Blackberry REACT June 2010 NewsletterQuick ClicksMercury Arc Valve RectifierScroll down to the video. It’s not till the end that you see people and get a sense of scale. This rectifier makes direct current from alternating current, so trolleys and such can wend their way through the city’s streets. It’s a mercury arc valve because there’s a large pool of mercury which acts as the cathode. Details are explained on the page. The liabilities of having this sucker in a downtown area are staggering in light of today’s paranoia about things going horribly wrong. Video of city hall collapsing in HaitiA half dozen or so clips from security cameras in the Presidential Palace show it being shaken to bits, then collapsing. Bring your dustmask to the next earthquake. An FM transmitter in a minced garlic jarWell, a small jar, if you don’t buy minced garlic. It’s sold as a kit, but without an enclosure. It’s apparently $25, but I’m not clear on that, and it’s shipped from the UK, so that may add to your costs. Trendy fabric YagiDiana Eng is a prolific poster of things mobile radio, and here’s her take on a collapsible Yagi antenna which she uses for satellite contacts. Since her day job is fashion design, the Yagi is colorful and practical. Car crash causes cloud computing to failA car hit a power pole and created an external electrical ground fault. This is no particularly meaningful to me, but the result was that a switch in Amazon’s data center refused to initiate a power transfer from external power to internal generator power. The switch was not set to Amazon’s prescribed defaults by the vendor, and as a result customers lost service for about an hour. This is an interesting article because it explains what went wrong in language I can follow and because it shows how many things can go wrong with cloud computing. It was the fourth power outage in a week for Amazon. Your first plane flightPopular Mechanics has put its entire back issue catalogue online, and here’s a colorful tale of flyiing from Newark, NJ, to San Francisco, CA. I can remember when we walked out onto the tarmac and walked up that set of stairs, but in 1939, that’s where they looked at your ticket and checked to see if you were on their manifest. According to the article, stewardesses were nurses, but they were hired for their smiles. You leave Newark on Friday at 5:15 pm and you’re in SF on Saturday morning at 8:15! The airport loudspeaker announces “United Airlines, Trip Three, for Chicago, Omaha, Cheyenne, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco, ship now ready at Gate Four.” Ah, those were the days. Flying at 180 miles per hour at 8,000 feet. The last typistThe improbably-named Skye Ferrante writes children’s books on his manual typewriter. He rents space from Writer’s Room in Greenwich Village, but he’s found that his typewriter is no longer welcome. This is another story of change. Of course only manuals were available when Writer’s Room started, but the switch to laptops from noisy clackers has been inexoroable, and Ferrante talks about being given attitude by current members when he came in and started banging the keys of one of his five manuals. At one time laptop users had to give way to typists when there were more typists than, er, computists, but “I was told I was the unintended beneficiary of a policy to placate the elderly members who have all since died off,” he says. Ferrante also says he’d like for other typists, but he doesn’t know any. Other sad quotes abound in this sad story. How they check whether new cell phones work on the carrierThe picture explains it, but the article gives some specifics. Toxic spill in the middle of the nightThis happened in Minot, North Dakota, where I spent four years when in the Air Force, so I was more than mildly interested. I can’t figure out a reliable version of the story. Sometime in 2002, a train wrecked and released anhydrous ammonia. One person died and many were sickened. Things got worse because no one could get the word out the residents to shelter in place. Although the article points out that Minot is the state’s fourth largest city, they don’t give the population: 37,000. And it’s in the middle of nowhere. There are no towns of any size anywhere close. The local radio stations were all either off the air or playing long recorded music/commercial segments; if they were on the air, one engineer was there. I won’t try to summarize the story because it’s fairly a complicated mish-mash of jammed phone lines, broken Emergency Alert System, and finger pointing. The comments following the story emphasize how confusing the lesson (if any) to be learned here is. Coaxial cableThe Wikipedia has a lengthy article telling you everything you will ever need to know about coax: why it’s called coaxial, why the coax we use has an impedance of 50 ohms, what hardline is, why feedlines radiate, and more! Maker FaireLouise and I along with several volunteers operated a portable HF station at Maker Faire this year (our third), and we have some photos and videos at that link (be sure to see Louise’s photos at the link in that link). We had a great time, but it was windy. Inside a Russian nuclear power plantThere are lots of photos, but little explanation of what we’re seeing. The text says this is the most modern Soviet nuclear power plant, completed in 1990. It’s the Chernobyl style with no containment building. Carnegie Mellon University protestThings are different there. Everything is better in TokyoA musical clock chimes the hour. I have no clue what time it was. Events
UpdatesNone ProgramsTo be announced. |