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Yep, it's a tantalum cap.  Now, why would I choose an expensive tantalum cap for that spot?  You did read the articles, right?

Okay, this is the 3-way pigeon flasher I mean to try.  Note that some component values are TBD.

(I may reverse it right-to-left.)

Red is reserved for true danger.

Over on the 'where to host' thread, there's a photo of the test article.  Identify away!  But the color rendering may make it hard to get the values.  (They are all standard, E24 5% values.)

Bonus points for that tan blob in the front on the right.

Alda's library tour should be cut short for other reasons, like her habit of keeping rescued food in her pockets.  There might be a really embarassing incident there.  Something like this.  Or just mice following her and making nests out of precious old volumes.

Where a number is duplicated, one  of the two should be inactive.  I'll have to double-check.

When I made my first pass through the story, I was working different threads so I left holes in the sequence.  I'll have to be a little more fastidious now.  (grumbles.)

Making one change requires several page loazds just to see if you got it right and what the fallout is.  Fixing a domino-tumble could take all day.

I'll go with Strunk and White (unbowdlerized) on this one

The problem is not the repetition of the word, but its use without a strong frapping to create the unity that I'm trying for.

Above you don't want me to repeat a word, now you deny me pronouns?  I'm guessing you're inveighing against constructions like 'it was his good fortune that ...'

The sentence is quite complete, but a comma or semicolon after the conjunction would make the parse clearer.  The second use of a part of 'travel' gives purpose to, and fulfills, the first use.

The logic is clear.  Before Melayne blossomed, friendship preceeded interest.  After she blossomed, interest preceeded friendship.  The inversion is important, not contradictory.

Okay, it's not clear enough.

Needed?  It's not an existential or ontological necessity.  It was an unforseen consequence, and one that they've delayed dealing with.

I can guide the reader better to that point.

And the backstory can unfold.  You don't tell us about the Mage Master in you first chapter, and when you mention the Age of Magic you don't give us the full history right away.

First example possible.  As to the second, Melayne's hair is not a mess, not in whole, not in part!  (There, how's that for repetition?)

What, I'm not showing it with the tender boiled laundry?

First example,  maybe.  Second example, no.  It announces a sudden change and contrast in the (perceived) speed of the action.

You and I will probably disagree on this for a long time.

If she trusts what she saw about her son, she has to trust what she saw with the others who were there.  That was the last thing she saw before the air turned to mud.

I should probably have her describe it.  She didn't hit her head against the wall, by the way.  She slumped down as she watched in horror.

I'm still spending 8 words where I should spend five.

Oh, Jamen has come in contact with other sorcerers.  He's not that isolated.  Compared to Merran, he's practically cosmopolitan.

I'm getting back in harness after Christmas.  I've just finished three Ellery Queen books I hadn't read before (one Wrightsville novel, two collections--one of them radio scripts) and almost half of the complete TV series.  (That was a gift for Mom that I convinced her to open early.  We also watched Frozen on DVD.  In some ways, it is almost operatic.)  I'm becoming convinced that Queen was the real master, even above Christie.  The EQ collaboration was immensely prolific, and at its best the character painting is so good it's scary.

On the long drives, I listened to a lecture course on ethics, and got another three quarters of a page of themes that I want to work into my story as it develops.  (I use half-sized notebooks: )

They indicate connection someplace.  When the wire comes out down the page, they are generally connected to the positive rail (often called Vcc or Vdd), unless there is a notation for something else.

Nothing.  But you need to make the old version inactive.

I'm used to thinking of version control as a system for creating snapshots of the text and then, if necessay, creating branches off the snapshots.  This isn't that.

Look towards the left.  You'll see a Weller thermostaticly controlled soldering station.  The pencil is further to the left, out of view, along with my power supplies.

If I were really up-to-date, I'd have a hot-air station for handling surface-mount devices.  I don't know where I'd put it, though.

The works you see on the test article, along with some other stuff, will go on a circuit board about 3+1/2" x 1+7/8".  It will go at one end of a box 4+1/2" x 7+1/2" x 1+3/8".  Most of the box will contain the battery box and the input filter, which will also provide some protection from a high voltage transient on the line.  It will have loops on the back for hanging from a wall.

But somewhere I have the diagram for a 'mobile' of parts that is actually a functioning AM radio.  Diode detector, not superhet, and I think I'd have to make up my own loopstick for the rf tuning tank.  And today's transistors are so good they'd probably overdrive the circuit--drive it into clipping.  But that can be fixed.

Anyhow, here's the flasher operating:

The narrow pulses dropping are the LED being turned on; that's the voltage between the mosfet and the big LED.
I'm driving a testbed (not the battery-powered test article) on only about 3v, so the on pulses are quite wide.

The other trace is one side of the sequence timing multivibrator.

Let's look at it more slowly:

Here we see one side of the sequence mv, with the two sets of pulses.  Because this is a digital scope, some of the pulses disappear in the sampling process.  Note the slow rise and sharp fall.  The other, much longer, side of that mv has an equally sharp fall.

Here's the battery-powered test article, running right now on the bench supplies.

I was able to catch it the LED flash by using a 1/10 second shutter time, but the camera can't show the real effect of the flash.  (I'm setting this test article up to work out the revised line voltage detector, visible just in front of the big IC.  The two green LEDs, with their resistors and mosfet switches, will be used to read the line state off the detector.

Here's the whole 'lab' in its present form: