A Crummy Commercial

It is never good when the old hometown gets mentioned online: it does look long and steep but hard to tell https://eu.jsonline.com/story/news/2024/06/30/it-just-broke-loose-what-the-brewers-escalator-accident-felt-like/74260968007/ My mother had a phobia about escalators.  I never got the whole story on why but all I know is that she never rode escalators when I was a kid.  When I would go shopping with her to downtown Milwaukee we would always either take the stairs or an elevator at the department stores. It was no big deal until the folks started taking trips to Europe.  There were some places like airports or train stations where she had to take the escalator - there was no choice - so she finally learned a way to take them. But she never liked escalators - I can just hear her response in my mind if this had happened when she was alive: "See ?  I told you" I can kinda see why people might be squeamish about escalators, all those interlocking metal bits in motion puts me i

I saw this picture (reversed black to white) on Farcebook: from the second issue of Electronics magazine, May 1930 source: https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Electronics/30s/Electronics-1930-05.pdf And this Westinghouse version, too: These thermionic trees remind me of my childhood.  The Sunday Milwaukee Journal had an outdoor section which often featured a painting by Mel Kishner.  The fall/winter landscapes would often have detailed stylized trees like this one: Homecoming This was so frequent that if anyone in my family saw a similar tree IRL or a photo or a piece of artwork they would simply remark: "Kishner"   :) Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm  

I've mentioned in passing our fellow travelers in electronic project land, the musicians: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/01/vitamin-q.html These folks must also be responsible for the various colors of die cast aluminum project boxes from  Hammond and others.  I imagine it makes it easier on stage to pick the stomp box you want when there is more than just plain aluminum color.  Also the obsession with tube amplification by musicians must help with the availability of tubes/sockets/transformers for ham radio tube fans. Anyway, I got an email from Jameco about a Forrest Mims project that pointed here: https://www.jameco.com/Jameco/workshop/DIY/atari-punk-console.html But Gmail didn't want to show the link for some reason so I searched for lo-fi synth and came upon a mention of this book: https://www.nicolascollins.com/HEM3/HEM3home.htm cover picture source: https://www.nicolascollins.com/HEM3/pictures/HEM3.jpg The author was kind enough to include links to  multiple chapters o

I finally did get my order of boards for the LF Converter kit so the kit is back in stock. http://wb9kzy.com/lfconv.htm Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

Another detailed picture from Shorpy: source and larger version: https://www.shorpy.com/node/22330 Here's a slightly different version from the Library of Congress site: source and larger version: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2017762812/resource/ And just about in the exact center of the picture you can zoom in to see the letters:  QS and part of a T, below them the word: devote, An issue of QST !! Actually there are only a few magazines that I recognize as still being published today:  The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper's, The Billboard (I think it's just Billboard now and only covers music): Senor Wences lived to 103 and was on Ed Sullivan with the spinning plates act :) Presumably the QST issue on the newsstand was November 1938: https://archive.org/details/QST_1938_11 https://www.worldradiohistory.com/INTERNATIONAL/QST/QST-1938-11.pdf Unfortunately this is the QST issue that announces the death of Ross Hull, the editor of QST !  This was mentioned in passing befo

For the first time in a long time (since September 2022) I decided to try pressure canning some dried garbanzo beans.   These round beauties have a nice flavor, very hearty.  Usually I pressure can 4 pints at a time.  I pre-soaked the garbanzos in salted water for 8 hours. But when I started putting the soaked garbanzos into the canning jars I realized that I only had enough for 2 pints - I had split the 1 pound bag in half using my kitchen scale but I should have used the whole bag ! In defense of my memory, in 2022 I was still working on a 20 pound bag of garbanzos so that must have messed up my calculations.  Anyway I canned just two of the pint jars for 12 minutes at 10 psi after adding 1/8 teaspoon of salt to each jar.  They are delicious. But it occurred to me that I should have a kitchen notebook similar to my lab notebooks !  Since shifting over to the graph paper style for the lab notebook I now have a stack of regular lined marble notebooks that need a purpose ! The first thi

Continuing with the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow mentioned on Sunday:   https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2024/06/jordan-love-rumored-contract-numbers.html   Source: https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/which-quarterback-will-be-the-first-to-get-to-60-million Rumor is for $11 million for 2024 and then $60 million per year for the next 5 years, $311,000,000 total Gold is roughly $2500 per troy ounce, so 311,000,000 / 2500  =  124,400 ounces of gold A "standard" gold bar is 400 ounces or 27.5 pounds and is 7 x 3 5/8 x 1 3/4 inches: source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_bar   for gold bar size see: https://www.carpathiangold.com/how-big-is-a-gold-bar-sizes-weights-explained/#How_big_is_a_full_bar_of_gold Jordan would be paid the equivalent of 124,400 / 400 or 311 bars (over 4 tons !) too big for a pot but which would probably fit in a dump truck but be sure to keep the tailgate UP ! Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

 I saw this picture on Fah-che-book: From this article in February 1941 Popular Mechanics, page 298: continued here:  The article can be found on Archive: https://archive.org/details/sim_popular-mechanics_1941-02_75_2/page/298/mode/2up?view=theater or on Google:   https://books.google.ie/books?id=ytkDAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false One of these days I have to try building a regen ! Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

A dump truck full of gold awaits Jordan Love (and Ronika) at the end of the rainbow: source: https://twitter.com/dkensmoe/status/1804857537335799974 Now what private jet will they be getting ?  :)   But I bet Jordan would be willing to give it all up if his Dad was still alive. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

Interesting story by Eric Berger, Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/06/family-whose-roof-was-damaged-by-space-debris-files-claims-against-nasa/ If I was NASA, I'd just pay - less than $100,000 is a rounding error on the SLS rocket ship budget. Why is that bracket thingy so heavy ?  It just looks way too solidly built for something going into space.  The walls of the Lunar Module were hardly thicker than a beer can ! Second, an interesting video by Anton on Voyager 1 working again: source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5wUqhpr07M Fortran ?  wow !  I recall using Fortran (with punched cards yet) in college in 1977 for a senior project but I would have thought they'd use assembly language. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm 

Dr. Matt talks about the solar cycle and explains the mechanism of pole reversal: source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxnqrEBxmm4 the cycle 25 wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle_25 I keep saying it to myself but I need to work on some antennas - before long this cycle will be over. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm  

I was searching for The Time Machine on Archive and found this: https://archive.org/details/uncommon-ephemera-f00121-part-1-the-time-machine Kind of a Reader's Digest version of the Time Machine movie with Rod and Yvette in 21 minutes !  Is that really a prompt to advance to the next picture or a T ? Of course there is a wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filmstrip And Archive has hundreds of filmstrips:   https://archive.org/details/uncommon-ephemera-filmstrips I noticed that many of the titles shown are "in living red and white": At first I thought this was Anscochrome syndrome:"it's really good for taking pictures of pizza"   https://spruemeistermodelwerkes.com/2019/02/24/the-heartbreak-of-anscochrome/ or maybe The Cisco Kid syndrome: But no, it appears that they were toned black and white photographs - I'll never understand why this was done . I know we had filmstrips in school, sometimes projected for the whole class, sometimes with a viewer for a

I thought this wiki article and periodic table were interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova_nucleosynthesis https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/Nucleosynthesis_periodic_table.svg I would have assumed that the heaviest metals came directly from the big bang or from supernovas but no, they come from colliding neutron stars ! And I had heard that iron was the end of the line as far as fusion in a star.  Above iron, the fusion process requires external energy to sustain the process rather than giving off surplus energy.  And this extra energy comes from an explosion when the star is unable to resist the compressive force of gravity with the outward force of fusion.  The star compresses and then explodes creating heavier elements. Dr. Matt has a video on cosmic nucelosynthesis: source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yLGeviU8FM I remember an OTR Sci Fi story, Project Mastodon by Clifford D. Simak on X-1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgzWq-4NngM Builders of

Lately the USPS has been messing up my kit delivery.  I can't speak to incoming delivery of mail orders - all seems OK per Informed Delivery and I haven't had any complaints from customers about orders they've sent. Today I got an email from a customer that the USPS confirmed they lost an order parcel.  The USPS was able to show the customer a picture of the parcel as received locally but did not know what had happened to it.  It had been marked as delivered to a P.O.Box - problem is that the customer parcel was sent to a street address: The parcel was mailed on Monday June 3 in the afternoon.  It was marked as delivered by the USPS on Saturday June 8 at 3:12 PM.  Now one nice thing is that USPS Ground Advantage is insured so my customer will hopefully get his money back from the USPS, we will see.  Insurance is one improvement over the former 1st class parcel service. And there are minor annoyances with the USPS, for example the tracking was temporarily unavailable when I

Yes there were ham radio cartoonists other than Gil and ham radio magazines other than QST with April Fool's articles: source: https://archive.org/details/73-magazine-1967-04 This issue of 73 is mentioned in this nice blog post about the artist, K3SUK: https://www.onallbands.com/ham-radio-and-morse-code-in-popular-culture-mad-73-magazine-and-remembering-artist-wayne-pierce-k3suk-sk/ Modern society is divided into many enclaves, true of ham radio, too.  Hopefully stuff like cartoons helps to break down divisions between those groups. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

I thought this video was really interesting (although it is over a year old): source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mXRf5YiWJk The gist of the video is that the Hubble is a longer version of the KH-11 spy satellite.  Longer both physically and in focal length - hence the name for the KH-11: Stubby Hubble. NASA was given 2 KH11 satellites plus parts for a third ?  And they might use them as the basis for a new Mars orbiter and/or the Nancy Grace Roman space telescope ?   Wow ! In 2019 President Trump tweeted a presumed KH-11 photo of an Iranian launch facility after a failed Safir rocket launch.  From the center shine this is a cellphone picture of a printed handout so the actual files may be even more detailed: I wonder about the gyros in the KH-11, are they the same/better/worse than the ones in the Hubble ?  I also wonder if NASA might take those parts from the third spy satellite to make an upgraded Lunar Recon. Orbiter ?  Lots of stuff happening on the Moon these days - and with

After watching Homer Price tinkering with his Uncle's doughnut machine: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2024/06/homer-price.html I mentioned Homer Price to some friends from grade school in an email, one counter suggestion was: source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08QDu2pGtkc   Hemo the Magnificent directed by Frank Capra with Richard Carlson, Sterling Holloway and of course Dr. Frank Baxter.  I didn't know as a kid that Dr. Frank was an English professor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_C._Baxter Of course there were a whole series of movies with Dr. Frank Baxter but maybe we'll save those for another post.  However the sciencey movie that I remember was: source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRzl1wHc43I Our Friend the Atom by the Disney folks.  As Walt mentions there was a companion book: https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.507282 Unfortunately as Dr. Watters informed us in Chemistry 101 at UWM in 1974, the whole nuclear industry was predicated on breeder reactor

I've been trying some new security related stuff after watching this episode of NOVA: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/secrets-in-your-data/ I added the Privacy Badger add-on for Firefox, it seems to work seamlessly and doesn't break any sites that I've used.  I also tried a VPN although not sure if that really qualifies for security.  Here's what I found after a week or so: Stuff that is better: My DSL modem is set to maximum security which is fine but before the VPN the maximum security setting broke stuff like audio streaming from Yesterday USA or Antioch OTR.  It also broke the automagic NIST time setting of Windows 10.  And I couldn't check my WB9KZY email either.  So I'd have to downshift the modem security to check those sites and then remember to reset it to maximum later.  But now with the VPN they all work even with maximum security.  One other advantage if the server is outside the US is being able to see sites like bilibili.tv   Stuff that is wors

After mentioning Nancy another drawing of a kid involved with radio turned up of facetbook: It's from the book: Homer Price by Robert McCloskey: https://archive.org/details/homerprice0000unse_z3p6 Homer builds his radio with the benign presence of a skunk named Aroma - who is in the above picture.  Homer hears about an award ceremony on his radio and that ceremony figures in the story.  Also Homer has an antenna at the roof peak of his house as seen here: One of the more famous stories in the book concerns doughnuts, here is a filmed version: source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXeYNmqp8X4 I'm sure I must have read this book as a kid although I didn't remember it - it is a fun read. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm