do so whenever the opportunity presents, and there is motive.]

This, folks, this is motive.

I’ve said it before: Contrary to the claim that there would always be one, there is in fact no longer an England, only an island off the coast of France.

The former bulldogs have so degraded themselves that they no longer trust themselves with guns, replica guns, toy guns, kitchen knives, folding knives, glass beer mugs, fire extinguishers, even laughter. References? Look ‘em up your self, I’ve had a queasy stomach the last few days.

While you’re at it, look up their skyrocketing violent crime rate, and remember: Her Maj’s cops jigger the stats to make them look as low as possible, and even so they can no longer hide the fact that Sarah Brady’s Paradise is becoming a violent hellhole.

Now this: even writing about guns is so wicked, that you can simply be disappeared for doing so.

Here’s the story of Phil Luty, who is semi-famous amongst the self-reliant for having published, in print and on the web, several manuals on how to manufacture “expedient firearms” and ammunition — that is, how to make your own guns from hardware store parts without fancy machine tools.

He was put in prison on a four-year sentence, extended to five by short-circuiting his parole hearings. “This, in the same legal system that fails to send offenders of criminal assaults to jail for a single day, instead issuing a ‘caution’ (similar to a traffic ticket) to someone who has actually committed violence. ”

Once free, Luty returned to the evil practice of explaining how to be free, this time on the Internet.

Luty’s book had been selling modestly well and received positive reviews. The public had clamored for more. While not about to perform the same stunt and get thrown back into prison, Phil was none-the-less still committed to promoting what a fallacy the premise of gun control was. The internet was now the new media, and Phil took to it readily. He started a website and forum dedicated to the subject of home-manufacture of guns, called www.thehomegunsmith.com .

The website became very active, mostly with American hobbyists looking to learn or to share info. But it also attracted an international audience, with curious persons checking it out from far flung places like Dubai, Madagascar and Australia. Not only was Phil still tweaking Parliament’s nose, but, in their eyes, practically spitting in their face.

Showing how they have never truly evolved from their authoritarian roots, English authorities, in February of 2005 raided 3 Luty family residences, including the home of his brother and his father’s house, apparently looking for prohibited firearms. Books, computers, CDs and all manner of other items were seized, never to be returned. Ed and John Luty (Phil’s father and brother) were arrested and charged with “Conspiracy to Manufacture Firearms”. Phil himself was not arrested or charged, and it seems the actions taken against his family were meant as an extortive tool to get him to shut his website down. It didn’t work, and Phil’s website gained even more notoriety and increased in traffic. His father and brother were let out on bond and the charges against them remained dormant and unprosecuted. (Because there was no evidence?!)

And so there it remained. Phil continued conversing with persons around the globe interested in the subject. Persons talked with each other and shared information via his website. A few months ago, Phil was diagnosed with cancer. It seemed he might of necessity begin to scale back his activism and perhaps have to take a break from running the website.

But recently, several people around the world who were in semi-regular correspondence with Phil (we are a tight-knit community) noticed he was not around and not responding to his emails. Upon checking www.thehomegunsmith.com it was noticed to be down. After some more time went by, people became concerned.

Then came word from a mutual friend in Portugal. A veteran of their armed forces, he had lived for many years here in Arizona, working as a gunsmith, and maintained an interest in the manufacture of guns. He was one of the regular visitors to Phil’s website. His home had been raided by a task force of Interpol and the Portuguese equivalent of the FBI’s counter-terrorism squad. They had specifically been asked to do so by Britain’s MI-5 as part of an investigation surrounding Mr. Luty. Some cyber-sleuthing among webmasters revealed that an RKBA-friendly (Right to Keep and Bear Arms) web guru had been contacted by Phil via his brother and asked to take the website down and wipe it. Phil had once again been scooped up by the British authorities, but under the newly modified anti-terror laws, had been able to do so without notifying anyone for weeks. After being pressured by friends and family, the Metropolitan Police finally only admit that Phil was arrested (on a date still not revealed) for “incitement of crimes” via his website, but would not provide a specific charge against him or any examples of what crimes or incitements to which they were referring.

At this time, there is no address to which to send positive correspondence to Phil, as the police who hold him refuse to say anything more, including where he is held. Phil’s brother John is keeping his head low, fearing the never dismissed charges brought against him in 2005 might be brought back to life if he were to publicly advocate and agitate for Phil. It is even unclear at this point if further proceeds from sales of Phil’s book via the publisher will now ever reach him again.

In short,…the British government has wanted for a very long time to simply take Phillip Luty and drop him down a deep dark hole. It seems they may have finally succeeded. In so doing, Phil has succeeded also. He has succeeded in showing us here in the U.S. that what defenders of the 2nd Amendment have been saying is true “If they succeed in repealing the 2nd Amendment, the 1st Amendment is next.”

Please note that the Island thugs are such cowards they extend their reach even beyond their shores.

Please note that while Her Maj’s government bends over backwards to give real terrorists free reign to impose their way of life on her subjects, going so far as to release the Lockerbie bomber on “humanitarian” grounds, the “anti-terrorism” laws are used to hide the arrest and imprisonment of a True Brit for merely given his fellow patriots the information to build the tools they need to defend themselves. Not the tools, mind, just the information is enough.

Please note that England is dead to me.

p.s. I am proud to say that I paid for and downloaded a copy of the 9mm submachine “expedient firearm” manual.

Conference Bike

Saturday, July 4th, 2009

Yes, they’re actually building these things:

Tricycle with seven seats and a steering wheel.

Tricycle with seven seats and a steering wheel.


As weird as it looks, I really like this.

And, yes, these aren’t “bikes”, they’re trikes.


In comments, Chanda says she only needs five seats. I replied with snark, but too quickly.

Chanda, my friend, you’re wish is granted:

A tricycle built for five.

A tricycle built for five.

“The Case for Working With Your Hands”

Saturday, May 23rd, 2009

Ooh, lots of good stuff here, such as:

A gifted young person who chooses to become a mechanic rather than to accumulate academic credentials is viewed as eccentric, if not self-destructive. There is a pervasive anxiety among parents that there is only one track to success for their children. It runs through a series of gates controlled by prestigious institutions. Further, there is wide use of drugs to medicate boys, especially, against their natural tendency toward action, the better to “keep things on track.” I taught briefly in a public high school and would have loved to have set up a Ritalin fogger in my classroom. It is a rare person, male or female, who is naturally inclined to sit still for 17 years in school, and then indefinitely at work.

Over the last few days, I have, among other things, re-shingled around the vent stack for my water heater, caulked the woodwork around my garage door, and pulled nails from scrap lumber. When I complete one of these little projects, I want to rip it out and do it over again, correctly, using what I learned doing it wrong the first time.

Or I could, you know, get a job doing that stuff day in and day out. Would I get bored doing stupid stuff like that?

I can’t remember the last time writing code, reinstalling Windows, or even building a computer, was this rewarding.

The trades suffer from low prestige, and I believe this is based on a simple mistake. Because the work is dirty, many people assume it is also stupid. This is not my experience. I have a small business as a motorcycle mechanic in Richmond, Va., which I started in 2002. I work on Japanese and European motorcycles, mostly older bikes with some “vintage” cachet that makes people willing to spend money on them. I have found the satisfactions of the work to be very much bound up with the intellectual challenges it presents. And yet my decision to go into this line of work is a choice that seems to perplex many people.

I spent the winter tearing down an old Honda motorcycle and rebuilding it. The physicality of it, and the clear specificity of what the project required of me, was a balm.

The escalating demand for academic credentials in the job market gives the impression of an ever-more-knowledgeable society, whose members perform cognitive feats their unschooled parents could scarcely conceive of. On paper, my abstracting job, multiplied a millionfold, is precisely what puts the futurologist in a rapture: we are getting to be so smart! Yet my M.A. obscures a more real stupidification of the work I secured with that credential, and a wage to match. When I first got the degree, I felt as if I had been inducted to a certain order of society. But despite the beautiful ties I wore, it turned out to be a more proletarian existence than I had known as an electrician. In that job I had made quite a bit more money. I also felt free and active, rather than confined and stultified.

The visceral experience of failure seems to have been edited out of the career trajectories of gifted students. It stands to reason, then, that those who end up making big decisions that affect all of us don’t seem to have much sense of their own fallibility, and of how badly things can go wrong even with the best of intentions…. In the boardrooms of Wall Street and the corridors of Pennsylvania Avenue, I don’t think you’ll see a yellow sign that says “Think Safety!” as you do on job sites and in many repair shops, no doubt because those who sit on the swivel chairs tend to live remote from the consequences of the decisions they make. Why not encourage gifted students to learn a trade, if only in the summers, so that their fingers will be crushed once or twice before they go on to run the country?

There is good reason to suppose that responsibility has to be installed in the foundation of your mental equipment — at the level of perception and habit. There is an ethic of paying attention that develops in the trades through hard experience. It inflects your perception of the world and your habitual responses to it. This is due to the immediate feedback you get from material objects and to the fact that the work is typically situated in face-to-face interactions between tradesman and customer.

[Emphasis mine.]

I am shocked to find that many supposedly educated people have not read Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which touches on many of these same ideas, only from a slightly different angle.

I can’t help adding that knowing how to fix a faucet, patch a roof, or wire a two switch lighting circuit significantly adds to your self-sufficiency. I get a little thrill every time I turn on the ceiling lights in my house because I, personally, wired them up — and I will testify that my work is often better than what’s done by the pros. I’m a lot slower than they are, but my quality is far higher.

And I am not afraid to rip my work out and do it over if it has a problem. I’ve learned a very great deal that way.

An Ocean of Data

Saturday, May 16th, 2009

From the Vancouver Sun, “Little Ocean Tattletales Fail to Find Right Facts”:

They drift along in the worlds’ oceans at a depth of 2,000 metres — more than a mile down — constantly monitoring the temperature, salinity, pressure and velocity of the upper oceans.

Then, about once every 10 days, a bladder on the outside of these buoys inflates and raises them slowly to the surface, gathering data about each strata of seawater they pass through.

After an upward journey of nearly six hours, the Argo monitors bob on the waves while an onboard transmitter sends their information to a satellite that in turn retransmits it to several land-based research computers where it may be accessed by anyone who wishes to see it.

These 3,000 yellow sentinels — about the size and shape of a large fencepost — free-float the world’s oceans, season in and season out, surfacing between 30 and 40 times a year, disgorging their findings, then submerging again for another fact-finding voyage.

It’s fascinating to watch their progress online. (The URLs are too complex to reproduce here, but Google “Argo Buoy Movement” or “Argo Float Animation,” and you will be directed to the links.)

[Here's a good one. Below is a still from one of these movies, so you can get an idea of just how well these little guys are surveying the ocean. -- djm]

Still from a NASA animation showing tracks of free-floating oceanographic buoys.

Still from a NASA animation showing tracks of free-floating oceanographic buoys.

When they were first deployed in 2003, the Argos were hailed for their ability to collect information on ocean conditions more precisely, at more places and greater depths and in more conditions than ever before.

No longer would scientists have to rely on measurements mostly at the surface from older scientific buoys or inconsistent shipboard monitors.

So why are some scientists now beginning to question the buoys’ findings? Because in five years the little blighters have failed to detect any global warming. They are not reinforcing the scientific orthodoxy of the day, namely that man is causing the planet to warm dangerously. They are not proving the predetermined conclusions of their human masters. Therefore they, and not their masters’ hypotheses, must be wrong.

In fact, “there has been a very slight cooling,” according to a U.S. National Public Radio (NPR) interview with Josh Willis at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a scientist who keeps close watch on the Argo findings.

I’d quote the whole thing, but the Sun deserves your traffic, so go read the whole thing.

update:
Cold Fury calls out global warming: “It ain’t science, it’s religion.”
The people pushing the GW agenda don’t give a good goddamn about Mother Earth. They want to return us all to a pre-industrial culture, with us as dirty sweaty agrarian peasants and them as the exalted overlords, wallowing in the rotting corpse of the richest, most powerful society the world has ever seen. The religion is all about making us accept it by making us think we’re saving ourselves.

They will never accept the limits they want to impose on us.

Damn straight, Al Gore and Barack Obama are only the most visible of the They.


NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio rocks,. and I mean hard. I’m going to be spending more time there than I have, I can tell. Just… damn!

Here’s what I found by just clicking on the “Next” link on the Argo page:
topex_still_nino04dec1997_web

This is a map of “relative sea level around the Earth“. Red indicates highs, blue lows.

Here’s the trick: this map shows a variation of 500 mm above and below average. The total range, highest to lowest, is one meter. That’s right, about a yard on a globe 8000 miles in diameter, measuring a surface covered with waves well over one meter high.

There is nothing, nothing, we cannot know about our world if we choose to find out.

And if this is a firehose, just wait: It’s going to become a Niagra.

[Credit for both images to NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio.]

[Link to Sun via Dan at Protein Wisdom.]

Tweenbots

Saturday, April 11th, 2009

Your feel-good must-read for the day week month:

In New York City, we are very occupied with getting from one place to another. I wondered: could a human-like object traverse sidewalks and streets along with us, and in so doing, create a narrative about our relationship to space and our willingness to interact with what we find in it? More importantly, how could our actions be seen within a larger context of human connection that emerges from the complexity of the city itself? To answer these questions, I built robots.

Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal.

There’s a word I think I’m going to have to start using more often, and in a completely non-ironic way: “charming”. This is charming.

Via, yes, Hacker News.

Alton Brown Probably Knew All Along

Friday, March 6th, 2009

Via Sigmund, Carl, and Alfred:
organic_caveman

And via there, this from The Economist:

The evolutionary role of cookery

Youare what you eat, or so the saying goes. But Richard Wrangham, of Harvard University, believes that this is true in a more profound sense than the one implied by the old proverb. It is not just you who are what you eat, but the entire human species. And with Homo sapiens, what makes the species unique in Dr Wrangham’s opinion is that its food is so often cooked.

Cooking is a human universal. No society is without it. No one other than a few faddists tries to survive on raw food alone. And the consumption of a cooked meal in the evening, usually in the company of family and friends, is normal in every known society. Moreover, without cooking, the human brain (which consumes 20-25% of the body’s energy) could not keep running. Dr Wrangham thus believes that cooking and humanity are coeval.

In fact, as he outlined to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), in Chicago, he thinks that cooking and other forms of preparing food are humanity’s “killer app”: the evolutionary change that underpins all of the other—and subsequent—changes that have made people such unusual animals.

Humans became human, as it were, with the emergence 1.8m years ago of a species called Homo erectus. This had a skeleton much like modern man’s—a big, brain-filled skull and a narrow pelvis and rib cage, which imply a small abdomen and thus a small gut. Hitherto, the explanation for this shift from the smaller skulls and wider pelvises of man’s apelike ancestors has been a shift from a vegetable-based diet to a meat-based one. Meat has more calories than plant matter, the theory went. A smaller gut could therefore support a larger brain.

Dr Wrangham disagrees. When you do the sums, he argues, raw meat is still insufficient to bridge the gap. He points out that even modern “raw foodists”, members of a town-dwelling, back-to-nature social movement, struggle to maintain their weight—and they have access to animals and plants that have been bred for the table. Pre-agricultural man confined to raw food would have starved.

Firelight
Start cooking, however, and things change radically. Cooking alters food in three important ways. It breaks starch molecules into more digestible fragments. It “denatures” protein molecules, so that their amino-acid chains unfold and digestive enzymes can attack them more easily. And heat physically softens food. That makes it easier to digest, so even though the stuff is no more calorific, the body uses fewer calories dealing with it.