A Crummy Commercial

I was watching this recent Asianometry video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lLFBun1qR0 It's an interesting video - everyone has heard of the datacenter boom - in Wisconsin there are towns that are turning down datacenters.  I imagine that there will be a shakeout in the future.  IMO the AI focus should be concentrating on standalone applications like robotics where it would be foolish to rely on communicating with a central brain.  For example I know that there are mini-AI models used on PCs to subtitle videos.  People like to watch un-subtitled videos from Korea or Japan but don't have the time to learn the languages.  With a gaming type of Nvidia video card in a PC this kind of voice recognition + translation  and then conversion to subtitles is a snap.  BTW when I think datacenters I picture something like the telephone central office switches we used to make at GTE.  This is a lot of open steel racks (probably NOT 19 inches wide :) filled w...

Roughly 9 years ago it was easy to pay the Washington Island Electric Cooperative.  On the 20th of the month: go outside, read the meter and then calculate your bill using the supplied form and then send it in. Then the Co-op installed these plastic power meters: http://wb9kzy.com/power.htm Here is a Youtube video: source:  https://youtu.be/PkVXOwrIVD8 The co-op eventually went to automated billing.  But this month one of the gears in the billing machine must have been broken because here is the first sighting of the bill this morning on USPS Informed Delivery: sent 1-29-2026, it won't arrive until 2-3-2026 at the earliest Yes, they do have a website but nothing updated as of this morning since the bill due on 1/1/2026. Both the USPS and the Co-op had working systems in the olden days.  Now the USPS sends local mail down 180 miles to Milwaukee and back and the Co-op waits until the next month before delivering the bill.  Is this yet another clue to the way thing...

This is Kodak's answer: Feeding the novelty beast !  This reviewer just doesn't get it: https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/kodak-charmera-review-retro-keychain-camera It's really not a question of a sharp, high quality image, the quality is more painterly.  I doubt that reviewer would hang a Bob Ross or William Alexander painting on the wall either :) The weird thing is that Charmera isn't really a Kodak, it's just Kodak badged with that Kodak yellow packaging we all know: https://www.kodak.com/en/consumer/product/cameras/digital/charmera-keychain-digital-camera/ I won't be buying a Charmera.  I've already got one of these that I never use: The real virtue of a camera like the Charmera is being able to tote something all the time, ready to shoot and not worry about losing it or breaking it.  Most people have phones now but they can be so awkward to use, especially outside. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

I found this bag recently: I *think* it held some kind of retrofit kit with an anti-static strap.  The strap had a coiled cord but after a while the plastic on the cord got brittle and started flaking off.  The strap came from the now defunct BG Micro.   Now everything is held in plastic bags.  The drawstring is easier for me to open and close than a zip bag.  The string also makes it easy to hang on a piece of equipment :)  This kind of bag used to be more popular originating in the pre-plastic era.  And they are still available: source:  https://www.uline.com/Product/Detail/S-1164/Burlap-and-Cloth-Bags/Cloth-Parts-Bags-5-x-7 When I was a kid a similar bag held chewing gum nuggets with a yellow-gold color.  It was supposed to be like the gold dust poke of a gold miner.  I'm not sure if this is the same gum but it's similar: source:  https://redstonefoods.com/products/04118--gold-mine-gum-giant I also found this cloth bag: It contai...

I was looking at the July 1959 issue of QST and saw this article: source:  https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-DX/QST/50s/QST-1959-07.pdf A really clever design.  I remember seeing a book detailing a "computer" that used a rotary dial for data entry but never had seen a dial used for Morse code before.  And in all my years as a kid who liked to take things apart I never actually took a dial apart !  I've got "two tree" dial phones around here, I may have to remedy that ! Here are the only diagrams from the article, too bad they didn't show the complete set of 19 dials but I guess QST space was too valuable for that.  I can see where the dah heavy numbers would require a dial to themselves although several shorter characters can be put on the same dial. This kind of mechanical approach to Morse code sending reminds me of this previous blog on a contest "memory keyer" by K2UBC: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/08/a-mechanical-memory-contest-k...

Angkor Wat I saw a NOVA last night on TV (only dozed for a few minutes :), here it is on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QADE8CkEVCw The program was on the enormous ancient city of Angkor in Cambodia.  It was a very interesting show explaining the rise and abandonment of Angkor.  Angkor Wat is only one of the hundreds of temples in Angkor the city.   I thought that the LIDAR usage was really amazing, it penetrates the overgrowth and gives a sense of what the city must have been like.  The whole city is built on a flood plane which regularly has standing water so the houses of Angkor residents were built on mounds (visible on LIDAR). the Angkor Wat temple in white The other thing I didn't realize was that since the big temples in Angkor can't be built on actual bedrock the builders used a couple of techniques to get around the lack of a solid foundation.  First while the outside cladding of the temple was sandstone the main structure is of a more p...

I saw this in a Lafayette Radio Electronics sale flyer from 1962: source:  https://www.microscopemuseum.eu/catalogues/Lafayette_1962_621.pdf This is like the old school airplane earphones, I love it !  And there is one on Ebay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/325734328258 BTW, be sure to watch the item before buying, the seller offered me $20 off.  I suspect the seller would accept a lower offer. The price on Ebay is in the ballpark of the 1962 price inflated: And here is the SH-100 in the 1963 Lafayette catalog (it probably didn't sell): And the 1963 price inflated: I looked in the 1964 catalog but Lafayette had dropped Pioneer as a vendor.  I didn't see any Pioneer items in the 1963 Allied catalog either. The follow up product from Pioneer was the SH-P1 but I wasn't able to find a price: source:  https://global.pioneer/en/corp/info/history/chronology/archives/1950/ (page down to 1963 and select Home Audio on the right to see the photo) It would have been so cool if t...