Don Lancaster's What's New 2013 Blog

Please note that the Guru's Lair is best used with larger display systems. Especially for our many ebooks, classic .pdf files and high detail images.

December 31, 2013
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One of the handier "rules of thumb" that sometimes apply some of the time and can be enormously useful is this:

Very often, one percent of what happens nationally happens in Arizona. And one percent of what happens in Arizona happens in the Gila Valley.

Thus, roughly, there are 300 million people in the US, 3 million in AZ, and 30,000 locally.

While not super accurate,this rule can quickly give you a rough estimate of an amazing variety of events or tasks. Where you otherwise may not have the faintest clue as to scale. 

Naturally, the "rule" does not apply to anything with a regional bias. I suspect Thatcher has more cotton module fires than Bangor, Maine does. And that walrus attacks may be rare in Nebraska.

My favorite rule of thumb applies to any Hazmat situation: Hold your thumb up at arm's length and close one eye. If you can still see the scene, you are too close.

December 30, 2013
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A minor tip: Sometimes misstating your zip code can reduce some hassles for you. The National Auctioneers Association seems to have a one hundred mile limit on their searches. Which cannot reach Phoenix and Tucson from Thatcher. But it can from Globe.

The independent Search Tempest is a great way to survey Craig's List. But you have to scroll through a bunch of junk if you really want two specific areas. Ferinstance, to get Phoenix and Tucson without the junk, use the Casa Grande zip code of 85130.

The local Radio Shacks have limited inventory, so changing your zip code can also find something urgently needed. Same goes for inventory at Wal Mart or Home Depot.

December 29, 2013
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An interesting collection of free Southwestern Archaeology videos can be found here.

December 28, 2013
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    "Golly Gee Mister Science."

December 27, 2013
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Few people realize how primitive the hardware options were at the time the TV Typewriter was first designed.

Microprocessors were theoretical beasts that were outrageously expensive and undeliverable with key peripheral chips not even on the drawing board.

Magnetic core memory had just dropped to a nickel a bit, and there were only rumors that solid state memory might be able to compete in the dark distant future.

A controversial quantum leap in baud rates from 110 to 150 had just been announced. The only dynamic RAM was the 1103 that drove a whole generation of engineers insane with its 20 nanosecond wide temperature dependent timing window.

Static RAM was outrageously expensive and pretty much limited to 64 bits or less per package.

Which left me with bucket brigade shift registers as the only viable route to an on-screen tv text display. These were cheap enough and fast enough at 1 microsecond, and big enough at 512 bits, but you had to continuously refresh them.

These were not in any manner random access, as you had to wait for the bit you were after to come out the end of the pipe.

Their dropout specs did not permit the several milliseconds needed for vertical retrace, but fortunately, out of most all of the needed seven milliseconds of delay, they only would guarantee two.

The high supply voltages and high clock driver capacitance also made these unit painful to use or interface.

Also unappreciated today was the utter hostility and ridicule heaped on why anyone could possibly want to put words and letters on a tv set. "They" just did not get it.

December 26, 2013
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Two Texans bragging about how big their lands were...

"Why, my spread is so big, I could drive all morning and not get half way across it."

"Yeah? I had a truck like that once."

December 25, 2013
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Thought I'd start a list of possibly upcoming predictions...

PV Solar panels soon hitting the 25 cents per peak panel watt needed for true renewability and sustainability.

A quantum leap in Goldilocks exoplanets.

Sane pricing of 100 watt equivalent LED lamps.

Extensive use of improved WWVB timing signals.

Modest efficiency and range improvements for wireless power transmission. But nothing spectacular.

Increased climatic and weather variability. We has met the enemy and he is us.

USB power supplies replacing wall warts in new designs.

Corn ethanol at last being recognized for the worthless vote buying scam it really was. Your tax dollars at work.

Greatly improved GPS/GLONAS vertical resolution.

Sane net metering resolution. Because of offering storage, utilities have every right to buy wholesale and sell retail.

New breakthroughs in HVAC efficiency.

Total legalization of marijuana, everywhere.

The demise of books much faster than expected.

Business as usual for perpetual motion schemes, free energy, cold fusion, and the usual incompetently ;engineered tomes from the Church of the Latter Day Crackpots.

Most newsgroups failing because of eyeball siphoning from newer social networking.

I'll try to add more items to this list. Your comments welcome.

December 24, 2013
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Apparently Siller Helicopters did the heavy lifting for the fish barrier project.

What once were Sikorsky Sky Cranes are now Ericksons. These have a 20,000 pound payload, can hit 125 mph with a 230 mile range. Rotor is 72 feet in diameter. About 110 exist.

Present costs are estimated at $15,000 per hour. Plus standby fees. In-flight movies are extra. These cannot lift a full size D8 bulldozer.

Apparently there is some sort of a jeep trail to the site via Sunflower Mesa and Pat Mesa, but it does not seem to have been used on the project. Likely because of wilderness restrictions or the route being too utterly gruesome.

December 23, 2013
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The Blue River Fish Barrier has apparently been completed and has been picked up by Acme Mapper and Google Maps.

This would be a possible candidate for one of the longest possible or most remote Gila Valley Day Hikes.

Amazingly, the complete field camps have vanished without a
trace, including the huge trailers, concrete plants, and tanks. Some amazing more details here.

December 22, 2013
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In response to an ever-diminishing number of requests, here is a list of the most profitable eBay selling items arranged by season...

January - eBooks of drop shipping resources
February - UK cable descramblers
March - Plasma HDTV displays from Romania
April - Nigerian lotteries
May - Add three inches to your mortgage
June - Pallet liquidations
July -Norfolk & Waay overstocks
August - Korean laptops
September - Home theater pyramid buying rights
November - Password phishing software
December - Microsoft and Disney replicas

More on our Auction Help page.

December 21, 2013
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Expanded and updated our Gila Valley Dayhikes page. Some of the lesser known destinations appear here.

Please  email me with anything I missed or needs further updating.

December 20, 2013
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Similarly, a dodging white reduction array might use this code...

/adjdepth 20 store
/whitecutarray mark 0 1 255
{ 255 div whiteout mul round cvi} for] store

to generate this gamma correcting array...

In this case white=255 becomes white=235 and black=0
stays as black=0. Once again, the depth of correction is
set by /adjdepth.

December 19, 2013
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The terms "dodging" and "burning" can get confusing in that holding back light darkened things in a traditional negative print darkroom. Usually you had a paddle to block light to dodge and a piece of cardboard with a hole in it to burn.

We'll call "dodging" holding back light or making the image portion darker. And "burning" to make the image portion lighter. What we will want to do in our upcoming dodge/burn code is to scan for pixels to be corrected, and then either add to the pixel value to brighten it or subtract from the pixel value to darken it. Being careful, of course, to never exceed 255 or go under 0 in our bitmap format.

Calculating corrections on the fly might end up slow and awkward, so my favorite programming trick of table lookup is appropriate. In which we predefine how much to add or subtract from each pixel needing correction. Ferinstance...

/adjdepth 20 store
/blackboostarray mark 255 -1 0
{255 div adjdepth mul round cvi} for] store

...should generate this gamma correcting array...

/blackboostarray [ 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 19
      19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 18
      18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 17 17
      17 17 17 17 17 17 17 17 17 17 17 16 16
      16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 15 15
      15 15 15 15 15 15 15 15 15 15 15 14 14
      14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 13 13 13
      13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 12 12 12
      12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 11 11 11
      11 11 11 11 11 11 11 11 11 11 10 10 10
      10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10   9   9   9   9
        9   9   9   9   9   9   9   9   9   8   8   8   8
        8   8   8   8   8   8   8   8   8   7   7   7   7
        7   7   7   7  7    7   7   7   7   6   6   6   6
        6   6   6   6   6   6   6   6   5   5   5   5   5
        5   5   5   5   5   5   5   5   4   4   4   4   4
        4   4   4   4   4   4   4   4   3   3   3   3   3
        3   3   3   3   3   3   3   3   2   2   2   2   2
        2   2   2   2   2   2   2   1   1   1   1   1   1
        1   1   1   1   1   1   1   0   0   0   0   0   0
        0 ] store

In this case black=0 becomes black=20 and white=255 stays as white=255. Depth of correction is set by /adjdepth.

December 18, 2013
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We pride ourselves in having the finest images on eBay, bar none.

Much of the work is done by spending most of our time in postproc with such obvious candidates as Paint and Imageview32. Helped along occasionally by Irfanview and Filezilla.

But the heavy lifting gets done with three of our custom and free Gonzo routines: The Bitmap Typewriter, An Architect's Perspective Corrector, and an automatic combined Auto Backgrounder and Vignetter.

I'm working on a fourth custom routine that would provide localized dodging and burning. Useful for such things as brightening poorly lit areas or making labels more legible.

So far, I envision you would mark the areas to be dodged or burned in a green=255 area fill and save them as a mask. Scanning the mask would then read a gamma correction file to brighten, darken, or do nothing to the underlying pixel routed to a new and modified file..

Details to follow as the program develops. Your comments welcome.

December 17, 2013
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Apparently Alan Turing has been granted a full pardon. Some details here.

You don't want to rush these things. Next on the agenda is to free Floyd Collins. Or -- dare we hope -- to free the Indianapolis 500.

December 16, 2013
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A reminder that we have several MILES of transparent polyester sheet in dozens of rolls of varying lengths and sizes. I've been meaning to build up a rewinder but it seems to be taking forever.

email me if you have any interest in this superb material at one sixth or less of its normal price.

December 15, 2013
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Always remember that you have no friends at an auction! Least of all the auctioneer. Listen to everything, volunteer nothing. Be invisible till it is time to be in the auctioneer's face.

Dress down to the point of being shabby, but always wear one very distinct hat or other piece of clothing. If more than five percent of your bids win, you are bidding far too high.

Always stop bidding if anyone is bidding against you and you even remotely approach fair value.

Always stay for the end of the auction. In some cases, utterly spectacular bargains will result. Especially if the area has to be cleared for a new tenant or whatever.

Sometimes you can also make really great deals on unbid or unsold items after the auction or during quiet times.

Don't sweat bidding on tons of garbage to get one or two items. You can usually find someone to take (or even pay for) the dregs after the auction. And abandoning stuff often is not that big a deal.

Stay alert through numerous sit down and meditation breaks, sensible food and drink, mild painkillers, and frequent restroom use.

Much more on our Auction Help page.

December 14, 2013
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Fundamental Factors Underlying Recent Technical Innovation appear here.

I'm saddened that this paper has not yet received the attention I feel it rightly deserves.

December 13, 2013
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Continuing our hanging canal by hanging canal list of needed further work ...

The Riggs Complex near N 32.77846 W 109.78945 suffered a setback in that it is nearly invisible on the latest Acme Mapper version. It is a group of small braided channels that may be older than some of the other canals. The braided channels are much smaller than those on Frye Mesa.

A source and destination remain unknown and the workmanship on these appears sub par. A link to the Robinson Canal or a predecessor appears likely. There is obvious damage from stream piracy. Considerable challenging work remains. Local terrain is quite unpleasantly rocky.

December 12, 2013
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Can't put one over on her. Nosiree.

Little old lady to a companion at a recent live auction:
Why, that man has been talking all morning!"

December 11, 2013
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Expanded and updated our Gila Valley Dayhikes page. Some of the lesser known destinations appear here.

Please  email me with anything I missed or needs further updating.

December 10, 2013
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Some interesting new developments in thermo electricity can be found here. Few practical devices exist today. First because of the
Carnot Limit that tells us you can do no better than the ratio of the absolute temperature difference.

Second, because of thermal impedance effects in which there is an unavoidable delta-T between the hot side source and the device and a second delta-T between the device and its ambient heat sink.

Another biggie has been space charge, where electrons pile up instead of freely flowing. The above paper addresses the space charge problem and doubles potential efficiency from 10 to 18 percent in a typical use situation..

More on why thermoelectric cooling has not happened much
to date appears here.

December 9, 2013
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At first glance, Safford and the Upper Gila Valley does not appear to be much of a high technology place. But for centuries, we've had bunches of world class and ( literally ) off the wall tech stuff. Such as...

The LBT large binocular telescope and friends.
Thousands of prehistoric archaeological grids.
The solvent extraction of copper refining.
Fifty miles of prehistoric hanging bajada canals.
World class prehistoric lowland river canals.
Newly efficient cotton drip irrigation.
The Mount Graham aerial tramway.
The Morenci Southern Railway loops.
Toll Roads through difficult terrain.
Spectacular logging flumes.
Leopard Frog Renarium
Check dams with aprons
The UFO fish fillets

More on some of these here.

December 8, 2013
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Continuing our hanging canal by hanging canal list of needed further work ...

The Allen Canal needs a credible destination and the route determined between the mesa edge and the dam. One possible end point would be fields presently buried under the Central Dam. But numerous trips have failed to reveal any obvious link.

Spring canyon water was apparently a resource shared with the Frye Mesa canal. It needs further study in that it likely was a much more significant source then.

Areas around the Hawk Hollow tank have yet to be precisely located with numerous CCC items also in the area.

Allen Dam itself is an enigma in that its watershed is quite small. Possibly it relied heavily on Allen Canal water. And may in fact have a prehistoric original. Or possibly have used presently unknown artesian sources.

The Cuelbra Cut is dramatic enough that it demands further photography and study. There is also a lesser but longer cut largely unstudied south of the Mud Springs back road. The present northern limit is in a small pass that demands further study. Its location and use appear brilliant.

December 7, 2013
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The "normal" Ghostscript output on windows seems to be limited to the last 200 output lines. Should you need more, there are apparently arcane ways to change the output format. Or you can write your needed output to a disk file.

The usual cut-and-paste also does not seem to work on the formatted 200 line output. But there is a subtle icon at the upper left that lets you copy to clipboard. Ghostscript has become of a lot more interest to me ever since Adobe banned most disk reads and writes from distiller. More on my Gonzo utilities here.

December 6, 2013
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Just picked up a Targus camera tripod from Walmart that has several interesting features.

The most useful to me is a quick release plate. You attach this somewhat permanently to your camera bottom and then snap it onto the tripod or shift a lever to get your camera back. Additional quick release plates may be available
here.

December 5, 2013
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Expanded and updated our Gila Valley Dayhikes page. Some of the lesser known destinations appear here.

Please  email me with anything I missed or needs further updating.

December 4, 2013
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Continuing our hanging canal by hanging canal list of needed further work...

The Robinson Canal has seen major historic rework making its interpretation difficult. The first mile starting with a Frye Mesa Canal ponding area at N 32.75995 W 109.81151 has not been explored yet, but is rather clear on Acme Mapper and is not expected to produce much in the way of surprises.

The canal route marking has recently been improved in Acme Mapper. Its exact destination remains unknown, but is believed to be in the Robinson Flat area. The most likely candidate is the empty lake at N 32.81371 W 109.77061. It could also underlie the Mount Graham Golf Course perhaps near N 32.81125 W 109.77465.

The latest Google and Acme images seem to have far less detail useful to canal identification. The is possibly caused by lower resolution, different times of day, or different spectral sensitivity.

Exploration in the northern area is difficult because of extensive historic rework. Also needing study is a small artesian pond at N 32.80263 W 109.78087.

The CCC appears to have purposely destroyed portions of the Frye Mesa Canal, presumably in the 1932 time frame. This would seem to place a last use date for the Robinson Canal. Unless an alternate Frye Creek source was substituted.

December 3, 2013
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Tesla's dream of wirelessly and safely and efficiently transmitting power long distances likely will never happen. And certainly will never be in any manner overunity.

Inductive air coupling at 60 Hertz is pretty much limited to electric toothbrush distances and power levels. While focused beams have serious safety and realizability issues.

But a new method may promise to allow modest amounts of power to be wirelesssly transmitted over moderate distances at acceptable efficiencies. This is done by resonating a pair of coupled high frequency coils in reasonable proximity. Some interesting papers can be found here.

December 2, 2013
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Revised and updated our hanging canal resource directory.

December 1, 2013
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A reminder that my favorite bed and breakfast of all time remains the Black Range Lodge, cleverly hidden in the part of New Mexico that you cannot get to.

Their Kingston Frisbee Festival runs from January 1st to December 31st this year. And the Percha Creek Salmon run remains as spectacular as ever. Two other places of interest are Casitas De Gila outside of Cliff ( Check out their real time planetarium simulator above the hot tub. And the art gallery. )

November 30, 2013
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Had a bunch of idiot lights trip on our 4Runner just as we were leaving for a major auction. It turns out that idiot lights can warn you of very bad things and certainly should not be ignored.

On the other hand, a loose gas cap or a worn gas cap gasket can create the same symptoms!

November 29, 2013
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docx files can be hard to deal with if you do not have bunches of expensive software on a Windows machine.

You can try saving a .docx tile to desktop, loading it into Word, and then saving it as .PDF. Otherwise, buying and installing a version of Office can bypass most of the hassles.

November 28, 2013
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Shocking. Just discovered that all of the New Mexico subastas are going to get sold at auction!

November 27, 2013
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Continuing our hanging canal by hanging canal list of needed further work...

The Frye Mesa canal could well represent a world class set of crown jewels for the entire system. But all we have for sure at present is two huge canal structures near N 32.75997 W 109.81149. By any possible measure, these are stunningly "beyond beyond".

One of these appears to be the unverified source for the Robinson Canal. The second HS Canal, which is very spectacularly counterflow, services Frye Creek in some manner. Ultimately reaching fields tuner the Blue Ponds has not yet been ruled out.

Frustratingly, the Acme Mapper imagery of Frye Mesa is not remotely as lucid now as it was in their previous data base. Possibly explained by season vegetation differences or time-of-day photography. But braided stream channels with possible CCC rework do remain dim but findable. Delivery slopes are eminently credible.

The most likely water source would be the spring in Spring Canyon at N 32.73900 W 109.85188. There is a modern water development here that could have underlying prehistoric origins feeding the Frye Mesa Canal. This obviously needs major further study. The canal itself could possibly have been under the Frey Mesa falls road.

Apparent CCC construction seems to have gone out of their way to destroy the canals on Frye Mesa proper. This certainly needs further verification.

Finally, a key question remains as to why the major development based on spring canyon that largely ignored Frye Creek itself.

November 26, 2013
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There's an active Raspberry pi newsgroup at comp.sys.raspberry-pi Some other Raspberry Pi resources can be found at...

http://www.raspberrypi.org/
http://www.raspberrypi.com/
http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs
http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi
http://www.element14.com//raspberry-pi
http://www.engadget.com/tag/RaspberryPi/
http://makezine.com/category/raspberry-pi/
http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/
https://plus.google.com/+raspberrypi/posts
http://www.youtube.com/v=r456d0imYPE
http://www.slashgear.com/tags/raspberry-pi/

Along with these competitors....

http://beagleboard.org/products/beaglebone
http://linuxgizmos.com/arduino-compatible-boardset

November 25, 2013
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Amazingly, Pima now has SIX Mexican restaurants in varying shades of newness. But Juanita is overwhelmingly in a class by themselves. For price, quality, authenticity, and ambiance

Juanitias is cleverly hidden in Bush and Sherts in the secret part of Pima that only a cotton farmer can find. To fit in with the locals, knowing the difference between "mosey" and "hunker" is an absolute must.

Check out the Jamaicas and Horchatas. Menundo on Saturdays.

November 24, 2013
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Our new bright red pound pup may in fact be an Australian Shepard after all. I always thought of Aussies as being black and gray with blue eyes. But apparently there is an "Irish Setter"flavor of Aussies that look exactly like Sally.

this image Per this image.

November 23, 2013
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I seem to have gotten myself buried in eBay inventory that is likely not only unsellable but even unlistable. So, I guess an inventory reboot is long past due. Throwing away half of everything. Here's some guidelines on whether something should
be kept or not...

• Lottable at $9 or more.
• Expected return greater than $70.
  
• Near current production OR collectible.
• Price findable here, here, or here.
• Item sell rate to clear within 15 months.
• Free data available online.
• Clean or group refurbable.
• Can hold item at arm's length.
• Preferably priority mail shippable.
• Modest but definite sales elsewhere.
• Reasonably testable.
• Is it "pretty"?
• Storage needs not excessive.
• Unique consistent with real demand.
• SBR near 30:1 maintainable.
• Properly located and inventory controlled.
• One sixth cost new price feasible.
• No bad vibes - feel good about item.
• Not particularly fragile or user abusable.
• Buyer incompetence unlikely.

So, I should have bunches of free stuff available for the next few weeks. Whose only rule would be "take one, take all". email me for details. More eBay tips and techniques here.

November 22, 2013
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Expanded and updated our Gila Valley Dayhikes page. Some of the lesser known destinations appear here.

Please  email me with anything I missed or needs further updating.

November 21, 2013
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A fairly complete collection of full and free reprints to Kilobaud Magazine can be found here. Along with lots of other interesting archival stuff.

The original text to my "Winning the Micro Game" can be found here in the August 1980 Kilobaud. This later also became a show and tell item in several talks and a chapter in my Micro Cookbook.

I feel that much of the story remains surprisingly relevant, and there is very little I would change.

November 20, 2013
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Continuing our hanging canal by hanging canal list of needed further work ...

The Shingle Mill canal needs proof it actually existed,a source and a destination. The middle third is quite obvious as the historic Minor Webster Ditch, and located between N 32.79806 W 109.87271 and N 32.81060 W 109.86761

Proof of prehistoric origins is presently only indirect, based on the strong "steal the plans" tendency elsewhere in the valley and the fact that lack of a shingle mill prehistoric canal would be highly conspicuous by its absence. Given that every other nearby stream has been fully exploited by one or more canals.

The canal becomes progressively harder to trace west and south of the McEniry Road, eventually subject to heavy ravine like erosion. There are moderate potsherds in the area. The original takein is presumed to be somewhere around N 32.79275 W 109.88735.

Routes north of N 32.81060 have not yet been checked. But likely have been extensively reworked by historic pioneers and later Arizona Game and Fish modifications.

November 19, 2013
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An extensive collection of vacuum tube data sheets can be found here.

November 18, 2013
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Managed to get a hanging canal paper submitted to Wikipedia. There acceptance/rejection backlog is now several months.

To participate in Wikipedia, you first have to register. There are separate places for images and articles. Images should be done first. You must personally own all rights to your images and be willing to post them on a Creative Commons basis.

Images can be uploaded using their Commons Upload Wizard. Articles are apparently best done by using a private provided sandbox. Once formatted and tested, the article can be submitted for others to review.

Articles basically use a variation of HTML or XML with a few added details. Bolding is pretty much reserved for headers and sub headers, while italics are the preferred method of emphasis within an article. The easiest way to do italics is to trace over and use the I button. Otherwise, the italicized portion can be marked with two single quotes. As in ' ' italic stuff ' '

External url links are marked with single opening and closing brackets. Such as [url goes here] Internal url links that cross reference another Wikipedia article use double brackets instead. As in [[other Wikipedia reference ]].

Images are similarly double bracketed in a [[File:image name|
thumb|right|caption]] format. This automatically provides a wraparound thumbnail that click expands into the full image.

Headers are bracketed by one or more equals characters. Note the equals signs should be contiguous without intervening spacing. ) A horizontal rule is provided after the largest headers.

November 17, 2013
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Alexander Graham Kernatski was the first telephone pole.

November 16, 2013
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Some details on Google Maps elevation reporting services appear her.

It is important to note that the elevation reports use interpolation from four nearby data points. The distance between points is reported by their resolution response to an elevation inquiry.

A foremost rule of interpolation is that no new information can be added. All you can do is minimize interpolation artifacts.

Thus, if a wash or ravine or building happens to sit between the original data points, no way will your elevation report be accurate.

All of which suggests that the Google service might not be quite good enough for resolving hanging canal slope or location issues. An interpolation assumes that the slope of the function is continuous and has continuous derivatives. Otherwise known as a "smooth" surface.

A tutorial on some of the math involved can be found here.

November 15, 2013
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Continuing our hanging canal by hanging canal list of needed further work...

The Jernigan canal is one of the few that has a very well defined field destination. It includes moderately hanging portions, a French Drain cascade, and a mid sized but undated Mesquite tree mid channel.

It is a good choice for tours as it is easily accessible and has a wide variety of features and nearby habitation sites.

The split from Mud Springs canal appears well  defined at N 32.82782 W 109.81981. Some small rocks suggest some sort of headgates structure that remains unexcavated and unexplored.

The canal seems to vanish between a known N 32.83143 W 109.81792 and a presumed N 32.83727 W 109.81502
and needs verified. The area between N 32.83727 W 109.81502 and N 32.83961 W 109.81354 needs further study in that the route is only dimly suggestive.

There is a branch which may lead to an aqueduct or dam structure at N 32.83911 W 109.81543. Or might be a historic artifact or rebuild that needs resolved.

A major portion of the canal remains unlocated between N 32.84295 W 109.81238 and N 32.84192 W 109.81496 despite many attempts at discovery. Careful altitude measurements might restrict the range of possible routes.

November 14, 2013
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Free copies of Mathematica are now being included in the Raspberry Pi firmware. More details here.

Over two million Raspberry Pi computers have been sold. One upcoming competitor is the Beagle Bone.

November 13, 2013
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Managed to finally get back to the Chihuahuas after their devastating fire. Basically, the entire mountain is just plain gone.

Devastation is utter and total over an extreme area. Recovery will take a minimum of one hundred years, assuming no further global warming surprises.

Bee's Barfoot lookout burned in the utter and total devastation. As did Rustler Park. The USFS is trying to rebuild the campground, but it is presently an utterly depressing totally trashed moonscape.

The monument more or less survived, but also suffered fairly extensive damage.

An interesting and definitive pair of books on lookout towers can be found here. While other area things to do can be found on our Gila Dayhikes library page.

November 12, 2013
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I've started the byzantine process of uploading some of our Hanging Canal info to Wikipedia. There seems to be layer upon layer of painstaking detail involved in the learning curve.

At any rate, our first two images can be found here and here. Please suggest  any additional image categories that can be added.

November 11, 2013
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Typical vintage vacuum tube boat anchors often sell for only slightly more than their shipping cost. If you have a bunch of these, one alternate route is to sell parts off them that often break or go missing. Such as full knob sets or panel meters.

The smaller items can be much easier to ship, in at least modest demand by collectors, and easier to deal with than the time and expense of a full refurb.

Our eBay items can be found here and more tips and techniques here.

November 10, 2013
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A website that converts property legal descriptions to latitudes and longitudes can be found here.

November 9, 2013
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One of the foremost rules of eBay sales is to finish what you start

It is trivially easy to, say, do a bunch of batch processed image photography or post prep only to have the work pile up unlisted and unfinished for weeks or even months.

There is no possibility of any cash return until after each item is listed. A good rule is "If you touch it, deal with it." All the way through listing. More eBay tips and techniques here.

November 8, 2013
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Continuing our hanging canal by hanging canal list of needed further work ... Mud Springs is sort of my favorite as I've spent the most time with it and parts of it have easy access.

A case can be made that Mud Springs was the pilot or prototype for the other 28 known canals in that there were several locations where pretty much the entire canal route can be viewed at once.

Our foremost problem is finding out the Mud Springs destination. The route vanishes under a jeep trail at N 32.84796 W 109.81104 and many searches to date have not found even a hint of where it was supposed to go.

My best present guess is that the canal took a sharp left and ended up in fields under the now totally trashed central dump. Possibly near N 32.85631 W 109.81522

While an actual tie in to lowland riverine canals was clearly possible, the amount of deliverable water involved would not seem to have been remotely worth the effort. A small piece of canal is missing between 32.83087 W 109.81533 and N 32.83389 W 109.81139. Possible explanations are damage from sheet flooding or simply looking in the wrong place. An automatic level could possibly be used to restrict candidate elevations to those below the known source and above the known continuance.

A mystery tank that appears historic yet Mud Springs related can be found at N 32.82769 W 109.81896. The watershed here seems much too small unless the Mud Springs canal was in fact the source of the water.

What we call the troll house can be found at  N 32.82540 W 109.82280. While clearly related being flush with the canal bottom and literally one meter away, the pit house suggesting structure defies explanation to date. There appears to be no charcoal or significant potsherds.

The canal appears to have a much smaller and inexplicable branch near N 32.82322 W 109.82523. This same area has been overworked with huge SCS or CCC water channels.

The next mile or so is fairly well studied but poorly photographed. A huge mesquite tree mid channel strongly suggests age. The tree has not been dated yet owing to the ease of instrument destruction and the false rings typical of Mesquite hardwoods.

A very interesting hanging portion lies near N 32.81442 W 109.82790 in the hardest to access reach of the canal. It needs additional photography. There is some mystery to the route for a few hundreds of feet south. There is also some CCC water spreader work in this area.

The area from N 32.80319 W 109.83946 to N 32.79424 W 109.85148 has not yet been explored, owing to a small portion of it unfindable at the north end. Survey should now be easy and fun to trace.

The Ash Creek road has recently been dramatically improved, greatly simplifying source access to mud springs canal. But the exact N 32.79200 W 109.85302 to N 32.78569 W 109.85440 route and takein point remains unknown. Portions of conglomerate with vertical walls strongly suggest catastrophic flooding.

November 7, 2013
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A reminder that it may pay to place a "secret" code line as the last entry in each of your eBay listings.

The code might include where the item is located to the nearest shelf or bin. Or its stock number if there are lots of similar items. Or at least part of the local image url. eBay has made it difficult to trace where an
image has come from. And they do not keep records of what got sold or unsold nearly long enough.

More eBay secrets here. And more on auctions here.

November 6, 2013
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The alternate route to decent eBay photos is to use a scanner instead. Scanners have a far higher total resolution and can be ideal where fine print must be preserved.

You do have to use a scanner with decent depth of field Such as an HP Scan jet. model 3970. Keeping the glass squeaky clean continuously is also a must. Depth of field is easily evaluated by scanning a soup can or something similar.

Scanners are best used for flat and shallow imaging. They are also useful as a "magnifying glass" where fine print is difficult to read. Or to enhance such print by changing contrast and brightness.

I've written some Bitmap Typewriter code that can greatly enhance "flat on" scanner derived lettering. The latest code appears here and an older tutorial here. Due to Adobe's recently banning Distiller file writes, the Bitmap Typewriter has to be used with GhostScript instead.

When scanning such items as multiple integrated circuits, you can sometimes cheat and use a common background, changing only the relevant lettering. The number of pins or the size is easily changed using copying and mirroring.

If you are going to have many similar ic's it pays to let the Bitmap Typewriter generate an entire alphabet and place it below the prototype bitmap. Logos and agency marks can be similarly saved. More details here.

When scanning, say, an oscilloscope front, the scanner can sometimes be placed on the object, rather than vice versa. If the object is too big, multiple exposures can be used, as can copy-and-paste of edges.

Scanning and digital photography can sometimes be combined using these techniques. A scanner can give infinite depth of field by cutting and pasting into an mage plane. Some useful web friendly PostScript Colors handy with scanner post prep can be found here.

November 5, 2013
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We pride ourselves in having the finest eBay photos, bar none. Such as this, this, and this recent example.

Much of the photography is done with a 10 Megapixel digital camera, although some is done with a scanner and some using both at once. For convenience, the camera has an Eye-Fi auto uploader. Highly diffuse light sources are normally used that include two skylights, a pair of CCFD cool white room lights, and adjustable CCFD lights for main, key, and backfill. A tripod, of course, is a must.

At least two hours should be spent in image post prep. Thus, the actual camera setup and photography is a totally negligible portion of the time and effort needed to do the job right!

Our main postproc tools include Imageview32, or rarely IrfanView and our in-house Architects Perspective Correction, Automatic Mottled Background System, and our Bitmap Typewriter. The latter three normally run under GhostScript following my Gonzo Utilities.

Architects Perspective is used on most appropriate subjects. In which all lines perceived as vertical are made vertical to a one pixel accuracy. The image is first rotated so a prominent vertical feature is in fact vertical, and then the Architects Perspective Correction is run.

A moderate amount of internal image retouching is done where appropriate to correct camera defects, remove shadows, sharpen borders, and repair any glitches that will be removed by a later cleaning anyhow. But the majority of the retouch normally applies to the outside and the borders of the items photographed.

In the case of a collectible where exact appearance is important, great restraint should be used in internal corrections. Otherwise, the image should be made as informative as possible, perhaps comparable to the retouch that would go onto a Time Magazine ad.

If lettering is crucial, consider the scanner and Bitmap Typewriter route instead. Perspective Lettering from scratch can be done, but is usually not cost effective. Very often, the lettering will become illegible as it is reduced from working pixel sizes to final eBay images.

We usually seek out shadowless images. Double, triple, or quadruple exposures are sometimes used to deal with murky lighting, meter faces that need brightened, or attachments whose alignment can be improved. Commercial auto trace programs are largely useless because of murky edges needing the most work. We trace an outline using any color with a red=255 component and route it to our Automatic Mottled Background System.

It is important to use a somewhat mottled background as this dramatically reduces JPEG edge effects with only a negligible increase in file size. Some Web Friendly PostScript Colors can be found here. These are suitably mottled before their actual use.

Internal backgrounds are dealt with by solid red=255 color fills, as are any undercuts. It is important to make sure there are no inadvertent red=255 pixels before running the auto backgrounder. Simply backing the red color balance off one click will usually do this.

The backgrounder includes an optional vignetter of variable density and thickness. An incredibly sophisticated "electric fields" algorithm is used for the auto rounded corners. It is important that the image be cropped to its intended aspect before running the vignetting is in use.

Final eBay formatting can be done with Imageview32
This includes resizing to 600 to 900 pixels, reducing the gamma,increasing the brightness, and AT MOST one or two clicks of sharpening. The image is then saved in JPEG format for eBay uploading and website retention.

Seminars and custom image work available. More on eBay technique here.

November 4, 2013
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Jstor is an interesting and expanding collection of digital scientific journals, books, and primary sources. Many of which are free or reasonably downloaded. lso check out Doaj.

November 3, 2013
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An interesting ( but European ) report on solar pv economics can be found here. Note that one euro is worth about seventy cents.

Apparently world prices are pushing fifty cents per peak panel watt for utility scale buys. This is about TWICE what pv solar needs to become a competitive and truly sustainable and renewable resource.

True renewability and sustainability now at long last appears close in achievable. Brought about by learning curves, production volumes, and reasonably anticipable believed forthcoming tech developments.

Meanwhile, the pv solar breakthrough of the week can be found here. But note that these major stunning breakthroughs have a half life of six days and twenty three hours.

And more evidence on why concentrating pv is doomed to failure can be found here. More on energy fundamentals here and pv specifics
here.

November 2, 2013
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A muffled intermittent yowling inside a laser printer can sometimes be repaired by opening the lid and letting the cat out.

November 1, 2013
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We still do not know where the Allen Hanging Canal goes or what its purpose is, but its likely destination would seem to be fields underlying the Central Dam. Almost certainly, the present fields are a siltation artifact of the dam itself. But prehistoric precedents would seem both possible and likely.

Found some really cute engineering just where Allen enters Central Wash near N 32.83388 W 109.80419. There are a group of low and small hillocks that block canal access except for one point that we might call "the pass".

The canal very carefully aligned itself on the most suitable route through the lowest part of the small pass. It is a lot wider and shallower than normal at this point.

Another mystery of the canals in general is how infiltration was controlled over their typical six mile lengths. For even minor "soaking in" loses would leave you with no deliverable water. Yet, infiltration was obviously controlled, or they would not have repeatedly built so many long canals.

October 31, 2013
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Getting decent photos of oscilloscope waveforms can be a problem with modern digital cameras. Owing to IR flooding of the auto focus, flash issues, timing between shutter and scan speeds, beam, scale, and external balances.

A surprisingly fast and easy workaround is to get the best digital image you can and then over trace it in Paint. Providing actual output waveforms of test gear for sale on eBay can dramatically convince potential customers that the instrument is in fact working.

Mirroring and symmetry and replicating make most of the image rather trivial. A sinewave or a swept sinewave can be done by using Paint's little known spline drawing tool ( between straight line and circle )for the tops and bottoms of the waveform, and then linking them with straight line segments.

Hint: change the waveform color enough that the traced portion can be distinguished from the original.

October 30, 2013
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... And here is how you send multiple record able elevation requests. The trick is to use a vertical bar ( or "pipe" ) delimiter as a separator... http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/elevation/json? locations=39.7391536,-104.9847034|39.7391636,-104.9847034 &sensor=true

( You may have to cut and paste the above url for the correct double elevation result. ) You are allowed 512 requests per url transmission and 25,000 total requests per day.

The main problem with all of this is that the actual elevation points are rather few and far between. Some sort of interpolation ( likely linear, but possibly quadratic or cubic spline ) is used that may in no manner reflect the actual topography.

Differential elevations should end up more accurate than absolute ones, but even this is not clear. Nearby buildings also affect the results. The technique should work best on flat desert. I have my doubts that this will be good enough to predict the paths of unknown hanging canal portions.

October 29, 2013
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Here is how to gather a record able elevation in Google Maps: Send this over the web... http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/elevation/json? locations=39.7391536,-104.9847034&sensor=true And get this back...

{
   "results" : [
      {
         "elevation" : 1608.637939453125,
         "location" : {
            "lat" : 39.7391536,
            "lng" : -104.9847034
         },
         "resolution" : 4.771975994110107
      }
   ],
   "status" : "OK"
}

There is a limit of 25,000 requests per day.

October 28, 2013
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Thought I'd start a hanging canal by hanging canal list of what needs done next. So far, a typical canal is only 60 percent or so defined. Key issues are the destinations for many of the canals, more accurate dating, and in resolving infiltration issues on a six mile canal reach.

The crown jewels of the Safford system appear to be on Frey Mesa. Where a ponding area can be found routed to the spectacular HS and Upper Robinson canals. HS is particularly intriguing because it is counterflow" and heads up canyon. A possible but wildly unverified destination could be the Blue Ponds area.

A logical but as yet unproven source for the Frye Mesa water could be the spring in Spring Canyon. Which also eventually feeds the Allen canal. There is a modern water project that accepts Spring Canyon water and routes it down Frye Mesa that suggests unverified "steal the plans" prehistoric original.

The braided water routing down Frye Mesa apparently required some tricky engineering to maintain slope. The issue is complicated by what appears to be CCC cross channel rework that seemed intent on destroying the utility of the underlying originals.

A related question is what was "wrong" with Frye Creek water that required such an elaborate second source bypass. The HS canal was clearly intent on preserving as much delivered water as possible, rather than simply dumping any excess over the mesa side. Possibly a spring source would be more reliable and less subject to flash flooding or seasonal variations.

There is a short modern canal apparently once intended to switch water between the Blue Ponds that may or may not be HS related. Some Acme Mapper route hints seem to be abandoned wagon roads, complete with horseshoes.

Yet, clearly, "they" obviously had something big in mind for the HS canal. Considering the extreme time and energy needed for its construction.

October 27, 2013
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Added new culebra1.jpg and culebra2.jpg images to our hanging canal image stash. This is the deepest cut on the Allen Canal  and lesser only to the aqueduct on Marijilda, the HS Canal and the Upper Robinson Canal on Frey Mesa for amount of excavation.

The Cuelbra Cut is approximately two meters deep, three wide and a hundred long. More on the hanging canal s here.

October 26, 2013
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As near as I can tell, the www.msnbc.com website has been totally and irreparably trashed. The new link for the original format can be found at http://www.nbcnews.com/I'll try to update this link on our home page as time permits.

October 25, 2013
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Well, maybe just the punchline: The Koala Tea of Mercy is not strained." More details here. And  here.

October 24, 2013
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A useful method of comparing new utility grade power sources or Levelized Cost of New Generation Facilities can be found here. I am surprised that focused solar furnaces are still in the running. They already cost twice as much as tracking pv and the disparity is certain to dramatically increase.

Not to mention requiring the highest structures in their respective states, some with their enormous water needs in their typical arid use areas, lack of progressive expandability, blinding pilots or truck drivers, potential climatic disasters, wildlife uncertainties, and near certain hidden consequences, overruns, and other very rude surprises.

Sanity may eventually prevail, with this project being dropped completely and this one.

Part of the problem is federal and state agencies being told to be far too aggressive in approving questionable or outright bogus "paint it green" land and water grabbing proposals. Combined with questionable technical competence of those doing the approving. Or so it seems to me. More on similar topics here.

October 23, 2013
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There seems to be several new services that, for a fee, will show you how go get a 100 percent return on eBay.

The only tiny problem with this is that a 100 percent return is a sure fire recipe for disaster. For this equals a ludicrously low SBR Sell Buy Ratio of a laughingly pitiful 2:1.Thus, these services do not have the faintest clue what they are talking about. They are not even wrong.

We strongly recommend a minimum SBR of 30:1.Thus, you should NEVER pay more than sixty seven cents for an item you sell on eBay for twenty dollars. 30:1 SBR's are quite easy to achieve through industrial auctions, especially on "contents of room" and "contents of cabinet" deals.

Many more free but tested and thoroughly proven details here and here.

October 22, 2013
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Found a rather tall armless Saguaro Cactus here.

October 21, 2013
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Many thanks to those of you who attended our guided tours of the hanging canals this weekend.

The tours attracted an amazing number of "name brand" professional archaeologists. Typical comments were in the "There is something unique and special here that has tremendous research potential.

More on these newly rediscovered world class engineering wonders here, with possible tours, lectures, or research opportunities here. Meanwhile, please ship all of your spare Dragonfly's to 3860 West First Street, Thatcher AZ, 85552.

October 20, 2013
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I find the classic statistical Monty Hall Problem utterly fascinating. Particularly the way nearly everybody is loudly and emphatically dead wrong about the odds.

A game show host offers a contestant a choice of three doors, one of which contains a car and two of which contain goats. The contestant guesses a certain door. At this point, you might rightly conclude that their odds on the car are 1 in 3.

Now, the host KNOWINGLY opens a door that GUARANTEED to have a goat behind it and ALWAYS asks the contestant if they want to change their guess. The surprising answer is that changing their guess DOUBLES their odds of winning the car!

Most people will wrongly argue that a new guess involves two doors and that the odds are 1 in 2 of either door winning on the new guess. But that is NOT at all what happened.

Because the original guess had 1 in 3 odds. The number of doors has not changed. The number of goats has not changed. And whatever was behind the guessed door has not changed. Thus the odds on the original guess REMAIN& as one in three!

Since the odds of there being a car in the open door with a goat in it is now 0 in 3, the unguessed closed door has to have odds of 2 in 3 of holding the car.

Or TWICE as good a bet as before.

October 19, 2013
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When it comes to Italian food, you cannot be both pro volone and anti pasto.

October 18, 2013
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We are in the process of porting our Magic Sinewaves to the Raspberry Pi. There should be a number of significant advantages, the first and foremost of which is zero or near zero custom hardware.

Second is the ease of doing precision high accuracy time delays in a single step. Eliminating code pinch points and complex multi step delay code. Thirdly are the deeper nulls available through higher clock frequencies. Possibly -85 db down on the Pi compared to -65 decibels on the PIC.

And fourthly, the ability to combine frequency setting and magsine generation together into a single step. Owing to the ridiculously higher total storage available. I'll try to work up some suitable code shortly.

October 17, 2013
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After a brief outage, BAMA, the Boat Anchor technical manual archive is now back in operation. Sadly, the Heathkit stuff remains to be restored But virtually every other classic electronic product source is well represented. Over 400 brands.

October 16, 2013
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This weekend's Hanging Canal tours are expected to go something like this:

Initial meeting at the Discovery Park parking lot at 10:15 Saturday October 19th. Morning tour to the lower Mud Springs canal and the Jernigan canal which will be followed by lunch at Juanita's ( Bush and Shertz ) in Pima.

An afternoon tour will visit the seldom seen portions of the Mills Collection in Discovery Park. For those wishing more on the canals, there will be a ribs night dinner at 6 PM at the Branding Iron ( north on Safford's Eighth avenue, cross bridge, left at Airport Wye.) At least five major southwestern archaeologists are expected to attend in this unique meet and greet.

Sunday's activities will depend on interest and skill levels as well as the number of participants.

They tentatively would include one of the most spectacular hanging canal portions, the Aqueduct, the utterly mind boggling world class HS Canal, and possibly original research over a still unexplored upper reach of the Mud Springs canal.

You are certainly welcome to attend on either or both days. Additional background here and specific info here. Or by calling 928-428-4073.

October 15, 2013
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There's now over a thousand known exoplanets and the score is increasing faster than several per day on the average.

Meanwhile, the number of Goldilocks exoplanets remains at twelve. While this suggests a one percent Goldilocks hit rate, the actual figure is likely to be much higher, possibly in the five or six percent range. Owing to Goldilocks planets typically being smaller and much harder to find with the currently available technology.

Meanwhile, Roller Derby, Captain Video, and Kukla, Fran, and Ollie remain our main goodwill ambassadors to outer space. Having now swept out over one million cubic light years of volume.

October 14, 2013
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We just picked up a whole bunch of gun drills from a machine shop auction. These let you drill very precise and amazingly deep holes.

You normally use them with a lathe or a CNC machine. The tail stock holds the drill stationary and routes coolant through its central hole. The work spins as the hole is deepened "Used" coolant and chips are returned down a single external flute. Drills are usually carbide or carbide tipped and apparently can be resharpened a number of times.

Normal price is $80 to $100 each, but we can offer brand new units in original packaging off eBay for about one third of their normal cost or less.

Please email me for details on remaining available sizes and which are new and which have been professionally resharpened. All are fully guaranteed. Typical sizes are near 0.2015 by 16 inches.

October 13, 2013
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It still never ceases to amaze me the number of individuals laboring under the delusion that use of electrolysis from high value sources such as grid, pv, or wind in some manner represents some sort of solution to something.

In reality, thermodynamic fundamentals involving exergy  will absolutely and positively GUARANTEE that such electrolysis flat out ain't gonna happen.

Exergy is a measure of the quality of energy and directly determines its price and its value. More specifically, exergy is a measure of the reversibly recoverable energy fraction.

Electrical energy is just about the highest exergy stuff available. Because of its convenience in efficient conversion to other forms. Bulk hydrogen energy, on the other hand, has very low exergy because of its inherent inefficiencies in conversion and the outrageous amortization costs in doing so.

Electrolysis is pretty much the same as 1:1 converting US Dollars into Mexican Pesos. There ALWAYS will be more intelligent things to do with high value electrical sources such as grid, pv, or wind, than instantly and irrecoverably destroying most if its value through electrolysis. Much more in our Energy Fundamentals and Electrolysis Tutorials found on our Hydrogen Energy library page. Along with a master directory here.

October 12, 2013
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A once-again reminder that we have guided tours of the hanging canals coming up on October 19th and 20th. Apparently some leading Southwestern Archaeologists have said they are going to participate. Which should make these tours into a significant gathering. You are welcome to attend. Per these details.

October 11, 2013
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Just came from an industrial bankruptcy auction that strongly reinforced the key things to look for in deep distress auctions: Poor promotion by a second tier auctioneer. Utter panic by a lien holder who just wants their building back.

Few but huge lots, most of which are poisoned and need major triage. Astounding bargains in "contents of cabinet" and "contents of room". Hassles over payments, removal dates, and cleanup. Time and date conflicts with a major competitor.

120 degrees in the shade except for the four inch hail. And, of course, the restrooms not working. Much more in our Auction Resources Library page. Your own custom local or regional auction finder can be created for you per these guidelines.

October 10, 2013
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Almost always, online piecemeal auctions combined with bulk offers are a sucker bet. The bulk offers are almost certain to win, unless there are major big time site issues.

You can often get an advance warning over whether there is any point in continuing, by dividing the bulk bid price by the number of lots. Unless the price per lot that has to be consistently achieved is ridiculously low, bulk will likely prevail. More on similar topics in our Auction Help page.

October 9, 2013
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Updated and expanded the Arizona Auction Resources portion of our Auction Help Page. Your own custom regional auction finder can be created for you per these details.

October 8, 2013
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Magic Sinewaves are a new method of very efficiently generating power sinusoidal waveforms from simple on-off witching. Their foremost characteristic is that any number of low harmonics can, in theory, be forced to zero. And in the real world to astonishingly low levels.

Our Magic Sinewave library can be found here with their
latest tutorial here and an amazingly fast performance calculator here. Custom development and symposium services available.

October 7, 2013
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The "next big thing" in energy efficiency is likely to involve heat pumps and air conditioning. For even the best of these are woefully inefficient.

The breakthroughs are likely to come from variable speed and variable capacity becoming the norm, followed by dramatic improvements in heat exchanger performance.

The latter is likely to come about through new developments in MEMS and nanostructures. One new example of which can be found here.

October 6, 2013
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Have you ever wondered what the name is of the little black book that Big Brother uses to stash all your secret stuff? It is called Spillman.

October 5, 2013
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Many years ago, I was attending a folk concert. The opening act was a single and an unknown flute player, performing in front of the closed stage curtains. His job was to warm up the audience for the high priced help that was soon to follow. He was good. Very good.

But as he went along, the music started getting strange and finally downright weird. He was playing chords on his flute, along with notes with unbelievably strong tonal structures. Eventually, the music turned into bunches of Impossible sounding and god-awful squawks.

Almost all of the audience got bored and restless as the music seemed to deteriorate. Just then, I happened to notice a friend beside me who had played in and had taught concert band. He was literally on the edge of his chair with his mouth open.

He briefly turned to me and said very slowly, "You can't do that with a flute. It is not possible." Of the thousands of people in the audience, at the most only five realized they were now witnessing a once-in-a- lifetime performance involving the absolute mastery of a very difficult musical instrument. To nearly everyone else, It sounded like a bunch of god-awful squawks.

Always play for those five.

October 4, 2013
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Truth in advertising: Like when an eBay seller posted...

"All fright arrangements are to be made by the buyer".

October 3, 2013
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A copy of Safety Last is apparently up on YouTube.

AKA the hanging clock scene. Apparently a new false wall on a roof and sneaky camera angles made this SLIGHTLY less dangerous than it really was. At the time, Harold Lloyd was missing a finger and a thumb.

October 2, 2013
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Eurostyle and many other modern connectors apparently have TWO different sizes that are nearly identical and most definitely should NOT be interchanged.

One group is on 0.2 inch or 5.03 mm centers. The other is on 0.197 inch or 5 mm centers. Watch this detail!

October 1, 2013
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A reminder that we have a pair of hanging canal tours coming up on October 19th and 20th. These will include a bunch of "name brand" southwestern archaeological professionals and you can find further details here.

And the related Glyphs story is newly available for free download here. Its live linked and combined web version can be found here. Or email me directly.

September 30, 2013
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Did I ever tell you my story with my involvement with the CIA? It took place somewhat before ( and was a proximate cause of ) the Bay of Pigs incident.

As we tended to do, Bee and I were wandering around south central Arizona and came upon a then presumably long abandoned Marana airstrip. We continued with the vague ( but unlikely ) hope of finding some unusual planes stashed or even an open restaurant.

We were stopped by a military uniformed type of person having no identifying marks whatsoever and holding an ancient SCR 536 WWII handi-talkie. He asked us what we were doing and we told him.

Things then proceeded to get bizarre in that he in no manner could stop us or tell us what to do because --------> he was not there!

We continued our tour and noted shadowy figures furtively hiding just at the edge of buildings carefully tracking our activities, also with ancient handi talkikes. But again, they could not interfere in any manner with us because ------> they were not there!

At the time, I held a DOD secret clearance, so I eventually decided that what was happening was not quite right. As suspected, there was no restaurant, and the only planes were a bunch of derelict connies.

The outcome of the Bay of Pigs clearly indicated the skill levels of the epsilon minuses involved. It seemed to me that a simple "ROAD CLOSED" sign might have helped their cause significantly. Eventually many years later, the CIA involvement was admitted.

September 29, 2013
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A while back I decided to write a PowerPoint emulator using my Gonzo Utilities. Aimed at short and fast loading and host independent single Acrobat .PDF files that had improved graphics and did url automatic linking.

A tutorial on the emulator appears here, details on Gonzo here, secrets of autoposition linking here, and the actual Gonzo routines here. Some of the generated file examples included...

Successful eBay Buying Strategies
Successful eBay Selling Strategies
Little known Gila Valley Dayhikes
Prehistoric Hanging Canal Lecture
Energy Fundamentals Intro & Summary
PV Panel Intro & Summary
Mount Graham Aerial Lumber Tramway
An Introduction to Magic Sinewaves
Three Phase Magic Sinewaves

With these companion sourcecode documents...

https://www.tinaja.com/glib/ebaysels.psl  
https://www.tinaja.com/glib/ebaybuys.psl
https://www.tinaja.com/glib/unusualh.psl
https://www.tinaja.com/canal/newhangshow3.psl 
https://www.tinaja.com/glib/nrglect2.psl
https://www.tinaja.com/glib/pvlect2.psl
https://www.tinaja.com/glib/tramshow.psl
https://www.tinaja.com/glib/msintro1.psl
https://www.tinaja.com/glib/deltams1.psl

Things have gotten slightly more complicated in that Adobe now forbids you doing disk access while Distilling PostScript. One obvious workaround is to tow a full copy of Gonzo along in each file's sourcecode. A new site area index has been added here. 

September 28, 2013
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Google recently updated their satellite coverage of the Gila Valley. With some disconcerting results. The new resolution seems about the same as the old, but obvious variations in time of year and time of day seem to have appeared. Besides obvious changes in building construction, some areas are better, and some worse.

In particular, portions of Frye Mesa that previously revealed major obvious hanging canal artifacts are now vague and sketchy at best. What is here now is not nearly good enough to even suggest the unique canal potential of this area. Fortunately, the old imagery has been largely field verified. The same imagery is apparently used by Acme Mapper.

September 27, 2013
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A collection of print style archaeological publications can be found here. And some newer open access archaeological sites can be found here.

September 26, 2013
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Many years ago, a certain New York editor who had never been off the block at Lawn Guiland visited a Texas ranch. He was amazed at how greasy the sheep were and asked why they greased their sheep.

The ranch hands had a big laugh over this and tried to explain lanolin. Then they moseyed up the draw to  he cow oiler.

September 25, 2013
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What may be he entire world's remaining supply of three pin round HP power cords ( also used on some Heathkits and many other pieces of vintage equipment ) can be found here.

I tried finding useful sources a year or two back with no luck at all. These would make a superb eBay item if they could be found in reasonably quantities and pricing.

A highly unsafe alternative is to attach two Molex .093 WM-50 female connector pins to a regular line cord. The "outside" two pins are live, while the middle one is ground. A very few apps used the hot pins opposite to HP. This was typical of certain tape recorders and appliances.

This stunt at least allows temporary testing of vintage equipment. EXTREME SHOCK HAZARD! Also trips breakers and starts fires if careless!

There are three problems with substituting an IEC jack and a modern cord: First, there might be a limiting amount of back panel space. Second, cutting a rectangular hole is labor intensive. And, Third, modifying a piece of legacy equipment can severely damage its values as a collectible.

September 24, 2013
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The Gerber File Format has long been a standard for describing printed circuit layouts and such. A freely downloadable version of the spec can be found here

September 23, 2013
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Thought I'd review what passes around here for a "style sheet". Our latest technical paper can be found here. And literally hundreds of more examples on our website. Amazingly, I've published well over 2000 papers to date, nearly half of which are now online.

I still do writing using raw PostScript by way of my Gonzo Utilities and web posting or submitting as an acrobat .PDF file. Sourcecode is often made separately and freely available in a standard textfile readable .psl format. Short for "PostScript Lancaster".

Recent changes in the Acrobat Distiller have made things a lot more difficult as you cannot any longer read or write disk files. Workarounds have included still using Distiller with a full copy of Gonzo attached to each file, or going to GhostScript when and where disk access is essential. Such as here, here, and here.

A foremost rule here is to typeset first and edit last. For both the form and function of a block of text contribute to its legibility, its readability, and its overall generated interest.

Our preferred format is "book page size" with text and graphics freely intermixed when and where they
are needed. Live web links are generously provided
when and where they can add to content. As does
magnification options.

I prefer short to mid sized paragraphs left justified. Hyphens are NEVER used, rewording the text as needed for well behaved right margins. Widows and orphans are similarly studiously avoided. No attempt is ever made to fit a standard size; each document is as long as it needs to be.

I overwhelmingly prefer the Stone series of fonts. Titles and subtitles are normally a mid green, while links are the usual dark blue. A unique feature of Gonzo is that url links automatically follow any resizing or repositioning as text is entered or edited.

Oversized raised caps are used at the beginning of text, rather than the drop cap that is also Gonzo available. Paragraphs are not indented but are separated by a half vertical space.

Should a "Powerpoint" or "slideshow" style format be more appropriate ( such as here, here, here, here, or here ), I've written a PowerPoint emulator and tutorial here. And actual code can be extracted from any of the just mentioned but .psl trailer files.

I'd very much like to get the rest of my books and early papers online, but this would take additional funding and your sponsorship.

September 22, 2013
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There appears to be a dramatic resurgence in all things Heathkit. And eBay prices are sharply up and many items are selling at their opening Buy It Now prices.

Free schematics and manuals are starting to once again appear on the web, after an ill advised and abortive series of "what were they thinking?" take down notices a few years back.

Many years ago, both HP and Tektronix defined how legacy products are to be dealt with on the web. First and foremost, any and all tech info gets placed into the public domain and can be provided by anybody in any form.

Secondly, the HP and Tektronix websites become the definitive free source for any and all of their own legacy info.

September 21, 2013
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Here's a revised list of local emergency scanner frequencies...

122.80000 Safford Airport
153.68000 Graham Electric
153.95000 Fort Thomas Fire
154.08500Thatcher Fire
154.32500Safford Fire
154.43000 Mount Graham Observatory
154.72500 EAC Security
155.05500 Graham #2
155.14500 Pima Fire
155.17500 Southwest Ambulance
155.20500 Search and Rescue
155.26500 Search and Rescue #2
155.71500 GRAHAM DISPATCH
155.83500 Graham #3
156.18750 Graham #4
159.10500 Klondyke
162.16250 BLM Gila
164.82500 Tonto Fire Net
168.05000 Coronado Fire
168.15000 Coronado Heliograph Fire
168.60000 National Fire 3
169.60000 Coronado Heligroph
171.70000 San Carlos
460.27500 Highway Patrol Statewide
460.32500 Highway Patrol Safford

Many listings for other areas can be found here.

September 20, 2013
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One of the more infuriating features of the vacuum tube era was that the tube markings tended to be impossibly difficult to read initially and often vanished completely with time.

Several manufacturers of MOV varistor chips seem to be repeating this debacle. With low contrast markings that are hard to read, mysterious, or even rub off.

We had to flush thousands of MOVs that, while we knew exactly who made them and what they were, ended up completely illegible. And thus largely eBay unsellable.

If the markings are there but dim, we sometimes will "improve" them in our eBay images by using our Bitmap typewriter. Latest version here.

Obvious tricks to read any dim numbers include an illuminated magnifier or to scan the chip at 600 DPI and view it in Imageview32. policy will continue to be flushing the illegible but shipping the dimly but certainly viewable.

September 19, 2013
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Overheard some alternate energy enthusiasts who were lavishly praising Sterling engines as the ultimate solution to low delta-t energy recovery.

It quickly became obvious that they did not have the faintest clue of the underlying thermodynamics or economics.

To date, the Sterling engine has been one of the largest and the most monumental engineering ratholes of all times. Here is why...

Much more in our Energy Fundamentals tutorial. And in our Engineering Ratholes story.

September 18, 2013
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www.engineeringtv.com is a new collection of industry videos,
tutorials, and related technical info.

September 17, 2013
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I'm surprised that I never heard of Tele-Tech magazine, an apparently one time outstanding trade journal for the broadcast and television industries.

At any rate, an extensive collection of freely downloadable and utterly fascinating historical downloads can be found here.

September 16, 2013
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Intel just announced a Raspberry Pi alternative called the Minnow board. With details here , a video here, and discussion here. Along with critical comments here.

Instead, it appears to be more of a beached whale. Oversized, overpriced, and of limited performance. What were they thinking?

September 15, 2013
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Just after WWII, our sun suddenly became a radio star. Owing to widespread expansion of VHF television broadcasts. And Captain Video, Roller Derby, and Kukla, Fran, and Ollie suddenly became our goodwill ambassadors to outer space.

These signals have now swept out over ONE MILLION CUBIC LIGHT YEARS of space and have been overwhelmingly likely to annoy many distant extrasolar Goldilocks planets.

At signal levels that remain detectable with our current technology. Curiously, the signal strength drops off with the square of the distance, but the number of annoyed planets increases with the cube of the distance.

Consider this: What interpretation would "they" make over a lucid ten second clip of Roller Derby as the sum total of Earth based humanity?

September 14, 2013
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A reminder that we have several MILES of transparent polyester sheet in dozens of rolls of varying lengths and sizes.

I've been meaning to build up a rewinder but it seems to be taking forever. email me if you have any interest in this superb material
at one sixth or less of its normal price.

September 13, 2013
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A local utility just did a major remote meter reading upgrade, and I now have great heaping bunches of several generations of earlier power meters.

These include both the classic mechanical "spinning wheel" mechanisms and newer all-digital LCD readout designs. I should shortly have these up on our eBay site. Just as soon as I get a test setup completed.

They are the traditional 220 volt center tapped home
power versions. I'm working at seeing if these can be modified for 110 volt use in alternate energy, power efficiency, or photovoltaics solar energy research.

As is, they should be quite useful for mobile home parks or sublet leasing. Besides being eminently collectible at a tiny fraction of their usual price.

Ownership and use of these meters is completely legal so long as they are not in any manner involved in utility theft of services. You can email me for further details and suggestions.

September 12, 2013
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The solar energy pv breakthrough of the week can be newly found here. With a discussion here.

Traditional pv cells have to waste a lot of energy as unwanted heat, as any frequency below the work function is ignored. As is any "spare change" above.

Unfortunately, pv weekly breakthroughs have a half life of six days, 23 hours, and 59 minutes.

September 11, 2013
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Here we go again. Boy, a whole flock of them flew over this time. With additional details here in its 9-11-13 entry.

My very first magnetic perpetual motion machine can be found here. And originally here.

In normal use, a certain amount of energy is externally stored in a magnet's field. You can borrow some of this energy temporarily, but you have to put it back if the magnet is to continue operating at full strength.

When you borrow some of the field's energy, its size and strength must proportionally decrease. Thus, a magnet does work when it is moved to the refrigerator and has work done on it when it is removed. No work or energy loss occurs when the magnet is just sitting there.

For work equals force times distance. If it just sits there, the distance moved is zero. How much total energy is stored in a better  grade magnet?

You can calculate this sort of thing directly. Or else use an equivalent solenoid and the Joules = 1/2 Li^2 formula. But there is a much faster and vastly sneakier way:

Here is a typical magnetizer for "normal" magnets. Its total energy storage is 8000 Joules. A Joule is one watt second and there are 3600 watt seconds in a watt hour.

If 100 percent of this energy were to end up n the magnet ( dream on ), you would be  talking a whopping 2.22 watt hours of energy storage. Enough to run a 100 watt light bulb for slightly over one minute!

Thus, the total energy stored in a typical  magnet is quite minuscule. More on pseudoscience bashing here

September 10, 2013
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Half of our first fully professional hanging canal paper is now in print...

Neely, J. and Lancaster, D. 2013. The Bajada Canals of the Safford Basin: Small Corporate Group Collaboration in Southeastern Arizona. GLYPHS, Arizona Archaeological and Historical Society, Vol. 64, Nos. 3 & 4. Tucson

Presumably part I should shortly appear for download on the Glyphs website. Meanwhile, you can view the entire paper
with live web links here.

September 9, 2013
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Until yesterday, we had been getting an intolerable several hundred obvious spam messages a day. Miraculously, these seemed to now have dropped to ten or so. Apparently Fat Cow has an incredibly effective and highly welcome new spam filter.

Just in case the new filter is too powerful and includes false hits, be sure to re-email me if you do not get a response the first time.

September 8, 2013
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Curiously, the Gila Valley seems to have used at least six ( and possibly seven ) major and innovative prehistoric ag tools. While somewhat mutually exclusive, in places they are literally piled on top of each other.

Possibly the oldest are what I call mulch rings and others have named "cairns". Basically a filled ring of rocks three feet in diameter and one rock high whose apparent use was to retain moisture and limit evaporation for a single plant, perhaps an Agave. These are typically randomly arranged in groups of fifteen or so, perhaps

Second are the grids, which bear an astonishing similarity to Dilbert office cubicals. These are a rock border perhaps twelve by twenty four feet that define a field area. Apparently crops were planted under the rocks, rather than in the more obvious middle. There are possibly tens of thousands of these north of the Gila and likely at least few hundred to the south. Their definitive text is found here.

A possible third are the UFO Fish Fillets. These appear to be a cross between grids and Trincheras. Only one example is known and it is both fairly remote from more dense habitation areas and could possibly be an odd CCC artifact. They are definitely in need of further study.

Fourth are the aproned check dams. These cross intermittent small washes and have a fine soil area built up behind them. Their size suggests some sort of plant nurseries. A smaller apron is often below the main dam, perhaps for a secondary crop area or to prevent erosion.

Fifth are the roasting pits. These are "miniature sinkholes" that were apparently used to roast agave. They are typically five feet across and two feet deep. And are quite distinctive because of their negative terrain

Sixth are the lowland canals. These are large and Gila river derived and quite similar to Hohokam canals in the Salt River Valley. While truly spectacular and impressive, the engineering behind them was not all that great as it involved nearly level dirt and obvious routes using gently sloping constructs.

Finally are the bajada hanging canals that apparently made spectacular use of virtually every drop of Mount Graham stream water.

28 of these are known for a total distance of 50 miles. In places, they are literally hung on the edges of steep sided mesas, making their slope largely independent of the surrounding terrain! Their astonishing engineering over incredibly hostile terrain remains world class.

More on similar topics here.

September 7, 2013
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The classic Richard Feynman physics lectures have been newly released in free downloadable HTML format.

Per these details, this discussion, and this video.

September 6, 2013
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So who built the hanging canals? Where did the technology come from? One possibility is that these are in fact world class unique and amazingly rapidly evolved in place.

Of the four or five Gila Valley "trading partners", only the Hohokam had significant canal technology. And their canals are remarkably similar to the riverine lowland canals here. A strong argument for lowland adaption can thus be reasonably made.

But the hanging canals involve orders of magnitude fancier engineering and skill sets. They also seem "complete" in that there are no obvious additional locations. And ( with possible exception of Henry's ) are conspicuously lacking in upgrades, outright failures, or obvious rework.

No similar systems are known elsewhere in Basin and Range. But a case can be made that Mount Graham is unique unto itself with additional height, numerous preannual streams, much higher snow pack, and convenient northeastern conduit mesas.

In short, there does not presently appear to be any known source to directly import the needed technology and skills. And thus, the hanging canals might be uniquely evolved locally within the Safford basin.

The motivation for such rapid technological advancement remains highly enigmatic. Bordering on the astounding. Much more here.

September 5, 2013
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Expanded and updated our Gila Hikes web page.

Please email me with anything I missed or needs further updating.

September 4, 2013
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Tucson Electric Power ( TEP ) seems to have an expanding mix of traditional and alternate energy power sources. Some interesting facts and figures from them are found here.

Some non-obvious points from their presentation: The best of their traditional power plants are combined cycle units that now approach a 60 percent thermal efficiency at a cost of $83 per megawatt hour. ( TEP apparently has no hydro power or comparable figures. And the obsolete Childs hydro site was just demolished.)

Surprisingly nuclear and tracking pv cost about the same and come in somewhat under double this figure. But it is very reasonable to expect nuclear to cost a lot more and pv to cost a lot less in the future.

The advantages of tracking pv are apparently strong enough to exceed their additional complexity. These systems currently beat out mirror style solar and should do so very more so in the future. To the point of which future mirror solar appears to be a sucker bet.

At present, wind comes in at $128 per megawatt hour. Note that $83 per megawatt hour is the same as 8.3 cents per kilowatt hour. Some energy tutorials can be found here and here.

September 1, 2013
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One of the latest free energy scam du jours seems to be rapidly approaching its inevitable crash and burn phase. At least according to this apparently credible analysis.

Secrets of effectively bashing pseudoscience appear here and here.

August 31, 2013
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A map showing the conflicts between the newly discovered prehistoric hanging canals and one proposed Sunzia transmission line route can be found here.

The most reasonable outer that is many miles away from the canals seems to be raising major NIMBY complaints.

To me, it makes the most sense to create integrated resource corridors. In which the identical route is used for interstate thruways, railroad lines, fiber optic pipelines, solar and wind farms, local power transmission, and regional power inter ties.

August 30a, 2013
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Some new and free software now allows just about any amateur with a decent telescope go on their own Goldilocks planet hunt.

The open source software works by monitoring an area of stars and looking for subtle changes in a single star's brightness during a possible transit. The technique is called differential photometry.

A reminder that we have a very active local astronomy club and free use of a twenty inch telescope. More here, here, and here.

August 30, 2013
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Speaking of which, a useful directory of local scanning frequencies can be found here.

August 29, 2013
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Oddball and klutzy wall warts may be on the way out. With most newer lower power electronics favoring USB for both rechargeable battery power and computer updates.

Normally, these are plug and go from any computer. If you must operate locally ( such as on a public service scanner ) $5 USB chargers are readily available from a number of sources.

These compact wall plug devices offer full regulation and switchmode operation. They usually run a little high at 5.25 volts to allow for cord losses.

One tip: unpowered USB expanders may not be able to provide
useful power. Use a direct computer connection or a powered
USB expander or a charger instead.

August 27, 2013
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Found an additional stash of "kiss your ass goodbye" nuclear holocaust fashion accessories. Area Predictor, Radiological that you use as a clear and grease pencil markable overlay for a standard topo map. NSN 6665-00-106-9595.

Rare collectible "as new" in original mil packaging with TM 3-6665-304-10 technical manual included. Vinyl this old ends up slightly wrinkled, but still clear and readable.

On eBay or email me for details.

August 26, 2013
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An interesting and free online Calculus Course can be newly found here.

August 25, 2013
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A directory of southwestern waterfalls appears here. It seems to have both gross omissions and little known inclusions.

Ferinstance, Frye Mesa Falls, the two Deadman Falls, and Grant Creek Falls are missing from the Grahams. As is Kennedy Falls near Aravapia, but this one may or may not even exist.

Curiously, two very remote falls in Greenlee County are listed. These are Sardine Falls and Chitty Falls. I have no idea how big they are. Access looks painful.

And the little known spectacular ( when it runs ) Seneca Falls on the San Carlos res also seems unmentioned. As does San Carlos falls itself.

Another Seneca photo appears here. Note that there is a second waterfall below the plunge pool that is quite difficult to visit or photograph.

August 24, 2013
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The ancient oriental art of Ti Wun On consists of getting totally snockered, but always doing so in a professional and workmanlike manner.

August 23, 2013
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Google has updated their local imagery for Google Maps and Google Earth. The same data base gets used for Acme Mapper.

Some of the image capture was done around May of 2013, and seems to apply mostly to developed areas. The resolution remains pretty much the same. Note that image dates appear on Google Earth but not on Acme Mapper or Google Maps.

Some remote areas appear slightly different, while others clearly still use older data. Elsewhere, newly developed flybys and other features are now offered.

August 22, 2013
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Once again revised our Hanging Canal summary here with its sourcecode here. This should be pretty much
near the final version.

More on the hanging canals here.

August 21, 2013
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Rediscovered a group of southern grids just off the Porter Springs road. The score now approaches several thousand north of the river and a few hundred to the south.

The new finds are pretty much invisible on Acme Mapper. They also include mulch rings, roasting pits, and a strange canal-like water management scheme that includes both long linear walls and crosswise aproned check dams. Bizarre.

The key paper on the grids appears here with an image here and more on our hanging canals here. The grids were apparently a giant agave booze factory and the very first Dilbert office cubicals.

August 20, 2013
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Yorg. You should NEVER use a space or ( especially ) a percent sign in a url! Apparently ASU IT has not yet picked up on this obvious and essential rule.

I started getting some bizarre links when going between .PDF and Chrome. A url that includes ...stuff stuff... or ...stuff%20stuff would 404 as ...stuff%3520stuff...

What apparently was happening is that BOTH acrobat AND chrome were substituting for the HTML reserved parenthesis character.

The sledgehammer workaround around url stupidity seems to be to redirect through a "clean" url on your own website, thus taking acrobat out of the loop.

August 19, 2013
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Thanks to some new developments, selling and shipping
to New Mexico has eased somewhat.

Yeah, there still is the language barrier and all the hassles at customs. But at one time, everything needed reloaded at the border crossings because of the different sizes and spacing of the truck tires.

Fortunately, reversible truck tires are newly available that can simply be insided out at the border crossings. More here and here.

August 18, 2013
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Arizona has a number of areas that include lots of impressive sinkholes. While none of these more obvious larger areas presently lead to significant caves that I know of, their very presence suggests enormous voids in their deeply underlying limestone. Possibly forever unreachable.

At least seven major sinkholes are known in the Sedona area that were recently covered in this geological report.

And this report covers the Holbrook Anticline that seems to include at least three major sink areas.

These include the McCauley sinks here, the Zeniff sinks here, and the Snowflake sinks here.

And the two classic "Rand Study" papers appear here and here. It is my understanding that portions of this latter paper have long been either challenged or discredited.

And here is yet another Holbrook Sink.

August 17, 2013
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allen0.jpg - Allen Canal takein
allen1.jpg - Allen Canal below dam
bestgrid.jpg - Best Northern Grids image
culebra1.jpg - Cuelbra cut with Dr. Neely
culebra2.jpg - Cuelbra cut raw
dragan.jpg - Draganflys promotion
frye1.jpg - Robinson Topo ( misnamed )
frye2.jpg - Frye Mesa Braided + HS Canal
gc1.jpg - Golf Course image #1
gc2.jpg - Golf Course image #2
hangcan1.jpg - Original Marijilda hanging
henry1.jpg - Middle of Henry Canal
jern1.jpg - End of Jernigan Canal
map2.jpg - Screen dump of early kml
mary2.jpg - Nicer image of Marijilda hang
mud1.jpg - Middle of mud springs below dam
mud2.jpg - Lowest end of Mud Springs
rinc1.jpg - Twin boobs ponding area
rinc2.jpg - Detail of Twin Boobs + Cactus
rob1.jpg - Main hanging portion of Robinson
rob2.jpg - Hung Robinson detail
rob3.jpg - Robinson top of mesa
safcan1.jpg - GIS Map
safcanmap.kml Google Earth Map
threeswitch.jpg - Narrow portion of Deadman
tranq1.jpg - Mid tranquility in urban area
tranq2.jpg - Tranquility rebuild detail
trol1.jpg - Troll house mid Mud Springs
twinb1.jpg - Twin boobs before Safford trashing

August 16, 2013
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Added a new Hanging Canal Image to our image stash. It is pretty much the same as this older one, but is far more colorful and shows the "water flows uphill" illusion somewhat better.

The mountains in the background are the low and very arid Whitlocks. There once was a scheme to put a luxury destination telescope resort on top of this totally inaccessible range.

More happy horseshit on the Whitlocks here. More on our hanging canals here.

August 15, 2013
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An interesting new barometric sensor can be found here and described here. It costs $5 in quantity, is micropower, and can give down to an eight inch resolution. We earlier looked at a competitive item here.

We still have not found an optimum method to measure hanging canal slope. The sensor in the Garmin is much better than a direct GPS measurement, but still not nearly good enough. Current thinking is to use a surveyor's automatic level. Such as one of these.

August 14, 2013
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One of the more amazing and utterly inexplicable features of our local prehistoric hanging canals under study is imply this: They appear both "perfect" and "complete" t seems that literally every drop of north eastern Mount Graham stream water was fully and completely exploited.

There are no obvious remaining locations to build any new canals. Of the existing canals, all of them seem "perfect" and fully functional. There is no evidence of any work in progress, nor any remnants of construction mistakes or errors.

Surely somebody screwed up something somewhere along the way. But such evidence remains conspicuously absent.

August 13, 2013
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Bezier Cubic Splines are an excellent and preferred method to draw the smooth continuous curves often found in typography, CAD/CAM, and graphics in general.

Among their many advantages is a very sparse data set allowing a mere eight points to completely define a full and carefully controlled and device independent curve.

Cubic splines are exceptionally easy to use in the PostScript computer language.  But are also generally implementable in most higher level languages and in all but the smallest of bare bones microprocessors.

Many tutorials and examples are now present in our Cubic Spline Library.

August 12, 2013
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A non-obvious trick when trying to extract info from Acme Mapper or Google Earth: False color tricks can sometimes make invisible or subtle features more apparent.

Obvious choices are normal, invert colors, red only, blue only,
green only, not red, not blue, and not green. One simple method is to use your Print Screen key to grab a screen image and then send it to Imageview 32.

August 11, 2013
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This story and this discussion have come to the conclusion that drive-in theaters might be endangered.

Doing them in this time is the major movie studios switching to all digital formats and dropping traditional 35 mm movie can distributions. The updating costs of a quarter of a million dollars or more is waaay beyond what they can deal with.

August 10, 2013
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I'm coming to the conclusion that Salvex is more bizarre entertainment than a useful auction resource. Nearly a dozen times, I've been high bidder only to have my reasonable offer rejected. Other times, they switch from bidding to "make an offer" that goes on forever before vanishing without comment.

They do have unusual stuff. Like the truck full of now mashed mashed potatoes that was in a wreck. Or the truckloads of napalm they got off Home Depot when somebody found out it burned. Or pizza that is clearly out of warranty.

Some useful auction stuff here, with Arizona specific links here.

August 9, 2013
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Expanded and updated our Gila Hikes web page. Please email me with anything I missed or needs further updating.

August 8, 2013
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There are a surprising number of Arizona observatories, as this list reveals. Our nearest local observatory is the 20 inch telescope at Discovery Park. Which you are welcome to visit most any time. And even can gain full control of by taking a simple college course. Light pollution here is rather bad..

The obvious biggie on the hill is the LBT. While drop in visitors are definitely a no-no, EAC does offer all day guided tours Saturdays during the fall and winter months.

While they do not have any larger telescopes, the Casitas De Gila bed and breakfast offers the finest night skies most anywhere and has many smaller instruments available for your use. Check out their real time planetarium simulator above the hot tub.

August 7, 2013
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Those compulsory faculty teas that drove me away from an advanced archaeology degree might not have been that bad...

    ....if only they hadn't been intravenous.

August 6, 2013
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A reminder that Adobe Acrobat does NOT update any links when you replace a page! This can cause severe problems in text pages when the url click thus can all end up in the wrong positions.

Alternately, this can be a benefit if you want to predistill full page image click-thrus. Per this PostScript code...

/sfpurl { /cururlname exch store % save url string
mark % start pdfmark
/Rect [-5 0 47 53]
/Color [ 1 1 1 ]
/Action <</Subtype /URI /URI cururlname>>
/Subtype /Link
/ANN % annotation type
pdfmark% call pdf operators
} def

The above code is intended for 10X layout pages using my Gonzo Utilities. For normal page sizes, multiply the /Rect values by ten. It is also important to make sure you do not have any "double" links or inadvertent unwanted earlier links present. Some browsers may pick the wrong link!

August 5, 2013
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A possible Wikipedia entry for our hanging canals appears here with its sourcecode here.

And a slight variant for Wesrch can be found here with its sourcecode here. These are rough drafts of preliminary files. Please email me with any critical review or comments.

August 4, 2013
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A reminder that I have a pair of very rare 1908 commercial silent movie projectors available. They are presently disassembled, so they would easily be UPS shippable. They seem to be nearly  complete and should be eminently restorable.

Please email me if you have any interest in this unique opportunity. Inspection welcome. We will shortly be dramatically be expanding our refurb activities, so I very much need the shop space back.

August 3, 2013
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Some eBay sellers seem obsessed with having as high a sell thru rate as they can, attempting to sell everything every time on its first listing.

In reality, there probably is no correlation whatsoever with fast sell thru and optimal eBay profits. In fact, if things are selling too fast, you are probably charging far too little.

My own feeling is that if it takes a few weeks or even a few months to sell something, the chances are you can get a much higher price for it. And that your total return even after the extra fees should be significantly higher. Especially since your first relisting is free.

At least to me, twenty one day cashout and a fifteen month hang time appears about right for industrial items acquired in quantity. Especially if a 30:1 sell/buy ratio goal is in fact achieved. More on our Auction Help page.

August 2, 2013
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Got one of the usual late night phone calls from an individual who just invented a new way of marketing and wanted to run out and get a patent on it to "protect" their invention. The individual, of course, had never really marketed anything themselves.

For openers, a patent in no manner prevents anyone from stealing your ideas. All a patent does is give you a right to sue someone should your idea in fact get stolen. As the typical enforcement cost of patent litigation is in the  $300,000 range ( yearly litigation insurance alone normally costs more than $90,000 ), the cost of a getting a patent is pocket change that simply does not enter into the economics.

It is thus extremely foolish to try and patent a million dollar idea. There is, of course, not one patent in one thousand that cannot be busted outright by a diligent enough search for prior art in obscure enough places. Nor does more than one patent in five hundred or more ever return a net positive cash flow.

I may have mentioned this a time or two before, but any involvement whatsoever by an individual or small scale startup with the patent system is VIRTUALLY CERTAIN to result is a HUGE net loss of time, energy, money, and sanity.

Much more on these topics in our Patent Help library. especially our Collected Patent Tutorial Reprints, and specific files on When to Patent, The Idea Mortality Curve,How to Bust a $650 Patent, and, of, course, our classic Case Against Patents that started it all.

August 1, 2013
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Plans are underfoot for another hanging canal tour on Saturday October 19th. Chances are that you would be welcome to attend.

July 31, 2013
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A possibly final ( or at least temporarily final ) version of the hanging canal .GIS map appears here. Most ( and hopefully all ) of the papers referencing it supposedly have been updated.

July 30, 2013
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Just noticed that the once dim bulldozer trace to Mescal Crack is now almost totally invisible. But this pit can still be seen as a black diagonal gash inside a small funnel in Acme Mapper or Google Earth.

Many caver trips were spent decades ago to try and pin down this elusive cave. Depending on the caver, its depth is between 90 and 120 feet. It is in Precambrian Mescal Limestone of the Apache group. Which only rarely forms present caves. I only know of El Diablo and Copper Mountain s other examples.

Another pit is rumored to be a mile and a quarter northwest, but nobody has even tried to find it for decades. Supposedly "rocks roll forever" and its tentative name is Strawberry Awful.

Both are located in the "hat" area of Arizona, a region the casual tourist often bypasses. You can't get there from here.

July 29, 2013
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Beware of a new eBay phishing attempt that attacks by way of a "sent a message" route. Typically, they will include an item number that is not yours and be vague enough that you might be motivated to ask them which item they are referring to.

The scam is that clicking on the "respond" button does not go to eBay but routes to them. From which they can ask for your password, your VISA or worse. Always check to be sure the respond address is not suspicious!

Another clue is that you might get as many as four of these at once. Always forward anything strange to spoof@ebay.com Our own eBay offers here.

July 28, 2013
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Found some more curious rock alignments here, but have not yet fully explored them.

They appear to be old but not canal related. Unlike typical grids, they seem to be on undulating or sloping land. As usual, they raise more questions than they resolve.

There are also mulch rings and other structures in the area. Including a "plaza" just east of the road.

July 27, 2013
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I've long been interested in bashing pseudoscience and in promoting real science. But there is a phenom on that seems to be stuck in the middle, neither fish nor fowl. This is the hum on the desert.

Here's how we covered it long ago in our Gila Dayhikes page:

HUM ON THE DESERT"-- Enigmatic "lopeing generator" sounds are heard by some in the Desert Southwest. Myself included. With no generally acceptable explanation. These could be real or variations on tinnitus or individuals that have exceptional infrasonic capabilities. Meanwhile, the classic southwestern sounds of coyote pup yip yarfs, the call of the canyon wren, and the creaking and groaning of an Aermotor windmill should be lovingly cherished.

And here is what Wikipedia did with it. And here is some of the latest coverage.

If this was an external source, it seems to me that a few minutes with a decent audio spectrum analyzer would nail it down once and for all. But this does not seem to ever happen.

Building a PC audio card synthesizer with a bunch of knobs might be interesting. Followed by comparing time reports and knob settings.

My present theory is ostoacoustic emissions.  In a quiet room, one
of my ears can clearly sense an object placed within an inch of it. The sensing lasts only a second. I assume this is some sort of a balance recalibration" or "acoustic background pattern adjustment". I have no doubt it is real.

And might explain why the effect seems stronger inside a van or SUV, perhaps owing to acoustical filtering or resonance.

But no credible solution to the hum on the desert has yet appeared. I predict it will turn out real but internal.

July 23, 2013
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Amazingly, it is trivial to convert a Raspberry Pi into a wide range rf signal generator per thesee details.

July 22, 2013
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Just took a speed reading course and managed to read War and Peace in seven minutes. It's about Russia.

July 21, 2013
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Found another mystery prehistoric hanging canal up on Deadman Mesa. As usual, it generates more questions than it resolves. It looks sort of older and smaller than the others

This one has yet another example of what we might call "knife edging". The highest portions of many mesas can be extremely narrow. With knife edging, a three foot wide canal precisely aligns itself with the uppermost highest six feet of the mesa.

Its destination remains unknown, but it seems to be heading directly to Upper Deadman Tank. The only tiny problem is that there is a huge cliff in the way.

The engineering and thinking that had to go into this sort of thing is utterly mind boggling. In many cases, knife edging is the only feasible route that can preserve the needed canal slope.

There are now two knife edges on Deadman Mesa, two on Frye Mesa, one on the Marijilda route, and several others. Clearly, they are a major concept used in the system design of the hanging canals.

There is at least one example of the opposite of knife edging as well. Where a canal crosses a very narrow saddle between Ash Creek and the Mud Springs bajadas. Via the only feasible route.

This find has not yet been field proofed. Your help  is welcome. An ATV would greatly simplify access. Much more on all this here.

July 20, 2013
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Google now has an image search feature. The only tiny problem is that it seems to deliver too many false hits.

You can add image search to Chrome with this plugin. It appears as a new menu item when right clicking over an image

This item was up for an auction sale. Using the search found dozens of omelet images. But nothing useful.

I did go to the sci.electronics.design newsgroup. Out of a dozen reasonable suggestions, one was a Kroy Lettering Machine. It turns out that only Kroy has a six wide keyboard and a tiny case notch upper left. But it does not appear to be a K5100 because of the bottom connector. Any ideas?

July 19, 2013
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Just made the summer issue of Lafayette Magazine.

Did I ever tell you about the time I made the cover of the Rolling Stone? Er, actually, it was on page 23 and there were a few others in the picture. About 275,561 of them as I recall.

Amazingly and inexplicably and astoundingly, our picnic cooler was prominently featured on the next page.

July 18, 2013
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Expanded and updated our Gila Hikes web page.

July 17, 2013
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There seems to be a bug in Windows 8 in which windows extend below the bottom of the screen and prevent themselves from being vertically resized.

A simple fix that often works is to pull the top of the window down, then reposition.

Another thing you can try is to use alt-space. The menu created seems to reset most windows to reasonable sizes.

Another possibility is to dramatically lower the screen resolution, then close and reopen. This is a pain and may rearrange your icons, though.

July 16, 2013
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Not sure if it is a bug or a feature, but it sure is totally infuriating: If you replace a page in acrobat, the old links are preserved and the new ones ignored!

This is especially maddening if the purpose of the page replacement was to alter or edit the url links. To enter new links, you apparently have to do so separately and manually after the page replacement.

July 15, 2013
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Just uploaded the initial version of our Hanging Canal Lecture III here with its sourcecode here. Version II remains available here with sourcecode here.

Adobe's crippling of Distiller has made using the sourcecode more difficult, in that images now  have to be hand inserted and linked after PDF creation. Or else page substituted.

Much more on our hanging canals here. Yes, tours, talks, and research opportunities are available.

July 14, 2013
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As we've seen, Adobe has hopelessly crippled Distiller in Acrobat X and higher by locking out disk access. As a result, I'm having to rework most of our early Postscript programs.

At present, the Hanging Canal slide show is up for revision. In the good old days, I had a completely automatic image JPG inserter, sizer, and linker in my Gonzo utilities. This no longer works due to the disk access ban. You now have to manually insert and link images after the .PDF file is distilled.

The process now has to go something like this: You insert a full version of my Gonzo Utilities inside each file to be distilled. Every place you want to insert a full page image, you add a dummy page with a very wide black margin and a reminder note to yourself with the name of the image and the link.

After distilling, you go to each dummy page and add a watermark (!) containing the desired image. Be absolutely sure you do not overwrite any previous watermarks and that you are limited to the specific page you are working on! You then expand the watermark to the desired full size. After that,you go to the advanced editing tools and insert the desired url link. Then save the full PDf file to a new filename.

At this point, it is a very good idea to extract your single page image as a .PDF file. That way, on later revisions, you only have to replace a page rather than go through the pain of a watermark and link.

I sorely miss the ability to run disk files in Distiller. In those cases where there is no other workaround, I've gone to Ghostscript. Which freely allows full disk access, But it seems to have problems in generating complex PDF files.

July 13, 2013
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Just noticed that the Q Ranch Lodge is now an upscale bed and breakfast. Cleverly located in the secret part of Arizona you cannot get to, they offer a prehistorically rich area and even classes on scientific illustration.

Back during the first moon landings, Bee and I did a pair of summer field digs here at their nearby Flying V.

One high point of the dig was an unintended culture shock experiment. It seems the dig attracted a bunch of snotty little rich girls from prestigious New England colleges. Strictly Upper Crudney on the Thames.

We took this gaggle of ingenues and without warning dumped them into Oni's Redneck Bar in Young, Az. Whose normal denizen's social skills were most generously described as less than formative.

Amazingly, the rodeo belt buckles prevailed. The next Saturday saw the worst traffic jam in Young since the Pleasant Valley War.

July 12, 2013
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Mickey Mouse logic is alive and well. NXP has just come out with their 74AXP1G58 chip which can be pin programmed to be any one of nine different logic gates.

It works down to 0.7 volts, is tiny, and costs a quarter each in quantity. Schmidt inputs. A uL914 in drag.

July 11, 2013
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Uploaded a rare ( rather than medium or well done ) copy of our classic Active Bandpass Filter paper. Along with its companion tutorial. Other classic reprints here.

Much more on active filters here and here. A reminder that the Synergetics edition is much cheaper, autographed, and has a better binding email us for direct shipment.

July 10, 2013
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The new format changes in WWVB  promises both orders of magnitude improvements in reliable reception and in single chip ( or near single chip ) compatibility.

Just had a legacy WWVB product salesman call me who did not have the faintest clue that All of their previous products are now instantly dead in the water.

Meanwhile, the chip supplier to watch is XtendWave. Who are a fabless chip house out of Dallas.

They apparently have the inside track on new chips as they have been working closely and directly with NIST on the new format.

At present, they do have some eval chips and demo boards available but only to potential large clients. And then only under highly restrictive NDA.

July 9, 2013
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Updated our Hanging Canal and Tinaja Questing sampler pages to pick up Neely's Lefthand paper, and our combined Hanging Canal Summary and its sourcecode.

July 8, 2013
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In the latest major scientific breakthrough, the shelf life of Hostess Twinkies has just been dramatically extended.

And humanity can rejoice.

July 7, 2013
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Uploaded a rough preliminary copy of our new joint Hanging Canal Summary paper here with its sourcecode here.

The GIS map is not quite finalized and the Google Earth version is not nearly complete. Other hanging canal papers and related info can be found here.

July 6, 2013
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Another reason inkjet ink does not last very long is that ink is also used for calibration and setup, never appearing on any page.

One way to minimize this is to leave the printer on all the time. The issue is discussed here. and here.

July 5, 2013
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Not quite sure what reserachgate.net is up to, but it looks like a potential new way of circulating scientific research.

Membership is apparently by invitation only and takes a week or two. Some details here.

I guess I am not personally much into social networking. I did need to join Facebook to find some of our local alternatives to the nonexistent Craig's List, and ended up with nearly a thousand friend wannabees.

One thing that is sorely becoming apparent is that the social networking eyeball siphoning is apparently decimating the traditional Usenet news groups.

July 4, 2013
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Some highly disconcerting fire weather info can be found here. Scroll down to their July 2nd. Another take on the same theme can be found here.

July 3, 2013
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One of the reasons people become firemen is that arson is generally frowned upon.

July 2, 2013
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Uploaded a copy of Dr. Neely's Lefthand Canyon paper here.

More on local prehistory here.

July 1, 2013
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It seems we have this tuxedo-furred felis domesticus with uncanny abilities involving keyboarding or sending faxes to randomly chosen destinations.

And certain models of HP printers have an outrageous "feature" of switching from black to fuzzy light gray on certain ( apparently felis related ) driver commands.

The problem is mentioned here. One possible check is to print from a different host to see if the problem goes away.

June 30, 2013
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The locals are arguing again on whether they should raise the library rates, especially for out-of-towners.

But the bottom line is this: Unless a public library radically and immediately repurposes themselves, their imminent failure is a certainty.

The concept of an individual during limited hours accessing a rare one-off document in the presence of a gate keeping control freak is no longer even quaint. And it is not helped any by the outrageously skyrocketing charges of scientific journals.

Like it or not, the finest library in the Gila Valley is now Burger King. But their WiFi now has dozens and shortly will have hundreds of competitors. Many of which have very few food and drink restrictions.

Possibly aggressive lecture series combined with tours and hacker space might salvage the community library. But I feel this happening locally is unlikely.

June 29, 2013
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The Goldilocks score is now up to an even dozen. With Glise hogging the stats. Per details here. Along with 723 confirmed exoplanets and 3098 Kepler candidates for a total of 3821.

June 28, 2013
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Sure, I've heard the horror stories about how low end inkjet printers have utterly outrageous ink costs, but we recently had an old printer blow up and had to substitute a cheapie.

Our ink charges literally went through the roof. We were making two trips a week to the ink store.

This site has done an analysis of your true printer costs. For a three year lifetime, if you print as few as TWO color pages per day, the more expensive printers end up far more cost effective!

A very bad choice is the HP 3520 , while effective cost printers include their 8100 or 8600. The latter weigh in at 1.6 cents per B/W page or 7.7 cents per color.

Really cute is their new  Office Pro X  which has a full width print head for blinding speed. But is unlikely o be cost competitive on total costs.

June 27, 2013
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NIST is in the process of dramatically improving their 60 kHz always-accurate-clock WWVB transmitter per these details. A whole new time code that is phase modulated had been added.

This should promise dramatically improved noise performance. Similar to FM blowing away AM for signal-quality. Error correction has also been newly added.

Amazingly, the old code remains more or less intact. Curiously, cheaper receivers based on diode detection or homodyne will remain compatible. But high end receivers based on PLL demodulation may need a frequency doubler analog multiplier added.

A zero degree 60 kHz reference phase is now transmitted for the first tenth of a second. For a zero in the new code, the phase stays the same for the rest of the second. For a one in the new code, the phase inverts by 180 degrees. Since a phase receiver can be hard limited, the AM noise problems of the past should be dramatically reduced in new designs.

The first few bits of the code are for faster synchronization and look something like a Barker Code. The rest of the minute provides a count of the hours gone by since the start of the century. Plus minutes, seconds, and DST stuff. This newly includes parity bits that can fix a one bit error and report two bit errors.

Some additional technical details, both old and new, can be found here, here, here, and here.

We did some classic stories on "old" WWVB here and here.

June 26, 2013
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New Mexico's spectacular Silver Fire came literally within a few hundred feet of the Black Range Lodge, our favorite bed and breakfast.

The rest of Kingston ( craftily hid in the secret part of New Mexico that you cannot get to ) also remained green and undamaged with zero injuries.

June 25, 2013
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In a rather stunning breakthrough, a pair of Texas researchers managed to reduce the size of particle accelerators by several orders of magnitude.

Going from the size of several football fields to a desktop! More details here.

June 24, 2013
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Some of the locals seem to be taking matters into their own hands over Craig's List not yet listing Safford/Thatcher/Pima.

First and foremost, contact Craig's List via here and once again request the addition. Apparently they changed the rules and you have to register before you can request a new city.

Be sure to use Safford/Thatcher/Pima as I suppose they might get confused over a dozen other possible names for the Greater Bonita-Eden-Sanchez metropolitan area.

At any rate, most of the alternatives are Facebook related and quite small. But there is incredible enthusiasm and stuff is definitely selling.

Here's some Facebook related sites...

Auctions for Graham County
Buy, Sell & Trade in Safford AZ
Duncan AZ Buy Sell Trade
Gila Valley Giveaways
Graham County Web Sales
Graham County Weekly Yard Sales
Greenlee and Graham County Garage sale
Greenlee County Gifts and Goodies
Gila Valley Garage Sale
Guys only Gila Valley Trades and Sales
Safford Thatcher Pima Buy, Sell or Trade
Safford's Treasures

Meanwhile, there's a fairly new third party search service for Craig's List called Search Tempest.

Plus, of course, our own eBay site. No shipping charges on local pickup

June 23, 2013
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Some random reminders of neat stuff: Its been a while since we mentioned Animusic and its related hoax. My own hoax stuff here.

As any beginning FFA student could tell you, no way could this have been John Deere parts. They were not even green! But, amazingly, Intel took the hoax and built a real one, using bunches of computers and paint ball guns at a cost of $160,000.

Our favorite online weaving store remains Cotton Clouds. Amazingly, this is likely the only weaving store that has a prehistoric hanging canal going through the middle of it!

And we remain enthused over Fat Cow, our ISP provider. They also have a new ultra low cost service.

June 22, 2013
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Managed to get a rather poor copy of our Experiments With WWVB part 2 up to our classics archive. Part I can be found here.

Because of am noise problems, reliable operation over most of the US was rather difficult. In addition, at the time, few people realized the significance and advantages of a self-resetting NIST traceable clock.

Modern hacker WWVB receivers and kits seem to get discontinued rather quickly. Again ( until very recently ) owing to reception difficulties, interference, and a limited market. But that is about to change radically.

At least these days, suitable type 77 ferrites for antennas and low frequency crystals for filters are readily available.

If you wanted to do a legacy receiver today, you would start with a ferrite antenna and a double filter, homodyne or PLL demodulate to baseband, then lowpass filter. A full WWVB emulator with considerable computer smarts could then be phase locked to the incoming data with an enormously low bandwidth. AGC would likely remain a must.

It would probably be best to try and synchronize only at midnight, rather than continuously as well.

Ferinstance, you could start recording at 11:58 for four minutes and then cross correlate your own code against the WWVB code. With a high enough score, you could make any needed correction. And sound an alarm if the codes fail to match. This would give you an effective noise bandwidth of .004 Hertz or so.

This is an interesting and low cost WWVB gadget, but it seems to have negative customer vibes.

BUT - there are some brand new changes in the WWVB format that should improve things substantially and open up all sorts of new opportunities for reliable reception. Additional useful info can be found here and here.

June 21, 2013
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My errant Wesrch article finally started behaving. It had rocketed into a bogus first place with typically 500 hits per day. In the last three days, it suddenly dropped to a more reasonable ( but still slightly high ) 15 hits per day.

The only tiny problem is that its score remains high by 35,000 hits or so. Its "real" score should be somewhere around 87th place.

I have no idea what the cause of this glitch was. But Google made major algorithm changes in exactly the same time frame. My apologies to other legitimate Wesrch posters.

June 20, 2013
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One of the other eBay items we once did quite well on were our tinfoil hat liners. These were genuine Cho-seal  from Chomerics and we got them declassified from Holloman Air force Base. Normal cost new was outrageously expensive. And they flew on outta here.

As any multiple abductee will gladly tell you, there is an important use consideration. The Cho-Sealf material should go on the inside of the tin foil hat if you want to stop them from reading your mind. And on the outside if you want to keep them from controlling your thoughts.

Each layer provides up to 120 decibels of attenuation. We used the same stuff years ago when we were first exploring low cost keyboards. BTW, at least some of the stock Apple I photos has my ASCII keyboard on them.

June 19, 2013
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eBay apparently no longer keeps track of your original image filenames.

A case can be made for putting a "secret" code at the end of each and every listing. Ferinstance, on a three line code, the first entry could be an inventory control number. This gets important fast whenever you ave multiple items that look the same but are in fact quite different.

A second code line could give the proximate location of the item in inventory. This is very useful whenever you have multiple storage units or whatever. And the third code line could give most of the url for your original image. You could end this just in ".j" rather than ".jpg" to make the code less obvious.

June 18, 2013
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Is the Blue Ponds Canal the crown jewel of our local prehistoric canals? Or just a figment of my imagination? So far the ground truth remains lacking. Evidence to date goes something like this...

The spectacularly sized HS canal off Frye Mesa needs a delivery destination ideally met by the Blue Ponds route. Most historic and modern water projects stole the plans from an underlying prehistoric original. Projects based on Frye Reservoir and Deadman sourcing were by far the largest and thus "borrow the blueprints" candidates.

The Blue Ponds route is eminently practical and its lack would be conspicuous by its absence. Acme mapper shows both a hanging construct and most of the route traceable. Sadly, at least a portion of this seems to be a wagon road complete with horseshoes.

A short prehistoric looking canal segment exists whose purpose appears to be routing between the two ponds but includes a modern diversion headgate. Your assistance welcome.

June 17, 2013
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The Ben Heck Show is an interesting hardware hacking site. With back issues here.

June 16, 2013
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There are quite a few alternatives to the Raspberry Pi emerging. The highest profile one is the Beagle Bone Black, while some others can be found here and here.

June 15, 2013
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A reminder that there is an independent and free Craig's List search service called SearchTempest. This can be enormously useful for flagging oddball items for you.

One tip: Flag the latest entry in each category of interest, even if you have no use for it. Mote on little known and hard to find auction resources here and here.

June 14, 2013
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As I see it, approximately 95 percent of all local pioneer historic
water projects were "steal the plans" and "dig out an old ditch" from prehistoric origins.

The remaining 5 percent were "borrow the blueprints". More here.

June 13, 2013
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What is the "best" possible image processing program for a scientific publication? This is proving to be quite a problem for our upcoming hanging canal publications.

For internal use, Acme Mapper wins hands down for its high resolution satellite imagery, internal topo maps, easy email linking, convenience, magnifiability, and instant GPS readings.

For classic "static" figures , something GIS based offers the most attractive appearance and the easiest way to do things like rotated text, fancy paths, or custom details.

But for full "flyby" interaction, .KML files under Google Earth are clearly the wave of the future. While pretty paths have recently been added, some simple features such as dotted paths, direct text, topo maps, highest resolution, or text rotation are not yet available. But such features can nearly certainly be soon anticipated.

As can improved path data entry. At present, we have multiple people working on "all of the above".

June 12, 2013
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A few other older yarns can be found here. Of these, by far my favorite and one that I continue to be dumbfounded by is the LAN of the 80's.

First used in the Eighteen Eighties! This single wire network supported dozens to hundreds of IP addresses, had automatic packet switching, self-addressing, error detection and correction, diagnostic options and even failure mode analysis and alternate routing.

All done with a handful of fist sized wind up clockworks. And it even had a baud rate. Yup - ONE BAUD!

June 11, 2013
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Virtually all screen grabbing software is malware that can be guaranteed to steal your home page, your opening page, and your search engine. But there is a usually ignored key on many Dell and ofter keyboards marked Print Screen.

This instantly grabs your screen to the clipboard from whence you can forward it to ImageView32 or elsewhere for processing. Among other uses, this is particularly useful in extracting info from Acme Mapper.

A little known tip: You can also do an Alt Print Screen that grabs only the open top window. BTW, a GIS related mapping tool can be found here.

June 10, 2013
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I guess it has been long enough that I can reveal some secret insider details of my favorite pseudoscience yarn, the saga of the magic lamp.

The only "correct" way of measuring power in a changing waveform is to take very small samples and multiply their instantaneous voltage times their instantaneous current. This is called a "RMS" or a "Root Mean Square" measurement.

Until recently, true RMS measurements were outrageously expensive and virtually all cheap instruments measured average rather than RMS values. On a full and clean sinewave, the difference was only eleven percent or so. Which the meter people dealt with simply by stretching their scale and most everybody else simply ignored.

What was little known and eventually became Beginning EE Student Blunder #001-A was that the differences between average and RMS could become utterly outrageous for low duty cycle waveforms. Ferinstance, a half wave phase control set in the 130 degree range would have an average to RMS error of around 3:1!

An individual was playing around with a circuit pretty much the same as a half wave thyratron phase control from a 1939 industrial electronics text. On the cheap meters they were using, they noted a 3:1 voltage difference and a 3:1 current difference, which led them to the conclusion that their "magic" circuit only was drawing one ninth of the normal power. The key waveform involved had a very low duty cycle, which let them run a 28 volt light bulb off the 110 volt line.

At this point, they could have saved bunches of hassle and trouble by touching the lamp and noticing that it was not any cooler than normal. Or simply recognizing that a 9:1 energy savings in an old stock and popular circuit might have been noticed by somebody else somewhere along the way.

In general, perpetual motion machines are frowned upon and the immediate question that should have been asked was "Exactly where and how did I fuck up?"

Instead, they went out and patented their miracle energy saver. The fact that the patent was granted was sort of strange since it was an old textbook circuit that I alone had published nationally in one form or another in dozens of projects over several decades. Albeit without any energy anomalies.

At any rate, they offered a construction story and kits in a national magazine, not recognizing that what they had was criminal fraud rather than an earth shaking new energy breakthrough.

The magazine managed to work out from under their part of the four paw by coincidentally having the story run in an April issue and later publishing disclaimers in their letters column.

The closest I dared to get on this was this column and this column in a related magazine. But finding out exactly where and how they screwed up was certainly a highlight of my ongoing pseudoscience bashing activities.

June 9, 2013
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Revision 3 of our Hanging Canal paper can now be found here with its sourcecode here.

The main changes are that we are now compatible with the horribly crippled new Acrobat Distiller version, that the latest Frye Mesa info is included, and some other numerous typos and updates were made.

June 8, 2013
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Managed to get one of my key Hanging Canal papers compatible with the new and horribly crippled version of Acrobat Distiller.

First, the full Gonzo now has to be towed along inside each program, replacing a simple run command with about 85K of extra code.

Second, my auto imaging and insertion now has to done manually in Acrobat after distilling. Besides being a long and painful process. This can be eased somewhat by a reminder script at the end of the code.

Update: Fix by sending //acrodist /F to Distiller.

June 7, 2013
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I have found no obvious way to use newly crippled Distiller to insert images into a .PDF document. And presumably no way to do so automatically with a script during distilling.

But there is a super sneaky trick you can pull. Buried in the watermark code are some highly useful image manipulation tools. It turns out you can use an image as a watermark and that you can place more than one different watermark on any individual page.

You do have to manually add links after distilling. Fortunately, latter corrections can often be done as single page substitution and not require all images in the total document to be hand reloaded.

Adding a reminder comment script to the end of your PostScript code can be most useful for keeping track of image sources and destination links. Nonetheless, I sorely miss Distiller's once great ability to read or write any disk file in any format.

Update: Fix by sending //acrodist /F to Distiller.

June 6, 2013
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Two papers evaluating present and potential battery storage can be found here and here. And an interesting current development here.

They are slightly pessimistic in that gasoline is often associated with a Carnot limit, while battery based apps may sometimes end up somewhat more efficient.

June 5, 2013
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A tenth Goldilocks exoplanet is reported on here. There is now a 94 percent probability of a Goldilocks exoplanet within ten light years of earth.

June 4, 2013
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An interesting free collection of full ( but not complete ) issues of Radio Electronics Magazine can be found here.

And some additional classic reprints by others here. And some of my RE classic stories here.

June 3, 2013
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Managed to upload a scan of our classic Music Modules story to our classic reprint pages.

This was based on a top octave generator architecture which was pretty much on the way out at the time. The use of "real" VCA chips made the system somewhat pricey as well.

As I recall, there were some crosstalk issues that, while fixable, never got around to being properly addressed. More classic reprints here.

June 2, 2013
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We've already looked at three "cloud" projects that can let you do genuine and authentic archaeological research here, here, and here.

A fourth cloud project can help us resolve just how ( and if ) the HS canal gets to the Blue Ponds area or even the Longview area. It is unlikely to follow the lowland route favored by modern pipelines as just about everything else in the system tends to be hung on the side of mesas. Or routed along the highest feasible terrain.

The task for cloud 4 is to determine whether this is a prehistoric canal or an old wagon road. Or if a road, whether its slope would allow it to overlays prehistoric canal. Points off for horseshoes, of course.

June 1, 2013
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eBay has just started enforcing some draconian new image rules. To me, they make no sense whatsoever and introduce far norm problems than they solve.

Images are now required. For integrated circuits and such, a clickable text box to reach a data sheet makes far more sense. Images now have a minimum size of 500 pixels. Many of our items such as ferrite beads or SOT transistors or whatever tend to fall apart at larger image sizes. Certainly a larger size is not needed on many tiny items.

It has now become enormously difficult to find the name of a previously used image. Text on an image is largely forbidden. Borders are forbidden. One of the hallmarks of our larger items is the use of vignettes. Technically a vignette is simply an edge darkening of a background. I'm not sure whether these will remain allowed or not.

May 30a, 2013
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A second attempt at reviving Heathkit can be found here. And a survey here.

Whether it can overcome the previous monumental stupidity remains to be seen. Certainly two of the key requirements would be encouraging free classic reprints from the largest possible number of sources and providing any and all SMT preassembled.

Meanwhile, items of interest to previous Heathkit enthusiasts would include Raspberry Pi, Arduino, the Basic Stamp, and whatever it is that the Steam punk movement is up to.

May 30, 2013
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A comparison of some fourth order low pass filters can be found here. Its unusual linear format clearly shows that there is no compelling difference between a plain old "slight dips" filter and a fancy Legendre one.

Further a slight "shake the box" applied to the four frequency and damping variables of the slight dips should produce even better passband curves.

Many thanks to Robert Ackerman for this plot.

May 29, 2013
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Considerably more prehistoric time and effort appears to have been spent developing and using the spring in Spring Canyon rather than Frye Creek. A possible explanation is that it was a much larger source. Or a more reliable or a less seasonal one.

No larger upper Frye projects are known to exist or survive. Although there are a few scattered small ag sites and small dams. The above dam terrain is, to say the least, formidable.

Meanwhile, historical Frye Creek projects overwhelmingly dominate. The likely cause being that the dam and storage dramatically changes the stability of deliverable useful water. Enclosed pipes also tended to favor lower destinations and are less slope critical as well.

Curiously, the CCC went exceptionally out of their way in the 1930's to utterly demolish any functionality of the prehistoric Spring and Allen Canal distribution systems.

Besides the usual water spreaders, the braided channels appear to have been purposely blocked in many places with cross channel dams.

Only a single Spring Canyon cattle tank remains in use today. This whole study demands orders of magnitude more expertise thrown at it than is happening today.

May 28, 2013
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A modern Coronado National Forest water project has been verified that exactly overlays projected prehistoric hanging canal developments. I feel this is now just barely enough to definitely state the prehistoric developments appear genuine.

And further, that the Frye Mesa area would seem to represent a beyond world class "crown jewels" to the entire Gila area. An apparent large spring at N 32.73895 W 109.85221 seemed to be the focus of development. Well down Spring Canyon at N 32.78243 W 109.83566 can be found the takein point for the prehistoric Allen Canal.

A presumed diversion structure near N 32.74617 W 109.83968 and a routing presumed to underlie the Frye Mesa Falls Road in and around N 32.75144 W 109.83826 is believed to lead to multiple braided channels area near N 32.75774 W 109.82801

These are believed to lead to a ponding and diversion area near N 32.76005 W 109.81122 which in turn drives a pair of spectacular canals. One is the HS Canal at N 32.75885 W 109.81381 which routes counterslope and UPCANYON and apparently merged with Frye Creek somewhere near N 32.75799 W 109.8138.

The goal of this merger remains highly speculative, but might end up in the Blue Ponds area. A modern "pond selector" canal at N 32.77720 W 109.77527 might represent prehistoric origins and an unverified hanging feeder canal may exist at N 32.76653 W 109.79362

Meanwhile, back at the ponding area, a second major canal tentatively called Upper Robinson at N 32.75981 W 109.80764 seems to route water to the main Robinson Canal ( AKA Robinson Ditch ) proper at N 2.77710 W 109.79614

Just to confuse matters, some smaller and apparently older braided water channels that appear to be of prehistoric construct are found at N 32.77846 W 109.78945 and are called the Riggs Complex.

This map summarizes these ....

32.77846 -109.7894
32.74354 -109.8424
32.73895 -109.85221
32.74617-109.8396
32.75144 -109.83826
32.75774 -109.82801
32.76005 -109.81122
32.75885 -109.81381
32.75799 -109.81387
32.77720 -109.77527
32.76653 -109.79362
32.75981 -109.80764
32.77710 -109.79614
32.77846 -109.78945

May 27, 2013
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As expected, the hundreds of bogus daily Wesrch hits has rocketed one of my papers into first place. These stats are flat out wrong and I am working with Wesrch to correct them.

The presumed cause is some strange sort of Google bounce back. It is not clear what can be done about it. Or by who.

May 26, 2013
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After bouncing it off the sci.electronics,design newsgroup and a resultant lively discussion, I'm convinced that some plots of a Legendre filter may have issues.

Further, I'm convinced there is little discernible difference between the plain old "slight dips" filters in my Active Filter Cookbook and a fancy Legendre design. Except that the former may be less sensitive and easier to work with.

BTW, copies of the Active Filter Cookbook bought through eBay or Synergetics have better bindings, more attractive covers, and are autographed.

May 25, 2013
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How do you base samples in a logarithmic mode? Ferinstance you might want to have a curve with forty data points on an active filter going from 0.1 Hertz to 10 Hertz.

The trick is to note that the inverse of a log is an exponent.Like so...

-1 .05 1.01 { 10 exch exp /curf exch store
          curf ==  % report present sample
                       % do stuff with sample here
                } for

May 24, 2013
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I've long been overly enameled on the PostScript language. Besides its obvious graphic stuff, it can be superb for batch mode reading or writing most any disk file in most any language, doing transformations, exhaustive searches, or generating tedious working code needed elsewhere.

Three examples are our bitmap typewriter, our combined mottled auto outliner and vignetter, and our architects perspective correction routine. Plus yesterday's automatic Acme Mapper to kml path converter.

At one time, all you had to do was shove your word processor text file at Adobe Distiller. But two years or so back, Adobe decided that PostScript was waaay too powerful and no longer could be trusted to read or write disk files. At first, they just required you run distiller from the command line mode, adding an //Acrodist /F to resume file access. But this was eliminated and Distiller no longer allows disk files to be written to or read from.

So, you have to switch to GhostScript instead if you want to have full file access. But GhostScript does not directly
produce .PDF files. It instead produces Display PostScript style images.

The workaround is is to still use Distiller if you need .PDF but not file access. Otherwise, there is a PS2PDF shell you can run around Ghostscript. There is also a totally separate but identically named PS2PDF online service that can be used.

We have many thousands of PostScript programs immediately available as well as custom programming services. Much more in our long overdue for an update PostScript library or our PostScript videos.

May 23, 2013
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Because of spam overload, we had to cancel our policy of having an infinite supply of "any@tinaja.com" email addresses.

If a "my favorite@tinaja.com" of yours just started bouncing, let us know and we will reinstate it. Or switch to don@tinaja.com BTW, we remain extremely pleased with Fat Cow as our ISP.

May 22, 2013
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Manually entering lat lon data points into a kml path in Google Earth, can end up somewhat tedious. Our hanging canal map needs several thousand path entries of seven decimal point numbers.

Instead, use the crosshair marker feature of Acme Mapper. Enter up to 26 markers at a time, separated by a minimum of 100 feet. Then capture and view the URL.

You can simply use a word processor or editor to rearrange the format between an Acme URL and a .kml path. Or else use this automated routine of mine. Additional point groupings can be simply spliced together with never a need for "real" data entry.

If the path is still slightly rough ( unlikely ) modify each location by replacing it with half of itself and one quarter of its immediate neighbors. Thus approximating a Gaussian low pass filter.

May 21, 2013
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Why would a sooper dooper active filter kick around for fifty years without seeing much use? It is called a Legendre filter. As lowpass, it falls off much faster than Butterworth. And there's no passband ripples like Chebycheff. Only a slight lump during a monotonic falloff.

Many fourth order filters can be synthesized simply by cascading two second order sections and then carefully selecting the center frequency and damping of each section. Seems to me you could simply plot a few hundred response curves that step, say, one fifth of the way between Butterworth and Cheby.

And something interesting should pop up or at least suggest further directions. I'll try to get to this sometime in the next few days.

Meanwhile, there's lots of ready-to-use stuff in my Active Filter Cookbook. BTW, we have better bound and autographed versions here at Synergetics and at eBay. You can email me for details.

May 20, 2013
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There's a curious bug/feature in Acme mapper: If you try to place a mark within 30 meters of a previous mark, the old mark will disappear. Sometimes several marks can disappear if they all lie within the danger area.

There's also a second bug in which the lettering or sequence of marks will sometimes change after the fact. I'm not sure why this happens, but be careful in telling someone else to go to point "J" since it might switch to "F" instead.

May 19, 2013
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I want to smooth out our .kml Hanging Canal maps by adding more data points. The present method of copying coordinates between Acme Mapper and Google Earth is way to tedious. Especially if you add a way point in the middle.

Present thinking is to create a series of invisible pushpins for each needed point and then copy the locations into continuous paths. As before, individual canals would be grouped into folders so that they can appear in a single file. Stay tuned.

May 18, 2013
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Let's try a THIRD archaeological cloud. Very much for real.

This is your opportunity to potentially make some world class archaeological prehistoric hanging canal discoveries. It might go something like this...

At your own risk and expense and following normal Upper Sonoran snake season TEAM procedures and techniques in a smaller but very brushy and steep area estimated at three hours...

Using this, something like this, and possibly an automatic level that we can loan you, go to N 32.79160 W 109.85388 and locate the known southern limit of the Mud Springs canal. This should be just under the fence in mid saddle.

The goal is to find the entire remaining portion of the canal, which is believed to extend well less than a quarter mile to its Ash Creek takein in or around the Coronado National Forest border.

Between heavy brush and possible extensive flood damage, canal tracing may not be possible in this area. Thus, this search while crucial to the canal, may end up unprovable and frustrating.

Simply wandering around at a slight upward grade might be a reasonable starting point.

Should that not work, survey and flag the most credible 0.75 percent slope between the canal limit and the water. Then, if needed, repeat the process at 0.5 percent slope and 1.0 percent slope.

Over the distance of perhaps one quarter of a mile, take GPS readings, notes, and preferably at least cell phone quality images and video of the route. Pay particular attention to any remaining remnants of the original takein system. This is presumed long gone due to catastrophic flooding.

It is extremely important to attempt to complete the route. The canal is presumed to have rather spectacularly been "hung" on the eastern canyon wall in a location that may or may not still physically exist.

If you are .kml literate, please attempt to plot the route to Google Earth as best you can.

Report back to me and separately publish your results in a credibly acceptable professional free manner to Wesrch or a comparable open source scholarly document managing system. Please stay OFF YouTube. At least for a while.

Keep all vehicles on suitable 4WD routes. The road is a tad rocky ( although passable ) for unmodified SUV's, so a smaller ATV's is strongly recommended.

Note: Canal routes typically do NOT have artifacts except for the canal borders themselves. OBSERVE ONLY! Do NOT collect, dig, disturb, or sample. DO OBEY ALL SIGNS! Please do not leave the slightest trace of your having traveled this way.

These are public lands. Much more on the big picture here. There are many similar archaeological projects here and general exploration projects here.

May 17, 2013
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The cause of my bogus high score in Wesrch has apparently been Google racking up around five hundred hits per day, continuously for the lastn several months. For no apparent reason.

My high score is clearly an outright lie. Please treat it as such.

May 16, 2013
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Prices on the paper mil auction ended up unusually and outrageously high. Especially for what appeared to be an under promoted and poorly advertised rural event with obscure contents apparently little in demand.

I was typically outbid by THIRTY TO ONE! I was hoping to offer bunches of real buys, but it clearly flat out ain't gonna happen.

I'll still stick to my rule that if more than five percent of your offers are accepted, you are paying too much.

May 15, 2013
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To recap, a pair of what appear to be huge and stunningly world class prehistoric canals have been relocated here and here in the lower Frye Mesa area.

We have named one of them the HS canal. As in "Holy Shit!". On top of everything else, it is counterslope and clearly heading UP canyon. Its engineering seems literally beyond belief.

At first glance these appear to be genuinely prehistoric. While slightly smaller in cross section than the Cuelbra cut on the Allen Canal below the dam, they are much longer and in far more spectacular hanging mesa terrain.

The problem is that they appear waaay too good to be true. And monumental effort must now be spent to verify a credible water source and thoroughly exclude the already rather unlikely dam construction or CCC originating alternatives. Or, for that matter, UFO involvement.

The next step is to talk to CNF. There is a large rock tank of presumed CCC origin near the dam turnoff. Where does its water come from? Is ( or was ) it a gravity fed adaption of the HS source?

Possible ( but highly problematic ) water sources might include the base of Frye Falls or Spring Canyon. With the falls road or other less credible routes overlying the original canal feeder route.

Separately, what are the date(s) of the Frye Mesa dam construction? What docs remain where? Postdating some CCC water spreaders would exclude any bypass possibilities.

May 14, 2013
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The latest in the battle over outrageous and inexcusable scientific publication paywalls can be found here with additional discussion here.

In regular publishing, at one time you absolutely had to edit first and typeset last. I believe the similar solution to the outrageous charges and inexcusable delays in scientific publishing is simply to publish first and peer review last.

Here's a random collection of quality open low or no charge scientific publication sources...

http://arxiv.org/
https://www.coursera.org/
http://ebookuniverse.net/
http://freevideolectures.com/
http://freevideo.rt.com/
http://www.gutenberg.org/
http://www.innocentive.com/
http://www.justfreebooks.info/
http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm
http://www.nature.com/news/
http://www.openculture.com/
http://www.openculture.com/
https://peerj.com/
http://www.plos.org/
http://www.i-programmer.info/news/
http://www.questia.com/
http://docs.rapidlibrary.com/
www.wesrch.com

Plus, of course, our own eBooks and reprints here at https://www.tinaja.com/ebksamp1.shtml and at https://www.tinaja.com/crsamp1.shtml

Please email me with any additions.

May 13, 2013
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Let's try a SECOND archaeological cloud. Very much for real.

This is your opportunity to potentially make some world class archaeological prehistoric hanging canal discoveries. It might go something like this...

At your own risk and expense and following normal Upper Sonoran snake season TEAM procedures and techniques for a rugged but not extreme 4 hour dayhike...

Using this, this, and something like this, go to N 32.79160 W 109.85388 and begin to trace the most credible eastward route of a presumed prehistoric canal from N 32.80339 W 109.83932

The canal can be initially located just under the new fence and becomes more obvious as it trends northeast.

Over this distance of slightly more than a mile, take GPS readings, notes, and preferably at least cell phone quality images and video of the route.

It is extremely important to attempt to 100 percent close the route. At least a small portion of the northeastern extreme may end up untraceable. At least we could not find it during earlier surveys. The canal is presumed to stay near the western mesa edge over much of its route.

If you are .kml literate, please attempt to plot the route to Google Earth as best you can.

Report back to me and separately publish your results in a credibly acceptable professional free manner to Wesrch or a comparable open source scholarly document managing system. Please stay OFF YouTube. At least for a while.

Keep all vehicles on suitable 4WD routes. The roads are a tad rocky ( although passable ) for unmodified SUV's, so smaller ATV's are strongly recommended.

The route is well suited to hikers who bring along their own catclaw, just in case there is not enough along the run. The word "trail", of course, is not in their vocabulary.

Note: Canal routes typically do NOT have artifacts except for the canal borders themselves. OBSERVE ONLY! Do NOT collect, dig, disturb, or sample. DO OBEY ALL SIGNS! Please do not leave the slightest trace of your having traveled this way.

These are public lands. Much more on the big picture here. There are many similar archaeological projects here and general exploration projects here.

May 12, 2013
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This week's paper mill auction may end up being one of the largest ever held in Arizona. I seem to have inordinate difficulties registering, so here's some of the problems I have encountered trying to participate on this three day combined web and live event online...

You start out by becoming a Rabin VIP that involves a $500 VISA deposit and picking up both a password and a bidders number.

Their instructions suggest you need XP, Vista, or NetScape. I'm not sure Chrome or Windows 8 will work properly. There is an exception halfway along the route that says that Windows 8 will only work in its Desktop mode.

You do have to have the latest version of Java installed and set to its lowest security clearance. You also need to disable any and all Norton or equivalent web firewall activity. A right click will sometimes do this.

Selecting Place My Bids or View Only seems to take forever, ( you may have to click "wait" a time or two, but eventually a Java check comes up. )Amd eventually a bidding console appears.

I'm not sure just yet whether this console is working or whether they just have not activated it yet. At any rate, you will need the big yellow console box at the least to continue.

May 11, 2013
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The obvious "next big thing" in printers are full width injkjets. HP has just come out with a series of 70 page per minute ones per this data and this insider info.

While only the paper moves and the mechanism is greatly simplified, the steps to measure (!) and correct any print defects goes far beyond anything previous.

An obvious extension would be simultaneous two sided duplexing for a further speed doubling. Whether this ends up cost effective remains to be seen. A vertical print path might be needed.

May 10, 2013
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The CSI Gila Bend television series has been canceled. So has Vegas.

May 9, 2013
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Many thanks to those of you attending my talk yesterday. The sixth slide with the canal locations was only a screen dump.

Clicking on it was supposed to magnify into a JPG image and clicking on the image was supposed to either download a .KML file or get you directly into a "Ghee Whiz" flyby under Google Earth.

For all this to work, you need online access, fast comm, a Google Earth plug in installed, and a reasonable browser and operating system. This all works well under Chrome and windows 8, but only bits and pieces worked during the talk. Let me know if you have problems getting this to fly on your own.

As usual, the question came up as to what "prehistoric" was. In general, a culture is prehistoric if it has no written history or obvious precursor. In the case of the American Southwest, Anything earlier than 1500 is considered prehistoric. Anything later depends on who is doing what to whom.

I was surprised over how few people yet know about Acme Mapper. This did bring up the usual Roadrunner jokes. But the original reason so many outfits called themselves Acme was the same as AAA Exterminating. Namely that they show up first in the phone book yellow pages.

May 8, 2013
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What possible remaining point could there be in having "seasons" to tv shows?

The "Netflix viewing model" lets you watch whatever you want whenever you want. The idea that there could be such a thing as "prime time slots" has long since become ludicrously quaint.

Much free tv can be found here.

May 7, 2013
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We needed a temporary replacement for one of our HP printers in daily use, so we picked up a 3520.

The depth of field on the scanner portion of this machine is utterly pathetic. It does not remotely compare to the depth of field on the HP 3970 that we routinely use for our eBay photography.

The easiest way to measure your depth of field is to scan a medicine bottle or whatever that is two to three inches in diameter and has lots of lettering on it.

May 6, 2013
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The pv solar energy breakthrough of the week can be found here. Unfortunately, most of these to date have had a half life of ten days.

What we have here is a potential doubling of the cell efficiency for all colors above green. Possibly one with a simple coating process.

It turns out there was a perceived limit called the Schockley-Quisser Efficiency Limit. In which you got an electron for input energy above the work function, but lost any energy below or "spare change" above as efficiency robbing heat.

To date, schemes to pick up a second electron for green and higher colors involved multiple materials and similar schemes unlikely to ever end up economically practical.

May 5, 2013
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Here's the meeting notice for next Wednesday's Gila Watershed Partnership meeting.

I'll likely be speaking there on new findings on our Prehistoric hanging mountain canals.

May 4, 2013
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The four "R's" of Arizona politics: Right wing, Racist, Reactionary, and Redneck.

In Arizona, a "political moderate" is anyone who is moderately to the right of Attila the Hun.

May 3, 2013
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There are at least seven types of prehistoric or unknown agricultural constructs in the Gila Valley that leave distinct rock artifacts. These seem to be largely independent and vary from understudied to beyond world class spectacular...

MULCH RINGS - These are rock circles about
two feet in diameter, typically in spaced groups
of a dozen or more. Their main purpose was to
retain moisture for a central plant.

APRONED CHECK DAMS - Small circular
dams in minor washes retained a fill area used
for small gardens or plant nurseries. A second
dam downstream usually controlled erosion.

THE GRIDS - Rectangular rock arrays retained
water under their borders for Agave and other
uses. There are over ten thousand of these to
the north and many hundreds to the south.

LOWLAND CANALS - Larger Gila River based
water systems later adapted for modern use
and are similar to those in the Phoenix and
Tucson areas.

HANGING MOUNTAIN CANALS - Twenty
one of these ranging over forty miles exploited
virtually every drop of northeastern Mt. Graham
water. Spectacular engineering was typically
"hung" on the edges of steep sided mesas to make
their slope independent of terrain.

CCC WATER SPREADERS - Modern rock check
dams were largely pointless boondoggles. Tens of
thousands of these are known . They can be easily
confused with genuine prehistoric ag artifacts.

UFO FISH FILLETS - Certainly our strangest
local artifact. Believed to be a CCC adaption of
an underlying prehistoric original. One known.

May 2, 2013
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A list of Arizona Hacker spaces can be found here.

May 1, 2013
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The concept of "proof" is wildy different between an engineer and an archaeologist. Or for that matter, between a lawyer, a theologian, a bartender, or a baker.

'm having enormous difficulty accepting archaeological proof as "good enough" Engineering is a sense of the fitness of things, normally brought about by enormous sample sizes centered on a falsifiable hypothesis.

Archaeological evidence is instead sometimes based on a single sample size from a erratic history and often colored by personal or cultural bias. Which is what makes it a "soft science".

On the archaeological hand, our recent hanging canal rediscoveries in lower Frye Canyon appear world class spectacular. As engineering proof, though, they simply appear waaay too good to be true. At least so far. May you live in interesting times.

April 30, 2013
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Rightly or wrongly, I've been applying several concept of normalcy to our prehistoric hanging canals...

That the canals actually worked.

That they were complete.

Thea they literally exploited every
drop of northeastern Mt. Graham
mountain stream water.

That missing canal portions remain
caused by looking in the wrong place
or post construction destruction.

That virtually all related historic water
project adaptations "stole the plans".

That "missing" segments remain undiscovered.

That CCC boondoggles were just that.

That the permeability of canal runs was
acceptable.

That the prehistoric and historic and
CCC are ultimately separable.

That "obvious" modern canal routes all
had prehistoric underpinnings.

April 29, 2013
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Here's a preliminary model of the Frye Mesa prehistoric canals: Whose apparent scope was to totally exploit every drop of Frye Creek area reliable water sources via a system of hanging canals and using that water well north of where it would otherwise disappear from solid gneiss base rock into valley fill conglomerates.

Earliest efforts were likely directly down Frye Creek, with canal activity likely starting somewhere below the present Frye Dam site and above the present disused chlorinator. With an unproven possible hanging area here.

Water was then delivered to the southern and northern blue pond area for ag use. A short remnant segment can be found here and was apparently remodeled historically with a concrete diversion gate to pick which of the now flood damaged and presently disused blue ponds was to be chosen for fill.

Some apparently very early braided vee sections can be found here and remain unexplained. These may or may not be related to fields in the Riggs Reservoir area.

Meanwhile, a second possible canal source appeared to involve Spring Canyon and even a possible Frye to Spring diversion route. Water apparently could have been delivered under the falls road, and possibly have used this route to get to the modern dam turnoff and rock tank.

A highly enigmatic group of braided canals then seemed to follow the southernmost and highest edge of Frye Mesa proper, carefully skirting intermediate drainages to preserve the needed slope. The apparent purpose of this portion of the braided canals was to deliver water to a ponding area here.

The primary water delivery area from here is believed to be down canyon via a rather steep and quite large hanging portion. While not yet fully studied, this is believed to form the basis for the Robinson Hanging canal here.

A second impressive and quite large and quite steep hanging portion appears to divert and head UPSLOPE and UPCANYON. It is clearly counterflow.

This is among the most spectacular finds in the entire Gila hanging canal systems. It has been fairly carefully visited, but its use remains speculative. Possible diverting Robinson when not in use or balancing the drainage availability with need.

There are a number of grids and habitation sites in the point of the canyon proper.

Things got ridiculously more complicated with the historic building of Frye Mesa Reservoir. Various generation pipelines can be easily traced of varying technologies, including wrapped and riveted metal, open flanged pipe, buried pipe, and concrete.

These were joined by a Transite pipe system that stole the plans from the Deadman hanging canal portion. Significantly, enclosed pipe water delivery systems do not have to be strictly downhill, so long as pressures and leaks stay in bounds. These modern pipelines are believed to more or less follow the prehistoric routes.

As a result, free flowing lower Frye Creek water became a flood liability, so all non-piped water was apparently diverted into Sheep Springs wash and routed around the Daley Estates development.

This created a situation where the prehistoric Robinson canal had to cross the diverted Frye Creek water. At that point in time, prehistoric deliver routes were presumably ceased.

Just to confuse matters, there were obvious and numerous CCC water spreaders that appear to have been thrown over certain otherwise apparently prehistoric segments. As near as I can tell, these appear to be obviously useless busywork. Possibly simply to claim credit for work they did not do. Much of this is speculative and remains unproven to date.

There is one modern stream gauge, and earlier ones may or may not still have data available.

April 28, 2013
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Details are still to be worked out, but I am planning a prehistoric hanging canal talk for the May 8th Gila Watershed partnership of Arizona meeting.

This will likely be somewhere around 7:30 PM in the County General Services Building, 921 Thatcher Blvd, in Safford. There is no charge and anyone with a past or present interest in water management opportunities are welcome to attend. Some more background can be found here.

April 27, 2013
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We managed to pick up a collection of genuine Dolby analog commercial projection gear, still in its original factory packages.

These should be useful as legacy spares or as trade in credits for newer systems. Extensive original docs are also available. Please email me if you have any interest in these.

April 26, 2013
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Found a maddeningly infuriating puzzle on the side of a Dots candy box. Consider a triangular array of nine dots. Arrange the numerals 1 through 9 in the array so that each side has the same sum.

They did give you three numbers to start. These eliminate six possible mirror or 120 degree rotation solutions.

Some approaches to the problem solution appear here. There is apparently no calculatable single solution so at least some trial and error will be needed.

Putting six digits into six slots has 6x5x4x3x2 permutations or 6! or 720 solutions. You can easily knock this out in under a second using some simple PostScript code.

Some other approaches can be found here. It turns out that the sum of the three corners has to be divisible by three, so this could reduce the testable solutions to 240.

You could also prove that the edge sums can only be 17, 19, 20, 21, or 23.Three equations can also be written that could eliminate two variables and further reduce the cases to be tested.

What is your most elegant solution?

April 25, 2013
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Let's try an archaeological cloud. Very much for real.

This is your opportunity to potentially make some world class archaeological prehistoric hanging canal discoveries. It might go something like this...

At your own risk and expense and following normal Upper Sonoran snake season TEAM procedures and techniques for a rugged but not extreme 5 hour dayhike...

Using this, this, and something like this, go to N 32.75991 W 109.80942 and begin to trace he most credible eastward route of a presumed prehistoric canal to N 32.77601 W 109.79681

Over this distance of slightly more than a mile, take GPS readings, notes, and preferably at least cell phone quality images and video of the route.

It is extremely important to attempt to 100 percent close the route. Switching ends or one or more transects might be needed.

If you are .kml literate, please attempt to plot the route to Google Earth as best you can.

Report back to me and separately publish your results in a credibly acceptable professional free manner to Wesrch or a comparable open source scholarly document managing system. Please stay OFF YouTube. At least for a while.

Keep all vehicles on suitable 4WD routes. With care, 4Runner 4WD class vehicles should be only mildly challenging.

The route is well suited to hikers who bring along their own catclaw, just in case there is not enough along the run. The word "trail", of course, is not in their vocabulary.

Note: Canal routes typically do NOT have artifacts except for the canal borders themselves. OBSERVE ONLY! Do NOT collect, dig, disturb, or sample. DO OBEY ALL SIGNS! Please do not leave the slightest trace of your having traveled this way.

These are public lands. Much more on the big picture here. There are many similar archaeological projects here and general
exploration projects here.

April 24, 2013
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A reminder that we have several MILES of transparent polyester sheet in dozens of rolls of varying lengths and sizes. I've been meaning to build up a rewinder but it seems to be taking forever.

email me if you have any interest in this superb material at one sixth or less of its normal price.

April 23, 2013
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There are several utterly mind boggling places in our prehistoric canals where the concept of counterslope arises. Normally, the part of the canal that is heading downhill generally follows the part of the topography that is also going downhill.

But there are rare times and places when the canal purposely goes downhill into the upslope portion of the terrain. This can happen during a large "S" or "U" turn. The goal of burying deeper into the mesa or other rising terrain is to keep the slope independent of terrain.

While the canal clearly gets longer in the process the total energy of construction remains astoundingly low due to minimizing of cuts and fills. In general on these canals, almost all of the construction goes across rather than along the route.

Of the several "S" and "U" turns on the Jernigan Canal, at least one is counterslope. Twin East goes counterslope to cross a wash somewhat South ( and under ) the Lebanon Cemetery. And there is a spectacularly huge counterslope canal segment clearly heading UP lower Frye wash.

April 22, 2013
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One of the better WWII jokes evolved during the final drunken GI waltz across Germany: A corporal picked up a bottle of wine or whatever that was far beyond bad and took it to an Army Chemist for analysis:

"I see your problem. Your horse has kidney trouble."

April 21, 2013
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Managed to get back to the part of Frye Mesa you cannot get to from here. Only to add far more mysteries than were resolved.

The story so far: Some highly enigmatic constructs on a seldom visited portion of Frye Mesa recently became a lot more apparent, both through Acme Mapper and Google Earth.

Some of these constructs suggest potentially spectacular prehistoric canals while others appear to be partial CCC rework boondoggles.

The structure here strongly suggests a major prehistoric hanging canal, albeit one both immensely huge and quite steep. It is enigmatic in that it seems to counterslope and clearly heading up canyon.

The yet unvisited structure here also seems to be a prehistoric canal. It is at least headed down canyon and could easily form a credible water source for the Robinson Canal.

Both constructs appear sourced from a potential ponding structure in turn sourced from five or more braided channels. Some of these channels have what clearly appear to be CCC spreader rework, and there are other more traditional CCC spreaders in the area.

The braids appear much older than the spreaders.

The braids seem to originate near the dam turnoff. Halfway along the braids is a saddle and low spot in the mesa that would seem to clearly exclude the continuum of an open canal. However, there is one braid at the extreme southern edge of the mesa that Google Earth elevation mouse overs appear to allow a consistent downhill slope through this area.

There is no clear prehistoric compatible water source for the system yet, although there is a working tank
nearby. While Frye Creek is an obvious potential source, the access would be extremely difficult.  But it might make little sense to take water out of the creek and replace it later downstream.

A secondary possibility is a Spring Canyon source. But its flow these days is much less and highly intermittent. Despite several visits, both of the candidates remain non-obvious. Possibly the falls road masks a portion of the postulated route.

As a side note, there are numerous four foot bare circles on the otherwise grass covered mesa. These suggest a prehistoric use that might alter ph or otherwise reduce available nutrients. Alternately, they could be some remnant artifact of a CNF sweet resinbush eradication program.

More eyes are definitely needed on all this. Please email me if you have any interest.

April 20, 2013
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The state of Arizona has some very strong incentives in place for their power utilities to make significant and genuine attempts at developing new alternate energy resources.

To me,this seems to be generating a wild mix of authentic breakthrough developments, somewhat marginal appearing projects, and obviously outright scam ripoff proposals.

First, the good news: To become a genuine and unsubsidized new renewable and sustainable net energy source, pv solar has to come in at twenty five cents per peak panel watt. Per my analysis here.

Amazingly and spectacularly, the utility grade and quantity pv pricing is now approaching the sixty two cents per peak panel watt range. With further near in price reductions and developments reasonably anticipated. Despite a spectacular number of recent pv solar bankruptcies.

System costs, of course, are something like double the peak panel watt costs. Even 62 cents approaches the holy grail of "paint it green" . In which a utility sells conventional power and uses the funds to buy parity solar and generate pr and meet regs and qualify for subsidies.

The immediate effect is to make solar power towers horribly obsolete. In that there is no way in hell that they can ever again become pv competitive. Even when ignoring their astounding water needs. Still, there seem to me to be several really bad power tower scams floating around in various states of attempting to make land grabs and steal subsidy funds.

All the while dazzling rural county commissioners and government bureaucrats.

Wind power potential in Southwestern Arizona and Southeastern New Mexico is not all that wonderful, but conventional transmission lines are already in place for possibly useful wind development and delivery. Very handily, much of the wind potential is at night.

As a result, Macho Springs near Deming NM is already up and running. And a somewhat similar farm is now proposed in Arizona's Cochise County near Muleshoe Hot Springs.

But the proposed fifty story towers and nearly 200 foot blades do seem a tad aggressive to me. More on the reality of alternate energy development here.

April 19, 2013
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Too good to be true? Dr. Neely and I managed to verify the structure near N 32.75849 W 109.8145 in Frye Canyon. At first glance, it very much appears to be a man made prehistoric canal.

And a huge highly spectacular world class one at that. It seems to source water from five or more braided channels that route along the northern edge of Frye Mesa proper. And a similar ( but still not field verified ) structure at N 32.75980 W 109.80808 seems to form a credible water source for the downstream prehistoric Robinson Canal.

Very strangely, the structure believed to be a prehistoric canal might have delivered water back upstream and up canyon. Why this would be done remains an enigmatic mystery. Although there appear to be some possible canyon bottom fields and grids in the area.

To be believable, all credible alternate explanations would have to be thoroughly excluded. These alternates could include some bizarrely atypical CCC work, or a vastly excessive dam construction bypass, or some sort of water or land dispute. All of which presently seem as unlikely as being an alien UFO construct.

More eyes on this are definitely needed, especially among qualified archaeologists or historians. Please email me with your thoughts.

April 18, 2013
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Updated and expanded our Gila Valley Dayhikes page.

April 17, 2013
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As to the recent "unexplained" Texas explosion, as a fireman and a hazmat person, I'm somewhat curious if the 640,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate might have in some manner have been a factor.

Version 1.0 of the ammonium nitrate story can be found here.

April 16, 2013
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The Rabin auction of the Snowflake Paper Mill should take place May 13, 14th, and 15th. There should be some absolutely outstanding bargains here, not the least of which is a stash of mostly brand new motors and electrical parts.

But word has it that the ENTIRE ten million dollar parts inventory may end up being sold in as little as one lot!

The mill is really nowhere near Snowflake. It is halfway between Snowflake and Overgaard and well north of the highway. The second and third auction days are to be held in a Snowflake hotel.

Availability of U-Haul trucks, rigging services, and such may be severely limited. More auction stuff here.

April 15, 2013
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Apparently there are now lots of instances where certain letters inside of a word are now capitalized. Particularly in the Linux and C worlds.

The correct name for this seemingly Random Capitalization is Camel Case.

April 14, 2013
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As near as I can tell, the latest Craig's List scank scam seems to be selling them an iPhone ap that watches Craig's list for utterly random new Johns and then answers for them. Without, of course, even reading the post to see what it is about.

It seems to me that 100 percent of the participating and targeted skanks are out of warranty, or lease expires, or in critical need of refurb.

I'm curious where they got the "Her name was Plethora" id's as well.

The average individual posting a bulk electronics wanted ad would likely be buying their skanks shrink wrapped by the skid. And then only at deep distress prices. Of a SBR of 30:1 or higher.

On closer inspection, there are remarkable similarities on the photographic style and composition of each pix. As well as uncanny reuse of certain phrases and English idioms. Which suggests the whole setup was done by ONE photographer and/or ONE writer. Some of the females seem to be wearing identical clothes as well.

The specter of a 46 year old male bowling shoe salesman may be behind the curtain. Please do not look there.

April 13, 2013
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Managed to explore more of the high end of the Mud Springs canal recently. Especially the spectacularly engineered portion near the Mud Springs to Ash crossover just under the fence.

While we picked up bunches of easily foot traced down canyon routing, about 3000 feet remains between here and the next known lower portion in the drainage west of the road somewhat north of Mud Springs Tank.

An ATV shuttle will likely be be best for this portion. The actual takein point should be somewhere near the CNF boundary, but I am not at all sure whether this still exists any more at all. Nearly vertical conglomerate suggests totally destructive catastrophic flooding in otherwise inhospitable terrain. Your help welcome.

April 12, 2013
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Our previous auto background mottler had a bug in it in
that you had to do an auto background before the vignetting worked properly. I've modified the code here to let you do stand alone vignetting.

To update older code, add this line near the start of the /dovignette code: includemottle not { /outstrarray instrarray store } if

To activate stand alone vignetting, make includemottle false, includefills false, and includevignette true

April 11, 2013
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Did you ever notice that seldom used sun icon in Google Earth? This lets you pick the time of day and can be very handy in looking over the edge of a canyon or otherwise brightening or darkening a scene.

On the other hand, with some bad luck and inadvertent selection, you can end up with a dark black midnight screen!

April 10, 2013
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Two new Goldilocks exoplanets can be found here. More on exoplanets here.

April 9, 2013
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Few people realize there are actually FOUR temples in or fairly close to the Gila Valley. Found here, here, here, and here.

Visitors are sometimes welcomed after suitable advance arrangements, conservative dress codes, and proper decorum. More on interesting things to visit or do in the area can be found here.

April 8, 2013
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Project Gutenberg now has some 42,000 free ebooks available for download.

April 7, 2013
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"But all I wanted to do was listen to an auction online"

There is a maddeningly infuriating piece of malware viri called conduit. Once it infects your machine, it hijacks your home page and your search engine and then floods you with totally worthless and utterly annoying ads.

They will remove conduit for you for a mere cost of $200. Neither Norton nor McAffee seem to offer fixes yet.

Apparently it is fixable, but there are lots of details to the repair...

FIRST, go to the control panel add/remove programs section and remove any and all programs that look like they are conduit related. Some sneaky names may be in use, so just to be sure, remove everything within three days of the date.

SECOND, get into Chrome and go tools/extensions. Remove any and all conduit related extensions. Better yet, remove any and all extensions that you do not immediately recognize or are not actively using.

THIRD, get into Chrome and go to settings. Reset to your desired startup page. Under Appearance, change your home button back the way it was. Note that there are TWO steps here, first deciding where you want to go on boot up and second deciding what your home icon does.

FOURTH, get into chrome and go to advanced settings. Go to Privacy and view the content settings. View all cookies and site data. Delete any obvious conduit cookies. Better yet, review ALL your cookies and remove any and all that you do not actively use.

FIFTH, do a cold reboot.

April 6, 2013
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There's a new comp.sys.raspberry.pi newsgroup. The above click thru will only work on some news readers, so you may have to manually subscribe on yours.

Newsgroups seem to have clearly peaked, likely caused by the "eyeball siphoning" of newer social media.

I still subscribe to alt.marketing.online.ebay, sci.electronics.design, and comp.lang.postscript as well.

April 5, 2013
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The mystery of my bogus Three Phase Magic Sinewaves score on Wesrch continues. It should rocket into first place in a month or so with well over 300 claimed but nonexistent visits per day. So far, they have ignored my emails.

And, unlike any sane linking pattern and similar to the Duracell Bunny, the score just goes on and on. Any "real" web mention would likely have a half life of a few days at most.

Apparently they are counting each of the 30 pages in my .PDF file as a separate visit. But even that does not explain the continued underlying interest beyond anything even remotely expected.

A possible explanation is that this "looks" like a Powerpoint file, but is really a PDF file using my infinitely superior Gonzo Powerpoint Emulator.

As far as I know, I have never linked their specific file, and Google does not seem to have a clue either.

April 4, 2013
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Have you ever wondered what all of those extra keys on your keyboard that nobody ever uses?

Naturally, you should have removed the CAPS LOCK key cap long ago. The best way to do this is with an older ic extractor.

Even more maddeningly infuriating is when Wordpad starts overwriting rather than inserting your text. The culprit is usually the INSERT key. Press it once to change back to inserting. Apparently this key will sequentially flip a latch that Word Pad responds to.

April 3, 2013
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We looked at some of the fundamental factors underlying technical innovation here. And long ago visited the concepts of elegant simplicity here.

The sheer brilliance of the Eye-Fi suggests we make another addition to the tech innovation concepts. This would be Leapfrogging.

With leapfrogging, you completely bypass any perceived restrictions to the systems that be. And completely blow them away.

Retrofitting an existing digital camera internally to pick up wireless uploading sounds like an unbearably daunting task. But swapping out its memory card with an identical sized and shaped subsystem that, besides memory, just happens to do wireless uploads is utterly trivial.

Several older examples of leapfrogging also come to mind. The earliest pinball games on the Apple II only ran one game that quickly lost any interest. But by
leapfrogging to some software that lets you design and build your own pinball machines in any chosen arrangement provides a much more useful product.

An older and lesser example of leapfrogging was when line cords became removable. Most electronic repairs, most accidents, and even some fires were caused by smashing or tripping over cords.

What other leapfrogging examples can you think of?

April 2, 2013
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Boy, a whole flock of 'em flew over this time. More on bashing pseudoscience here.

April 1, 2013
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The problem of unwanted email spam has been eliminated completely with today's long awaited passage of House Bill 27-234. Which places a tax on anyone admitting to receiving any unwanted email. Initially 35 cents per email on a sliding scale up to $4.37 in June of 2015.

Because it would place an unfair burden on the spammers themselves and because of ISP considerations, the tax was placed on the sender rather than the sender. The number of admitted unwanted emails is expected to shortly and dramatically drop.

Thus eliminating unwanted spam once and for all. Additional details are found here.

March 31, 2013
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The cheapest of the Eye-Fi units only work with .JPG files. This should not be a problem with eBay images.

Typically, I will start with a 10 or 12 Megapixel camera image and crop it as needed, perhaps 3200 pixels wide. While uploaded as .JPG. it is immediately saved and preserved in .BMP bitmap format.

If an Architect's Perspective Correction is needed, it gets done at this full resolution. The image is then dropped in size to the 2000 pixels area for most other Postproc to reduce the needed time and effort.

Automatic backgrounding and vignetting is also done at this resolution. When the image finally looks right it gets reduced to the 450 pixel or so area for smaller items and 850 pixels for larger ones. At this point it usually has its gamma reduced and its brightness increased and gets a maximum of one point of sharpening.

And then uploaded to eBay in .JPG format.

The loss in a grossly oversize initial .JPG is thus likely to be entirely negligible with a high resolution camera.

March 30, 2013
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I am absolutely stunned by the Eye-Fi series of products. These take most any recent digital camera and automatically give it full and invisible wireless upload capability. Prices start at $40.

You simply go through an USB oriented setup on your computer and then replace your existing camera memory card.

This did not work on first try for me, but by going to their http://support.eye.fi/downloads/ and retrying, things worked just fine. I suspect this may have been a Windows 8 update of one sort or another.

The wireless stuff is all in the card and a host ap. You essentially have "endless memory" as each picture gets erased once sent. There is also provision for online "cloud" backup as well.

I'm not sure what happens when you are out of wireless range. The concept is obviously best for studio work, especially eBay.

Their website lets you enter your make and model of camera to determine suitability. As near as I can tell, most any recent digital camera will work just fine.

March 29, 2013
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An alternate to the Bayer Filtering used in digital cameras that potentially doubles its low light sensitivity can be found here and discussed here.

By selectively deflecting red and blue light sideways, a four cell array of Cyan, White+Red, White+Blue and Yellow is created.

March 28, 2013
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There seem to be some compelling advantages to moving our Magic Sinewaves from the PIC to Raspberry PI machine language realizations.

First, the PIC seems limited to "zeroing" the low unwanted harmonics to around -65 decibels, while the Pi should be able to approach -85 decibels.

Second, the time delays can be done in one piece without any pinch points or exotic factoring. This should greatly simplify the coding and opens the way to indexed data reads.

Third, the PIC works best with externally set frequency, while the Pi's larger memory should be able to easily combine large numbers of amplitudes and frequencies at once

Fourth, the Pi would seem to lend itself better to a single data base driven code set that can handle many different types and classes of magic sinewaves.

Fifth, zero to very little custom hardware should be needed. More on Magic Sinewaves here. Seminars and Custom Design services available.

March 27, 2013
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My very first perpetual motion machine can be found here with more details here. More on bashing pseudoscience here.

March 26, 2013
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A reminder that we have great heaping bunches of partial polyester (mylar) film rolls. I've been meaning to build a re-rolling fixture, but I would just as soon sell these as a lot.

They are typically clear and 24 to 30 inches wide by several hundred to several thousand feet long. Thicknesses vary with ten mils typical. Price is typically one-sixth new. email me if you want to inspect these.

March 25, 2013
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Did I ever reveal to you my Fire Lookout's secret gourmet recipe for boiled can?

The trick is the 24 hour prep time as you reuse yesterday's dishwater.

March 24, 2013
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For reasons that make no sense whatsoever, eBay is in the process of restricting image borders. It is not clear whether our super unique vignetting will be allowed to continue. Technically, a vignette is simply a shading difference in an existing background.

At any rate, here's how our combination auto backgrounder optional vignetter works...

Firstoff, it is super important that there are no unwanted red=255 pixels anywhere in your .BMP bitmap artwork. These get eliminated automatically in our Architect's Perspective utility, or you can simply back the red off by one or two clicks in Imageview32.

A true red=255 ( or any rgb color including red=255 ) color is then selected and used to outline the subject in Paint. It is important that all undercuts are made solid red and that there are no "holes" anywhere in the outline. Optionally, all internal "holes" where the background is to intentionally punch through can also be made red=255.

Colors for the mottled background can be selected using [ 125 34 251 ] as read from Paint or [ 97 ] as read from our Web Friendly PostScript Colors. The depth of background mottling can be set with an internal mv mottle variance variable.

Values near 22 are often a good choice.

The backgrounder works in a three step process. First, the image is scanned left to right and the background pattern is set down up to the last encountered sequential red. Scanning continues right to left, bottom to top, and top to bottom, again replacing the background until the last encountered sequential red.

In an optional second step, any internal reds are replaced with the mottled background. And in an optional third step, the edges are vignetted. Vignetting is controlled by vigwide and vigtrips variables, among others. The vignetting algorithm is incredibly complex and is based on actual electromagnetic field synthesis.

Vignetting examples can be found here.

In use, the auto backgrounder code is loaded into a word processor such as Wordpad, modified as needed and then fed to GhostScript. Filenames and some parameters will have to be customized for your particular source and destination files.

Custom assistance available.

March 23, 2013
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Getting decent integrated circuit photos ( and especially their lettering ) can be tricky for eBay sales. So, I thought I'd review some of our insider tricks that seem to work for us.

First and foremost is to spend lots of time in image postproc. Much more than in the scanning itself. We might start off with this scanned image and get this final result.

A squeaky clean 600 DPI scanner is a must, such as the HP3970 which you can find on eBay for $30. If the subject chips are murky, it may pay to scan three or more at once and then crop out the best one.

Note that you scanner can also be used as a "magnifying glass" to aid in identifying ic's in the first place.

Postproc starts by cropping to somewhat larger than final image size, brightening and reducing gamma somewhat, and rotating the object until the best edge line and the lettering are aligned within one pixel. Imageview32 is an excellent choice for this.

At this point, keep the images much larger than final size and save them as a bitmap only!

A suitable mottled background is created. You can do this by sampling and replicating the best of the existing background area, by using this "steal the plans" template, or by putting a red=255 box around the chip and using our auto backgrounder.

Next, the best part of the best long chip edge is found and improved. It is then "chased along" its intended length to define an acceptably sharp and perfectly horizontal edge.

The best single pin associated with the best edge is found and improved. Typically lengthening it and fitting it to the intended mottled background. This pin gets replicated the needed number of times along your sharp edge. Be sure to get the pin count right!

Copy the entire edge/pins/background assembly, flip it vertically and paste it back over the other side of the chip. Then finish improving the chip ends to make them match and look credible.

At this point, you have to decide whether the lettering is good enough as is, whether it can be retouched by improving the inter character area and rounding backgrounds, or whether all lettering should be redone by using our Bitmap Typewriter.

If you use the Bitmap Typewriter, sample the background and use the values from the Paint "edit" colors" listing. The foreground should typically be the lightest existing lettering pixels. And the pixels-high by pixels-wide" settings cn be read from the rectangle tool in Paint.

Needless to say, it is super important to get the numerics exactly right if you do a Bitmap Typewriter replacement.  Logos can sometimes be faked or assisted by the triangle and circle Paint tools. Or, in extreme cases, retouched or simply left off entirely,

If you are going to have many similar ic's it pays to let the Bitmap Typewriter generate an entire alphabet and place it below the prototype bitmap. Logos and agency marks can be similarly saved.

Finally, the image is cropped to size and resized to some suitable eBay image format, perhaps 500 pixels wide. The image gets brightened somewhat and might have its gamma reduced further. While this tool is best used with extreme caution. The properly postproced image then gets saved as a .JPG file and uploaded to eBay.

naturally, these techniques are intended to accurately replicate needed chip technical information. They are not appropriate when you are selling a collectible where revealing present condition is of top priority.

Consulting services available.

March 22, 2013
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While the Unstoppable runaway train movie is not half bad, the underlying CSX 8888 real world incident is even more compelling.

March 21, 2013
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What can you do if an eBay or other image is not quite sharp enough?

Naturally, if it is really fuzzy, do it over! And make sure you are not the cause of the problem by always using a tripod, waiting long enough for auto focus to stabilize, having enough lighting, and having a subject that an auto focus system can reasonably deal with.

Beyond that, there are several tricks you can do to improve apparent image sharpness. Such as starting with this image and ending up with this one.

In general edge sharpness is much more apparent than anything internal. I like to align things such that verticals are truly vertical to a one pixel lock, along with horizontals that are truly horizontal to a one
pixel lock.

When and where it is appropriate I like to switch to Architects 2D perspective. Again forcing intended verticals to end up truly that way. By using this utility.

Rotating the image to optimize its appearance can also help a lot.

A sharpened but mottled background can do wonders, working towards a "shadowless" image. You can make such a background out of sampling and repeating a small portion of the best of the original background, or by using this "steal the plans" resource, or by using our auto backgrounder code.

Edges can be improved by sampling their best part and replicating it over their entire length. Should an edge be really fuzzy, trace a single pixel line over it in a ridiculously contrasting color. Then fill in to the internal side to the line. Finally, fill in the external side of the line and replace the temporary edge color.

If there are multiple instances of something like the pins on this filter, get one looking really good and then replicate it as needed. But watch out for perspective issues where things get smaller the further into your image that you get. In general, you can get away with isometric edges ( or other thin structures ) on perspective images.

Sometimes eliminating unwanted detail can make things look sharper, like we did with the aluminum chassis in this item. But things can end up "cartoonish" or "obviously retouched" if you go to extremes with this technique.

Programs like Imageview32 or Irfanview do have nice sharpening routines. But these are best used VERY sparingly, typically one click or at most two. Consulting services available.

March 20, 2013
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The powers that be have determined that the term "Anasazi" is no longer politically correct. The acceptable terminology is "Ancient Pueblo Peoples"

Apparently the term meant "Our old Enemies". It is unlikely that a culture would similarly name themselves.

Our hanging canals show an incredibly amazing variety of trading activities including those of the Ancient Pueblo Peoples, Mimbres, Mongollon, Hohokam, Salado, and even possibly Sinagua.

But the Adena embassy site has yet to be located.

March 19, 2013
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eBay will shortly demand that all listings include photos. Since we feel we have the finest photos on eBay bar none,I thought we'd spend a few blog entries on what works for us.

First and foremost is our rule of spending at least two hours in image post prep!

And a close second is to use BOTH a high resolution scanner AND a 12 Megapixel or higher camera. Our preferred scanner remains the HP 3970. Mostly for its exceptional depth of field. These are often available on eBay for $30 or less.

Three third party tools that are extremely useful are Imageview32, Irfanview, and, of course, the latest version of Paint.

Our own key custom tools include our Architects Perspective Corrector, Automatic Backgrounder and Vignetter, Bitmap Typewriter, and Background Sampler. With additional postproc tools here.

March 18, 2013
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Here's a link to an "adequate supply" of Pittsburgh Streetcar Photos. And more than you could possibly want to know about ancient car stop locations here.

WARNING: Attempting to view all of these in one session will result in yunz guys pronouncing "beer" as "airn". Or making a mill outta a chipaam sammitch and Olde Frothingslosh Pale Stale Ale in Sliberty.

Fortunately, in regards to this matter, a desert rat like me is immune. Skooze me while I redd up the website

March 17, 2013
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The original to the Xylophone Duet can be found here."

March 16, 2013
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I was just disappointed to see what whould have been a really useful auction announcement vanish without a trace from a major Arizona auctioneer.

It turns out there are several reasons why an auction may not be an auction after all. The obvious one is simple blackmail where a creditor convinces the game the debtor is playing is very much real.

An other possibility is for the auction house to also play "pawn shop". In which they advance a high interest loan to the creditor in exchange for rights to everything on default.

Generally, if a creditor forces an auction, all of the excess has to go to the debtor. But a pawnbroker gets to keep the change.

March 15, 2013
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The "mini viral" mystery on our Three Phase Magic Sinewaves upload to Wesrch seems to be turning into a simple internal score keeping error.

Apparently they switched from a single PDF file to a multiple page one, and at least some of the pages are wrongly racking up their own hits. Obviously confusing the visits and page views data.

The ratio of bogus to real hits seems to be somewhere around 6:1 or so.

Since I detest PowerPoint, the original was done using my Gonzo Power Point Emulator. Which has all sorts of major advantages over the original.

March 14, 2013
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A group of New Mexico hikers were suddenly caught in an unexpected storm. They managed to find a tree with a major horizontal branch and a bunch of old boards and quickly built an "A" Frame shelter.

The little rain ware they had was used to cover the cracks and they managed to stay quite dry in their poncho villa.

March 13, 2013
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The apparent reason or hanging canals got hung in the first place seemed to be to make their slope independent of the terrain. This could end up exceptionally energy efficient and could dramatically reduce the construction time and effort.

The canal system might have taken a lot less effort than you might first guess. Assume that an average individual could build one foot of average canal per hour. On a fourteen hour day, this translates to something like one mile per man year.

If the entire canal system was 50 miles long, then 50 man years might be needed for most of the canal route. Or 50 people for one year.

March 12, 2013
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Updated and expanded our Gila Valley Day Hikes page.

We have now exceeded our initial goal of 365 major entries. Please email me with any corrections or suggestions for additional entries.

March 11, 2013
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Classic example of what those French Veterinarians call a "four paw":

A leading newscaster has just confused the words "cannabis" and "cannibal" in describing a tasting tour.

March 10, 2013
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A reminder that it is sometimes hard for us to come up with exactly one new blog entry per day, so always check back a week or so to pick up anything you may have missed.

Blogs back to 1997 can now be reached here.

March 9, 2013
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Updated our Hanging Canal sampler page to include the AZ Republic and USA Today articles, videos, and slide shows.

The other samplers appear midway on our home page.

March 8, 2013
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As any geologist will tell you, there are three different kinds of rocks. These are sedentary, ingenious, and metaphoric.

March 7, 2013
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The mystery of the Magic Sinewave mini-viral continues.

The Wesrch version has rocketed through the charts at an unheard of and unprecedented rate. It likely will peak in position #4. Driven by an apparently bogus hoax and a nearly constant but slowly increasing 300 file requests per day.

I've been unable to find the faintest clue what is driving these requests. There is nothing apparent on Google, on Bing, or on my website itself that would suggest such request behavior. And no response feedback whatsoever from the requests. And I have no access to the internal Wesrch daily log files. I've yet to find any time-of-day or day-of-week significant pattern.

A typical mini-viral would be expected to spike and sharply drop after a day or two. Like is happening on our ISMM eBook requests. Whatever this one is seems more like the Duracell Bunny. It just goes and goes and goes.

Please let me know what you think the source ( and the point ) for this behavior is.

March 6, 2013
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One of the underappreaciated features of the latest version of Paint is its curved line tool. This is superb for rounding corners or tracing long curved outlines.

Typically, you select the tool and a single pixel line width. Click your mouse at the first end of the line, then the second end. Now grab the middle of the line and pull it into the desired shape. Or for a non uniform curve, grab the line closer to one end.

One gotcha: Once the curve looks the way you want it, be sure to exit the curved mode. The easiest way to do this is to switch to the straight line mode.

If the edge is fuzzy, start with a very high contrast color and then cover it with the intended outside or inside color.

The curves are quadratic second order. Thus they are not nearly as powerful as a cubic spline, but definitely are quite useful.

March 5, 2013
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The latest version of our Bitmap Typewriter can be found here. It appears to work properly under GhostScript.

A typical new example appears here, with bunches more here.

The bitmap typewriter lets you retouch small lettering on any bitmap. It offers full anti aliasing, font sizes by pixels, any colors, and mottled background control. Legibility is exceptional and is likely the best that can be done without going to exotic subpixel techniques .

It is particularly useful for eBay sales of integrated circuits. on these is notoriously difficult to show with decent appearance and contrast.

Up to four background colors can be selected, either using a [ 127 244 13 ] style matrix directly out of Paint, or a [ 103 ] style matrix from our Web Friendly PostScript Colors.

Font sizes are set as width heights st directly in pixels. Proper font sizes can be selected by using the rectangle tool in Paint.

A newly positioned string can be done as 3 985 (your text message) st, while continuing from the last available position can be done by 0 0 (your text message) st.

At present, results are delivered to a curletsx.bmp file. From which they are cut and pasted onto your target bitmap.

Kerning and many other commands are also available. As are our consulting services.

March 4, 2013
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Yet another electronic part search engine can be newly here.

It promptly got some hits for me on some really old and obscure MIL spec parts. On the other hand its search seems too broad and generates far too many false hits.

Other engines I use are OEM's Trade and PLC Center.

March 3, 2013
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Just added a pile of 1N4007 diodes to our eBay sales for a little over two cents each with in-stock immediate delivery. Diodes Inc traditional branding. 1 amp 1000 volts, normal recovery. Direct replacement for 1N4001 through 1N4006.

A case can be made that these are the most significant and most important semiconductor of all time. It is interesting to compare them against their 5U4G predecessor which presently sells for as much as $34 each.

The 1N4007 is half the size of one of the base pins on the 5U4G. It drops half a volt in use compared to nearly a hundred.

March 2, 2013
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A reminder that an erratic wireless mouse can sometimes be instantly cured simply by blowing on its scanning infrared diode.

March 1, 2013
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I've long been a fan of the HP 3970 Scanjet scanner. Both for its high resolution and exceptional depth of field. The latter particularly useful for scanning integrated circuits and similar 3D objects for our eBay sales.

The 3970 recently got much more convenient to use under Windows 8 as well.

But some sort of "sensor rot" had been creeping into my unit, with the individual pixel noise slowly adding unacceptable "bulldozer tracks" to the scans.

Attempts at scanner cleaning did not seem to help. The cure was to replace the entire scanner with a $30 one from eBay. Which worked just fine.

February 28, 2013
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I've never had any reason to do a wire transfer until recently.

The bottom line is that Western Union sources them, they cost $20 each, and they can be done either by you or your bank. These can be VISA or MC charged. Or otherwise paid for. Transfer of the funds is nearly instantaneous. And irrevoci3ble.

For the overwhelming majority of individuals, a wire transfer is almost always a scam to steal your money

In my case, an auction from an old line auction house had closed and pickup was imminent. This formed a very rare example of when and where a wire transfer might be both useful and legit.

February 27, 2013
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Two fascinating places you cannot get to are here and here.

February 26, 2013
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The combined Arizona Republic video and story on our hanging canals can be found here. And its slide show here. A similar but shorter USA today story only can be found here.

In excessive zeal over political correctness, my "stole the plans" got replaced by "borrowed the blueprints". And somehow, the Twin Boobs Canal is no longer mentioned.

Several errors crept into the story. Not sure where the "19 miles" came from. Typical hanging canals range from one to seven miles. System totals clearly exceed 40 miles, and possibly quite a bit more. And there is no evidence that the canals delivered running water to habitation sites in the area. Water use appeared to be purely agricultural.

And the TV Typewriter, of course, was from Radio Electronics, September 1973, and not PE.

February 25, 2013
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Expanded and updated our Gila Valley Day Hikes web page.

February 24, 2013
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There are at least five different and largely independent prehistoric water management concepts in the Gila Valley. These include the lowland canals, the hanging canals, the dry agricultural grids, the mulch rings, and the aproned check dams.

The hanging canals are quite distinct and different than the lowland canals. Lowland canals are quite common in Phoenix, Tucson, and areas between. While a tremendous amount of effort is required in their building, the needed engineering is not all that great, and the canals tend to build themselves by noting acceptable water flow.

The hanging canals on the other hand are world class constructs that demanded a mind boggling engineering sophistication. No other examples are presently known, and the vision, the foresight, and the societal structure needed to create them remains uniquely outstanding.

Another key difference is that lowland canals tend to flood damage along their length, while the hanging damage across their path. A low land repair could take years and impact survivability, while a hanging repair could be done by kiddies in minutes.

February 23, 2013
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Three interesting developments in the goal to break the scientific publishing stranglehold and the overwhelming for peer review reform:

A new federal policy demands improved public access to government sponsored and paid for research. And a discussion of which can be found here.

And a new Peer J scientific journal will publish for free distribution for as little as flat $99 lifetime fee. The arXiv from Cornell seems to be working just fine, but still is limited to certain fields.

We've already seen how Wesrch represents the new model of free public access scientific publication. My own Wesrch papers can be found here.

I strongly feel that ALL scientific papers older than three years should be freely web available without unreasonable restriction or any charges. Many of my own papers are freely available here and here.

February 22, 2013
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A story on our hanging canals is apparently scheduled to appear in this Sunday's Arizona Republic.

A variant with video supposedly is already in their free online
tablet versions.

February 21, 2013
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We still get an ever diminishing number of requests for color organ info. A number of these construction projects can still be found here. And they both predated and defined the psychedelic lighting era.

These days, of course, you would be infinitely better off with a PC display. Even the best of the color organs had issues with dynamic range, automatic level controls, heat management, linearity, color saturation and a static display that fast became boring.

It might be interesting to apply DSP techniques to re-extract the energy of each individual instrument and relate that to color sequences, rather than simply splitting the audio spectrum into low, medium, and high frequency components.

This might make an excellent Raspberry Pi project.

February 20, 2013
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Watch out for the cliff!
        What CLIFFFFFfffffffff?

Watch out for the ping pong ball!
         What ping pong gloulckkk?

Watch our for the ladder!
         What ladder dedadder dedadder?

Watch out for the revolving door!
         What revolving door .. ing door ing door?

I'd like to try and find the rest of these and give them a long missing home on the web. Please email me with your candidates and suggestions.

February 19, 2013
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I used to be surprised that nothing of ours ever went viral. But last week, our ISMM quintupled our web page views for a day or two. Apparently driven by this site.

But the real mini-viral mystery is that our Three Phase Magic Sinewaves is literally rocketing through the charts at Wesrch.

I have no idea whatsoever what the underlying referral is. Please let me know if you have a clue.

February 18, 2013
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Expanded and updated our Auction Help page.

Your very own custom auction finder can be created for you per these details.

February 17, 2013
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Updated and expanded our Gila Valley Day Hikes library pages.

February 16, 2013
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One of the key secrets to eBay success is having a high enough SBR or sell buy ratio. 30:1 works well for me.

30:1 SBR's are fairly easy to achieve at industrial auctions on "contents of cabinet" and "contents of room" deals. As they are on multiple pallets.

Especially when the lot gets "poisoned" by the auctioneer using "put it with the next lot" to maintain momentum.

I just got an email asking me to do some eBay consignment sales for a 10 percent commission. The minimum practical commission for me would be 96.7 percent, equal to a 30:1 SBR.

I can see no point whatsoever in trying to do eBay consignment sales for others. It makes absolutely no economic sense. Particularly since it is YOU that gets hung out to dry when things inevitably go south. More on similar eBay insider sales secrets
here.

February 15, 2013
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Managed to find an image of the Mule Creek tunnel and get it both here and on the web...

Thanks to Diane Drobka for finding this image from her extensive Arizona postcard collection. The tunnel got trashed when the road got expanded and paved. Only a tiny and obscure remnant remains today.

Judging by the shadows, this might have held the world record for the "world's shortest tunnel". One side appears to be EIGHT INCHES long!

The "usual" image includes a car going through the tunnel. Please let me know where I can find and upload this second photo. Or any related others.

Much more on similar topics here and here and here.

February 14, 2013
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Small Parts has been acquired by Amazon and renamed Amazon supply.

It remains an outstanding ( but sometimes pricey ) source of the mechanical bits and pieces needed for robotics, automation, hardware hacking, and such. McMaster Carr remains a competitor.

February 13, 2013
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There's a new alternative to the alt.marketing.online.ebay newsgroup called e commerce bytes and available here.

February 12, 2013
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I've long been fascinated by The Gambler's Ruin, which we looked at earlier here.

Assume a simple honest and vig free coin flipping game. You put up ten pennies, one at a time, as does the house. A coin is flipped and the winner takes the pot of two cents. The game continues till one side is broke.

What are your odds of winning? Obviously, fifty percent.

Now make a minor and seemingly innocuous change. You still start with ten pennies but the house starts with a hundred. Your win odds now drop to less than ten percent!

If the house starts with 10,000 pennies, you virtually will NEVER win.

If you always bet on anything, the house essentially has an infinite stash. And you are ABSOLUTELY GUARANTEED to lose. Hence, you bet, you lose.

A simulation appears here, with more on unique PostScript stuff here.

A reminder that Acrobat Distiller is making it difficult to run file accessing PostScript code and that GhostScript is fast becoming a better choice.

Update: Use //acrodist /F sent to distiller.

February 11, 2013
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What are the odds of "n" coin flips ending up half heads and half tails? The answer is counterintuitive and different than you might expect.

This is yet another example of binomial coefficients which have a fascinating range of uses and which we looked at earlier in depth here.

For two flips, 2 binary words have one ones in them  out of 4 possible states. For a probability of 50.0 percent.

For four flips, 6 binary words have two ones in them  out of 16 possible states. For a probability of 37.5 percent.

For eight flips, 70 binary words have four ones in them out of 256 possible states. For a probability of 27.3 percent.

For twelve flips, 926 binary words have six ones in them out of 4096 possible states. For a probability of 22.6 percent.

For sixteen flips, 12,870 binary words have eight ones in them out of 65536 possible states. For a probability of 19.6 percent.

For twenty flips, 184,756 binary words have ten ones in them out of 1,048,576 possible states. For a probability of 17.6 percent.

February 10, 2013
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There's not too many tunnels in this part of Arizona, but the few that are here may be of interest...

The most famous is the McEniry Tunnel, a scam to go all the way through Mt. Graham and tap untold riches. A neat trick since the Grahams are Precambrian and totally unmineralized.

Long gone is the tunnel on route 78 in the Big Lue mountains, of which only a vague fragment remains. It was demolished when the road was expanded and paved. I can't seem to find any web photos of this.

Three interesting hiking or mountain biking tunnels remain on what once was the Morenci Southern railway. Of the fifteen known railroad loops in the US, five of these were on the Morenci Southern! Only one remains.

There's four or more tunnels on the present Morenci Railway, but these are presumed off limits. There is also a short vehicle tunnel in Morenci itself.

Further afield, the Gilman Tunnels in New Mexico may be worth a visit, as may the Copper Basin Railway tunnel near the coke ovens at Cochran. Or the old original Queen Creek ( Claypool ) tunnel near Superior.

Much more here.

February 9, 2013
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Discovered yet another glitch in moving from using Acrobat Distiller to GhostScript when dealing with writable files:

We long used this routine as a super elegant array to string converter...

/makestring {dup length string dup  
 /NullEncode filter  3 -1 roll            
{1 index exch write} forall  pop } def

...only to have it write all nulls in Ghostscript.

The problem is that GhostScript is more critical
of file closure buffering. This seems to work...

makestring {dup length string dup  
 /NullEncode filter  3 -1 roll            
{1 index exch write} forall
closefile } def

February 8, 2013
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Discovered a miracle cure for the somewhat strange of Saliva Gland Stones, aka Sialoithiasis. GREEN Mason Dots!

February 7, 2013
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An alternative to PayPal can be found here.

As near as I can tell, this one is by far the best available.

February 6, 2013
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Another rule of thumb: $100 in consistent 24/7 daily sales translates to a gross $36,500.00 per year. And $200 to a gross of $73,000.00 per year.

Two other favorite rules of thumb: For a surprisingly wide variety of things, one percent of anything happening nationally takes place in Arizona, and one percent of anything happening in Arizona takes place in the upper Gila Valley.

And my super favorite hazmat rule of thumb: Hold your thumb up with your arm fully extended and close one eye. If you can still see the scene, you are too close.

February 5, 2013
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IASCO ( Short for Industrial Academic Supply Company ) has long had an extremely interesting collection of everything from small plastic injection molders to flocking guns to bridge and rocketry kits and everything in between.

February 4, 2013
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It really pains me to throw perfectly good stuff away, but this often can be the most sane route towards inventory control. And the most profitable. There's this obscure small semi house in Florida called Sussex Semiconductor.

We have many thousands of their surge protectors in stock, but these have a non-standard part number that may or may not have mainstream equivalents. And we can't find exact data because their website is "sort of" down.

We also cannot find any pricing or ways to buy any reasonable places on the web, such as OEM's Trade.

The parts are now on the Alvin pile. If you want them for free, come and pick them up. Take none or take all.

February 3, 2013
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One of the questions that came up from last night's talk was "What is the energy density of coal?"

This figure is hard to pin down, especially in my preferred units of watt hours per liter and watt hours per kilogram

But this site suggests something around half that of gasoline, or around 6500 watt hours per kilogram.

This likely would vary all over the lot with moisture content, impurities, and the various flavors of lignite, bituminous, or anthracite.

Coal is unlikely to emerge as new transportation solutions. The railroads flushed it for having only half the efficiency of diesel and its PITA factors of high maint and needing water every 20 minutes.

But coal remains very much mainstream for utility power conversion. Owing to the latest plants approaching a 60 percent thermal efficiency through fluidized beds and combined recovery cycles.

February 2, 2013
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A reminder I'll be giving an Energy Fundamentals talk tonight at 6:30 in the Jupiter Room at Discovery Park. Discovery Park is near the intersection of Discovery Park Boulevard and 20th Avenue in Safford.

February 1, 2013
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Two of our many available eBook classic early reprints include our Machine Language Programming Cookbook I and Machine Language Programming Cookbook II.

Amazingly, these were written in such a way that they remain more or less relevant to todays interest in the Arduino and the raw machine potential of the Raspberry Pi.

I'd say that around 30 percent of the essentials still apply, with, of course, much of the rest ending up rather quaint.

I'll eventually get around to eBooking the older Micro Cookbook I some time. Meanwhile, we have the original up on eBay.

A "director's cut" of the more relevant stuff can be found here. This is rather labor intensive and will require third party funding for completion

January 31, 2013
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Many early automobiles included whip sockets.

A traditional live auction of necessity would close one auction every minute or so, and most online only auctions similarly close two items per minute or thereabouts. Which means you may have to sit around for many hours for the complete closure. Some alternate closure forms surely can shorten this time without impacting the ability to snipe or having to do too many deals at once.

One auction house is apparently trying to close 400 auction items at once while simultaneously removing anything you did not previously bid on. This strikes me as somewhere between monumentally stupid and mesmerizingly awful.

Perhaps closing eight to ten lots per minute will make the most sense and still maintain the bidders ability to pay attention while shortening their total participation time.

Too many closures at once could also choke the web or overload the auction house servers. It might also be useful to alter the sequence of lots offered.

In a traditional auction, lots had to be beside each other. In an online auction, lots can in theory be in any order.

I'm not sure what the optimal order is, but totally random might keep the average bidder from paying attention to too many lots of interest at once. On the other hand, all cars together might dramatically shorten the auction for the the car buyers. But this could confuse finding lots during item pickup if not carefully thought out.

email me with your thoughts on this. More auction help here.

January 30, 2013
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I'll be presenting a paper on Energy Fundamentals this Saturday February 2 in the Jupiter Room of Discovery Park at 6:30 PM.

Here's a copy of the press release hat may or may not appear locally...

Local author and researcher Don Lancaster returns to Discovery Park in the Jupiter Room this Saturday February 2nd at 6:30 PM. As part of Discovery Park's ongoing spring lecture series.

The presentation will review the basics of understanding and using energy, both in its traditional and alternate forms.

Covered will be the differences between power and energy, the importance of exergy ( a little known key measure of energy quality ), how energy and dollars can often be used interchangeably to measure value, and the differences between heat energy and temperature.

Should time and interest permit, the fundamental economics of photovoltaics ( pv ) panels will also be reviewed. Although these are not yet in any manner renewable nor sustainable due to their excessive true costs, pv panels are expected to shortly become a major and economic player in meeting energy demands. This should happen when the price of utility grade panels drops under twenty five cents per peak watt.

There are many energy schemes that range from wishful thinking to outright scams. These flat out are "not even wrong" and are not going to happen because they clearly violate fundamental physical or economic laws in one way or another.

These include compressed air cars, solar panels on cars, corn ethanol, fuel cells, swapping out ev batteries, the quot;Brown's Gas" fiasco, virtually all of the hydrogen economy, "water powered cars", and most forms of electrolysis.

The presentations can be previewed as < https://www.tinaja.com/glib/nrglect2.pdf > and < https://www.tinaja.com/glib/pvlect2.pdf >

background material can be found at < https://www.tinaja.com/etsamp1.shtml >

Discovery park is located at the corner of Discovery Park Boulevard and 20th Avenue in Safford. You can get more info by calling Paul Anger or Jackie Madsen at (928) 428-6260.

====================

Important note: "exergy" is very much a real word!

January 29, 2013
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Most online auction houses flat out refuse to reveal the prices of closed auctions. And those that do pick only the stuff that makes them look good.

Typically, prices vanish just after the lot closes. So if you want to know what something closes at, you have to manually record the price just before closure. Additional online auction tips here.

January 28, 2013
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"Gee, Dad, its a Wurlitzer!"

Despite my uncle, Joseph R. DeOtto, once being the first organist of Pittsburgh's original Nickelodeon silent movie theater, I never actually saw or heard a mighty Wurlitzer theater organ until yesterday.

Turns out the Organ Stop Pizza in Mesa, Arizona has lovingly restored and dramatically expanded the largest extant mighty Wurlitzer theater organ and has nightly shows.

This beast has four (!) keyboards and nearly 6000 pipes. the 32 foot stopped wooden Contra Tibia Dictaphones completely blow away any sub woofer you have ever heard. And their companion 8 foot Trumpet En Chamade rank is literally brilliant.

Besides the drums and xylophones and celestes and such, there's all the usual bells and whistles, including a steam locomotive, dancing cats, a light show, a duck, and even a bubble machine.

The 50,000 watts of equivalent audio power are certainly in the "adequate" category. While not bad, the food isn't all that great and is cash only.

The pricing is pretty much the same as any mid range pizza house. Free music is typically 45 minutes per hour and you can stay as long as you like. The organists are superb. It is, of course, LOUD!

Apparently there were many pizza organ places at one time, but this may be only one of two remaining.

January 27, 2013
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There's a little known Norwegian microprocessor company located here that has some very interesting low cost and low power alternatives available. Free samples.

January 26, 2013
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There's rumors a major newspaper may be doing a story on our prehistoric hanging canals. Whether this can attract sorely needed big time researcher attention and funding remains to be seen.

There is a crucial difference between publicity done by others and advertising done by yourself. Only the latter can be totally under your control. Much more here.

January 25, 2013
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A second reminder that I'll be presenting an updated talk on our revised Hanging Canal slide show in the ARA conference tomorrow this Saturday January 26th at Grand Canyon University in room CAS 6 Rm 105/107. Grand Canyon University is located at 3300 West Camelback Road in Northwest Phoenix.

January 24, 2013
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A highly useful series of links to older but surviving electronic surplus houses can be found here for January 23rd.

Conspicuously absent is Sparkfun Electronics. Presumably because they are newer than the others listed.

January 23, 2013
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Shocking.

Nearly FIFTY PERCENT of North Dakota school children are below average.

January 22, 2013
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There's all sorts of renewed interest in calculating how much area pv panels would need to fill present US energy demand. It turns out there are several subtle factors that some are not taken into consideration.

Firstoff, a 20 percent pv facility only does its 20 percent for five hours a day. And thus has to be derated by 5/24ths when compared to a traditional power plant that might approach something near a 100 percent daily duty cycle.

Second, the active areas of a pv panel are significantly less than the size of the panel itself, owing to edge effects, support systems, interconnects, shape factors, and such.

Third, vehicle access roads will be needed between banks of panels. This could easily approach the area of the panels themselves.

Fourth, most large pv systems will built up a bank at a time over a multi year development program. Huge areas of unused raw land will likely remain early in development.

Fifth, no place in the US has 365 days of available sunshine. Arizona comes close at 85 percent, but the state averages are a lot more like 60 percent. More on the realities of pv panels here.

January 21a, 2013
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I've long been fascinated by the Hammond B3 organ. Which to this day remains popular with rock and blues groups. A case can be made that this 1937 design was the very first music synthesizer.

January 21, 2013
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A complete service and repair manual can be found here. What is really amazing is that much of the B3. consisted of a mechanical kluge and an utter rat's nest of wire. Yet it approximated a full Fourier Series waveform synthesis amazingly well.

Sort of the exact opposite of our Magic Sinewaves. They wanted all of the harmonics and I wanted none of them.

In operation, a synchronous motor whose speed was set by the power line rotated up to 96 toothed wheels of varying tooth count and varying speeds. Pickup coils continually sensed up to 96 audio sinewaves of fairly pure fundamental-only tones.

Pressing a key selected a carefully chosen nine of these sinewaves that represented the fundamental, most of the eight harmonics, and the subfundamental of the intended note. These nine selections were then placed on nine seperate analog audio bus lines. The notes were summed with any other notes selected for full polyphony.

It is important to understand that one bus line held all the fundamentals, one all the second harmonics, one all the third harmonics, and so on.

Now for the neat part. At this point, all of the harmonics for a given note were at full amplitude. Attenuators called "drawbars" were placed on each of the nine bus lines to allow various harmonic and fundamental strength comginations. Each drawbar had eight positions and there were nine busses, so the total voices of any rank was 8^9 or 134.217,728 different timbres.

A flute like sound would result from a fundamental only. Strings would be a mix of all harmonics, woodwinds mostly odd harmonics, and so on.

January 20, 2013
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I'll be presenting an updated talk on our revised Hanging Canal slide show in the ARA conference this saturday January 26th at Grand Canyon University in room CAS 6 Rm 105/107.

Grand Canyon University is located at 3300 West Camelback Road in Northwest Phoenix.

January 19, 2013
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I was aksed my views on the various storage auction video sites. I feel they are highly misdirected and mesmerizingly awful total bullshit.

A storage area in default almost always contains nothing but abject trash. Especially if the rental price is cheaper than the local dump tipping charge.

I guess I got "somewhat discouraged" over storage auctions when the next lot after the one I bid on included two dead babies. The auctioneer was not at all clear whether this was to be "choice" or "times the money".

The most major grevious flaw in the tv shows is confusing the SBR sell/buy ratio with the profit. Profit is invariably much, much lower. You have overhead, the value of your time, your own storage areas, transport and packing costs, and things not selling at all or selling for far less and far later than you expected.

We routinely seek out SBR's at industrial auctions of 30:1 or higher. This is easily done on "contents of room" and "contents of cabinet" deals. On the other hand, the SBR's on storage auctions are laughingly and ludicrously low.

Secondly, you absolutely and positively want to be absolutely invisible at any auction. Except when you are clearly in the auctioneer's face. The object of the game is to get triageible as silently and as cheaply as possible.And to NOT EVER get into pissing contests with other bidders.

Thirdly, you normally should bid once and only once with your absolute maximum price very late in each lot offer. The only exception to be a lowball opener to help the auctioneer maintain momentum.

Fourthly, most other auction types permit a careful inspeciton of all items up fol sale. Almost always, there will be hidden defects in storage auction items, either being broken in the place or damaged through lack of care.Much more here.

January 18, 2013
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The Colby LEDTTV1526 from Amazon seems to be a good match to the Raspberry Pi. It is reasonably priced ( I paid $79 ) and directly compatible with the default pi settings.

The fifteen inch size seems about right. The 720p res is a tad low, but should be suitable for most pi uses. The contrast is not all that wonderful, but this actually enhances most text displays.

On the other hand, Walmart seems to be overcharging for their smallest screens. Presumably to upgrade you to something more expensive.

January 17, 2013
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A Goldilocks Exoplanet catalog can be found here. Nine currently make the cut.

January 16, 2013
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A machine language based Magic Sinewave design should shortly be available implemented on the Raspeberry Pi. More on this as it unfolds.

Meanwhile, several have asked if Windows can run on the pi. The available memory might be a little lean for this, and Microsoft could be assumed to be mightily pissed. And, until recently, Windows was pretty much 86/88 rather than ARM based.

Nonetheless, Windows emulation on the pi has been acheived. Sort of.

The crucial question is when and if Microsoft is going to realize that their very survival depends on them coming up with a $9 alternative to the pi.

January 15, 2013
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There was a recent re-release of a Director's Cut 40th anniversary ultimate collectors edition of Woodstock.

Strangely, there seems to be no mention of this on IMDB. Or at least I can't find any.

The audio quality is greatly improved in this longer version, and stuff conspicuously absent in the original ( such as Janis Joplin ) have been returned.

Some of the Woodstock urban lore included that the original final act was supposed to be Roy Rodgers and Dale Evans singing "Happy Trails".

No, thre is no way I could possibly have made this up. The only large rock concert I ever managed to attend was the first US Festival.

January 14, 2013
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There at last seem to be several attempts at dramatically reducing Santa Claus machine material costs. Mostly based on homemade extruders to convert new or used plastic into suitable diameter filaments

I feel that those working with new raw pellets will do a lot better than the "recycle anything" versions. Examples are here and here and here.

Normal extruder prices are 1.65 per pound in 1000 pound lots. With regrounds even cheaper. Additional recent links here.

January 13, 2013
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Usenet newsgroups seem to be in dramatic decline. Most likely caused by the eyeball siphoning by the social media sites. Some larger ISP's have stopped or scaled back on their newsgroup coverage.

Traffic on alt.marketing.online.ebay is only a tiny fraction of normal, although sci.electronics.design seems to more or less be holding their own.

Even Bruno, who used to be the AMOE attitude relateralization facillitator had to get a job insiding truck tires out for New Mexico border stations.

Interest in sci.energy.hydrogen is now zero, but this is probably just as good.

January 12, 2013
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U-Ship seems to be a new way, highly competitive, and web friendly means of finding the best shipping prices. They even have a Shipping Wars tv show.

But you do have to give them accurate information, particularly the volume and weight of the items to be shipped. On a recent auction, I did not have the faintest clue how large a "contents of room" deal would have ended up.

But they were all cardboard boxes on shelving. So, you could assume one four foot shelf is good for four cubic feet, or three for three. Six shelves high would be 18 to 24 cubic feet. But there is a packing factor which says you are only going to ship 15 to 20 cubic foot per shelf. Less for the partially empty ones.

In theory you could count the shelf units to get a total. But it is best to do this personally as the photos may miss or repeat some of the stuff.

For reference, a 17 foot U-haul truck holds 865 cubic feet if perfectly packed.

January 11, 2013
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A photographer was the only other person on the set when a world famous actor ended up hanging by one hand from a fast failing vine above a thousand foot deep canyon. They had only scant seconds to make a gut wrenching decision.

Sixty or ninety millimeter lens?

January 10, 2013
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Measuring inductance can be very tricky. First because very few VOM's have LCR capabilities. Second because of the quality control on these instruments being abysmal.

And third because any inductor with a core material will have its inductance vary with frequency. If the measurement is not made at the use frequency, the results will be wildly wrong and typically lower than expected.

I tried buying a Sinometer MS8269 off Amazon only to find a totally dead battery and no screen activity after substituting a known new battery. I then switched to a Tenma 72-8455 which seems to work perfectly so far.

Both units seem to share a somewhat common design, judging by oddball connectors.

January 9, 2013
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Haven't heard much more lately on the "lost wax" cave mapping technique.

January 8, 2013
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My current goal with the Raspberry Pi is to ignore all that Linux stuff and drop down directly in machine language to create Magic Sinewave software.

Advantages over our earlier 8-bit code are the ability to do a high accuracy precision time delay in a single step, freedom of some code "pinch points", the ability to provide both frequency and amplitude generation in a single file, further reduction of unwanted harmonic "zero" minimums, and the ability to separate one indexed generating program from its many instances of sinewave specific data.

An earlier brute force and third party pi example can be found here.

January 7, 2013
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To me, the Raspberry Pi is looking more and more like one of those Escher staircases that keep going round and round with never ending rude surprises but do not seem to be actually getting you anywhere.

My latest hassle involves the monitors. Apparently, you cannot get a monitor working unless you already have a working monitor! On the RCA/NTSC side, chances are that an old color monitor will have unacceptable legibility and that you may have to dig up an ancient degaussing coil.

I ended up temporarily going back to my trusty Apple II monitor which gives me any color so long as it is green. The first two characters of any line were missing, so some fishing around was needed to find the secret configuration files and the overscan_left command.

Finding an HDMI monitor can be tricky, as only the newest monitors may include this input. Meanwhile slightly older tv sets do offer HDMI but the smaller ones will only go to 780 resolution and you may want more.

In typical UNIX fashion, there are 186 possible HDMI settings, only one of which will be correct for you and very few of which will give you anything even remotely readable.

You do have the option of moving your memory card to a Windows PC with a card reading option. It can be modified there using WordPad and returned. This is one workaround to changing formats for an unreadable monitor.

A new pi tutorial can be found here.

January 6, 2013
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Did a long overdue update on our RSS Feed. More than 15  entries are now allowed.

But something does not seem quite right as I seem to be passing checks but getting warnings. Please let me know if you have any problems or tell me what I am doing wrong.

It does turn out that you have to add an RSS Extension to Chrome to get the RSS links to work. To activate our orange box, enter https://www.tinaja.com/whtnu.xml into your RSS server or right click to save and paste the url.

January 5, 2013
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I've still got a pair of genuine Eastman 1908 commercial 35 mm movie projectors for sale that I would like to clear out.

Their provenance was the original Cliffton, AZ movie theater. They are presently disassembled and can be shippid in multiple UPS boxes. They are eminently restorable and fairly complete.

Please email me if you have any interest in these extremely rare collectibles.

January 4, 2013
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( Property has been sold. Older description here.)

January 3, 2013
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( Property has been sold. Older description here.)

January 2, 2013
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Seems to be the time of year for WAG predictions.
Here's my current assortment...

A hardware hacking resurgence, led by the
Raspberry Pi and Arduino computers.

Utility scale pv solar pricing approaching the
25 cents per peak panel watt demanded for
net energy generation. Combined with many
more continuing solar pv bankruptcies.

Word getting out that corn ethanol is nothing
but an outrageous vote buying scam and
is otherwise shockingly useless.

Significant improvements in LED lighting
efficiency and newly dropping costs. New
forms of lighting based on LED's working
over an area rather than being point sourced.

Santa Claus Machines increasing in variety
and dropping in price but still high material
costs and unresolved strength issues.

Near total demise of print trade journals,
with many mid or smaller newspapers.

Opportunities in timed online auctions as
supply and demand stays out of balance.
Stunning buys over undersold lots.

The first real nearby Goldilocks exoplanet
discovery, shortly followed by dozens and
then hundreds of others.

Big improvements in HVAC efficiency, by
variable speeds and better MEMS.

The peer review ludicrosity getting resolved
through the Wesrch and similar. Any and all
technical papers over three years old should
end up freely downloadable.

Something finally done about the spam outrage,
likely based on email no longer arriving postage
due. A flat charge of two cents per email
payable to the recipient should do it.

Wristwatches have been utterly pointless. The
caver's wrist sundial is a far more intelligent
choice. And clearly makes a stronger statement
than a Rolex.

Emerging "You ain't seen nothing yet" issues with
global warming and climatic variability..

Things that no longer make any sense are the
US Post Office, "Big 3" network Television, over-
the-air tv transmission, public libraries ( unless
totally and immediately repurposed ), or any tax
funded Public Broadcasting.

A continuing turnaround in Drug legalization as
governments and municipalities will no longer be
able to ignore the US #4 cash crop as income. But t
he crop value should drop precipitously after the
federal subsidies and price supports are phased out.

eBook readers falling by the wayside, and replaced
by full feature, full color, full .PDF tablets and such.

The "terabyte era" largely being skipped as we go
directly to the "petabyte era". In which there is no
sane reason that all movies or all books or papers
should not be available on a single thumb drive.

Your comments welcome.

January 1, 2013
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Closed out the 2012 Archive and started this 2013 one.

December 31, 2012
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Gotcha! Raspberry Pi is now working. The problem is that you cannot simply copy an .mg file to a memory card. All this does is move the file just like any other.

Instead, a very special image mapping file such as Win2imager.exe is required to actually change the entire image of the memory card.

Note that this program is outrageously dangerous and must be used with extreme care.

December 30, 2012
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Expanded and improved our home page video link access to 64 entries.

Reasonable attempts have been made to verify that all links work and are largely virus and porn free. Please report any exceptions. Or suggested additions.

Note that these links can be used with a personal computer to convert any dumb HDMI television into a smart tv. At nearly zero cost.

December 29, 2012
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I seem to be getting nowhere trying to boot a Raspberry Pi.

Things learned so far: It would seem best to buy an entire
package with a preprogrammed memory card. Boot time is by no means instant and typically could take 35 seconds with a class 4 card. Although 2 Gigs is only needed, at least 4 Gigs is recommended.

Supply voltage is critical and can be measured from diagonally opposite pins. NTSC video may be less flaky than HDMI. Besides the red power LED, the activity lights should show activity during and after booting. Memory cards to be self-loaded probably should be initialized and removed only with the recommended eject routine.

Trying to run the checksum routine on Windows 8 is maddeningly infuriating. I'm working on a PostScript routine to read the first few thousand program bytes

I'm ot sure where to go from here. I'll try a new memory card and then an entire bundled package. If this happy horseshit is happening to more than one user in a hundred, the Pi should never have been sold.

December 28, 2012
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"Smart" tv sets are basically an unmitigated disaster. Their ergonomics are mesmerizingly awful, their content is both pathetic and second rate, charges can be outrageous, and attempts at micromanaged control and DRM are ludicrous.

More discussion here.

But little known is thatyou can easily and cheaply build your own smart tv with none of these problems! Besides starting, stopping, reversing, or fast forwarding many sources at any time. Accessing them totally at your convenienc.

Just make sure the plain old but fairly new tv has a HDMI connector, find a cable and connect your web connected personal computer to it.

An adjustment of the video resolution to 1920 x 1080 may also be needed. As might a VGA to HDMI adapter. Run a preliminary test by using this xylophone duet.

Then check out https://www.tinaja.com/#video for 65 free programming sources. Good early choices include Fox, CBS, and A&E. My own vids can be found here.

For remotes, you may want to add a wireless mouse or a wireless keyboard.

I'll try to add more items to this list. Your comments welcome. Earlier Material can be found here.

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BTW, these change every reload! Try it and see. You can extract the banner rotator code from this file with a view page source.