A Crummy Commercial

Because of the recent death of Pope Francis I was reminded of the movie: The Shoes of the Fisherman .  I remember going to the theater with the folks to see it - movies weren't just comic book entertainment then, they tried to deal with real world problems in a fictional way.  Anyway I particularly remember this scene: source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nci3x67K8uc Anthony Quinn as the new Pope sneaks out of the Vatican in a priest's cassock and walks around Rome.  He comes upon this dying man, his family and the doctor - he tries to help by going to the pharmacy for the doctor and then starts to administer the last rites but when informed that the man is a Jew he sings/says the prayer: Shema Yisrael.  It's a very memorable and moving scene. I listened to the audio book of The Shoes of the Fisherman (over 11 hours !), read by the formidable Alexander Scourby, who used to narrate those National Geographic specials on TV, again a memorable voice.  Ther...

I was watching this really interesting Lucasfilm doc on Howard Carter (the discoverer of King Tut's Tomb): source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BR31Nq04Ng I thought of this book from the "All About Book" series that I had as a kid, All About Famous Scientific Expeditions : https://archive.org/details/allaboutfamoussc00hold/page/58/mode/2up These books were great for kids, not too much heavy detail with nice illustrations and interesting subjects. All About Famous Scientific Expeditions has other stories of science and scientists including Beebe and his diving sphere but King Tut was the one I remembered.   The Mummy was my favorite monster movie, maybe because of King Tut and the death of Lord Carnarvon ?   BTW, Zita Johann, the heroine of The Mummy , was married to John Houseman, who gained latter day fame in the 20th in The Paper Chase . Also, Lord Carnarvon was the real world owner of the building now known from Downton Abbey . Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://...

  I was thinking about the all-pass filter concept (used in the W3AM symmetric audio filter for speech) and recalled that the all-pass filter had been discussed in the Motorola book: Digital Signal Processing and the Microcontroller .  I did an internet search and found this Bitsavers scan on Archive: https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_motorola68SignalProcessingandtheMicrocontroller_11141119/page/n11/mode/2up I first read this book when I got a Motorola 68HC16 course and development board, previously mentioned here: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/06/why-pic.html BTW, the bookmark shown above in my copy was this printed message: Motorola used to do some stuff nicely like introducing new microcontrollers with dev boards where they'd send a refund if you passed a test or completed a task (of course Motorola also did other stuff not quite as good like continuing support and transition to Flash memory ;).  Although I never really used that 68HC16 chip again (way too many ...

I saw this book cover on Face: A little searching found these instances on Archive: https://archive.org/details/theresadventurei0000juli https://archive.org/details/adventures_in_electronics An interesting approach to a kids book.  Rather than the straightforward approach of Alfred P. Morgan, the author of There's Adventure in Electronics , Julian May, has used a fictional story to knit together the concepts and projects of electronics.  Similar to what John T. Frye did with his: Mac's Service Shop column in several magazines and of course with Carl and Jerry in Popular Electronics . The author and/or Popular Mechanics did a whole series of these There's Adventure in books on various technical subjects. I look forward to reading this book - after all my favorite Alfred P. Morgan book was Adventures in Electrochemistry : https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/11/alfred-p-morgan-had-rivals.html Also, the forward to the book is by Lee de Forest, the old rascal of electronics and...

I was looking for the title of a book I remember (still haven't found it) when I came across this page: https://www.fadedpage.com/ Another page of books that are in the public domain in Canada.  I had known about: http://gutenberg.ca/index.html but this was new to me.  For example they had a separate page for Jim Kjelgaard: Jim Kjelgaard https://www.fadedpage.com/sc/kjelgaard.php Kjelgaard was one of my favorite authors while attending Maple Dale school in the 1960s. I'll keep looking for that book (actually there are two, one I read during grade school and another from more recently).  But faded page was a pleasant diversion for a Sunday afternoon. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

I was doing a search of the archive.org site with the keyword: jacksonharbor on duckduckgo and got this: The first result is what I wanted (the stuff I've uploaded from grade school and high school).  But the second result is what caught my eye, so I clicked on it: The digitized second novel by my Dad, William H. Olson.  It can be borrowed online for reading although it can't be downloaded.  As I understand it Archive has a physical copy of the book and only one patron can borrow it at a time - so it is like a library in that way. I then did a search on archive for "Jackson Harbor Press" and got this: The 73 magazine issue contains a review of one of my keyer kits.  Island Connections was something my Dad did for his writers group.  The George Johnson poetry booklet is a vanity press type of service that my Dad did for his fellow poets and authors.  The two books by Conan Bryant Eaton are reprints that my Dad arranged for the local Washington Island Archive...

I was looking at the book:  Run to Daylight   again since the Packers start training camp today: first blog mention:  https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/10/some-thoughts-on-run-to-daylight.html One thing with the Archive books, OCR gets done automagically during the upload process - this makes it easy to search, for example, how to go: quoted 15 times in the book.  I suppose it's something like a shortening of:  "That's how to go about it"   Maybe not :)  Is it an east coast thing that blew in with Vince ?  Or maybe something from the 1950s ?  Internet searches are worthless for  finding more info on this kind of thing.    "Way to go" is what we said when I was a kid in Wisconsin, usually in a mocking tone:  "way to go, Chuck, way to drop your lunch tray"   Way to go is quoted only 4 times: Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

I started listening to this reading of The Hobbit on Youtube: source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPeDWpHo4KY&list=PLiprFMdUvCYi9dzAxLbjUHaNswbsORq5O&index=1&pp=iAQB I can really see the attraction of audio books, at least with a story like The Hobbit .  There is just something nice about hearing the words rather than reading them and this is a wonderful reading. One thing that I didn't remember about The Hobbit were the rhyming names of the Dwarves: source: https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/hobbit/characters/ That reminded me of the denizens of Hoopeston, Illinois mentioned on the Vic and Sade show: source: https://vscharacters.blogspot.com/2012/01/cupid-and-stupid-golfbake.html Hoopeston seemed to have more than a fair share of dizzy twins :) I'd like to think that either Tolkien or Rhymer cribbed the idea from the other but I suspect it was just coincidence that they both liked rhyming (and funny?) names :)   Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.co...

I got an email from the Nicolet73.com site telling me it had been 6 months since my last profile update.  For some reason I actually took this to heart and got on the site.  Nothing needed changing so I was about to leave when I thought of this passage from the Heinlein novel: Have Space Suit, Will Travel . source: https://archive.org/details/havespacesuitwil0000unse I decided to avoid copying Heinlein so instead I changed my occupation from Electrical Engineer to Retired Electrical Engineer. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

I was listening to: The Red-Headed League on WPR Chapter a Day.     https://www.wpr.org/shows/chapter-day/the-adventures-of-sherlock-holmes-2-of-10   At the end of the story Dr. Watson remarks: "You reasoned it out beautifully," I exclaimed in unfeigned admiration. "It is so long a chain, and yet every link rings true." then Holmes says: "It saved me from ennui," he answered, yawning. "Alas! I already feel it closing in upon me. My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me to do so." The assistant to Jabez Wilson, Holmes and Watson In other words Holmes was on a quest for novelty - but real life fictional novelty not 21st century internet novelty :) BTW I've been waiting since December 5, 2023 to borrow the book (on Overdrive): Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman.  I'm 7th in line. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

Grounding of Ingenuity per Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/01/nasas-mars-helicopter-has-made-its-last-flight-above-the-red-planet/   Update:  Anton Petrov did a Mars video with an update on Ingenuity:   source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=At3xiYtITHo   That's the reality of Mars.  These books portray Mars as it should be: source:  https://youtu.be/sLTBRG0y6iw https://archive.org/details/arthur-c.-clarke-audio/05+The+Sands+of+Mars+1951+ I remember my Dad had a college astronomy text book from roughly the same time as those two books were written.  Most of the pictures were small, fuzzy and black and white.  So Heinlein and Clarke didn't have the benefit of multiple robo-missions to Mars (or Venus also).  Their written works were made on the basis of slim data.  It is interesting that none of the authors from the golden age of SF anticipated the use of satellites and robo-landers before manned exploration. Best ...

  https://archive.org/details/arthur-c.-clarke-audio/38+c+The+Wind+from+the+Sun+1964+by+Arthur+C.+Clarke.mp4 This is audio of a story which I remember reading in 1964.  I was a Cub Scout then, in 4th grade and the space race was ON.  This was such a cool story and the artwork was neat, the diagonal cover motif was very memorable. https://books.google.com/books?id=HEFsdunJeZMC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false There are those who think that space exploration will result in making humanity a multi-planet species.  I suspect that people will just be wasting time having fun in more space than could ever be filled.  They will take pictures of themselves against the scenery, take pictures of their food.  Some will do pointless and potentially dangerous activities.  It's a continuing novelty quest. :) Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

I did a quick search on Youtube for Asimov for audiobooks and found these: Part 1 of 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a24Clx_Q5LI Part 2 of 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vm6ATTQwC38 I remembered a book (which I have around here somewhere) called: Asimov's Mysteries .  These were science fiction mystery stories.  But this one:   The Best Mysteries of Isaac Asimov isn't a collection of science fiction stories.  Instead it contains stories from two different series of stories that Asimov wrote.  The last stories are from the Union Club series and deal with spy and counterspy stuff.     The first stories are from the Black Widowers Club series and were my favorites.  The waiter at the club meetings is Henry who is kind of like Jeeves in the Wodehouse stories. a self-effacing genius who usually has the answer to the mystery.  Each story is prefaced with a note from Asimov which is interesting.  Also, although there is the skull o...

source: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/JPCaOEy4qjA/maxresdefault.jpg I thought that this was an interesting take: What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism.  Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us.  Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions."  "In 1984", Hux...

 Lots of action, lots of food cooked, prepared, described AND eaten by hungry boys, it's like one of those wacky early 20th century kids books but updated into the 1950s with plenty of ham radio.  A 17 year old protagonist, Jim, W9ZZO has adventures with his two brothers and Dad just before his last year of high school on Isle Royale in Lake Superior. I enjoyed the book, it's similar to the Tommy Rockford books by Walker A. Tompkins.  It's almost as if it was set in a big city with all the plot twists, teenager versus parent, kid falls in a hole, radio SOS' all over the place, wild child caught stealing, it's all here :) One line struck me (by the black star): Maybe Gordon Lightfoot heard the same stories when he wrote the song about the Edmund Fitzgerald ? Anyway, a good read, highly recommended.  Borrow it on Archive: https://archive.org/details/isleroyalecallin00hele/ 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 th...

 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 w...

I remember finding out about this book in 6th grade.  Miss Vandenburgt made us do oral book reports and also draw a picture that would be pinned on the bulletin board.  One fellow did a report on Citizen but also a nice drawing of this from the cover: It is a wonderful book, no other author can create a setting on some other planet so quickly and simply as Heinlein could.  A lot of times his endings leave something to be desired and he can be preachy, especially in the non-juvenile books but he can "set the hook" like no other author.  I was able to buy a copy of Citizen in hardcover in college from the UWM bookstore - I wish I had purchased some of the other Heinlein books in hardcover but mostly I've got old crumbly paperbacks. One of the references in the book was to this fellow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Renshaw We did a brief speed reading segment using the tahistoscope in freshman English at Nicolet High School.  Basically part of a "how to stud...

 The anti-Heathkit:   https://archive.org/details/Thrilling_Wonder_Stories_v34n02_1949-06 See page 74, only one part supplied, the builder only gets a catalog and no instructions either - although the ARRL handbook is mentioned.  It kind of reminds me of that ship model my Dad purchased, inside the box was a block of wood although it did come with instructions and a few other parts :) Now we know how the Professor (from Gilligan's Island ) got his start: Watch out for the virtue/liability of vacuum tubes:  the are repairable/copyable but also easy to break. BTW, be sure to disable the self-destruct inherent in the interociter, otherwise it's a one-time use device ! Also, the story is continued in two more issues of Thrilling Wonder Stories : https://archive.org/details/Thrilling_Wonder_Stories_v35n02_1949-12 https://archive.org/details/Thrilling_Wonder_Stories_v35n03_1950-02 The story ends differently than the movie: This Island Earth . Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY h...