A Crummy Commercial

I wasn't aware that Robert Preston had a role in a movie called: The Last Starfighter (1984) - I will have to watch that one of these days.  Anyway, I looked up Preston's wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Preston_(actor) and came across this: source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Iz7W2m6e78 And of course the song has a wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_Fat_(song) I don't remember ever hearing this song at Maple Dale school.  The only time they played records in Phy Ed was for square dancing. BTW, is there also a Yiddish version called Schmaltz ? Preston died of lung cancer at 68 !  Maybe he just sang the song - should have ditched the cigarettes and done the exercise, too ?  My Dad quit smoking cigarettes around 1962 - he continued with a pipe for a while but quit that, too, eventually. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm  

Recently I had gotten on the Nordic Track for under a minute when whoops !  My feet came out from under me - the strap had broken. The Nordic Track was a pretty ruggedly designed machine - meant to mimic cross country skiing motion.  There are two one way rollers under the skis which drive a flywheel.  The strap is a length of nylon webbing about 1 inch wide that rides in a groove on the flywheel.  The strap is wound most of the way around the wheel and is tensioned by a spring.  As the machine is used the strap rubs on the wheel generating warmth to the touch.  But this friction and heat must eventually break down the strap until snap ! Note that this is a much better system than the old stationary bike I had from AMF.  It just had an adjustable pressure roller on a wheel - eventually the wheel bearings heated up and froze. Here is a picture of the removed strap: Ebay still has listings for the strap: https://www.ebay.com/itm/255879679323  But $2...

Whenever I feel like skipping my daily exercise I think of this picture: It's from this fitness and strength training video with Angie Flickinger at about 27 min 30 sec: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbQZSGUmmjU There's also a newer video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDFbsYCXqcY The slide shows the condition called sarcopenia.  The thigh cross section scan on the left is from an active young woman.  The cross section on the right is from an older sedentary woman.  The women are about the same size and weight but the difference in the muscle (lighter gray) versus the fat (darker gray) is  startling.  And yes, you will never look at those packaged ham slices in the meat case the same way again !  BTW the program of exercise is a well tested regimen used around the world and is supposed to be a proven way for people to gain strength. Now to be truthful I've never really made a consistent effort on strength training.  The video workouts are about an ...

 I tried using the solderless breadboard concept along with an old portable radio cabinet to quickly put the metronome together into a usable form: packaged metronome It works fairly well, I wanted a 20k ohm pot for the range between roughly 40 to 50 beats per minute but didn't have any.  I did have some 10k ohm pots with detents which I had bought for another idea. They have 11 detents (I couldn't find any with 10) and all I could think of was: goes to 11 although I guess you'd really need 12 detents to go from 0 to 11 so it doesn't really apply.  In any case the pots weren't all that linear so I went with 10 position switches and 9 resistors for that project instead so I had the detent pots available.  Weirdly the rotary switches do have 12 positions so 0 to 11 is doable :) I didn't plan ahead so I had to cut two holes in the battery tray on the back of the radio cabinet to allow the pots to fit.  So that prevented a rapid prototype. holes cut in battery tray ...