A Crummy Commercial

Eric Berger at Ars Technica has started a new column called Daily Telescope: https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/10/daily-telescope-on-halloween-a-clear-view-of-a-jovian-golem/ Today it's what looks like a face in the swirling clouds of Jupiter: I remember as a kid in the Milwaukee area we went trick or treating on the evening BEFORE Halloween, it was called: Beggars Night: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beggars_Night I always remember one house on the next street to the west which had a basket with a sign:  Take One !   Yes, the basket was completely empty by the time we got there.  I wonder if they set it out that way ?  :) Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

I remember when I was a kid there was a show called The CBS Children's Film Festival.  Hosted by Kukla, Fran and Ollie they'd have these movies, usually shorts or excerpts of longer films mostly with non-US kids as the main focus.  I remember a few of them like: Skinny and Fatty or The Red Balloon.  I also remember seeing part of 24 Eyes but it isn't listed in the wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBS_Children%27s_Film_Festival Anyway, it was a wonderful show.  Recently  I  discovered this site: https://rarefilmm.com which is kinda the 21st century adult equivalent of the CBS Children's Film Festival but for all ages.  I haven't had too much of a chance to check it out but the films are summarized enough to make it easier to decide if you want to invest the time in watching them. Even some US films are mentioned: https://rarefilmm.com/2023/10/the-stars-are-singing-1953/    with Rosemary Clooney https://rarefilmm.com/2023/10/doctor-rhythm-1938/   with Bing Crosby

I ran out of Windex this afternoon.  Instead of going to the store (which isn't open anyway) why not use our friend the internet ? https://kalynbrooke.com/house-and-home/homemade-window-cleaner-with-vinegar/ necessity => home made Windex = VVindex VVindex vvorks but doesn't evaporate as quickly as ammonia Windex.  It's certainly better than nothing. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

I was fiddling around in the basement and came upon this box: the inside view: From what I can tell it has never been used.  Not too surprising since as I recall the Oster blender we had just didn't work very well after French dressing seeped down inside the mechanism.  Probably just as well it was never used since pasta is mostly carbs, right ? The Oster stuff was actually still made in Glendale, Wisconsin, USA during the 1970s, not too far from where I grew up.  Some of the fellows I worked with at the Village of Fox Point during college summers also took an evening shift at Oster.   Not me, working 12 or more hours a day sounded like too much ! Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

https://www.ebay.com/itm/275196571870 I saw a picture of one of these on Face, interesting idea.  Since Bliley was a crystal maker, their take on an alignment oscillator used a bunch of crystals using an interesting drum switch: https://www.ebay.com/itm/275196571870 I've seen some of these units for sale on ebay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/275196571870 A previous blog entry on the Bliley VF-1: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-bliley-vf-1.html   The manual is available online courtesy of a Bliley scion:    http://bliley.net/XTAL/docs/manuals/CCO-1/CCO-1C_Tech_Manual-72.PDF   An interesting design. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm 

I've been listening to this book: https://www.wpr.org/code-six-james-grippando An interview with the author: source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvtdB2WTuPo One thing mentioned in the book that I never knew was that IBM sold punch card technology to the Nazis before World War II.  And that that enabled the Nazis to round up Jewish people in Germany with more ease.  Thomas Watson, the head of IBM, was given a medal by the Nazis - not a good look although he did give it back.  The book also mentions that Lindbergh also received the Nazi medal (but of course he never returned it). I guess it never occurred to me before that something so clunky and old would have been such an assist to evil.  I used punch cards in college for running Fortran programs on the UWM mainframe.  There would generally be a crisis near the end of the term when the class accounts would run out of money and your program wouldn't run :)  Also used punch cards at GTE for programming the Sentry because that

I got my electric bill in the mail from the co-op on 10-23-202 - fine, I usually get out the checkbook and get the payment ready and mail it the next day. But not this time. Why ?  Because I never got my bill last month.  I ended up looking the bill up online, printing it and took the payment to the co-op on my bicycle.  The thing is that I'm starting to lose trust in the post office.  For some reason all of the mail on the island, even if it is sent to someone else on the island, has to be sent to Green Bay.  Then hopefully it comes back the next day.   In a way this is nice because I can use Informed Delivery to see if there is any mail for me that day.  But when service changes (gets slower) it changes the way the postal customers use the mail. I remember hearing my Dad tell me about the mail service when he was a kid (might have been in Appleton or Milwaukee) - there were TWO mail deliveries a day.  This was really handy for a quick reply, you might get a letter in the morning,

 No, not this guy: Nicola Walker as Annika Strandhed source: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/nicola-walker-annika-1920x1080-1.jpg I watched the second episode of season two of Annika on PBS Sunday night.  Annika is a murder show but with a twist, the main character, Annika Strandhed, is the head of the Marine Homicide Unit in Scotland.  The twist is that Annika, played by Nicola Walker, talks directly to the viewer, often with some aside about her own life but mainly to bring up some cultural/historical facts that may be related to the case (or her own life). Annika was originally a series of brief radio shows on the BBC.  In that show, Annika is still a detective but in Norway.  But as with the TV show, the crime and detection tends to be cut and dried but the cultural asides are a hoot, and of course Annika speaks directly to the listener. the BBC radio show mp3 files:  https://archive.org/details/AnnikaStrandedr4 the PBS web page for Annika:  https://

It never dawned on me before that a corn maze could also be called a maize maze :) source: https://www.bing.com/th?id=OHR.PoconosMaze_EN-US4210947594_1920x1200.jpg I do recall this commercial though: source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W96AVpiu7cI But unfortunately for the Mazola people, I mis-remembered it being an ad for Promise: source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEIcRX-mQ6Q starring Bill "never turn down a role" Shatner. And yes, I was scared as a kid by this Twilight Zone episode: source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXHKDb0CNjA I always meant to watch this Shatner movie: source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHUfHj2lTaM Pre-Trek and all Esperanto ! And another of Shatner's movies I've been meaning to watch:   source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqHkO_LkKnc And I have blogged on The Brothers Karamazov before (sorta): https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/11/my-favorite-peanuts-comic-strip.html Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

. Hopefully Mann's will put sugar on sale soon because this apple sauce when completely natural is a little sour. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

 Hek, I missed out on these: source: https://hackaday.io/project/165498-classic-radioshack-protoboards Unfortunately as mentioned before: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/05/another-one-bit-dust-year-ago.html BG Micro is out of business.  But the hackaday poster did also include design files so it might be possible to get some made, we'll see. I'm down to one of these: Incidentally I remember reading that Global Specialties was originally called Continental Specialties but that the company name was changed because the phrase "continental specialties" means something a lot different to the English than electronics parts and equipment :) Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

I was watching Anton's latest video on Mars: source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TydGU2RI8o which had a number of interesting topics but the one that I thought was really interesting was this picture: source: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2008/TwoWorldsOneSun_Bouic_2683.jpg from this page:  https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap200802.html I never knew that the sunsets of Mars are blue in color.  Anton explains why in the video.  But Mars and Earth seem to be opposites in almost all respects, even sky color and sunset color. NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day is a cool site that I will have to start checking regularly:   https://apod.nasa.gov/apod Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=falmlosmcVo Things are a lot different at my old high school than when I graduated 50 years ago.  Modern computing makes a huge difference over the Teletype insterfaced time sharing that we had in 1973.  Glad that Nicolet is investing in the newest stuff.  But I hope they are still requiring social studies and English and gym.  Practical and hands-on is fine and must be engaging for the students but without ethics, context and art all you get is commerce.  I hope the sophomores are still reading Julius Caesar this upcoming March ! But why did youtube suggest videos on Machiavelli and Hitler after the video finished?   No, that shouldn't reflect on me directly since I watched the video in a private window without signing in :) Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

No, not Emma Peel, that's a completely different topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idtYckLIZnI (I was in the 6th grade when the Avengers was on TV) It has been a good year for fruit on the island.  Not just the grapes mentioned before https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2023/10/grape-juice-in-my-opinion-welchs-earns.html but also apples: Usually I just eat the apples that I harvest but there are just too many this year, and while no store would sell them they taste good and this year the apples don't even have that many worms.  So how to preserve the excess ? I suppose that juicing is possible but both apple trees that I have (a red and a golden, I'm not sure of exactly which varieties they are) but neither has juicy apples.  So that would leave either drying or canning.  I will try both ways but think I'll try making apple sauce for canning first.  While reading a recipe in the old Better Homes cookbook I noticed that they suggest peeling the apples.  That stirred a memo

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/10/canadas-84-year-radio-time-check-has-stopped-because-of-accuracy-concerns/ The interesting thing to me was that the CHU digital time code audio was incorporated at a low level as background sound into The Empire Strikes Back soundtrack.  I've watched that movie several times and never noticed it.   This blog has more info on the sound designer for Empire: https://swling.com/blog/tag/the-empire-strikes-back/ The CHU time code can be heard about 30 seconds into this clip: source: https://youtu.be/BTP-PXeG9Fg   Of course WWV (and WWVH) hide the digital time code into a rather slow, low frequency one bit per second HUM type of modulation.  The CHU method is more straightforward.   I always thought about a possible kit for a CHU receiver that could be used to set a clock.  WWVB has a hard time getting into the NE of the US and the phase modulated WWVB clock decoder chips by Everset (which are supposed to be more sensitive) never quite got into th

https://www.wired.com/story/whole-earth-catalog-now-online-internet-archive/ https://wholeearth.info/ I've got a couple of copies of the Whole-earth catalog around somewhere - they do kinda suffer from ARRL Handbook or The Art of Electronics disease: the physical books are REALLY large/heavy/cumbersome.  It's nice to be able to search and page through online or even use PDF files. One nice thing about the Whole Earth catalog in the olden days was that they also had a store, I remember buying books from them that were mentioned in the catalog, some of them can also be borrowed online on archive: https://archive.org/details/possumlivinghowt0000free https://archive.org/details/profilesoffuture0000arth_x1l1 https://archive.org/details/howtocutyourowno00bent Now Burgess Meredith would never have to worry about his specs on the steps, he could just stay home and read. source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLoNGRVeC7Y Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

https://archive.org/details/against-all-odds-01-what-is-statistics I can remember in the 1990s when I first started getting on the internet I went on the Annenberg/CPB web site and entered a drawing.  And I actually won.  I was able to pick out a video course from Annenberg/CPB.  This was on VHS tapes, a boxed set of educational programs.  I chose: Against All Odds: Inside Statistics.  I had seen this program on WYCC channel 20 when I lived in the Chicago area and thought it was well done.  I was a QA engineer at GTE but never really quite understood statistics.  I remember going through a course at GTE but I didn't see how it was useful for testing digital things where it's about pass/fail - the course was aimed at physical measurements of a population of items. The only criticism that I have of Against all Odds is that Dr. Amabile moves her head too much, it's distracting - I suppose some movement is good, no one wants to view "Clutch Cargo lips" but still :) th

. I read this article with interest: https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/10/nasa-is-about-to-launch-a-mission-of-pure-discovery-to-a-metal-asteroid/ With Stephen Clark joining Eric Berger, Arstechnica has even more coverage of space related news - I check the site daily. The Psyche mission put me in mind of the Heinlein novel: The Rolling Stones   source: https://lwcurrey.cdn.bibliopolis.com/pictures/141054.jpg?v=1360164753 audio book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th_CzLK06c4 Among other things the book mentions asteroid mining.  Unfortunately there might be as few as 9 asteroids which have high metal content.  But Heinlein portrayed the solar system as it should have been, with Venus and Mars being more hospitable to life than reality.  The book also covers a trip to Mars which must have been the inspiration for the Star Trek TOS episode: The Trouble with Tribbles source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/50/ST_TroubleWithTribbles.jpg Anyway, the Psyche mission provides a

Usually I start the week by checking the New Yorker page for the cartoons in this weeks issue: https://www.newyorker.com/ But for some reason this week I completely forgot to check until Friday the lucky 13th.  I always like the ones from Roz Chast, this weeks issue had this cartoon: source: https://media.newyorker.com/cartoons/652095588e0f0f8f637a52f6/master/w_600,c_limit/231016_a27684.jpg However as the literalist, I think Roz was conflating an old tube color TV with a microwave.  Microwaves are actually quite simple, basically a timer, a power supply, a cavity magnetron and a cabinet: source: https://beam.pk/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/inside-microwave-oven-diagram.jpg Here is a page with an inside picture view: https://www.christinedemerchant.com/dissecting-microwave.html Newer microwaves might have a switching supply but still, not that much to it.  But I like the detail (Roz Chast abhors blank space in a cartoon) such as:  hex-head neut stick  :) Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http:/

. source: https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/10/nasa-finds-water-and-organics-in-asteroid-sample-possible-clues-to-origin-of-life/ Both carbon and water in the residue outside the actual sample container - pretty impressive quick results from what looks like static cling dirt ! :) Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm