Tag: Technology

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Clippy? Is that You?

One of my favorite TV shows is NYPD Blue. There are a lot of little details on good shows that only become apparent if your read the FAQ. For instance, one of the detectives, Danny Sorenson sometimes did this weird thing – when upset, he would start putting office implements, usually paper clips into his shirt pocket. The explanation is in the FAQ:

What’s the deal with Danny and those paperclips?
During Rick Schroder’s first few episodes on the show, the writers introduced the idea that when Danny gets emotionally “stirred up,” he deals with it in part by grabbing office supplies — usually paperclips — and sticking them in his shirt pocket. And on one occasion, after getting a particular problem off his chest, we actually saw him take the clips out of his pocket and put them back in their caddy on his desk. At least one therapist who watches the show says this means that Danny had Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder, which is a more mild version of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

When I get stirred up, I go and buy office supplies. Especially pens. It seems to have a calming effect on me.

I am especially lusting for a really really good fountain pen. I think one day, when I feel especially crappy, I’ll finally buy myself a modern Parker Duofold, a descendant of the noble offshoot of Parker’s Jack Knife Safety line. My high school physics teacher used to have one of those. They are great. Nibs made of osmium, iridium, ruthenium and other unobtainium, split by hand. Ooooh.

Anyway, because the prospect of buying an apartment is making me poor, all I can afford right now is regular ballpoint pens at Staples. And writing in livejournal about that.

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The Not So Darth Waders

Since everyone liked my last fishing post so much, I’ll do another one on the topic. For those of you who are not into fishing, hunting or sewer exploration, I’ll explain. Waders have nothing to do with Darth Vader, although they were probably named after the old English word for water. They are special waterproof pants with boots attached that allow you to keep dry while standing in water. They are usually made out of rubber or neoprene. I own a pair of neoprene Red Ball® brand waders. Yeah, I know. Ha, ha – red balls. It’s a good brand, dammit.

Well, I knew about this for a while – there is a company that produces “Women in Waders ™” calendars.

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Twonky

Here’s something that my dream reminded me of. “Cat’s eye ” tube.

When I was little, my dad used to have this huge vacuum tube radio. I think, actually this is it:

I think that’s what a Twonky would look like.

I am not sure of the model though, but there it is as I remember it. That was probably the device that introduced me to “radio buttons”. It’s tuning scale was a bit misleading – it was marked with names of different cities that you could supposedly get on the short-wave band. Prague, London, Paris, New York. Riiight.
It had one very interesting detail – a “cat’s eye” tuning tube.

“Cat’s eye” is a really amazing device. Basically it’s a tiny little CRT in a vacuum tube. It usually served as a tuning indicator. When you would turn a tuning knob, the pattern displayed on the tube would change. Here’s a more detailed article.

There were several names these tubes were known under. “Cat’s eye”, “magic eye”, “electronic eye” and just plain “tuning tube”. They were (and still are) a bit pricey, so they usually were included only on high end radios.

Here are just a few examples of such tubes from this amazing collection:

Besides being amazingly pretty, IMHO they are actually very user friendly. It’s just that in modern solid state device there is little need for actual “tuning”, but they would make wonderful sound level indicators. It’s a great visual feedback mechanism.

I am probably saying this just because I am into this whole glowing vacuum tube aesthetic though. Also these tubes make amazing blinkenlights.

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The Carpet Gremlins

I subscribe to two weird magazines. One is Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The second one, as I learned right now is defunct. So I subscribe to one weird mag.

In any case, the magazine was called “Listener”. It was a renegade audiophile magazine. This magazine was against Home Theater and solid state electronics in general. They concentrated on vacuum tube (valve if you are British or thermionic if you are really old) technology and analogue sound in general.

You see, there is this group of people who believe that analogue technology is far superior to digital in sound reproduction. They say that solid state devices will never replace the vacuum tube and CDs will never replace LPs. Those who do use CDs prefer to use tube amplifiers.

It may surprise you to know that there are literally hundreds of companies that manufacture only turntables. There is a bunch of Russian and Chinese companies that still manufacture and sell vacuum tubes, Sovtek being the most famous. Lots and lots of companies are making vacuum tube amps. And I am not just talking about DJ equipment and guitar amps. No, they are making honest to god consumer stuff. Somebody even made a motherboard with vacuum tube based sound card or something.

Of course vacuum tube stuff is expensive. There are systems that cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. There are cheaper ones, going for just mere thousands. And then, on eBay, you can purchase old cheap equipment for hundreds.

But some audiophiles don’t stop at that. No, no, no. Once they get going there is no stopping them. They purchase vibration free platforms not just for turntables, but for ALL of their equipment. They say that vibration muddies up the sound. They buy cables made of exotic materials. They buy special power supplies that “scrub” the electricity. See a hilarious cartoon about this here. Oh, but some even run their equipment entirely from batteries.

There is no stopping this maddnes. Check this out:

This made me laugh hard.

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Watch Out, Radioactive Man!

Ok, since we are on the subject of things that fascinate me. How about radium glass?

When I was little, I’ve read in some book about special red glass from which the red star on top of Kremlin was made of. It turns out that a little bit of radium must be added to the glass mix in order to get a deep red color.

From here:
When seen from below, from the ground, the stars do not seem particularly large, yet the points of each one are 3 to 3.75 meters apart. The lighting inside the stars is controlled from a room in the Troitskaya Tower. The framework of the stars is made of stainless steel and they are faced in special three-layer glass which is ruby-red on the outside and milk-white on the inside. Each star is lit by a 3,700 to 5,000 watt bulb and, to protect the bulbs from overhearing, cooled air is forced into the stars through hollow rods 24 hours a day. The stars are so designed that they can revolve smoothly in the wind.

Oooh, oooh, look at this picture of the star being installed. Man….

Anyways, back to my rant.

Turns out that besides being popular as an ingredient in all sort of “medicinal” remedies, from enemas to pills, radium was used in many sorts of glassware. The color of radium impregnated glass has a very distinctive look. These days such items are called “Depression Glass” because it was very popular during the Great Depression or “Radium Glass”. A very distinctive feature of such glass is that it glows when exposed to uv light (aka black light).

Here is what green radium glass looks like with and without uv light.

Freaky, huh?
My cigar ashtray is made out of the same greenish glass.

There is also “Carnival Glass” that was popular in the 1920s. It is sometimes made of radium glass, but with a glaze made of iridium and other unobtaniums.

There is not too much radioactivity in this glass, so it’s pretty much considered safe. I would not reccomend eating off it, but for collecting it’s ok. There are tons and tons of this stuff on eBay.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I want to add a radium/phosphorus paint to the hour and second arms and numbers on my watch. The modern “glow in the dark” paints suck.

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Speakeasy, I love Eu!

Speakeasy service is rockin’!

When the TT was closed, they asked for feedback. More than that, they’ve replied to it!
I’ve got my money back for the eBay modem and an apology.

Wooo hooo!

So the moral of the story is – use Speakeasy DSL!.

Now I can go back to writing something more interesting.

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Boring Stuff

This was a moderately crappy weekend.

On Saturday I spent most of the day in a Russian restaurant celebrating my father-in-law’s birthday. Did I mention that I hate Russian restaurants? I have to drink at least 4-5 shots of vodka to stop feeling completely disgusted by music and decor. God, I hate those places. If I were evil overlord, I’d definitely prohibit them.

On Sunday I spent most of the day cleaning up my crappy apartment. Oh, and trying to get DSL working again. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll get something out of a level 2 support tech, because the regular drones that have to work weekends can’t help me.

Remember I was bitching about cable outage (it took me 3 week to get it back working)? Well, it turned out that the outage was caused by the damn Cablevision techs that were installing digital cable. No matter how much I turboed, I could not weasel out of taking a day off and waiting for the damn tech to come to my apartment. I was so busy at work that I did not even call the Cablevision customer service and get them to credit my account for the outage.

I’ve spent a few hours installing an old modem I borrowed from my dad. The damn thing wasn’t even PCI. It was ISA. I don’t think I’ve ever managed to install any modem in less than 2 hours. Have you?

Today a fan fell off from the second processor in my home computer. Luckily it was an Intel and not an AMD chip, so it did not burn, but just shut down my computer. I hear that AMD has fixed the problem with burning chips, but still.

I need to get new fans. Those Thermaltake orb coolers only look cool. They are noisy and don’t work very well. I think I’ll get a pair of normal Intel fans. It’s not like I am overclocking or anything, I don’t need anything fancy. Any suggestions?

Now, that the boring part is over, here are some artsy-fartsy New York-ey pictures.




This was a moderately crappy weekend.

On Saturday I spent most of the day in a Russian restaurant celebrating my father-in-law’s birthday. Did I mention that I hate Russian restaurants? I have to drink at least 4-5 shots of vodka to stop feeling completely disgusted by music and decor. God, I hate those places. If I were evil overlord, I’d definitely prohibit them.

On Sunday I spent most of the day cleaning up my crappy apartment. Oh, and trying to get DSL working again. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll get something out of a level 2 support tech, because the regular drones that have to work weekends can’t help me.

Remember I was bitching about cable outage (it took me 3 week to get it back working)? Well, it turned out that the outage was caused by the damn Cablevision techs that were installing digital cable. No matter how much I turboed, I could not weasel out of taking a day off and waiting for the damn tech to come to my apartment. I was so busy at work that I did not even call the Cablevision customer service and get them to credit my account for the outage.

I’ve spent a few hours installing an old modem I borrowed from my dad. The damn thing wasn’t even PCI. It was ISA. I don’t think I’ve ever managed to install any modem in less than 2 hours. Have you?

Today a fan fell off from the second processor in my home computer. Luckily it was an Intel and not an AMD chip, so it did not burn, but just shut down my computer. I hear that AMD has fixed the problem with burning chips, but still.

I need to get new fans. Those Thermaltake orb coolers only look cool. They are noisy and don’t work very well. I think I’ll get a pair of normal Intel fans. It’s not like I am overclocking or anything, I don’t need anything fancy. Any suggestions?

Now, that the boring part is over, here are some artsy-fartsy New York-ey pictures.




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Fugawi

While researching the GPS stuff today I came across Fugawi, a company that sells GPS software. They must have had some balls to call their company that :)

From what I understand, the name comes from an old joke about Fugawi Indians, named so because they often get lost and often say “Wherethefugawi?”. I’ve heard that on “The Sopranos”, but the joke probably goes back to WWII or even earlier.