Don Lancaster's What's New 2015 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, 2015
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Some Cluff NW Canal Preliminary Field Notes has just been posted here with its sourcecode here

This seems to be a twice refurbed historical rework of a prehistoric original.

Present field notes include...

 Cluffnw Canal
 Smith Canal
 Veech Canal
 Lefthand Canyon West
 Minor Webster Ditch
 Freeman Canal
 Sand Canal
 Tugood Canal

Some of these need further improvement. Eight down, fifty seven to go. Org.

More Hanging Canals can be found at  https://www.tinaja.com/tinsamp1.shtml
New Developments can be found at https://www.tinaja.com/whtnu15.shtml

December 30, 2015
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Once again expanded and updated our Gila Valley Dayhikes page. We are now up to 441 main entries, most of which now include GPS location links.

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

December 29, 2015
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RED HORSE TOURS - Free guided tours of the combined wind and pv facility northwest of Willcox is offered by Mallory Safety Management Services. Contact Aubyn Avery at (205) 919-7936.

While somewhat obvious as the tallest structures in all of Southern Arizona, they still do not show up yet on Acme Mapper. Start at the junction of Warbonnet and Hooker Hot Springs roads. Northeast of Allen Flat.

December 28, 2015
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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. Figures that 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 27, 2015
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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.

One other place of interesis the superb Casitas De Gila you'll find outside of Cliff  NM ( Check out their real time planetarium simulator above the hot tub. And the art gallery. )

December 26, 2015
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Some Smith Canal Preliminary Field Notes has just been posted here with its sourcecode here.

This abandoned historical canal in the Ash Creek area appears to have indirect evidence of a prehistoric origin, as do other near to Cluff Ranch.

Present field notes are...

 Smith Canal
 Veech Canal
 Lefthand Canyon West
 Minor Webster Ditch
 Freeman Canal
 Sand Canal
 Tugood Canal

Some of these need further improvement. Seven down, fifty eight to go. Org.

More Hanging Canals: https://www.tinaja.com/tinsamp1.shtml New Developments: https://www.tinaja.com/whtnu15.shtml

December 25, 2015
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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.

December 24, 2015
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One of the other eBay items we once did quite well on were our tinfoil hat liners. These were second only to our water soluble swimsuits.

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.

December 23, 2015
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I "sort of" have a blog which you are reading here.

The name changes yearly such as whtnu97.sthml, through whtnu16.shtm and beyond. These are easily reached by clicking through the green ?NEW? on our home page.

Use of our deeplink clickthrough lets you access any specific date entry rather than having to sort through an entire year.

The respond clickthrough goes through the usual email links.

This, of course, is my blog and I edit any and all third party responses in any manner I damn well please. But all comments are certainly welcome and all are carefully read.

December 22, 2015
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Drawing a cubic spline through four points can be tricky as this tutorial shows us.

Actually, an infinite number of cubic splines can be drawn through four points. Finding the "best" curve involves some horrible elliptic function math, so the above tutorial uses a sneaky simplified approximation instead.

An additional tutorial here And much more on cubic splines here.

December 21, 2015
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Just realized my Gonzo.ps utilities were pretty much buried on my website. Added an additional clickthru here.

And the tutorial remains here.

December 20, 2015
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Managed to buy a copy of Place Magazine and hope to have my caving story reprint up soon.

Other classic reprints can be found here.

December 19, 2015
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There's a shiny new pv installation just down the street. I seem to be appalled by the apparent utter lack of  sane economics involved.

In Arizona, we can assume 1000 peak watts per square meter incoming, and a dime per kilowatt hour in places like this one that already has utility power available.

While arguable, I feel that present dimes and present kilowatt hours are largely interchangeable energy or  economic commodities. You verify this every time you  look at your nearest gas station sign or power bill.

The individual panels seem somewhat shy of a square  meter and have dead areas. It seems reasonable to me to assume a 10 percent efficiency at the output of the inverter. Combined, 100 watts per fixed orientation panel on a peak clear day seems more than reasonable. Assuming the panels are cleaned  often enough.

There are five panels per strip, six ranks, and  two structures that suggest 6000 watts at noon on a good day. The usual production assumption is five kilowatt hours per day per peak kilowatt hour.

This gives us 30 kilowatt hours per day worth $3.00 per day incoming energy income. Using this amortization schedule, and ten percent interest for ten years ( this system is certain to be obsolete far earlier ), you can finance up to $7570 for the project to break even.

Or about one half or less of an average household needs.

Which, of course, would be in no manner renewable nor sustainable. Wait - it gets worse. The system  was almost certainly subsidized or grant funded

Any subsidy has a horrific "iceberg" hidden cost in that the true energy and dollars going in plus admin  will almost always grossly exceed the net benefit.

I'd guess 5 dollars have to go into creating a subsidy to get 1 dollar back. Thus. there would seem to be a 5:1 net energy penalty for any subsidy use at all.

Another obvious problem is that the system uses off the shelf electrics and synchronous inverters. Whose prices and sub-optimal installations clearly far exceed the "learning curve" economics of scale  needed to make net energy pv feasible.

Eventually, of course, each panel should have its own synchronous inverter, possibly adding something like four dollars to the beyond-learning-curve cost.

Yes, we are ridiculously closer to net energy pv  than we ever have been. But the beast down  the street sure looks like a gasoline destroying  net energy sink to me.

Much more on energy topics here, and a  monthly report of how far we have to go to reach the magic net energy number of a quarter per peak panel watt here.

December 18, 2015
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Once again expanded and updated our Gila Valley Dayhikes page. We are now up to 438 main entries, most of which now include GPS location links.

Also included our latest hanging canal directory along with many dozens of third party links of local outdoor interest. Plus several new Arizona historical book downloads.

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

December 17, 2015
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And my own movies can be found here and here.

December 16, 2015
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My other favorite, obscure, and vastly underrated flicks:

Certainly A Trip to the Moon and its recent restorations for stunningly exceptional innovation on all fronts.

Of course Safety Last with its utter lack of CGI. By an  actor missing fingers and a thumb.. The initial check of the safety setup plummeted seven stories to the ground.

Virtually unknown and grossly underrated: Putney Swope. Decades ahead of its time.

Anything by legendary actor Peter Sellers, but most especially The Mouse that Roared.

But my favorite of all is the tapioca pudding scene in the cross-genre classic Godzilla versus the Night Nurses. Unfortunately, the restraining order from the Tapioca Pudding Institute restricted its release to 8 track only.

December 15, 2015
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Thought I'd start my end of year predictions a little earlier than usual this year...

Commodity pricing of 100 watt equivalent class LED residence lighting and car headlights. Obsoleting CCFL's .

A controversial but credible detection of extra-terrestrial mid-level intelligence "real soon now". Perhaps a planet full of asparagus.

A catastrophic drop in marijuana pricing, caused by the inevitable total elimination of mj federal crop subsidies and farm price supports that were cleverly and diabolically labeled as "prohibition" laws. More here.

Dramatic close in breakthroughs in ev related battery technology, possibly involving lithium air technology.

A major increase in building destroying butane explosions  from utterly clueless processors of herb upgrading.

Full width inkjet print heads for ridiculously improved speed, complexity, and ultimately, cost.

Strong sales of ultra resolution smart tv's despite zero available content. Driven mostly by computer users.

Further improvements in the KML language. Particularly for use with our hanging canals. Plus blendable images and topos.

The price of utility grade solar panels finally dropping under  twenty five cents per peak panel watt and eventually leading to true net energy generation, renewablility, and sustainability.

A resurgence in traditional electronic hacking, driven by Arduino,  Raspberry Pi, C.H.I.P. Beagle Bone, the Basic Stamp and derivatives,  magazines such as Circuit Cellar or Make, and such suppliers as  Sparkfun, Marlin Jones, American Science & Surplus, and even ( should they last a few more weeks ) Radio Shack.

Dramatic increase in popularity of hackerspaces , makerspaces, "Free Energy" nuts and other members of the Church of the Latter Day Crackpots fiasco continuing "business as usual". Failing to realize that finding an unlimited source of free energy would be the most unimaginably heinous crime against humanity.

Nanostructures dramatically improving both photovoltaics and  conventional  HVAC air conditioning.

The terabyte revolution being largely ignored, moving directly instead  into the petabyte revolution.  One thumb drive to hold all movies, or all  books, or all history. With emerging utterly disruptive IP issues.

Substantial medical breakthroughs, especially in the areas of cancer and diabetes, female sexuality, dentistry, and Alzheimers.

The stranglehold on technical research publication finally being broken, with open source dissemination dominant, low access costs, easy publication, long term access, and peer review taking place after publication rather than before.

Major breakthroughs in understanding human brain architecture and  functionality,  combined with significant new I/O capability..

Craig's list finally coming to Safford. Right after the Ayatollahs bar Mitzvah.

December 14, 2015
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No matter where you go, there you are.

From Confucius, via Buckaroo Banzai.

Which was by far the finest medical, science fiction, rockumentary love story, comedy, racing, comic book, quantum mechanical, musical, watermelon ode, survivalist, intergalactic war documentary movie of all time.

But, then again,the script can be found here.

December 13, 2015
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November pv prices remain nearly flat at double the 25 cents per peak panel watt price demanded for eventual net energy.

>More on similar topics here.

December 12, 2015
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Got a curious email about someone wanting to Arduoinize my ancient Digiviewer.

Well, firstoff, there since has been a new and improved Digiviewer, but while very few uses still exist for classic DIPS today, I don't really see the point. Although these could still be useful for video game repair and such.

If there were some market for new Digiviewers, it would be more interesting to use a Raspberry Pi with a real HDTV display. This would slash construction costs and completely eliminate the need for all of the snap on overlays.

Even more interesting would be making the unit super smart enough to identify the integrated circuit it was clipped onto.

Assuming a "pure" digital device, any 16 pin device would have 65,536 possible states. Of which only 256 would be valid for, say, a quad logic gate. Changing  inputs from the unit under test could then create an array of possible states that often could pin down the  actual chip in use.

Brief "superpower" supply and ground signals of, say one amp for one millisecond could overwhelm normal system pin values to further isolate the chip under study.

December 11, 2015
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Some interesting new steel developments can be found here and here. They seem to have the potential to dramatically improve strength and significantly lower cost.

On the other hand, to me these have a slight "too good to be true" aura about them. I'd recommend waiting for more evidence before getting too excited about this development.

December 10, 2015
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Some random factoids: Cable One now has a new high speed service they force on you that may require a new modem.

Required is a DOCSIS 3 Cable modem or WiFi. Compatible third party devices are listed here. The Arris SBG 6580 is one such unit.

Some Netflix issues that came up around the changeover time apparently were related to a Vizio smart tv needing reset. Resetting is done via the remote using these details. A new Netflix account linking may also be needed.

When issues like these crop up, it is important to isolate the blame to the actual cause. This could have been a Cable One problem, an incompatible modem problem, the modem needing reset, a wireless problem, a security pass code problem, or a smart tv reset problem.

December 9, 2015
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There's a new Brew Ha Ha drink that combines beer with Nitrous Oxide.

December 8, 2015
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There sure seem to be a lot of low "delta T" energy schemes kicking around. Ocean thermal and bunches of others. Uh, it turns out that there are some very fundamental thermodynamic and engineering laws that guarantee these flat out ain't gonna happen.

Firstoff, Carnot efficiency is limited to [1 - (Tlow/Thigh) ] in absolute degrees. A 20 degree Fahrenheit difference at its very best can only approach a theoretical FOUR PERCENT or so best efficiency. And, of course, the real world never gets anywhere near Carnot.

Secondoff, low efficiencies have to move a lot more heat than than they can convert. At four percent efficiency, TWENTY FIVE times the heat has to be moved from source to sink.

Thirdoff, it is enormously difficult to get heat exchangers with very low Delta-T's across them. A heat exchanger, of course, MUST have a Delta-T across it to transfer any heat at all. You can easily end up with ALL of the Delta-T across the source and sink exchangers leaving NOTHING for the process to work with. Further trashing a dismal efficiency.

Ferinstance, it is trivially easy to build a Peltier "cooler" that has twenty degrees of cooling across the device and forty degrees of heating across its heatsink. For net heating rather than cooling.

The need to move many times more heat than recoverable energy at low Delta-T's very much magnifies this problem. To which such realities as imperfect insulation on long pipes compounds problem.

More in our Energy Fundamentals tutorial.

December 7, 2015
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       ( revised to a later entry )

We just relisted our stunning Southern Oregon Gold Hill spectacular view property for sale. 20 acres. Find it on Craig's List.

Price has been reduced to $148,000. This is the very last remaining large developable property immediately adjacent to the northern Gold Hill city limits.

We have secured a full access easement for these 20 acres. Power and cable are on the property.

Legal description is T36 R3W S16 Tax Lot 400.

Attractive financing is now available. Mid-size city amenities are twelve minutes away at Medford. The property borders directly on the town of Gold Hill. The Rogue River is very close; beaches and mountains are only an hour away.

Here's a group of photos...

You can click expand these. Then click again.

This steep to sloping parcel is immediately adjacent to the Gold Hill city limits and offers absolutely outstanding views. It is in one of the most in-demand rural areas in the country, and has really great access both to recreation and to midsize city resources. Plus superb climate, low crime, and good schools.

Here is a map. Property is the green rectangle "pointed to" by Thirteenth Street. You can click here for an aerial photo and flyby.

Contact the owner directly by phoning (928) 428-4073 or else use don@tinaja.com.

Additional older photos here. More info here and here. Guided tours can be arranged

December 06, 2015
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The "local blend" version ( the one with the broken thermometer on the label ) of the El Fumarole Salsa de Mucho Caliente has been banned in all civilized nations of the world and even parts of Texas.

Naturally, when El Fumarole goes out to hunt, the Habanaros and Scotch Bonnets have to stay on the porch.

Some possible substitutes appear here.

December 05, 2015
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There are two operating modes in our newly revised MagicSinewave calculator, normal and quantized. For valid results,it is super important to know how you got to what you are viewing.

In the normal mode, you first select a type and size of magic sinewave, and then usually click on Instacalc. The correct amplitudes and angles should appear along with the "by pulse widths" and "by angles" reporting boxes.

The blue "by clock pulses" reporting would not be meaningful because no attempt at quantization was made. But this reporting was purposely left active just in case you want a previews of possible counts per cycle.

Ferinstance, if only three clock pulses were available for a given width or position, only 33% accuracy could result. Along with near certain degradation. Such errors would increase the strength of unwanted harmonics and shift the desired amplitude.

For quantization to work, it alway must immediately restart with a valid normal result. Only one quantization button may be activated
at a time.

Always reset to a normal result before continuing.

December 04, 2015
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Earlier versions of our Magic Sinewaves used PIC and similar microprocessors that only had limited memory capabilities.  Because of this, the frequency was made independent of the amplitude. Frequency was intended to be set by changing the clock value of the chip, while amplitude was internally generated.

Newer Raspberry Pi and C.H.I.P. computers have insanely huge memories, which now let us set both frequency and amplitude together internally. These chips also let us  do 16-bit timing to greatly simplify the code complexity.

How much memory is needed? Let's assume a seven pulse per quadrant magic sinewave. Each quadrant would need thirty one different 16-bit timing values in table lookup storage. If desired, the other quadrants could use symmetry instead of actual lookup values.

Lets assume a hundred desired amplitudes. These  could be linear or log spaced. Thus a minimum  storage of 3200 bytes of 8 bits each would be needed for one medium resolution magic sinewave set.

Thus, tens of thousands of magic sinewave instances could easily be internally stored.

Given the insane amounts of memory available, it might even be possible to brute force each magic sinewave  with no data table lookup at all!

Writing such a huge amount of code might prove daunting, but a PostScript program to generate the code itself might add up rather trivial.

Consulting services available.

December 03, 2015
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I still get occasional emails over the "shaft encoder" problem. It takes two channels of incremental encoding if you need both direction and speed.

The two channels are spaced half a pulse apart and are called the Inphase and Quadrature outputs.

Consider these typical waveforms...

  0 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 0    I  Forward
  1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0   Q

  0 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 0    I      Reverse
  0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1   Q

To extract the speed, simply use the I output leading edges. Now for the tricky part: To extract the direction, EXCLUSIVE OR the present I with the previous Q.

And that's all there is to it!

December 02, 2015
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For years, I've been creating what, for a better name, we might call Lancasterisms. These are intentional but apparent topographical errors intended to reveal a higher or greater truth.

Such as a groundswill of popular demand. Or what those French Veterinarians call a "four paw". Or being overly enameled on some idea. Or ending up a few bricks shy of a full deck. Frosting the lily or gilding the cake. Or not being able to hit the barn side of a broad. Or the mythinterpretiation of something.

Or sources close to an associate of the barber of a usually reliable spokesperson. New uses for Chebycheff Polynomials would take the Cheby to the Leby. Many of the web perpetual motion schemes and those electrolysis fantasies seem to involve electrocity.

All in one swell foop. Provided there's no oint in the flyment An unauthorized autobiography. A jerk of all trades. The local hysterical society.  A wine that "pours well". The caver's wrist sundial. Godzilla versus the Night Nurses.

Letting the cows come home to roost. So long as they are elected by acrimination. That little dip between the winter slump and the spring slack period. Sort of the qualm before the scorn. Geranium transistors.

Godzilla versus the night nurses. Especially the Tapioca Pudding Scene.

Plays a mean eclectic guitar. Pioneers new methods of animal husbandry. Speaks Esperanto like a native. Bruno's attitude relateralization facillitation. Or the long lost oriental martial art of Tai Wun Oun. Will be persecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Thus reaching a new millstone.

"I'll give you just three hours and fifty one minutes to STOP THAT!.

Norfolk & Waay is the leading eBay supplier of drop ship items. Separating the useful adjuncts for porcine whole body cleanliness from the total hogwash. The greater Bonita-Eden-Sanchez metropolitan area.

Geologists often classify rocks as sedentary, ingeneous, or metaphoric. And New Mexico hikers might call an emergency rain shelter a Poncho Villa. The illegal aliens in the Alabama Grits Harvest, will, of course, be used for flavor only.

Or confusing "cannabis" and "cannibal" tasting tours.

These are somehow related to the Yogi Berra's of others, such as "Nobody goes there because it is too crowded", "Deja Vu all over again", or "Let's keep the Status Quo right where it is. Or "When you come to a fork in the road, take it".

Or Ed Abbey's classic "Androgynous Ammonia". Which might even involve an engendered species. I have a hollow feeling I've lost some of the better ones of these somewhere along the way. As you go through some of my older books and stories, please report any that may be missing in action.

Because Opporknockity tunes but once.

December 01, 2015
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Discovered yet another long forgotten CCC field camp in the Canador Peak area.

There are literally thousands of nearby local CCC projects. The overwhelming majority of which were totally and utterly worthless boondoggles.

But largely made up for by a few unique and surviving structures and the overall societal program goals.

Much more of the same on our Gila Dayhikes page.

November 30, 2015
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Seldom discussed is the fact that a pv energy farm  needs very little water. Which makes them a near perfect use for government and indian lands in the arid southwest.  If you start doing an economic analysis based  on highest and best use, a case can be made that any site with adequate water is an inappropriate location for a pv energy panel.

More here.

November 29, 2015
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Boo. Hiss #3. Here is yet another blatant example of how to lie with  statistics.

The obscene "truncating the graph" trick was not quite as bad at only 61.5 percent.   But it still makes a minor increase appear to be a catastrophic trend.

Color coding "blue is good; red is bad" to identical data values is yet another sneakily obscene stunt.

Once again, ignoring of course, correlation is not causation!

Even if it was, the sample size is too small, and their same graph also shows a significant reduction in post mj crime.

A much more likely ( although not yet proven ) reason for any correlation is that mj in fact was reducing the crime rate, while at the same time the greatly expanded federal law demanding that great heaping quantities of cash must now be continuously placed in obvious locations just might have something to do with the problem.

The definitive video on all this appears here. And, curiously, its rather obscure origin here.

With a tenth of a billion entry stunning daily coverage here.

November 28, 2015
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A preliminary major revision of our Magic Sinewave Calculator can be found here. With its automatically towed along javascript here.

For proper appearance in Chrome, several other files also have to be present in the same folder. These are also auto provided.

The quantization problems have likely been fixed, along with a new Clocks Per Quadrant selector and a new reporting by clock pulses in additional to angles.

Some minor pretty printing and cleaner code issues remain. Despite its blinding speed, a few speedup tricks remain, some of which are related to excessive reporting on instacalc. I'll try to get to them soon. While code has been independently third party verified, please report any problems.

More on Magic Sinewaves here. Seminars and consulting available here. Full IP rights for sale.

November 27, 2015
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Beyond amazing.

There is now a $5 Raspberry Pi computer and a $9 C.H.I.P computer

Both in the 1 GHz speed class and half a Gig of SDRAM. And both in the "ain't half bad" class.

Being argued over both here and here.

"True" costs only slightly higher but include memory cards, cables, mice, keyboards, etc.

Either one should make a dandy Magic Sinewave generator that combines amplitude and frequency data settings.

November 26, 2015
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Farm sibling explaining why he kept feeding raw pork to city slickers: "Its the only trick I know, Sis.".

November 25, 2015
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One of the more maddeningly infuriating features of JavaScript is that every once in a while it will throw something at you like 2 + 2 = 4.000000000000002.

While there are all sorts of math. Round workarounds, these three functions can greatly improve any pretty printing...

 toFixed(4) - Converts a number value to a
                      string of the selected number
                      of decimal points. Particular
                      useful for pricing.

 parseFloat(4) - Attempts to convert a string
                      into a floating point number.

 parseInt() - Attempts to convert a string
                       into an integer.       

The usual use would be youstr.parseFloat

A comparison between JavaScript and PostScript can be found here. The two are pretty much opposites.

November 24, 2015
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A quite serious problem arises whenever you use 4-point barbed wire for premium audio speaker connections: The barb points are all sharp and will thus raise the pitch of any music. The usual workaround is to make an equalizer out of a carefully chosen length of flat ribbon cable. Additional details are found here.

November 23, 2015
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As we've recently seen, pv pricing is around double the twenty five cents per peak panel watt needed for true renewability and sustainability. And thus still remains a gasoline destroying net energy sink. Albeit one that is not nearly as bad as before.

As we've seen, much of this year's pricing has been heading the wrong way but once again has began inching download.

Curiously, actually hitting the quarter per peak watt value will in itself create a major new setback in time to renewability and sustainability. Because of the zillions of new investment dollars that all at once will be thrown at a sure thing.

About an eight year breakeven glitch sounds about right.

In many valid energy considerations, a current dime can be considered pretty much the same as a current kilowatt hour of electricity. And thus the two are largely fungible equivalents.

More here.

November 22, 2015
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Never store carbide in a non-locking carabiner!

November 21, 2015
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A now even more famous media newscaster has just inadvertently confused "cannabis" with "cannibal" in describing a tasting tour.

The definitive video on all this appears here.

November 20, 2015
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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.

November 19, 2015
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All you need to know about sailing: The binnacle goes on the top and the barnacle goes on the bottom.

Interchanging the two is a serious breech of maritime etiquette.

November 18, 2015
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The "next big thing" in battery technology will almost certainly involve lithium-air.

Which has superb energy density because one of the reactants is not part of the battery. Unfortunately, there have been many very nasty problems involved in developing this technology.

The 30 October 2015 issue of Science reports some major new lithium air developments that appear to be a significant leap forward in this technology. A summary is on page 524 and the story itself on page 530.

Meanwhile, a potentially interesting but unrelated battery development can be found here. And more on energy topics here.

November 17, 2015
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Many decades back, there was a superb but short lived magazine called "Place" that may or may not have somehow been Whole Earth related.

There does not seem to be the slightest trace of it on the web.

I'm in the process of reprinting most of my stories and columns at https://www.tinaja.com/crsamp1.shtml Two of my WER copies already appear there.

I did a really obscure caving story for Place in their third or fourth issue. Do you know of any copies available anywhere in any form? PDF scans would be nice. Better yet, I'd like to provide free online access to all of Place.

November 16, 2015
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An update to our Magic Sinewave Calculator is almost ready to be released. Quantization errors are believed to have been corrected, along with a new Clocks per Quadrant quantizer feature. A new reporting option now features clock counts rather than trig angles.

It can be tricky to make minor changes to a major JavaScript program, and I seemed to have all sorts of instances where code reverted to previous copies.

Hence this list of possibly excessive guidelines...

 Make sure you in fact save each change.
 Save often to new filenames.
 Clear Chrome history continuously.
 Make sure your editor can undo.
 Keep screen clear of clutter.
 Reboot your FTP program each time.
 Reboot the entire machine occasionally.
 Verify subdirectories each and every time.
 Delete identical previous web files.
 Never overwrite irrecoverable code.
 Never delete previous diskfile work.

The old calculator can still be found here.

November 15, 2015
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PV panel pricing was pretty much flat for October and seems stuck around 48 cents per peak panel watt or higher. And remains up for the year by a few percent.

True renewability and sustainability can reasonably be expected a few years after the price drops below twenty five cents per peak panel watt. Thus, recent pricing clearly has been headed the wrong way, but seems to be easing.

Many annalists mistakenly assume a subsidy is a 1X asset, rather than a 7X liability. And thus fail to take their true net energy costs into account.

Note also that the prices are shown in Euros. Dollars currently would be a few percent higher. Per this converter.

Much more here.

November 14, 2015
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Free eBook downloads of two of the most significant early Arizona History records are newly available.

Find Hodge's Arizona as it is here.

And Hinton's Handbook to Arizona here.

Similar resources here.

November 13, 2015
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The USGS now have made all of their older versions of historic maps available for free download. Just dial the year!

Some interesting observations from the Thatcher 1960 fifteen minute quad:

 Their last mention of the "white house" seems
 to still be viewable as a roofless Anglo ruin on
 Acme Mapper.

 The long abandoned Bigler Canal they clearly
 show is also traceable on Acme Mapper.

While still unproven, any underlying prehistoric precedent would be highly conspicuous  by its absence, with proven old canals nearby. Including several other artesian sourced ones.

Somewhere I seem to remember a map reference in Cottonwood wash of the "Lamb Hotel Ruins". While I tried to find it adjacent to Pima International Airport many years ago, it seems to remain a mystery. There is also a findable Lamb Tank further west.

Speaking of which, Pima International is likely the only place you will find a C119G Flying Boxcar that is being converted into a Bed and Breakfast.

Rumors of nightly DC3 Service to Columbia remaining available at Thatcher International Airport appear to be largely unverified. But sharp eyed pilots flying into Thatcher International may note very minor debris on the runway, such as refrigerators or evaporative coolers.

Similar topics here.

November 12, 2015
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Links to one hundred university libraries that have free and largely unlimited public access can be found here.

November 11, 2015
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We have a new exoplanet. That's earth sized, rocky and close enough for more detailed study. But a tad warm to be habitable.

Counting candidates, this is exoplanet #5425 and potentially habitable exoplanet #31.

In a totally meaningless extrapolation, this suggests that one out of every 175 exoplanets may be potentially habitable.

More here and here.

November 10, 2015
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Boo. Hiss. #2.

This one may not be quite as bad as the underlying research does appear credible and ( eventually ) potentially useful.

But the title claims a 100X improvement in solar energy efficiency. In reality, the efficiency still misses by a country mile and the product remains useless.

Except for suggesting that further work may prove worthwhile.

All that happened was that the efficiency sharply went from mesmerizingly awful clear on up to just plain terrible.

More on pv and energy issues here.

November 09, 2015
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Boo. Hiss. #1.

How to lie with statistics. Start with this truncated plot that suggests a skyrocketing crime rate instead of a modestly increasing one.

By leaving the bottom SEVENTY SEVEN percent of the graph off! All the while providing an obscenely misleading title.

Then claim that, contrary to most other studies, that mj is the exact and total and immediate cause of the somewhat increasing crime rate. Ignoring of course, that correlation is not causation!

Most other unbiased studies show many areas where mj is in fact reducing crime. And should any actual correlations show up, it would seem likely ( although not certain ) that mj was slightly reducing the crime rate, while federal mj "cash only" regulations and restrictions were sharply increasing it.

A somewhat related item of interest appears here.

The definitive video on all this appears here. And, curiously, its rather obscure origin here.

November 08, 2015
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 2 + 2 = 4. Except for very large values of two.

November 07, 2015
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Once again expanded and updated our Gila Valley Dayhikes page. We are now up to 437 main entries, most of which now include GPS location links.

Also included our latest hanging canal directory along with many dozens of third party links of local outdoor interest. Please email me with anything I missed or needs further updating.

November 06, 2015
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Just got an email asking about the quantization buttons in our Magic Sinewave Calculator.

These are only approximate guidelines. Ferinstance, a .001 "zero" result translates to -60 decibels of relative harmonic rejection.

To find your "real" quantization, you have to decide what the ratio of your clock frequency is to a quarter cycle of your present fundamental. This determines the number of allowable angles. These angles can then be reentered into your calculator for the exact suppression values.

The calculation buttons just give you a quick and dirty way to estimate what you can expect in any given quantization range clock to fundamental quarter ratio..

Alternately and probably simpler, you can build the magic sinewave in hardware and view the actual suppression on a spectrum analyzer.

There is a sneaky trick you can use to further suppress your zeros. Otherwise known as "shake the box" Recalculate the magic sinewave over and over again with each angle start and end shifted by -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, or 3 clocks. This typically can give you a further reduction of two to ten decibels for most values.

November 05, 2015
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Insult for a really bad wine - "Pours well".

Surprisingly, I could not find any others on the web. Please let me know your favorites.

November 04, 2015
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Watch out for the cliff! "What CLIFFFFFFFFF?"

There's obsession and then there's OBSESSION!

Another benefit of yesterday's Magic Sinewave Closure was that some solutions of the equations were in fact zeros to beyond FIFTY decimal places.

This strongly suggests that the calculator solutions are in fact true zeros rather than minor dips in the response.

Practically, while there was ( and sort of remains ) no absolute proof, the result was not seriously in doubt. After quantization, a Magic Sinewave zero will rarely get lower than -70 decibels. Possibly a little less with "shake the box" stunts or higher clock frequencies. Thus a four or five decimal point zero is all that's really needed.

Zero accuracy was a really big deal way back when while using 32 bit math PostScript. The first attempt was to somewhat stretch the PS reporting accuracy. When this was not good enough, we went to JavaScript and its 64 bit math.

The present calculators easily and routinely provide zeros out to eleven decimal points. Amazingly, these also now provide "instant" results.

But are the zero solutions real?

November 03, 2015
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We have closure!

A fully independent and highly qualified third party has now used some fourth party polynomial tools to completely validate our Magic Sinewaves!

See the perfect matches here  and here.

The significance lies in the polynomial method, while glacial even on a supercomputer, requires no "seed" or preconceived notion of what a magic sinewave solution is supposed to look like. Yet perfectly converges on identical solutions.

These results also strongly suggest that these magic sinewaves are in fact switching efficiency optimal.

The three phase solutions might remain possibly suboptimal, but have a big advantage of needing only one half the coefficient storage.

Next steps are the Raspberry Pi reference examples. More here and the ultra fast ms calculator here.

November 02, 2015
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Always be prompt.
class="colorbrown">No matter how long it takes.

November 01, 2015
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We are sometimes criticized for using the term "hanging canal".

A historic Utah precedence for largely identical hanging structure references can be found here. And once you have seen our prehistoric ones, there is not the slightest doubt that they are hung.

Sometimes only a few feet above the base terrain.. Other times many hundreds. And often leading to spectacular "water flows uphill" illusions.

We define a hanging canal as a portion that goes midway high along the steep sided edge of a mesa. Done to first make its slope largely independent of terrain, and secondly to allow most construction to take place across, rather than along the route.

Both of which energy efficiency considerations are essential with stone age tools and a lack of beasts of burden. Depending on the terrain, a typical canal usually ends up a mix of hanging and flatland portions.

October 31, 2015
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A somewhat less than stunning third party U-Tube video on our hanging canals can be found here.

October 30, 2015
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A reminder that we have 20 spectacular view acres that are the only remaining developable property immediately north of Gold Hill Oregon in the Rogue River Country.

Full access easements have now been secured and there is cable and power on the property which has some outstanding development opportunities.

More info here.

October 29, 2015
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I was asked for my views on the latest free energy fiasco. Which apparently consists of a film on the inside of a pop bottle.

The obvious answer is "Boy, a whole flock of 'em flew over that time". But a more polite one would be to "Wait a year and check back".

At that time, if the free energy was real, you would expect to find several independent papers in Science, Nature, and in the Proceedings of the IEEE.

The U-Tube demo seems to consist of a brief and high impedance measurement of contact potential. Instead, rerun the measurements into a realistically low load for a realistically long time to see how much power you can actually measure for how long.

Possible serons for any voltage at all could be a battery-like electrolytic coating or the contact potential ( thermocouple style ) between dissimilar conductors.

Or, of course, an outright hoax.

Some third party responses here and here.

My favorite free energy fiasco remains the magic lamp, which I commented on here.

As we have seen before, finding an unlimited source of free energy would be the most unimaginably heinous crime against humanity. Making Hitler look like Mother Teresa.

Much more on bashing pseudoscience here and here.

And on the dark side, here.

October 28, 2015
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One of the tenants that made discovering Magic Sinewaves possible was ( and remains ) the unproven Minimum Visual Pollution Theorem.

Which tells us that any low harmonic binary sequence waveform should also "look" both attractive and unjarring.

Figure nine of this older alternate paper though, shows a waveform whose narrowest pulses are nearest the peak portions of their waveform. It is not clear, then, whether there are whole classes of useful Magic Sinewaves that blatantly violate the Minimum Visual Pollution theorem.

Nor how you would find at least one working example you could use as a "seed" for our sneaky trig identity stunt. Nor whether the amplitude range for such seeds would be acceptable.

This particular pulse sequence does have a uselessly high third harmonic, so it may not be relevant.

Present Magic Sinewave research is aimed at minimizing the first two uncontrolled harmonics.

More here.

October 27, 2015
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The Hell's Angel hoax has apparently gone viral, and very few so far seem to have the faintest clue. Already taken in has been Google Search, a major midwest newspaper, and a large handfull of blogs and bloggers!

What happened with this for real: With no malice or intent, the Canadian Hell's Angels and leading Canadian politicians just happened to check into the same hotel at the same time. A minor and barely newsworthy item here legitimately reported some minor security adjustments. Published were some Hell's Angels images in full regalia.

A site noted for its bogus news entries changed this into a stunning report that the Hell's Angels were petitioning the government to drop its promise of legalizing cannabis because they would lose too many jobs and too much money.

Several major websites seem to have remarkably toned down and adjusted their bogus reporting. At least one now with an "oops" admission.

Always remember that "net" is an acronym for "not entirely true".

Much as I love hoaxes, I had nothing to do with this one. Mine can be found here or on many April 1st blog entries. Along with some random ones just to keep you on your toes.

My favorite remains the Tapioca Pudding scene in the cross genre flick Godzilla versus the Night Nurses. Because of the restraining order from the Tapioca Pudding Institute, the movie had to be released directly to eight track.

October 26, 2015
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Here is one example of an apparently new and probably largely useless class of Magic Sinewaves. Which suggests that there are great heaping bunches of other unexplored waveforms remaining.

This particular one zeros out only harmonics 5, 7, 11, and 13.

Properties include...

Amplitude of 0.7
pls = 15.391545952288
ple = 51.848888749493
p2s = 59 . 536691563741
p2e = 72.326388953187
p3s = 89.374314177479
p3e = 90.0

The third harmonic of the above waveform seems to be an outrageously excessive 81.9 percent of the fundamental.

More on tested and proven three phase magsine solutions here.

It is not at all clear that solutions exist to crate any arbitrary collection of zeroed harmonics. Nor how the "seed" candidates for them could be found for optimization using our sneaky trig identity trick. Nor what their amplitude ranges would be.

Seminars and consulting available

October 25, 2015
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Magic Sinewaves are recently discovered long binary unipolar or bipolar sequences that allow digital synthesis of power sinewaves having ANY chosen arbitrary number of low harmonics zero in amplitude in theory and extremely low in practice.

And thus should prove extremely useful for industrial motor controls, solar panel inverters, uninterrupt1ble power supplies, and electric automobiles.

Magic sinewaves are unique in that the fewest possible switching events are required for the highest possible number of zero harmonic results.

Single Phase and Three phase variations are available.

Our Magic Sinewave resource page can be found here and its ultra fast calculator here. Third party analysis related work can be found here with an older and largely obsolete paper here.

Seminars and consulting services available here.

October 24, 2015
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We saw here how Acrobat Distiller locks out most disk access as a default and how the magic command line incantation of...

 //acrodist /F

 ... can easily run our Gonzo Utilities or most any PostScript program needing disk access.

But it turns out there is yet another detail. In recent Windows, the magic incantation MUST be run in ADMINISTRATIVE MODE!

Often you will do this automatically on boot up. More details on administrative mode here and similar links.

October 23, 2015
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Amazingly, rectocranial inversion can be both acute and chronic at the same time.

October 22, 2015
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We last looked at some remarkably promising improvements in the WWVB time standard format here. Sadly, nobody seems to care and these developments seem to have been largely stillborn to date. While a few chips have been offered, their crucial Raspberry Pi or Arduino reference designs have yet to appear.

At one time, always super accurate and self resetting clocks were a really big deal, and WWVB was largely their main source. Sadly, industrial and terrestrial noise at 60 kHz made their reliable reception exceptionally difficult prior to their recent upgrades.

But these days, any phone and any GPS receiver provides continuous and nearly accurate time, as does most any personal computer. Even plain old digital clocks now recover gracefully from power outages, especially brief ones.

Which might have left us with too little too late.

Some early WWVB stuff of mine appears here and here and here.

October 21, 2015
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Sincerity is everything!

Once you have that faked, all else follows.

October 20, 2015
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This older paper shows some independent studies related to my magic sinewaves. It takes a polynomial approach compared to our "sneaky trig identity convergence" technique.

Its figure nine shows a wildly non-intuitive waveform that has separately been verified here.

Which suggests that many hundreds of new magic sinewave waveforms may exist and remain totally unstudied.

Whether such waveforms have findable "seeds" for their solution convergence and whether they have any use at all remains to be explored.

Our current math would seem easily extended to reject any chosen group of harmonics instead of strictly sequential low ones of the present ultra fast calculator.

Seminars and consulting services available here.

October 19, 2015
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Well done. Also medium rare. More here.

Apparently the real and somewhat less newsworthy story appeared here.

The legendary similar source here. And my stuff here.

October 18, 2015
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Just spent a bunch or time and money on finding out exactly why only one of our computers suddenly ceased all internet traffic, yet clearly showed incoming and outgoing traffic counts properly advancing.

Turns out the culprit was Norton Internet Security. A wayward routine apparently related to 5k:p3 apparently started making bogus reads or writes to an illegal memory location. Possibly related to an Application Blocking Config situation.

This was enormously difficult to find, since the only clue was a vague error message on system reboot.

But it did drive home how important finding where a problem is NOT can be a powerful limiting technique for any serious problem.

More on degubbing here.

The cure was to flush Norton entirely.

October 17, 2015
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I predict the price of marijuana is about to suddenly, precipitously, ignominiously, and catastrophically collapse. Yet nobody seems to be paying any attention.

Any reasonable commodity price is based on supply and demand. Instead, US marijuana pricing is clearly based instead solely on fear versus reward. The classic approach-avoidance conflict.

Because of the law of the unintended consequence, virtually every penny of federal or state anti-marijuana expense can clearly be viewed instead as a farm subsidy or price support.

Price supports outrageously higher than on ANY other agricultural commodity. As these supports are very likely to soon vanish, mj pricing can be reasonably expected to revert to a supply and demand pricing model.

It is interesting to compare mj to cotton. Since the ginning is simpler but the growing is pretty much the same, a reasonable post subsidy mj pricing would appear to likely be around fifty nine cents per pound.

Thus, the state tax income projections could easily be a tad off. But perhaps only by three or four orders of magnitude.

As with cotton, much of the processing could be fairly similar, with the standard commodity item being the five hundred pound bale. Partial bales, of course, should clearly be considered personal use only.

The definitive video on all this appears here. And, curiously, its rather obscure origin here.

October 16, 2015
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We have been getting spikes in our website of thousands and even tens of thousands of bogus hits each day. Which may suggest a new web crisis we might call "admin munching".

Wherein a great heaping bunch of web traffic is likely totally unneeded. And whose intent is nowhere near the traffic load or ISP maint time hassles and expense it  clearly causes.

Ferinstance, apparently any time anybody tries to access our website on a tablet, they first demand an apple-touch-icon.png. Even after providing this request, they still continue to demand icon variations in alternate forms. Greatly adding to unnecessary web traffic.

An even worse offender is WordPress. We have nothing whatsoever to do with them, but they keep demanding thousands of bogus 404 responses daily. To files that flat out ain't us.

Worse yet, at least one wp user keeps lengthening their url and retrying on every 404. Leading to mind boggling and unending traffic.

Present strategy is to monitor log traffic several times a day and then block any spiking offender.

Meanwhile, both Apple and WordPress should be staked to the nearest anthill. There surely is a better solution to 404 high traffic web attacks.

October 15, 2015
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Many thanks to all of you who attended my Gila Watershed Alliance talk yesterday. As typical, the "what good is archaeology?" question came up.

My two co speakers came up with the usual "whoever ignores history is destined to repeat it" and "all of science is based on standing on the shoulders of giants."

I guess my answer is different. It does not matter in the least what good archaeology is. For all of science and much of engineering, "IT" is what we do.

Because "IT" is there and resolving "IT" is obsessively our mission. End of story.

October 14, 2015
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Amazingly, Heathkit is once again attempting to reincarnate.

But I cannot tell if this is real or an elaborate hoax. Their product obviously is overpriced by a factor of at least ten, Obviously has mesmerizingly awful selectivity, obviously lacks a calibrated dial, and obviously comes with a defective front panel.

Meanwhile, the previous copyright debacle seems to be easing, leaving these active schematic and manual free web resources...

www.vintage-radio.info/Heathkit/
www.mods.dk/manual.php?brand=Heathkit www.nostalgickitscentral.com/heath/Heathkits
www.ebaman.com/
www.schematicsunlimited.com/h/Heathkit www.ko4bb.com/manuals/index.php?dir=Heathkit www.antiqueradios.com/forums/

October 13, 2015
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The KML language in Google Earth would seem to have the ability to completely blow away GIS mapping. Among its many possibilities is the ability to "fly" your custom map.

When I looked at this a while back, I could not find a way to do splines in KML. Splines would be particularly useful on our hanging canals to eliminate the need for hundreds or thousands of points per single wandering canal path.

Apparently kml splines are now routine per these details. More on this when I get a chance to look further.

It also s still not obvious to me how to do slanty lettering in KML.

Additional KML support here.

October 12, 2015
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The Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

October 11, 2015
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It is usually very easy to tell the difference between a genuine prehistoric canal and its later rework. But absolutely "proving" that a historic rework in fact has a prehistoric precedence is another matter entirely.

>Energy efficiency was absolutely crucial in any prehistoric original, owing to the lack of metal tools, significant instruments, and beasts of burden. Each teaspoon of dirt and each rock had to be painstakingly moved by hand.

Canals were strictly only the size and ( especially ) the depth needed to get the job done. When and where appropriate, "hanging" portions were used to make the slope independent of the terrain. And to allow primary construction across, rather than along, the canal route.

Modern or historic rework had no similar restrictions, with mule scrapers, gradealls, and even bulldozers readily available. Thus, there was a total and wanton disregard for energy efficiency during construction.

Yet a modern rebuild occasionally would include a low energy and low profile short segment. The most credible explanation for this is that the entire modern canal was in fact a rebuild of a prehistoric original.

Such low profile segments appear in the Webster Ditch and the Cluff NW canals. While this does not in and of itself constitute "proof" of a prehistoric origin, it very strongly suggests so.

Sadly, no strong rebuild evidence exists for the Smith Canal. But indirect evidence includes it being such an obvious location for a prehistoric origin that its absence would be highly conspicuous. In addition, there is a large habitation site and numerous potsherds in the immediate area and the Smith tanks would appear to have been highly reasonable areas for prehistoric fields.

In addition, several canals seem to have prehistoric extensions well beyond their historic rebuilt uses. This typically happens then the historic rebuild terminates in a cattle tank. Hawk Hollow is one example.

No convincing evidence has been found to date of any historic bajada canal having been an original.

My premise remains that virtually all of the historic use bajada canals;s were "steal the plans" or "borrow the blueprints' from underlying prehistoric originals. If for no other reason that it is much easier to "dig out an old ditch" than it is to fully design and develop a successfully working canal from scratch in a difficult terrain.

Much more here.

October 10, 2015
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I guess the "opposite" of a color organ would be one of these image to sound converters from Photosounder.

Classic reprints of most of my color organ construction projects are now up here and include...

Solid State Color Organ
Solid State Color Organ Simplified
Multipurpose Electronic Control
Low Co$t Hi-Fi Color Organ
Build New High-Power Colorgan
Musette Color Organ
Hi Fi a Go Go
Psychedelia I Color Organ

Problems with even the best of these included vary strong RFI, limited dynamic range, and displays that lacked color saturation, were hot, expensive, and in the end, boring.

Today, a monitor or LCD TV or a projector would be an infinitely better display choice. And it would sure end up interesting to apply advanced DSP techniques to isolate each instrument as a separate actor.

October 09, 2015
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There will be a professional tour of our local hanging canals involving some name brand archaeologists and hydrologists next Tuesday and Wednesday October 13th and 14th.

A very limited number of additional guests can be accommodated on these free tours, particularly if you can provide a SUV and a driver.

Please contact don@tinaja.com or call 928-428-4073 if you want to participate.

October 08, 2015
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We are sharply scaling back on our slower selling or more bulky or otherwise problematic eBay offerings and our Alvin Pile is now sorely overflowing.

You are welcome to pick up any of this stuff absolutely free, subject only to "take any, take all". Naturally, shipping is unavailable.

October 07, 2015
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I will be lecturing on our Prehistoric Hanging Canals at the Gila Watershed Alliance meeting on Wednesday October 14th at 7 to 9 PM in the GSA Services building at 931 Thatcher Blvd (aka US 70) in Safford.

Anyone with an interest in hydrology, environment, or archaeology is welcome to attend this free talk.

October 06, 2015
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Here is yet another variation on our latest hanging canal papers.

October 05, 2015
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Your ISP may make a file available to you called .htaccess.

To prevent malware, only a few filename extensions are permitted by exactly spelling them out. You also have a choice of how these files will be processed for downloading.

Ferinstance, "they" would not download my ".psl" files, short for "PostScript Lancaster" and pretty much plain old textfiles. Until this line was added...

 AddType text/plain .psl

How an extension is dealt with is set by ....

AddType text/html
AddType text/plain or
AddType text/x-server-parsed-html

Among its other features, .htaccess can also block any website. Perhaps because they are attempting to overload your site. Or consistently asking for stuff that is not there. Or just because you are mad at them...

# Begin IP blocking
# Order Allow,Deny
Deny from 154.76.15.235
Deny from 170.250.47.196
Deny from 55.204.148.136
Deny from 63.241.74.92
Deny from 202.134.114.89
Deny from 67.171.30.253
Allow from all # End IP blocking

Names above have been randomized to protect the guilty.

October 04, 2015
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Excerpts from our latest hanging canal paper can be newly found in this Southwest Archaeology blog.

October 03, 2015
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Preliminary Field Notes for the Veech Canal are newly  available here. And its sourcecode here.

This long sought after canal seems to define the easternmost limits of our present hanging canal study area. It has not yet been field verified but the Acme Mapper and the Google Earth evidence is quite compelling.

Previous field notes are...

Lefthand Canyon West
Minor Webster Ditch
Freeman Canal
Sand Canal
Tugood Canal

Six down, fifty nine to go. Org.

Much more on our prehistoric hanging canals here.

October 02, 2015
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Some significant but incremental developments in pv solar energy can be found here. And talked about here.

Best pv panel pricing today seems stuck around 60 cents per peak watt. Sustainability and renewability will not happen till several years after this pricing reaches a quarter per peak watt.

More on pv fundamentals and energy fundamentals here.

October 01, 2015
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Org. Got yet another email from someone about to revolutionize electrolysis and would I please recommend a highly qualified yet low cost electrochemist within six blocks of Holt County, Nebraska.

One more time: There is a profound and fundamental first principle of thermodynamics called "exergy" that absolutely and positively GUARANTEES that electrolysis from high value sources such as grid, pv, wind, or alternator flat out ain't gonna happen.

The process would be exactly the same as 1:1 exchanging US dollars for Mexican Pesos. There ALWAYS will be more intelligent things to do with the electricity than immediately and irrevocably destroying most of its value.

Just for kicks, try finding an electrolysizer manufacturer sometime. Even if you find one, they certainly will not tell you how much their products cost, and absolutely will not sell one to an individual because of safety and liability issues. The reason being that exergy limits such devices to highly unique, specialized, and obscure industrial uses.

Virtually all bulk hydrogen gas is produced from hydrocarbons. The amount produced by electrolysis is utterly negligible and limited to exceptionally specific needs where system efficiency and costs are not major design factors. 

Exergy is a measure of the present quality and value of an energy source. You measure exergy by converting that source to another form, converting it back, and seeing how much you have left. Resistance room heat is a classic example of horribly wasted exergy.

Electricity is about the highest exergy stuff available. Unstored hydrogen gas has exceptionally low exergy. Electrolysis is the process of converting many high value kilowatt hours of energy into fewer very low value kilowatt hours of energy. And, thus, is normally and monumentally stupid.

As such, electrolysis clearly will forever remain totally incompatible with efficient and sensible alternate energy solutions. And that is before abysmal system efficiencies, amortization, or stupidities ( such as stainless steel electrodes with its hydrogen overvoltage of iron ). "Real" electrolysizers demand platinized platinum electrodes that are regularly renewed.

Does exergy mean that solar to hydrogen via Faraday's Law is never gonna happen? Not at all. But it does GUARANTEE that conventional high value electricity will definitely NOT be a mid process energy state.

Once again, our bottom line summary:

 If you do not understand exergy, you SHOULD
 NOT be pissing around with electrolysis.

 If you do understand exergy, you WILL NOT   
 be pissing around with electrolysis.

Either way, the outcome is not the least in doubt. More can be found here, here, and here.

September 30, 2015
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I'll be doing a free lecture on our Prehistoric Hanging Canals this Saturday October 3rd at 6 PM in the Discovery Park Jupiter Room.

Discovery Park is near the corner of Discovery Park Blvd and 20th Avenue in Safford Arizona. To reach the Jupiter room, just follow the main pathway all the way South.

There tentatively will be a free tour of the Sand Canal on Sunday morning. It will involve about half a mile of very easy hiking with desert compatible footwear and reasonable clearance dirt road friendly vehicles. Lunch at Juanitas might also be a possibility.

Here is what some of the pr sort of was supposed to look like...

====================================
"Prehistoric Bajada Hanging Canals subject of Saturday's free Discovery Park lecture"

The ongoing Discovery Park lecture series welcomes back local researcher and author Don Lancaster this Saturday October 3rd at 6 PM in the Jupiter room on the Discovery Park campus.

Don will be speaking on the latest discoveries involving a spectacular series of previously unknown and newly world class "hanging" canals that literally exploited every drop of Northeastern Mount Graham stream water in the 1250 CE to 1450 CE time frame.

Astonishingly, there are over 65 known canals whose currently explored length exceeds 70 miles. Their engineering and hydrology is clearly and unquestionably beyond brilliant. Many of the canals remain well preserved and a few actually flow to this day.

The talk can be previewed through links at https://www.tinaja.com/tinsamp1.shtml

Tours can be arranged. Additional researchers are more than welcome. The only skills needed as a researcher are an enthusiasm for hiking, a genuine avocational interest in prehistory, and knowing how to take notes and use a camera and a GPS receiver. Drone, video, and ATV operators are particularly needed.

For additional info, please contact Paul Anger or Jackie Madsen at (928)428-6260. Don's website is www.tinaja.com .

September 29, 2015
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Preliminary Field Notes for the Lefthand West Canal are newly available here. And its sourcecode here.

Previous field notes are...

Minor Webster Ditch
Freeman Canal
Sand Canal
Tugood Canal

Five down, sixty to go. Org.

Much more on our prehistoric hanging canals here.

September 28, 2015
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A KIM-1 emulator can be found here and a COSMAC emulator  here.

And an ET3400 emulator here. With related details here.And 8086 stuff here. And some excellent 6502 references here.

September 27, 2015
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There seem to be major problems with the Panda exhibit at the Chicago Aquarium. They appear to be mostly related to the masks and regulators.

September 26, 2015
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A summary of the Acme Corporation versus Wiley Coyote lawsuit can be found here.

September 25, 2015
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This site and others tell us that there is a US marijuana arrest every 45 seconds and each arrest costs around $2000 to process.

There is an obvious way these costs can be reduced by 75 percent. Simply give each suspect $500 cash instead of further processing them. This, of course, makes much more sense than present policies.

The definitive video on all this appears here. And, curiously, its rather obscure origin here.

September 24, 2015
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Preliminary Field Notes for the Minor Webster Ditch are newly available here. And its sourcecode here.

Previous field notes are...

Freeman Canal
Sand Canal
Tugood Canal

Four down, sixty one to go. Org.

Much more on our prehistoric hanging canals here.

September 23, 2015
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A reminder that Apple Assembly Line reprints can still be found here.

September 22, 2015
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Am I the only one to still notice that, despite stunning developments in CGI and incredible advances in compute animation, that movie stagecoach wheels still turn backwards?

September 21, 2015
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We looked at a popular Acrobat Javascript navigation button generator here, with one of its many use examples here.

Sometimes your document content may want the buttons moved slightly to prevent collisions, as per here.

The adjustment is easily made. Just go to the part of the code that says...

 var aRect = this.getPageBox
 ( { nPage: nPageNum} );

 aRect[0] += x * inch;
 aRect[1] -= y * inch;

And modify it like so...

 var aRect = this.getPageBox
 ( { nPage: nPageNum} );

 aRect[1] += 0.40 * inch ;
 aRect[0] -= 0.10 * inch ;

 aRect[0] += x * inch;
 aRect[1] -= y * inch;

aRect[0] is the vertical position. We have moved it up here by a tenth of an inch.

aRect[1] is the horizontal position. We have moved it right here by four tenths of an inch.

To add the buttons to any .PDF file, get in Acrobat XI Pro and do a Control-J. Overwrite all the console code by pasting in your new button code. Select all of the button code and click on the Enter key that is in the lower right part of your numeric keyboard.

Note that the regular Entry key does not work.

September 20, 2015
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Made some revisions to canaleng1.pdf and to its canaleng1.psl sourcecode.

We expect this to be published shortly. More on our hanging canals here.

September 19, 2015
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No survey instruments are known to survive from the design and construction of our prehistoric bajada hanging canals.

One possible explanation being that they never existed in the first place. Or were much simpler or less obvious than expected.

Given the exceptional water management expertise, the canals may in fact have been largely self modifying and self regulating.

Here are some more or less credible possibilities...

 WATER LEVELS - Pilot extensions of a canal
 under constructions could have been built and
 filled with static water, noting the start water 
 depth compared against the barely overflowing
 end of the current project extension. Such
 water levels remain a popular product to this
 day. A section of the Sand Canal seems "too
 small to be useful between N 32.83186
 W 109.92448 and N 32.83515 W 109.92272.
 And inconsistent in size with its earlier portions.
 Possibly being an incomplete pilot might be one
 possible explanation .

 TWO STICKS - One of two sticks of identical
 length could be placed in the bottom of the
 present end of a canal being extended. A
 second could be placed a hundred feet or so
 upstream. Sighting between the two would
 give a credible slope extension.

 THE POSTHOLE THEORY - A post hole of
 half its ultimate depth could be dug a hundred
 feet or so beyond a canal being extended.
 Three identical sticks could then be used to
 verify slope alignment. The post hole could
 then be deepened as needed to become a
 survey construction marker.

A much larger and completely unresolved question is how the routes ( up to six or more miles! ) were picked in the first place. Finding a credible constant slope route between point A and point B in a Basin and Range province bajada is clearly no trivial matter.

Of all the known canals, only the Mud Springs canal has points where it can more or less be viewed in its entirety. Which suggests that this may have been an original or at least a very early construct.

Part of the solution may lie in critical locations or pinch points that any canal had to go through. These locations would then subdivide the total canal length into somewhat more manageable segments.

The most stunning example here is the Mud Springs watershed crossing that could only possibly take place at N 32.79166 W 109.85388

Other examples include "knife edge" mesas where the route clearly must be placed. Examples include N 32.75828 W 109.82097on the main Frye Mesa Canal, N 32.76080 W 109.78125 on the main Deadman Canal and possibly N 32.75513 W 109.78034 on the still unexplored East Deadman canal. Or possibly N 32.83567 W 109.79793 at the beginning of the Culebra Cut. 

Your thoughts welcome.

September 18, 2015
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I do have a sledgehammer cure for some glyphs buried in my Gonzo Utilities. And that is to use our |overstrike.

This is particularly useful for adding umlauts for words such as "canyon" or "Pinalino" . Or adding a complement bar above a logic callout. And it works with most any font, regardless of whether it has unicode glyphs available or even if they are coded in unexpected places.

What the |overstrike does is whap a second character on top of the last one you used, with only the advance of the first character. The overstrike character does not even have to be the same font, and it can be arbitrarily above or below the previous font baseline.

Just use /overstrikechar and /overstrikeht To wander down the canyon...

xpos ypos ( . . . can|yon . . . ) cl

In this case, the overstrikechar would be "~" and raised four points or so above a normal unscaled font baseline.

September 17, 2015
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I've long been a fan of the ITC Stone font. Owing to its great vibes and its ability to still look good in reduced resolution displays. Per this example and bunches more.

The only little problem is that the version I have is so old that many of the unicode glyph characters are either missing or in the wrong place. This creates all sorts of problems when the stories are republished elsewhere.

For some reason, my opening quote glyph is missing or hidden, While I initially did a workaround by substituting a backwards font,

I realized  that this would cause major problems for future editors.

The simplest workaround, of course, is to just use plain old quotes instead. Another would be to change the fonts of the opening and closing quotes so they seem to work as Unicode glyphs and still appear to be Stone compatible.

September 16, 2015
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Some comments on fonts in general...

Most fonts these days consist of a mix of letters, numbers, and glyphs. And most fonts are now Unicode coded in an attempt to standardize the glyph locations.

Glyphs are noted in PostScript and elsewhere by their octal notation. Some of the more popular and originally standard ones are ...

\274 ellipsis
\267 bullet
\320 emdash
\261 endash

Other ways to access glyphs are with the "Glyphs" panel in illustrator or the "Open Type" panel in Photoshop. Or the "Insert Special Character" in Indesign. Or the "More Symbols" panel in Microsoft word.

The original Adobe STD font encoding can be found here.

When using glyphs, it is super important to make sure your font has the glyph available and that it is in the same address as any fonts a further editor may use.

One example of finding glyphs for a particular font can be found here.

The main fonts available on a PC can usually be found by going to the control panel and selecting "Fonts". Clicking on any available font should give you a sample printout of the main characters.

But it will not give you a list of fonts in your own or Adobe directories and it will not show you any glyphs or their locations.

The available fonts for use in Acrobat Distiller can be found by going to "Settings" and then "Font Locations" Should you have any special favorite fonts in your own directories, you must add their directories to this list. Or Disiller will not recognize them.

Should you be editing a .PDF document, a sneaky trick can generate a list of your available fonts. Simply start a watermark entry, then Add Watermark, then click on text. Scrolling down on Font Name should give you a list of all available fonts to you.

These will typically be a mix of Adobe and Windows fonts. Any fonts in a custom folder of yours likely will not be listed. Any font can be sampled by typing it in a large size. Be sure, of course, to not save your document when you are done exploring your available fonts.

September 15, 2015
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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, quot;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.

September 14, 2015
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If there is one thing I can't stand, it is intolerance.

I find those inane surveys needed to access some web stories to be maddeningly infuriating. An obvious defense is to make their results utterly useless by ALWAYS lying like a rug and ALWAYS generating the most wildly improbable responses.

Ferinstance, when asked for your favorite brand of smoke Detector, you reply "Pepsi".

When asked what products you associate with the Acme Veeblefeltzer company, you reply "ketchup".

And otherwise generate the most mesmerizingly awful responses that you can possibly dream up.

September 13, 2015
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Added a Kilobaud TVT Hardware_pt1 story to our Classic Reprints.
Added a Kilobaud TVT Hardware_pt2 story to our Classic Reprints
Added a Kilobaud H8_Cheap_Video story to our Classic Reprints
Added a Kilobaud Ap_Inverted_Dec_Code story to our Classic Reprints.

Added a "Director's Cut" fully restored New_Winning story to our Classic Reprints. Based on This Original.

September 12, 2015
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Just uploaded a "Director's Cut" full restoration of Winning the Micro Game. You'll find the story here and the sourcecode here. And the JS nav button code here.

This was a rather major paper in Kilobaud, along with the basis of several talks. After you factor out the quantities, very little of it changed, and I only made some very minor additions.

Much of the story would seem to still apply to the latest of Raspberry Pi or Beagle Bone developments.

Use of my Gonzo Utilities kept the file sizes under 7K per page. Including all built in fonts. Until dramatically increased by the new Acrobat JavaScript Nav blocks.

Note the super secret hyphenation algorithm!

More on classic reprints here.

September 11, 2015
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Here and here are detailed examples of our /jpegimageprocwithlink automated image placer that places in-pdf and remote clickable url JPG images programatically inside our Gonzo Utilities for use with Acrobat Distiller.

The code works directly in GhostScript and will work in Acrobat when it is properly /F activated.

Helped along by /setareaurl auto click sizer and /inurllink.

The code can be activated by ...

 hoffset
 voffset
 hpixels
 vpixels
 scale
 pcurllink
 weburllink
 jpegimageprocwithlink

It is extremely important to get /hpixels precisely correct. Otherwise, the image will smear badly. A local pc available image copy and a web available image copy are required. These can be identical resolution, or the local can be reduced.

September 10, 2015
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Preliminary Field Notes for the Tugood Canal are newly available here. And its sourcecode here.

Note that you can click thru to larger and higher resolution images. And that there are JavaScript page-to-page nav buttons. Thanks to /F, all figures are now auto inserted using the Gonzo utilities routed to Distiller. Only the JS nav needs done after distillation.

This is intended to be the third of many ( possibly 65 sets ) of updated and revised field notes.

>Much more on our prehistoric hanging canals here.

September 09, 2015
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Here and here are detailed examples of our /surl and /eurl automated url placer that fully tracks any changes in underlying text size and position. With the actual heavy lifting done by /makeurl All done programatically and before distilling!

The code works directly in GhostScript and will work in Acrobat when it is properly /F activated.

A list of related url's can be created with..

 <</url1 (http.whoever1.com)
 /url2 (http.whoever2.com)
 /url3 (http.whoever3.com)
 >> {mark exch /eurl
 cvx ] cvx def} forall

I did just discover a minor gotcha that I should have noticed a very long time ago: The url generator only works inside callout left or cl and does not work on callout center or cc. The workaround is to use a shifted cl any time you really need a cc with a url in it.

September 08, 2015
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After many months of price increases, pv panel pricing finally showed a slight decline for the month. But still is up six percent for the year.

At present, the peak panel watt pricing is around double that needed to eventually become a renewable and sustainable net energy resource. The magic figure is twenty five cents per peak panel watt and is derived here. Note that subsidies are a 7X liability, rather than a 1X asset when their fully burdened true energy costs are honestly considered.

One minor gotcha: These charts are in Euros. Dollars would presently be around 13 percent higher. A useful converter here.

Some additional energy stuff here.

September 07, 2015
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One of the routines in our Gonzo Utilities that we have not looked at for quite a while is roundbox. Which draws a box with rounded edges that's useful for all sorts of stuff.

You call it like this...

xoffset
yoffset
xwidth
ywidth
radius
roundbox

and, when finished using it, you return with...

grestore

Outlining and coloring might go something like...

gsave 0.7 0.90 0.98 setrgbcolor fill
grestore line3 0 0.75 0.84 setrgbcolor
stroke

And adding text goes like...

xpos ypos (message) cc

Making radius much larger than normal produces all sorts of interesting "inverse" effects.

A detailed example can be found here with results here .With many similar stunts here.

September 06, 2015
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 Added Clocked Logic I to our Classic Reprints.
 Added Clocked Logic II to our Classic Reprints.
 Added Clocked Logic III to our Classic Reprints.
 Added TVT for KIM to our Classic Reprints.
 Added Lower_Case_Ap I to Classic Reprints.
 Added Lower_Case_Ap II to Classic Reprints.

September 05, 2015
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 Added TV Color Graphics to Classic Reprints.
 Added ROM_Technology to Classic Reprints.
 Added Volatile_Memories to Classic Reprints
 Added TV_Interface to Classic Reprints.
 Added Build memory card to Classic Reprints.

September 04, 2015
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Preliminary Field Notes for the Freeman Canal are newly available here. And its sourcecode here.

Note that you can click thru to larger and higher resolution images. And that there are JavaScript page-to-page nav buttons. Thanks to /F, all figures are now auto inserted using the Gonzo utilities routed to Distiller. Only the JS nav needs done after distillation.

This is intended to be the second of many ( possibly 65 sets ) of updated and revised field notes.

Much more on our prehistoric hanging canals here.

September 03, 2015
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What appears to be a potentially major cost reduction in Lithium batteries can be found here. And its discussion
here.

Much more on energy topics here.

September 02, 2015
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Field Notes for the Sand Canal are newly available here. And its sourcecode here.

Note that you can click thru to larger and higher resolution images. And that there are JavaScript page-to-page nav buttons. Thanks to -F, all figures are now auto inserted using the Gonzo utilities routed to Distiller. Only the JS nav needs done after distillation.

This is intended to be the first of many ( possibly 65 sets ) of updated and revised field notes. Much more on our prehistoric hanging canals here.

September 01, 2015
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The original phone phreaking paper can be found here. You will also need a whistle out of a box of Captain Crunch cereal.

This was not BSTJ's finest moment.

August 31, 2015
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Several of you have asked about Bruno. Bruno is the attitude relaterization facilitator for a major eBay newsgroup. Since he is big on multitasking, he also combines this with his role of being a product durability tester for a major New Jersey baseball bat manufacturer.

Bruno also does trucking for Norfolk & Waay. Norfolk and Waay, of course, is the only reputable dropshipper for eBay buyers. This week only, they are offering free sample pallets ( limit five ) with free shipping. From their choice of Neiman Marcus, Land's End, Eddie Bauer, or Bruno's Trucking.

The Bruno pallets may occasionally include an odd body part or two. Naturally, this is normal and expected. More details here.

August 30, 2015
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Some or our recent prehistoric bajada hanging canal developments would be...

 Strong evidence that many if not all historic
 bajada canals do in fact have prehistoric origins.

 Especially the Minor Webster Ditch and the
 Cluff NW Canal complex. Based on remnant
  low energy profiles.

 The shorter new Sand Canal that features a
  sampler of most hanging canal feature
  combined with easy foot and vehicle access.

 An enigmatic new Golf Course Canal with a
 significant hanging portion and a possible
 destination for the spectacular counterflowing
  HS Canal.

 A new possible nursery site apparently
 Freeman Canal canal fed.

 Discovery of a near pristine Tugood
 Canal, possibly many miles in length.

 Discovery of the potential route of the
 long sought Veech Canal.

August 29, 2015
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There are apparently two flavors of Walmart auctions. They run their own merchandise auctions here. Typical pallet lot prices are in the $800 to $2000 range. Locations vary all over the US, and you have to arrange your own shipping.

On the other hand, sixteen pallets of $58,000 worth of broken tv sets currently have a single bidder of one dollar. Three hours to close.

While store closing fixture auctions vary with the location, with examples here and here. Easiest and most current access is to Google "Walmart store closing auctions"

Much more auction stuff here.

August 28, 2015
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Golly Gee Mister Science.

Here's the top few "gee whiz" features of our prehistoric bajada hanging canals...

 1. The sheer scope and magnitude of a world
 class total exploitation of every recoverable
 drop of northeastern Mt. Graham water
 through 65 exceptionally engineered canals of
 70+ total miles.

 2. The high Marijilda hanging canal portion that
 is hung 200 feet above its adjacent drainage.

 3. Many other hanging canal portions of a
 variable offset, clearly done to make slope
 3independent of terrain and clearly done to
 optimize construction across, rather than
 along the canal route. But only present
 where needed.

 4. The spectacular counterflowing HS
 canal returning Frye Mesa water to Frye
  Creek. Perhaps an eighth mile long,
 seven feet wide, and dropping a highly
  controlled 200 feet.

 5. The Culebra Cut below Allen Dam
 20 feet wide by seven feet deep and
 extending for 300 feet. No signs
 whatsoever of historic rework.

 6. The Marijilda aqueduct, perhaps
 300 feet long by 4 feet high.

 7. The optimal watershed crossing of the
 Mud Springs Canal from the Ash Creek
 Drainage to the Mud Springs Drainage.

 8. The still unproven watershed crossing
  between Frye Creek and Spring Canyon
  required as at reasonable explanation for
 many canals to be suitably sourced. A
  third possible watershed crossing might
 also be in Nuttall canyon.

 9. The nearly pristine and still largely
 unexplored Tugood Canal, potentially
 several miles long.

 10. Examples of counterflow structures
 that work against the prevailing terrain.
  Especially for wash crossings and the
 spectacular HS Canal.

 11. Rather strong proof that many if not
 all historic bajada canals were in fact
 adapted from prehistoric originals.
 Based on remnant low energy profiles.

August 27, 2015
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ISP mail servers and Thunderbird may not work the way you might expect them to. I recently ended up with  huge amounts of ISP memory use for no obvious reason.

If you have several people and several email addresses where any one of them may respond, it pays to leave all email messages on the host until you purposely remove them. But it also definitely pays to click an erase after 100 days or whatever box to prevent unwanted accumulation.

Apparently changing an <remove after> box is NOT retroactive.

The kicker is this: If you <save as> an .eml to another folder on your pc, the ISP knows this and still keeps the email in its server! Recording it as a sub folder. even after you delete the original message in your inbox and on the mail server!

Which leaves you with lots of space and no obvious record of why it is still in use! This is particularly a problem with large attachments.

The workaround is to save your < save as > folder off site to a website or removable thumb drive or whatever. Then delete the original < save as > folder. Apparently the ISP is swift enough to delete its sub folder record if you do this.

You do have to activate your email reader for the disconnect to get back to the host. It may take a day or two to settle the dust. You do also have to empty your recycle bin.

You should be able to return the folder copy, preferably with a slightly modified name.

To find any .eml files you may have forgotten about, do a windows-x and search files for ".eml".

BTW: If you view an .eml file in a text editor, you will see the raw code with images encrypted. If you view the same .eml file in Thunderbird or another email processor, you will see only the message and any uncompressed images or other attachments.

August 26, 2015
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Here's a partial list of our available Bajada Hanging Canal photos. Those with an "x" in the filename are reduced resolution ( typically 500 pixels wide ) suitable for use in PDF documents...

allen0.jpg
allen0x.jpg
allen1,jpg
allem1x.jpg
allen2.jpg
bestgrid.jpg
bestgridx.jpg
cluffnw1.jpg
cluffnw2.jpg
cluffnw3.jpg

cluffnw4.jpg
cluffnw5.jpg
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culebra1.jpg
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frye1.jpg
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golf3.jpg
golf3x.jpg

hangcan1.jpg
hangcan1.pdf
henry1.jpg
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left1.jpg
levada.jpg
levita.jpg

map2.jpg
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map2.pdf
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rinc1.jpg
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rinc2.pdf
rob1.jpg
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rob3.pdf
safcan1.jpg
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safcanmap.kml
sand_tree.jpg
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sand9.jpg
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August 25, 2015
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eBook copies of my Enhancing Your Apple II & IIe can be found here.

And many of my other eBooks here.

August 24, 2015
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It seems to me that the HUNDRED MILLION daily and ever changing links on this fascinating site are all utterly and completely missing several key points.

First, because the law of the unintended consequence,, virtually all federal govrnment involvement to date can be viewed as simple price supports and farm subsidies of this popular and major commodity. Subsidies far and away higher than on any other agricultural product.

Should these outrageous price supports and farm subsidies be completely eliminated ( as they certainly will ), the price could be expected to drop somewhat, perhaps to fifty nine cents a pound.

This would be comparable to and slightly less than cotton, because the ginning is simpler. Similar to cotton, the standard increment would be the five hundred pound bale. Partial bales should, of course, be considered personal use.

Secondly, it is reasonable to assume that the potential new tax income on this commodity might be slightly overestimated. But perhaps only by three or four orders of magnitude.

Thirdly, while there are many proven medical benefits, nobody seems to be mentioning the most significant and most proven and most well known one - dealing with motion sickness.

Fourth, any presidential candidate not overwhelmingly and conspicuously supportive is guaranteed unelectable.

The definitive video on all this, of course, appears here. And, curiously, its rather obscure origin here.

August 23, 2015
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The traditional US Post Office "dead letter" auctions have changed quite a bit recently. They are all only in Atlanta, are online only, and typically have a $2000 opening bid.

I would think inspection is mandatory, so any opportunities would only seem to be in the Atlanta area.

More on auction resources here, Arizona specific links here, and your own custom regional auction finder here.

August 22, 2015
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Google Maps has a new Google Solar Project Sunroof feature that can evaluate your home for solar energy suitability. It is swift enough to calculate the size of your roof and nearby trees.

Some discussion here. Only some areas are presently covered, and they treat subsidies as a 1X asset rather than the true cost 6X or 7X liability that they really are. For you have to consider the true time and energy costs needed to make the subsidy funds available in the first place.

As this site shows us, pv still costs double than the twenty five cents per peak panel watt that will eventually be needed for true net renewability and sustainability. And the recent pricing trends have been upward, rather than their traditional long term dramatic cost reductions

More on energy here and pv here.

August 21, 2015
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I've moved an archive of historic emails involved in our Bajada Hanging Canal research to our website. This can be made available to you on request.

But there are two gotchas. Since it is an uncompressed folder of .eml files whose size may change, it can be delivered by FTP only. And you have convince us of a reasonable need to know.

August 20, 2015
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A reprint of the Glyphs Prehistoric Hanging Canal paper can newly be found here.

August 19, 2015
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eBook copies of the long lost Apple II "red book" can be found here.

eBook copies of several of my earlier books can be found here. And other classic reprints here.

August 18, 2015
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Here is yet another of our Prehistoric Hanging Canal cloud projects:

Starting the short and enigmatic canal segment found at N 32.80011 W 109.7507, trace its origin and destination, possibly as far back as the HS Canal at N 32.75874 W 109.81404

Yeah, that would be quite a stretch. But the canal, if real, had to come from somewhere. And the HS Canal is super spectacular, so it had to have a still unknown destination.

Other cloud projects linked here.

August 17, 2015
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Managed to find yet another prehistoric hanging canal. As usual, it raises many more issues than it resolves.

The tentative name is the Freeman Canal. What we have is a hundred foot square very rocky area in an otherwise flat and sandy desert at N 32.80011 W 109.75075. There is not the slightest hint of anything on Acme Mapper.

The rocks have obviously been rearranged into alignments of some sort. Prehistorisity would not seem to be in reasonable doubt, and there seems to be no obvious CCC handiwork.

There is a small apparent field perhaps 20 feet square. There are a few small check dams without aprons.

The site seems to be directly fed by a vague and erratic mid sized canal like structure. The canal can be sort of traced for a few hundred feet. And then, so far, vanishes.

This would require a major linking system of several MILES to reach candidate sources such as the HS Canal. So far, there is only one tiny hint of anything in between.  The between area has been visited many times.

The terrain is eminently suitable for a canal route. Both slope and topographically. The location is reasonable  considering the known canals. This would be #65. A previous list can be found here.

I am totally baffled by what I seem to be looking at. None of it makes much sense to me so far. The developed area seems much too small for that much of a canal. IF it is in fact a canal.

I definitely need a second or third opinion. Some preliminary photos now appear here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

More on other hanging canals here. Your participation welcome. Field mice, Daddy Warbucks, and drone pilots definitely needed.

August 16, 2015
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Yorg.

No sooner do I pretty much eliminate most of my internal 404's that I start getting hundreds ( and possibly thousands soon ) of 404's seeking apple-touch-icon.png links.

Apparently ALL websites now MUST include this file! There's all sorts of arguments over which size to use, but starting with a 60 x60 bitmap is supposed to work.

So, here is my icon. Easily built as a .bmp file using my Bitmap Typewriter. And then converted to .png by using Paint. Please let me know if you find any use problems.

My initial goal was simply to get rid of the 404's.

August 15, 2015
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A reminder that Acrobat Distiller Pro normally locks out most diskfile reads or writes. The workaround is to run Distiller from windows-x-run with a trailing /F. Like so...

//acrodist /F

This lets you run our Bitmap Typewriter directly from Acrobat X Pro instead of GhostScript. One advantage of which is access to a much greater number of fonts.

The Bitmap Typewriter lets you add or improve text that can be cut and pasted into most any bitmap and is particularly useful for  delivering the highest possible resolution to very small type sizes. Short of subpixel techniques.

You will also need access to a copy of our Gonzo Utilities. Gonzo can be found here with its tutorial here. An older Bitmap Typewriter tutorial can be found here.

You can generate a list of your available fonts by loading most any .pdf file into Acrobat and starting to add a text watermark. The fonts box should give you a list of all available fonts to you with their correct spellings. The commented font list in the Bitmap Typewriter is unlikely to exactly match the fonts available on your computer.

A summary of some of the internal Bitmap Typewriter commands are...

 /targetfilename - Short target filename string
 /targetfilenameprefix - full Prefix string.
 /yourfontname sf - set font num
 gk - set global kern num
 mv - mottle background variability
 [red green blue] sca - background color
 num 0-215 sca - background color
 ma - bottom quarter background color
 mb - next higher quarter background color
 mc - next higher quarter background color
 md -stop quarter background color
 [red green blue] sca - background color
 num 0-215 - background color
 w h ss- font width and height in pixels
 h v (yourtext) st - set text where shown
 0 0 (yourtext) st - set text past previous
 writebitmap - add text to work bitmap.

August 14, 2015
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In response to an ever diminishing groundswill of popular demand, here is an upload of my one and only patent.

And here is what I think of patents and patenting in general.

August 13, 2015
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There are continuing serious problems with wordpad in that it often will trash linefeeds in Linux originated documents.

Which both runs text together and creates serious checksum problems.

Better text manipulation strategies would include Word, Dreamweaver, Chrome, and Acrobat. Among many others.

August 12, 2015
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Managed to upload a copy of the totally bogus "magic lamp"perpetual motion machine story. Based apparently on a failure to appreciate the horrific differences between average and rms measure when made on low duty cycle waveforms. AKA Beginning EE student blunder #001-A.

More on this fiasco here, with the fundamentals of rms versus average here and here, and the magazine admitting they had been had here. More on bashing pseudoscience here, and on the utter futility of patents here.

August 11, 2015
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Another month has gone by with increasing pv panel prices, once again reversing decades of continuing dramatic cost reductions.

PV pricing remains around double what will eventually be required for long term renewability and sustainability,

More on pv fundamentals here, and on energy in general here.

August 10, 2015
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And here is how you add navigation buttons to a .PDF file using JavaScript over Acrobat...

 // Button Nav Generator
 // Add navigation buttons to the page
 // Script puts 3 buttons on every page top
 // First button "<" goes to previous page
 // Second button: "1" goes to the first page
 // Third button: ">" goes to the next page
 var inch = 72;

 colLtGray = ["RGB", 0.7 , 0.7, 0.7 ];
 try {nLastPage = this.numPages - 1;
 for (var p = 0; p < this.numPages; p++)
 {var x = 0.5; if (p > 0)
 {AddButton(p,x,0.5,0.25,0.25,"
 PrevPage","<", Page","this.pageNum--;");<
 // left arrow

 x += 0.3;}if (p != 0)
 AddButton(p,x,0.5,0.25,0.25,
 "StartPage","1","Go To First Page",
 this.pageNum=0;");
 // "1", takes to the first page
 x += 0.3;}if (p < nLastPage)
 AddButton(p,x,0.5,0.25,0.25,"

 NextPage",">","Next Page",
 ;"this.pageNum++;");
 // right arrow, next page
 x += 0.3;}}} catch (e)
 {app.alert(e);}
 // AddButton funct creates a button function
 AddButton(nPageNum, x, y, width, height,

 strText, strCaption, strToolTip, strAction)
 {var aRect = this.getPageBox
 ( { nPage: nPageNum} ); aRect[0]
 += x * inch; aRect[1] -= y * inch;
 aRect[2] = aRect[0] + width * inch;
 aRect[3] = aRect[1] - height * inch;
 var f = this.addField(strText,"button",

 nPageNum, aRect);
 f.setAction("MouseUp",strAction);
 f.userName = strToolTip; f.delay = true;
 f.borderStyle = border.s;
 f.highlight = "push";
 f.textSize = 0; // autosized
 f.textColor = colLtGray;

 f.strokeColor = colLtGray;
 // you can specify a different font here
 //f.textFont = font.ZapfD;
 f.buttonSetCaption(strCaption);
 f.delay = false;}

An example can be found here. And a code copy here.

You do have to make sure the .pdf file is unlocked and not secure. And you do have to make sure you are on the first page at the start of your document.

August 09, 2015
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More on the Red Horse 2 combined wind and solar project can be found here. Cost after subsidies and similar scams seems to approach five cents per kilowatt hour.

Not sure how close you can get to the site, which is near the junction of Warbonnet road and Hooker Hot Springs roads. Somewhere around N 32.28581 W 110.13233. They should not be too hard to find since they are by far the largest structures in Southern Arizona.

More interesting places to visit here. And more on energy here.

August 08, 2015
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JavaScript over Acrobat can be incredibly useful but can also be maddeningly frustrating. Some key references can be found here, here, here, here, and here.

Such tricks as filling a document with images or adding nav buttons, or page watermarking are easily done as are many other tricks. Especially involving forms.

Ferinstance, here is some simple test code to let you add a watermark to a page...

 this.addWatermarkFromText({cText:
 "DRAFT\n\nCOPY", nTextAlign:
 app.constants.align.center,
 cFont: "Helvetica-Bold",
 aColor: color.red, nStart:
 this.pageNum, nOpacity: 0.5});

And here is how you insert an image...

 // Image Inserter
 this.addWatermarkFromFile({cDIPath:
 "/C/Users/image_loc_.jpg", nStart: 2,
 nScale: 0.59, nVertValue: 131,
 nHorizValue: -5,});

Typically, you activate JavaScript from within a previously uploaded .PDF doc into Acrobat XI pro. A control-j turns on the console debugger, while a control-k lets you save some preferences. Make sure the console window is open.

Copy your code to be executed into the console and highlight it with your mouse. To execute your highlighted code, either use the Keyboard Enter or the main Control Enter. Note that the main enter key will not work by itself!

Extreme attention to detail is needed to get working code. Acrobat will sometimes save a .js routine into its internal C:/Program Files(x86)/Adobe/Acrobat11/Acrobat/Javascro[ts folder. Any new stuff entered here will automatically execute each and every time you select a .PDF file, and defective entries can trash newer tempts and accomplishing anything. should remain in this directory. Chances are that all other .js files should be deleted unless you know exactly what you are doing.

Acrobat may also keep older .js routines in an active .PDF file if it is saved. Should you have problems, always restart or redistill to a "clean" and JavaScript free original.

Should your code prove difficult, always try something simpler first and sneak up on it, using the error message hints in the console.

August 07, 2015
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There seem to be quite a few presently disused historic pipelines in the area, some of which would appear to be prehistoric bajada hanging canal related. Here is a summary of some of the candidates...

ASH CREEK - Still functional pipeline parallels Mud Springs Canal but starts higher, routes directly downstream, and apparently still feeds Cluff Reservoir #3. N 32.77450 W 109.85976 to N 32.79622 W 109.85764

SAND CANAL - Two mysterious short segments of terra cotta pipe have been placed near the known takein of an otherwise clearly prehistoric canal. Who did this and why remains enigmatic. N 32.83094 W 109.92607 and N 32.83122 W 109.92562

DEADMAN MESA - Original westernmost portion of prehistoric Deadman Canal has been replaced by historic pipeline once feeding domestic water. Still flows but today only serves cattle tanks. N 32.73878 W 109.81177 to N 32.74493 W 109.80673

BELOW FRYE DAM - Extensive prehistoric canals instead stayed high on Frye Mesa. Bottom canyon concrete pipe route appears modern and dam related. Combined with Deadman pipeline to route to a chlorinator and domestic water supply. N 32.75602 W 109.81698 to N 32.76917 W 109.79285

MYSTERY REACH - Fragments of a concrete pipe line appear to possibly overlay a largely unstudied and rather vague prehistoric original. Definitely needs further study. Prehistoric ag structures and rock alignments are also in the area. N 32.79087 W 109.76136 to  N 32.79297 W 109.75890 ?

CLUFF NW CANAL - Extensively developed historic canal shows prehistoric standards portions and includes several white PVC pipes as feeders and as siphons. N 32.82414 W 109.84816 and N 32.82702 W 109.84646

GOAT CANAL DROPOFF - While the topo map shows three pipelines here, only one remains Acme Mapper visible. This one might even have had some hydro potential.  32.68504 W 109.72947 to N 32.68428 W 109.72924

Field mice and drone pilots needed.

August 06, 2015
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Finally got my Fatcow logfile reporting straightened out.

Logfiles are available by FTP transfer from your FatCow site stats subdirectory. Filezilla is one example of a suitable FTP transfer utility. Use of a browser for transfer is not recommended.

A typical report might be called access_log_20150814.gz. FTP transfer a copy of this to your local computer in a suitable subdirectory.

This is a .gz compressed file and you will need a preloaded copy of a suitable decompressor. WinZip would seem to be a good choice. WARNING: Make sure you go to the "real" WinZip site and not on one of the many malware alternatives!

Drag and drop your local access log copy into WinZip. It should create a new plaintext file for you named something like moo.tinajacom or similar. You can now inspect or modify it using most any text processor. My Gonzo Utilities are especially superb for this sort of thing.

Warning: Use of Wordpad will trash your line feeds, as it does with many Linux originated files. Better choices for viewing are Word or Dreamweaver. To use Acrobat, rename a file copy as .txt.

August 05, 2015
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Managed to locate and update the two missing pages of the classic Lil Richie reprint. A problem still remains on Pseudorandom Circuits which we are working on.

August 04, 2015
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I've long been a fan of the super slushes by the eeGees chain in Tucson. Their eight foot long subs also aren't half bad.

Turns out they "sort of" just opened a site in Safford inside JoBi's across from Bricks on south 191.

Its basically just a freezer full of prepackaged stuff. To get the drinks to appear "normal", you have to either microwave them or repeatedly stab them with a real fork. I prefer the latter.

But, hey, they are here. Also at Pima Freeze.

August 03, 2015
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Some interesting new battery developments can be found here. I'd predict that incremental advances will be more the norm than stunning breakthroughs.

At present, lithium batteries are around 300 watthours per liter. Compared to gasoline at 9600.

More on energy fundamentals here.

August 02, 2015
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Found a few mysterious concrete structures that apparently were involved in historic water management. Strangely, they do not appear to be CCC related at first glance.

I've yet to visit them and do not yet know exactly what we have here.

Check out N 32.77994 W 109.76554 , N 32.80039 W 109.79105, and N 32.80063 W 109.79055.

More on neat Gila Valley things to explore here.

August 01, 2015
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Just noticed that our product warranty label has been long missing. Probably because there was some overload or malware incident many years ago.

I've temporarily replaced it here after retrieving it from the Wayback Machine. More similar items at  engrish.com.

July 30, 2015
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Now have a nearly complete set of our classic Modern Electronics stories and columns as free ebooks...

upg_aII_mon2+3_85.pdf
abs_rst_upd_11_85.pdf

/hhack_1_85.pdf  
/hhack_2_85.pdf
/hhack_3_85.pdf
e/hhack_4_85.pdf
/hhack_5_85.pdf
/hhack_6_85.pdf
/hhack_7_85.pdf
/hhack_8_85.pdf
/hhack_9_85.pdf
/hhack_10_85.pdf
/hhack_11_85.pdf

/hhack_1_86.pdf
/hhack_2_86.pdf
/hhack_3_86.pdf
/hhack_4_86.pdf
/hhack_5_86.pdf
/hhack_6_86.pdf
/hhack_7_86.pdf
/hhack_8_86.pdf
/hhack_9_86.pdf
/hhack_10_85.pdf
/hhack_11_86.pdf

/hhack_1_87.pdf
/hhack_2_87.pdf
/hhack_3_87.pdf
/hhack_4_87.pdf
/hhack_5_87.pdf
/hhack_6_87.pdf
/hhack_7_87.pdf
/hhack_8_87.pdf

I'll try and shortly get these into our main Classic Reprints directory.

Which is now fairly complete, except for bunches of Byte and Kilobaud column and great heaping piles of really obscure stuff.

July 29, 2015
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It is always the greasy whistle that gets squeaked.

July 28, 2015
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Once again expanded and updated our Gila Valley Dayhikes page. We are now up to 429 main entries, most of which now include GPS location links.

Also included our latest hanging canal directory along with many dozens of third party links of local outdoor interest.

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

July 27, 2015
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Managed to get this demo and this sourcecode on using disk files with Acrobat XI that is -F run to allow disk file access. The PDF and PSL files are based on a shortened version of this file.

The code is completely rewritten with greatly improved docs. Key features are the ability to run our Gonzo Utilities rather than having to embed them; to programatically auto position url links from a .psl file sent to Distiller; and to also programatically insert both low and hires click thru images, again within Distiller.

Apparent LORES image resolution also appears somewhat higher The final .PDF files should also end up significantly shorter than most other approaches. Size is overwhelmingly determined by the number and reduction factors of any included images.

You will need to place copies of https://www.tinaja.com/psutils/gonzo.ps  and https://www.tinaja.com/canal/Reduced_Images/allen0x500x400.jpg in an appropriate directory to your host machine.

You will also need to special activate Distiller by using a "//acrodist /F from Windows run from the command line. Full details should appear in the internal comment docs. Please email me with any comments or problems.

July 26, 2015
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A technique we might call "lowballing" can produce useful results both on eBay and Craig's List.

Just hit twice in a row. The normal goal is to hit one in twenty. Which of course, you make up for by making twenty times the number of offers you could possibly use.

With lowballing, you make an offer of one fifth to one quarter of the lowest possible conceivable value to you for the items listed. The technique works best when a large pile of wildly divergent items is being offered. Items that you are familiar with, but not "gottahave" mainstream to you.

For every once in a while, "they" really just want to get rid of the stuff or must clear the area. Or haven't the faintest clue what their stuff is worth. Or there are legal or familial or medical or estate or bankruptcy or divorce issues.

Or, for one reason or another, you end up as the only one responding to their ads. For some mysterious reason, this seems to dramatically increase your odds of winning.

You will, of course, receive obscene responses almost of all of the time and must not re-respond to them in any way. And certainly never get into a pissing contest. Always do fully agree that your are an opportunistic bottom feeder. Its what you do.

Strangely, most loball acceptances will not attempt to negotiate with you at all. More strategies here.

July 25, 2015
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A curious fact: Any perpetual motion machine that includes a 555 timer is bogus and nonfunctional. No exceptions to this rule have ever been found.

Which saves you bunches of time discrediting a perpetual motion machine, for if a 555 timer is present, there is absolutely no point in continuing. Guaranteed.

After reviewing a bunch of recent candidates, the usual problem is that narrow pulses are exceptionally difficult to properly measure. I've dealt with this here, here, and here.

The key gotcha is that any spike or narrow pulse has an exceptionally high ratio of rms to average value. And even though correctly measuring rms instruments have finally become readily available, the overwhelming majority of lay members of the Church of the Latter Day Crackpots continue to mislead themselves by still using average reading instruments.

Even if you have a "real" rms meter, there's a secondary gotcha called the crest factor that still will nail you to the wall. Multiply two big numbers together and they become a huge number. Waaay beyond anything analog can deal with.

Exceed the crest factor and the instrument will still read deceptively low.

A fascinating supply of totally worthless overunity devices can be found here on a continuous basis. More on pseudoscience bashing here.

July 24, 2015
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A question that might reasonably be asked is "How many of our bajada prehistoric canals are now in use for marijuana cultivation?"

To the best of my knowledge and belief, I feel the answer is zero. The vast majority of the canals presently do not flow or have no usable takein. The few that do currently flow or are capable of are all in obvious or highly visible locations. And managed by ditch bosses who are pillars of their community.

Much more here and its curious origin here. Plus many hundreds of millions of daily progress reports here.

July 23, 2015
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Details on the most likely Goldilocks Exoplanet yet can be found here. "They" are still too far away to know about us for the next 900 years or so, though.

Which raises the obvious dilemma: What if the first and only contact they receive is a perfectly lucid ten second clip of Roller Derby? And exactly how would they deal with Captain Video?

More on exoplanets here and here..

July 22, 2015
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Oops. My Bad.

It turns out that, given enough secret insider stuff and more secret insider stuff to read and write disk files can be made fully available for the Distiller in Acrobat XI.

There are two different approaches.

The problem was ( and remains ) that the abuse potential ( and, of course, the sheer raw power ) of Distiller being able to read or write to any disk file in any language is totally off the wall.

While Distiller does create an internal temp file that can be written to or read from, it is not obvious how you can use this as it gets fully erased after each session.

Instead, you can add a /F to your distiller run command. to gain file read write access. Such as by going to windows-x and then run...

//acrodist /F run

Do this as a single line with a space between the quote and a space between the F and /. You may want to convert this into a desktop shortcut.

Here is an example of some code that compactly runs Gonzo and then makes a layout grid...

 (C:/Users/don/Desktop/dist-FR//gonzo.ps)
  run gonzo begin ps.util.1 begin

 50 50 10 setgrid 40 60 showgrid showpage

This, of course, will only work if your Distiller run shortcut has its F switch flipped.

I'll try to shortly work up demos on our auto-positioning URL generator and our auto image inserters shortly. These can also be found in many of our older .psl files.

July 21, 2015
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Just received a call from an individual apparently over their head on an analog design with problems that seemed to be related to shielding, decoupling, and other "regeneration" stability issues.

But there was a more fundamental problem that I've seen over and over again. The design was for an item that almost certainly was a standard and off the shelf ( albeit fancier and much more expensive ) product in long in use by industry insiders.

What should have been done first was a careful study of who these insiders were and what products and tools they used. Foremost, of course, would be industry insider trade journals, industry shows, and related product catalogs.

Combined with a very careful study of online resources. In this particular case, knowing a lot more about city water supplies should have proven extremely useful.

Free trade journal examples might have included the no-charge list from http://www.freetrademagazines.com/ waste-management-water-supply-magazines/

Much more on product innovation in our Blatant Opportunist column library. Custom consulting available.

July 20, 2015
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Here's a preliminary list of all the hanging canals and their related constructs...

1. VCN1 Veech Canal From middle Veech Canyon to possible P Ranch Fields N 32.64151 W 109.74348 to N 32.64386 W 109.74218 Not yet explored, should be significant.

2. GTC1 Goat Tank Canal From Lower Jacobson Canyon along southern edge of Ledford Mesa N 32.68467 W 109.76160 to N 32.68914 W 109.72106 Apparently still in modern use, difficult access.

3. LDC1 Ledford Tank Canal From Lower Jacobson Canyon along middle of Ledford Mesa. N 32.68454 W 109.76209 to N 32.69198 W 109.72801Apparently still in modern use, difficult access.

4. JAC1 Lower Jacobson Hint ( largely discredited ) N 32.67671 W 109.77610 to N 32.67736 W 109.77472 Aerial evidence became a fence line in hostile terrain.

5. UMC1 Upper Marijilda Delivery Canals N 32.70648 W 109.77932 to N 32.70930 W 109.77709Group of small delivery canals near main Marijilda takein.

6. MAR1 Main Marijilda Canal aka Lebanon Ditch from Marijilda Dam to Lebanon Reservoir N 32.70628 W 109.77702 to N 32.73322 W 109.76149Major prehistoric development, still flowing Modern Use

7. SMB1 Marijilda Southern Feeder Branches N 32.71096 W 109.77108 to N 32.71327 W 109.76696Short delivery and diversion canals south of Main Marijilda

8.MAQU1 Marijilda Aqueduct Delivers between Main Marijilda and High Marijilda 32.72356 W 109.76257 to N 32.72411 W 109.76235 Only known major system aqueduct crosses a saddle.

9. HMC1 High Marijilda Hanging Canal N 32.72410 W 109.76239 to N 32.74113 W 109.74677 Spectacular portion hangs mesa edge 200 feet in the air.

10. SXP1 Sixpack Canal N 32.72290 W 109.76052 to N 32.74449 W 109.73391Branch of Marijilda south of access road, still needs work.

11. HNC1 Henry's Canal N 32.73712 W 109.74229 to N 32.74456 W 109.72996 Southern branch of main Marijilda, portions unexplored.

12. RPC1 Roper Canal N 32.75567 W 109.70885 to N 32.75567 W 109.70885Modern feeder to Roper Lake, presumed mostly prehistoric.

13. RIC1 Rincon Canal N 32.73410 W 109.76325 to N 32.76222 W 109.74402 Marijilda branch possibly becomes Twin West canal.

14. TQC1 Tranquility Canal N 32.75754 W 109.73294 to N 32.77477 W 109.72751Artesian sourced and historic use from presumed original.

15. DPC1 Discovery Park Canal ( vague - still requires verification, ) N 32.79267 W 109.72830 to N 32.79450 W 109.72781 Possible feeder to potential Discovery Park fields.

16. TEC1 Twin East Canal N 32.76068 W 109.73500 to N 32.76472 W 109.73426 Routes UNDER the Lebanon Cemetery, one of two feeders to the TB ponding area.

17. TWC1 Twin West Canal 32.76226 W 109.74374 to N 32.76739 W 109.73803Hanging canal is SECOND feeder to tb ponding area

18. TBP1 TB Ponding Area N 32.76739 W 109.73803 to N 32.76465 W 109.73400Receoves and redistributes TEC1 and TWC1 water. Highly distinctive aerial profile.

19. MFC1 Mystery Feeder N 32.76738 W 109.74366 to N 32.76681 W 109.74181Short Canal segment might tie Deadman or Deadman South to Twin West. Needs more work

20. DMS1 Deadman South N 32.75525 W 109.78008 to N 32.75650 W 109.77712 Unexplored potential canal has strong Acme Mapper presence. Includes mystery alignments.

21. DMC1 Main Deadman Canal N 32.73735 W 109.81291 to N 32.76277 W 109.77392 Still flows in original channel serving cattle tanks. Portions are buried pipeline.

22. WS1 Water Spreader Rock Alignments Such as 32.78883 W 109.73843 and N 32.79273 W 109.75897 and elsewhere. The more obvious of these are CCC, but many, many prehistoric examples also exist.

24. MRG1 Mulch Ring Arrays N 32.78491 W 109.74642 plus many others. Typically 2 feet in diameter by one rock high in groups of 20. Rather common.

25 CKD1 Check Dams with Aprons N 32.77872 W 109.76472 or N 32.78840 W 109.87113 plus many others. Rock diversions across secondary washes are quite common..

26. ALS1 Alberto's Signature N 32.79690 W 109.75485Of the thousands of conflicting CCC structures locally, this one is the only known one autographed in stone.

27. LVC1 Longview canal N 32.78956 W 109.75971 Obvious short wall on otherwise unsupported short canal segment with local destination. Sourcing unknown and unproven.

28. FWD1 Frye Watershed Diversion N 32.74427 W 109.83918 to N 32.74558 W 109.84033 Unproven potentially spectacular watershed crossing seems demanded by HS Canal and others.

29. MFC1 Main Frye Mesa Delivery Canal N 32.74573 W 109.84033 to N 32.75995 W 109.81148. Partially unproven but demanded by Frye Ponding Area, HS Canal, Golf Course, and Robinson Canal.

30. FPA1 Lower Frye Mesa Ponding area. N 32.75995 W 109.81148. Gathers in Frye Mesa braided channels to support HS Canal, Golf Course?, and Roginson Canal.

31. HSC1 HS Canal N 32.75987 W 109.81163 to N 32.75771 W 109.81511. Spectacular hanging and counterflowing structure RETURNS water to Frye Creek, possibly sources Golf Course.

32. LFC1 ( largely discredited ) Lower Frye potential route N 32.76634 W 109.79377 to N 32.77185 W 109.78715Possible route includes wagon road with horseshoes, could feed Blue Ponds.

33. BPC1 Blue Ponds Canal N 32.78118 W 109.77771 to N 32.78064 W 109.77607 Short disused historic pond routing canal may or may not have unproven prehistoric origins.

34. RGC1 Riggs Mesa Area Braided Channels Area of N 32.77763 W 109.78729 to N 32.77831 W 109.78694. Enigmatic channels may be routing between HS Canal and Golf Course Canal.

35. GCC1 Golf Course Canal N 32.79811 W 109.78286 to N 32.79895 W 109.77587 . Major prehistoric canal serviced Daley Estates area, includes hanging portions and mystery structure..

36. TAP1 Twin Artesian Ponds N 32.79956 W 109.78347 and N 32.80264 W 109.78091. No obvious links to Golf Course Canal, but unlikely to be prehistorically ignored.

37. RBC1 Robinson Ranch Canal N 32.75997 W 109.81147 to N 32.79930 W 109.79027. Major hanging canal with strong down = up illusion sources from Lower Frye Mesa ponding area

38. ALC1 Allen Canal N 32.78237 W 109.83540 to N 32.83253 W 109.80507. Major prehistoric canal possibly includes Frye Watershed crossing. Destination remains unknown.

39. ALD1 Allen Dam Failure N 32.83324 W 109.79383 . Back in its water sling (!) days, might have been fed by the Allen Canal.

40. CUC1 Culebra Cut N 32.83567 W 109.79796 to N 32.83560 W 109.79841. Spectacular major large cut in Allen Canal below historic dam.

41. ACF1 Ash Creek Feeder to Mud Springs N 32.79016 W 109.85478 to N 32.79140 W 109.85388. Source for Mud Springs canal via proven spectacular watershed crossing but not yet fully explored.

42. MSC1 Mud Springs Canal N 32.79153 W 109.85375 to N 32.84796 W 109.81105. Major canal system branches to Jernigan, includes several hanging portions. Destination remains unknown.

43. THP1 Troll House strange structure N 32.82538 W 109.82281. Enigmatic pithouse like mud springs canal related structure lacks charcoal.

44. MJB1 Mud Jernigan Branching Point N 32.82765 W 109.81953. Apparent location of the beginning of the Jernigan Canal.

45. MST1 Mud Springs Tank N 32.82766 W 109.81896. Apparently historic construct would seem to demand Mud Springs Canal for its water.

46. JEC1 Jernigan Canal N 32.82765 W 109.81953 to N 32.84131 W 109.81649. One of few canals with obvious destination. Conspicuous hanging portion, habitation sites.

47. LMT Lower Mud Trace ( largely discredited ) N 32.80803 W 109.84448 to N 32.81882 W 109.84093. Aerial images appear to be field verified as a historic two track.

48. STC1 Smith Tank Canal N 32.81870 W 109.84689 to N 32.82055 W 109.84458. Likely has unproved prehistoric original.

49. CSW1 Cluff Southwest Canal N 32.81586 W 109.84971. Branches from the Smith Canal takein on Ash Creek. Still unexplored.

50. CNW1 Cluff Northwest Canal Complex N 32.82494 W 109.84652 to N 32.83635 W 109.84302. Strongly redeveloped canal system includes convincingly authentic prehistoric reaches.

51. MWD1 Merrill Webster Ditch N 32.79771 W 109.87296 to N 32.81310 W 109.86638 . Historically redeveloped canal shows reasonable evidence of unmodified prehistoric origins

52. TGC1 Tugood Canal N 32.80923 W 109.87115 to N 32.82008 W 109.86671. Most impressively pristine of the known hanging canals. Superb restoration candidate.

53. MLC1 Main Lefthand Canal Complex N 32.80850 W 109.91812 to N 32.81680 W 109.91872. Shorter canal segments primarily used for end use delivery

54. LWC1 Lefthand West Canal N 32.82077 W 109.91835 to N 32.82564 W 109.91851. Prehistoric original adapted for historic field reuse.

55. SLC1 South Lefthand Canal ( Needs verification ) 32.83101 W 109.91453 to N 32.83366 W 109.91555. Yet to be verified aerial image

56. LMC1 Lamb Tank Canal N 32.81196 W 109.92310 to N 32.81445 W 109.92266. Likely lefthand source. Additional study required.

57. MR1 ( largely discredited ) Mystery Reach N 32.81793 W 109.90207 to N 32.82478 W 109.90003. Fairly convincing aerial evidence field verifies more as a vehicle two-track.

58. SWC1 Sand Wash Canal N 32.83099 W 109.92604 to N 32.83508 W 109.92274. Ideal short tour candidate has nearly everything including easy access. May be prototype as final channel minuscule

 59. NWD1 Nuttall Watershed Diversion N 32.77471 W 109.95411 to N 32.77774 W 109.95532. Postulated third watershed crossing would supplement Sand Canal water sourcing. Unverified.

60. BSC1 N 32.85049 W 109.94399 to N 32.87226 W 109.92596Apparent scam historic canal from a source unlikely to have been prehistorically ignored.

61. GRD2 The grids Southern examples include N 32.78651 W 109.74353 and N 32.79408 W 109.75260 Rectangular agave farm rock alignments.

62. BDC1 Bandelier Canal N 32.94446 W 109.91120 to N 32.94677 W 109.91317Appears to be deep vee riverine canal unrelated and unlinked to present study area.

63. UFO1 UFO Fish Fillets N 32.81203 W 109.97330 to N 32.82299 W 109.96420Likely a highly atypical CCC project that may or may not have prehistoric origins.

These were numbered arbitrarily more or less from southeast to northwest. We will likely use as an outline for a set of expanded field notes. Much more info here.

July 19, 2015
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Probably the greatest electronic textbook of all time was the Radiotron Designers Handbook. Nearly all of its zillion pages are now obsolete, but free online copies are readily available here.

Many similar references are available through the folks at http://www.tubebooks.org/

Another stunning collection of other historic radio magazine reprints and related items are available through http://www.americanradiohistory.com/

July 18, 2015
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Our 404 extermination process seems to be taking forever. One rude surprise halfway through was that half the 404s are reported by this utility as 500's. Needing a reset to zero.

Best current estimate is that several hundred broken links remain that are repairable.

It appears that the URL noise floor of our website will end up somewhere around three percent. Assuming that everything we can fix does in fact get fixed. Please report any remaining problems.

July 17, 2015
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Either I am looking in the wrong places, or web information on fingerprint longevity seems to be either ambiguous or sorely lacking.

Could a fingerprint under a rock survive in some remnant form eighty years? This might let you separate 80 year old CCC rock projects from our 800 year old prehistoric canals.

Then again, the CCC folks might have consistently used gloves. No mention of this on CSI Gila Bend.

July 16, 2015
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Managed to upload https://www.tinaja.com/blog_excerpts12.shtmlto go with our excerpts13 and excerpts14. Taken together, these should include a historic time line of our hanging canal developments, without needing to plow through all the rest of the whatnu blogs. More on the canals here.

July 15, 2015
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Then there was the agnostic dyslectic insomniac who stayed up all night wondering if there was a dog.  

July 14, 2015
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A question came up as to which of our prehistoric baja hanging canals might be restorable.

The quick answer is very few, owing to multiple owners, some extensive historic revisions, more recent land use, and a lack of available demo water.

But two reasonable candidates would include a third mile of the Sand Canal at N 32.83096 W 109.92607 to N 32.83096 W 109.92607and possibly as much as two miles (!) of the Tugood Canal found beyond N 32.80846 W 109.87176 to N 32.82246 W 109.86579

Both reaches appear pretty much pristine.

July 13, 2015
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As you can tell by all the arrows in my back, I was a pioneer in Book on Demand publishing. BOD or POD.

Such as this document or this one or this one which were first published by using Applewriter on an Apple IIe.

With one curious exception, BOD seems a total failure with no future whatsoever. Reasons include eBooks being infinitely superior on all counts.

The secret hidden reason was the failure for anybody ever to address the crucial needs of economy cutters and binder systems that were sanely enough priced, safe enough and easy enough to use for for one up book sales by individuals.

That exception is the Espresso machine. Whose outrageous pricing, training, and maint is only suitable for such service bureaus as very large bookstores or university libraries.

A typical price list can be found here. Basically, you are looking at $32.50 for a single book with zero quantity discounts.

That price, of course, is B/W only and before any of your profits. Which kinda cuts into the instant availability.

Our available eBooks can be found here.

July 12, 2015
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This 404 detector sometimes may hang, possibly permanently. 

Long delays are usually caused by the queered website taking its good old time responding. Forever delays are likely caused by site glitches such as two URLs in one continuous link.

The simplest way to deal with this is to immediately fix the hanging 404. Then resume your broken 404 search on the others.

Another workaround is to replace the https: in the problem files with https: This creates an intentional and very quickly found error to bypass the problem hanging code.

Naturally, you undo the mistake after everything else gets fixed.

July 11, 2015
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The Barbie Index is a new method of measuring math understanding and competence. Ferinstance, an individual with a BI of 0.7 would have seventy percent of the math capabilities of a Barbie doll. More math stuff here.

July 10, 2015
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Amazingly, five of our prehistoric bajada hanging canals either still flow to this day or at least seem capable of doing so...

 MARIJILDA CANAL - An important feeder
 to the Lebanon Pond from N 32.70600
 W 109.77755 to N 32.73322 W 109.76158.

 ROPER CANAL -Modern feeder to Roper
 Lake believed to mostly follow a prehistoric
 canal route from N 32.74617 W 109.74177
 to N 32.75567 W 109.70885 Portions weer
  realigned along US 191.

 DEADMAN CANAL - Portions here still
  flow in the unmodified original prehistoric
  channel from N 32.73791 W 109.81238
  to N 32.75502 W 109.78938 Part of this
  route is now a disused but still flowing
  buried pipeline.

 LEDFORD CANAL - Believed prehistoric
  original sometimes supplies modern cattle
  tanks from N 32.68455 W 109.75917 to
 32.68989 W 109.73711.Not yet fully
  explored due to difficult access.

 GOAT TANK CANAL - Believed prehistoric
  original sometimes supplies modern cattle
  tanks from N 32.68231 W 109.75879 to   
  32.68556 W 109.72935.Not yet fully
  explored due to difficult access.

July 09, 2015
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Managed to clear a few hundred website 404 errors. Please report any remaining.

By far the worst problem are the bureaucracies and others who delete files or change their names without redirection.. Leaving hundreds or even thousands of 404's web wide. Which, of course, take hundreds of hours to fix. The BLM is by far the most mesmerizingly awful offender.

Apparently, there is a fundamental low limit of "noise 404's" that no website can get under. These are caused by malware, robots, fumble fingered typists, blog referencing, hopeful guesses, and similar attempts. The limit to these uncorrectable 404's would appear to be around three percent for this website. Fortunately, the noise 404's rarely affect any user you care about.

Some tools I've found useful for chasing 404's..

 Raw site logs such as these to give you the
  ratio of fixable and noise 404"s.

 Fancy site logs analysis reports to give you
  the ratio of 404's to valid hits.

 ISP reports that give you file popularity.
  Popular files are more likely to affect more
  users more often. And thus should have
  maint priority.

 404 detection services such as this one and
 this one.

Persistent "unremovable" 404's may be a part of an include rather than the main file! Watch out for duplicate or multiple identical 404's or they will return to haunt you.

It may pay to arbitrarily check 200 links per day by hand as a backup check.

Do note that active 404 hunting can significantly alter your actual web use reports, making them appear excessive. More here.

July 08, 2015
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While I was repairing 404's, I also had to take a few web glitches out and replace them with shiny new ones..

Our least interesting rather most obsolete file of Resbin76 remains under relentless DOS attack. It has to be special ordered via email. My best guess as to what is coming down is somehow confusing my /glib directory with GLib in the C language.

Managed to replace the long missing Muse143 file with a fresh copy, but not up to most of the fully restored Muse standards. Two of our hanging canal maps had to be temporarily placed under NDA status and require email download approval.

My PostScript videos remain available here but the ultra sized sourcecode requires your receiving a link via email.

I got tired of cleaning up the mess BLM consistently leaves on the web, so most of their links on my site are now generic.

July 07, 2015
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That's not a bug, its a feature.

The latest revisions of Google Chrome arbitrarily and erratically switch to a "black screen of death". Which is both scary and maddeningly infuriating.

One apparent cure is to go to the upper right Chrome "jail" icon, scroll down to "Relaunch Chrome in Desktop Mode"

Apparently there are now two Chrome modes, regular and dark black. The latter intended for Windows 8.

July 06, 2015
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Last month's pc pricing posts remain flat and still show a continuing reversal of traditional steadily declining prices.

Once again, a price of twenty five cents per peak panel watt needs reliably achieved before pv anything can ever hope to approach eventually becoming renewable or sustainable.

More here and here.

July 05, 2015
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While some electronic music chips have ceased production, a wide variety of interesting devices remains available from Thatcorp. They also have dozens of superb ap notes.

July 04, 2015
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Further expanded and improved our Classic Reprints page. There are now many hundreds of original projects now included.

While nearly compete, many Byte, Kilobaud, and Modern Electronics titles are not quite yet available. And some really obscure stuff ( Such as the Goodyear AEEM"s and the Cave Crawler's Gazette ) will likely take forever.

I am still obsessively trying to track down the magic lamp story, although it clearly is not mine. Whenever.

I guess this was my best pseudoscience bashing effort and the second best ever degubbing. The best, of course, was the LAN of the nineties. The EIGHTEEN nineties!

July 03a, 2015
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The first photos of the probable location of the long sought after Veech Prehistoric Hanging Canal ( P Ranch area ) can likely be found here, here, and here.

July 03, 2015
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While the very first photos of the newly known and verified TuGood prehistoric Canal ( Merrill area ) can be found here, here, and here. Much more here and here.

July 02, 2015
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A stunning collection of data sheets and such for most transistors, vacuum tubes, diodes, and pacific rim semiconductors can be found here.

July 01, 2015
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One of the most stunning illusions in our prehistoric bajada hanging canals is the consistent "water flows uphill" illusion. Typically, a canal flows DOWN to the highest point on a hill or mesa! And does so brilliantly while fully preserving any and all physical laws.

Typically, seeing is not believing. "They" are playing with your mind. Obviously, the canal has to start somewhere higher than the highest present elevation. Such opportunities, of course, abound with a mountain at your back.

The engineering sophistication to pull this off staggers the imagination. "They" apparently realized that the canals should always be on the highest terrain to maximize the water potential energy, and thus to allow the longest possible delivery distances. A summary here. Plus bunches more here. Field mice welcome. As are Daddy Warbucks types and drone operators.

June 30, 2015
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Win a few, loose a few. Typically more than nine out of ten of our potential hanging canal candidates end up "real" and world class upon more detailed investigation. But I've decided to include the losers in our directories as well for completeness and to discourage re plowing old ground.

After dozens of fruitless trips and chasing many rumors, it appears the Veech Canal in the P Ranch area is likely quite real. I still have not ground truthed it, but it clearly seems to be at N 32.64294 W 109.74269 And credible witnesses seem to now abound, both within and outside of Coronado National Forest.

There do seem to be some nearby water spreaders to the east that may or may not be prehistoric and may or may not be CCC. The access route seems brushy and over half a mile from the nearest 4WD track. This might end up as an interesting ATV project. As well as a drone candidate.

The spectacular but little visited Veech Canyon appears to be a seasonal water source that was gathered and routed further north to yet undiscovered fields in the P ranch area.

Meanwhile, what looked like a potential canal on Acme Mapper in the lower Jacobson Canyon area with credible location and slope apparently turned into a plain old fence line in rather canal hostile territory. A summary here. Plus bunches more here.

Field mice welcome. As are Daddy Warbucks and drone operators.

June 29, 2015
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When they marionette shrimp, how do they tie all those little strings on?

June 28, 2015
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Added some more of my Popular Electronics projects and tutorials to our Classic Reprints library... 

low cost decimal counter
electronic stopwatch
pitch reference
digital voltmeter
frequency counter
Psychedelia color organ
two tone alarm
Nixie decimal counter
no bounce pushbutton

100kHz frequency standard
shift register signal injector
mini dvm psychtone
digi viewer
electronic music intro
electronic music component
pitch standards
pitch generators

simplified ASCI keyboard
cmos microlab
electronic music keyboards
electronic music keying & vcas
electronic music timber & voicing
music synthesizers
music envelope generators
April hobby scene
music modules
understanding active filters


six cmos circuits

tvt6 video display
hex to ascii converter

This should nearly complete the PE restorations. Other classic reprints can be found here, and these should shortly be added.

June 27, 2015
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Our prehistoric bajada hanging canal study has apparently now gone to an unprecedented "beyond beyond beyond".Read the summary here and the ongoing progress here. And follow the emerging story right here

One new but still unverified discovery can be found here And another one here. Possibly bringing the apparent totals to FOURTY THREE canals of total length more than ONE HUNDRED kilometers! Built by moving one rock at a time by hand in the 1250 to 1450 time span. Possibly 100 man years or more in the construction!

Your assistance is desperately needed in this world class scientific research as GPS field mice, as a drone and operator, as an ATV escort, with funding, or simply spreading the word on these clearly world class discoveries. Lecture opportunities on request.

June 26, 2015
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I think I have the new Google search working. Apparently it was choking on some ancient .asp commands. Please report any remaining problems. Here is an example of a working shtml search box include to which you have added your own message...

 <table cellspacing="0" width="389"<tr>>
 <td width="58"></td>  <td width="347">
 <table width="293" border="1"
 cellspacing="3"><tr> <td align="center"
 valign="middle"width="277"
 bgcolor='#33FFCC' onmouseover=
 "this.bgColor='#00CC99'"
 onmouseout="this.bgColor='#33FFCC'">>

 <script> ( Google code goes here ) </script>  <gcse:search></gcse:search>
 Your search title goes here </td>

You get your Google code here and you put this in your /includes folder. Here is how you call the code for each page you want the search box to appear...

 <!--#include virtual=
 "/includes/searchnamehere.shtml"-->

June 25, 2015
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Tracing in "raw" Postscript I'm also exploring restoring Linotype area schematics and stuff up to "perfect" PostScript stroke artwork with ridiculously smaller file sizes. So far, this looks very promising for certain smaller schematics and stuff but appears to be enormously time and labor intensive.

Update: Adobe newly demands a //acrodist /F from the command line to read or write disk files in Distiller. The trace process should eventually go something like this....

 1. Make a mangy .JPG file using Acrobat's
 save as other feature. Correct any gross    
  features in Paint and Imageview32 such as
  tilts, smearps, and  dropouts. But only the
  really terrible stuff.

 2. Start a Gonzo Utilities based PostScript
  ASCII text workfile. Convert the above
  mangy .jpg file into an image in your workfile
  following your gonzo disk reads. Bracket
  your file with well marked conditional save
  or saves so you can turn it on and off.
  Much more on PostScript here and here.

 3. Create an optional and following conditional
  conditional save of a background tint layer. Use
  transparency with caution if you want to fade
  the original since transparency commands will
  differ in GhostScript and Distiller.

 4. Create a third or fourth and following
  conditional save of Gonzo's setgrid and
  showgrid commands. This gives you a
  controllable additional level to your trace.

 5. Create a fourth or fifth and following
  conditional   level of your actual trace.
  Make up glyphs and position them as
  needed to complete your new efficient
  and superbly appearing trace.

 6. Once you have a perfect overlay, you
 can eliminate the original and grid layers
  to a new compact PostScript  file.
  Convert it back to .pdf

Note that Ghostscript gives you an "almost" real time image that is "almost" but not quite WYSWYG.

This tracing scheme should have all sorts of other uses as well, despite its time needs, somewhat trailing edge technology, and steep learning curve.

If you have to, you can insert a full or partial copy of gonzo.ps into your final file so that  distiller will not choke on it. This is a fairly small file addition that would still keep you way ahead of any other scheme that I know of. Be cautious with transparency if you do this..

Once the figures are restored, perfect text can be added elsewhere as needed. How much of this you can do depends, of course, on the nature of the original material and how successful the scans were.

If you have control over the subject material, you can also add or restore more background tints as well as correcting typos, improving fonts and typography and such. Or even add links. Note that links are easy to add in Ghostscript, but require postproc in Distiller unless you use the -F file read option in Acrobat X or higher.

The usual reminder that you should either have all IP rights to the original material, or that the history of the IP rights are exceptionally murky, or that the total expected future value of the material is well below the attention horizon from any major current publisher.

I'll try to work up some sourcecode examples as time permits. Custom consulting available.

June 24, 2015
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Uh, whoops. Our website custom search seems to have broken, likely owing to major changes Google has made in improved services.

We are working on fixing it. Part of the problem seems to be some ancient .asp dreg files on the website. Some of the new stuff sort of works, but I am hoping to find a workaround that does need changing many hundreds of website files.

Sorry about that.

June 23, 2015
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A disconcertment. I'm in the process of restoring many of my Popular Electronics stories to our Classic Reprints page and can't seem to find one of my major ongoing keyboard construction projects.

This was a follow up to my April 74 PE story in which I picked up a brand new 2376 encoder, sent the story to PE, offered well selling kits on it, and even put it on the cover and inside my TV Typewriter Cookbook.

The 2376 was a PMOS scanning device that offered 2 key rollover, needed far fewer components, and ridiculously simplified circuit board layouts at a price of needing a second -12 volt supply, This eventually got replaced by the single supply NMOS KR9600. And later on got totally obsoleted by low cost programmable Microcontrollers.

I could find no evidence that its story ever appeared in PE! Possibly it appeared in one of their quarterly project summaries, but I simply do not remember and have not been able to find a trace of this magazine story.

The original story copies do seem long gone. Your help?

June 22, 2015
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Rediscovered these early "lost" Radio Electronics columns...

dotnbar generator
meter display decimal counter
nine digital instruments
integrated logic circuits

One was the first integrated circuit color tv convergence generator project and another pair involved the first $10 decimal counter modules.

June 21, 2015
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Added some of my Modern Electronics projects and the first Hardware Hacker series to our Classic Reprints library...

absolute reset update

hhack 8_85.pdf
hhack_9_85.pdf
hhack_10_85.pdf
hhack_11_85.pdf

hhack_1_86.pdf
hhack_2_86.pdf
hhack_3_86.pdf
hhack_4_86.pdf
hhack_5_86.pdf
hhack_6_86.pdf
hhack_7_86.pdf
hhack_8_86.pdf
hhack_9_86.pdf
hhack_10_86.pdf
hhack_11_86.pdf
hhack_12_86.pdf

hhack_1_87.pdf
hhack_2_87.pdf

Thanks to my Gonzo Utilities, Applewriter, and the Laserwriter, these were the first high quality author generated final artwork columns anyplace, ever.

June 20, 2015
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While the overwhelming majority of our prehistoric hanging canals lie on Arizona State Lands, many of them actually originate with takeins on Coronado National Forest streams.

Typically, a canal might start with a short CNF original reach only to continue primarily on state, or rarely, BLM or private lands.

Here are some of the more crucial research problems on CNF lands that need immediate attention:

 (1) Seek evidence of the takein and exact
 location route of   the Mud Springs Canal
 between N 32.78614 W 109.85518  and 
 N 32.79148 W 109.85364. Portions may
 have been obliterated by the 1983 Octave
  tropical storm. The route further north is
  well defined and well researched for nearly
  all of its six miles http://mapper.acme.com/

 (2) Determine feasibility of a watershed
  crossing to prehistoric engineering standards
  between Frye Creek and Spring Canyon
  from N 32.74346 W 109.83977 to 
  N 32.74468 W 109.83844 to 
  N 32.74545 W 109.84044. Seek out
  proof that such a route in fact existed. Other
  proven canal constructs would appear to
  demand such a routing. Notably Robinson
  Ditch, HS Canal, and Golf Course Canal.
  Other area watershed transits have been
  fully established .http://mapper.acme.com/

 (3) Seek out evidence of a prehistoric canal
  underlying the modern Frye Mesa Tank
  water line from N 32.74575 W 109.8403
  to  N 32.75228 W 109.83822 to 
  N 32.75522 W 109.83547. Other existing
  canals downstream demand this routing.

 (4) Determine if there is any evidence of a
  prehistoric watershed diversion crossing
  underneath the Nuttall tank at
 N 32.77787 W 109.95533. Sand Canal
  would seem to strongly require this as a
  water source. http://mapper.acme.com/

Start  here and here for more details. Your assistance welcomed.

June 19, 2015
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Added some more of my Popular Electronics projects and tutorials to our Classic Reprints library...

 musette color organ
 what are ics?
 ic amplifier
 square deal
 binary counter
 logic demon
 metal locater
 amligner

 electronic dice 
 lil riche
 ic freq meter
 prof pow supply
 transistor tester
 linear ic aps
 ic testone

June 18, 2015
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Approximately one third of all our local prehistoric bajada hanging canals were apparently reworked as historic projects in some manor or another. To date, no strong evidence has been found of any historic bajada canal use that did not seem to have a "steal the plans" or "dig out an old ditch" prehistoric precedent.

Here is a summary of some of the rebuilds...

 CLUFF NW - Major historic development
 includes large rectangular cardinal oriented
  fields, tail water runs, Y-Weirs, siphons,
  and large ditches. Short runs to prehistoric
  standards appear to be a reused part of
  earlier constructs.

 MARIJILDA DITCH - Was paved with
  puddled concrete aggregate and runs to
  this day to supply the Lebanon Ponds
  and Roper Lake.

 FRYE TANK - Modern pipeline appears
 to exactly follow a prehistoric supply canal
 once feeding Robinson Ditch and the
 HS canal.

 TRANQUILITY - Portions paved with
  concrete aggregate to supply Cook
  Reservoir from a likely artesian source. .

 ROBINSON - Name usurped but little
  modernized longer reach appears to
  have supplied cattle tanks.

 MINOR WEBSTER - Mix of reaches
 to prehistoric standards and modern
 deeper vee constructs with an adjacent
 maint road.

 LEDFORD & GOAT - Historic
 adaptions still supply numerous cattle
 tanks from a Jacobson source..

 DEADMAN - Adapted as a Thatcher
 water source but has fallen into disuse.
 Water still flows in its original prehistoric
  routings.

 ALLEN - May have supplied Allen Reservoir
 in modern times. Has a clearly prehistoric
 origin and major Culebra Cut excavations.

 SMITH CANAL - Historically used to
 replenish a pair of Smith Tanks. While
 prehistoric evidence remains fairly weak,
  reuse clearly seems likely.

Amazingly, Goat, Ledford, Marijilda, and Deadman still often flow to this day, largely in their original prehistoric channels.

June 17, 2015
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Once again expanded and updated our Gila Valley Dayhikes page. We are now up to 426 main entries, most of which now include GPS location links.

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

June 16, 2015
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Used this and this to try and eliminate most internal website 404's. Please report any you may find remaining.

One disconcertment of this 404 detector is that it vanishes when there are no 404's to report. Poof. Gone.

And one subtle problem in chasing down errors is that if an error is inside an  include file, it can keep on reinserting itself in pages that you thought you fixed. Over and over again.

A reminder about an important rule: NEVER eliminate a web page! There could be hundreds or even thousands of sites elsewhere on the web referencing it forever. Here is some substitute redirect code..

 <html> <head>
 <meta http-equiv="refresh"
 content="1;url=http://example.com/">
 <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5;
 url=http://example.com/">
 </head> <body>
 Taking you to our new website.
 </body> </html>

Be sure to place a second or more time delay (the number in the content code) so your users back arrows will still work properly.

Because of an access glitch, Resbin74 remains 404'ed. You can email me for a working copy if you really need it.

June 15, 2015
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Current plans are to rename most of the classic Popular Electronics files and complete the set to our Classic Reprints page. Several dozen remain to be scanned and reformatted. A few files have been updated and placed. Keep checking back for the rest of the gang.

June 14, 2015
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We were playing with a new toy last night at TFD - a no hassle smoke generator 400 from Bullex. This nearly instantly fills a large room with murky white smoke of selectable density that supposedly is residue free and safely breathable. It completely blows away the old smoke grenades.

Primary uses are learning ventilation, search and rescue, mask confidence, and disorientation drills. Cost is in the $3000 and $25 per use hour range.

June 13, 2015
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Another interesting feature of http://www.web-site-map.com/ is that it can automatically detect many internal broken links. When it is done generating a site map, it gives you a choice of downloading either a site map or a broken link list. Either ends up in your downloads file.

There's actually two different sites. http://www.web-site-map.com mostly generates site maps but also provides a list of broken 404 internal site errors. While http://www.brokenlinkcheck.com/ will find both internal and external 404 problems for you.

Catching errors and bad links is super important for any website. Obviously, you should test and test often. You also should use a second pair of eyes when and where possible, because they will see things that you won't.

One typo trick I've found very useful is to use the spell checker in most email programs to catch web typos. Simply copy a portion of a web page to your email without actually sending it to yourself. Many typos will be clearly marked and can then be repaired in your main web editing software.

When looking for broken 404's in Dreamweaver or whatever. Be sure to search the full sourcecode and not just the text! And recognize that the sourcecode generation may end up different from its generating results. Feriostance, a CCC"might find all URL links ending in CCC.

Your log files ultimately can find all of your internal 404's.Recognize that different techniques are needed to spot bad links with HTML related filenames compared to .pdf files.

You should always demand raw log files from your ISP over and above any more convenient error reporting services. With Fat Cow, they have a great Webalizer in their visitor stats page, as well as actual log files reachable here.

The Webalizer quickly compares valid downloads to internal 404's. Some of these may be fumble fingered typing by your users, but anything above one percent is suspect and needs dealt with by the sitemap reports.

One minor hassle is that the log files are compressed in a GZ file format. This only lets you view the first few hundred entries before going compressed on you. I've found many GZ readers to be malware or worse, and yet seem to be able to get the gz online services to work.

Another infuriation to watch for is that the same 404 may repeat more than once in your web code, so repeat trips may be needed to catch them all.

June 12, 2015
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Many SEO or Search Engine Optimization fee based promises are outright scams, and even the legitimate ones are very unlikely to do you much good in the area of site popularity. SEO algorithms are constantly being improved to minimize any gaming of the results.

BUT - Google themselves has some free SEO tools that simply must not be ignored and must become an essential part of your website.

See https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ for more details on these services. Two key things for you to do are to join their Search Console using their Add a Property feature and to add a xml Sitemap to your website home page. 

To add your website, you have to prove you in fact have root access admin privileges. Google gives you four ways to do this. The easiest way is for them to give you a short HTML verification file to upload to your website. Followed by clicking on Verify.

This file may have a name something like googled1e5th....24.html and will only be a few bytes long. I did find one frustrating gotcha: Be sure you only use the first one of these to end up in your downloads folder! For ....5th24.html will get validated, but ....5th24 (1).html will not!

You also will need to load a xml sitemap file to your website home page. This sitemap is basically a list of the internal url's your home page will make available to your users. Format details can be found at http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html

Basically this is a plain old ASCII textfile that starts with an xml version line followed by a pair of <urlset> brackets. Inside these is a pair of <url> brackets. Inside of which is a list of linked urls, each one on a separate line and bounded by <loc> brackets.

My own sitemap can be found here.

You can create your own sitemap by hand. Two free shorter sitemap generators are web available here and here. These have a max limit at or near 500 url's, while this site will generate unlimited urls for you at a fairly nominal fee.

Apparently these only work on .html related files. .pdf files will need your separate treatment.

Once again, joining the Google Search Console and providing a sitemap simply cannot be ignored. These should be on your "must do" list.

June 11, 2015
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I'm in the process of evaluating several newer link checkers. But https://validator.w3.org remains quite good at catching missing or multiple anchors.

June 10, 2015
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I think I now have most, and probably all, of my Radio Electronics reprints added to my Classic Reprints page...

tic tac tronix
binary demo
liquid crystal display
darkroom timer by stops
logic demo
super clock
function generator
grinchwal
low cost keyboard
ascii encoder

experiments with wwvb
experiments with wwvb
tv typewriter
active filters
what god is cmos?
regulated power supply
electronic music ics
what is a a rom?
improved ASCII encoder
active bandpass filters

mos character generators
time on a tv
random access memory
mos shift registers
pseudorandom circuits
inside opamps
digital sinewaves

The overwhelming biggie here, of course, was the TV Typewriter. Considered by many to be the opening shot fired in the personal computer revolution. But several other unusual or beyond bleeding edge projects did appear here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Most of the restorations are only medium quality, owing to the time and cost involved. But the Super Clock was done as a full restoration. Other full restorations await your participation as a sponsor.

There are a few minor glitches that may include a missing page or two. Please email me some original scans if you run across any of these.

June 09, 2015
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Renesis has a new and free downloadable ebook on embedded systems available.

June 08, 2015
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There's a cute and cheap new product that purportedly increases the life of ordinary batteries. But the 8X life extension claims appear to me and to others to be outrageously excessive. The unit is basically a switchmode regulator that steps a cell's failing voltage up to 1.5 volts.

This should work, but whether it can provide a useful life extension under normal use conditions remains to be proven. First, the inverter will have efficiency losses. Second, the cell has shelf life effects that are more or less independent of actual current consumption. Third, as the battery voltage drops, the current demand has to increase, accelerating end of life processes.

The device appears here, comments here, and a highly critical video here.

It should be possible to dramatically increase the battery life of any electronic system that uses an input regulator simply by designing the regulator to have as low a dropout voltage as possible. This, of course, will only work for the portion of the device that is providing electronic services, rather than heat, motion, or light.

I have long wondered what would happen if you returned a small portion of the battery energy in the form of brief high current pulses of short duty cycle. Conceivably, this could discourage polarization and is somewhat similar to how electroplaters purposely reverse their current every now and then to make results nicer.

This might explain some of the battery based perpetual motion claims that involved high current spikes. After all, if so much as a tiny fraction of the battery case remains, energy should theoretically remain chemically recoverable. The effectiveness, though, would be highly dependent on exact battery chemistry.

Whether reverse pulsing will work at all or can be made cost effective remains to be seen. But it does seem like an interesting and totally legitimate area to study.

More details here and here.

June 07, 2015
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I have long been overly enameled of binary chain codes. These are a recirculating code of 2^N states that have the unique property that any N bits tells you its exact position in the entire N bit code sequence.

It turns out there is a possibly related De Bruijn Sequence, which someone has used to crack most any traditional garage door opener in four seconds flat. By using an out-of-date kid's toy.

Details here and a video here and a discussion here.

June 06, 2015
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I think I now have most, and probably all, of my Electronics World reprints added to my Classic Reprints page...

solid state color organ
capacitance nomogram
revised color organ
four layer diodes
new scr developments
chirp radar
multipurpose electronic control
heatsink designs
semiconductor tv sweeps  
light dimmer control

optical links
new ic availabilities
amps using switching techniques
nanosecond pulses
using low cost_ cs
gcs darkroom timer
Varactor diodes
insulated gate transistors
switch mode power
linear ics

metal locators
opamp circuits
constant current diodes
audio integrated circuits
extended resonance curves
differential amplifiers
plastic power transistors
decimal counting
thermoluminescence
predetermining coun

add sub mos counter counter

Good old number one can be found here and the two best restorations here and here. The strangely most controversial one was here, apparently being too far ahead of the curve. This one took a lot longer to take off than I expected, but take off it did. And the story was pretty much right on.

Most of the restorations are only moderate quality, with the exception of this and this, which are detailed full total restorations. Full restorations of the others, when even possible at all, would take exceptional time and effort and demand outside funding or sponsorship.

June 05, 2015
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The fire service sure has made a lot of major improvements lately. But three items still sorely needed are...

 SMART FIRE HOSE - Whose indestructible
 RFID number can be read in the dark from
 three feet away or preferably an entire hose
 bed at a time. After being drug six blocks
 and otherwise abused.

 THE PITOT GAUGE HAS GOT TO GO --
 Give us a no-bullshit pipe that measures pumper
  hydrant flow to 2500 GPM and 350 PSI.
  Wirelessly plus eight inch backlit verbal digits.

 SOLITON PULSE FIRE STREAMS -- High
 tech should give much longer range and much
 tighter patterns.

June 04, 2015
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Many newspapers and other media sources have taken to forcing exceptionally annoying polls on you before they will give you any free content.

The best defense I know around these is to make their survey results totally useless.

Do this by (1) always lying like a rug, (2) always picking the most wildly inappropriate response, and (3) always using fake or absurdly ridiculous company names as your favorites.

June 03, 2015
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Two more additions to our classic reprints page.

 The Optical Link - a New Circuit Tool
 Integrated Circuits - What's Available?

June 02, 2015
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Canal #41 of our Prehistoric Hanging Bajada Canals has just been located! It is tentatively called the Togood Canal and would appear to bring the potential length totals of this largely unknown and vastly understudied world class archaeological engineering wonder well beyond sixty miles (!) or ninety six kilometers.

This one is just west of the Cluff Ponds area and is the fifth candidate canal in this immediate region. Its known portions are located here, with its potential reach here. Ranging from a projected shared takein with the Minor Webster Ditch in the Shingle Mill Canyon area to potential ag fields destination area somewhere in a still unlocated Cluff Ponds area.

Finding the actual takein point may prove difficult to impossible, as it  may have been obliterated by the 1983 Octave tropical storm.

The canal is "medium" sized with a one meter width, a ten cm depth and a total length projected to be in the three to four mile class. The visited portion of the terrain is exceptionally benign, meaning that there are no presently observed hanging portions, nor any apparent need for them. In general, the hanging portions are only used when the route becomes difficult and there is a need to make the slope independent of the immediate terrain.

Further, the 4WD access, while long, is very mild and the foot travel is largely trivial. Portions also have rather little in the way of brush, making this an ideal candidate for drone debugging.

There seems to have been very little historical development interest in this area, so Togood appears to be genuinely prehistoric with at least some portions exceptionally well preserved.

Significantly, this new find averages a mere 700 feet west of the Minor Webster Ditch and clearly adds credibility to the premise that Minor Webster was in fact "steal the plans" and did have a prehistoric precedent. The two "odd" eastern markers here show the Minor Webster relation to this new find.

The area is on posted state land on the far side of posted ranch property, so the disturbance factor presently appears surprisingly minimal. As with most canals in the area, artifacts are largely unpresent. There is minor interference from CCC boondoggles.

Unfortunately, a camera battery was dead, so proof still lies in the "sources close to an associate of the barber of a usually reliable spokesperson" genre.

Immediate tasks are obviously to replace the battery, to seek out possible destination fields, to find any Minor Webster branching, and to try and scam some drone funding. There are two homes for sale nearby ( one of them stunningly beautiful ) that sure would make dandy field camps.

The find is profound enough to possibly alter the focus of the entire hanging canal bajada study and possibly even demand that portions of southwestern archaeology be rewritten or, at the very least, reevaluated.

Your help with both funding and as field mice are welcome. This is a seldom seen opportunity for just about anyone to participate in leading edge world class scientific research. Possibly right in your own front yard.

June 01, 2015
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Two more additions to our classic reprints page.

 Semiconductor Sweeps for Large Screen TV's
 Solid State Dimmers and Power Tool Controls

May 31, 2015
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A new collection of free or low cost fonts can be found here. Our own classic approach to free fronts can be found here. These were really my insider tricks that let you take existing fonts and do all sorts of non-obvious things with them.

May 30, 2015
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We are continuing to add to our classic reprints page. Some of the newest additions or improvements include...

Lil Dusker
LDR Color Organ
Tools for the Electronic Hobbies
Pro Meter Faces
Dymwatt

Parts Profiles1
Simplified Color Organ 2
New SCR Developments
Chirp - a new radar technique
Multipurpose Electronic Control
Light Dimmer & Power Tool Control

Thermoluminescence
Paleomagnetism & Archaeomagnetism

We are also switching to coverage by magazine and standardizing the file names. This transition will take a while. Keep checking here for the latest updates.

May 29, 2015
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Here's yet another hanging canal cloud project.

This Acme Mapper image suggests yet another possible major hanging canal but has not yet been field verified. Google Earth supports a credible slope.

Go to  N 32.81714 W 109.86764, explore north and south, and evaluate the potential for this being real. Take relevant photos Try to establish a takein point and the destination fields.

More on these mind blowingly spectacular bajada hanging canals here.

May 28, 2015
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Added a Neely Tecoatles paper to our hanging canal resources.

May 27, 2015
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Managed to upload our Little Dusker classic reprint from the September 1965 Popular Electronics.

Other classic reprints can be found here.

May 26, 2015
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I continue to be utterly amazed that new bajads prehistoric canals are continuing to be found. To date, we have something like 41 candidates of which 33 are field verified and only three rejected as old wagon roads or whatever. ( Points off for horse shoes! ) The rest await independent opinion and verification.

Total length of the hanging bajada canals is rapidly approaching sixty miles! This is clearly beyond beyond.

The latest new candidate is here. It seems to have acceptable Acme Mapper imagery, length, and reasonable Google Earth slope. But still awaits ground proof.

Much more here. Your assistance welcome.

May 25, 2015
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For a decade now, cavers have been concerned over the white nose syndrome that has been wiping out US bat populations.

The fungi prevents the bat from hibernating properly, and they run out of energy before they run out of winter.

Apparently a new discovery of a bacterial treatment holds tremendous promise for easing the problem.

News here, the paper here, and a discussion here.

In the middle of all this is Bat Conversion International. Plus, of course, the National Speleological Society.

BTW, the word "decimation" really only means one tenth of what you think it does.

May 24, 2015
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A number of methods to bypass the security on an Acrobat PDF file can be found here.

Perhaps the simplest is to drag and drop the file into Chrome and then print to a new PDF file.

Note that a new text recognition trip through real Acrobat will be needed to restore document searchibility.

May 23, 2015
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Those plastic pins that lock tubes of integrated circuits can be very frustrating to deal with. But a plain old dinner fork works just fine!

May 22, 2015
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Yet another eBay example of symmetric one point perspective can be found here. As usual, it applies our Architect's Perspective, Auto Vignetting Backgrounder, and the Bitmap Typewriter.

The image was "symmetrisized" a tad by mirroring the left edge. A dot matrix character generator was also directly faked in Paint.

There's another obscure trick here. The grid work was enough out of focus to make it unacceptable, so a "Moire" stunt was used to entirely fake the grid work from whole cloth.

Being perspective, things have to uniformly get smaller the further into the image you go. But still remain pixel locked!. Getting something acceptably credible can be tricky. Here is how a locked semilog grid got faked...

 4 rows of 3 metal pixels and 3 hole pixels
 4 rows of 4 metal pixels and 3 hole pixels
 4 rows of 4 metal pixels and 4 hole pixels
 4 rows of 5 metal pixels and 4 hole pixels
 4 rows of 5 metal pixels and 5 hole pixels
 4 rows of 6 metal pixels and 5 hole pixels

Yeah, its totally bogus and totally fake. But, with some adjustment, it don't look half bad. Consulting services available.

May 21, 2015
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Because of a glitch, it became necessary to remove RESBN76.PDF from our website. Please email me if you need a revised copy.

May 20, 2015
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The prehistoric engineering behind our local bajada hanging canals continues to utterly astound me. Surely not all of this could be coincidence...

 HANGING INDEPENDENCE - Hanging a
 canal makes its slope largely independent of
 terrain.

 EXTREME ENERGY EFFICIENCY -
  Absolute minimum cuts, fills, and sizing except
  where it is absolutely otherwise called for.

 WATERSHED CROSSINGS - Several
  instances of major ridges are being crossed
  at absolutely optimal locations.

 HIGHEST TOPOGRAPHY - Numerous
  occurrences of the canals apparently was
  purposely routed to the HIGHEST possible
  local topography in many instances. Especially
 on Deadman Mesa, Mud Crossover, and
  middle Minor Webster.

 NO MISTAKES - Entire system seems both
  complete and optimal. And literally appears
  to exploit every drop of Mt. Graham water.

 OPTIMAL SLOPE - Is amazingly consistent
 over long distances. Also quite straight, but
 never quite cardinal or precisely aligned.

  EVOLVED RAPIDLY IN PLACE? -
  While Hohokam influence appears significant,
  the bajads systems ended up doing so much
  more in so little time,

 SIMILAR EXAMPLES RARE - Possibly in
 Tularosa NM, Hierve el Agua, and the island
  of Maderia. Relationships unlikely.

 UNIQUE MT. GRAHAM EXPLOITATION -
  This is the highest Arizona mountain measured
  from its base. It also has more north running
  streams than most others.

 EXTREME HANGING EXAMPLES - While
 only a few feet of elevation is rneeded to "hang"
 a canal for a slope independent of terrain,
  examples as high as 200 feet above the
  regional drainage terrain exist. -

 NO OBVIOUS SURVEY TOOLS - Which
 suggests in situ use of pilot structures and static
 water level measurement techniques.

 HISTORIC "STEAL THE PLANS" - Or
 "Borrow the Blueprints. Virtually all bajada
 historic canals seem to be "Dig out an old
 Ditch" adaptions or partial uses of prehistoric
 originals.

 COUNTERFLOW EXAMPLES - When
 needed, canals flow "into" the typography
 rather than along it with it. This technique
 is particularly handy for wash crossings,
 but also sees spectacular use in the HS
 Canal return the Frye Creek.

 TWO OR THREE WAY SWITCHING -
  Done between watersheds at absolutely
  optimal locations.

 HUGE CONSTRUCTS - Despite minimal
 construction energy being the sought after
  norm, very large builds exist, notably the
  HS Canal, the Marijilda Aqueduct and
  the Culebra Cut.

May 18, 2015
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Previous explorations of the Minor Webster Ditch strongly suggested historical construction or rework and seemed to lack any strongly compelling evidence of a previous bajada hanging canal prehistoric origin.

A premise has been that virtually all historic bajada canals had "steal the plans" or "borrow the blueprints" or "dig out an old ditch" prehistoric precedents. Recent evidence for the Cluff NW canal complex strongly supported shorter largely unmodified segments of prehistoric size, slope, and construction energy. Until yesterday, the Minor Webster Ditch seemed to lack potentially convincing evidence of a prehistoric origin.

Explored portions of the canal revealed large and deep cuts, extreme construction energy inefficiency, the presence of a maint road, and even its very name clearly supported strong historic use.

But yesterday's explorations near N 32.81102 W 109.86749 revealed a significant canal reach whose slope, size, patina, and construction energy appears totally indistinguishable from similar prehistoric constructs without historic intervention. Such reaches would appear extremely unlikely were they not in fact a genuine prehistoric precedent.

Typical photos appear here, here, and here. While remarkably well preserved, there is some significant erosion damage near N 32.81102 W 109.86749. The destination remains unexplored and unknown. Complicating matters is that the canal appears to be about to run out of State Land and headed to a newer high value home at N 32.81413 W 109.86466.

May 17, 2015
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Of the four known major bajada canal complexes in the Cluff Ponds area, Mud Springs has no known obvious examples of historic reuse, and is thus almost unquestionably prehistoric.

The Minor Webster Ditch System was just discovered to have significant reaches that appear indistinguishable from prehistoric origins. Based on construction energy, slope, size, apparent purposes, and patina.

The Cluff NW complex also was recently discovered to have partial reaches that also appear indistinguishable to prehistoric origins.

Three out of four ain't half bad.

Which leaves the Smith Canal. On the basis of a weak "odd man out" argument, this canal might also be believed to be of prehistoric origin since there is no known clear or compelling evidence proving otherwise. The size and scope of the constructs, while somewhat large, seem certainly within prehistoric bounds. There is also significant tradeware evidence and habitation sites in the area. And the modern tanks could easily overlay prototype prehistoric fields.

While certainly not constituting proof, a claimed prehistoric origin for the Smith Canal does not at present seem unconvincing.

May 16, 2015
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While not in the earliest of our Prehistoric Bajada Hanging Canal studies, the Cluff Ponds area is proving to be an incredibly rich and diverse resource.

Which, in hindsight, should have been obvious because the area is one of the most intensely riparian in the entire Bajada complex, and thus would seem highly unlikely to be ignored by prehistoric water developments that otherwise apparently totally exploited every drop of available Mount Graham water.

Here's a summary of some of the present candidate study areas...

MUD SPRINGS - Ash creek takein of this nine mile extremely well preserved prehistoric complex was presumed near N 32.78709 W 109.85501 but may have been obliterated by the 1983 Octave tropical storm. Also branches into the Jernigan Canal with a few reaches and one set of destination fields presently unlocated. The saddle crossing between two major drainages remains engineeringly spectacular. As does several hanging sections. Includes an enigmatic "troll house" structure.

SMITH TANK - Mile long obviously historical canal sourcing from Ash Creek near N 32.81323 W 109.84905 would seem to have no obvious barriers to a prehistoric "steal the plans" precedent. Ruins and extensive but sparse tradeware support early occupations. Presently in disuse.

MINOR WEBSTER DITCH - Mostly very well preserved and obviously historic canal destination is presumed to originate in Shingle Mill Canyon near N 32.79005 W 109.88949, but its takein point may have been obliterated by the 1983 Octave tropical storm.

Presence of a maintenance road and a somewhat larger size presently lacks convincing proof of prehistoric origins. However, it is strongly felt that such proof may eventually be forthcoming. Numerous check dams and tradeware are in the area. About two miles length with an unknown relation to tanks.

ALSO RANS - A still unexplored triple headgate near N 32.81295 W 109.84887 served obvious historic purposes but could well be prehistoric original based. It seems primarily of local delivery. A two track trail of credible canal slope from N 32.80789 W 109.84453 to N 32.81877 W 109.84090 appears to be just an old and disused road, but there do seem to be a few related rock alignments.

The destination and full extent of the Cluff NW complex is not yet known, but conceivably could extend northward much of the distance to Pima. There are numerous CCC structures, particularly in the Minor Webster area, but these seem uniquely distinct and unrelated. Finally, there are a number of check dams that appear genuinely prehistoric. Some of these are aproned, and at least one has a large mid channel barrel cactus.

Your participation is welcome.

May 15, 2015
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An intermittent muffled yowling inside a laser printer can sometimes be cured by opening the lid and letting the cat out.

May 14, 2015
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In 1983, tropical storm Octave dropped twelve inches of rain on Mt. Graham, more than doubling the previously kept 65 years of flood records.

To date, I've been unable to find any ground evidence for either the Mud Springs Canal sourcing from Ash Creek or the Minor Webster Ditch sourcing from Shingle Mill Canyon. A credible explanation is that the Octave event could have obliterated any and all takein evidence. Subsequent reaches of both canals remain remarkably well preserved and easily traced.

Only the first mile of the above links are linked above.

In Ash Creek we have a sheer cliff in conglomerate, a geological entity highly tenuous at best. In Shingle Mill Canyon, we have huge piles of carefully sorted and dirt free foot diameter boulder cobbles.

I'm still hoping some takein evidence survives and can be found. Your participation is welcome, particularly if you have geological expertise. Many more resources here.

May 13, 2015
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There have been many alternates to wind turbines proposed. This appears to be the latest of the bunch. With this related discussion.

It does not seem quite legit to me. I'd suspect some real world efficiency, range, and reliability issues. Possibly involving some "haven't got the faintest clue" understanding of engineering fundamentals.

BTW, the best possible efficiency of a wind turbine is the 59 percent of Betz's Law. To recover all the wind energy, you would have to exit at zero miles per hour. Which would equal zero flow.

Since low wind speeds equal trivial power and high ones must be shut down to avoid destruction, this limit is rarely achieved.

I suspect this new development misses by a country mile.

May 12, 2015
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BidIndustrial seems to be a new Phoenix based auction house that, if not an outright merger between Cunningham and Arizona Auctioneers, will be a collaboration on national events combined with Bidspotter.

A group of major expected events would involve GT Technologies of mesa.

More Arizona auction links here and more on auctions in general here. Your own custom regional auction finder can be created for you per these details.

May 11, 2015
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A slowdown in your comm speeds over time can usually be traced to Ethernet Tokens that are either corroded or grime covered. The usual treatment is to use Brasso. But a better long term solution is to gold plate the tokens and then flash overplate them with a few microinches of rhodium.

May 10, 2015
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Here is yet another cloud project involving our hanging canals...

Locate the continuance of the Minor Webster ditch in the Cluff Ponds area at N 32.81193 W 109.86680 Trace it northward and eastward to try and find its original destination fields or tanks. Also try to accumulate evidence of prehistoric origins.

State land ends just north of this area. Respect all postings and private inholdings. Alternate access might be from the west off the McInery road.

Previous cloud projects still needing your active participation can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

May 09, 2015
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A reminder that American Radio History continues to add to its mind boggling collection of technical reprints. Newly added are bunches of Electronics Now and Modern Electronics issues.

I'm still trying to find the Magic Lamp issue of Electronics Now.

BTW, there is apparently a one month error between the actual Electronics Now issues and the claimed date on the Tech Musings issues that appear on my website.

More of my classic reprints can be found here.

May 08, 2015
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Moved my Thermoluminescence and Archaeomagnetism classic reprints to our new combined Electronics World stash.

These were both full level 2 enhancement restorations. We offer this as a service, but its exceptional quality makes it a tad pricey.

One of the reasons I dropped out of an anthro program was when my Thesis adviser gave me a D on the Archaeomagnetism paper and pronounced it "unpublishable". Of course, this happened Six weeks AFTER it appeared in Electronics World.

That same advisor was also responsible for converting the compulsory faculty teas to intravenous only.

May 07, 2015
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Per these pv pricing reports, the long term trend of steadily dropping panel prices seems to have reversed, with present trends up by an annual rate of something over twelve percent.

Once again, a quarter per peak panel watt is required for photovoltaics to eventually become genuinely renewable and sustainable. They, of course are nowhere near that today.

Much more here and here.

May 06, 2015
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Some independent third party verification of our magic sinewave concepts can be found here and here.

A magic sinewave summary can be found here and its ultra fast calculator here. Consulting services available.

May 05, 2015
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I was asked for my favorite HazMat yarns. In answer to an ever diminishing number of requests, here goes...

The hazmat rule of thumb: Hold your thumb up with your arm extended and close one eye. If you can still see the scene, you are too close.

The all time "best" hazmat incident: The great Boston molasses disaster

My personal "best" hazmat incident: The great Kentucky Fried Chicken gravy explosion. The original 20 gallon pot fire was put out simply by placing a lid on it. Much later and long after we thought the incident was over, we were pouring the gravy into a ditch in the back yard when it flashed spectacularly. Caused by oxygen in the air hitting hot buried oil.

Neatest HazMat training effect: The Christmas Tree that creates a 20 foot diameter propane Dante's Inferno. Only to reveal spectacular ice crystals (!) afterwards. The rapidly expanding propane freezes out moisture from the air under certain humidity and temperature ranges.

Our best TFD "Golly Gee Mister Science": Our cotton module fires create their own oxygen through low grade pyrolysis. And require no air to continue. We fight these by the Dentist Method" just like removing decay from a tooth. There are two teams, the "pluckers" and the "chuckers.

Our scariest TFD hazmat situation: The hundreds of sulphuric acid tankers per day that go through our town. There have been spills and fatalities and it is certain  to get a lot worse.

May 04, 2015
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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 03, 2015
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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.

May 02, 2015
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We now have something like 5000 exoplanets of which thirty or so are potentially habitable. And with the expected exponential rate of discovery, millions of exoplanets and tens of thousands of habitable candidates can reasonably be shortly expected.

But the kicker is that a very rare earth-moon combo is apparently needed to insure orbits needed for climatic stability, and thus for evolution. This may prove to be far less likely than simple availability of target exoplanets.

May 01, 2015
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The ancient oriental art of tai wun on consists of getting totally snockered, but always doing to in a professional and fully workmanlike manner.

April 30, 2015
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I am in the process of updating and expanding our Classic Reprints linking page. Present new old stuff includes...

John Dvorak's Pioneering Hardware
Solid State 3 Channel Color Organ
Capacitance Nomogram
Four & Five Layer Diodes
Plastic Power Transistors
Heatsink Design Chart
The Differential Amplifier

ME Hardware Hacker 2/86
ME Hardware Hacker 3/8
ME Hardware Hacker 4/86
ME Hardware Hacker 7/86
ME Hardware Hacker 9/86
ME Hardware Hacker 10/86
ME Hardware Hacker 1/87
ME Hardware Hacker 2/87

I've lost track of the total, but there probably are something like 2300 articles total to date. Amazingly, something like half of these are now up in various directories of www.tinaja.com.

April 29, 2015
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It is usually quite easy to tell the difference between a prehistoric hanging canal and a modern or historic build or rebuild.

Prehistoric canals are literally "hand made" and are extremely and excruciatingly energy efficient. Deep or wide portions are quite rare and used only when absolutely necessary.

Hanging portions are quite common to make their slope independent of local terrain.

Modern canals are literally "machine made" and are extremely energy inefficient. Deep or wide portions are typical for higher flow rates. Energy efficiency during construction is nearly totally unneeded when you have a mule and a scraper or a Gradeall helping you. Plus, the more modern canals are likely to include concrete, steel, or rebar.

Hung portions are quite rare as it is much easier to "bull through" any obstacle with more extensive cuts and fills.

Should a shallow or narrow portion show up on a modern or historic canal, the most likely reason it got there was that it was a "steal the plans" remnant of an underlying prehistoric prototype.

At least two examples of prehistoric style construction are present in the Cluff NW canal pair. Per this map, this photo, and this photo.

May 28, 2015
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Did a full Level II Enhancement Restoration of John Dvorak's classic Pioneering Hardware Inside Track column. Sourcecode can separately be found here.

We can help ( or actually do ) full restorations for you per these details. But note that the superb results are time intensive and pricey.

April 27, 2015
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Sometimes a bold display font will end up a tad "too thin", while its extra bold companion font may not exist or else be gross overkill. Here's a trick that may prove useful:

Print the text twice, separated by one pixel. Or four times that are spaced normal, one pixel north, one northeast, and one east.

This works best on San serif or Gothic fonts and a little of it can go a very long way. Note that a single one pixel shift will somewhat change the font vibes.

An example can be found here. And zillions of other "free font" insider stunts here.

April 26, 2015
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Making full use of all of your available fonts in Acrobat Distiller can end up rather tricky.

First and foremost, you have to go into the Acrobat Distiller --> Settings --> Font Locations stash and make sure that all of your available font directories are included. Note that the directories can be Adobe based, Windows based, commercial font based, or your own collections.

A typical font stash list might look like this...

 C:\Program Files\Myfonts_old\
 C:\Program File (x86)Adobe\Acrabat 11.0
  \Resource\Font\
 C:\Windows\Fonts\
 C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe Illustrator
  CSS\Suppprt files
 C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files
  \Adobe\Fonts

The next problem is to find a convenient way to see what all your available fonts look like. The sneakiest way to do this is to get into any old unlocked PDF file in Acrobat and attempt to add a text watermark with the Edit Page Design tool.

Pick a text watermark and add a target name. Under "Font" should be a complete list of all your fonts. And as you change them, their appearance should show up in the watermark.

Secret insider stunt: You can simply mouse wheel through all your available fonts!

Another route is to use the Fonts directory in the control panel. While this gives you an interesting list, it does not let you try your own text. Note that this only shows the fonts in the Windows/Fonts directory! Possibly leaving out all of the good stuff.

I was amazed to find several hundred more fonts than I thought I had. And there may still be more in hidden or non obvious directories yet to be distiller linked.

Another major problem is to make sure you have the PostScript spelling of the font correct. Details on this can be tricky. Ferinstance, in the C:\Windows\Fonts directory, clicking on any font can give you hints to the correct PostScript ( or gonzo ) spelling. Such as Adobe CaslonPro Semi Bold leading you to /ACaslonPro-Semibold

One stunt that works sometimes: Use your target font in any old ap to print a short message. Route and view the result in Acrobat X. Then go to File --> Properties --> Fonts for the exact spelling.

The usual result of a misspelled PostScript font is a Courier substitution.

April 25, 2015
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I remain very much an overly enameled enthusiast of the general purpose PostScript language. But Adobe themselves has severely crippled PostScript and recently seems to be ed-emphasizing it.

The problem was that PostScript could read or write any file on any computer in any operating system. Which could lead to excessive malware problems. So, a few versions of Acrobat back, Adobe disabled Distiller's ability to read or write most disk or computer files.

Fortunately, there is a hidden workaround.

Besides slowing down the bad guys, this meant you could no longer use a simple run command for such things as our Gonzo utilities. And prevented programs whose main goal was modifying bitmaps or other programs from happening on Adobe's watch. All of which was somewhat futile, given that Ghostscript can still read or write any file in any operating system and and language just fine.

So, I've had to split my PostScript work into two categories. Those that go to Distiller may need a full copy of gonzo prepended in each file. They also prevent programatically entering images and such in your source code. Instead, any images may have to be post Distiller added in Acrobat by making obscure and off-the-wall uses of their watermark feature. On the plus side, Distiller offers many more and easier to use fonts and directly generates searchable and otherwise superb graphics.

Here is the latest example of a Distiller route file and here is its sourcecode.

For programs that modify other files or programs, I've gone to Ghostscript. Whose two big advantages are that my Gonzo utilities can simply be run instead of prepended, and that reading or writing any disk file in any language or operating system is still allowed. But there are hassles with GhostScript, some of which limit font choices or convenience, Acrobat direct compatibility, and log file lengths

Examples of my programs that demand GhostScript include Architect's Perspective, the Bitmap Typewriter, and the Auto Backgrounding Vignetter. Many images hat these have processed can be found here.

Once again, there is a hidden workaround that lets Distiller use disk files

April 24, 2015
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Win a few and lose a few. This Acme Mapper image strongly suggested a prehistoric canal that would prove once and for all that the Cluff NW historic canals and their neighbors were "steal the plans" adoptions of a prehistoric original.

But field verification just failed to reveal the slightest hint of the Acme suggested canal as ground truth..

This is sort of the exact opposite of a few years back when otherwise invisible and unknown canals were all uniquely and ephemerally full of  dead flowers.

At present, Cluff NW clearly has two short unmodified reaches that  appear in all manner identical to pristine prehistoric canals. Sadly, this is only suggestive, rather than absolute proof.

April 23, 2015
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The Church of the Latter Day Crackpots just posted their latest 250% overunity perpetual motion machine.

Needless to say, the utter bogosity is unquestionably assured. This one looks a little trickier to immediately debunk. But my prediction on the inevitable debunking will be based on unusual waveforms that have a high ratio of rms to average values that are easily mis measured with low end instrumentation.

We looked at the underlying principles here and here. Along with a summary of a previous overunity bust here.

Speaking of which, I need a scan of the magic lamp fiasco story, likely around April 1997 Electronics Now. Can you send me one? While outstanding earlier reprints are available here, this era seems to still be in copyright limbo.

One more time: To prove overunity, connect the output to the input and destroy a six block radius. As we've seen a number of times before, finding an unlimited supply of free energy would be one of the most heinous imaginable crime against humanity.

Much more on trashing pseudoscience here.

April 22, 2015
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How to drive a southwestern crafts or art store owner bonkers: Ask them for a DeGrazia Macramé Howling Coyote...

  ... in teal.

April 21, 2015
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Our website has been picking up record highs lately. As with any "too good to be true" events, it pays to look further to see if anything strange or malware is involved.

All of the hits have been on a previously low interest ancient archive file of resbn76.pdf. Which forms an immediate red flag that the present stats do not reflect the web traffic reality.

The traditional hits on this file were typically less than one per month. So far in April, we have gotten nearly 8000 views.

The usual Fat Cow Webalizer stats seemed to hide much of the obvious, so a true log file download was done by clicking through on http://www.fatcow.com/knowledgebase/read_article.bml?kbid=5610

To save on space, the true log files are compressed in a .gz format. While readers are readily available, there are all sorts of malware problems in selecting one at random. Fortunately, their .gz log files are plain text for the first few hundred characters, so if there is a big problem, chances are you can read enough of the file in wordpad to find out what is coming down.

Which promptly told us that all of the hits were coming from two related sites: 54.208.47.49 and 54.208.62.33. Both of thee promptly 404'ed, but chasing these through Whois quickly revealed that the culprit was Amazon.

Exactly why they would reference one of the least useful files on my site and why they would do so in such a heavy handed way remains a mystery.

Here is one off-the-wall theory: Somehow they confused my /glib/ or "guru library" subdirectory with a gLib portion of the C language.

Yes, you can block problem url's. But in this case they just might reference something useful or worthwhile in the future. Present strategy is to wait and watch.

Nonetheless, the above tools and techniques should be useful to you if you end up with similar issues on your own website.

April 20, 2015
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Yet another one dimensional centered perspective image of our eBay offers can be found here. As usual, it uses both our Architect's Perspective correction and our self-vignetting backgrounder.

A question can be legitimately asked as to how much retouching is "allowed". I strongly feel the usual answer for an "as new" and commodity product that you have lots of would be "about the same as a full page color Newsweek ad".

One-off collectibles are another mater entirely and should have any and all condition details exactly shown. Retouch here is best limited to backgrounds, edge sharpening, obvious lighting problems, and anything that clearly will be greatly improved before actual shipping.

But cameras and lighting do tend to make defects more obvious, so minor adjustments that make things appear as they actually will be perceived by the end user would not seem inappropriate.

April 19, 2015
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As we've seen many times in the past, the usual breakthrough of the week has a 6.99 day half life.

But a new development in artificial photosynthesis just may bear further watching. In which solar energy, water, and carbon dioxide are converted into acetate under reasonable conditions. Helped along with some bacteria biosynthesis. Further discussion here.

April 18, 2015
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Many examples of our our self-vignetting backgrounder of our eBay offers can be found here. Basically, you outline the good part of your image with a continuous red=255 line and fill any image "holes" or undercuts with similar red=255 pixels. Then the Ghostscript software automatically fills the background with your choice of  215 mottled background colors .

Mottling can be set to any depth from very subtle to an intentional design element.

Note that mottling dramatically reduces any JPEG edge artifacts with only a negligible increase in file size.

Sometimes helped along by earlier use of our Architect's Perspective routines that make all intended vertical lines truly so. The backgrounder optionally does a super fancy edge vignette that actually applies complex electronic field synthesis at its edges.

With practice, the backgrounder is quite easy to use. But there are some simple guidelines that, if not followed, will lead to disastrous results or unacceptably excessive retouch...

First and foremost, always work with true bitmaps that are at least two to four times your final size. Switch to JPG only after the image is otherwise exactly the size shape, contrast, gamma, brightness, balance, and the sharpness you want.

There must be ZERO original pixels with a red=255 component! the easiest way to deal with this is to use Imageviewer32 to back off two clicks on the red color balance. Usually this will make a negligible change in overall appearance, but if need be,  you can always add two clicks later. Note that unexpected yellows or whites may have a red=255 component. Outlines MUST be continuous and unbroken without so much as a one pixel gap where punchthrus may happen.

Changes in brightness, contrast, or gamma MUST NOT be made after outlining! They can be fixed after the auto fill process is complete.

The background MUST be cropped to its intended final size BEFORE the auto fill starts.

Edge bleeds are a no-no. Any red=255 outlines are best placed more than two pixels from any edge. Source and destination filenames MUST be different.

You may want less vignetting on smaller items. Rework the vigwide variable ( perhaps to 76 ) as needed.

The auto fill process works by going west edge to the right, then east edge to the left, then top edge to the south and finally bottom edge to the north. If one of these cannot hit your intended pixel, you have an undercut. Undercuts can be dealt with by treating them as internal fills.

April 17, 2015
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I firmly believe that most, if not all of the historic use bajada canals were "steal the plans" or "borrow the blueprints" adapted from underlying prehistoric originals.

While proof would seem exceptionally difficult, some underlying principles are that apparently every drop of Mount Graham water was fully and professionally exploited by stunning prehistoric engineering, leaving little room for new historic developments. It also would seem infinitely easier to "dig out an old ditch" than properly engineer an entire new properly working canal system from scratch.

The pair of Cluff NW historic canals offer additional suggestions to strong suggestions of prehistoric origins. But such origins are by no means proven.

For openers, they are located in the most riparian region of the entire bajada system. It would seem exceptionally unlikely that such as area would be prehistorically ignored. The area also has sparse but extensive tradeware potsherds, clearly establishing ongoing prehistoric occupation.

A second factor is that the canals clearly have a "binary" mix of "high construct energy" and "highly efficient energy" partial segments. The most credible reason for the shallow, small, and minimal effort segments is that they are in fact largely unaltered prehistoric. heir existence would otherwise make little sense with an availability of major earthmoving equipment or beasts of burden.

A third factor is both curious and highly speculative. This canal system includes a dozen or so masonry"Y-weirs" that are otherwise apparently unknown elsewhere in the Gila Valley. Their purpose seems to be simply a one foot high flow limiting dam. There is no obvious routing or switching or diversion involved.

Why would only this canal system require major constructs of flow limiters? One credible explanation would be that they started with a prehistoric low flow original and dug it out for more capacity. And, in the process, experienced serious washouts and erosion.

Next door to this canal complex is the Minor Webster Ditch. It would seem challenging to find further suggestive evidence that this canal also is in fact prehistoric. The Smith Tank Canal in the same area is yet another candidate seeking proof of prehistoric origins.

Further east, the Tranquility Canal could also use much better proof of prehistoric origin. As, obviously, could the Robinson Ditch.

April 15, 2015
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Number THIRTY in the present score of apparently habitable exoplanets has been newly added here. At present, there are something like 1500 plain old exoplanets and 3300 more unproven Kepler Candidates. But the candidates presently are ending up with a 90 percent hit rate.

Additional resources here, here, and here.

April 14, 2015
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Yorg. That's not a bug, it is a feature. Apparently Chrome trashes our orange .xml box. They intentionally return an unlinkable menu and a "no style sheet" error even when a style sheet is provided.

To get our orange xml box to work in the intended manner, please try a different browser. Apparently both Internet Explorer and Firefox will link us properly.

Apparently Chrome has no intention of repairing this problem and I know no workaround. Please let me know if you have a solution.

Update: problem has been fixed.

April 13, 2015
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A really, really big deal for me: The ISO Insurance Services Office has just re-ranked the Thatcher Fire Department as 3/3Y!

This puts us in the top ONE PERCENT of all of the volunteer fire organizations in the entire United States.

April 12, 2015
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A new section to the Cluff NW canal pair has been relocated here. It seems to also be of prehistoric hanging canal size, slope, and standards. And suggests to strongly suggesting "steal the plans". But is by no means certain proof. Here is one photo. This reach is quite subtle but seems quite real.

Elsewhere in the complex are many "Y weir" structures such as this one. No other occurrence of Y weirs is known. They seem to be a flow regulator with a one foot drop. One possible use would be if a prehistoric canal was expanded and resulted in to aggressive a flow rate.

April 11, 2015
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I'll occasionally "backfill" an older missing date entry. Or make corrections, adjustments, or additions. Particularly if I missed a crucial detail on the first pass. Or if your email feedback provided more input.  So it often may pay to reread older entries a week or two after they first appear.

But the baseline goal remains to try and provide new content every day.

April 10, 2015
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Uploaded a reprint of my classic Plastic Power Transistors tutorial from the February 1968 Electronics World.

April 09, 2015
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Here's yet another needed prehistoric hanging canal "cloud" project...

Find the source and destination of the Cluff NW canal complex pair starting at N 32.83042 W 109.84475 and at N 32.82936 W 109.84478 Seek out proof of prehistoric origin.

Additional cloud projects for which your help is very much needed can be found here.

April 08, 2015
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A church in Gila Bend has decided not to get a  chandelier. It turns out nobody in the congregation knew how to play one.

They also can be a bear to tune.

April 07, 2015
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They are still just not getting the message. One more time:

ELECTROLYSIS FROM HIGH VALUE SOURCES ( SUCH AS GRID, PV, WIND, OR ALTERNATOR ) FOR USE IN BULK HYDROGEN PRODUCTION IS TOTALLY WORTHLESS AND UTTERLY USELESS!

Particularly by scamming members of the church of the latter day crackpots. Tesla, of course, is their patron saint. And electrocity is their watchword. Here's some starting resources...

Energy Fundamentals
Intro Summary
Energy Fundamentals
More Energy Fundamentals
Trashing Auto Electrolysizers
Electrolysis Fundamentals
"Its a Gas" Hydrogen Library
PV Panel Intro and Summary

Summarizing the key points: Electrolysis is the process  of stupidly converting very high value kilowatt hours of energy into very low value kilowatt hours of energy. A fundamental thermodynamic principle of exergy GUARANTEES that the process is exactly the same as 1:1 converting US dollars into Mexican Pesos. Faraday's Law ain't broke. Continuous direct current is GUARANTEED to be more efficient than any possible pulse scheme. All the pulse schemes do is make "not even wrong" deceptive measurements ridiculously easier to do.

Electrolysis is a current driven process. ALL older current sources are inherently inefficient by definition. Only when exotic switchmode techniques are used can reasonably efficiencies ( at destroying value ) be created. Stainless steel is utterly useless for efficient electrolysis because of the hydrogen overpotential of iron found in any intro electrochem book. If you must do serious electrolysis, platinized platinum electrodes are a must.

An ordinary car alternator is only around 45 percent efficient and the maximum available excess power that can be sent through an ordinary fanbelt is a few hundred watts at most. Thus, the primary product of on-board vehicle electrolysis is trivial quantities of useless low grade heat. And is exactly the same as running with your emergency brake partially on

The bottom line is this: If you do not understand exergy, you SHOULD NOT be pissing around with electrolysis. If you do understand exergy, you WILL NOT be pissing around with electrolysis. Either way, the outcome is not the least in doubt.

April 06, 2015
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There seems to be a combination flapdoodle and opportunity presently in flux. Apparently a Mesa outfit called GT Advanced Technologies allegedly got screwed over by a major computer company, forcing them into bankruptcy.

Several major auctions have been recently announced that should offer some exceptional opportunities. While both Arizona Auctioneers and Cunningham initially announced these auctions, they now appear at least temporarily on hold. Presumably because of legal details.

This opportunity bears closely following. More auction help here.

UPDATE: More flapdoodle here.

April 05, 2015
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Texan, bragging about the size of his spread -- "Why, I could drive all morning and not get half way across my place"

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

April 04, 2015
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As we've seen a number of times, most commercial trucking firms absolutely refuse to do any packing or prep whatsoever. Even such simple matters as shrink wrapping to a skid. We've seen useful alternatives before. Such as U-Haul and their new Moving Helper service. Or U-Ship with all sorts of possible custom arrangements.

There is also a newer franchise service called Two Men and a Truck that can offer all sorts of packing and shipping services. They seem to have locations in many areas of the country.

More auction help here.

April 03, 2015
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We saw some pixel interpolation algorithms here. And another third party tutorial here. These are used extensively in our Architect's Perspective utilities.

A new method can be found here that claims the "best" possible results. And claims a variation on "nearest neighbor" believed to be a dramatic improvement on bicubic interpolation. Albeit one that is computationally intensive.

I'm not so sure I fully understand the method nor yet agree with the results. The process apparently involves doubling or quadrupling image resolution. Impressive examples are given.

Your comments welcome.

April 02, 2015
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Over the years, we have accumulated bunches of classic integrated circuits, some rare and others possibly even extinct in the wild.

We are starting several new series of available packets of these on our eBay site. Prices are quite low and at least some of these are simply not available elsewhere.

Some are just plain old, while others are full mil spec 883 ceramic. We even have DTL digital chips!

April 01, 2015
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Shocking.

I just found out that many of the New Mexico subastas are going to be sold at auction!

Even worse, "slippery slope" issues may also endanger a large number of the licitacions and even the almonedas.

Thankfully, eBay sales and shipping to New Mexico aren't quite as bad as they used to be. Yeah, there is still the language barrier and the hassles at customs. One main problem was that of all the New Mexico truck tires are all a different size and spacing, so everything needed  reloaded at the border crossings.

Fortunately, there are now REVERSIBLE truck tires that can simply be insided out at the New Mexico ports of entry. More details at your nearest New Mexico embassy.

March 31, 2015
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Uploaded a reprint of my classic differential amplifier tutorial from the February 1968 Electronics World.

At the time, I was absolutely outraged that the editor stupidly reversed all the arrows on the current sources in the story!

It seems that way back when, somebody ( possibly Michael Faraday ) guessed wrong about the way current flows in an electrical circuit. And thus invented "conventional current flow". Which ALL engineers, scholars, researchers, and manufacturers to this day have COMPLETELY standardized on.

Even the IEEE tie clasp agrees. As do all the arrows on diodes and PNP or NPN transistors. And these days with semis, electron flow and hole flow are now equally useful concepts.

But the military had problems explaining how a vacuum tube works and switched to using electron flow. As did the numerous trade schools and correspondence courses that made up the primary source of Electronics World ad income.

Which led to the disparity of wannabe technicians being given EXACT OPPOSITE info from their supervising engineers.

Needless to say, the arrow on a current source should have the same definition as those on any nearby semis.

As far as I know, electron flow has long ago died the horrible death it rightly deserves.

March 30, 2015
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Here's yet another image that did not turn out half bad but required some special treatment.

We've recently saw that one trick to doing slanty lettering was to use Paint's vertical skew to "rectangularize" a work area, improve the lettering with my Bitmap Typewriter, and then "unrectangularize" it back.

Only in this image, the lettering was on a "top" side rather than a "front" side. For which the workaround was to use a double skew, one vertical and one horizontal. While you can still work on revisions-to your original image, you do have to work oversize enough that there are no clipping or writeover issues. The double skew and unskew may change the size somewhat. This can be corrected by using free Imageview32.

Back to our image, it got "stretched" somewhat to give acceptable background spacing and obviousness to the rail extensions. And the air ports and mounting holes needed emphasized since they were an important part of the device.

A major problem was that the top surface "black on black" was largely illegible in the original photo. A second exposure was made much lighter and overpasted. And then was overwritten with several shades of black or gray to dramatically improve its contrast.

March 29, 2015
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When it comes to Italian food,  you cannot be both pro volone and anti pasto.

March 28, 2015
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A critical review of the latest eCat claims can be found here.

I've been long opposed to perpetual motion in any way, shape, or form and strongly feel that any "invention" of unlimited free energy would be the most horrendous crime against humanity imaginable anytime ever.

As with our How to Bash Pseudoscience among the many entries in our pseudoscience library.

My most memorable free energy bashing was reviewed here. Most of the scams are obviously wrong and easily trashed with a simple "looks like a duck - quacks like a duck". But this one was a challenge in that it involved a "researcher" who managed to find a highly unusual waveform that had an exceptionally large ratio of average to rms value. And then made highly incompetent measurements of the same.

March 27, 2015
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One of the most astounding medical facts is that rectocranial inversion can simultaneously be both chronic and acute.

March 26, 2015
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Once again expanded and updated our Gila Valley Dayhikes page. We are now up to 421 main entries, most of which now include GPS location links.

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

March 25, 2015
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Even with the best of fluorescent or CCFL lighting, diffusers, and tents, it can be very hard to get perfectly uniform lighting for eBay photos.

One correction is to use multiple "exposures" in Paint to retouch hot spots or shading errors. As was done in this example.

But a sledgehammer alternative is to photograph outside in medium shade. This also has advantages for such things as "straight on" oscilloscope or instrument shots. Or to literally tape a cable or loop of whatever to a door.

You do have to disable or otherwise prevent any flash. And do have to allow for weather or time of day. And being under a tree with mottled leaf effects is, of course, a big no no.

Here's an example of how uniform you can get.

Much more on eBay photography here.

March 24, 2015
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PV price stats are in for February and they still are dropping, but the minimums are still stuck at 46 cents per peak panel watt. As we have seen, 25 cents per peak panel watt is required to eventually be able to achieve true pv subsidy free renewability and sustainability.

More on pv stuff here , energy fundamentals here, an energy intro here and additional energy stuff here.

March 23, 2015
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Some Arizona auction news and updates: Pima College has apparently switched their auctions to Public Surplus from Southwest Liquidators who also have just relocated.

Auction and Appraise has newly renamed themselves American Auction Company and seems to be expanding from their former regional scope. Little known Asset Conversion Specialists has all sorts of interesting online auction stuff that still seems to be going at remarkably low prices.

A rather obscure government surplus auction source is GSA auctions.

Only two major Arizona newspaper Sunday classifieds seem to remain. These include AZ Central and the Arizona Daily Star.

Auction HQ has state by state listings, but they are forever confusing AR and AZ.

More auction assistance can be found here, our eBay specific stuff here, AZ auctioneer links here, and your own custom regional auction finder here.

March 22, 2015
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Many people do not realize that there are several popular GPS formats. Using the wrong one can sure cause problems and frustrations in any group project.

The two most popular are degrees-minutes-seconds and degrees.fraction. While degrees-minutes-seconds was the original and remains quite popular, it involves three data values and a base 60 variation on duodecimal. While degrees.fraction is single valued and far more intuitive.

Both Dr. Neely and myself overwhelmingly prefer use of degrees.fraction in our Hanging Canal work, as do most other scientific or engineering researchers.

There are bunches of conversion sites that can be found here. Most GPS receivers and aps will accept most formats, and let you pick and chose your reporting or "main" format.

For instance, in Acme Mapper, go to Options-Coords. On the Garmin eTrex 30, go to Position Format. On Google Earth, go to Options-3D View. On a cellphone, find a useful display conversion app.

March 21, 2015
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I'll shortly try to link these to our Classic Reprints page...

 heatsink design
 electronic tools
 LDR color organ

Note that Nom De Plumes were the rage in the magazine world at that time. Especially when I had three or more stories in the same issue.

This particular color organ was by far the worst of the series. It was an attempt to design the cheapest possible circuit, but had serious reliability and use problems. I've still included it because it was an early and historical part of the color organ sequence. Fortunately, the key component is now unobtanium.

March 20, 2015
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Yet another "slanty lettering" image can be found here and I think it is one of our best ever.

As usual, the process starts with making vertical lines true to one pixel accuracy. Either manually ( as was done here ) or by using our Architect's Perspective Utilities.

The low-contrast-on-stainless lettering was not directly usable, so a copy was vertically skewed 7 degrees in Paint to make the message horizontal. The arrow was redrawn in a higher contrast, and the regular lettering was redone by using my Bitmap Typewriter .

The Swagelok logo was borrowed from a logo site and had its contrast and brightness bumped enough that it could be transparently pasted in Paint. Note that the reuse  of such a logo is permitted under the First Sale Doctrine.

Once re lettered, the image is vertically unskewed by -7 degrees and returned to its proper place. The "Closed" callout was completely manually redone. First by establishing bounding "boxes" per letter, and then by entering the most obvious horizontal and vertical line segments. And finally by manually adding or editing the remaining pixels as needed.

Two of the surfaces had confusing reflections, so these were substituted "whole cloth" in Paint. For stainless and similar reflective objects, it is important to start with a completely uniform white or ( preferably ) a light gray background.

Should our Autobackgrounding Vignetter be used, it is super important to make sure there are no unintended red=255 pixels before outlining. This is simplest to do in Imageview32 by backing the red color adjust off by two clicks. Note that ivory or orange areas can in fact include unwanted red pixel components. It is also important to completely fill any undercuts or internal holes with new red=255 pixels.

Can you spot the one undercut needing attention in this image? One detail: This skewing trick is mostly usable against a dimetric background. Fortunately, the eye is quite forgiving if the lettering ends up "pretty nigh but not plumb". True slanty perspective lettering can be done, but ends up a lot more complex and time intensive.

March 19, 2015
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Several independent convincing factors for the age of our prehistoric canals are their energy efficiency and purposeful intent; the presence of uniform lichens, caliche, and patina; being run over without accommodation by roads, dams, fences, and even cemeteries; or the lack of any apparent use of earthmoving equipment, concrete, iron tools, or animal assistance.

But one of the more convincing factors would be the presence of mature slow growing trees or cacti mid channel. Not only might these growths be many dozens of years old, but their effective germination times could well date in the centuries after the last canal servicing or reuse.

Presence of mid channel vegetation can be most useful for separating CCC projects from genuinely prehistoric ones.

This image is of a newly found Mesquite Tree midchannel to the Sand Canal and seems to be the largest and oldest found to date. Similar approximate locations include...

N 32.83148 W 109.92477 Mesquite
N 32.84284 W 109.81439 Mesquite 
N 32.81738 W 109.82956 Mesquite
N 32.80739 W 109.81457 Cacti
N 32.80969 W 109.81290 Cacti
N 32.79250 W 109.87288 Cacti

March 18, 2015
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Arizona milepost markers can be found using this guide. They also are supposedly available here, but note that they only are activated when clicked and properly magnified.

March 17, 2015
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Managed to upload reprints of these classics...

/hhack_8_87.pdf
hifi_gogo_1_66.pdf

I'll shortly try to link them to our Classic Reprints page.

The "Parts Profiles" series was my first attempt at a monthly column, and was not all that great. This column, though, did show one of the very first optocouplers.

March 16, 2015
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The Radio Shack store hit list can be found here. Note that the word "tranche" is simply legal doublespeak for "group".

There are two flavors of stores, company owned, and independent. Both of our local independents seem to have enough other cash streams that they would likely survive. One of them, rightly or wrongly, seem to feel that some other wholesale supplier will take up the slack with similar products.

Meanwhile, the type of store that seems eminently suitable for continuing success would seem to me to be either Sparkfun or Marlin P. Jones or MCM Electronics or PLC Center.

March 15, 2015
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A reminder that there is an absolutely outstanding collection of radio, television, and other technical reprints can be found at http://www.americanradiohistory.com/

Of particular interest are the tech lab sources such as the RCA Review, Bell Laboratories Record, Tele Tech, and such. Amazingly, the content keeps expanding. Many of the .PDF files are fully searchable.

March 14, 2015
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Here's a summary of some of the prehistoric hanging canal "cloud"projects I sure could use bunches of help with...

  Prove or disprove Frye Creek diversion from
  N 32.74420 W 109.83941 to N 32.74562
  W 109.84041

 Minimize Mud Springs Canal "gap" between
 N 32.79157 W 109.85360 and
 N 32.80306 W 109.83946

 Explore Robinson Canal origin from
 N 32.75995 W 109.81148 to
 N 32.77086 W 109.79723

 Verify eastern Deadman route is in fact a
 prehistoric canal both directions from
 N 32.75608 W 109.77810 Find destination.

 Seek a destination for the Allen Canal
 starting at N 32.83567 W 109.79813.
 The actual problem begins just past the low
 saddle into Central Wash.    

 Find the actual takein point for the Mud
 Springs Canal between N 32.79150
 W 109.85363 and N 32.78721
 W 109.85466

 Seek a destination for the Mud Springs
 Canal starting at N 32.85155
 W 109.80788

 Try to extend the Gold Course Canal
 southward from N 32.79854 W 109.78233
 perhaps ultimately linking it to the HS Canal
 at N 32.75816 W 109.81498

 Find out where the Shingle Mill canal
 ( Minor Webster Ditch ) goes northward
 from N 32.80175 W 109.87054

 See if the area around N 32.76808
 W 109.79185  has any prehistoric
 canal potential.

 Try to verify if the area from N 32.79280
 W 109.72831  to N 32.79461 W 109.72778
 is in fact a prehistoric canal serving Discovery
 Park.

 Prove or disprove prehistoric water diversion
 from Nuttall Canyon to a Sand Wash tributary
 at N 32.77574 W 109.95586

 Explore and photograph the Ledford Canal at 
 N 32.68957 W 109.73870 and the Smith Tank
 Canal at N 32.68513 W 109.73527

 Find a takein point and a route for Henry's
 Canal linking its known reach easterly from
 N 32.73725 W 109.74212

 Seek out evidence of prehistoric canals in
 the P Ranch area centering on N 32.64786
 W 109.71942

 Find out how the Frye Mesa water got from 
 N 32.74568 W 109.84039 to
 N 32.75996 W 109.81153

 Regain legal access rights to the Lefthand
 Canyon and Goat Hill area.

A "big picture" location map can be found here.

March 13, 2015
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NEVER assume the boxes in an auction pallet actually contain what the label says they do! Very often, schools or other institutions doing an upgrade will put their out-of-date units being replaced into the new boxes before moving them to their future auction sale stash.

Thus, the units typically may be one or two generations older than the palletized boxes suggest. One sure fire clue of this happening is if there are more than one units in their unit packaging. Always verify the age and series of actual individual units!

Outside of a limited possible collector market, out-of-date electronics may have little to no value, typically less than its shipping charges. It also may have use or compatibility problems that could piss off your customers.

Typical examples would be analog tv anything, especially test gear, CRT anything except for certain oscilloscopes, paper based chart recorders, older glass power meters, vintage cable or satellite gear, phonograph needles, most LP records, most used books or magazines, dated but not vintage gambling  machines, Polaroid anything, photo anything involving slopping in the slush, VHS anything, pen plotters, high end logic analyzers, or largely uncollectible laser disks.

Much more auction help here.

March 12, 2015
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An interesting pv solar update appears here, while the latest economics can shortly be expected here, and a lively discussion here. Plus a free trade journal here.

March 11, 2015
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The perpetual motion epsilon minuses that frequent the Church of the Latter Day Crackpots seem to be getting off on a cute little system we might call a commutative linear repulsion machine.

Yes, it is real and it works. No, it is not related to any homopolar device, although some related projects on their website are.

Basically, you have an AA cell contacting a coil of wire by using the outsides of powerful magnets as contacts. A current is established, creating a magnetic field that gets repulsed by the magnets, and the device "miraculously" scoots down the inside of the coil.

It then moves down a turn or two and the process repeats. Helped along by some inertia.

Golly gee, Mister Science!

It certainly is not perpetual motion and clearly obeys good old F = BLI. Clearly, it could not possibly be very efficient in its present form, owing to erratic contacts and shorted turns.

March 10, 2015
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We managed to find a bunch of superbly tiny SMD tantalum capacitors and now can offer them on eBay for around one tenth the normal dealer cost.

March 09, 2015
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As we have seen a time or two before, there have been some recent dramatic improvements in WWVB coding that very much eases reception problems. We have also seen that Everset Technologies has a ES100 receiver module newly available. With some connection details here.

One interesting feature is a pair of small diversity antennas, which largely get around orientation and reception problems.

But yet to appear is a Raspberry Pi free reference design, or an Arduino Shield, or availability through such high profile hardware hacker sources as Sparkfun.

Back when I was playing with WWVB here and here, clocks were mostly inaccurate and needed reset on any power outage. But these days, we seem to have all sorts of "sort of accurate" and "always the right time" services. Obvious examples are most any personal computer, most any cell phone, and the GPS navigation system.

Meanwhile, WWVB still has issues with diurnal dropouts and needing midnight updates to get around terrestrial noise. I'm wondering if all of today's "fairly good time" alternates might not significantly cut into any new WWVB demand or popularity.

March 08, 2015
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I managed to get a few more Modern Electronics classic Hardware Hacker reprints uploaded...

hhack_2_86.pdf
hhack_3_86.pdf
hhack_4_86.pdf
hhack_7_86.pdf
hhack_9_86.pdf
hhack_10_86.pdf
hhack_1_87.pdf
hhack_2_87.pdf

I'll shortly add these as links to our classics library page. Newer hardware hacking columns can be found here and here.

There should be something like sixty of these total, but the few shown above are all I've been presently able to locate.

A surprising amount ( although certainly not all ) of the material still seems both relevant and useful. At least as stepping points for new Google or Wikipedia searches. But I guess that is what classics are supposed to be all about.

March 07, 2015
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I may have found the "Rosetta Stone" that greatly supports the premise that virtually all historic area bajada sourced canals were in fact "steal the plans" or "borrow the blueprints" from prehistoric originals. Based on the second premise that it was clearly easier to "dig out an old ditch" than to properly engineer and construct an entire working canal system from scratch.

And on the third premise that virtually every drop of northeastern Mount Graham bajada water seems to have been prehistorically successfully exploited.

Candidate canal systems that could use additional evidence for prehistoric origins would include the Minor Webster Ditch, the Smith Ponds Canal, and the Tranquility Canal.

Here is an aerial photo of a newly rediscovered Cluff NWpair (!) of remarkably parallel canals consistently within a few dozen feet of each other. The eastern one is large with a high single spoil pile wall, clearly energy inefficient, and obviously needing modern tools for initial construction.

The western canal delivery portion is mostly of a deep vee architecture normally typical of historic use. But it includes a short section of a few dozen feet at N 32.82641 W 109.84673 that seems "remarkably similar" to many other  prehistoric canals in the area.

This segment is clearly low energy, shallow, and double bordered. It seems exceptionally unlikely to have been intentionally built from scratch  historically. A credible reason for its continued existence might be that the area is somewhat more rocky than some of the deep vee "all dirt" areas.

Origins of both canals appear to involve Ash Creek takeins, but this has not yet been verified.

Both canals share similar historic constructions, including numerous and distinctively unique "Y Weir" structures and a possible stream siphon. There is also a very crude and apparently more modern diversion cut linking west to east just south of the wash.

As usual, this find creates many more new questions than it resolves. Your help and support welcome to further this utterly unique local stunning world class research.

March 06, 2015
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Managed to get an early Modern Electronics Hardware Hacker reprint up here. I'll shortly add its link to our classics reprints.

Only a dozen or so of these may end up immediately available, with the remainder being much more of a long term project.

More recent columns can be found here and here.

Your support welcome.

March 05, 2015
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So, how long did it take to build our prehistoric hanging canals?The abstract of one new study from China can be found here. While not directly relevant, it does point out that the time to make the tools needed apparently could be quite significant.

I'd also expect limited caloric intake to also be a factor.

My own WAG estimate goes something like this: I ask the asker "Given some practice and some good stone tools, could you build one foot of typical canal in an hour?"

To which they usually would admit this might be a fair ball park estimate. Which translates perhaps to fifteen feet per day or a mile per year. There are presently something like sixty five miles of known canals.

Adding some slop for rework and mistakes and extra for any deeper or harder cuts, along with the time to make the tools and a caloric factor gives us something like 80 to 130 man years for the project.

Which is a fairly big number, but nothing remotely approaching an Egyptian Pyramids work load. Your mileage may vary.

March 04, 2015
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I was asked if there were any IP rights issues involved in printing two copies of my Incredible Secret Money Machine.

Most of my material is open sourced, including full source code for most new material. In, of course, an incredibly powerful and useful format that nobody seems to have the least interest of learning or using.

Everything is basically free, except for IP rights to magic sinewaves, which are fee based.

Thus, the only issue I see with running two ISMM copies at a jiffy print store is that it likely would be cheaper to buy an eBook reader instead.

March 03, 2015
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Most older dimmers and related ac power controls use a scheme called ac phase control. In which the delay of an electronic switch turn on is set by its time lapse from the previous zero crossing.

While borrowed from the ancient thyratron days, this works particularly good with SCR's, Triacs, and similar solid state switches that can be turned on but have to stay on until their main current drops to zero.

Sadly, no solid state bipolar device that can be switched both on and off from a low power control source has yet become mainstream or cost effective. Although some gate controlled switches do exist. Sort of. See the NTE276.

The main little problem with ac forward phase control is that the sudden high current switching causes horrendous radio frequency interference, besides giving non-incandescent LED or ballasted dimmers fits and limiting their range options.

There's a somewhat newer concept called reverse phase control. In which the load is always turned on immediately after a zero crossing for no transient or rfi, and then turned off later in the cycle to create a proportional control.

Any rfi from the turnoff can be greatly reduced by lengthening the turnoff time. Trading off some increased device dissipation for significantly less transient issues. Reverse phase control also works much better for dimming exotic light sources.

Since no really great gate controlled switches are yet mainstream, the usual route here is to substitute a power MOS transistor. Which creates a new problem of being unipolar. Often gotten around by adding a full wave rectifier between the MOS device and its load.

My first of many forward ac phase control project can be found here. With more similar stuff here.

March 02, 2015
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Here's an interesting interface project that lets you get a commercial Black & Decker power monitor online and web literate.

Besides making you generally energy aware, this can track such things as air conditioner or hot tub heater use. Possibly for significant savings.

More on energy topics here.

March 01, 2015
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Uploaded a classic Multipurpose Electronic Control construction project from the January 1965 Electronics World to our Classic Reprints stash.

This was one of the first combined lamp dimmer and single channel color organs. It used a biasing trick of mine to shift the phase angle of a conventional SCR dimmer circuit.

Other color organ projects linked here.

February 28, 2015
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As we've seen a number of times before, sometimes the best online auction opportunities are found in "contents of shelf" or "contents of cabinet" or even "contents of room" lots.

While outstanding bargains can sometimes be found here, one downside is that you have to triage a lot of trash and move heavy stuff to get at the goodies. So, you likely should limit yourself to nearby opportunities And a personal inspection is highly recommended.

One potentially outstanding "contents of shelf" event can be found here. Sadly, it is in York Pennsylvania, so it is waay too far east to be practical for me

A note added later: DOZENS of contents of cabinets went unbid! And could literally have been stolen.

February 27, 2015
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I am in the process of revising my hanging canal field notes so they are newly rearranged by watershed. You can keep track of the progress here.

We are nearly half way there. In general, the blue GPS entries are nearly complete, while the brown ones still need major revision.

February 26, 2015
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Small and out-of-focus or poorly exposed eBay images can sometimes be salvaged with some fancy Paint work. This example shows us what can be done. 

First, you should rotate the image to get the intended verticals as near so as possible. The goal should be to seek out "architects perspective" in which all intended verticals are in fact so to one pixel accuracy. If they are nearly so, you can usually manually adjust them. If not, my Architects Perspective routines can be used.

Next, the background should be knocked out, again to one pixel accuracy. If my Autobackgrounder utilities are used, at this time they should be completely outlined with a red=255 border for a later knockout using our Web Friendly PostScript colors. Otherwise, a suitably mottled border can be manually inserted.

The autobackgrounder has an advantage of optional auto vignetting.

If the original was out of focus, replace the edges with internal pixels as needed to get solid-to-the-edge colors. Raise contrast as needed to clarify borders. In this example, the ellipse feature of Paint was used to strengthen the edges of the four top holes. They were also darkened slightly to improve their contrast.

Other fuzzy features can similarly be dealt with by substituting their internal pixels at their edges.

Highlighting internal edges with a fairly thin and medium gray can prove useful so long as it does not end up too strong. These will usually become more subtle during your final image reduction and .JPG conversion.

Some liberties with minor details ( such as the bottom pins here ) can sometimes greatly improve the final appearance.

February 25, 2015
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The Public Surplus online auction website mostly has abject junk too far away and too worthless to triage. But I rarely have done quite  well on some items, particularly those from Mesa or Central Arizona Water.

I get the impression there aren't all that many bidders and that at least some of them are not aggressive or aware how to deal with an online auction.

Here's some guidelines that work for me: Carefully prescreen the candidate items well ahead of time. Making sure that each item by itself is worth dealing with. Precisely eight minutes before auction closing time, enter your maximum proxy bid. But do so only if the current price is less than one third of your maximum.

And only if there are a very few bidders so far, and if the number of bids isn't very much more than the number of bidders.

Then sit back and watch. Do not rebid and do not get into a pissing contest. Above all, do not trip any autoextensions. More online auction tips and techniques here.

February 24, 2015
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The new CSI Gila Bend tv series seems to have fully lived down to its expectations.

February 23, 2015
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Amazingly, EAC is building a fab lab, per these details. Which is a 180 degree turnaround from a few years back when they canceled the entire electronics program because the football team needed the money.

More on fab labs here and hackerspaces here.

From your original Hardware Hacker. Back when enough good things couldn't be saying about hacking. Hardware and otherwise.

February 22, 2015
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The illegal aliens in the Alabama grits harvest are apparently being used for flavor only.

February 21, 2015
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II have long wanted to see the ability to quickly and conveniently merge topo maps with other images. Preferably with an instantly programmable transparency. We saw a very crude example way back when with our aerial coverage of PacMan, Arizona.

I would think such a feature would be easy to include in the .KML language or as an added value service to Acme Mapper.

Meanwhile, a not-too-bad approach can sometimes be done by using Adobe Acrobat XI. Per this example. The trick is to start with a background .pdf file and then use their understated watermark feature to overlay a second .pdf file to somewhere near 50 percent transparency.

Set the scale to properly span any known alignment marks. Then adjust the vertical and horizontal watermark positions to properly align. You'll get the best results and the most accuracy with the largest possible viewing area.

February 20, 2015
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Reprints of Modern Electronics are starting to become available from this resource. I'll be excerpting my ME Hardware Hacker columns from them as time, funding, and sponsorship permit.

The Hardware Hacker series started out in Modern Electronics, moved to Radio Electronics, and then became Tech Musings in Electronics Now.

The name change became essential after a 180 degree shift in the meaning of "Hacker" and all the men in black on my doorstep and those helicopter landings in the cotton field next door. Not to mention a never ending and ever expanding supply of epsilon minus wannabes.

Fully restored reprints of Tech Musings can be found here. And reprints of the more recent Electronics Now hardware hackers here, with partial restorations only of EN Columns 1-59 here.

Initial ME reprints will likely appear in our Classic Reprints area. We may or may not create a separate area later with time and funding permitting.

February 19, 2015
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The Colorgan was a Radio Electronics variation to the series of color organ projects. I've uploaded a rather poor copy here.

The complete color organ sequence was...

Solid State 3 Channel Color Organ
Simplified Solid State Color Organ
Multipurpose Electronic Control
Low Co$t Hi-Fi Color Organ
Build New High-Power Colorgan
Musette Color Organ
Hi Fi a Go Go
Psychedelia I Color Organ

The Psychedelia I completely blew the others away. It used active filters and a revolutionary off-the-wall development in super cheap and high performance RTL digital IC phase controls. 

Once again, I'd recommend starting over from scratch using a HDTV display and beyond FFT signal processing that in some manner would attempt to extract all of the individual instruments in the musical passage.

Several of the lesser stories above have not yet been linked. I'll try to get to them as time and funding permit. I'd also like to do full restorations on these sometime.

February 18, 2015
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I remain very much convinced that 95 percent of all local bajada historic canal projects were based on "steal the plans" and "dig out an old ditch". The remaining 5 percent, of course, were based on "borrow the blueprints".

But the pair of Cluff Ponds Northwest canals presents a dilemma. Their construction and architecture is wildly different from our prehistoric canals. The single wall high mud barrier clearly was horribly energy inefficient and obviously needed horse or power scrapers. While concrete distinctive "Y" weirs form an essential part of the system. And a rather advanced stream crossing involved a siphon or similar.

The only "evidence" for a prehistoric predecessor are a few sparse potsherds. Plus being in the most obvious and easily constructed riparian location in the entire Gila Valley. No such location was ignored prehistorically locally, and such a canal would be conspicuous by its absence.

Yet, evidence for a prehistoric origin presently remains unacceptably weak.

February 17, 2015
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A local online industrial auction seems to be presenting some unusual opportunities. Many opening bids are quite low and there do not seem to be very many bidders as of yet.

Pack and ship services are separately available. The present auction closes in a few days.

February 16, 2015
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Uploaded a rather poor copy of my first ac dimmer project. This fit an outlet box and used a short lived beastie called a bilateral switching diode. These were shortly thereafter blown out of the water by Triacs.

A full restoration of this story would take quite a bit of effort and require sponsorship or other support.

February 15, 2015
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Yesterday's explorations expanded on the Cluff Ponds Northwest canals. These seem to be abandoned historic and are rather distinct from most prehistoric canals. They are clearly riverine architecture, even though they appear to be Ash Creek sourced.

Hallmarks are one high mud bank that clearly would need horse or tractor scraper work. Plus six or more distinctive concrete "Y" shaped weirs and some sort of damaged wash crossing, possibly a siphon. There seem to be two parallel routes.

The "Y" weirs are easily viewed in Acme Mapper.

While the Minor Webster Ditch and its possible Shingle Mill prehistoric canal is in the area, the two seem unrelated.

The only hints of possible prehistoric precedents are a few sparse potsherds and being conspicuous by absence in an obvious and easily developed major riparian area.

February 14, 2015
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A Capacitance Nomogram was my first technical nomogram paper for Electronics World. In those days, you had to use a nom de plume if you had more than one paper in any given magazine. I've added a somewhat poor quality reprint link to our Classic Reprints page.

February 13, 2015
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Another "slanty lettering" example can be found here. This one was extremely tricky to photograph owing to the white on silver lettering.

Again, the process is to first rotate the subject so the lettering is horizontal, reletter with the Bitmap Typewriter, skew with Paint, copy back, and then rotate back. In this case, the perspective correction was close enough to do manually without needing my special software.

BTW, full perspective lettering is also possible but much more involved. We saw the full details a ways back.

February 12, 2015
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Despite their being outrageously expensive compared to most other shipping services, I've found the UPS Stores to be an effective way of dealing with remote online auction wins.

Just be sure to factor your shipping costs into your bid prices.

Most trucking firms will not pack or load! Not even so much as shrink wrapping to a skid. And, amazingly, the few times I've used UPS Stores, they ended up a five minute drive from the pickup and offered amazingly fast services.

They do tend to over package, so you should spell out exactly whether individual items need extra wrapping and if recycled materials are appropriate.

Other alternatives can be found through UShip. Our local UPS store folded, but got replaced by CMI who seem to do fine work.

Much more on auction insider secrets here.

February 11, 2015
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As this example shows us, retouching "slanty lettering" can be fairly simple if you combine the right tools.

First, rotate the image using Imageview32 so that the lettering is perfectly horizontal. Then replace the lettering and its background using my Bitmap Typewriter.

Save a special copy of the results and then use the horizontal skew feature hidden in Paint's Rotate command to make the "intended vertical" portions of the lettering align properly with the "intended vertical" nearby portions of the same image.

Copy the skewed lettering back to the original rotated image. Then rotate everything back to the desired final orientation.

Tutorials, projects, and consulting work available.

February 10, 2015
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New SCR Developments was my first technical tutorial paper for Electronics World. I've added a reprint to our Classic Reprints page.

February 09, 2015
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Managed to return to the Sand Wash hanging canal #33 several times. As is typical, the return visits created more questions than they answered.

This is by far the easiest of the hanging canals to access both on foot and with 2WD.

It seems to originate in a presently dry wash at N 32.83319 W 109.92513. Strangely, there is an unexplained terracotta pipe at the takein point and a second diversion pipe a hundred yards north. Who did these obviously modern constructs and why remains a mystery. Both pipes are on state land and clearly are an afterthought to the original work.

A credible but unproved possibility is that the present perennial stream in Nuttall Canyon was diverted into a branch of sand wash at N 32.77468 W 109.95556. A present forest service water project here would seem to verify the feasibility of such a prehistoric diversion. And is remarkably similar to a potential upper Frye Creek diversion.

There is at least one other hanging canal example where water was diverted into a natural streambed and later diverted again into a canal construct. This would be Spring Canyon feeding Allen Canal. Spring Canyon may have also been supplied by a constructed diversion above Frye Creek falls.

Just beyond the second diversion pipe and still on state land, a classic hanging portion begins with the usual "water flows uphill" illusion. This is followed by a fairly long and fairly deep cut in turn straddled by a huge mesquite tree midchannel. A fence bridging state and BLM land ownership follows somewhat to the north.

Once on BLM land and still trending northward, the canal seems to be exceptionally small. So small that it would appear unlikely to be able to deliver significant water. The lack of known survey instruments suggests that pilot small static levels may have been used. Such static levels could conceivably be of a size comparable to this portion of the sand canal. Whether this was a pilot construct of a work in progress remains highly speculative.

Further north, the canal is partially damaged by a four wheel track. but remains followable. Yet further north, the canal enters highly developed private land and no longer appears extant. Possibly interviewing the landowner may prove of value.

Much more on the hanging canals here.

February 08, 2015
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Uploaded a rather poor quality reprint of my second color organ paper from the January 1974 Electronics World. This one featured filter and SCR trigger circuits that were much cheaper and featured easier to get parts.

There were about a dozen of my color organs total, with this one being the first and the Psychedelia being one of the last and best. Intermediate versions included the Colorgan in Radio Electronics, Musette in Popular Electronics, and the horribly renamed Hi Fi a Go Go also in Popular Electronics.

Plus an atrocity I'd just as soon forget about involving power photocells and pilot lights. Cheap but awful. They also tended to self destruct.

Many competing systems were also incredibly bad and gave the whole genre a bad name. Problems largely unsolved to this day were the need for decent sensitivity, lack of AGC, and mesmerizingly awful line interference. Getting decent display color saturation was difficult and most systems quickly became boring and repetitive.

If I were to address the color organ problem today, I would simply start over. The obvious display to use is a HDTV. And the obvious controller would be a Raspberry Pi.

Rather than full spectrum filtering, I think I'd look into advanced signal processing in which an attempt is made to separately extract each and every instrument, using something several levels beyond the Fast Fourier Transform. Each isolated instrument would then create a color "voice" suitable for its content. The position, size, shape, "dynamaticity" and whatever of each instrument would appropriately dance around the display.

Randomization would be introduced so that the very concept of how each instrument appears continuously changes.

February 05, 2015
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What were my worst construction projects of all time? After all, something had to end up on the bottom of the pile...

 A thermoelectric ice cube maker where the
 heatsink rise vastly exceeded the module
 delta T.

 A science fair proximity project where the
 sensitivity was appallingly bad because of
 a lack of understanding vacuum tube biasing.

 A pneumatic key presser for an IBM Selectric
 typewriter that never quite got the 1 in 64
 pneumatic decoder properly worked out.

 An ultra cheap color organ using nothing but
 three power photoresistors and three light bulbs
 but had an alarming tendency to self destruct.

 An attempt to get plotters to draw integrated
 circuit packages by merging Applewriter's WPL
 with Hewlett Packard's HPGL. Leaving a
 vanishing and fast closing market.

 A computer cassette interface that, while it
 seemed to work properly, did not have nearly
 the error rate studies and improvements that
 clearly were necessary. Made instantly obsolete
 by plummeting floppy drive prices

 An Apple IIe graphics accelerator that
 attempted to complexly table lookup HIRES
 graphics addresses for only a minor possible
 speedup.

 Attempts at WWVB receivers that never
 could get acceptable noise performance and
 error rates.

 An advertising "Reddy Readout" based on
 a winning college exhibit that was impossibly
 difficult to hardwire program and only
 offered a twelve character message.

February 04, 2015
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The xylophone duet can be found here. And its rather obscure original source here.

Plus hundreds of millions of daily progress reports here.

February 03, 2015
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A fairly good sign that a hanging canal or a check dam is prehistoric is having a large barrel cactus growing mid channel. Or at least a large mesquite tree or a lesser shrub such as a creosote bush.

We presently have dozens of midstream barrel examples that strongly and consistently seem to verify prehistoric age.

All of which raises an interesting math problem that I do not know how to deal with. The barrel cacti itself could be fifty to a hundred years old and was unlikely to grow in the presence of excess water. And the canal owner was unlikely to tolerate its presence during actual canal use.

But the germination time of a cactus is likely to be much, much longer. Possibly many hundreds of years. How would you statistically measure this? A steady state could be tentatively assumed, with the number of new cacti exactly matching the number being harvested or dying.

Otherwise, there would be no cacti or they would be wall to wall on ten inch centers.

Thus, it would seem to be reasonable to assume that the average germination time would be at least a century after the canal fell into disuse.

Any suggestions on a mathematical model?

( This is rather similar to the "Is hell exothermic or endothermic? " problem. If exothermic, eventually all hell breaks loose. If endothermic then hell freezes over. )

February 02, 2015
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Several exciting developments involving the Raspberry Pi today. We saw a few weeks ago that the Model A+ was introduced in a slightly smaller package at a base price of $20. Which, it turns out, does not include the software SD card, the power supply, the monitor, mouse, or keyboard.

My favorite monitor here is the Coby LEDTV1526, which may no longer be available. I have two pi projects underway at present. The first is to upgrade our magic sinewaves so that entire libraries of combined amplitude and frequency settings are possible in a single and largely hardware free SD drive.

And the second is to try and come up with a reference display design for new Everset Technologies ES100 WWVB self resetting and always accurate clock chip. With more info here, here, here, and here.

Meanwhile, there is an even newer quad core Raspberry Pi 2 that is up to six times faster in pretty much the same package as the original. And even more amazing it runs Windows 10 which is newly available at no charge!

February 01, 2015
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If you see a SMT reel that looks like "only a little" of it has been used, the chances are it is probably at least half empty. Because the outer wraps are much longer than the inner ones.

On a complete spiral, half of the length will be near the three quarters diameter point. For integrating a diameter of x dx produces an (x^2)/2 total.

Some math on this I never got around to using here. The was to find out how many turns were needed to give a customer a certain length of polyester sheet. Given the starting diameter and the sheet thickness.

January 31, 2015
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     Free the Indianapolis 500.

January 30, 2015
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The December PV cost figures are in here, and the best price per peak panel watt comes in at 45 cents. Which projects out to the 25 cents per peek watt magic number breakeven happening in 23 months.

Much more on energy fundamentals here. And especially here.

January 29, 2015
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A "gotcha" from back in the aerospace daze: Ferrite Beads will only work properly if they are able to move!

Apparently some minor motion is essential to convert unwanted rfi into heat. What this means is that if you pot a ferrite bead, or if you conformal coat it, or if you embed it in epoxy, it may no longer behave nearly as well as intended.

An alternate explanation for this problem is that the potting compound may shift or shrink during curing, resulting in a permanent applied pressure.

By one of those astounding coincidences that seem to infest this blog, we just happen to have some new and interesting ferrite interference reduction items up on our eBay auction site.

January 28, 2015
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Are auctioneers about to become an endangered species?

Online auctions offer far more convenience, less time, no travel, no weather or parking problems, etc... and they seem to no longer require traditional auctioneer skills. In fact, such skills can be largely a hindrance.

No longer relevant are spiels, charisma, and venues. Nor their traditional scams of fast hammers, phantom bidding, bid pulling, slow pay, and shilling. None of these skills or scams are even remotely needed or relevant in any online only auction setup.

Hints of all not being well is the Arizona Auctioneers Society pulling a Schroedinger and seeming being neither alive nor dead. And the National Auctioneers Association website clearly being unable to find a pig in a dishpan when it comes to available auctions.

More useful auction resources here and here.