A Crummy Commercial

A communications course I took in college was previously mentioned: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-bit-player-claude-shannon.html The bottom line:  the students wanted to learn how TV and radio worked, the prof and one student wanted to talk about signals and noise.  Unfortunately the practical side was emphasized but the theory was what we needed. Rita doesn't know what to think Anyway I clicked on this old Watch Mr. Wizard program and wish I had seen it when I was younger although I would have been only 7 or 8 in 1963: source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l381_ho8KR8 Don Herbert does a nice job (especially considering he was on regular commercial TV) of explaining the topic of noise.  Really this is what ham radio is all about, getting your signal through the noise whether that noise is natural or man made. Don Herbert wiki:   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Herbert Don Herbert site (everything is sold out :)  http://www.mrwizardstudi...

It's the day before Fat Tuesday but the truck from the mainland comes up on Monday and Thursday so this is the day to go to Mann's.  I roll up to the store and my next door neighbor is out front and says: "weren't you just here last week ?"  - so I said: "Donuts, man !" I tried them and they were OK.  Boxed donuts are never quite as good as ones right from the fat but these were fine. It was a nice day here in the afternoon, sunny, above 40F.  If my tummy wasn't weighed down by the Paczki (only one) I'd go out and drill some maple trees !  :) Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm  

I have a Thomas Nelson KJV Bible from the 20th century.  It was furnished through the courtesy of the Not Ashamed Ministries, Lawrenceville GA, director: Lloyd Ferguson.  Incidentally, I happened to hear about the free Bible offer from a SW broadcast of Not Ashamed Ministries, shortwave used to be useful :) As can be seen the words in red are those of Jesus. On a completely different subject: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-strange-case-of-peekaboo-power-bill.html I was thinking about the billing date and finally dug out the latest bill and saw this: This would have been more helpful BEFORE they started ! I'm afraid I usually just ignore the words in red on the power bill.  Maybe my customers do the same with my website and documentation ? Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm  

It was such a nice day that I took a walk out to the woods even though the snow is over my boot tops in some places.  And the widowmaker is still up there. There are two little trees holding it almost level so I guess it's going to take some trunk rot before it finally comes down. not seeing too much rot so far, being off the ground hurts   I'm still debating whether to start drilling the maple trees, this would be kinda early but OTOH it's a shame to miss a "run" of sap.  It's been hard freezes at night but sunny and warm during the day - that's the recipe for both pot holes and maple sap.  I did see some budding pot holes on Thursday, evidence of freeze-thaw.  Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm  

IMO the internet stinks for recent history, the boring details like what did this place look like in 1969 - that kind of thing.  However there are a few outposts like Pinterest that do have a little history (along with a LOT of ads). Recently I saw this Red Barn ad in a Pinterest email.   Curiously while I don't think I ever was in a Red Barn restaurant the ad did spark a memory. As I recall there was a Red Barn on Fond du Lac avenue right next to Amateur Electronic Supply.  So I jumped in my internet car and tried to take a "drive" around that area.  Unfortunately Microsoft Bing has killed their streetside part of the maps.  Fortunately Google did a pass through that area for street view fairly recently in November 2025. I *think* this used to be the Red Barn: the barn roof is gone though To the north is where AES used to be: South of the Red Barn was Evans and Kunz pet shop: And finally here is the former Fruit Ranch food store: I tried to verify some of these...

It happens: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/02/byte-magazine-artist-robert-tinney-who-illustrated-the-birth-of-pcs-dies-at-78/ I didn't know Robert Tinney had a site with posters: https://tinney.net/product/1776 I *think* this is the cover of the first issue of Byte that I ever bought: I probably got it at Amateur Electronic Supply ?  Not sure on that. Unfortunately this is what the BYTE covers turned into after a while: I guess you can't blame them, editors are wordsmiths not artists.  They see a blank space and want to fill it with words (in sans serif type yet).  QST covers aren't quite the same since full color and large format, my own corny sunset cover: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2025/09/go-back-50-years.html Byte kinda degenerated from a hobby magazine into yet another corporate rag - I suppose that's where the money was, at least for a while.   I used to enjoy fooling with computers - now they are just another appliance. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY...

Einstein did "thought experiments" => engineers do "design thought experiments" :)  Before simulation or breadboarding the engineer thinks about how to solve the problem, maybe with something new factored in.  Idea (which many engineers don't like to confront) is to make things more cheaply. This was one of the first ways for an experimenter or a ham to add speech to an electronic project: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Instrument_SP0256 I have one of those chips (SP0256A-AL2 from Radio Shack): I did take it out of the package and misplaced the doc Here is the Radio Shack datasheet for the 276-1784 SP0256A-AL2 chip: https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_gispeechGe56AAL2datasheetRadioShack2761784Apr1984_15859898 I can't recall ever using the chip.  There are still a few of them on Ebay but the prices !  Also, the phoneme based voice synthesizers didn't sound that great.  So the SP0256 isn't really an option for the 21st century project desi...