A Crummy Commercial

 I took a required engineering design class in college - one thing they gave us was a deck of cards (about the size of the chance cards in Monopoly ).  The cards provided suggestions on designing a product - I remember one of those cards said something like:  Make it smaller - that is what Xteink did with their e-readers: about the size of a credit card I saw the Xteink X3 mini ebook reader reviewed in The Atlantic : https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/09/xteink-e-reader-best-technology-years/688539/ the Xteink X3 page:     https://www.xteink.com/products/xteink-x3 Incidentally I have actually read the book mentioned in The Atlantic  review, The Power Broker - in hardcover - I have it around here somewhere, I remember the cover picture of Robert Moses standing on a beam: from the 1930s to the 1960s Robert Moses was hot stuff in New York The Power Broker is a really interesting book.  But I always wondered: how did author Caro know that R...

It's Labor Day, NFL football starts on Wednesday 2026-09-09.  So I thought this video was interesting: source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hrtkYKlbn8   The Super Bowl name started as a placeholder ?  Who knew ?  Inspired by a Wham-o product called the Super Ball. I *think* I had a Super Ball but lost it quickly.  I seem to remember that they developed cracks after a while anyway.  One thing I remember is if they were spun the Super Ball would bounce back and forth.  Fun for a brief while.  I think they were more suited to the city than suburbs - you need nice level pavement away from houses. I wonder if Wham-o ever tried making golf balls with a Super Ball inside ?   Of course: Yuck, not only printed in USA but also stained there :) source:  https://www.ebay.com/itm/157434233831 $89.99 plus $10.95 postage, just a little out of my price range !  Also, not a "legal" ball. That brings up the old:  "there's acid in ...

There was this guy: in 1939 everyone in the USA knew what this guy was about source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_R._Brinkley Yes, old Doc Brinkley - he sold potions and treatments over the radio to cure: EVERYTHING !  Eventually he moved his station to Mexico where he could boom his disinfomercials over all of the USA.  And he did advocate goat glands for restoring virility, yikes ! But then there was this (I think I heard Norman Gilliland point out the Doc Brinkley reference on the discontinued  Old Time Radio Drama  program on Wisconsin Public Radio): https://archive.org/details/OTRR_Jack_Benny_Singles_1939-1940/JB+1939-11-19+Mary's+Thanksgiving+Poem.mp3 1939 was Dennis Day's first season on the program taking over the singer/stooge role after Kenny Baker left.  At about 8:20 Dennis is about to sing when Mary interjects an amazing line: Jack:     Oh Dennis ! Dennis:  Yes, please ? Jack:    How about a song before we get inv...

The Questor Tapes popped up - I really can't remember if I ever saw it before or not.  It was a TV movie, essentially a pilot for a TV series which didn't sell ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Questor_Tapes The tape on Archive is from January 23, 1974 - a Wednesday night ?  So maybe I was hard at work studying for my freshman electrical engineering classes ?  (yeah, right :) https://archive.org/details/questor-tapes-1-23-74 The video quality is strictly Beta or VHS although watchable.  But it reminded me of the Demon With a Glass Hand episode of The Outer Limits , mentioned previously here: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2023/11/youtube-stuck-in-its-thumb-and-drew.html Both shows featured robots who didn't quite understand what their purpose was, at least at the start.   "Through all the legends of ancient peoples – Assyrian, Babylonian, Sumerican [sic], Semitic – runs the saga of the Eternal Man, the one who never dies, called by various names in various...

I saw this on Pinterest: no viewfinder => to me this means it's a view camera It might be a fake ?  It looks like a wooden body view camera with a Hasselblad film back and possibly the lens and bellows are from an old roll film camera ? But there was this question: How do you know when it is in focus? If it's like my old B&J press camera you do the following: 1) put in the slide for the film back, this prevents the film from being exposed 2) take off the film back  3) put on the ground glass back  4) frame and focus the shot with the shutter open.  Then reverse the process to take a picture 5) close the shutter 6) set the aperture / shutter speed for the correct exposure 7) take off the ground glass back   8) put on the film back 9) take out the slide 10) take the picture View camera users tend to be very deliberate people who use tripods :) This got me thinking about my B&J camera.  It was made in Chicago !  It had a wooden body, 2 1/4 x 3 ...

I saw this ad for a Mattel bike, never knew that Mattel sold a bicycle !: how did I miss this ? Here's another ad for the noise maker accessory only: source: https://corporate.mattel.com/brand-portfolio/v-rroom So I was wondering about the sound, how was it, how loud ? Looking on Youtube I found some videos: Bill Conrad providing the voiceover ! source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-y8mG8cRv4 source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzGqY2zHuSo source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-EGZwAdHJo source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZMkQ-JTPjU How did I live without one of these ?  Basically with playing cards clothes-pinned to the spokes - also I probably aged out ?  9 years old in 1964, too big for that kid stuff :) How did it make the sounds ?  It was patented (always a good place to check): https://patents.google.com/patent/US3160984A/en%C2%A0 It was mechanical NOT electronic: I don't quite understand it - I'm an EE not a mechanical engineer :)  But i...

This is an interesting video about the deepest part of Lake Superior: source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtjexAeh4C4 With that little boat they are on, I'm not surprised that they skip the days with choppy waves.  That landing craft type ramp doesn't seem like a good match for a lake that can sink the Edmund Fitzgerald ! a perfect day to go diving Superior What is this a new sequel in the Alien franchise ?  Yikes ! invasive ? alien ?  sea lamprey ! It's dark and cold so not a lot of fish down there: But (of course) they did find a Busch can :( get thee back to St. Louis ! I guess the subs built in Manitowoc during the war could only go to 300 to 400 feet safely, so that submersible must have been pretty tough.  Here's a comparison chart on the depths of the Great Lakes: The video was more of an intro to the project, hopefully there will be some followup videos. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm