A Crummy Commercial

The weather / atmosphere was certainly kooky on Wednesday, at least here: the picture was taken through the screen That's not fog, it's smoke from MN or Canada ?  The island is underneath there somewhere south of Escanaba in the poor air quality: source:  https://www.accuweather.com/en/us/content/59538/smoke-map/2640047 The air is heavy and still - so I've been staying inside, taking it easy which is not saying much since I don't do that much even when things are nice.  One good thing, the smoke seems to have calmed the temperature somewhat. Unless it moves out I think I'll skip going to the store this week. With apologies to Carl Sandburg: Smoke The smoke comes in on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then lays down for a multi-day nap. original:   https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45032/fog-56d2245d7b36c Update 7-16-2026 9 AM: Sandburg didn't mention a fog horn but this morning I started hearing what's probabl...

Mentioned on the piclist: https://archive.org/search?query=subject%3A%22Elektor%22 also this Elektor collection: https://archive.org/details/ElektorMagazine/Elektor%5Bnonlinear.ir%5D%201974-12/ Per the wiki, a Dutch based electronics magazine so they may not all be in english, however it's always possible to use translate.google.com . the elektor site has a search including old issues: www.elektormagazine.com As long as the internet lives, I will NEVER run out of magazines to look at !  :) Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

I saw an email on the Piclist that Microchip Technology (the PIC people) have made the full XC compilers including the optimization stuff (whatever that is) free for the downloading.  It used to be that the unoptimizing compiler was available as a part of MPLAB.  Here is the press release: https://ir.microchip.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1403/microchip-expands-developer-access-with-free-mplab-xc-compilers-and-mplab-machine-learning-development-suite I've made many attempts to learn programming beyond PIC assembly language but never made much progress.  Theoretically it should increase productivity but I dunno - I'm just not that great at programming.  It sounds like a lot of folks are becoming, in effect: "systems analysts". they don't write code, they spec what they want the code to do.  Then the AI generates the code.  The person then reviews, tests and tweaks the input to AI for any necessary changes.  I can't see doing that either, especi...

Available here: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78084 or here: https://archive.org/download/AgathaBundle/The%20Mysterious%20Mr.%20Quin_%20A%20Shor%20-%20Agatha%20Christie.pdf The book is in the public domain as of 1/1/2026. I listened to several stories in the book on Chapter a Day: https:\/\/wpr-podcast.streamguys1.com\/cad\/cad260629.mp3 https:\/\/wpr-podcast.streamguys1.com\/cad\/cad260630.mp3 https:\/\/wpr-podcast.streamguys1.com\/cad\/cad260701.mp3 https:\/\/wpr-podcast.streamguys1.com\/cad\/cad260702.mp3 https:\/\/wpr-podcast.streamguys1.com\/cad\/cad260703.mp3 I wanted to read more even though I'm kind of tired of murder shows in general - these three stories didn't involve murder just mystery.  But after reading some of the stories in the book (12 in all, 3 of them were on Chapter a Day) there are indeed murders a plenty :( One thing that the internet does do well is looking up unfamiliar words, for example: "two countries separated by a common language" - so...

Interesting article from IEEE Spectrum : https://spectrum.ieee.org/ukraine-ground-drones Yikes !  Killer machines flying AND rolling around ?  No, thank you ! The vision of killer robots reminded me of this Philip K. Dick story, The Defenders : https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/28767 It was dramatized on the NBC old time radio show: X-1  (note that the story isn't quite the same as the Galaxy  original but the essence is there): https://archive.org/details/XMinusOne560522052TheDefenders Spoiler alert:  The story starts years after a doomsday nuclear exchange between the US and the Soviet Union.  The remaining populations of both sides have retreated below ground to escape the radiation.  Both sides use robots called:  Leadys  to continue the fight above ground.  However the robots of both sides stopped fighting without ever telling the humans and instead created fake war news and video on how the war was continuing.  In the meantime ...

I finally caught a buck on the cam: He must have been spooked by the click or the red glow since he turned around and walked south.  I only rarely see a buck during the day.  Once spring after the snow melted I found this in the side yard: Later this doe was unperturbed by the cam and walked on by: On a different subject, I was wondering what the heck this is since I'm fully disconnected and refunded: Of course Frontier has to gig me yet again - will it be the last time ?  we'll see. Finally, one bad thing about the island is that USPS Informed Delivery tells you about mail that you will receive tomorrow , so if you see something like this: you have an extra day to wonder:  "what is this from the IRS ?"  I *think* I know what it is but who knows, Kreskin ?? Update, July 11, 2026 afternoon: The IRS letter arrived and it was just a note that someone had used id.me to create an account on irs.gov - so no big deal, this was the previous mention of id.me: https://wb...

I found out that Practical Wireless , a UK ham radio magazine, is available via overdrive.com, nice !   https://www.overdrive.com/media/8765740/practical-wireless In addition Overdrive still has a few 2023 issues from the now defunct CQ Amateur Radio , too. https://www.overdrive.com/media/5855264/cq-amateur-radio I mentioned Overdrive and CQ before: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2024/04/cq-magazine.html Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm