A Crummy Commercial

This is an interesting video about the deepest part of Lake Superior: source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtjexAeh4C4 With that little boat they are on, I'm not surprised that they skip the days with choppy waves.  That landing craft type ramp doesn't seem like a good match for a lake that can sink the Edmund Fitzgerald ! a perfect day to go diving Superior What is this a new sequel in the Alien franchise ?  Yikes ! invasive ? alien ?  sea lamprey ! It's dark and cold so not a lot of fish down there: But (of course) they did find a Busch can :( get thee back to St. Louis ! I guess the subs built in Manitowoc during the war could only go to 300 to 400 feet safely, so that submersible must have been pretty tough.  Here's a comparison chart on the depths of the Great Lakes: The video was more of an intro to the project, hopefully there will be some followup videos. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm  

source:  https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/wendell-berry-kentucky-born-author-advocated-simpler-life-died-92-rcna595476 I mentioned him before: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/07/is-this-cheating.html   Making it Home was my intro to Mr. Berry: source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApRLCXCB80E   Now Wendell Berry is gone but Arthur Roundberry lives on in this story. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

The Magnetic Monster is a 1953 movie:  https://archive.org/details/magnetic-monster The Wiki:      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magnetic_Monster I'm not crazy about colorized movies but this one is kookie and fun.  The characters are so serious !  There are many actors everyone has seen before in small roles but in this one they get bumped up to more important roles.  Also, a brief appearance by Strother Martin as an airline pilot !!: what we have here is fictional communication  :) Richard Carlson is the hero, Dr. Jeffrey Stewart.  King Donovan (aka Mr. Imogene Coca) was the assistant, Dr. Dan Forbes.  The producer was Ivan Tors who later became known for many 1960s shows on TV like Flipper , Daktari and Gentle Ben (I watched them all). Richard Carlson also played the writer in three of Frank Capra's science films with Dr. Frank Baxter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_System_Science_Series There was a brief blog mention o...

I heard about two deaths today, first Dolly Parton, I knew something was up when I saw this thumbnail from Dave Letterman: Dave Letterman's thumbnails on Youtube, signposts of death ! As a boy growing up in the 1960s, none of us tuned into The Porter Wagoner Show  to listen to guys with high hair and spangly suits: We tuned in to see Dolly: I imagine the ratings went UP when Dolly joined the show.  We are all mammalians after all :)  And I was 12 years old in 1967.  But she didn't just sing songs and be on TV and in the movies - she created her own music - those songs will live on. Second, a trivial death but a death of something I used every day: The various Nitter instances allowed users to look at twitter without having to sign in or endure the ads or engage in the endless scroll.  It was nice to just check the tweets of accounts you liked and you are done after seeing their new stuff. I don't get why someone would buy twitter, then ditch the name (which was ...

Senseless Destruction but Fun: source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bdp9nk0NZk I never would have thought of this idea.  Now I have (like most experimenters) accidentally connected power backwards.  The center ground pin on a coaxial power connector was the culprit when I popped the big electrolytic in my old Koss amplified computer speakers (I should have used the wall wart !).  What an amazing stink was discovered !  Yuck, hopefully whatever gas is released doesn't cause disease :)  Now I routinely incorporate some kind of reverse polarity protection circuitry into any project. The only willful destruction of electronics that I recall participating in was using a tube tester in the Nicolet Radio Club to "supernova" the filaments of innocent vacuum tubes :)  What a waste - it got old rapidly though. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

Several items: First, the Brewers manager, Pat Murphy, is NOT afraid to make a decision.  For the second time recently he changed pitchers in the middle of an at-bat !  Thursday afternoon Murph replaced Robert Gasser during the Mariners game: source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8qxh4gqJ34 On August 3rd Murph replaced Brandon Sproat versus the Pirates: source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYNhK7-CvFM Murph is definitely serious about the end of the season !   But the Brewers did finally win: BTW, the only other time I remember seeing this was in a Cubs game during the 1980s - I'm sure it happens a lot more but gotta figure that it could be seen as a public insult to the pitcher (reminds me of the schoolyard refrain: "but we didn't get our last ups" - IOW the pitcher didn't get a chance to redeem the at bat). Second:  During the afternoon while checking the laundry on the line I saw this: 2026 is a cicada year here on the island.  The ques...

I was kind of ambivalent about using bait with the cam.  But then I thought about windfalls.  Usually the deer police most of them but not always.  And I have to figure that a pile of apples probably has at least a few worms.  If I get the deer to eat the apples won't that kill the worms ?  See, you can justify anything :) So I tried baits for a couple of nights.  They found them the first night but left 3.  So I redeployed on Monday night - all were taken.  I think by a single deer, appears to be a fawn ?  Here's my attempt at stitching together the stills: source:  https://youtu.be/gd6jSkp1aWM This reminded me of an episode of The Andy Griffith Show (season 1, episode 32) where Opie is banished from the courthouse after school because Aunt Bea thinks it's a bad influence.  So he goes wandering around, kicking a can down the road.  He encounters a kid eating apples on a pickup truck tailgate and trades him apples for the can....

"why'd you have to say that, impossible,  why'd you have to say that ?" source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tC4efdAv1LM BTW, per Heinlein, strap on wings might allow humans to fly: on the Moon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Menace_from_Earth https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/luminist/SF/FSF/FSF_1957_08.pdf (note that The Menace from Earth is followed by a 1 pager from Asimov: A Loint of Paw :) Other than being fun, why mention this ? Because I've always found it much easier to do a task if I know that it has been done before.  The real pioneers will either fail or they'll spend a lot of time/money on a problem.  It was so much easier to write a keyer program for an 8 pin PIC microcontroller after seeing that the fellows at Embedded Research had already created the Tick keyers.  (I did add my old favorite, the potentiometer based speed control).  After Yuri Gagarin orbited the earth it was easier for NASA to send John Glenn around 3 times.  S...

A Kentucky high school student brought some radios to school in January 2025.  The school and a local deputy appear to have then gone off the deep end: seized the radios, concocted requests for a warrant after the seizure and generally messed things up.  Now they may have to PAY. Three links with a few details: https://www.kentucky.com/news/local/article316639936.html https://www.wkyt.com/2026/07/29/lawsuit-alleges-pulaski-co-students-two-way-radios-were-seized-without-warrant/ source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddi3l9TCcIY I suspect the narrative was something similar to this:  - a ham/student brings handie talkie/s to school so he can listen for fire callouts  - some other kid asks him: "is that all it can do ?"  - then the ham demos a QSO on a ham radio repeater  - a teacher witnesses this and gets hysterical  - off-duty cop takes the radio/s and later fabricates a paper trail to make the seizure appear legal  - the kid's family goes...

At first I wondered if this truck was an AI creation: source: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/386817055479827672/ But no, it's way too cool for AI to be involved  :) https://www.hagerty.com/media/automotive-history/are-labatts-streamlined-semis-the-coolest-trucks-ever/ source:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIHLZgkg4ZU I've been reading the book: Scale by Geoffrey West.  I'll have a more complete report when I finish it.  But I thought this point was interesting: Author West is saying that when a designer is told to optimize economy and performance the resulting car will be similar no matter the manufacturer.  They aren't copying each other, they are all moving towards the same goal.  But the results are kinda meh.   "Honest, Sgt. Friday, I can't tell one make of car from another anymore" The streamlining on the Labatt's truck may not have been functional BUT it did catch the eye and that was the main specification for a rolling Labatt beer...

This photo is priced above my Ebay pain threshold: Although I did get a 15% discount offer: source:  https://www.ebay.com/itm/185914151164 The listing says circa 1920s but other internet pages fix it at 1911.  By that date Percival Lowell had already fired the public imagination with his drawings of Mars and had published books about Mars per the wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percival_Lowell And the War of the Worlds had been published just before the 20th century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds I'm not aware of any reason for a surge of interest in Mars during the 1920s - the Orson Welles Halloween telling of that tale on the radio was in 1938. I find it a fascinating picture raising several questions.  What was it like inside ?  Was it just a movie or slide show ?  Where are the customers aka rubes ?   Of course here is the semi-obligatory inflated price (it won't go below 1913): I guess it depends on the show as to whethe...

For some reason I thought of the song: Bandstand Boogie .  I found it on Youtube, there is the original instrumental by Les Elgart and his orchestra (which is really catchy and brief): source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHiFsRQEHQw Then there's also the version with lyrics by Barry Manilow (longer but also good): source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTXWf2_H0FI Now this search was in a private window, so theoretically it shouldn't "pollute" my regular Youtube feed, right ? But then later in the day my regular Youtube feed recommended this: source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsLT-zRWWdQ I didn't actually watch this Youtube video, I watched the movie instead.       Escape From New York is a good movie, fast paced and entertaining but there's almost no music - except for the Les Elgart version of Bandstand Boogie !  Ernest Borgnine's character, Cabbie, has it on cassette in his yellow Checker cab.  And the song plays a ro...

The first joke from Annie Hall was mentioned before: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2025/01/another-one-of-my-elmers-has-died.html But, as the literalist, seeing an old Australian magazine ad made me remember the final joke from Annie Hall : source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3feAYfyjzk Here is the ad originally from Pinterest: From other sources I gather that Ke-Peg was (don't think it is available in the USA) a paint on or wipe on substance for fresh eggs to prevent moisture from escaping out and bad stuff like oxygen and germs from getting in.  From the months of peak egg laying mentioned you realize this is a southern hemisphere ad. https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/has-anyone-ever-used-kepeg-egg-preserver.226412/ The peg in Ke-peg may refer to polyethylene glycol 400 or PEG-400 (described as a clear, colorless viscous fluid): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEG_400 Apparently PEG 400 is the active ingrediment in Visine ?: Mineral oil is an alternative coating t...