Don Lancaster's What's New 2017 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, 2017
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Expanded and revised our directors cut for the Applewriter Cookbook. Find its file here and its sourcecode here.

Director's Cuts are my method of restoring Linotype era books and stories to well beyond their formal glory. The major benefits include astonishing low file sizes, "perfect" typography and backgrounds, color addons, full URL linkings and clickthrus, image click expansion, dehyphenation, paragraph ledding, and great heaping bunches more.

The process starts with a scan fed to Acrobat .PDF followed by text recognition and optimization. Pages are then cut to clipboard and fed to my Gonzo Utilities. Gross scanning typos are then fixed, followed by reformatting. Surprisingly little rekeying is required. As many figures as possible are regrouped into standard box procs of one sort or another.

The method does have a steep learning curve and is quite labor intensive. It is also not suitable for legal documents or "Shakespearean" quality originals.

Full services available.

December 30, 2017
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The smallest 4K resolution screens are apparently 24 inches. And, yeah, you'd have to be about three inches away to actually have your eye see this resolution.

But there is a major hidden advantage. Your print screen key now can have four times the resolution! Which significantly improves your capturing the uncapturable . And renders the concept of IP rights "quaint" at best. You will have to make sure you have the latest Window version, the latest screen drivers, and a display board that can handle 4K.

December 29, 2017
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Our latest pseudoscience bashing post has been newly revised here. With its sourcecode here. Along with a historic third party coverage here.

Some rules...

NEVER attack pseudoscience with manic religious fervor. Or you become what you think you are attacking.

NEVER directly confront a pseudoscience proponent. All this does is piss them off and get them into a "shoot the messenger" mode.

ALWAYS try to give third parties useful, authentic, and genuine scientific resources. Such as here and here. Let them fight the actual battles.

ALWAYS remember that rectocranial inversion can be both acute and chronic at the same time. Especially when they are "not even wrong".

And some links to our other pseudoscience stuff...

How to Bash Pseudoscience
How to scam a student paper
      This one is only "slightly"
       incorrect. But which?
Supraluminal Dowsing for Brown's
      Gas in Roswell.
Trashing auto electrolysizers
Debunking water powered cars. 
Arguments AGAINST the hydrogen
      economy
Investigating Brown's Gas 
The bogus magic lamp.
The actual bogus magic lamp paper. 
My very first perpetual motion machine
Our main Pseudoscience library

December 28, 2017
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Time for our usual end-of-year predictions...

Long overdue public increasing awareness of power and energy consumption, partially brought about by power utilities making meter readings owner accessible.

Total elimination of "unintended consequence" federal price supports and marijuana farm subsidies dropping street prices under a cotton comparable 59 cents per pound. With standardization on 500 pound bales.

Unlikely third world countries very soon dropping their pv panel prices to the utility grade twenty five cents per peak panel watt demanded for true renewability and sustainability.

Major increase in home butane honey oil explosions.

Expanding interest in "water from air" devices.

The sudden and total demise of coal.

Controversial but credible detection of extra-terrestrial mid-level intelligence "real soon now". Perhaps a planet full of asparagus. And more "WTF" signals yet to come.

Full width static self-duplexing printheads that can offer dramatic printer simplification and speedups.

Reduction in traditional auctions and auctioneers brought about by explosive online popularity. Many traditional auctioneer  skills are clearly no longer useful.

Dropping relevance of ISO fire ratings, combined with volunteer daytime response problems, dramatic cost increases, and major funding issues. ( But - hey. TFD just got a three! Which is the best it can get. Top dog. It seems the paid departments hog all the twos and ones. )

Strong sales of ultra resolution smart tv's despite zero available content. Whose largely unintended  side effect will dramatically increase the quality of IP print screen violations.

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.

Increasing climatic and weather variability, combined with size and frequency of outrageous fires. All clearly caused by human activity.

Dramatic increases in near field power transmission. Wireless chargers going from fraction of inches up to several feet. Driven by WiFi contactless charging.

Total self-destruction of traditional politics. Merging of tv sets and monitors into identical products.

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

Santa Claus rapidly becoming politically incorrect.

Social media eye siphoning dramatically cutting into more traditional website present and future use.

Dramatic increase in the popularity of hacker spaces, fab labs, and makerspaces.

Memory availability increasing exponentially, while memory needs are only increasing linearly. "Throw another million calculations at it".

Rapid demise of conventional desktop computers with laptops utterly dominating.

AI Artificial Intelligence soon crossing a self-awareness threshold. Boy, are they gonna be pissed.

Computers that are so cheap there is no longer any point in charging for them.

Stunning new HVAC efficiency breakthroughs by way of nanotechnology and other new or yet unapplied concepts.

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

December 27, 2017
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The encounter of the long count keeper.

December 26, 2017
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Uploaded a Son of Cheap Video free eBook here.

Additional free ebooks here.

Your help in finding additional scans needed...

Active Filter Cookbook ( autographed hard copy here )
Micro Cookbook volume I ( autographed hard copy here!) 
TTL Cookbook ( autographed hard copy here ) 
CMOS Cookbook 
All about Applewriter
Hexadecimal Chronicles 
Manual De Circuitos Integrados TTL
Pacific Rim TTL
Goodyear Aerospace AEEMs 
For Low Cost, Count on RTL 
Big TTL Wall Chart
Big CMOS Wall Chart
Cave Crawler's Gazette

December 25, 2017
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Uploaded a Cheap Video Cookbook free eBook here. It is on the longish side, owing to some higher res scans. But I have made it fully text searchable and web friendly.

The most successful and most spectacular commercial device derived from Cheap Video technology can be found here.

What is really frustrating is that a Directors Cut can be done to get down near 3 Megs per page with perfect typography and greatly improved artwork. But only with an hour-per-page time commitment. Outside funding required.

Additional free ebooks here.

December 24, 2017
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Updated and posted our latest Reay Canal Field Notes here and its sourcecode here.

Updated our latest Field Notes links here. With much more on our Bajada Hanging Canals here.

December 23, 2017
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Placed a new Director's Cut concluding our r Applewriter Cookbook here with its sourcecode here. Director's Cuts are my Gonzo Utilities method of dramatically restoring Linotype Era books and papers.

While the biggest benefits are astonishingly small file sizes ( 4K per page for the present AWCB! ), these can offer perfect registration, perfect fonts, no typos or dropouts, full color, url links, expandable images, simplified color, easy nav, fast loads, etc, etc...

The downsides of Director Cuts include a steep learning curve and being time and labor intensive. Perhaps an hour per page, much higher with schematics or specialty pages.

More ebooks here, while our other Director's Cut samplers presently can be found here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Consulting available, as are full projects.

December 22, 2017
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Our free Applewriter Cookbook eBook download is now available here.

After applying my usual anti-bloat tricks, the file remains somewhat long at 17 Megs. But it does create illusions of fast downloads by way of byte range retrieval.

There's a few more things I can try. By going to our Director's Cut techniques, I can probably get the size under 2 Megs. But this would take 120+ hours of time and would seem to demand external funding.

More free eBooks here. And your help is needed on these.

December 21, 2017
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The overwhelming majority of historic bajada canals seem to have moderate to compelling evidence of having clearly been "steal the plans" reworks of prehistoric originals.

But the Roper Lake Canal raises several age issues...

It seems to be orthogonal (!) to Henry's Canal near 32.74629 -109.72657 presently defying rational or credible prehistoric explanations.

Roper Lake may not have existed before the 1960's or might have been a local artesian pond. It is not on the 1960 topo, but appears on the 1985 topo.

The concrete ditch grade seems too steep for a mud original around 32.74529 -109.73730

The aggregate seems much less coarse than other historic rework, such as Marijilda.

Significant canal portions are cardinal oriented.

These puzzlements should be resolvable by appropriate ditch bosses or historians. Contact us if you can help.

December 20, 2017
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So, what percentage of obviously historic bajada hanging canals were clearly based on prehistoric originals? A best current guess is "well over 95 percent".

Firstoff, there is very strong bias in favor of "dig out an old ditch", "steal the plans" or "borrow the blueprints", as compared to  skillfully engineering a complete and working new canal system from scratch.

Secondly, we have strong "Rosetta stone" evidence of canals that clearly have co-linear segments that strongly show distinct "human" and "machine" scale portions. Particularly compelling evidence is found in the CluffNW, Minor Ditch, and Deadman canals. Along with a CNF Frye Mesa pipeline rework.

Thirdly, the historic rework typically applies only to a small and obviously repurposed portion of an initially longer construct. Examples include Deadman and the Allen Canal rework into Dams and cattle tanks. As were Robinson, Goat, and Ledford.

Fourthly, the bajada landscape is literally littered with dozens of easily exploitable examples of  original and undeveloped prehistoric canals. Ignoring these would have been sheer folly.

Fifthly, the prehistoric constructs clearly exploited every reasonably available water source. Leaving a scant few few unburdened and available for new historic use.

Sixthly is a typical lack of negative historic evidence that did not particularly preclude a prehistoric origin.

We will look at an enigmatic counter example tomorrow.

December 19, 2017
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How can you tell if a Prehistoric Bajada Hanging Canal at least once had a prehistoric original? While any one factor might be "weak", an overall preponderance of evidence of similar weak and largely unrelated factors can often utterly and totally overwhelm.

Here are some factors that might be considered...

"Hanging" portions serve uniquely prehistoric needs.
Construction across, rather than along, the route.
Slopes made strongly independent of local terrain
Run over by roads, fences, dams, and cemeteries.
Meets prehistoric use source and destination criteria.
Lack of original concrete, headgates, wood, or rebar.
Lack of service or maint roads.
Huge cuts or aqueducts used only where essential.
Absolute human scale minimum energy constructs.
Presence of cacti, mesquite, and others midstream.
Long statistical germination time of midchannel plants.
Consistent unshifted patina, lichens, and caliche.
Obvious"mid route" human to high tech scope switching.
Sizes totally consistent with construction by human hands.
Brilliant adaptation of "pinch points" and "knife edging". Credible "Steal the plans" and "Borrow the blueprints".
Notable lack of cardinal or magnetic direction runs. 
Longer routes favoring meticulously constant slope.
Associated well defined end user fields. sampler
Not in any manner "cow oriented".
Sophisticated route combination and splitting.
Unknown to modern land users. Lack of modern development along traces. Does not have a "Gradeall" look about it.
Not in common and popular clan histories. 
Use of water sources considered trivial today. 
Teacups versus acre feet of water.
Watershed crossings of crucial prehistoric import.
Associated artifacts and habitation sites.
Overwhelming preponderance of prehistoric use.

No pipes. No siphons. No eroding steep runs.
Only a small fraction obviously historically reworked.
Historic use stopping midway around the canal route.
"Dig out an old ditch" requiring few historic skills.
Gentle and constant slopes.
Preponderance of evidence from unrelated factors.
Overwhelming "exploit every Mt. Graham water drop".
Many of the canals have no obvious historic purpose.
Styles of CCC constructs wildly different.
Use of local, rather than hauled rock resources.
Channel being significantly on higher ground.
Lack of evidence of iron tool use during construction.
Human size consistent spoil piles where appropriate.
No rocks used that could not be easily hand lifted.
Possible uses of pilot water levels as survey tools.
Historically unlikely to insult"Grandpa's Ditch".
Unified specialized exotic engineering skills required.
Reasonable evidence of historic bajada rebuilding.

But the crucial main reason of all, of course, is...

Because an archaeologist said so.

December 18, 2017
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Here's a "work in progress" partial sampler of our upcoming free Applewriter Cookbook eBook. We hope to have this complete in the next few days.

Find our other eBooks here and some of them third party here. And a list of stuff that needs your scanning help or links here.

December 17, 2017
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Just added a bunch of revised field notes. Those presently available bajada hanging canal docs now do include...

Allen Canal **
Bear Springs Canal **
Cluffnw Canal   **
Deadman Canal **
Frye Complex **
Jernigan Canal  **
Longview Area **
Lower Frye Construct  **
Mud Springs **
Reay Canal  **
Robinson Canal  **
Tranquility Canal  **
Tugood Canal  ** 
Veech Canal  **

Intended for early major upgrade are...

Freeman Canal 
Henry Canal* 
Lefthand Canyon West 
Minor Webster Ditch 
Riggs Mesa Canal 
Sand Canal  Smith
Canal  TB Ponding Area* 

For sourcec codes, substitute .psl trailers above. A catalog of most field notes can be found here and new additions are are first likely to appear here.

Our intent is to post many of these to ResearchGate. Your proofing assistance and critique welcome. As are field mice, drone operators, and ATV honchos.

December 16, 2017
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Repairs are continuing on some of our older YouTube videos. There seem to be several glitches in the works.

Meanwhile, we recommend our revised classic Intro to PostScript vid that is now single file combined and can be best viewed via this link.

We are thinking about doing some new Gila Hike and Bajada Hanging Canals videos. Let me know what you would like to see. We are working on
an Applewriter Cookbook ebook and hope to have it up "real soon now".

Many more ebooks ready-for-free-download here and bunches more on PostScript here.

December 15, 2017
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Oops. I just discovered that my Ask the Guru columns #53 through #58 are apparently "lost" with their source code long gone.

So, if any of you still have July 1989 through December 1989 issues of Computer Shopper available, please either scan the columns or send me hard copies. Or tell me where to find them online.

We just summarized the key contents of the other ATG columns here and earlier.

I'm also having trouble finding "For Low Cost, Count on RTL" from some March 1968 issue of Electronics. This one had a bizarre side story that got me permanently banned from Electronics. It seems the photographic directors on two wildly different magazines rephotographed coincidentally identical images at the same time, mightily pissing off the powers that be.

I guess we now have about half of my eBooks now freely available online. I sure would like to find valid and ready-to-use downloads of the others without having to rescan them all myself.

Of particular need are...

Active Filter Cookbook ( autographed hard copy here! )
Micro Cookbook volume I ( autographed hard copy here! ) 
TTL Cookbook (eBook newly here ) ( autographed here! ) 
CMOS Cookbook 
Cheap Video Cookbook
Son of Cheap Video
Applewriter Cookbook

All about Applewriter
Hexadecimal Chronicles 
Manual De Circuitos Integrados TTL
Pacific Rim TTL
Goodyear Aerospace AEEMs a third is
For Low Cost, Count on RTL 
Big TTL Wall Chart
Big CMOS Wall Chart
Ask the Guru 53 through 58
Cave Crawler's Gazette

Plus our usual reminder that you can pick up nearly one each of everything that we do have on your own USB here.

December 14, 2017
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Added updates to our prehistoric bajada hanging canals and field notes that include Mud Springs, Tranquility, Tugood Canal, and Veech Canal .

Also updated our previous field note link farm here. As before, substitute .psl trailers to get at the sourcecode.

We hope to get these onto Researchgate shortly Your proofing assistance and critique welcome. As are field mice, drone operators, and ATV honchos.

December 13, 2017
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Concluding our Ask the Guru partial directory, this time on ATG1.PDF...

#16 - WPL details, keyword indexer, laser printed badge
#15 - Anti-aliasing, Imageworks card, image processing
#14 - Drawing schematics, new control computer, RAM
#13 - Curve tracing, USGS data bases. VIP interface
#12 - Secret ASCII control commands, Applewriter 2.1
#11 - Fancy grey techniques, halftones, post processing.
#10 - Vaporlock interrupts, bar code info, HIRES entry
#9   - IIe dual monitor, Isometric drawing, Ramcards
#8   - Cubic splines, Using Bezier curves, editing BASIC
#7   - IIc/IIe absolute reset, EPROM monitor adapter
#6   - Typesetting an ad, Diablo 630 emulation, software
#5   - Disassembly aliasing, Shuffling algorithm, Info
#4   - Snatchmon, ET Watching, Dual character gen
#3   - Option picking, tough I/O chip, Robotic motors
#2   - Low cost air valves, pneumatic actuators, ISMM
#1   - Pseudorandom generator, free tech info, tape secrets

December 12, 2017
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Some vids...

An interesting three part pseudoscience presentation can be found here. With my own pseudoscience bashing here, and its key papers here and here. And my related latest post here.

A superb vid on the Wright - Curtiss war can be found here. The Wright Brothers, of course are most famous for their interminable patent battles over obsolete technology that completely crippled US aviation development.

And that, of course, was well before the present patenting debacle.

For most individuals and small scale startups, patents  are virtually certain to result in a net loss of time,  energy, money, and sanity.   

One reason for this is the outrageously wrong urban  lore involving patents and patenting. A second involves  the outright scams which inevitably will surround all "inventions" and "inventing". 

A third is that the economic breakeven needed to recover patent costs is something between $12,000,000 and $40,000,000 in gross sales. It is ludicrously absurd to try and patent a million  dollar idea.

Start with our Case Against Patents paper and then  go on to these...

 The Case Against Patents  
When to Patent   
How to Bust a $650 Patent   
Patent Horror Stories
Patent Avoidance Resources
Main Patent Library Page Collected Patenting eBook

And, finally, my own video can be found here.

December 11, 2017
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I was surprised to see on our website's search strings up on Fat Cow come up asking me about locked PostScript font paths. Well, for years and years, font paths have long been completely open and unlocked.

The key operator is charapath per the Reference Manual. Among the other great things this allows is that you can redefine operators such as lineto, curveto, etc... to create nonlinear transformations and distortions of lettering. Per these examples and great heaping bunches more here.

At one time back in the dark ages, font paths were protected by an "absolutely unbreakable" eexec operator. That is until I discovered that any patient seventh grader could sight read an eexec file simply by inserting an extra character and viewing all their error messages! Shortly after that Adobe both fully documented eexec and unlocked all of their fonts.

Correlation is not causation. Cum hoc ergo propter hoc.

Back in the locked font days, I did have a now obsolete, very slow, and fairly harebrained scheme called pixel line remapping. Published here, but don't even think about reviving it.

The scheme worked by putting down a character and scanning it cropped one pixel by one line, then transforming each scan line as needed.

In those days, you did what you had to do.

December 10, 2017
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Continuing our Ask the Guru partial directory, this time on ATG1.PDF...

#32 - Pixel line remappig, ultimate hacker food, T-Shirt printing
#31 - Eastern typefaces, PostScript lock washers, paper folders
#30 - Curvetracing, Binding systems, Toner cartridge reloading
#29 - Desktop publishing tools, Step & repeat, Serial firmware
#28 - Autoaddressing labels, PostScript speedup, Laser print
#27 - Point ruler, absolute IIc reset, laser die cutting
#26 - Mass teleportation, Tweedleifier, Apple tech literature
#25 - De-putrifying grays, Omnicrom color, Rubber Grids
#24 - IIgs serial cables, Toner cartridge reloads, Creepifier
#23 - Stretchifier, Curvetraced signatures, Key Mac graphic
#22 - Swallowifier, Solar breakthrough, Omnichrom
#21 - Business cards, Bee's piano tradesman's cut, Scrunchifier
#20- Apple ID code, laser letterheads, WPL nullifier
#19 - Poison ivy in a spray can, PostScript surface mapping
#18 - ASCII to hex and decimal, Reversed window decals
#17 - Circular text, Puss de Resistance, Laser badges

December 09, 2017
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Presently available newly revised bajada hanging canal field notes do include...

Allen Canal **
Bear Springs Canal **
Deadman Canal **
Frye Complex **
Jernigan Canal  **
Lower Frye Construct  **
Mud Springs **
Tranquility Canal  **
Tugood Canal  ** 
Veech Canal  **

Intended for early major upgrade are...

Cluffnw Canal 
Freeman Canal 
Henry Canal* 
Lefthand Canyon West 
Longview Area 
Minor Webster Ditch 
Reay Canal  *
Riggs Mesa Canal 
Robinson Canal *
Sand Canal 
Smith Canal 
TB Ponding Area* 

For sourcecodes, substitute .psl trailers above. A catalog of most field notes can be found here and new additions are are first likely to appear here.

Our intent is to post many of these to ResearchGate.

December 08, 2017
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Continuing our Ask the Guru partial directory, this time on ATG2.PDF...

#58 - to #53 - May be temporarily "lost"

#52 - Fast PostScript, Low cost jogger, Die cut forms
#51 - Two-up notepads, toner refill tools, Error trapper
#50 - Spirograph code, 57600 Baud interface, Pellon ploy.
#49 - Secret non-putrid grays, ticket blanks, using WPL
#48 - SX refilling, Tearing method, Some thick paper ploy
#47 - White noise generator, Intelligent tabs, Resources
#46 - Gocco silk screens, Smart directories, Game paddles
#45 - Hot stamping, PostScript Superexec, Nuisance codes
#44 - Pixie dust anti-scratch, Gonzo Justify, color proofing
#43 - Kroy Kolor, Sight reading eexec, Fusion machine mods
#42 - IIgs toolkit, video locking! Post justification editing
#41 - LAN of the 80's, Corner rounding, personal buscards
#40 - IIgs tool list, padding compound, PostScript printed circuits
#39 - Border builders, IIgs dependencies, stock market records
#38 - Perspective transforms, toner cart reloads, sneaky bricks
#37 - Self publishing secrets, perspective drawings Apple III.
#36 - Dropout free gray grid, Printing on aluminum, IIgs modes.
#35 - Monochrome HIRES graphics, Printing papers, Boxifier
#34 - IC Dipdraw, Appletalk schematic, Print onto anything
#33 - Paper cutters, Rubergrids, PostScript fundamentals

December 07, 2017
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Our original Computer Shopper Ask the Guru columns are presently available in these three volumes...

ATG1.PDF  ( columns 1-32 )
ATG2.PDF  ( columns 33-57 )
ATG3.PDF  ( columns 58-74)

I thought I'd start at least a partial directory of what was in each column here. We'll start with ATG3.PDF...

#74 - Click to Clunk, Flocking, Baud rate Limiting
#73 - Fuzzy data fits, Video compression, PostScript Ideas
#72 - Serendipitios borders, ISMM, book publishing
#71 - Mitzi's Yuppy Fare, menu justify, printer networks
#70 - Stock analyzer, unusual print stuff, toner durability
#69 - Toner cart refilling, lamination, BOD Publishing
#68 - Bezier graphics, Meals in minutes, PDF Distillery
#67 - Navicubes, Perspective lettering, Repair manuals
#66 - Using histograms, duplex printing, papers & humidity
#65 - PostScript point rule, cheap color, file conversion
#64 - Fractal Fern, T-shirt toners, duplex printing secrets
#63 - Perspective letters, printed circuits, nonlinear transforms
#62 - Pelsaer Binding, ifelse actions, effective baud rates
#61 - Flippity floppers, understanding eexec, blackflashing
#60 - Bezier length, vinyl lettering, PostScript speedups
#59 - Pad Printing, Superstroking, direct toner printed circuits

December 06, 2017
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Presently available newly revised bajada hanging canal field notes do include...

Allen Canal **
Bear Springs Canal **
Deadman Canal **
Frye Complex **

Intended for early major upgrade are...

Cluffnw Canal 
Freeman Canal 
Frye Complex 
Henry Canal* 
Jernigan Canal 
Lefthand Canyon
West  Longview Area 
Lower Frye Construct * 
Mud Springs 
Minor Webster Ditch 
Reay Canal  *
Riggs Mesa Canal 
Robinson Canal *
Sand Canal  Smith Canal 
TB Ponding Area* 
Tranquility Canal
Tugood Canal
Veech Canal

For sourcecodes, substitute .psl trailers above.

A catalog of most field notes can be found here and new additions are are first likely to appear here.

Our intent is to post many of these to ResearchGate.

December 05, 2017
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The latest revisions to our bajada hanging canal field notes can be identified by a new final page that will include one or more topo maps.

Presently available are...

Deadman Canal **

Intended for early upgrade are...

Allen Canal
Bear Springs Canal 
Cluffnw Canal 
Freeman Canal 
Frye Complex 
Henry Canal* 
Jernigan Canal 
Lefthand Canyon
West  Longview Area 
Lower Frye Construct * 
Mud Springs 
Minor Webster Ditch 
Reay Canal  *
Riggs Mesa Canal 
Robinson Canal *
Sand Canal 
Smith Canal 
TB Ponding Area* 
Tranquility Canal
Tugood Canal
Veech Canal

For sourcecodes, substitute .psl trailers above.

Unwritten field notes are listed here and are first likely to appear here.

Bear Flat Canal redirects here Bigler Canal redirects here.  The HS Canal redirects here. Tailwater Canal redirects here

December 04, 2017
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A second release from blog hell would be the purposely long delayed The The Curious Saga of the Magic Lamp.

Find its .pdf file here and its sourcecode here. And a third party confirmation here.

More on pseudoscience bashing here. And many of our older GuruGrams here.

December 03, 2017
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There are several older entries I'd like to release from blog hell and upgrade them to real live .PDF GuruGrams.

The first, of course, is our technical treatise on Enameled Dealing With Four Paws and Groundswill. Find its .pdf here and its sourcecode here.

December 02, 2017
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This "new" scheme to eliminate rfi on Gen 5 color organs and similar dimming aps would seem to demand incandescents with high thermal time constants. Such as a PAR38 with a dichroic filter.

The scheme is based on switching only full power line half cycles, thus completely eliminating the rfi of older designs.

There would be a definite tradeoff between the number of available amplitudes and objectionable flicker. Chances are that greatly reduced amplitude counts might be needed.

Here are some low amplitude count possibilities...

Ten amplitude levels...

0 -   0000000000 ( $000 )
1 -   0000100000 ( $020 )
2 -   0010000100 ( $084 )
3 -   0100100010 ( $122 )
4 -   0101000101 ( $14A )
5 -   0101010101 ( $155 )
6 -   1010110101 ( $2D5 )
7 -   1011011101 ( $2DD )
8 -   1101110111 ( $37B )
9 -   1111011111 ( $3EF )
10 - 1111111111 ( $3FF )

Eight amplitude levels...

0 - 00000000 ( $00 )
1 - 00010000 ( $10 )
2 - 01000100 ( $44 )
3 - 01010010 ( $52 )
5 - 10101101 ( $AB )
6 - 10111011 ( $DD )
7 - 11101111 ( $EF )
8 - 11111111 ( $FF )

Six amplitude levels...

0 - 000000 ( $00 )
1 - 001000 ( $08 )
2 - 001001 ( $11 )
3 - 010101 ( $25 )
4 - 110110 ( $36 )
5 - 110111 ( $37 )
6 - 111111 ( $3F )

Four amplitude levels...

December 01, 2017
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There might be a new way to precision dim lamps. Both for a Gen 5 color organ, or for general use. Its key feature is that it should eliminate most, if not all rfi. Poof. Gone. A secondary feature is extreme digital precision.

All it takes is a plain old zero switched triac solid state relay and some minor smarts from the lowest of low end micros.

Consider a "frame" of 32 sequential half cycles, along with a "magic" word that only activates some of them to produce a level from 0 to 32.  Normally, you'd expect some flicker or lag problems with the 3.75 Hertz refresh rate. But out of the billions of possible 32 bit words, what if we could pick out "magic" ones that had negligible fundamental and other low harmonic energy? By using stunts similar to our Magic Sinewave stuff?

Such as these guys...

0 - 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
1 - 0000 0000 0000 0001 0000 0000 0000 0000  
2 - 0000 0001 0000 0000 0000 0001 0000 0000    
3 - 0000 0100 0000 0000 1000 0000 0001 0000    
4 - 0000 1000 0000 1000 0000 1000 0000 1000
5 - 0001 0000 0100 0000 1000 0010 0000 0100
6 - 0010 0001 0000 0100 0100 0000 1000 0100
7 - 0010 0010 0001 0001 0000 1000 1000 0100
8 - 0010 0010 0010 0010 0010 0010 0010 0010  
9 - 0010 0100 0100 1000 1001 0001 0010 0010
10 - 0101 0010 0010 0010 0100 1001 0001 0010  
11 - 0100 1001 0010 0101 0010 0100 1001 0010
12 - 0101 0010 0100 1010 0101 0010 0100 1010
13 - 0101 0010 1001 0100 1010 0101 0010 1010
14 - 0101 0101 0010 1010 0101 0100 1010 1010
15 - 0101 0101 0101 0100 1010 1010 1010 1010  
16 - 0101 0101 0101 0101 0101 0101 0101 0101  
17 - 0101 0101 0101 0101 1101 0101 0101 0101    
18 - 0101 0101 1101 0101 0101 0111 0101 0101
19 - 0101 0111 0101 0101 1101 0101 0101 1101   
20 - 0101 1101 0101 1101 0101 1101 0101 1101
22 - 1011 1010 1110 1110 1011 1011 1010 1110
23 - 1101 1011 1011 0111 0110 1110 1101 1101  
24 - 1110 1110 1110 1110 1110 1110 1110 1110   
25 - 1101 1110 1110 1111 0111 0111 0111 1011
26 - 1101 1110 1111 1011 1101 1110 1111 1011
27 - 1110 1111 1011 1111 0111 1101 1111 1011
28 - 1111 0111 1111 0111 1111 0111 1111 0111
29 - 1110 1111 1111 1101 1111 1111 1011 1111
30 - 1111 1111 1111 1111 0111 1111 1111 1111
31 - 1111 1111 1111 1111 1111 1111 1111 1111

This third party website can quickly give you the Fourier Series for each and every one of these. Just enter the bits vertically..

What could possibly go wrong? Go wrong? Go wrong?  This still is not yet proven. There still might be lag or flicker effects. Singing cannot be ruled out. The concept would likely work better with high lag incandescents, rather than LED's.

Yeah, there is a lot of high frequency energy in the spectra. but at least  it is not directly and suddenly switching high currents. There might be power factor correction issues.

Alternates such as 24 level or 48 level might prove useful. Trading off lag or flicker against the number of available levels. As might prebiasing the lamps to avoid problematic amplitudes 1, 2, and possibly 3.

There's likely even better magic words, as I did not yet run through all of the 429,496,729 possibilities. Present values were based on maximizing the number of zero sequences while making them as uniform and as symmetric as possible. But as our Magic Sinewave stuff proved elsewhere, there are likely to be some real gems deeply buried here.

Your comments, and testing welcome.

November 30, 2017
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This recent blog raised a few very interesting math questions that center on minimizing the fundamental and other low harmonic energy of repeating half cycle harmonic sequences.

This is sort of the exact opposite of our usual Magic Sinewave goals. But its purported minimum visual pollution theorem can still be of help. Chances are the "best" half cycle color organ amplitude waveforms will have a maximum number of zero groups. And the zero groups will end up as internally uniform and as symmetrically uniform as possible.

Somewhere along the line, you might want to ask "How many binary words of length n have exactly k ones in them?   The answer depends on a beastie called a binomial sequence, and I dealt with this in depth way back here. Note that figure two has been truncated, so use symmetry for anything missing.

Ferinstance, the sequence for n=8 is 1-8-28-56-70- 56-28-8-1 with there being 28 words with either two ones or two zeros in them. Higher n values can be calculated from this web resource.

Things do get out of hand for very large n. Ferinstance, there are over half a billion 32 bit words with 16 ones in them.

Another approach might be to generate a shorter test sequence of random k out of n patterns. This is a largely trivial PostScript process. Create an array of n zeros. For each new pattern, pick a random number from n and try to write a one to your array. If there already is a one there, try again. Complete writing k times.

One gotcha: this only works well for k equal or less than one half of n. Use complements for the rest of the gang.

For low k, only a sane number of retrys will be needed. Well less than double k or so. Depending on luck.

More math stuff here. And buried here.

November 29, 2017
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Fixed a link glitch and improved and updated our Tugood Canal Preliminary Field Notes. With new sourcecode here.

A probable destination is now a tank at 32.82118 -109.86670, but this still needs field verified.

This canal is an ideal candidate for a field camp, or even for preservation or gasp! as a full restoration. It remains in a virtually undeveloped difficult access area on the wrong side of both private and state land postings.

More on these stunningly engineered prehistoric bajada canals here. With its usual key paper here.

Field mice and drone operators welcome.

November 28, 2017
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One of the new concepts I am overly enameled with is that it is now insanely easy to throw another million calculations at something. Or even many more.

Examples include our Fun with Fields and More Fun With Fields - Simplification by Rebounding papers that can ridiculously and heretically ease electromagnetic and similar fields calculations.

These techniques are now so powerful they can even be used to vignette picture borders. With this code and these detailed examples.

Yet another example of easy but intense calculations are our magic sinewave calculators.

More on million calcs here. More math stuff here.

November 27, 2017
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A partner in our Guru's Lair Blog revealed that, way back when, they had surprisingly good results with a color organ design that used only entire power line half cycles. Helped along with carefully chosen incandescent lamps with very high thermal inertia.

This, of course, completely eliminated any rfi.

These days ( with a little help from a Raspberry Pi or a PIC or whatever )  we might try a ten frame per second refresh rate, each frame of which included zero to twelve half cycle pulses. Said pulses made at the highest possible and most uniform rep rate.

The frames could be time staggered for each channel to try and mask what is really coming down. Given some help from decent audio AGC and some digital linearization stunts, the dynamic range might not end up all that bad.

It might also be interesting to try a 5 Hertz refresh with 24 levels. Other candidates might include 10x12, 8x15, 7.5x16 6x20, 5x24 4x25, or 3.75x32. Trading lag vs dynamic range.

A sneaky trick might work at 3.75x32: Prebias the lamps to state #3! This would only barely light the lamps, but would significantly reduce the lowest frequency flicker and lag components!

A challenge: Use Fourier Series to find the pattern for any given amplitude that minimizes the lowest harmonics.

November 26, 2017
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The story that first got me into color organs first appeared here, along with several other early attempts by others here.

Which led to my series of psychedelic lighting projects..

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

Technology limits at the time left many flaws, most of which were corrected by this 2011 third party story. Whose improvements included agc microphone based audio, digital filters, dynamic range improvement, and brightness linearization.

But problems with severe RFI, heat issues, decent color saturation, and ultimately boring displays still persisted. So what would be possible in a new "gen 5" color organ?

The RFI could be significantly reduced by phase cut or "trailing edge"dimming where power is turned off proportionally later in the half cycle. Better yet, bunches of LED's could be used for each channel, switched in a 1-2-4-8 sequence and each channel quantity adjusted to balance equal color perception levels.

Best of all would be to eliminate the display entirely and substitute an HDTV monitor. What might push today's technology is an elaborate digital filtering scheme that would attempt to extract each original instrument back into its own isolated channel.

Each instrument would then appear in its own color Naturally, animation and randomizing techniques could be used to minimize boredom issues.

November 25, 2017
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Our latest prehistoric bajhada hanging canal publication is being preliminarily uploaded as A Gila Valley Bajada Hanging Canal Directory. Find it here and its sourcecode here.

A few dozen links have yet to be completed, and I sure could use your proofing help in checking those already active.

We expect to have this on researchgate and wesrch shortly.

The key bajada hanging paper can be found here, with bunches more of them available here.

Field mice, ATV's and drone operators are urgently needed.

November 24, 2017
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Our classic Fundamental Factors Underlying Recent Technological Innovation paper can be found here with its sourcecode here.

Additional GuguGram summaries and links here.

November 23, 2017
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One of the resource collections we have had kicking around here for a long time involve Flutterwumpers.

Flutterwumpers are low cost machines that spit or chomp. Such as printed circuit drills, sign routers, animation stands, CAD/CAM mills, plotters, Santa Claus machines, etc.

One approach to designing these machines involves combining PostScript's incredible ability to write any disk file in any language with an ultra simple and royalty free flutfile of inanely simple text commands that can be distilled in Acrobat and then fed to most any Raspberry Pi or PIC or whatever.

Thus giving the lowest of low end microcomputers the ability to deal with world class typography and fancy curves. And totally free of any high end CAD/CAM software.

Here are some of our flutterwumper resources...

Main Flutterwumper library
PIC PostScript Flutterwumpers
$99 Flutterwumpers
Gonzo PostScxript Utilities
Gonzo PostScript Tutorial
Using Distiller as a general purpose computer
PostScript Reference Manual
PostScript Flutterwumper Utilities
Exploring PostScript PIC Flutterwumpers
Vector to Step Conversion Low Cost Printed Circuit Drill
Virtual Ways CAM Machine
Hexapod web site
A third party flutterwumper video
Main PostScript Library

Oh yeah. One tiny gotcha. Postscript's ability to read or write any disk file in any language was so incredibly powerful that Adobe has factory disabled in recent distiller versions.

The top secret workaround is as follows: Always run Distiller from the command mode using this //acrodist /F incantation to restore full disk access power.

And please send only trusted material to Distiller.

November 22, 2017
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Concluding our Prehistoric Bajada Hanging Canal list...

20. XXX2 ( awaiting reassignment )

19. XXX3 ( awaiting reassignment )

18. TBP1 TB Ponding Area N 32.76739 W 109.73803 to N 32.76465 W 109.73400 Receives and redistributes TEC1 and TWC1 water.  Highly distinctive aerial profile. Field notes here. rinc1 rinc2

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

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.

15. DPC1 Discovery Park Canal N 32.79267 W 109.72830 to N 32.79450 W 109.72781 Possible feeder to potential Discovery Park fields. Vague - still needs additional verification.

14. TQC1 Tranquility Canal N 32.75754 W 109.73294 to N 32.77477 W 109.72751 Artesian sourced and historic use from presumed original. Older field notes here. tranq1 tranq2

13. RIC1 Rincon Canal N 32.73410 W 109.76325 to N 32.76222 W 109.74402 Marijilda branch possibly becomes Twin West canal. Further study required, especially mid route.

12. RPC1 Roper Canal N 32.75567 W 109.70885 to N 32.75567 W 109.70885 Modern feeder to Roper Lake, presumed originally prehistoric. Possible cardinal realignments.

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. Field notes here. henry1 henry9

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

9. HMC1 High Lebanon 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. Associated with a major aqueduct. hangcan1 mary2lebanon_route3

8. MAQ1 Marijilda Aqueduct 32.72356 W 109.76257 to N 32.72411 W 109.76235 Delivers between Main Marijilda and High Lebanon Only known major system aqueduct crosses a saddle. Heavy construction energy comparable to HS Canal and Culebra Cut.

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

6. MAR1 Main Marijilda Canal from diversion takein. N 32.70628 W 109.77702 to N 32.73322 W 109.76149 Major prehistoric development likely sourcing Henry's, High Lebanon, TB East, TB West, and Roper Lake. Still flowing in maintained modern use.

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

4. JAC1 Lower Jacobson Hints N 32.67671 W 109.77610 to N 32.67736 W 109.77472  Largely discredited. Aerial evidence became a fence line in canal hostile terrain.

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

2. GTC1 Goat Tank Canal N 32.68467 W 109.76160 to N 32.68914 W 109.72106 Jacobson Canyon to south edge of Ledford Mesa. Apparently still in modern use, difficult access. Partial private lands. Includes curious historic pipeline. goat4 goat5

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 Only preliminary explored, should be significant. Entire canal is on CNF lands.

November 21, 2017
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Continuing our Prehistoric Bajada Hanging Canal list...

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

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. Includes impressive Culebra Cut Destination remains unknown. Earlier field notes here. allen0 allen1 culebra1

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. Relation to Reay Canal not yet resolved. Field notes here. rob1 rob2 rob3

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

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. Some routings remain unknown. Likely related to HS Canal and Riggs Canyon and Reay Canal. . golf1map gc1 gc2 golf3

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. Needs further work.

33. BPC1 Blue Ponds Canal N 32.78118 W 109.77771 to N 32.78064 W 109.77607 Short disused historic pond routing canal is likely a portion of Lower Frye Construct and Freeman Canal. Presently has been "lost" and awaits rediscovery. Includes obvious concrete headgates.

32. LFC1 Earlier Freeman Canal Search N 32.76634 W 109.79377 to N 32.77185 W 109.78715 This initial search for a Blue Ponds to Lower Frye connection was discredited due to horseshoes on an apparent wagon road. See #75 LFEX1 for current interest.

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, Blue Ponds, and Freeman Canals. Among the three most major known constructs that include the Aqueduct and the Culebra Cut. Absolutely and unquestionably world class.

30. FPA1 Lower Frye Mesa Ponding area. N 32.75995 W 109.81148 Gathers in Frye Mesa braided channels to support HS Canal,  and Robinson Canal. Also likely still unproven Golf Course, Blue Ponds, Lower Frye, and Freeman Canals.  Also still unproven is an upper Frye watershed crossing.  

 29. MFC1 Main Mid Frye Mesa Delivery Canal N 32.74573 W 109.84033 to N 32.75995 W 109.81148  Partially undiscovered but demanded by Frye Ponding Area, HS Canal, Golf Course, and Robinson Canal. The simplest to explain source would be an Upper Frye watershed crossing that remains unproven.

28. FWD1 Upper 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. With any present alternates lacking credibility. A significant and obvious watershed crossing has been previously proven on the Mud Springs Canal at 32.79159 -109.85379

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. Early field note here.

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

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. While not hanging canal related, they represent significant water management features.

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. Likely older.

23. XXX1 ( awaiting reassignment )

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.

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. Field notes here. deadman3 deadman4> deadman5

November 20, 2017
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Continuing our Prehistoric Bajada Hanging Canal list...

60. BSC1 Bear Springs Scam N 32.85049 W 109.94399 to N 32.87226 W 109.92596 Apparent scam huge historic canal from a source highly unlikely to have been prehistorically ignored. The history part needs resolved first as the present canal is much too large for prehistoric development..

 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. Largely Discredited. Present Sand Canal takein believed near 32.81238 -109.94797.

58. SWC1 Sand Wash Canal 32.81238 -109.94797 to N 32.83508 W 109.92274 Ideal short tour candidate has nearly everything including  easy access. May be prototype as final channel minuscule. Mysterious historic "cluttering" with random "stuff". Tri branched. Earlier Field Notes here. sand4 sand6 sand8

57. MR1 Mystery Reach N 32.81793 W 109.90207 to N 32.82478 W 109.90003 Once convincing aerial evidence field verified more as a disused vehicle two track. Largely discredited.

56. LMC1 Lamb Tank Canal
N 32.81196 W 109.92310 to N 32.81445 W 109.92266 Difficult access. Additional study required.

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

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.

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. Paper here.

52. TGC1 Tugood Canal N 32.80923 W 109.87115 to 32.82100 -109.86675 Most impressively pristine of the known hanging canals.  Superb restoration candidate. Older field note here. tugood1 tugood2

51. MWD1 Minor 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. Somewhat paired with the Tugood Canal. Older field note here. minor1 minor2

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.

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

48. STC1 Smith Tank Canal N 32.81870 W 109.84689 to N 32.82055 W 109.84458 Likely has unproved prehistoric original. Early field notes here. smith1 smith2 smith3 smith4 smith5

47. LMT Lower Mud Trace 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. Largely discredited.

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. Three "U" turns. Portions still unaccounted for. Older field note here. jern1

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

44. MJB1 Mud Jernigan Branching Point N 32.82765 W 109.81953 Apparent location of the beginning of the Jernigan Canal, branching off the Mud Springs Canal. Three portions of the route remain unresolved.

43. THP1 Troll House strange structure N 32.82538 W 109.82281 Enigmatic pithouse like mud springs canal related  structure lacks charcoal evidence and is intimately mud springs canal related. troll1

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 and spectacular proven watershed crossing. Plus a troll house. Destination remains unknown. Earlier field note here. mud1 mud2 mud4 troll1

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. Possibly obliterated by Tropical Storm Octave.

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. One of the three largest known local hanging bajada canal constructs. Others include the HS Canal and the aqueduct. Allen field notes here. Dam failure docs here. culebra1

November 19, 2017
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We seem to be due for another revision of our Prehistoric Bajada Hanging Canal list, perhaps adding images. There are presently two ways to count the canals, the study candidates list ( now 82 ) that may include multiple names having missing pieces and a very few discredited entries kept to avoid duplicate efforts. Plus a certified list in the forties of  those strongly validated.

Either way, the total lengths awaiting drone mapping appear likely to well exceed a world class and utterly spectacular ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY MILES! Starting today with some of the latest...

82. LOWR2 - Understudied Lower Rincon Near 32.77355 -109.74263 to 32.77360 -109.74166 Possibly part of still unproven Discovery Park Canal.

81. TBD1 Thunderbird Canal 32.74350 -109.73323 to 32.74353 -109.73261 Previously unnamed portion of CC:5:51 under restudy.

80. REY1 Reay Canal 32.80623 -109.77622 to 32.82236 -109.77287 Endangered possible Golf Course Canal Destination. reay1 reay3 reay5

79. LPZ1 Lopez Canal 32.82141 -109.76650 to 32.82376 -109.76307 Discredited - likely a 4wD track.

78. ARTS1 Artesian #1 Canal 32.75273 -109.72032 to 32.76247 -109.71188 Flowing historic canal in strong artesian area likely to have seen prehistoric use as well. artes1a artes1b artes1c

77. ARTS2 Artesian #2 canal 32.75288 -109.72043 to 32.75288 -109.72043 A second but apparently commonly sourced and still flowing historic canal in a strong artesian area. Has possibly been cardinal redirected from original.

76. TALW2 Tailwater2 Canal 32.83987 -109.91578 to 32.84067 -109.91407 Discredited - likely historic orchard overflow.

75. LFEX1 Lower Frye Extension 32.77325 -109.78377 to 32.77428 -109.78270 Required but unproven link between Frye Complex, Blue Ponds Canal, and Freeman Canal. frye_lead200

74. GCC1 Grant Creek Canal  32.59825 -109.96483 to 32.58887 -109.96758 South of Mount Graham historic canal that may or may  not have had prehistoric origins.

73. HCC1 Hog Canyon Canal  32.55361 -109.76449 to 32.55407 -109.76414 South of Mount Graham possibly prehistoric canal currently unexplored. Possibly perennial.

72. CNU1 Canal near UFO Fish Fillets 32.81428 -109.96678 to 32.81536 -109.96618 Short canal previously studied by Dr. Neely. Location is approximate.

71. CBAE1 Bandelier Artesian Extension  32.93523 -109.94128  to 32.94158 -109.92112 Dried up artesian lake may have enormous potential. Definite signs of historic reuse plus possible Bandoleer Canal source. band2 band3 band4

70.LFC1 Lower Frye Construct 32.76749 -109.79289  to 32.76824 -109.79178 Mysterious and unexplained construct may have major prehistoric canal significance. Likely Blue Ponds Canal and Freeman Canal related. Extensive study still needed. Field notes here. frye100 frye101 frye106 frye108

69.UMC11 Upper Marijilda Canal  32.70664 -109.77779  to 32.70693 -109.77729 Smaller hanging canal near Marijilda diversion.

68.DEC1 Deadman East Canal  32.75295 -109.78502  to 32.75655 -109.77688 Potentially significant prehistoric canal remains largely unexplored due to difficult access.  Field Notes here. deadman5

67. SCC1 Sand Canal Center Branch  32.82953 -109.92950  to 32.83441 -109.92705 Destinations of easily traced canal remain unknown. Canal apparently uses a natural drainage partial route. sand19 sand30

66. SCW1 Sand Canal Western Branch  32.82953 -109.93063  to32.83441 -109.92705 Destinations of easily traced canal remain unknown. sand40

65 SR1 More Spear Ranch Work 32.83348 -109.91548 and 32.83616 -109.91440 Additional survey required north of Lefthand.

64. PRM1 P Ranch Mysteries 32.61817 -109.72829 to 32.61611 -109.72809 Additional survey required beyond Veech.

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

62. BDC1 Bandelier Canal N 32.94446 W 109.91120 to N 32.94677 W 109.91317 Appears to be deep vee riverine canal possibly linked to artesian source at 32.93522 -109.94131 but apparently unrelated to most mountain stream fed resources.

61. GRD2 The grids Near N 32.78651 W 109.74353 to  N 32.79408 W 109.75260 Rectangular agave farming arrays. Many thousands north  of the Gila river, a few hundreds south. Not directly canal related, but enormously significant area features. bestgrid

Some unresolved Enigmas were outlined here. And losers here.

November 18, 2017
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Almost all of our Guru's Lair is my own original work, but we do have a Third Party Library for some other "credit where credit is due" contributors.

This library is sorely in need of better indexing, updating and revision, so here are some of the other participants... "

Mitutoyo -       
Digimatic Interface Details

Bee Lancaster -      
Bee's Library Pages     
Exploring Arizona for Gems     
Where to Order Maps     
Hiking Grand Canyon

Ken Shirriff -     
VCR Plus Codes

Everset     
WWVB ES100 Application Kit

Frederick Jonnsson -    
Lorenz "Owl's Mask     
Lorenz "Owl's Mask Sourcecode

Jim Fitzsimmons -     
Real Length of a Bezier Curve    
Exploring Binary Chain codes    
Magic Sinewave Higher Harmonics.   
Bezier curve recursive midpoint rule     
Bezier curve through four points ( better here )    
Bezier circular
arc approximation   
Fitting points to a Bezier curve  
Fast Bezier curve evaluation   
Alternate view of a Bezier curve    
Bezier curve sinewave approximation   
Accuracy of PostScript Circles

Warren Lail -     
Mount Graham Archaeological Survey

Jim Neely -     
Co-authored Papers     
Preservation Archaeology Blog    
Lefthand Canyon Paper     
Prehistoric Ag Paper     
Gila Canals Paper     
Tecoatles Paper     
Purron Dam Paper    
Hohokam Canal Irrigation    
Iran Settlement Patterns
  Additional Material on Researchgate

Robert Ackermann -   
Marbelous Stacks of Pancakes   
Marbelous 4        
Lagrange Bezier Fit #1  
Lagrange Bezier Fit #2  
Lagrange Bezier Text Code  
Lagrange Bezier PostScript Code  
Legendre Lowpass Filter Comparison

November 17, 2017
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Bezier Cubic Splines are an excellent and preferred method to draw those smooth continuous curves often found in typography, CAD, and graphics in general.

Among their many advantages is a very sparse data set allowing a mere eight values ( or four x,y points ) to completely define a full and carefully controlled and totally device independent curve. Many tutorials and examples are now present in our Cubic Spline Library. Some entries include...

The Math Behind Cubic Splines
Using Cubic Splines Cubic
Spline through Four Points
Cubic Spline Length and Subdivision
Cubic Spline Minimum Point Distance
Length of a Bezier Curve
Cubic Spline Circle Circles and Ellipses
Pixed Interpolation Algorithms
Cubic Spline Catenary Approximation
Image Post Processing Tools
Various Bezier Examples
Meowrrr Puss De Resistance
Cubic Spline Image Interpolation
Bezier Curve through fuzzy data!
Nonlinear Graphic Transforms
PostScript Insider Secrets

Older third party resources...

Real Length of a Bezier Curve  
Bezier curve through four points ( improved here )    
Bezier circular arc approximation   
Fitting points to a Bezier curve    
Fast Bezier curve evaluation   
Alternate view of a Bezier curve    
Bezier curve sinewave approximation    
Accuracy of PostScript Circles    
Lagrange Bezier Fit #1  
Lagrange Bezier Fit #2

There are also simpler and less powerful quadratic splines. Often overlooked are the ones in Paint as its second shape option extensively used in these examples. A third party quadratic spline lecture can be found here and some ot its math here.

November 16, 2017
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I guess it has been long enough that I can reveal some  secret insider details of my favorite pseudoscience yarn, the saga of the magic lamp.

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

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

Painting the "eleven percent" on a meter face had the curious side effect of convincing everybody it was an immutable physical constant, rather than being highly and excessively waveform sensitive.

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

An individual was playing around with a circuit pretty much the same as a half wave thyratron phase control from a 1939 industrial electronics text. On the cheap meters they were using, they noted a 3:1 voltage difference and a 3:1 current difference, which led them to the conclusion that their "magic" circuit only was drawing one ninth of the normal power.

The key waveform involved had a very low duty cycle,  which let them run a 28 volt light bulb off the 110 volt line.

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

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

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

At any rate, they offered a construction story and kits in a  national magazine, not recognizing that what they had was  criminal fraud rather than an earth shaking new energy  breakthrough. The magazine managed to work out from under their part of the four paw by coincidentally having the story run in an April issue and later publishing disclaimers in their letters column.

Wait. It gets worse. Besides being not even wrong, the circuit is illegal under power factor correction regs! Even the best of rms instruments force highly restrictive crest factor limits. Late phase angles have raised sensitivity and stability issues elsewhere. Bulb life is more than hypersensitive to easily exceeded currents. Low voltage, high power bulbs are presently rare and expensive. Besides offering limited choices. And, of course, waiting in the wings were the LED's with their genuine 9:1 improved efficiency.

The closest that I personally dared to get to all of this was this column and this column in a related magazine.

But finding out exactly where and how they screwed up was certainly a highlight of my ongoing pseudoscience bashing activities.

More on the perils of patenting here. More on product design and development here.

November 15, 2017
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Newly updated and expanded our Gila Valley Dayhikes. We are now up to 517 primary entries!

The latest of which include new birding resources, access to Lidar alternatives to  to the satellite imagery of Acme Mapper or Google Earth. Along with some newly revised Gila High Tech Resources with its source here.

A sampler of some of the more unusual day hikes can be found here.

And more details on your spectacular research opportunities of our Prehistoric Bajada Hanging canals here.

A fer of the many open "help wanted" projects were summarized here. There are dozens of newer ones.

November 14, 2017
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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. Some  New uses for Chebycheff Polynomials would take the Cheby to the Leby. Many of the web perpetual motion schemes and those electrolysis fantasies 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 fragrant volition. The word  "gullible" is not in any major dictionary or spell checker. 

Godzilla versus the Night Nurses. Especially the tapioca pudding scene. 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.

Confusing Cannabis and Cannibal tasting tours. Geranium transistors. A wine that "pours well". Plays a mean eclectic guitar. Pioneers new methods of animal husbandry. Speaks Esperanto like a native. Bruno's attitude relateralization facillitation.

The long lost oriental martial art of Tai Wun Oun. Will be persecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Reaching a new millstone. Geologists, of course, 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.  Right after the Ayatollahs Bar Mitzvah. Rectocranial Inversion being both simultaneously chronic and acute. "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. 

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.

Much more here, here, and here.

November 13, 2017
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Yesterday's Prehistoric Bajada Hanging Canal explorations may have revealed a new study candidate #81 (!) in or around 32.74355 -109.73242.

It is indistinct in heavy brush just off an ATV track, likely is a Henry's Canal branch or is supplied by it, and definitely needs a second opinion as to its scope and validity.

Moderately dense potsherds and similar artifacts are in somewhat nearby association.

The actual canal count is somewhat lower and remains ambiguous in that a canal with a nonobvious segment connection presently may count double. A very few study candidates ( perhaps 8 ) have also been dropped from present further study as lacking enough credibility. These are purposely  kept in the listing to avoid later effort duplication.

Nonetheless, there are a great heaping bunch of these highly unique world class structures. And their total length now appears quite likely to exceed ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY MILES!

Counting ONLY the perennial mountain stream candidates and, of course, ignoring all of the plain old ho hum Gila sourced riverine alternatives.

Much more on these spectacularly engineered world class constructs here and a key paper here. Your participation as a field mouse or ATV or drone operator are very much welcome.

November 12, 2017
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I've always considered PowerPoint to be mesmerizingly awful, so I wrote my own emulator using my Gonzo Utilities to generate Acrobat .PDF equivalents.

These files are much more compact, are totally device independent, load much faster, and offer  significantly better graphics.  It is not even close. 

A newly revised Gila High Tech slide can be found here with its improved sourcecode here.

Other available Powerpoint emulation resources and emulations now include...

A Gonzo Tutorial and Directory
A Gonzo PostScript PowerPoint Emulator
High Tech Gila Valley Features ( sourcecode here )
Successful eBay Buying Strategies  ( sourcecode here )
Successful eBay Selling Strategies  ( sourcecode here )
Little known Gila Valley Dayhikes  ( sourcecode here )
Prehistoric Hanging Canal Lecture  ( sourcecode here )
Energy Fundamentals Intro & Summary  ( sourcecode here )
PV Panel Intro & Summary  ( sourcecode here )
Mount Graham Aerial Lumber Tramway  ( sourcecode here )
An Introduction to Magic Sinewaves  ( sourcecode here )
Three Phase Magic Sinewaves  ( sourcecode here )
Alternate Lores Magic Sinewaves

Consulting, custom design, and training services available.

November 11, 2017
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Lidar is an interesting alternative supplement to the satellite imagery of Acme Mapper or Google Earth. It consists of monochromatic aerial infrared illumination and can offer significant resolution  improvements and unique visualization enhancements.

Only a tiny fraction of Arizona is provided for in this directory, but, amazingly, just about all of our prehistoric bajada  hanging canals are covered.

This 2016 sample printout extracted from "2016 AZ Fredonia Safford D16" from the United States Interagency Elevation Inventory is of interest to our Reay Canal Field Notes. The location is 32.81484 -109.77578 and can be compared against this Acme Mapper Image. The image was further enhanced by a "print screen" and Imageview32 magnify and sharpen stunt. Note that a decompressor such as WinZip is needed.

The corral area is dramatically improved, and a previously unviewable structure can be observed near the now wet streambed. But so far, the projected central "required" canal route  ( bearing 15 degrees ) does not seem to yet  yield obvious and crucially needed new info.

Field mice and drone + ATV  operators are urgently needed.

November 10, 2017
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I've long been overly enameled over random and pseudorandom possibilities. So here's a "random" sample of some of the many apparently unrelated things we have looked at...

Most shuffling algorithms have an easily fixed flaw per these details..

Mottling a background with slight randomization can eliminate most .JPG artifices. Demos here

JavaScript Banner Rotators rearrange on each screen refresh. ( scroll down to "evolving" )

Bouncy Bricks include shuffling and banner utilities.

Purposely ratty lines and fills make "computer art" much less so.

Randomized swashes improve Powerpoint emulation.

Unusual random screen in column 23. Also see 30.

PostScript includes rand and srand operators.

There's always marbelous stacks of distorted pancakes.

My Gonzo Utilities include a random operator that returns, say, 0 to 4 on a 5 random command.

The TTL Cookbook has part of Chapter 7 on Psuedorandom Sequences. So does Chapter 6 of the CMOS Cookbook.

The PsycTone is the world's most annoying music synthesizer.

An early Ask the Guru tutorial on random sequences. See page 1.1.

A Radio Electronics pseudorandom story still in need of some repairs. Sorry about that.

White Noise KFC Virus in Column #14

November 09, 2017
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Completing our previous GuruGram catalogs...

November 08, 2017
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Continuing yesterday's GuruGram catalog...

#40 - MagSin PIC Programing Sourcecode
#39 - Fun with fields
#38 - New Magic Sinewave Eval Chips
#37 - High legibility fonts tutorial
#36 - Logfile Reporter History Addon
#35 - Saga of the dripping stalactites
#34 - SigViewing of Magic Sinewaves
#33 - Magic Sinewave demo hardware
#32 - A Heap Sort for PostScript
#31 - Fast & Efficient PostScript Sorts
#30 - PostScript String & Array Hacks
#29 - Using Distiller to run PostScript
#28 - Logfile reader & eBay analyzer
#27 - Magic Sinewave Quantizations
#26 - Successful eBay buyer strategies
#25 - Successful eBay seller strategies
#24 - Magic Sinewave Visualizations
#23 - Fancy .JPG to .PDF Conversions
#22 - My eBay photo secrets
#21 - Website video fades & wipes

November 07, 2017
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Continuing yesterday's GuruGram catalog...

#60 - Cubic spline length & subdivision
#59 - Cubic Spline through 4 points
#58 - The Math behind cubic splines
#57 - Cubic Spline Circles & Ellipses
#56 - Universal bitmap manipulator
#55 - Improved keystone corrector
#54 - Perspective lettering utilities
#53 - Revised bitmap typewriter
#52 - Raw PostScript full transparency!
#51 - Ongoing Refurb Log
#50 - Extreme display legibility secrets
#49 - Enhancing your eBay skills II
#48 - Flashing Text in Acrobat
#47 - Real time Acrobat Animation
#46 - Acrobat PDF Content Extraction
#45 - Word Frequency Analysis Tools
#44 - Arizona Auction Resource Guide
#43 - Simple new EM field solutions
#42 - PS Array-to-Image Conversion
#41 - Enhancing your eBay skills I

November 06, 2017
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Continuing yesterday's GuruGram catalog...

#80 - Cubic spline min point distance
#79 - Gonzo PostScript utilities guide
#78 - Enhancing your eBay skills VI
#77 - Gauss Jordan equation solver
#76 - PostScript numeric reporter
#75 - Acrobat PDF post doc editing
#74 - What is the best eBay price?
#73 - Ultra fast magsine calculator ( Improved )
#72 - Deterministic Magsine solutions
#71 - Enhancing your eBay skills V
#70 - Enhancing your eBay skills IV
#69 - Cubic spline catenary approximation
#68 - Tech innovation secrets
#67 - Solving puzzles with PostScript
#66 - A newbies intro to the web
#65 - Magic Sinewave summary
#64 - Gonzo utility log plots
#63 - Two phase magic sinewaves
#62 - Enhancing your eBay skills III
#61 - Book Cover Layout Utilities

November 05, 2017
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Continuing yesterday's GuruGram catalog...

#100 - Energy intro & summary
#99 - Filterless magic sinewaves?
#98 - Mt. Graham aerial tramway 
#97 - GGMS magic sinewaves
#96 - Enhancing your eBay skills VII
#95 - Spread Spectrum Magsines?
#94 - Improved Magic Sinewave calculator
#93 - Trashing Auto Electrolysizers
#92 - Bitmap circular lettering
#91 - Bitmap perspective lettering
#90 - Architect's perspective utilities
#89 - Mt. Graham lumber tram history
#88 - Image post processing tools
#87 - A digital airbrushing algorithm
#86 - More energy fundamentals
#85 - Inverse Graphics Transforms
#84 - Bitmap to PS array conversions
#83 - Pixel interpolation algorithms
#82 - False color & rainbow mods
#81 - 2-way HTML & PDF linking

November 04, 2017
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Our GuruGrams are and continue to be a series of web published ap notes on just about anything.

Obvious advantages are freedom from deadlines and layout restrictions. Combined with full web linking and bunches more. Not to mention that I can now say whatever I want whenever I want to.

Most of the GuruGrams consist of .psl sourcecode using my Gonzo Utilities combined with Adobe Acrobat final delivery .pdf files. A catalog of available .psl sourcecode files can be found here. And most available .pdf files here. All free and open sourced, of course.

We are somewhat behind in keeping our main GuruGram library up to date, with much of our current effort going into Hanging Canal Field Notes, these Whtnu Blog entries, and updates to our Gila Hikes web pages.

We'll do a GuruGram directory here over the next few days, starting with these most recent ( and not completely linked elsewhere ) ones...

#121 - Unusual Gila Valley Dayhikes
#119 - "Web Friendly" PostScript Colors
#118 - Some "Fat Tail Arrow" PS Utilities
#117 - Level II eBook Enhancements
#116 - Restoring Faded or Scuffed Text
#115 - "Un-Halftoning" to improve eBooks
#114 - Remastering a Technical Book
#113 - Allen Reservoir Failure Docs
#112 - Hanging Canal slide show 
#111 - Thesis for IC67 Metal Locater
#110 - Remastering video for web use
#109 - Gauss-Jordan stability issues
#108 - Prehistoric hanging canals
#107 - Magic Sinewave Developments 
#106 - Enhancing your eBay Skills VIII
#105 - Some Link Checking Utilities 
#104 - uv lamp ballast debugging
#103 - Book Scanning "Gutter Math"
#102 - PS Web validation utilities
#101 - PV panel intro & summary

November 03, 2017
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Here's a summary of our available and eventual ebooks...

First, those traditionally published...

RTL Cookbook
TTL Cookbook
TV Typewriter Cookbook
Incredible Secret Money Machine
Apple Assembly Cookbook I
Apple Assembly Cookbook II
MLP Cookbook I ( was Micro CB 2.1)
MLP Cookbook II ( was Micro CB 2.2)
Enhancing your Apple II Volume I
Enhancing your Apple II Volume II

And those that were first Book-on-Demand sourced...

Case Against Patents
PostScript Show and Tell
PostScript Beginner Projects
PostScript Secrets
Ask the Guru Volume I
Ask the Guru Volume II
Ask the Guru Volume III
Hardware Hacker I
Hardware Hacker II
Hardware Hacker III
Resource Bin I
Resource Bin II
Blatant Opportunist Early Archive

And these "director's cuts" restoration demos...

DC Apple Assembly Cookbook
DC Machine Language Programming I
DC Tearing Method
DC SigForth Intro to PostScript
DC Archaeomagnetism and Paleomagnetism
DC Thermoluminescence
DC Superclock DC TVT Image
DC Winning the Micro Game

DC"Director's Cut" tutorials here, here, here, and here.

More classic reprints here. And this Introduction to PostScript video...

And the maybe these someday work in progresses...

Active Filter Cookbook ( autographed hard copy here! )
Micro Cookbook volume I ( autographed hard copy here! )
TTL Cookbook ( autographed hard copy here! )
CMOS Cookbook Cheap Video Cookbook Son of Cheap Video Applewriter Cookbook

All about Applewriter
Hexadecimal Chronicles
Manual De Circuitos Integrados TTL
Pacific Rim TTL
Goodyear Aerospace AEEMs
For Low Cost, Count on RTL
Big TTL Wall Chart
Big CMOS Wall Chart
Cave Crawler's Gazette

Plus our usual reminder that you can pick up nearly one each of everything on your own USB here.

November 02, 2017
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Our PostScript Show and Tell started life out as a series of pass-around cards we used at computer club talks and computer fair presentations.

These days, they are available as a free eBook and have been colorized into the latest of our PostScript Videos.

Here are the Show and Tell topics...

1. - Puss De Resistance
2. - Instruction Manual
3 .- Cotton Logo
4. - Isometric Drawing
5. - Poison Ivy in a Spray Can
6. - Badges, bumperstickers, cards
7. - Signatures
8. - Analog Schematic
9. - Digital Schematic
10. - Omnicrom Color Foils
11. - Certificates and Scrolls
12. - Gray Robotic Shaft Encoder
13. - Sequential Numbered Repeats
14. - Layout Grid Block Diagram
15. - The Macintosh Bomb
16. - Printer Tradesman's Cut
17. - Three Column Tech Article
18. - Printed Circuit Layout
19. - Zillions of Bricks
20. - Barbershop Quartet

Many more of our PostScript opportunities here and especially here, while some third party link farms can be found here, and here.

November 01, 2017
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A reminder that we have a set of links to our Guru's Lair Directory of filetypes here. These are useful for finding any "lost" or "underlinked" or "hidden" files.

Here are the individual fieltype links...

.asp web files 
.aspx web files 
.bas Basic files 
.config web files
.bmp Bitmap Image files
.eml email files 
.gif compressed image files
.gz compressed winzip files
.htaccess files
.htm files
.html files ( most redirect to shtml )
.ico fast nav icon files
.jpg compressed image files
.js JavaScript files 
.kml Google Earth files
.lnk shortcut files .log files 
.pdf Adobe Acrobat files 
.png compressed image files 
.ps PostScript Language files
.psl "PostScript Lancaster Sourcecode" files
.shtml html + include fileses
.txt text files
.xml files

The secret to making your own links by filetype is to first make a local copy of your website and then do something like this...

C:/Users/don>dir "F:/webbackup7.17/*.asp"
/S /OEN /W

Plus our usual reminder that you can now own your own personal copy of one each of everything per these details.

October 31, 2017
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Newly available is a tentative early release of the Reay Bajada Hanging Canal  Preliminary Field Notes along with its sourcecode.

In general, the field notes are horribly incomplete and have gone through several generations. Those considered "current" ( with an "*" ) can be identified by upper left PDF nav buttons and a new upper right KML clickthrough. All  of the notes demand more images and ongoing revisions.

The KML itself remains an out-of-date and inaccurate pilot. At present, Chrome only returns KML sourcecode which  you have to manually save to drag and drop into Google Earth.

Here are most of the presently available field notes...

Allen Canal Bear Springs Canal 
Cluffnw Canal  Deadman Canal * 
Freeman Canal 
Frye Complex  Henry Canal * 
Jernigan Canal 
Lefthand Canyon West
Longview Area 
Lower Frye Construct * 
Mud Springs 
Minor Webster Ditch 
Reay Canal  *
Riggs Mesa Canal 
Robinson Canal *
Sand Canal 
Smith Canal 
TB Ponding Area* 
Tranquility Canal
Tugood Canal Veech Canal

 ( For sourcecodes, substitute .psl trailers above. )

Bear Flat Canal redirects here Bigler Canal redirects here   HS Canal redirects here  Tailwater Canal redirects here

New field notes are likely to first appear here or later.

Your participation and support of this unique world class research project would be much appreciated.

Meanwhile, please drop all your of live video spare drones  into our driveway.

October 30, 2017
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Bee and I once did a few EAC semesters of PostScript programming classes. Mostly aimed at plain old students making plain old stuff for pleasure or profit. These eventually became our PostScript Beginner Stuff free ebook. The projects included...

1 - A Full Page Grid
2. - Personal or Business Letterhead
3. - Step and Repeat Business Cards
4. - Two Personal Notes
5. - Grocery List, Quadpad, and Forms
6. - A Report Cover
7. - A Gonzo Text Paragraph
8. - Resumes
9. - Simple Curvetracing
10. - Autoaddressing Letters and envelopes
11. - Quadfold Announcements or Fliers
12. - Arcjustify Badges and Bumperstickers
13 - Reverse Printing for Window Signs
14. - Awards, Certificates, Borders
15 - Menu Justification and supertabbing
16. - Clipping and Large Letters
17. - Tags, Tearoffs, Tents, and Tickets
18 - A Pulp Novel
19. - Two Column Newsletter with figures
20. - Three Column Magazine Article

These days, you play with these in a word processor or and then send them to Acrobat Distiller with that top secret Windows command line run command of "//acrodist /F"

Some of these are helped along with our Gonzo Utilities. Find a tutorial here and the gonzo procs here. And an empty program pilot here and the reference manual here.

October 29, 2017
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... and here are most of my Popular Electronics tutorials...

Pro Meter_Faces_2_65.pdf
Electronic_Tools_3_65.pdf
Parts_Profiles1_9_65.pdf
Parts_Profiles2_10_65.pdf
Parts_Profiles3_11_65.pdf 
Parts_Profiles4_2_66.pdf
What_are_ics_10_66.pdf 
Intro_el_music_10_73.pdf
El_music_comps_11_73.pdf
Pitch_standards_1_74.pdf
Pitch_generators_2_74.pdf 
Em_keyboards_7_74.pdf
Select_syn_10_74.pdf
Mus_keying_vca_1+2_75.pdf
Timbre_and_voice_6_75.pdf
Synth_mus_insts_8_75.pdf
Envel_gens_1_76.pdf
April Hobby Scenes ( Marcia- Revisited )
Und_active_filts_12_76.pdf 
Six_cmos_circuits_4_77.pdf

Click here for "you own it" fully searchable "one each of everything" new release version 1.4

October 28, 2017
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Newly available is a tentative early release of the Henry's Bajada Hanging Canal  Preliminary Field Notes along with its sourcecode. .

In general, the field notes are horribly incomplete and have gone through several generations. Those considered "current" ( with an "*" ) can be identified by upper left PDF nav buttons and a new upper right KML clickthrough. All  of the notes demand more images and ongoing revisions.

The KML itself remains an out-of-date and inaccurate pilot. At present, Chrome only returns KML sourcecode which  you have to manually save to drag and drop into Google Earth.

Here are most of the presently available field notes...

Allen Canal Bear Springs Canal 
Cluffnw Canal  Deadman Canal * 
Freeman Canal 
Frye Complex  Henry Canal * 
Jernigan Canal 
Lefthand Canyon West 
Longview Area 
Lower Frye Construct * 
Mud Springs 
Minor Webster Ditch 
Riggs Mesa Canal 
Robinson Canal *
Sand Canal 
Smith Canal 
TB Ponding Area* 
Tranquility Canal
Tugood Canal
Veech Canal

 ( For sourcecodes, substitute .psl trailers above. )

Bear Flat Canal redirects here Bigler Canal redirects here   HS Canal redirects here  Tailwater Canal redirects here

New field notes are likely to first appear here or later.

Your participation and support of this unique world class research project would be much appreciated.

Meanwhile, please drop all your of your live video spare drones  into our driveway.

October 27, 2017
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And here's most of the other half of my Popular Electronics construction projects...

psychedelia_col_org_9_69.pdf
two_tone_alarm_2_70.pdf 
numeric_glow_dcu_2_70.pdf
nobounce_pb_3_70.pdf 
digital_microlab_4_70.pdf
standard_100kHz_4_70.pdf
shift_register_5_70.pdf
signal_injector_6_70.pdf
mini_dvm_9_70.pdf
psychtone_2_71.pdf
digiviewer_3_71.pdf
simp_keyboard _4_74.pdf 
cmos_microlab_6_74.pdf
digiviewer2_9_74.pdf 
music_modules_6_76.pdf
tvt6_video_dis1+2_7_77.pdf
hex_ascii_con_10_77.pdf

Click here for "you own it" fully searchable "one each of everything" new release version 1.4 .

October 26, 2017
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Of all the newsstand magazines, the original Popular Electronics was ( and remained ) by far the best since way on back in the days of Gernsback's Science and Invention.

The real unsung hero of the entire microcomputer revolution was their editor Perry Ferrill. Who largely singlehandedly created the entire golden age of hardware hacking. Thus setting the scene for just about everything that was to follow.

Here's a start of a list of some of my PE construction projects...

Dymwatt_5_66.pdf
Lil Dusker_9_65.pdf
Hifi_Gogo_1_66.pdf
Pulse_Generator_4_66.pdf
Musette_color_organ_7_66.pdf
IC_amplifier_10_66.pdf
Square_deal_11_66.pdf 
Binary_counter_12_66.pdf 
Logic_demon_12_66.pdf
Metal_locator_1_67.pdf 
Amligner_2_67.pdf 
Supertrol_3_67.pdf
Electronic_dice_9_67.pdf
Lil_richie_9_67.pdf
IC_freq_meter_10_67.pdf
Prof_pow_supply_11_67.pdf 
Trans_tester_12_67.pdf
IC_testone_1_68.pdf
lowcost_dec_count_2_68.pdf 
elec_stopwatch_3_68.pdf  
pitch_reference_9_68.p
sports_timer_10_68.pdf
dig_voltmtr_12_68.pdf
frequency_count_3+4_69.pdf   

Click here for "you own it" fully searchable "one each of everything" new release version 1.4 .

October 25, 2017
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Here's a few of my more obscure classic papers...

CQ Magazine -     
Butterworth Cookbook         

SIG Forth --          
What is PostScript?

Computer Faire--   
Two Cheap Video Secrets            

Popular Science --  
Dual Photoflood Dimmer     

PC Techniques --  
PostScript Startup Secrets
PostScript Speedup Secrets

Byte --                  
Bit Boffer  
Build a PC Memory Card                               
Serial Interface_TVT                                          
TV Color Graphics                                              
ROM_Technology                              
Television_Interface                              
 PostScript Insider Secrets 

Kilobaud --            
Winning the Micro Game                                       Lower_Case_Apple_pt1                               
Lower_Case_Apple_pt2                               
Clocked Logic I                               
Clocked Logic II                             
Clocked Logic III                               
TVT for KIM                             
TVT Hardware_pt1                             
H8_Cheap_Video                             
Ap_Inverted_Dec_Code                             
New_WinningUSB

Circuit Cellar --   
Nonlinear Graphic Transforms                                          
The Quest for Magic Sinewaves                               
PIC PostScript Flutterwumpers                              
Steplocked Magic Sinewaves                              
Vector to Step Conversion

Whole Earth --  
The Case Against Patents                            
Stupendous Stuff Sources

Marcia --  
Worst of Marcia Swampfelder

Click here for "you own it" fully searchable "one each of everything" new release version 1.4 .

October 24, 2017
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Outside of the obvious, here are most of my Radio Electronics and Electronics Now construction projects...

dotnbar_gen_7_67.pdf
mtr_dec_coun_12_68.pdf
nine_dig_insts_12_68.pdf
tic_tac_tronix_12_71.pdf
dual_clock_gen_2_72.pdf 
binary_demo_2_72.pdf 
darktimer_by_stops_4_72.pdf
logic_dem_re_5_72,pdf 
superclock_7_72.pdf
funct_gen_9+10_72.pdf
grinchwal_11_72etc.pdf 
low_cost_keyboard_2_73.pdf 
ascii_encoder_4_73.pdf  
tv_typewriter_9+_73.pdf
improved_encoder_2_74.pdf 
time_on_tv_9_74.pdf 

And here are the tutorials...

ic_logic_circs_5_69.pdf
liquid_crystal_disp_2_72.pdf 
experiment_wwvb_8_73.pdf 
experiment_wwvb_9_73.pdf 
active_filters_11_73.pdf
reg_pow_sup_12_73.pdf 
elec_music_ics_2_74.pdf
what_is_rom_2_74.pdf
active_bandpass_filters_5_74.pdf
mos_character_gens_6_74.pdf 
calculator_ics_7_74.pdf
random_access_memory_9_74.pdf 
mos_shift_registers_12_74.pdf
pseudorandom_circuits_4_75.pdf 
inside_opamps__5+7_75.pdf 
digital_sinewaves_11_76.pdf

And here for "you own it" fully searchable "one each of everything" new release USB version 1.4 .

October 23, 2017
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Here's the newest third of the Tech Musings columns. The newer Hardware Hackers and Tech Musings shared sequential numbers...

#131 - Position detectors, rangefinding, RFID,..
#132 - Remote control, log graphs, Tesla, ...
#133 - Dimmers, mil surplus, mag recording,..
#134 - SETI, video overlay, aerial photos, ...
#135 - Brain parity, impulse radio, Feynman,..
#136 - Boat anchors, twinkle lights, tachometers
#137 - EIS spectroscopy, radiation detectors, ...
#138 - Web logs, miracle antennas, impulse, ...
#139 - Hot tubs, radio astronomy, plastics... 
#140 - PC drill, USGS maps, water soluble, ...
#141 - Sub pixel res, rf switches, ultrasonics,...
#142 - Gauss-Jordan, induction heating, ...
#143 - Direct Toner PC Boards...
#144 - Thermocouples, gambler's ruin, ...
#145 - Digimatic code, magnetorhelogy, ....
#146 - Electrochemistry, capacitor switching...
#147 -  Accelerometers, navigation, selsyns...
#148 - Taylor series, algae hydrogen, batteries..
#149 - Touch screens, fuel cells, transformers...
#150 - RFID, VMSK, Hydrogen, waxes...
#151 - Chebycheff, magnetometry, humidity...
#152 - Power, energy, shuffling, banners...
#153 - Electrolysis, patents, surplus, tables..

Newer possible Tech Musings column topics were rolled over into the web only GuruGrams.

Find the rest of Tech musings here. Find the later Hardware Hackers here. Find the earlier Hardware Hacker here. Find many classic construction projects here. And one each of everything here.

October 22, 2017
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Managed to find a third party Lorenz chaotic attractor "Owl's Mask" written in PostScript. I've cloned the pdf output here and the sourcecode here. Alike but different somehow would be our avuncular sleezoid or the Spirograph stuff found here and here

Plus our recently fasterized Fractal Fern here and here, and our Sierpinski Triangle here and here.  And, of course, the marbelous stacks of pancakes here. A PostScript manual here, my personal utilities here, and  an intro tutorial here. A math library link page here and one each of everything here.

October 21, 2017
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Newly available are the Deadman Bajada Hanging Canal Preliminary Field Notes along with its sourcecode.

Updated a revised index for our woefully behind Hanging Canal Field notes.

In general, the field notes are horribly incomplete and have gone through several generations. Those considered "current" ( with an "*" ) can be identified by upper left PDF  nav buttons and a new upper right KML clickthrough. All  of the notes demand more images and ongoing revisions.

The KML itself remains an out-of-date and inaccurate pilot. At present, Chrome only returns KML sourcecode which  you have to manually save to drag and drop into Google Earth.

Here are most of the presently available field notes...

Allen Canal
Bear Springs Canal 
Cluffnw Canal 
Deadman Canal * 
Freeman Canal 
Frye Complex 
Golf Course Canal 
Jernigan Canal 
Lefthand Canyon
West  Longview Area 
Lower Frye Construct * 
Mud Springs 
Minor Webster Ditch 
Riggs Mesa Canal 
Robinson Canal *
Sand Canal 
Smith Canal 
TB Ponding Area* 
Tranquility Canal
Tugood Canal
Veech Canal

 ( For sourcecodes, substitute .psl trailers above. )

Bear Flat Canal redirects here Bigler Canal redirects here   HS Canal redirects here  Tailwater Canal redirects here

New field notes are likely to first appear here or later.

Your participation and support of this unique world class research project would be much appreciated.

Meanwhile, please drop all your of live video spare drones  into our driveway.

October 20, 2017
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Here's the middle third of the Tech Musings columns. The newer Hardware Hackers and Tech Musings shared sequential numbers...

#109 - Table lookup, idea mortality, audio,...
#110 - NTSC, aerial photos, faders, chargers,..
#111 - CIE diagrams, energy claims, video,...
#112 - AC power measurements, aerogels, ....
#113 - Pager vibrators, rms voltages, printers,..
#114 - Energy density, temp sensors, strawbale,
#115 - PIC chips, hydrogen car, genlocking,...
#116 - Log files, error codes, low level measur...
#117 - PostScript robotics, melody IC's,....
#118 - Laser testing, hydrogen, radio astronomy
#119 - Data acquisition, reactance limiting,...
#120 - PIC Calibar, brown's gas, meta studies,..
#121 - PFM wireless, homopolar, power meas...
#122 - Satellite imagery, phase shifters, Hilbert..
#123 - AC power, A/D converters, DNA,..
#124 - Pseudoscience, wind energy, LED lamps
#125 - Crest factors, SAW filters, temp sensing,
#126 - Nitrogen cars, magnetic refrigeration,..
#127 - Capacitor bounceback, DAA chips, PIC,..
#128 - Tesla turbine, impulse radio, class D, ...
#129 - DMX lighting, network comm, ...
#130 - Rail guns, Modutrols, Faraday, DNA, ...

Find the rest of Tech musings here. Find the later Hardware Hackers here. Find the earlier Hardware Hacker here. Find many classic construction projects here. And one each of everything here.

October 19, 2017
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Here's a third of the Tech Musings columns...

#88 - Acoustic canceling,PIC micros, adapters..
#89 - Basic Stamp, Fibonacci, Cubic splines..
#90 - Fourier series, platethru, video toaster,...
#91 - All channels FM, switched capacitors, ...
#92 - GPS navigation, terahertz, pitot, ...
#93 - Magic sinewaves, PCMCIA docs, ...
#94 - MIDI electronic music, Basic Stamp,...
#95 - Lighting efficiency, product development,
#96 - Solar energy, bilateral switching, phone,,,
#97 - Transformers, agc, robotics, digital pots,..
#98 - PIC programming, music chips, tv sites,..
#99 - Hot chassis hazards, switchmode, fuse....
#100 - Power factor, mag levitation, web, ...
#101 - Delta-Wye, audio, Acrobat, Tesla, ....
#102 - Bionomials, colorizer, printer repair,,,,,
#103 - Fluxgates, magnetometry, vectors, ....
#104 - Compass sensor, UFO's, vacuum form,..
#105 - Navigation resources, digital filters, ...
#106 - Determinants, induction heating, binding,
#107 - Linear digital filters, techno myths, ..
#108 - Baby PIC's, color organs, phase control,.

Find the rest of Tech musings here. Find the older Hardware Hacker here Find the earlier Hardware Hacker here. Find many classic construction projects here.

October 18, 2017
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After 30 Hardware Hacker columns in Modern Electronics, I moved to Larry Steckler's Radio Electronics with its larger circulation and infinitely better editorial policies.

The renumbered columns continued under the Hardware Hacker title for 87 issues and then became Tech Musings, owing to the total trashing of the term "hacker" by the utterly clueless media and "men in black" wannabes.

The columns were book-on-demand published as these four archives...

Columns #01-24 HACKAR1.PDF
Columns #25-48 HACKAR2.PDF
Columns #49-72 HACKAR3.PDF
Columns #73-87 HACKAR4.PDF

Not all columns have yet been converted into stand-alone reprints, so in this listing you'll still find a mix of archive and individual Hardware Hacker entries...

#01 -- Auto Electronics, tech lit, Santa Claus, pots
#02 -- uv resins, electronic music, superconductors
#03 -- Posistors, video ics, IIGS monitors,...
#04 -- Bar Codes, transducers, pneumatics...
#05 -- Ring detectors, toner carts, PostScript,...
#06 -- Perspective, RS232, parts sources...
#07 -- Phone recording, nav, printed circuits...
#08 -- Remote controls, IR receivers, A/D conv..
#09 -- Synchronous inverters, Apple books, 16-bit
#10 -- LAN of the 80's, pressure transducer,....
#11 -- Navicube, Kroy Kolor, RGB TV, trade...
#12 -- Digital compass circuits, prototypes, ...
#13 -- Surface mount parts, IR filters, sinewaves.
#14 -- Pseudorandom sequences, white noise...
#15 -- Zero crossing detection, phase dimming,...
#16 -- Refilling SX carts, teleportation, upower...
#17 -- SAW devices, call progress, state var filter
#18 -- Digital audio, Delta-Sigma A/D, sensors,..
#19 -- Bar code resources, oscilloscopes, CMOS...
#20 -- Electrolytic chemistry, light show BBS,...
#21 -- Cheap digital compass, humidity measure..
#22 -- Filter capacitors, visible lasers, wireless...
#23 -- Linear stepper motors, modelmaking, vid...
#24 -- Double sided pc boards, optical reprints...
#25 -- Fractal Ferns, Thermoelectrics, chaos, ...
#26 -- Dew sensing, cold fusion, alarm resources,...
#27 -- LDVT position, treasure finders, sync,... 
#28 -- Vapor detectors, low melt alloys, uv flames,
#29 -- Hall effect, shape memory, low noise amps,
#30 -- Electronic levels, memory, cases, lasers,..
#31 -- Tune chips, blender controls, power basics,
#32 -- Huffman codes, video drivers, runlength,..
#33 -- Magnetocaloric effect, log voltmeter, ...
#34 -- SAW devices, active filters, DSP, temp,...
#35 -- Vortex coolers, polyphase gens, mag refr..
#36 -- DCT, sinewave gens, video compression,..
#37 -- Decibels, level meters, patent avoidance,..
#38 -- Visible lasers, motor resources, wavelets,.
#39 -- Infrared people detectors, liquid crystals,..
#40 -- VHF & microwave resources, toner carts,..
#41 -- Electronic tuning, parametric amplifiers,...
#42 -- Power electronics, video crosshatch, ...   
#43 -- EPRI, focused X-rays, Buckyballs, .....
#44 -- Inductive loads, Bakerizing, alternators,...
#45 -- Fuzzy data, Tesla Coils, FCC regs, E-fields,
#46 -- SMPTE time codes, solar energy, cases,...
#47 -- Fractals, FM stereo, home energy, ....
#48 -- Shielding, VGS, GPS, flyback sweeps,...
#49 -- Caller id, wavelets, Lumeloid, lab tests,...
#50 -- Wavelets, piano & organs, musical notes,..
#51 -- Laser printer repairs, sync separation, ....
#52 -- FM stereo broadcasters, Ockham's, ...
#53 -- Dye based solar, RGB monitors, avionics,.
#54 -- Correlation fundamentals, Santa Claus,...
#55 -- Electronic halftones, idea marketing,....
#56 -- Alternate latches, histograms, IC houses,..
#57 -- Distant FM reception, UFO's, boosters,...
#58 -- Yagi antennas, navicubes, rate gyros,...
#59 -- Semilog plots, resonance, IC resources,...
#60 -- Video toaster, EDM machining, broadcast.
#61 -- Nichrome, FCC part 68, scrambling, copy,.
#62 -- Cubic splines, electrorhelogical fluids, ...
#63 -- Video game repair, piezoelectrics, Curie...
#64 -- Thermodynamic basics, reversibility,...
#65 -- Telemetry, max-min, SETI, power xfer,...
#66 -- Photopolymers, flying cars, pc drills, ...
#67 -- FM traps, GPS, nonlinear graphics,...
#68 -- Pulse monitors, thermoelectric modules,...
#69 -- Data compression, comm transparency,..
#70 -- Digital photos, fluxgates, mag fields,...
#71 -- CTCSS squelching, coin mechanisms,...
#72 -- Voice messaging, special effects, Acrobat...
#73 -- Jukeboxes, aerogels, sonoluminescence. ..
#74 -- Cogeneration resources, SCSI comm,...
#75 -- RBDS, human power, bus switches,...
#76 -- Air turbines, FM dx, invention scams...
#77 -- Thermodynamics, solitons, Santa Claus, ...
#78 -- Recycling toner carts, research tools,...
#79 -- Cold fusion, video driver, trans lines....
#80 -- Binary chain codes, SETI, batt charging...
#81 -- Helical resonators, laser service, reprints
#82 -- Remote controls, virtual ways, FCC regs...
#83 -- Halogen cycle, vector to step, PostScript..
#84 -- Auto computers, servicing intermittents,...
#85 -- TV data displays, brain implants, sinewave
#86 -- Wavelets, DNA, engineering economics
#87 -- AC motor drives, basic stamps, magsines

October 17, 2017
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Modern Electronics magazine evolved out of the ashes of Ziff's forced demise of Popular Electronics and Electronics World. Reprints of which are available here.

ME was sort of low budget, second rate, and in my opinion, badly edited. The big deal to me was that it started the transition where authors could submit drawings of high enough quality and consistency that they could be directly published.

The first attempts at my author-submitted art were rather gruesome, being based on MacPaint. The figures rapidly became superb after the release of the then new PostScript language.

I had these two construction projects in ME...

Upgrading Apple IIe Monitor ROMS
Absolute Reset for newest Apple II's

I began a series of Hardware Hacker columns there, which eventually were moved to Radio Electronics and ultimately renamed Tech Musings.

In those days, "hacking" was an absolutely positive term meaning "doing things so spectacular or so cheap or so elegant that experts were left shaking their heads in stunned disbelief".

Dastardly negative connotations of "hacker" later appeared because of the utterly clueless media.

Here are the ME Hardware Hacker columns...

hhack_1_85.pdf
hhack_2_85.pdf
hhack_3_85.pdf
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_86.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

October 16, 2017
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Some of my columns appeared as my Ask the Guru in Computer Shopper. These were in a mixed bag "question and answer" format and ran for several years.

I had just completed joining the Guru's and Swamis Union local #243, but because of Marcia Swampfelder's restraining order from the Tapioca Pudding Institute over her cross-genre classic of Godzilla versus the Night Nurses, I had to switch to local #475.

And the flick had to be pulled from theatric release and sent directly to eight track.

The columns survive in their original form as these reprint archives...

ATG1 -- Columns 1 to 32
ATG2 -- Columns 33 to 58
ATG3 -- Columns 59 to 70

October 15, 2017
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My other column in Nuts & Volts magazine was the Resource Bin. Its ongoing intent was to "tell people where to go to get stuff".

Back in those days, pinning down resources took a lot of time and effort. Not to mention continuously looking in oddball and obscure places that were enormously difficult to access.

The link farm can be found here with the main library here. Here's most of the Resbin columns chronologically...

#01 -- Starting your resource quest
#02 -- Finding obsolete integrated circuits
#03 -- Hacker friendly printed circuits
#04 -- Semiconductor & IC sources
#05 -- Labor-of-love technical newsletters
#06 -- Wondrous world of electronic surplus
#07 -- Unique opportunities in auto electronics
#08 -- Looking into electronic trade journals
#09 -- Exploring PostScript for fun & profit
#10 -- Oddball sources for just plain stuff
#11 -- Technical books that made a difference
#12 -- Secret desktop publishing sources
#13 -- Perils of patents and patenting
#14 -- Starting up your own technical venture
#15 -- Secrets of professional prototypes
#16 -- Opportunities in hacker robotics
#17 -- Exploring ham radio publications
#18 -- The furry with the syringe on top
#19 -- Royalty free real PostScript
#20 -- Starting an IC data book collection
#21 -- Book-on-demand publishing
#22 -- Online resources & opportunities
#23 -- Tools for electronic prototyping
#24 -- A look at electronic collectibles
#25 -- Essential homebrew test equipment
#26 -- Pseudoscience scams & ripoffs
#27 -- Electronic servicing opportunities
#28 -- Secrets of electronic breadboarding
#29 -- Cable & video insider sources
#30 -- Conducting your own personal research
#31 -- A "magic machine" for desktop pub
#32 -- Direct toner homebrew printed circuits
#33 -- Optoelectronics and fiber optics
#34 -- New developments in remote controls
#35 -- The best hardware parts of all time
#36 -- Book-on-demand publishing update
#37 -- A look at sensors & sensing
#38 -- Exploring high frequency resources
#39 -- Getting started in auto electronics
#40 -- New opportunities in home automation
#41 -- Security & alarm resources
#42 -- Alternate desktop publishing options
#43 -- Electronic music then and now
#44 -- Disability and handicapped resources
#45 -- Manic multimedia media magazines
#46 -- New opportunities in power electronics
#47 -- Another look at telecom
#48 -- Solar and alternate energy resources
#49 -- Fundamentals of nutting and volting
#50 -- Injection molding & plastic prototyping
#51 -- Son of alternate energy 13th, part 6
#52 -- Choosing a personal computer
#53 -- PDF and other info distribution tools
#54 -- Pick a peck of PIC's
#55 -- Exploring the web for the first time
#56 -- How to start your own web page
#57 -- Resources for electronic servicing
#58 -- Getting a charge out of batteries
#59 -- Starting your own tech venture
#60 -- Finding answers on the web
#61 -- Some favorite web sites
#62 -- Exploring trade journals
#63 -- Painlessly scamming a student paper
#64 -- The human side of the web
#65 -- Video game tools & techniques
#66 -- Book-on-demand publishing
#67 -- Getting started in amateur astronomy
#68 -- Terrific toner techniques
#69 -- Robotic resources update
#70 -- PostScript PIC flutterwumpers
#71 -- Secrets of web based research
#72 -- Some wireless resources 
#73 -- Electronic surplus & auctions
#74 -- Seismic & earthquake resources
#75 -- Virtual reality illusions
#76 -- Home Automation Again
#77 -- Accessing offshore electronics
#78 -- Starting your own web page
#79 -- Finding semiconductor & IC data
#80 -- Test Equipment manuals
#81 -- Secrets of military surplus I
#82 -- Secrets of military surplus II
#83 -- Fun with neat stuff
#84 -- Exploring Medical Electronics
#85 -- Some favorite web sites
#86 -- Dowsing for Brown's Gas in Roswell
#87 -- Used Test Equipment
#88 -- Hydrogen Resources
#89 -- Boat Anchors
#90 -- GPS and Navigation
#91 -- Exploring Antenna Resources
#92 -- Some PostScript Possibilities

October 14, 2017
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For a long while, I had a pair of columns in Nuts & Volts Magazine, Resource Bin and the Laserwriter Corner, which was soon renamed PostScript Secrets.

At any rate, PostScript Secrets was an intense and eclectic short column. When later released as a free ebook, supplements of additional neat things to do got added to each column.

While each column typically contained a dozen entries of sneaky 'free font" stunts and off-the-wall secret insider stuff, some of the loci included...

#01 - Certificates and scroll borders
#02 - Fractal Fern ( revised here )
#03 - Persistent downloads
#04 - Point Ruler
#05 - Step and Repeat utilities
#06 - Arccos and Arcsin
#07 - Classic litho chokes
#08 - Toner cartridge refilling
#09 - Multiple stroking techniques
#10 - 3D Lettering
#11 - Sturdy macho font
#12 - Cardboard box layout utility
#13 - Barcode resources
#14 - Backwards printing
#15 - Redefining procs
#16 - Using the flying wedge
#17 - Sight reading eexec
#18 - Secret gray map
#19 - Halftone spot patterns
#20 - Arc justify font
#21 - Popular Star Wars font
#22 - Internaldict FlxProc
#23 - Scribbling in PostScript
#24 - IBM serial comm ports
#25 - Isometric font
#26 - Avuncular Sleezoid
#27 - Knotting to this at all
#28 - True perspective font
#29 - Bricks up against the wall
#30 - Random number tricks
#31 - Speeding up a logo
#32 - Spherical nonlinear transforms
#33 - Font name directory
#34 - Spirals and Spirographs
#35 - Bezier curve length
#36 - Menu font lotsadots
#37 - Font path grabbing
#38 - Nonlinear ashow operator
#39 - College pennant font
#40 - Sticker variations
#41 - Keystone justification
#42 - Array justification
#43 - Smith Charts and log plots
#44 - Assorted neat stuff
#45 - Fancy borders and embossed fonts
#46 - Fast insertion sort
#47 - Classic bubble sort
#48 - Rotating text and thermography

October 13, 2017
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My first two published stories appeared here and here in Electronics World, the "highest" tech and most carefully crafted of competitive newsstand magazines.

In those days, magazines used nom de plumes to create the illusion of having more authors than they really did. Some of my pen names included Ralph Genter, Frank Gross, Alvin Snurdley, and, of course, Marcia Swampfelder. Leon Schoenfield was a rare early real person co-author.

The music speech discriminator sort of worked, but it was not quite ready for prime time. The log circuitry really wasn't and loading caused Schmitt trigger problems. But the solid state color organ was first rate and started this series of follow up projects.

Here's a chronological rundown of my EW papers. These were mostly a mix of "how it works" tutorials and "you build it" construction projects....

colorg1_4_63.pdf
music_speech_discrim.pdf
cap_nomo_4_63.pdf
color_organ2_1_64.pdf
four_layer_10_64.pdf
new_scr_dev_12_64.pdf
chirp_radar_1_65.pdf
mult_elec_con_1_65.pdf
hs_design_1_65.pdf
ss_dim_5+6_65.pdf 
semi_sweep_tv_06_65.pdf 
ldim_ptcon_7_65.pdf 
optical_link_9_65.pdf 
ics_whats_avail_11_65.pdf
amp_using_switching_2_66.pdf
nanosecond_pulses_2_66.pdf
using_lowcost_ics_3_66.pdf
gcs_timer_5_66.pdf 
varactor_diode_apps_6_66.pdf
insulated_gate_trans_7_66.pdf
switch_mode_power_9_66.pdf
linear_ics_11_66.pdf
metal_locators_12_66.pdf
opamp_circuits_8_67.pdf
constant_cur_diode_10 67.pdf
audio_ics_10_67.pdf 
extended_resonance_11_67.pdf
diff_amp_2_68.pdf plast_pow_2_68.pdf  
decimal_counting_9_68.pdf
thermoluminescence_3_69.pdf 
Paleomagnetism & Archaeomagnetism_9_69.pdf predetermining_counter_5_70.pdf
addsub_MOS_counter_6_70.pdf  

October 12, 2017
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Magic sinewaves are a recently discovered class of math functions that are able to dramatically improve the quality and efficiency of many digitally derived sinewaves for such tasks as synchronous inverters, motor drives, pv panels, or electric cars.

Magic Sinewaves have the unique property of using the fewest possible energy-robbing switching transitions to precisely zero out the maximum possible number of low order harmonics.

ANY chosen number of low harmonics can theoretically be forced to zero and practically reduced to extremely low values, typically well below -60 decibels.

A quick link farm can be found here, and the main Magic Sinewave library here. Key papers include...

Introduction to Magic Sinewaves
Magic Sinewave Executive Summary
Magic Sinewave Calculator Quantizer Update
Recent Developments in Magic Sinewaves 
Three Phase Magic Sinewave Intro
Ultra Fast Magic Sinewave Calculator ( older )
Ultra Fast Calculator Tutorial
Ultra Fast Calculator JavaScript Code
The Saga of the Dripping Stalactites
Improved Magic Sinewave Chip
Magic Sinewave Demo Hardware
Magic Sinewave PIC Programming Guide
Magic Sinewave Quick Links
Magic Sinewave Main Library
Magic Sinewave Archive
Magic Sinewave Development Proposal

Present work focuses on Raspberry Pi software-only solutions that combine entire sinewave libraries with simultaneous frequency and amplitude generation.

Your support is welcome.

October 11, 2017
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My Blatant Opportunist columns started out in Midnight Engineering magazine and then were web published as ezine topics in my www.tinaja.com website and their continuations ultimately were merged  into our GuruGrams.

The focus was on product development for the individual and small scale startup. They remain linked here and here.

Many of the earlier Blat columns remain relevant and useful  to this day...

Blat #01 -- Book-on-demand publishing
Blat #02 -- Stupendous stuff sources
Blat #03 -- Desktop finishing ideas
Blat #04 -- Emerging technologies I
Blat #05 -- Son of desktop finishing
Blat #06 -- The case against patents
Blat #07 -- Mastering the advetorial
Blat #08 -- Stalking the wild paradigm
Blat #09 -- Direct toner printed circuits
Blat #10 -- New ISMM II introduction part 1
Blat #11 -- New ISMM II introduction part 2
Blat #12 -- Why I like PostScript
Blat #13 -- Insider research secrets
Blat #14 -- Revisiting Book-on-demand publishing
Blat #15 -- Terrific toner techniques
Blat #16 -- Post justification editing
Blat #17 -- Emerging technical opportunities II
Blat #18 -- Inventor's organizations
Blat #19 -- Bound & Determined
Blat #20 -- Book-on-demand publishing resources I
Blat #21 -- Book-on-demand publishing resources II
Blat #22 -- Patent horror stories
Blat #23 -- One thousand and one reviews
Blat #24 -- Becoming a purveyor of risk reduction
Blat #25 -- Elegant simplicity
Blat #26 -- Picojustification techniques
Blat #27 -- Emerging technical opportunities III
Blat #28 -- Some catalog musings
Blat #29 -- When to patent
Blat #30 -- Flutterwumpers Blat #31 -- Some helpline hints
Blat #32 -- Avoiding engineering ratholes
Blat #33 -- The Mount Graham aerial tramway
Blat #34 -- Catalogs using Adobe Acrobat PDF
Blat #35 -- Magic Sinewaves
Blat #36 -- Con Tests
Blat #37 -- Emerging technical opportunities IV
Blat #38 -- Winning the micro game
Blat #39 -- Options for self-publishing
Blat #40 -- Making B/W print more colorful
Blat #41 -- Weaving a tangled web
Blat #42 -- My primary research tools
Blat #43 -- Don't get sick
Blat #44 -- Emerging technical opportunities V
Blat #45 -- Essential tools to bust a $650 patent
Blat #46 -- Insider banner advertising secrets
Blat #47 -- Guidelines for tri-mode publishing
Blat #48 -- Cash & Carry consulting
Blat #49 -- How to bash pseudoscience
Blat #50 -- Secrets of 24/7 publishing
Blat #51 -- Adding website bells & whistles
Blat #52 -- PDF & PDF link checking
Blat #53 -- Emerging technical opportunities VI
Blat #54 -- The surplus and auction scene
Blat #55 -- Eminently effective email etiquette
Blat #56 -- Funding your personal web site
Blat #57 -- Imaginative imaging
Blat #58 -- Some thoughts on ezines
Blat #59 -- Web imaging secrets
Blat #60 -- The eBay phenomena
Blat #61 -- Steplocked magic sinewaves
Blat #62 -- Bouncy bricks and other web tricks
Blat #63 -- Don's unauthorized autobiography
Blat #64 -- Debugging insider info
Blat #65 -- My eBay secrets
Blat #66 -- Thoughts on refurb
Bllat #65 -- My eBay secrets
Blat #67 -- Step by step image prep
Blat #68 -- Emerging technical opportunities VII
Blat #69 -- The worst of Marcia Swampfelder
Blat #70 -- How to become a crooked auctioneer
Blat #71 -- Some energy fundamentals
Blat #72 -- Fun with stuff

October 10, 2017
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For most individuals and small scale startups, patents are virtually certain to result in a net loss of time, energy, money, and sanity.   

One reason for this is the outrageously wrong urban lore involving patents and patenting. A second involves the outright scams which inevitably will surround "inventions" and "inventing".  A third is that the economic breakeven needed to recover patent costs is something between $12,000,000 and $40,000,000 in gross sales. It is ludicrously absurd to try and patent a million dollar idea.

Start with our Case Against Patents paper and then go on to these...

The Case Against Patents  
When to Patent  
How to Bust a $650
Patent  Patent Horror Stories
Patent Avoidance Resources
Main Patent Library Page
Collected Patenting eBook
Tech Innovation Secrets Risk Reduction
Stalking the Wild Paradigm
Elegant Simplicity
Our InfoPack Service

Emerging Technical Opportunities I
Emerging Technical Opportunities II
Emerging Technical Opportunities III
Emerging Technical Opportunities IV
Emerging Technical Opportunities V
Emerging Technical Opportunities VI
Emerging Technical Opportunities VII

Much more on product development here. My own patent here. And a bizarre collection of historic patent scams here.

October 09, 2017
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Newly updated and expanded our Gila Valley Dayhikes. We are now up to 514 primary entries.

More here and here.

October 08, 2017
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We recently started getting great heaping bunches of 404's over a file called /wp-login.php. Here is what we found and how we decided to deal with it.

WordPress is an open source website managing system that is normally provided by your ISP web server. It is apparently quite popular and seems to be in use by nearly a third of all websites.

If you no not have a file on your website called /wp-login.php, a 404 error will be generated by participating ISP's. The main WordPress website can be found here and a tutorial here.

I purposely sought out ( and still seek out ) a classic "retro" look to my website and  ( rightly or wrongly ) decided to presently not use WordPress.

Instead, he he he , I decided to hijack /wp-login.php with this redirect, leading what used to be 404's to my most important entry directory of /whtnu17.shtml...

<html> <head> <title>wp-login.php redirect
</title><meta HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH"
CONTENT="1;     
URL=https://www.tinaja.com/whtnu17.shtml">
</head> <body> Redirecting... </body> </html>

I don't yet know whether it is a coincidence or not, but our website response literally shot up after the hijack.

More on measuring website popularity here. And stunts that may help can be found here.

October 07, 2017
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Here's a few of our ongoing Director's Cuts. Some are complete and others are still in process...

SigForth Intro to PostScript
Tearing Method Winning the Micro Game 
Superclock AACB1 Rework
MLPCI Rework
Paleomagnetism and Archaeomagnetism
Thermolluminescence TVT2 Image

October 06, 2017
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Started a directors cut of our newly discovered SigForth paper. You can follow it here and find its sourcecode here.

"Director's cuts" are my method of fully restoring Linotype age technical papers. Important benefits include bringing appearance up to modern web standards; gaining "perfect" typography, backgrounds, and alignment.

Plus new use of spot or full color; tiny ( 1/5 or less of normal! ) file sizes; ultra fast loading; live URL linking; possibly vastly improved image recoveries; total hyphen removal; improved italic substitutions; paragraph ledding; and potentially zero typos or spelling errors.

Limitations include being time intensive with a steep learning curve, needing to become PostScript literate, using my Gonzo Utilities along with that super top secret Distiller //acrodist /F from your command line, needing Acrobat Pro, resolving IP and copyright issues, and allowing minor to moderate modifications of the original paper.

It is by far the best to start with the original sourcecode, but this is rarely available on Linotype era precomputer docs. While good choices involve high resolution scans, all you really need is a fairly clean screen image on a high resolution monitor.

There is an obscure "print screen" or whatever key on most keyboards. Use this to grab a third or a quarter of a page at a time and send it to Imageviewer32 or its equivalent. Save as fragmented bitmaps and then combine and bring the full page bitmap up in Paint.

Route one page bitmap at a time to Acrobat Pro and have it do its superb character recognition. Switch to edit mode and copy the largest feasible text blocks to Wordpad or some other word processor. Then you carefully remove all glitches and typos in an attempt to get perfectly clean original intended text.

Done properly, very little actual rekying should be needed.

Bring the text up in my Gonzo Utilities, and carefully mimic the original layout but with new and clean fonts. Add spot color and links and new paragraph ledding where and when appropriate.

Hyphens, of course, are vile and despicable and have no place whatsoever in modern web layouts. Fortunately, most obsessive hyphenators eventually grow so much hair on their palms that they can no longer type.

What you do instead is slightly modify any non-power words in the text to gain acceptable fill justification. Or else eliminate fill justification entirely.

The trick to forcing Gonzo fill justify lines is to convert any "group" into one long paragraph and then add a dozen spaces at your intended line ends. Then modify your text and its space locations as needed to gain suitably dense typography.

Any such mods, of course, should not in any manner modify the original author's intent and style. And should not be used on any legal document or on any Shakespearian quality originals.

I strongly feel that italics should be discouraged and replaced with bolding or spot color. But I kept them in this example because they seemed to belong.

The original bitmap image of the printer was rather small and mangy. It was magnified four times and then traced over in Paint. Gonzo then does an automatic resizing and even provides an optional URL link. All with modest file sizes.

You can compare the Acrobat version here against the full gonzo director's cuts rework here. It is not even remotely close.

Samples of other director's cuts can be found here, here, here, here, and here.

We can do director's cuts for you, as well as consulting or training. Contact us for details.

October 05, 2017
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Just after WWII, our sun suddenly became a radio star. owing to widespread expansion of VHF television broadcasts. And Captain Video, Roller Derby, and Kukla, Fran, and Ollie suddenly became our goodwill ambassadors to outer space.

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

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

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

BTW, Additional Captain Video clips newly appear here.

October 04, 2017
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Overheard some alternate energy enthusiasts who were lavishly praising Sterling engines as the ultimate solution to low delta-t energy recovery.

It quickly became obvious that they did not have the faintest clue of the underlying thermodynamics or economics. To date, the Sterling engine has been one of the largest and most monumental engineering ratholes of all times.

Here is why...

Carnot Matters -- There is a fundamental and unavoidable law of thermodynamics that says the best possible efficiency of any heat engine is proportional to the absolute temperature delta fraction. Thus your best possible efficiency of a 20 degree rise at 70 degree F room temperature would be 20/(459+70) = 3.8 percent. And no real world system can be even this good.     

 Efficiency Matters --As efficiency goes down, the size and complexity of the energy recovery device will disproportionately increase in a hyperbolic or worse manner for a given set of recovery values. Which is why totally free pv solar panels of less than six percent efficiency are totally useless.    

Amortization Matters -- If your energy recovery device is producing an average of two cents worth  of electricity per day and your total cost of ownership is three cents per day, you have a gasoline destroying net energy sink. The longer you run it, the more gasoline you destroy.

Gotchas Matter -- A Sterling engine needs a special part called a regenerator. Regenerators have to be long and thin and short and fat. They also have to be very good conductors of  heat and outstanding insulators. Extreme  engineering compromise is needed and nobody  has come up with a good regeneration solution to date. Much more in our Energy Fundamentals tutorial. And in our Engineering Ratholes story.

And more on the fundamental factors underlying recent technical innovation here.

October 03, 2017
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Managed to find a fragment of a paper that I completely forgot about. This was a PostScript tutorial that I did for the SIG-Forth folks.

PostScript, of course, is the third cousin of Forth that has been five times removed and six times disowned.

The present file is sort of a placemaker. I'll complete it and possibly do a vastly improved Director's Cut on it as time permits. Please temporarily ignore the wrong area code.

Meanwhile, if you have a better or a more complete scan of this item, please send me a copy.

October 02, 2017
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We are in the process of adding dozens of super premium SMT microwave switches to eBay.

Some of these sell new for $1000 to $2000 or more, and we now offer them for pennies on the dollar. RFE. We have "click tested" them for functionality. And we fully guarantee them serviceable and as described...

SPDT magnetic latched...

Agilent 8765A Magnetic Latching Coax Switch
Opt 024 100 DC-4 GHz 24 Vdc SMA ( 6 left )

HP or Agilent 33314-60026 Latching Coax
switch DC-20 GHz 24 Vdc Drive SMA ( 11 left ) 

HP 33311A Coaxial Switch
DC-4 GHz Pin Terms 24 Vdc 50 Ohm term SMA
dual SPDT ( 20 left )

HP 33311B 011 Coaxial Switch DC-18 GHz Pin
Terms  5 Vdc 50 Ohm term SMA dual SPDT (1 left )

HP 33314A Magnetic Latching Coaxial Switch
DC-4 GHz 24 6dc Drive SMA pin conn ( 18 left )

HP 8765B Magnetic Latching Coaxial Switch
Opt 005 100 DC-20 GHz 5 6dc Drive SMA
( 13 left )

Agilent 8765A Magnetic Latching Coaxial Switch
DC-4 GHz 15 6dc Drive SMA 4 pin ( 2 left )

Agilent 33311-60039 Coaxial Switch
DC-18 GHz 24 6dc Drive SMA pin terminal s
(43 left )

HP 33314B Magnetic Latching Coaxial Switch
DC-20 GHz 24 6dc Drive SMA pin conn ( 9 left )

HP 33314A Mag Latch Coaxial Switch
SPDT DC-4 GHz 24 6dc Drive SMA 4 pin conn
(1 left)

HP8765B Magnetic Latching Coaxial Switch
DC-20 GHz 10 6dc Drive SMA ( 2 left )

Narda SEM123LT Magnetic Latching
Coaxial Switch SPDT DC-18 GHz24 6dc Drive
e SMA ( 43 left )

Agilent 33311-60040 Coaxial Switch
DC-26.5 GHz 24 6dc Drive SMA pin terminals
( 1 left )

HP 33311C STD Coaxial Switch
DC-26.5 GHz Pin Term 24 Vdc 50 Ohm SMA
dual SPDT ( 10 left )

HP 8761B OPT 551 Latching SPDT coax switch
DC-18GHz 24-30vdc Nmal SMA fem SMAfem
( 3 left )

HP 8761A OPT 555 Latching SPDT coax switch
DC-18GHz 12-15 Vdc all SMA female ( 8 left )

HP 8761B OPT 555 Latching SPDT coax switch
DC-18GHz 24-30vdc all SMA female ( 2 left )

HP 8761A OPT 655 Latching SPDT coax switch
DC-18GHz 12-15 Vdc SMA male fem fem ( 4 left )

HP 8761B OPT 661 Latching SPDT coax switch
DC-18GHz 24-30vdc Nmal SMAmal SMAmal ( 2 left )

HP 8765A Magnetic Latching Coax Switch
DC-4 GHz Opt 024 100 24 6dc SMA ( 23 left )

HP 33314-60026 Mag Latch Coaxial Switch
Opt 005 100 DC-20 GHz 5 6dc Drive SMA ( 18 left )

HP 8765A Magnetic Latching Coaxial Switch DC-4 GHz
5 6dc Drive SMA 4 pin conn ( 2 left )

4 port...

HP 33312B Four port Coaxial Switch
DC-18 GHz 24 6dc Drive SMA int 50 Ohm
( 23 left )

HP 33312B Four port Coaxial Switch DC-18 GHz
5 6dc Drive SMA int 50 Ohm ( 13 left )

5 port...

HP 33313A Mech Latching 5 port Coaxial Switch DC-4 GHz 24 6dc Drive SMA ( 18 left )

HP 33313B Mech Latching 5 port Coaxial Switch DC-18 GHz 24 6dc Drive SMA ( 5 left )

[ 1-2 3-4 to 1-3 2-4 ] latching...

Legacy UZ Transtel T443D31 RF Switch
28 Vdc dc-18 GHz SMA [1-2 3-4] to
[1-3 2-4]  ( 14 left )

SP6T...

Narda SP6T rf coax switch 060-D0-A3D-4C2
SMA 28 Vdc NO DC-18 GHz DB9 connector
( 20 left )

Narda SP6T rf coax switch 062-D1-A3D-4C2
SMA 28 Vdc NO DC-18 GHz DB9 connector
( 8 left )

SP8T...

Dow Key Microwave 581J-5208 12 Vdc SP8T
SMA coaxial switch DC-18 GHz DB9 conn
( 1 left )

SP12T...

Narda SP12T rf coax switch
120-D0-A1D-3C2 SMA 28 Vdc NO DC-12.4
GHz solder terms ( 2 left )

We still have a few dozen more to list, so please check back or contact us.

October 01, 2017
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A reminder that we have THE definitive Gila Valley dayhikes guide here. It includes exact locations of all but the most sensitive of places to go and things to do.

The trips can be greatly added to by using Google Earth, or my very favorite Acme Mapper. A local hiking club can be found here.

Some of the lesser known dayhikes have now been  gathered together here. This is also a great example of how PostScript can completely and utterly blow Power Point out of the water on all counts. Many more examples here.

Separately, if you want your outdoor activities to make a significant contribution to ongoing exciting world class research, check out our Prehistoric bajada hanging canals you'll find here.

A collection of field notes can be linked here. And we are now newly posting to Research Gate. Or contact us for more  details.

September 30, 2017
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Some recent major glitches in the pv panel world:

Wacker just got whacked. With their polysilicon factory blowing up. It is likely to be many months before they can resume. Thus creating a major materials supply issue .

Both Solar Server and pvXchange seem to have failed to update their pv pricing info for the last several months. We are currently stuck at 40 euro cents per peak panel watt. We need 25 US cents for true renewability and sustainability.

Two possible alternate pricing sources here and here.

Currency exchange rates here.

Meanwhile, in their infinite wisdom, the ITC International Trade Commission ( who are by no means international ) recommended proceeding towards a pv tax that could easily exceed 100 percent of ongoing value.

One of the minor side effects would be the complete elimination of any and all new pv installations in the US. Done primarily to help two utterly incompetently mismanaged and now bankrupt foreign firms.

An older pv panel tutorial can be found here, with much more on energy in general here and here.

September 29, 2017
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eBay has just gone draconian big brother in that they have newly banned all live url links and all phone numbers from their seller's listings.

The damage this does to their sellers overwhelmingly exceeds any perceived but likely utterly trivial revenue loss from off-eBay sales.

For a list of any of your listings that may be affected, go to my eBay ---> tasks.

Some of our available eBay resources include...

Our own eBay Sales
eBay Buying Summary
eBay Selling Summary
Enhancing your eBay Skills I
Enhancing your eBay Skills II
Enhancing your eBay Skills III
Enhancing your eBay Skills IV
Enhancing your eBay Skills V
Enhancing your eBay Skills VI
Enhancing your eBay Skills VII
Enhancing your eBay Skills VIII
Image Post-Processing Tools
Auction Help Library
The Arizona Auction Scene
Your own Custom Auction Finder

Plus the live and online auction hints here and here.

September 28, 2017
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Online auctions are a totally different scene from the recently endangered live ones. They are far easier to participate in but their risks are also much higher, as are their closing costs...

Always seek out a 30:1 or higher SBR Sell Buy Ratio. Avoid ever paying more than a fraction of a cent on the dollar.

Bid only ONCE precisely two minutes BEFORE any auto extension trips.

A reasonable max proxy bid might be THIRTY PERCENT above what the lot is worth to you. For, almost always, you will either be outbid or will get the item for significantly less than your max.

Carefully establish street value through such sites as PLC Center or McMaster Carr or OEM's Trade or similar.

Carefully establish eBay value by seeing how many competitors are offering the items for what price spread. Always factor in any personal value added that you can bring to the table. Such as exceptional images.

Be sure to review data sheets and technical info on the web. Many items may now have zero demand.

Note that buyers premiums can be totally outrageous, with state taxes and VISAs piled on top of them. Not to mention packing and shipping costs. Combined these can easily TOTALLY DOMINATE your lot cost.

If more than five percent of your bids win, you are paying waaay to much. You make up for this by bidding on twenty times what you could possibly deal with.

Recognize "don't go there" currency threshold limits and always bid a few cents above them. A bid of $20.17 is much more  likely to win than $19.73.

The best buys are often "contents of shelf" or "contents of cabinet".

Certain images can be magnified and sharpened to reveal more product info. Free Imageviewer32 is handy here.

Keep close tabs on likely auction sources, most especially Bidspotter, AuctionZip, and similar.

Have well defined distance limits; Close for heavy stuff you can personally deal with; light for stuff others have to ship for you ; and Exceptional for, well, exceptional very rare "bottom feeding" opportunities.

Always note whether adjacent lots are prime inventory, obsolete spares, abject mezzanine junk, maintenance stuff, or likely unfixable repairables.

Use calenders or Rolodex files to keep tracks of opening and closing dates and passwords. List lot numbers of interest on a 3x5 card and cross them off as you get outbid.

Apply for bid approval early.

Outrageous lowball bids are sometimes accepted after auction on unbid lots. This ploy is mostly useful when the building has to be vacated.

UPS Stores are outrageously expensive but may be your best choice for pickup and packaging of remote lots. Otherwise, check out UShip and similar services. Note that most trucking firms absolutely refuse to do any packaging whatsoever, even so minimal as shrink wrapping a skid.

Note that the inability to inspect can very much affect the suitability of the lot to you. The risk to reward ratio is much higher online than live.

Much more on auctions here, eBay here, and your own regional auction finder here.

September 27, 2017
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Here is a spiral related kind of thingy along with its sourcecode. It is sort of based on some web related art, but with all new sourcecode. As usual, send it to Distiller via the Windows Command mode with the top secret incantation of "//acrodist /F"

Curiously, its animated sideshow only appears once for any given amount of Acrobat PDF magnification. The animation seems totally absent on Chrome, so be sure to view it via Acrobat on a local copy.

Alike but different somehow would be our avuncular sleezoid or the Spirograph stuff found here and here

Plus our recent Fractal Fern here and here, and our Sierpinski Triangle here and here. And the marbelous stacks of pancakes here. A PostScript manual here, my personal utilities here, and an intro tutorial here.

September 26, 2017
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A copy of our latest hanging canal field notes has just been newly uploaded to Researchgate.

You'll also find many Dr. James Neely papers here, both on our local hanging canals and worldwide. As well as many different response and participation options for you.

Meanwhile, here, here, and here are our latest images of our latest possible hanging canal find that potentially are located here.

Sadly, the evidence to date is "not quite" strong enough and further study is definitely needed to see if it is real.

Your participation welcome.

September 25, 2017
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OK, so just how does our Sierpinski Triangle work?

There are two portions to the code: A stacked array and the display code. The stacked array consists of six individual two dimensional arrays of length 1, 3, 9, 27, 81, and 243. Each [x y] subelement defines the lower tip of any triangle, while the array positioning sets its scale. And, optionally, its color.

All the display code does is report the array contents in the expected manner. Drawing each triangle in its intended position and size.

The second array down on the pile looks like this...

[[x0 y0] [x1 y1] [x2 y2]]

When the array is being built, the [x0 y0] values here will get added to the needed upcoming left, right, and upper offsets and become the first three sub-entries of the third array down on the array stack.

Each "parent" thus fosters three "children". The process continues from left to right and then from the top down until all 364 triangles are defined. Additional depth is easily added with trivially short extra code.

The PostScript forall command is especially adept at re-entrant code such as this.

An alternate turtle graphics approach to Sierpinski can be found here. It would seem much more complex, quite obtuse, redundant stroked, and difficult to colorize. A PostScript manual here, my personal utilities here, and an intro tutorial here.

September 24, 2017
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OK, here is a brand new Sierpinski Triangle. You'll find the PostScript code here and its PDF demo here.

Just send the 6K code to Acrobat Distiller with the usual top secret command line incantation of "//acrodist /F".

While the final result is identical to Sierpinski, I'm not quite sure whether our sneaky stunt of reentrant forall commands creating cascaded arrays of lower vertices would be considered completely kosher or not.

Adding any desired depth to the reentrancy or compiling for compaction is largely trivial. We did cheat a little by throwing an optional "real" triangle around the outside.

A PostScript manual here, my personal utilities here, and an intro tutorial here.

Even more "doesn't look like a computer did it" stuff in our fractal fern and sourcecode, and, of course, in all of our Marbelous Stacks of Pancakes.

September 23, 2017
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... and yet another ancient review on mistakes, this time on live auctions. Which, of course, are getting totally blown out of the water by the online auctions which usually have utterly overwhelming cost and convenience advantages.

To the point that classic auctioneers are rapidly becoming an endangered species. Still, opportunities ( barely ) exist in the way of remote community college auctions and small town venues that can definitely work to your interest.

And, when combined with "put it with the next one" poisoned lots and being thirteen hours into a three hour auction, there's still some exciting possibilities. Especially when inspection is a good idea...

Always remember that you have no friends at an  auction! Least of all the auctioneer. Listen to  everything, volunteer nothing. Be invisible till it  is time to be in the auctioneer's face. Dress down to the point of being shabby, but always  wear one very distinct hat or other piece of clothing.

 If more than five percent of your bids win, you are  bidding far too high. Always stop bidding if anyone is bidding against you and you even remotely approach  fair value.

Be on the lookout for poor promotion by a second tier auction, utter leinholder panic, conflicts with another show, and hassles over payments, removal dates, outrageous bid deposits, and cleanup.

Huge lots tend to have disproportionately low prices. As do "contents of cabinet" or "contents of room" Always stay for the end of the auction. In some cases,  utterly spectacular bargains will result.

Especially if the  area has to be cleared for a new tenant or whatever. Sometimes you can also make really great deals on unbid  or unsold items after the auction or during quiet times.

Secretly mark which of dozens of pallets you have an interest in, such as with pushpins. Don't sweat bidding on tons of garbage to get one or two  items. 

You can usually find someone to take ( or even pay  for ) the dregs after the auction. And abandoning stuff often  is not that big a deal.

Position yourself a few lots ahead of the auctioneer and right beside the next item of your interest. Stay alert through numerous sitdown and meditation breaks,  sensible food and drink, mild painkillers, and frequent  restroom use. Plus sane shoes.

Work in teams of two. Your partner might see something that you miss, and might give you a crucial sanity check.

Crossing your hand across your chest palms down will sometimes ask the auctioneer to split the bid increment.

Watch for heavy items that can allow minor valuable parts recycled, large quantity assorted lots, items requiring major  triage, items needing mix and match part swapping refurb, or simply your being the only bidder that recognizes value.

Recognize "don't go there price thresholds" and always bid just above them. A bid of $20.14 is much more likely to win than $19.73.

NEVER get into a pissing contest with another bidder. They will squash you like a bug. If you would like to try and steal an item, get out in front of everybody else but not quite in the auctioneer's face..

Then, while the item IS STILL BEING DESCRIBED, hold your bidder card against your chest with one hand and do a Churchill V for Victory with your other hand, against your chest. Be sure that ONLY the auctioneer can see you. You are giving the auctioneer a message of "Here is a $2.50 floor bid if and when you care to accept it."

If that does not work, try rocking your bidder card back and forth to tell the auctioneer "I want this item". Do so invisibly to the audience.

If you suspect the bidding will be highly competitive,WAIT till just under your max and bid ONCE on the second going of going going gone.

NEVER get tired, or lazy, or in a hurry. The spectacularly best deals usually happen very late in an auction.

A missing key can dramatically suppress the number and values of compatible bids. And many locksmiths are quite low in cost. Be sure to balance risk versus reward. And make sure adjacent lots are all high tech.

Beware of the traditional scams of fast hammers, phantom bidding, bid pulling, no or slow pay, and shilling.

I guess I got "somewhat discouraged" over often worthless storage auctions when the next lot after the one I bid on included two dead babies. The auctioneer was not at all clear whether this was to be "choice" or "times the money".

Use the four inch hail, the scorpions, the rabid bats, the snakes, the poor parking, filth, bad lighting, and, of course, the lack of restrooms to your full advantage.

Secrets on becoming a crooked auctioneer can be found here. Your own custom regional auction finder can be created for you per these details. And more here on our Auction Help page and links.   

September 22, 2017
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This appears to be waayy too good to be true, but it seems possible to speed up PostScript fractal fern creating time by a factor of 130 or so! On down to under a fraction of a second.

Per the code here and the final PDF file here. But some third party checks should be done that verify this is for real.

The PostScript Reference Manuals shows  us a maximum path limit length of 3500, but the PS Interpreter in Acrobat Distiller apparently can accept a path of half a million path dots and likely many more. But this many may cause problems with Chrome or GhostScript or others.

Thus, instead of repeated stroking single dots, you should be able to accumulate 1000 of the fern points into a single path and then stroke that path only ONCE! Then repeat the process 250 times or how often for the density you are after.

Some third party variations can be found here. You should be able to just change the numbers in the above code, and send it to Acrobat Distiller via the usual secret command line code of //acrodist /F

And for something "alike but different somehow, check this out. It looks like it should function superbly under PostScript.

Please email me with what does and does not work for you.

September 21, 2017
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... and review these ancient eBay selling mistakes...

Not recognizing that eBay sales are a profession that always demands EXTREME time commitment, attention  to detail, and very high personal value added.  

Trying to work on too low a profit margin. ALWAYS seek out a 30:1 or higher RSB sell/buy ratio.

Not having the faintest clue what your true costs are.

If you are not including your pro-rated water  bill and similar obscure items, your cost accounting  is probably woefully inadequate.

Not recognizing that the minimum profitable eBay sale is somewhere around $19.63.    

Not offering unique products not found elsewhere.    

Failing to keep proper tax records.    

Exceeding a 21 day cashout or 15 month hang time. While avoiding the profit loss of "too fast" sales.  

Not realizing that eBay seller profits ALL happen during  BUYING and not during selling.    

Not buying except under EXTREME distress situations.  If more than 5% of your buy offers are accepted, you  are paying way too much. Failing to promptly provide tracking info to buyer. Naturally, you NEVER ship without tracking. But it usually pays to self-insure .

Not keeping your item descriptions complete, accurate, and somewhat understated.

Not offering refunds for ANY reason. And comping full  costs on any return, usually WITHOUT a return. Your 30:1 SBR protects you against significant losses.    

Listing anything you cannot hold extended at arm's length.   

Not having proper inventory controls in place.   

Not having daily shipping, a trade name registration, and a state tax stamp.

Using arcane terms and conditions that exceed  ten words absolute maximum.  Failing to promptly answer all emails and to correct all problems as quickly as possible.

Not using a camera AND a scanner AND web data  links when and where appropriate. Images rule.  

Failing to keep shipping charges strictly revenue neutral.  

Not spending nearly enough time in image post-processing. At least 90 percent of your photo  effort should go here.   

Selling foreign.

Including newly banned phone numbers or live URL's in your listings.   

Listing any item at an opening price less than you are willing to sell it for.    

Withdrawing an offer in violation  of the Uniform Commercial Code. 

Selling any item violating VERO rights.    

Selling in known problem categories.     

Stealing images and copy from other sellers.

Accepting anything but  Paypal

Not offering inspection privileges.

Not promptly offering refunds. When appropriate, including buyer costs and without any  return.  

Falling for account-stealing phishing emails.   

Posting feedback before customer evaluates item.

Being rude or confrontational in seller email contacts.

Using dropshippers, palletized "bargains", doing consignment sales, or selling for friends.

Much more eBay stuff here.

September 20, 2017
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Thought we might once again review these ancient eBay buying rules...

Failing to proxy bid their max ONCE very late in the auction, doing so in oddball penny amounts just above  a currency denomination threshold.

Failing to realize that an awarded bid is an enforceable contract under the Uniform Commercial Code.   

Not knowing the TOTAL transaction cost of the bid  price, the shipping costs, and any special charges.  

 Failing to acknowledge that it costs money to ship stuff, and that the carrier charges are typically only a tiny fraction of true total shipping costs.

Not fully reading the offer or seeing what is not there.    

Failing to contact the seller if there is ANY question.   

Failing to pay promptly and in the expected manner.   

Withdrawing a bid for frivolous or remorseful reasons.   

Buying foreign.   

Not realizing that "too good to be true" offers are.   

Paying with anything except  Paypal   

Failing to research value elsewhere. eBay is seldom the only or the best buy.    

Not realizing that shipping heavy stuff long distances is practically NEVER cost effective.    
 Falling for account-stealing phishing emails.   

Getting into pissing contests with other bidders.    

Failing to preview the seller's feedback. Anything less than 98 percent is suspect and below 95 percent should trip a red flag alert.

Nickel and dimeing the seller over trivial charges.   

Being rude or confrontational in seller email contacts.   

Negging before resolving any seller conflict

Much more eBay stuff here.

September 19, 2017
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Let the sleeping dogs lie. Because I will not believe them anyway.

Turns out there are dozens of "lost" Guru's Lair pages caused by underlinking or even no linking at all. Here's a few of them that might remain of some interest...

aafont01.shtml - Bitmap manipulation Library
acrob01.shtml - Acrobat Library
adeptinv.shtml - Long sold out robotics
advt01.shtml - Banner advertising opportunities
amlink01.shtml - Book access
ara01.shtml - Historic conference record
aucres01.shtml - Your own regional auction finder
barg01.shtml - Bargain page catalog software
beewb01.shtml - Bee's own library pages
capvid01.shtml - Captain Video's secret laboratory
consul01.shtml - Older consultant's network
flut01.shtml -Spit or Chomp Flutterwumpers
glair01.shtml - Guru Archive Collection
golly01.shtml - Golly Gee Mister Science
info01.shtml - Your InfoPack Solutions
image01.shtml - Image Postproc Graphics Library
libry01.shtml - Main Library Page ( needs revision ) msquant/retry_m/xxxx.shtml - Magic sinewave calc
magsn01.shtml - Main Magic Sinewave Library
magsna1.shtml - Magic Sinewave Historic Archive
map01.shtml - Site Map ( still needs revision )
navcub01.shtml - Navicube navigation library
picup01.shtml - Some older PIC resources
psweb01.html - Older PostScript web resources
synlib01.shtml - Synergetics library page
third01.shtml - Third Party Resources
tinaja01.shtml - Tinaja Questing Library
wave01.shtml - Wavelets Library
weblib01.shtml - Older web resource library
webwb01.shtml - Some ancient web resources

Plus our usual reminder that we have one each of everything here and bunches of resources on our prehistoric hanging canals here.

September 18, 2017
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Here's some revised PostScript fractal fern sourcecode and its resulting .PDF file.

The source code is all of 2K long and is activated by sending it to Acrobat Distiller, preferably from the command line secret incantation of "//acrodist /F".

The sourcecode takes the better part of a minute to execute on most machines. Even the resultant .PDF file takes a full two seconds or so to refresh.

This has to be one of the most stunning images anyplace ever. Send it to your county fair for a guaranteed third place!

What really amazes me is that you do not draw this image. You temporarily remove its leash and let it out of cyberspace. Even more amazing is that the entire image is defined with only 24 numbers. This is astounding image compression.

Some background here.

September 17, 2017
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Most of our SSL update now seems to be working, and many of our files ( but - curiously - not certain web pages ) are now fully secure. Stay tuned for the dust to settle.

It turns out there is a secret hidden gotcha to any SSL update. One that can cause you no end of grief.

Only links that start with https:// can be made secure!

One option is to go through all 10,000 links on your website and manually change them to a https:// prefix. Yeah, right. But that in no way would respond to links your visitors have saved. Or anything else uncontrollably floating around in cyberspace.

Instead, the preferred solution is to use what is called a "301" redirect. This can automatically change most other incoming file prefixes (especially http:// ) to https://.

Details vary with your ISP and their server family. In the case of FatCow which uses Apache Server standards, their published workaround can be found here. Should you chose to, they can also fix the redirect for you for a small fee. Other hints here.

The alternate is to change your ht_access file yourself. ht_access should be on your homepage of your ISP's Apache server. Other uses for ht_access are to block bad visitors or allow non-mainstream file postfixes.

IF you already have an ht_access file and are using FatCow, you can try adding these three lines to its beginning...

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule (.*)
https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}
[R=301,L]

If, not, create a new three line standard textfile. Either way, be sure to FTP save the new file to your ISP, as well as careful backup copies elsewhere. Make sure you fully comply to your ISP and server rules!

September 16, 2017
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Can you pass this energy quiz?

Here's some more energy stuff you may find to be of interest...

Energy Intro and Summary
PV Panel Intro and Summary
Assorted Energy Links
Some Energy Fundamentals
More Energy Fundamentals
Fundamentals of Electrolysis
Trashing Auto Electrolysizers
How to Bash Pseudoscience
Technical Innovation Secrets
Debunking the Water Powered Car  
Debunking Brown's Gas
Supraluminal dowsing for Brown’s Gas in Roswell
"Its a gas" Hydrogen Library

September 15, 2017
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Our latest new PostScript program reads your web log files for you and extracts a report of all the 404's.

Find the code here and a sample output here. It reads a local file similar to an uncompressed moo.tinaja.com from FatCow and  generates an output similar to snoop_404.5.log.

I've purposely kept the file short at under 3K, but bells and whistles ( such as sorts and counts ) are easily added, as is conversion to a full blown logfile analyzer.

As with most of our code that uses gonzo.ps from our PostScript Utilities and any other PostScript code that wants to read or write disk files, you have to use a secret Distiller incantation from your Windows command line of "//acrodist /F".

My own report revealed several rude surprises. Some Russian hackers use extreme length URL's, and the usual PS readline string had to be lengthened to 15,000 characters or more.

Most of the errors appeared to be piracy attempts, with /wp-login.php overwhelming all the others. There were only 40 of my own errors, only half of which appeared to be remotely detectable, let alone fixable. Remarkably, there were no personal repeats, suggesting that actual Guru's Lair problems are already rare and well out of the mainstream.

More on PostScript here and here, with a bunch of program links here. Beginner stuff here and insider secrets here. With the bible book here and a video here.

September 14, 2017
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There does seem to be an uptick in our web response, over and above the usual seasonal school starts.

Some recent changes may explain the new interest levels...  

1. I'm trying to provide mostly new and fresh content daily 24/7.

2. The "things to do" goal is now at least a dozen new links or code modules per day.

3. Appropriate older "recycled" content will be worked in when and where it is still either current or funny. Or both. Such as this forever classic.

4. I've been paying more attention to some of the better blogs. Sort of as a "pace" Particularly this one and this one. Sadly, the future is up in the air over this one.

5. I'm trying to eliminate some of the more  difficult 404's, both those under my   control and those not.

6. I'm working on uploading more classic stuff such as this one, this one and this one.

7. I've been paying a lot more attention to spell checking lately. The magic incantation on Dreamweaver is shift-F7. But  the Lancasterisms will, of course, continue.

8. We have just added SSL security, although it may take a day or two to kick in. Besides the obvious benefits, this supposedly can also improve a site's SEO rankings.

Speaking of "5", I've made the disconcerting discovery that certain Russian Hackers will have logfile entries many thousands of bytes long.

Which takes a high RAM computer or some sneaky PostScript programming for workarounds. The sledgehammer cure is to use 15,000 character strings for file reads!

Other piracy attempts focus on .php files. And most especially /wp-login.php,which accounts for nearly one quarter of all of our wayward 404's!

One workaround is to create a dummy file of three spaces. Which will not respond in any manner, yet remain 404 free. Resist the urge to redirect to the Hualapai County Sheriff's Office or https://www.fbi.gov/ as pissing off the bad guys can end up a rather bad scene.

One way to deal with a hard to find personal 404 is to use a redirect to a related known good file...

<html><head><title>old html redirect</title>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content"=1;  
url=https://www.tinaja.com/acrob01.shtml">
</head><body> Taking you to our new website.
</body> </html>

Your ongoing support via here or here or here would be most welcome.

September 13, 2017
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Starting in October, Chrome will start publishing dire live security warnings on any web link that does not offer https:// and SSL security.

These warnings could severely impact your eBay sales. More details in this link collection.

The bottom line: If you wish to continue your eBay sales, you pretty much MUST include SSL on your website by October.

Fatcow offers SSL for your unshared website at $44 annually. More details here. Other ISP's may charge more or less. Shared websites may sometimes include free SSL.

Meanwhile, we've just placed bunches of newly listed microwave rf switches on our eBay site. With pricing a tiny fraction of factory originals. We have "click tested" these and guarantee them fully usable.

More eBay stuff here.

September 12, 2017
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How can you tell if an uptick in your website response is real or bogus? Your best bet is to assume it is bogus and then be genuinely surprised if it is not.

My ISP is Fat Cow and I am very much impressed with them, especially their live help. Since I am a Fat Cow associate, they do request that I mention this every now and then.

At any rate, Fat Cow ( and, likely, your ISP ) will offer several ways of measuring your website popularity. First, Fat Cow offers your choice of Webalizer or AWStats.

I prefer Webalizer, but suggest you dramatically up the Number of Top URLs configuration on it to 1000 or more. This way, you can "track" any new website entires or announcements you made very quickly.

Two numbers to note are the ratio of Code 404 to total hits. Your unreachable files likely will have an unavoidable minimum of three to five percent. Caused by spam, malware, and other factors outside of your control.

To find out which 404's are your fault, see the log file details we will shortly look at below.

The Top Total Sites report can quickly show any excessive hits from an outside website. You can find the location of any visitor by using whois.

Your own internet server access should usually be by far the top source of hits. In my case, this would be Cable One. Should you suspect an attack elsewhere, it may be monitored daily or even hourly to find out if it is continuing and how serious the problem is to become. What they are actually up to can often be found with your log files covered below.

The referrals report seems to miss many of your visitors, but any dramatic changes can often suggest that something has gone viral. Again, daily or even hourly monitoring can prove useful in extreme cases.

Around three to five percent porn is usually normal in any referrals report. As might be around half Russian or otherwise indecipherable foreign links.

Should you need more specific info on a visitor, Fat Cow and others should offer log file access. These can be enormously useful, but may require some programming skills and detective work for your use.

To access your logfile in Fat Cow, use a FTP Program such as Filezilla and go to your site's stats folder. Then download the most recent access_log file. Details may vary with your ISP, but it is vital to DEMAND log file access!

Your downloaded stats may be in .GZ format and you may need a decryptor such as Winzip to uncompress the files. The resultant textfiles may look awkward in Wordpad and are often better viewed directly in Chrome.

The exact log file format will likely vary with your ISP, and it is super important that any software you use for analysis exactly matches your data format!

Simply scanning your textfile report can tell you lots of things. Such as searching on " 404 " to find where the errors are coming from. Or noting a pattern that repeats for more than a few dozen lines

The FatCow log report format tabs on spaces, and the ordinary textfile data is in the following format...

Requesting website Often blank hyphen Often blank hyphen Date and Time File access requested Status of returned file ("200" = good) Referral previous website Nature of browser

Here is some older log file analysis software I wrote at one time or another. These will likely need modification before you can actually use them...

Custom Logfile Analysis Utilities
Website Analyzer Utilities
Website Hit Analysis Routines
Web site Search Log Extractor
Website Referral Log Extractor
URL Extractor and Link Tester
PostScript Referral Log Analyzer
"404" Extractor and Reporter
Gonzo Tutorial and Directory

September 11, 2017
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Managed to find a rather rare copy of my Butterworth Filter Cookbook, my only paper to appear in CQ Magazine.

Yeah, I was a ham as K3BYG, but not particularly active. That time frame was around the International Geophysical Year, and some hams were bouncing radar off the moon, inventing parametric amplifiers, and building the first gas chromatographs. Oh yeah, there was also this new big deal called Single Sideband.

Zillions more classic papers here, and eBooks here. And one each of everything ( newly expanded version 1.04 ! ) here.

September 10, 2017
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Golly Gee, Mister Science!

Adding a wire and a few bytes of code now converts the Raspberry Pi to your choice of a 300 foot range FM Broadcaster, a key element of a ham transceiver, or a newly improved method using Hilbert Transforms to generate single sideband signals from a phase lock loop.

Some key details here and a sampler of related coverage can be found here. Meanwhile Analog Devices is doing all sorts of similar but pricey SDR software defined radio chips and evaluation demos.

September 09, 2017
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Managed to upload our Lower Frye Construct notes to Researchgate.

Who are a major open source research free publishing site with many millions of current papers. Yes, "independent" researchers are welcome here, but you will need a referral or two or significant evidence of your published research history. Competing open source research publishers include...

Academia
Archive
Arxiv
Carnegie OLI
Doaj
Figshare
Free Video Lectures
I Programmer
Justfree eBooks
Lulu Mendel
MIT Open Courseware
MyScienceWork
OSTI
PDF Drive
PLOS  One
Quartzy
Questia
Researchgate
SSRN
Vixra
Wesrch
Wikipedia

Please email me on others who belong on the above list. More field notes here and more hanging canal info here.

September 08, 2017
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A fundamental premise: Something always has to be at the bottom of the pile. And usually well below the bottom of the "to do" list.

These "lost" or "missing"  Gurugrams still need cataloging. But most now at least appear here.

123 Prehistoric Bajada Canals of Southeastern AZ
122 Glyphs Hanging Canal Summary
121 Little Known Gila Valley Dayhikes
120 Apple Assembly Cookbook I and II 
119 Web Friendly PS Colors
118 Some "Fat Tail Arrow" Utilities
117 Level II Precyber eBook Conversions
116 Restoring Faded or Scuffed Text
115 An "Un-Halftoning" scheme for eBooks
114 Remastering a Technical Book
113 Allen Reservoir Failure Analysis Docs
112 Prehistoric Hanging Canals Slide Show
111 My Metal Locater Thesis
110 Remastering Video for Web Distribution
109 Gauss-Jordan Stability Issues

These are also available in our "all we have" USB. And the latest GuruGram can be found here.

September 07, 2017
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Just added a new bunch of things to do to our Gila Valley Dayhikes page. Which is now up to 512 major entries.

Further details on a few of the more obscure trips can also be found here.

September 06, 2017
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Quite a few YouTube videos of the area are starting to appear and probably should be mentioned in passing for our Gila Valley Dayhikes.

Some random samples of varying interest and quality...

"McNary" Tunnel
Ash Creek Flash Flood
Climbing Frye Mesa Reservoir
Hiking the Gila Box River Trail
Frye Mesa Natural Waterslides
Wilderness First Recovery
Road Less Traveled US191
Exploring Mount Graham
Frye Mesa Video #1
Frye Mesa Video #2
Frye Mesa Video #3
Frye Mesa Video #4
Frye Mesa Video #6
Frye Mesa Video #7
Frye Mesa Video #8
Frye Mesa Video #9
Frye Creek Potholes
Safford Hanging Canals
Mount Graham Ice Cave
Mount Graham Streams
Frye Canyon
Smores Canyon
Waterfall Hike
Hike to the Potholes
Frye Mesa Cruise
Stone Fire
Dankworth Pond

As is usual and even typical of street signs, McEniry Tunnel is misspelled. His own signature appears here.

More on our hanging canals here, with their Field Notes here. While not Gila Hike related, my own video can be found here.

September 05, 2017
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I'd like to start a definitive directory of utterly useless ( but nonetheless absolutely true ) factoids. Such as...

The Canary Islands were named after a large dog.

The eastern end of the Panama Canal is on the Pacific
Ocean.

There are forty six states in the US. ( slog with four
commonwealths )

Reno is west of San Diego. 

The propane fire training simulator often adds icicles
to its fireball.

Arkansas has six states on its southern boundary .

There is more hydrogen in a gallon of gasoline than
there is in a gallon of liquid hydrogen. Mole fractions
and all.

Lake Havasu City AZ has more lighthouses than
anywhere else.

The tallest mountain in the world is in South America.

The original Woodstock closing act was supposed to
be Roy Rodgers and  Dale Evans singing Happy Trails.

Lawrence Welk did a cover on One Toke Over the Line

New York is north, south, east, and west of Norwalk,
Connecticut CT. 

It is possible to score a one point safety in NFL football.

The latter has not happened since the 1940's, but they
have since tightened up the rules. It still remains possible.
There have been two more recent NCAA college calls.

Please email me your contributions.

September 04, 2017
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Finding the slope of a function can be enormously useful,  as the whole branch of differential calculus can tell us. Ferinstance, a zero slope indicates a local maximum, minimum, or an inflection point. And finding the slope of the slope can tell us which is which.

One crude way of finding slopes is to make a very  small incremental change in the function's variable and see how much the function itself changes. But if the function can be mathematically defined and is reasonably well behaved, chances are its slope derivative is already well known.

The basic scheme is called the fundamental rule of  differential calculus and goes something like this...

slope of a function = the limit as delta x goes to zero
for (( f(x) + delta(x) - ( f(x)) / delta(x).

The usual example is to find the slope at a point along a parabola y = x^2. (x + deltax)^2 is x^2 + 2x*deltax + deltax^2. Subtracting  x^2 and letting deltax^2 vanish and dividing by deltax leaves us with a derivative slope of 2x. Good old u^n(du).

More in our Math Stuff and Magic Sinewaves and Cubic Spline libraries. 

September 03, 2017
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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.

September 02, 2017
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You are welcome to participate in the following world class research...

1. Does a reach of the Freeman canal exist near 32.77320 -109.78400?

2. Can you re-find the "lost" historical Blue Ponds Canal near 32.78073     -109.77904? Can you strengthen the premise that it had a "steal the plans" prehistoric origin and in fact is part of the Freeman Canal?

3. What, if anything, is at 32.78051 -109.78214? Does it have any prehistoric significance?

4. What, if anything, is at 32.78904 -109.78401? Is it Golf Course Canal related?

6. Can you acquire more evidence that 32.76389 -109.79526 is in fact prehistoric and not a wagon road or 4WD track? How far southward and ultimately westward can you trail this?

7. Is the image at 32.80811 -109.84444 significant?

8. Can you find additional evidence of a prehistoric origin for the Tugood Canal at 32.82097 -109.86675?

9. The entire Deadman East Canal still needs explored, particularly its destination. Start at 32.75644 -109.77729

10. Is there a prehistoric canal trace at 32.76117 -109.80065? How is it related to HS, Freeman, and Golf Canals?

Particularly needed are GPS keyed images and videos of drone fly overs. Much more info here.

September 01, 2017
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Updated a revised index for our woefully behind Hanging Canal Field notes.

In general, the field notes are horribly incomplete and have gone through several generations. Those considered "current" ( with an "*" ) can be identified by upper left PDF nav buttons and a new upper right KML clickthrough. All of the notes demand more images and ongoing revisions.

The KML itself remains an out-of-date and inaccurate pilot. At present, Chrome only returns KML sourcecode which you have to manually save to drag and drop into Google Earth.

Here are most of the presently available field notes...

Allen Canal
Bear Springs Canal
Cluffnw Canal
Freeman  Canal
Frye Complex
Golf Course Canal
Jernigan Canal
Lefthand Canyon
West Longview Area
Lower Frye Construct *
Mud Springs
Minor Webster Ditch
Riggs Mesa Canal
Robinson Canal *
Sand Canal
Smith Canal
TB Ponding Area*
Tranquility Canal
Tugood Canal
Veech Canal

 ( For sourcecodes, substitute .psl trailers above. )

Bear Flat Canal redirects here Bigler Canal redirects here  HS Canal redirects here Tailwater Canal redirects here

New field notes are likely to first appear here or later.

Your participation and support of this unique world class research project would be much appreciated.

Meanwhile, please drop all your of live video spare drones into our driveway.

August 31, 2017
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Just added a Revision 1.04 update to our Don Lancaster's Vintage Early Classics USB.

This includes over 100 Megabytes of new files, sourcecodes, eBooks, and videos. Now well over two Gigabytes total!

Easily searched for "hidden" or "lost" material. All totally open and unlocked. Immediate availability.

August 30, 2017
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Recently revised Guru's Lair file links current as of 9/17\274...

Gila Valley Dayhikes
What's New for 2017
What's New for 2016
Book on Demand Library Sampler
PostScript Library Sampler
Free eBook Library Sampler
YouTube Introduction to PostScript Video
Recent Hanging Canal Field Notes
Some KML Code
Wellness Relist
Website Filetype Catalog Directory
Turbo Encabulator Video
Some Directors Cuts
Website master catalog file list
PostScript available files summary
Knob Pattering summary and code
Patent Link summary
Bashing Pseudoscience link summary
Importing JPEG into HTML or PDF
Bizarre puzzle
Law of the unintended consequence
New letterheads and business cards
Slanty lettering
Stupendous products
Links via PDFMark
Deferred PostScript Execution
Hidden PostScript Characters 
New Mexico subastas to be sold at auction!   
Restoring Distiller disk access!  
UAAC Songbook  
Magic Sinewave summary links  
Banner auto rotation  
"empty" dummy PostScript code
PostScript font snooper and example 
New Mexico Wilderness Land  
Highly Developable Oregon Acreage 

August 29, 2017
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Just uploaded a reworked version of Don Lancaster's Introduction to PostScript video.

This is now much more compact, newly phone compatible, fast loading, and all in a single 27 minute video.

Urban lore fantasy #078-G: Someone forgot to send out invitations to the taping, so almost all of the show was shot using only three people besides me and the camera man. We later hijacked the entire next-in English class and got them to fake interest in something they did not have the faintest clue over.

Which to them, completely blew away giving Hester Prynne a C-.

Sorry that the video quality remains less than stunning. It seems the Betamax original was lost, and a second generation VHS copy had to be used. There's also still a minor glitch or two and I'd like to try some fancy sharpening and some example improvements.

BTW, the Adobe "cloud" subscriptions can include Premier at no additional cost. This, of course, is a superb video editor.

August 28, 2017
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Certainly some of the strangest and off-the-wall abuses of the PostScript Language involve horribly misapplying their setdash operator.

Ferinstance, there are some 6000 bricks in this perspective building image, all of which were done in a few dozen bytes of code. The dashed lines are simply mapped into the perspective space. At mind-numbing speed.

Find the image buried here as example #19 or the ready-to-use code here in Secret #29. And its video here.

Also buried here in #29 is a sneaky and "stripey" 3D font that abuses setdash in a totally different ( and equally unexpected ) way. This one is somewhat slower, though.

These days, you simply send your PostScript code to Acrobat Distiller, being absolutely sure to use the magic //acrodist /F incantation from the old Windows command line. GonzoPS utilities are here and their tutorial here.

August 27, 2017
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When it comes to Italian food, you can't be both anti pasto and pro volone.

August 26, 2017
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Just added the long missing home page link to our Book on Demand Publishing library.

August 25, 2017
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I've long been fascinated by Hugo Gernsback's Science and Invention Magazines, many of which are now available for free download by American Radio History.

These are a curious mix of concepts decades ahead of their time, on down ( waaay on down ) to the utterly ludicrous. The later of which today give us a new depth of meaning to "WTF?".

Fascinating are the advertising scams that ranged from more miles per gallon to patents to bodybuilding to perpetual motion to psychic prizes, to "win a car" puzzles that bore a striking resemblance to today's penny auctions.

Oh yeah, you can also earn up to $300 per month just by taking a radio correspondence course. Or build your own dining room furniture. Or an airplane.

August 24, 2017
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While it is no longer very active, we do still have a Book-on-Demand library page that includes these classics...

Useful tools for Book-on-demand publishing
Classic Early BOD Columns
Using Distiller as a PostScript Computer
Early Bod Stuff from Ask The Guru
Gonzo PostScript Utilities
Gonzo PostScript Utility Tutorial   
Actual Gonzo Sourcecode
PostScript Beginner Stuff
PostScript Secrets.
Blatant Opportunist Library
PostScript Show and Tell
Exploring Some PostScript Possibilities
Resource Bin Library
Secrets of 24/7 publishing 
1001 Reviews
Insider Banner Advertising Secrets
Main PostScript Library
PostScript Show & Tell
PostScript Startup Secrets
PostScript Speedup Secrets
Some Thoughts on ezines
Bound and Determined
Bookbinding Book Info
A "new" bookbinding method
Revisiting Book-on-demand
Insider secrets of post justification editing
Book on Demand Resources I
Book on Demand Resources II
Spot Color Options for Self-publishing
Terribly tricky terrific toner techniques
Guidelines for tri-mode publishing
Laser printer hard drive interface
Hand Bookbinding Resources
Upgrade Print Catalogs with Acrobat
Bodaciously better BOD bindings
Terrific toner techniques
A Superb New Color Printer
Imaginative Images
Web Imaging Secrets
Bouncy Bricks Adding
Website Bells and Whistles
Exploring information distribution tools
Step by Step Image Prep
Duplex Auto-addressing Catalog
Auto Tracking PDF Web Links

See https://www.tinaja.com/whtnu17.shtml and friends for improvements and updates.

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. The 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.

August 23, 2017
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One of the lesser known features of Google-earth is its ability to go back to previous or historic satellite imagery.

Yeah, most of these will be blurry and they do not go back all that far,

BUT...

The satellite appearance of a prehistoric hanging canal very much depends on time of day, time of year, recent moisture, and especially if it is full of dead flowers from a recent bloom.

This image suggests a prehistoric canal route exactly where it is needed. The slope elevations also seem credible. Of interest is the slanty SW to NE route through the center.

To recreate the image original, search Google Earth to 32.77364 -109.78318 and then use the history bar to return to November of 2011.

I'm not yet sure this adds credence to a projected THIRTEEN KILOMETER (!) supercanal. Foot access is mesmerizingly awful.

More on the study area here and on these stupendously mind blowing world class engineered canals here.

If you are the sort of hiker that brings along all your own catclaw just in case there is not enough along the route ( the word "trail", of course, is not in your vocabulary ), please contact us.

Ether way, please drop off all of your excess drones in our driveway. We particularly need the type with live video continuous feedback.

August 22, 2017
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Certainly the most important drill any volunteer or paid firefighter can do is following hose couplings out of a burning building.

One magic incantation is "SMOOTH BUMP BUMP TO THE PUMP."

Be able to sense this with your eyes closed. Another hint: Drop the hose to sense which coupling is nearest.

August 21, 2017
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Just added a new bunch of things to do to our Gila Valley Dayhikes page. Which is now up to 508 major entries.

Extended details on a few of the more obscure trips can be found here.

August 20, 2017
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Our currently available free eBooks include...

Incredible Secret Money Machine
TV Typewriter Cookbook 
TTL Cookbook 
Tearing Method       
Tearing Method Sourcecode
Apple Assembly Cookbook I
Apple Assembly Cookbook II
RTL Cookbook
Enhancing Your Apple II Vol I
Enhancing Your Apple II Vol II 
Machine Language Programming I
Machine Language Programming II

Please note that the Micro Cookbook volume II was split into two publications of Machine Language Programming I and Machine Language Programming II. Along with a partial "director's cut" rework demo of  MLPCI "Level II".

Micro Cookbook Volume I has not yet been listed. We do have autographed dead tree copies up on eBay. These are very hard to find elsewhere.

Speaking of which, please let me know where I can find scanned web reprints of any and all of the following...

Applewriter Cookbook
Cheap Video Cookbook
Son of Cheap Video
Micro Cookbook I 
Active Filter Cookbook
CMOS Cookbook 
Hexadecimal Chronicles 
Active Filter Cookbook
Manual De Circuiitos TTL
 ... and its Pacific Rim translation
All about Applewriter
Place Cave Story
"For Low Cost, Count on RTL"
Goodyear Lancaster AEEMs
Cave Crawler's Gazettes.

August 19, 2017
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The Lower Frye Construct  prehistoric field notes are newly available, with their PDF file here and their PSL sourcecode here.

Other hanging canal field notes were recently linked here.

August 18, 2017
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A reminder about our "one each of everything" USB.

August 17, 2017
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Any time that someone tries to tell you that "energy can neither be created nor destroyed", they are really revealing their utter and total ignorance of all things thermodynamic.

The correct statement instead is " It is trivially easy to irreversibly and irrecoverably destroy the quality and value of energy."

For you are dealing with a three legged stool here. You cannot ever consider energy without simultaneously considering entropy and exergy.

Exergy is a measure of the quality and usefulness of energy. To measure exergy, you change the energy into a different form, and then change it back. And see how much you have left. For instance, you can go from electrical energy to mechanical energy back to electrical energy without much loss at all.

Which is why electricity has extremely high exergy. Use the electricity to produce, say, resistance room heat, and you can only get the tiniest fraction of the original back as electricity. Thus, resistance room heat irreversibly and  destructively forever destroys the quality and value of energy.

Electrolysis for bulk hydrogen from high value sources is a good example of "ain't gonna happen" because of the staggering and irretrievable loss of exergy involved. There always will be more intelligent things to do with the electricity.

Electrolysis from high value pv, grid, or alternator electricity is pretty much the same as 1:1 exchanging US Dollars to Mexican Pesos. Meanwhile, believe it or not, there is more hydrogen in a gallon of gasoline than there is in a gallon of liquid hydrogen.

If you do not understand exergy, you should not have any interest in electrolysis. If you do understand exergy, you will not have any interest in electrolysis. Much more in our Energy Fundamentals tutorial. And its supplement.

August 16, 2017
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We first looked at LED and lighting efficiency way back here. Where we found that "perfect" green light has a best efficiency of nearly 700 Lumens per watt, while the best white light will be around half that at 350 Lumens per watt.

Ordinary incandescent lamps have a mesmerizingly awful efficiency around 13 Lumens per watt. With the latest LED's nearly ten times that.

It might seem reasonable to ask "What else is horribly inefficient?" and "Will fixing it be the next big thing?"

One obvious candidate is the internal combustion engine. It turns out there is a brand new way of combining gas and diesel technologies so the entire gas air mixture ignites at once. Details here and a discussion here.

The other elephant in the room would be HVAC and air conditioning. A typical commercial system has an EER of 14, compared to a sometimes best possible of 120. Thus, present air conditioning can be just as awful as was incandescent lighting.

No, I know of no immediate tech breakthrough in this field. Not one remotely comparable to the quantum leap provided by scroll compressors a few decades back.

One possible hidden beneficiary of a major HVAC efficiency increase: Hot tub heaters.

But the opportunity exists for huge efficiency breakthroughs. Possibly helped along by molecular scale heat transfer methods. And some super insulation or energy reflection techniques.

Other predictions here.

August 15, 2017
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A computer without Cobol or Fortran is like a chocolate cake without ketchup or mustard.

August 14, 2017
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In July of 1988, I first described a vapor ware product called a Navicube. This was a then heretical cheap three inch cube that always knew where it was, which way was up, where it came from, how fast it was going, how much its speed was changing, and where north was.

Publication of the Navicube in a national magazine should also have placed this name in the public domain.

And Navicubes have been conspicuous on the web pretty much ever since.

At any rate, lots and lots of stuff has happened since then. In particular, there's now an outfit by the name of Memsic who now have bunches of the Navicube bits and pieces for a dollar or two in single quantities, and pocket change in high volume.

Some of their hundreds of products now include accelerometers, tilt sensors, inertia systems, magnetic sensors, flow sensors, and current sensors.

Their three axis magnetic field sensors are particularly useful for electronic compass apps. The earth's magnetic field is normally a fairly large fraction of a Gauss.

Their inertial systems replace complex electromechanical gyroscopes with nothing but a bubble of air.

Accelerometers, of all things, measure acceleration. But if you integrate ( or sum ) acceleration you get velocity. And if you integrate velocity, you get position. Thus acceleration - surprise surprise - is the rate of change of the rate of change of position.

But all accelerometers have a huge problem called the "t squared" error. For the tiniest initial error will accumulate velocity errors with time and position errors with time squared.

Thus, any positioning determining system will need something in addition to an accelerometer for its long term resets.

August 13, 2017
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A video of the original turbo encabulator can be found here. Along with decades of "me too!" covers here.

My own approach can be found here.

August 12, 2017
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Outside of that, Missus Lincoln, how was the play?

August 11, 2017
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The TB Ponding Area prehistoric field notes are newly available, with their PDF file here and their PSL sourcecode here.

Other hanging canal field notes include...

Allen Canal field notes & sourcecode
Longview Area field notes & sourcecode
Mud Springs Canal field notes & sourcecode
Riggs Mesa Canal field notes & sourcecode
Robinson Canal field notes & sourcecode
Tranquility Canal field notes & sourcecode

And some of our previous ones due for updates or revisions...

Bear Springs Canal field notes & sourcecode
Cluffnw Canal field notes & sourcecode
Freeman Canal field notes & sourcecode
Frye Complex field notes & sourcecode
Golf Course Canal field notes & sourcecode
Lefthand Canyon West field notes & sourcecode
Minor Webster Ditch field notes & sourcecode
Sand Canal field notes & sourcecode
Smith Canal field notes & sourcecode
Tugood Canal field notes & sourcecode
Veech Canal field notes & sourcecode

August 10, 2017
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This one is not quite ready for a prime time demo just yet, But it is exciting enough and mind boggling enough to demand an immediate heads up.

It seems there is this language called KML that lets you add all sorts of personal custom features to Google Earth and similar resources. KML is similar to .xml and .shtml but also has its own set of highly specific and arcane rules.

KML is poised to completely blow away GIS and its relatives in that it is flyable! In the end, nothing else matters! The outcome is not the least in doubt.

A KML file is created as an ordinary text file with a .kml trailer. Clicking on it should automagically link to a local copy of Google Earth. Otherwise, you can drag and drop into any text editor for creation or edits.

Typically, as part of a .kml program, you will create any number of paths and then add descriptions to those paths.

Clicking on the path causes a box to appear with a title and a message. What is ultra exciting is that, besides the text in the description, you can add .html like links to any website, an external Acme or similar map, videos, animation, .PDF's, or any number of photos.

Here is a preliminary code fragment...

<Placemark> <name>Allen Canal</name> <description>Sources in Spring Canyon -- Overrun by Allen Dam -- Major Culebra Cut -- End fields unknown <br/> <![CDATA[ <a href="http://www.website.com"> Site Name</a>.]]> -- <![CDATA[ <a href="http://www.acmemaplink.com"> Map Name</a>.]]> - <![CDATA[ <a href="http://www.image.jpg"> Image Name</a>.]]> - </description>

Links can be either web or local pc based. More info on the CDATA tag can be found here.

Among its other exciting possibilities, you should now be able to directly link topo maps to Google Earth.

There's a few minor details I haven't picked up on just yet. The links seem to trash normal carriage returns and I've yet to make the links bold. Removing the underlines would also be nice.

And so far, loading a kml file with Chrome seems to give you text only. The annoying workaround is to save the Chrome download as a file and then click on the file.

Surely this detail will soon be resolved with one or more working Chrome extensions.

Much more to follow.

August 09, 2017
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Yorg. We were just the victims of a double home invasion and a double identity theft. Seems two neighborhood pussy cats cracked the security on our cat doors.

In hindsight, we probably should have changed the default door factory password from "meow".

August 08, 2017
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The Robinson Canal prehistoric field notes are newly available, with their PDF file here and their PSL sourcecode here.

Other hanging canal field notes include...

Allen Canal field notes & sourcecode
Longview Area field notes & sourcecode
Mud Springs Canal field notes & sourcecode
Riggs Mesa Canal field notes & sourcecode
Tranquility Canal field notes & sourcecode

And some of our previous ones due for updates or revisions...

Bear Springs Canal field notes & sourcecode
Cluffnw Canal field notes & sourcecode
Freeman Canal field notes & sourcecode
Frye Complex field notes & sourcecode
Golf Course Canal field notes & sourcecode
Lefthand Canyon West field notes & sourcecode
Minor Webster Ditch field notes & sourcecode
Sand Canal field notes & sourcecode
Smith Canal field notes & sourcecode
Tugood Canal field notes & sourcecode
Veech Canal field notes & sourcecode

August 07, 2017
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Yorg. It sure can be frustrating when you "almost" end up with a software solution.

I want our hanging canal field notes to have an option where the .PDF file can directly click through to a custom .KML map in Google Earth.

The PostScript and Acrobat end of things was rather trivial, as these Gonzo code fragments show us...

/clickforkml { save /ksnap exch store 34 53
translate 0 0 mt 2 pu 7.2 pr 2 pd closepath
gsave 0.94 0.94 0.98 setrgbcolor fill grestore
0.8 0.8 0.8 setrgbcolor line2 stroke 0.6 0.6
(|6|/surl Click for KML |/kmlx ) cl ksnap
restore} store << /kmlx (https://www.tinaja.com/
canal /mapimage2.kml) >> {mark exch      
/eurl cvx ] cvx def} forall

The rest of the sourcecode should shortly appear here. And its generated field note here.

The only tiny missing detail is that Chrome returns a kml textfile instead of linking to Google Earth. And I have not been able to get the kml Chrome extensions to fix this.

The present awkward workaround is to take the returned Chrome .kml file, do a save as locally and then click on the saved KML file to actually enter Google Earth.

Your suggestions on how to eliminate this painful and klutzy step are more than welcome.

August 06, 2017
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Chemistry 101: If you are not part of the solution, then you are part of the precipitate.

August 05, 2017
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Acme Mapper has strongly suggested a previously unvisited routing and end field destination for the Tugood Hanging canal you can find at...

http://mapper.acme.com/?ll=32.81985,- 109.86602&z=18&t=H&marker0=32.81945%2C- 109.86662%2Cunnamed&marker1=32.82123%2C- 109.86665%2C5.7%20mi%20SxSW%20of%20Pima %20AZ&marker2=32.82038%2C-109.86672 %2C5.7%20mi%20SxSW%20of %20Pima%20AZ&marker3=32.81827 %2C-109.86684%2Cunnamed

Energy considerations and materials used strongly suggest Tugood has prehistoric origins. But the apparent cattle tank destination would suggest historic reuse and would seem to reasonably demand additional proof of prehistoricity.

Tugood would seem to be an excellent candidate for restoration or preservation in that it is largely single owner controlled in what to me appears to be largely unused and marginally secondary rangeland.

Some earlier Tugood field notes are found here with their sourcecode here and an earlier KML main map of  the entire canal system here.

The latest GIS map version is found here.

August 04, 2017
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Deeply buried in our Guru's Lair is some medical stuff, mostly oriented towards a wellness lifestyle and aerobic exercise. I still use these occasionally for fire department fitness drill training exercises.

The big three are...

Don't Get Sick
A wellness Lifestyle Quiz
Aerobic Pulse Rate Chart

A review by a real doctor here...

Bee's Website

And these also rans...

Understanding Pulse Monitors
Recording Aerobic Exercise Sessions
Aerobic Fitness PostScript Sourcecode

The leading web medical resource is Medline. You normally search this with PubMed.

Also check out Healthy.Net.  And one collection of the top 25 web medical resources can be found here.

Some older alternate medical book resources here.

August 03, 2017
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I'm not too sure of the details, but eBay may have just changed their search linking to favor title words over text description words. The net result is that some of your older eBay links may no longer work. There also seems to be a new NKW in the description. New Key Words?

Our one-each-of-everything USB has been newly relinked here.

August 02, 2017
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I may have completed our website catalog directory arranged by file types. Please report any omissions.

This should be most useful for finding "lost" or "hidden" or "underlinked" files. It is also gives you new search options. And eases finding which directory a particular file is in.

Another way to search is with our "one each of everything" USB.

Key catalog textfiles include...  

 web_asp_directory1.txt
 web_aspx_directory1.txt
 web_bas_directory1.txt
 web_bas_directory1.txt
 web_bmp_directory1.txt

 web_config_directory1.txt
 web_eml_directory1.txt
 web_gif_directory1.txt
 web_gz_directory1.txt
 web_htaccess_directory1.txt

 web_html_directory1.txt
 web_ico_directory1.txt
 web_jpg_directory1.txt
 web_js_directory1.txt
 web_kml_directory1.txt

 web_lnk_directory1.txt
 web_log_directory1.txt
 web_pdf_directory1.txt
 web_png_directory1.txt
 web_ps_directory1.txt

 web_psl_directory1.txt
 web_shtml_directory1.txt
 web_txt_directory1.txt
 web_xml_directory1.txt

August 01, 2017
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Watch out for the cliff!         
What CLIFFFFFfffffffff?

Watch out for the ping pong ball
What ping pong gloulckkk?

Watch our for the ladder!  
 What ladder dedadder dedadder dedadder?

Watch out for the revolving door!
What revolving door .. ing door .. ing door?

Curiously, there does not seem to be the faintest hint of these on the web. I'd like to try and find the rest of these and give them a long missing home on the web. Please email me with your candidates and suggestions.

July 31, 2017
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Our usual source of pv pricing info seems to be getting further and further behind, not to mention obvious typos.

Turns out they get their info from the German pvXchange which you can find untranslated here. Present exchange rate is around 1.19 dollars per euro.

We see that the best June pricing was down a euro cent and went back up an euro cent in July. While most other pricing was flat or dropping somewhat. Long term trends seem consistent with meeting the magic twenty five cents per peak panel watt demanded for true subsidy free renewability and sustainability in seventeen months or so.

With the actual energy breakeven demanded to pay for all of the staggering previous pv losses perhaps eight years or so after that.

Much more here.

July 30, 2017
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Let's repeat it one more time...

Assumption is the mother of mistakes.  

This from Buckaroo Banzai, which is by far the finest medical, science fiction, rockumentary, love story, comedy, racing, comic book, quantum mechanical,  musical, pro nerd, watermelon ode, survivalist, intergalactic war documentary movie of all time.

Overwhelmingly the best movie of its type that was ever made.

Also present: No matter where you go, there you are.

July 29, 2017
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A "flutterwumper" was defined as any low cost hackable robotic device that chomps or spits.

The original story was found here and here, while the apparently underlinked PIC PostScript flutterwumper utilities can still be found here

These days, the concept has Raspberry Pi written all over it .

July 28, 2017
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Managed to find and upload a hard-to-find reprint of the final version of the Popular Electronics DCU. This one appeared in the Electronic Experimenters Handbook series, which can still be found here.

The original version had a flaw involving sneak paths, while an intermediate solution was to add a pair of power hungry balancing resistors. The final kicking and screaming solution was to use ten fake diodes made out of five nine cent PNP transistors.

July 27, 2017
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A new filetype-based catalog and directory for the Guru's Lair has been started here. This should greatly aid finding "lost" or "underlinked" files. As should finding which directory any obscure file resides in.

Already present is the crucial .psl sourcecode catalog, along with the .bmp image catalog and the .pdf Acrobat catalog.

The .jpg compressed image catalog should shortly follow, along with others in area of interest.

A catalog link is newly present a screen or two down on our home page.

July 26, 2017
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Started a master catalog of 1556 of our .psl sourcecodes (!) which you can find here.

.psl files are Don Lancaster PostScript sourcecode for various papers and projects. They are ordinary textfiles. You compile them or to otherwise generate useful results, send them to full Acrobat Distiller after carefully decrippling distiller with a windowskey-X "//acrodist /F" return. Less quotes.

Many of the .psl files will need a PC local linked copy of our Gonzo Utilities from https://www.tinaja.com/gonzo.psl that the sourcecode will need modified to properly link.

View this listing with a fixed pitch font such as Courier New. More use assistance here and here.

I'm not sure exactly where I want to go with this. Possibly generating files for the other extensions. Live linking might take stupendous effort, as might .shtml conversion.

Please email me with what you want to see.

July 25, 2017
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Just realized I forgot to include Winning the Micro Game in our ongoing Directors Cuts. Find the revised version here, its sourcecode here, and the original here.

Presently available directors cuts are...

Tearing Method
Winning the Micro Game
Superclock AACB1 Rework
MLPCI Rework
Paleomagnetism and Archaeomagnetism
Thermolluminescence
TVT2 Image

...with their sourcecode as .psl trailers.

July 24, 2017
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There's a subtle infuriosity in Wordpad that can cause you grief if it is inadvertently tripped. Its usual problem is double spacing carriage return or adding unwanted ledding.

Click the box with the up and down arrows just before the picture icon. Unless you really want these features, uncheck "Add 10 pt space after paragraph" and click only on "1.0"

Despite the equivalent illusion, this has nothing to do with the differences between PC and MAC carriage returns and linefeeds.

July 23, 2017
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Here is one way to get a master catalog file list for your website...

1. FTP a copy of the site to a local PC USB, perhaps
called J:

2. Get into the old command mode by entering    
windowkey and X followed by cmd.exe.

3. Enter DIR "J:\sitewebcopy\*.jpg" /S /OEN /W

4. Cut and paste into a textfile. Print or whatever.

In this example, only your .jpg images will be listed. Similar tricks can extract other file types. For everything, omit the wildcard * and the extension. Some hints here.

A more modern alternative is to select your directory, followed by shift rightclick, followed by Open Powershell Window Here. More on Powershell here.

July 22, 2017
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Here's a summary of some of our recent or more significant PostScript stuff...

Secret Distiller File Access
Secret Distiller Typekit Access
  ...more details here
Knob Patterning Fontname Snooper    
Fontname Snooper sourcecode
New Letterheads    
New Letterhead sourcecode
Inserting JPG into PostScript
   ...and here
Step and Repeat
Simplified Step and Repeat
New Business Cards    
New Business Cards sourcecode
Assorted PostScript apps
"Director's Cuts"
Ratty Lines
Empty .psl app
Architect's Perspective
Bitmap Typewriter
Vignetting Auto Backgrounder
Web Friendly PostScript Colors
 ...and sourcecode
PostScript Powerpoint Emulation
  ...and examples
Marbelous Distorted Pancakes
Fat Tail Utilities    
Fat Tail Utilities sourcecode
Tearing Method
Tearing Method Sourcecode
PostScript Spirographs
Hanging Canal Field Notes
Deferred execution secrets
$99 Flutterwumpers
PIC PostScript Flutterwumpers
Secret Characters
Lagrange Spline thru 4 points  
Using the type operator
Finding PostScript Font Names  
Using watermarking
List of PostScript Font Names
Glyphshow Comparing
PostScript and JavaScript Smoothstep
Windows Directory Names
Minsky Circles
String Dereferencing
Easter Egg Litho Chokes and Spreads

And some older classics...

PostScript Reference Manual
Gonzo Utilities Gonzo Tutorial
.PSL Tutorials Fractal Ferns
    ...More Here
PostScript sampler web page
Using Distiller as a PostScript Computer
Adding nav features with JavaScript
Adding nav features with pdfmark
      and its source code Converting
PS strings, integers, arrays
PostScript Secrets
PostScript Beginner Stuff
PostScript Startup Secrets
PostScript Speedup Secrets
Nonlinear Graphic Transforms
Fun with Fields
More Fun With Fields
Timing Measurement
Improving PostScript Math Accuracy
Dodging and Burning
Original PostScript Library Page

And this video...

Intro to PostScript Video

July 21, 2017
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Got yet another call on the homopolar generator, AKA the Faraday disk. We looked at these long ago  here and here, while Wikipedia has a good summary here. These are the only known "pure" DC machine and are characterized by extremely high currents and very low voltages.

While they do make dandy student reports and projects, they are utterly and totally useless because of slip ring costs, losses, outrageous inefficiencies, and potential hazmat issues.

Bunches of simple but ultimately useless homopolar related projects can be found on the web. Understanding their operation is tricky, which leads to  all sorts of totally bogus overunity pseudoscience claims. One problem in understanding is that Lorenz Force equations have to be used instead of Faraday Induction equations. Along with general relativity concepts.

A second is that you cannot tell when or if a uniform magnetic field is rotating. Per this classic paper. Or this simple experiment.  I know of no commercial homopolar devices for sale today, and their last practical use was many decades ago. These days, it is cheap, efficient, and trivial to convert regular ac or dc levels into low voltage high current when and where needed. 

An ancient power conversion tutorial here. The present caller obviously has spent an obsessive amount of time trying to trick the concept into producing higher voltages.

Some one time similar work can be found here. And here. I guess two more upbeat homopolar resources might be found here and here.

But, at least to me, this would clearly appear to be the wrong horse to bet on. More on product development here. Counter EMF's and conservation of energy is alive and well, in all homopolar devices. Just as would be expected.

July 20, 2017
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We have newly uploaded great heaping bunches of microwave switches to our eBay site. There are several important use details that vary from unit to unit.

Some are "magnetic" or "mechanically" latching. These remember their previous state in absence of power. But only some of these lock themselves out after being pulsed, Which can lead to high rate oscillation. Be sure to prevent activating more than one coil at a time!

Others are "normal" or "fail safe". These switch to their other position only so long as power is applied. Typically, switches of more than two positions are normally activated.

Some are common positive, but with varying control voltages of typically 5, 10, 15, 24, or 28 volts DC. Others are common ground. Many of these include spike protecting diodes that can be blown up if high current of the wrong polarity is applied. ALWAYS use a current limited supply while testing! NEVER apply reverse polarity from a high current source!

You can usually hear the mechanical switching. Sometimes loud, sometimes subtle. A click-klunk is typical of failsafe units when power is applied and removed.

Pinouts of a DB9 or DB15 connector can be a mystery. On SOME units, we have found pin 1 to be the positive supply, pin2 getting grounded to connect common to SMA 1, pin 3 for SMA 2, and so on up the range. But BE SURE TO TEST AND VERIFY ELSEWHERE!

An ohmmeter can usually resolve pinouts. Any "extra" pinouts or terminals are usually extra contacts for LED indicators or such.

These typically respond down to dc, but their max frequency can vary all over the lot. Typically from 2 GHz to 26 GHz.

Some may include internal 50 Ohm terminations. Typical power limits are one to two watts average. Always be sure to try and get a matching data sheet for the units you are using.

We try to do at least a click-klunk test before shipping.

We recommend further testing on your own. All units are unconditionally guaranteed to perform as new.

July 19, 2017
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Managed to find an extremely well done color photo of one of the earlier TV Typewriters. Find it here as a .BMP or here as a .JPG.

The provenance and source is a mystery. It was obviously professionally done and likely done so after it was donated to a computer museum.

At one time, some pallets actually used real wood. Which is where the solid oak! side panels came from. The keyboards were EBCDIC rebuilds at $4 each from Apache Reclamation and Electronics. To which the improved ASCII encoder was added.

The color cover version of the first original TVT can be found here.

July 18, 2017
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Here's our recently most popular ebooks...

Incredible Secret Money Machine
TV Typewriter Cookbook
TTL Cookbook
Tearing Method  
Tearing Method Sourcecode
Apple Assembly Cookbook I
Apple Assembly Cookbook II
RTL Cookbook
Enhancing Your Apple II Vol I
Enhancing Your Apple II Vol II
Machine Language Programming I
Machine Language Programming II

July 17, 2017
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Uploaded an eBook copy of Enhancing Your Apple II Volume I.

The "Tearing Method" of Enhancement 3 is also separately available in this "director's cut".

July 16, 2017
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Managed to find an a eBook copy of Enhancing Your Apple II Volume II
It is now a sane length, unlocked, printable, and fully searchable.

There are still issues with the grays. Fixing these would take "Directors Cut" techniques and funding. Per your participation.

More ebooks here.

July 15, 2017
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Managed to find a reprint of my West Coast Computer Faire story on cheap video. I've newly made it searchable.

An outfit called archive.org seems to have lots of useful stuff.

July 14, 2017
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Uh, oops. If you try to use our sneaky knob patterning at a very low scale ( such as a url clickthru ), you will likely get some mesmerizingly awful Moir'e effects.

This could also cause problems on phone screens or in other limited resolution images.

Two workarounds are to always use the knob patterning at its intended full resolution. Or carefully "gray out" any intended stripes in any low resolution images.

July 13, 2017
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Here's a new photo that did not turn out all that bad for our new eBay offerings of aerospace goodies that include bunches of superb attenuators and microwave rf switches.

A summary of the key steps: It first gets no flash Nikon photographed in outdoor shade, overcropped and sent to Imageviewer/32. Because of its circular motif, my usual steps of rotational alignment and my Architects Perspective correction were not needed.

All work should be done in raw bitmap format. Save any .JPG compression for your final step! As I may have mentioned several times before, at least 90 percent of your photography time MUST be spent in postproc!

The knob callouts were dark and murky, so a double exposure was used in Paint to correct its brightness. A crucial step is to back off the red by one click to make absolutely sure no red=255 pixels exist anywhere in the bitmap at this point.

The knob texture was then improved using the new ideas we recently looked at. Followed by a full tracing that involved red=255 pixels. There was one subtle undercut that needed red filled. The rule is that undercuts ( or any "holes" ) need filled if they cannot be reached by a true north, east, south, or west from their image respective borders.

The J1 area had reflective variances that lessened the image quality, so these were replaced with a solid but mottled pattern. A few minor lighting and dust speckle areas were also corrected.

The image was sent to our vignetting auto backgrounder. In this case using my color #141. The result was then once again sent to Imageviewer/32 where it was resized to 1000 pixels, brightened and gamma reduced somewhat, and possibly sharpened. Be sure to check the sharpening to make sure it does in fact improve things. Never more than two clicks!

From there, the image .JPG converted to reduce its size and is then sent to our website and eBay.

Seminars, consulting, and professional photography available.

July 12, 2017
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IF you know the secret incantation, PostScript can be an exceptionally versatile general purpose computer language that, among its stunning other powers, has the ability to write any disk file in any language. Especially bitmaps. Why, it is also rumored that PostScript can even be used to dirty up otherwise clean sheets of paper!

The problem was this: A few years back Adobe decided the ability to read or write anything anywhere was ridiculously too powerful and had ( gulp! ) abuse potential. So, they started shipping Acrobat Distiller with most of the read file and write file ability factory locked out.

They did provide a secret incantation that let read/write file ability of PostScript be fully restored to Distiller.

To decripple Acrobat Distiller in Windows 10, select windows key and X and enter this magic incantation...

//acrodist /F

To use PostScript, you write an ordinary text file and send it to Acrobat Distiller. Distiller then will return your choice of a .PDF file, an info log file, or any requested diskfile reads or writes in any language. It also can newly run code modules without having them inside your actual program itself.

Examples of the latter include our Architect's Perspective, Vignetting Autobackgrounder, or our Bitmap Typewriter.

The reference manual appears here, our Gonzo Utilities here, and a Gonzo Utilities tutorial here. And zillions of use examples here.

More secrets? Well, yeah. It turns out you cannot use the Adobe Typekit with Postscript sent to Distiller unless you personally contact them for your secret access code that gives you the needed info for your Distiller's settings -> font locations file. Once enabled, you have full PostScript and Distiller cloud access to the entire Typekit.