A Crummy Commercial

 OR  precision versus accuracy During the first year of college I took a course on measurement.  I remember lots of old Weston analog meters with no digital instruments in sight.  And we learned that precision is the degree to which a measurement is divided.  Accuracy is how close that measurement is to being correct. Often these terms are misused in my opinion.  For example: weapons are now often referred to as "precision guided".  It seems to me what they really mean is high accuracy.  Dropping a bomb into a pickle barrel, that kind of thing is accuracy.  High precision would be a bomb just large enough to destroy the pickle barrel and nothing else.  A punch in the nose is high-precision, only one person's nose is involved.  I suppose what they are trying to say is that fewer bombs need to be dropped now (due to increased accuracy) than before to apply the required destructive force. Anyhow, wasn't feeling that great today and tho...

 A couple of years ago about a month before Memorial day I was on my way to check on the maple sap jugs in the woods.  Stepping into the woods from the field I was startled by a fluttering noise and the brief appearance of an animal.  It was a bald eagle !  It's fairly unusual to see eagles here, about a mile from Lake Michigan.  And when I have seen them the eagles have been roosting high in trees not on the ground.  But an eagle actually in the woods on the ground, very strange. Walking back to the house I could see that the eagle was injured and couldn't fly high or far.  I got my camera and put on a telephoto lens.  By the time I got back out near the woods the eagle had flown next door to the "stump dump".  I was able to catch a few shots of the bird from fairly far away (ducking behind an old school bus for cover).  I just couldn't get close enough for a good picture.   it's weird to see an eagle on the ground unless it's feed...

 Sorry Yogi.   Sometimes deer are fairly easy to see, even in the daylight.  Although I only rarely see the bucks, usually the does and fawns.  Usually they are browsing and moving.   On rare occasions they are plunked down, chewing their cud. But once in a while I'll see a doe just standing in the field. she would be running if not for the little ones (three!)   That's the time to grab the camera and get out there because she has probably just given birth and there are newborn fawns to gawk at.  Mom won't like the approach, there may be grunting and stamping of hooves.  But you can get right up to them. this is a new born fawn from a few seasons ago You can indeed observe a lot by watching ! Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

Not me anyway.  Maybe that's the big attraction of ham radio for a kid, the Morse code and radio terminology that other people just don't understand. Larry Zdeb posted a 1942 Captain Midnight secret message on the Radio Premiums Face group: I spend too much time on Face So with a challenge like that, the hint was that a code was on the Captain Midnight 1942 Flight Commander medal.  I looked at the front and the back picture of that medal via image search and no help. unsure of the hint Then I figured it would use a Captain Midnight 1942 Code-o-graph.  The hint was for setting the Code-o-graph but since I didn't understand that, brute force would have to work. that brass part on the right was an opening for a photo I looked at the images of the Code-o-graph on the internet, the inner dial has the numbers 1-26, the outer ring has the letters.  At first I  tried "cutting out" the numbered dial using Photoshop and then could it be turned somehow ? I was never good a...

 One of the translators on the translator subreddit suggested that the characters on the Terryscope https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/05/terryscope-translated-from-chinese-to.html   could just as well be Japanese Kanji characters.  So I tried Kanji and got this: did this preview 21st century people being tattooed with language characters they don't understand ? They are all basically the same except for Akira which means discernment in English rather than bright as Ming does in Chinese.  OTOH, the Google translator (I usually use the Bing translator) says that Akira means Ming in English :)   Basically they were just decorative characters ! Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

 I didn't accept the offer.  this was blogged on previously:   https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/05/what-deal.html     Also seeing that I was the only one watching, I unwatched - no sense in feigning interest.   Ebay didn't even email their usual:  "you better jump on this PDQ, the same offer has been sent to others" :) Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

 (no not a musical) I remember when we used to drive up (in the 20th century) to Washington Island from the Milwaukee area.  The freeway stopped at Manitowoc (Waldo boulevard) and we'd proceed to drive up to Door County on Wisconsin highways 42/57.   Highway 42 proceeds north from Waldo boulevard along Lake Michigan, eventually getting to Two Rivers, WI.  Along that lakefront roadway we'd always pass a building with the name:  Hamilton on it. it wasn't this one but it had a similar font   I always wondered what Hamilton was. Fast forward to the 21st century, PBS Wisconsin showed the documentary movie:  Typeface   on their Director's Cut program.  (here is an interview with the director of typeface:   https://pbswisconsin.org/watch/directors-cut/directors-cut-justine-nagan-typeface/ Also, PBS Wisconsin had a documentary which mentions Hamilton on their Wisconsin Hometown Stories program about Manitowoc/Two Rivers: https://pbswis...

Good for us but why didn't the owner put the Terryscope together ? Did most of the translation by using a very nice site:   https://learnchineseez.com   I was able to figure out all of the characters except for the top flap, I had missed it  while scanning the character tables.  The character is Ming which is Bright in English: the original is on the right in red This was revealed to me via the subreddit: translator, https://reddit.com/r/translator/new/  a very nice person did the translation in just a few hours !  Amazing ! As I found out on my starting attempt:   https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/05/a-big-but-fun-waste-of-time.html    machine translation is kinda hit and miss.  I did find a slightly better scan on the Hakes auction site but it still didn't seem to work with the Yandex translator.  Also as is true with what we used to called script versus printing in English, a similar difference exists between hand written calligra...

 I got this notification from ebay, $1050 off !: the countdown has begun https://www.ebay.com/itm/143598360784 so the total would be 2057.25 including tax for 100 of the Phaostron meters. I usually "watch" ebay "buy it now" stuff that I'm sorta interested in before buying just for this type of discount, some sellers even have patterns of doing this, so it may save a few dollars. But even though these are really nice meters (not sure if they are taut-band or jeweled or what but they are 50 uA full scale, or 20,000 ohms per volt when used in a VOM) over $20 for a surplus meter that's entering middle age (33) is kind of a lot of money. I do have a similar Phaostron meter which I *think* I bought from (the now departed) BG Micro last century: date code 52nd week of 1981 ? the works are visible But I never used it for anything.  That's the other thing, what would I do with 100 meters, sell them in a kit, a VOM ?  Now one interesting thing is that it would be ...

I saw this   tally of initials   for an Orphan Annie radio premium posted by Larry Zdeb to the radio Premiums group on Face: https://www.facebook.com/groups/907249652996436 Wondering if this has any use as far as something like Morse code ?  Or more probably for Wordle ?  Maybe not since the words in question are names but still it's interesting. Is there a tally of the most common first letters of English words ? Did a little sorting on a spreadsheet: someone in the Chicago area had a job fulfilling premiums for a kids radio show, wonderful ! I need to look into this :) Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

 Milwaukee County has some neat historical aerial maps: https://gis-mclio.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/MCLIO::1967-aerial-photo    The one from 1967 shows the Nike Hercules anti-aircraft missile site (and the radar used to guide it) - these were located across the street from Indian Hill school.  I mentioned this before: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/03/no-squiggly-roof-on-nike-site.html   Here was the best aerial view I had, from the very interesting nikesite.org site: source: http://www.nikesite.org/page17.html   The radar is the red box on the left, the missile site is on the right and my old school is barely visible at the lower right.  The main road connecting them is Brown Deer road in River Hills, a suburb of Milwaukee, WI.  The highway on the right is now I-43. But here I (inexpertly) stitched together several screens of aerial views from 1967 of the missile site with Indian Hill school at the bottom: The Nike site at the top/middle an...

cover photo from Wisconsin Public Radio web page  I started listening to this book on Chapter-a-day from WNMU (90.1 MHz) in Marquette, MI.  It's on here at 8 AM here while I'm exercising. It can also be listened to on-line:  https://www.wpr.org/listen/1925416 or downloaded:   https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/wpr-podcast.streamguys1.com/cad/cad220516h.mp3 I've only heard the first few days of the book but it seems to me that someone should have given Tesla a small notebook and a pencil, he literally scratched out the ideas for his polyphase AC system in the dirt of a Hungarian park ! Thinking of Tesla reminds me of my college electrical machines course when Dr. Staats taught us about the single phase induction motor.  It tickled him to death that there was a "theory" of how it works (the counter-rotating field theory).  And then he demonstrated the various ways that a single phase induction motor could be started (with a capacitor or a switched wind...

 Time for asparagus and ramps: green and fresh The asparagus isn't wild, the deer usually get those.  But the ramps just grow in the woods.  I usually just take a green leaf from each shoot.  I was informed it's best to leave the bulb in the ground since it takes something like 7 years before they attain a nice sized bulb.  Also, the ground is rocky and the bulbs are hard to pull without breaking.  Especially when bugs are biting :) Living off the fat of the land ! Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

Some one uploaded (to archive.org) Digi-key's last catalog from 2011 as a 137 MB pdf file:  https://web.archive.org/web/20120629032030/http://pdfcatalog.digikey.com/US2011/digikey.pdf   It's nice to be able to page through a catalog, even a pdf, to find something.  Searching is wonderful but only if you know the exact name of what you want .  Also it's nice to be able to see not only the vendor you usually use but also other vendors of similar items.   One example: cable ties with mounting hole.  Searching Mouser.com for cable tie mounting hole provides 167  possibilities none were what I envisioned.  So changed the search to just cable ties.  Then drilled down by specifying nylon material, cable ties with mounts, screw mount and finally got what I wanted.  I am sure that just looking at the cable tie section of a paper or even pdf catalog would have been easier. Who knew there was a connector vendor called:  ASSMANN ?  Not me ...

 This is about source code of a sort.  Not computer source code, it's yogurt.  That sweet stuff, mixed with fruit in the dairy case at your grocery store is actually living bacteria.  All you need to do to make your own yogurt is to save a little (two tablespoons, 1/8 cup) and then introduce that starter to some milk.  In no time you will have cloned up a nice supply of yogurt, but you have to add your own fruit and sweetening. First, heat up 1/2 gallon of water to about 120-130 F and then pour it into 4 old cleaned out salad dressing bottles.  Then those are put into a nice styrafoam cooler with a wire rack placed on top.  Then  heat up a little over 1 quart of milk to 185 F on the stove.  Then cool it down to 120-130 F.  Then add that little 1/8 cup of "source code" to the warm milk, mix well and pour into six half-pint jars and screw on the lids (I use canning jars but any glass jars with lids will work).   Then put those 6 jars ...

 I used to kid my Dad - when we would watch the PBS show NOVA (can't believe there have been 49 seasons !), he would never make it through the show, he'd be asleep, at least until I'd make a rude noise. Guess what ?  Now watching NOVA does the same thing to me.  They had a 2 part episode on dinosaurs and the asteroid strike, hosted by David Attenborough (of course his late brother, Richard, was one of the stars of Jurrassic Park): These viewing links are only good through June 8, 2022. https://www.pbs.org/video/dinosaur-apocalypse-the-new-evidence-rchsjr/ https://www.pbs.org/video/dinosaur-apocalypse-the-last-day-h80ueb/ Who doesn't love learning about dinosaurs ?  Especially with that Jurassic Park style CGI.  I made it almost all the way through the first one but by 10pm I was asleep.  You might say who cares, you can watch it online anytime.  Or record it and watch it later.  But I find that often if I do that I won't finish watching the show, ...

 I was listening to some episodes of Terry and the Pirates on Yesterday USA's re-stream of Max Schmid's "Golden Age of Radio".  This 1941 kids show was out of Chicago and sponsored by Libby's canned Tomato and Pineapple juices. Libby's was trying to get kids to drink Tomato and Pineapple juice in 1941   One way for Libby to gauge interest in the show and also sell some juice was to offer premiums.  The "Terryscope", a periscope was offered: half of a Terryscope the other half of the Terryscope The idea was to attach a mirror to each half of the Terryscope, then fold it up and fit the two halves together, trombone style.  The kid could use it as a periscope to look around something.  Or by turning one of the halves 180 degrees the kid could use it to see behind them.  I found those pictures on a web page for Hake's auctions: auction for a Terryscope Anyway, the radio ad mentions that there are real Chinese characters on the Terryscope  so I tried...

 I used to work at a place called Automatic Electric in Northlake, Illinois.  It was a good place to work, I didn't really realize how good at the time.  It was a generous place, not just in the sense of money but generous of spirit.  For example, one of my co-workers didn't have his degree (which is a whole topic for discussion, technical folks without a degree).  So he went to school at the company's expense, but he didn't study engineering, he studied music.   And his boss and the company knew that.  The company made the world a better place by allowing people to further their education / dreams.   But the operations moved out and the building I used to work in was sold in the 20th century.  One of the parts where I worked (in the front, we moved around a lot within the building) was torn down.  Here is how Bing shows it now in 2022 from above: Bing aerial view of Automatic Electric turned so that the front of the building (east) is D...