Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi → The Sorcerer's Progress
Over the last few days I have had a creeping BFO*: I need to pay more attention the weaknesses of characters I'm going to bring in than to their strengths. I have to figure out just how to work with this.
*Blinding Flash of the Obvious
Kudos to BFO. Strengths of characters are obvious and easy. Weaknesses are what define a character because that is what they have to surpass in order to succeed.
Over the last few days I have had a creeping BFO*: I need to pay more attention the weaknesses of characters I'm going to bring in than to their strengths. I have to figure out just how to work with this.
*Blinding Flash of the Obvious
I need some of that.... Heaps! 
K has an itchy trigger finger on that buzzer. It has meanings that I can't quite define. Like an onion. Lotsa layers and makes the unprepared cry a lot.
Kenny's not an onion. More like a parsnip, I think.
I keep making things to do, and slogging slowly through rhem. I thought I had ordered some wire three weeks ago, but it appears I didn't, so I just ordered it. Grrrr.
One of the things I've been burning time on is Jordan Peterson's =12 Rules for Life/An Antidote to Chaos=. It's a big book and you think he's meandering, but when he's encircled his target and makes the attack, it can take your breath away.
His observations on evil and existential virtue, and their link to the meaning of life, should be red meat to writers. There's a 20 minute video taken from a Q&A session on Ricochet that took my breath away. I'll post a link later, especially for Amy and Norm.
I also have an idea for changes to Merran's first evening at Harsan's, before Momma leaves. I want to write it up and post it as a short, but it involves a story to be told, and I need to figure out how ro make ir short. I think it will muddy the water's of Melayne's relationship with her daughter.
I once lost a parsnip on a bus. I've wondered all these years what the finder of said tuber thought. Like Holy Cow, it's a parsnip! Or was it more like wtf is that??
Nope you're on rule #11 and about to finish that so you can get back to writing
Rule 5, and I'm trying to figure out how to heat sink the voltage output transistors. If I can, I can relax my voltage limit, and maybe boost the current drive available and relax the single-section current drive as well, keeping the overall power limt on the sumix sections together.
To help with testing, I'm making a six-switch panel. I'm looking at the loads to use. I'll probably include incandescent bulbs fir their nonlinear voltage-current chararacteristic.
When I was in HS I set out to build a transistor stereo amplifier for the final project in Shop class. I found some circuit patterns from who knows where, got the pats (We used to have RadioShack in this country back then) and set to work. 3 weeks and much frustration later I had built what I think is the world's first "noise-adding stereo deamplifierr". Teacher gave me an A which sorta tells you the extent of the bell curve and the calibre of the competing projects
Unless you're Bob Carver, the way to build a stereo amplifier is to put two copies of a mono amp together in the same package and use dual-ganged volume and tone controls. Oh, and don't forget the balance. Of course, if it's just a power amp, you don't need those controls.
What you built was a noisy attenuator.
What kind of noise? Hiss? Buzz? Squealing? Motorboating? Did both channels have the same problem? Were you powering it off batteries? AC? A lab supply? (Power supplies are a noise source.) About what year did the plans date from? (Tells me which generation of trnsistors you were using. Oh, wait--were you using vacuum tubes?)
Nobody has Radio Snack anymore. Sad. So sad.
'twas battery-drive... 9V if I recall correctly (Because D-Cells would slip off my rigging and the 9V was squarer)... may have been one of those giant 6V. I had built a lab supply but I recall I wasn't using it for some reason - probably because the cheap potentiometer would adjust/spike wildly from just a little hand motion.
Couldn't tell you the year or the generation of transistor to save the life of me. I did own vacuum tubes but not the slightest idea how to wire them up.
The noise was a hiss. I remember you had to crank the volume in source just to hear music over the hiss. I did start soldering in there figuring there was play in the contacts of the breadboard. Then I remember switching to that other board (sorry, I don't know the name but it's really thin and the holes go all the way through and there's copper ringlets around them so you can just join things up with a dollop of solder. It was on this second board I was able to get anything more than static.
When I was a kid I made a ray gun by connecting two D batteries to a flashlight bulb. :-)
The term is 'printed circuit board', or PC board.
9V batteries are used because each transistor requires a drop of about 2/3 of a volt to operate (depending on the actual current, and the kind of current the transistor is designed for). But they can't supply a lot of current--not for long. Transistor radios typically used 16 or 32 ohm speakers instead of 8 ohms, and sometimes used transformers to make better use of the loudspeakers. And you want it to work until the battery voltage is about 30% below nominal. (Most of the useful life of a carbon-zinc or alkaline battery is between 75% and 85% of nominal.)
Hiss, gain < 1 ... transistor misconnection, transistor fried from overheating while soldering, bias resistor network wildly wrong, electrolytic coupling capacitors connected backwards .... or extraordinary electromagnetic noise in the vicinity?
(Modern radios that don't need to drive big speakers can operate on 4.5v (nominal) or less because they use mosfets instead of bipolar junction transistors. When designed device by device on an integrated circuit, you don't have the same minimum voltage drop in the controlled current, but usually a greater minimum drop in the controlling current. If the device uses junction FETs the drop may be lower; I haven't worked with them.)
You people are awesome. I just sewed people.
Got an idea or two about how to build the prequel adventure. Change the person who finally breaks the relationship, add a little Michael Corleone (but not too much).
Add some GRR Martin. Half the cast is dead by chapter 5
Yeah. All the good guys. By now the reader is unwilling to invest too deeply in a character. I'm not writing a carrion feast. I'm not sure I could carry it off if I wanted to.
I've got a plausible storyline for my backstory chapter and it will fit, I think, into the B2/3 story. Only thing is, it deserves to be 8000 to 25000 words. I want to get it under 4000. There's also a conceit I need to fit around the telling.
And I've got six potloads of other stuff to do. I'll keep you up to date.
Don't make me get out the cattle prod again
Just stay out of the rain with that thing 
Working on scene-by-scene outline for this backstory section. That's the only hope I have of keeping it short. I'm going to be caught in another namestorm.
Just stay out of the rain with that thing
Actually, he's sticking his finger in an electrical outlet. It's his way of doing his hair. Einstein used to do it too. Important note: never open the housing for a toy motor and tap it with a screwdriver while it's plugged in. It actually melted the screwdriver. Almost won a Darwin Award for that one.
A telco central office worker, back in the seventies, accidentally dropped a wrench while standing on a ladder. It shorted between the giant 48v DC copper plate busbar and the busbar's steel supports.
Down in the basement, the meters twitched on the huge-tank-of-sulfuric-acid batteries. Upstairs, the workers were blinded and deafened by the arc that vaporized the steel wrench.
I guess you had to be there.
Amy, what sort of battlefield trauma would make it hard to be sure if someone was alive or dead? We're talking linear Greek press-of-shields warfare.
Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi → The Sorcerer's Progress
