1,376

(1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)

So I can use it.

1,377

(1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)

I couldn't sleep for a while last night so I wired up the little circuit board for project 2.  (The switches and potentiometers were there before.  So were the undervolt detectors and LEDs beneath the switches.) http://i1065.photobucket.com/albums/u394/njGreybeard/VoltageDividerSupply-Bottom_zps6yvbdyae.png
Being tired, I made three mistakes placing transistors, and had to thrown one of them out and take a new one.  (KSA992's, about $0.25 each in modest quantity.)http://i1065.photobucket.com/albums/u394/njGreybeard/VoltageDividerSupply-Top_zpsaxduukmc.png

The board works, too, but I haven't put the bootstrap transistor in.  That's sitting on the side, on the heat sink--which is almost unnecessary.  Almost.

Now to work.  (I'll finish project 2 in a day or so and embark on project 3--leaving project 1 unfixed.)

1,378

(1,217 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)

Yeah.  Everything is made by A Company that Makes Everything.

OTOH, 'Lens' recalls the universe of Doc Smith.

Janet (AJ) Reid wrote:
amy s wrote:

I like the reference that you provided to Janet. Good pics.

I was too scared to click on it, but eventually I did! For some or other reason, I'm under the impression what you think is good pics is somewhat different to what I think is good pics and might not be something I can stomach. If it wasn't njc, I'd probably never have clicked on it! LOL

In general, WikiP references are safe to click on and not too explicit.  There are exceptions--certain pages on body modification, sexual practices, and so forth.  The math and biology pages are in general very good.

Amenuesis

Seven hundred ...  Bimmy, you'e not a Jaegermonster!  (Are you?) (Bottom panel.  Yes, they're battle clowns.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brachial_artery

Good pictures.  'ventral' means the belly/chest side.

1,383

(1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)

Got two important task items done on the one electronic project.  Mostly mechanical, quite simple, but it requires the kind of patient care I'm not good at.  Everything fits, or will when I trim away an unneeded boss.  I had to improvise a little, but the binding posts are well within tolerance to take a double banana plug.  http://allelcdn.upshotcommerce.com//mas_assets/cache/image/3/9/2/a/150x150-14634.Jpg  They're off by 1/64" or so--just enough that the eye sees something wrong--but everything's workable.  And the holes for the mounting screws line up nicely.  There's only about 1/128" excess between the #8 clearance hole and the 11/64" bits I have.

I'm setting those notes aside to mellow and going back to Merran's arrival at the Acadamy.

How muscular is Peter?  How tough are his muscles?  That can make the cut more difficult.

Prosthesis

1,386

(1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)

More reviews done.  Trying to systematize my notes on the infectious evangelism of despair.  I wonder if Lewis had this problem when he wrote Screwtape?

1,387

(20 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

Well SPAMMEE, it's too bad!

Scott Boras

1,389

(20 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

bimmy wrote:

I feel left out. Am I not important enough to be spammed?

Bimmy

Well, they'll spam ya when you're trying to be so good
They'll spam ya just a-like they said they would
They'll spam ya when you're tryin' to go home
Then they'll spam ya when you're there all alone
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get spamed.

1,390

(1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)

Nope, not it.  Or not completely.  Sigh.  I'm going to have to breadboard this durned thing.
First guess is that the LP0701's transfer curve isn't as sharp as the datasheets indicate.

I can reduce the resistances.  I'll also try adding a 5.1v zener in for the voltage drop.  I've got a few in stock, courtesy of closeout sales at two local Radio Snacks.

And I got one and half of the other electronic tasks done.  Another one this evening.

One review just finished.  A longer, more difficult one next.

1,391

(2 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

It slso appears that each IL comment requires at least one server interaction, which can show a severe delay.

Sol, I'm seeing crippling network delays again from Windows (IE and Chrome).  My Android phone, using the same network, does not have the problems.  I do a fair amount of work on battery and waiting ten minutes or more for a pge to finish loading is just not compatible with that.

While I'm sure the problem is the fault of Windoze, it seems likely that it could be tweaked at your end by a properly equipped network True Guru.

Is your network stack Microslough or a Unix variant?

You can use them the same way Tazar does.   You can even overlap.  The lesson about not seeing illusions could be very painful.

Oh, and please do not pare the scene leading to Sil's transformation any further.  I think you've gone a little too far now, making the dialogue screen dialogue instead of reading dialogue.  That moment needs some meat on the bone.  You can't afford it voluptuous, but you don't want it anorexic either.

1,394

(1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)

Replace one cap, add one resistor,  all in tight quarters.

1,395

(1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)

You're in much better shape than I am.

Notes more or less reconstructed, but not distilled.

Turns out there is another problem with my little box.  Aargh!  Okay, a couple more hours.  I have a pretty good idea of what's up.

After sleep and maybe 5 hrs of electronics, I'll switch back to the chapter,

1,396

(1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)

Girl Genius has been running for 16 years.  The Dreamland Chronicles has taken 13 years (with a major interruption) to approach its final chapter.  Unfortunately, the author of Lovecraft Is Missing did not live to finish his story.

njc wrote:

Using it as a frame might be too much, and in it's full length it might be too long.  But it's good info.  You might even be able to use two or three parts as Kha and Airen get ready to roll.

Y'know how Tazar remembers the past in prison?  I wonder if you might be able to use parts of Karls story like that, maybe as Kha tries to make sense of what happened in Earthwound.

1,398

(1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)

Status: I just got a couple of reviews to do.  I spent much of Friday trying to to convince my body that it should either want me awake or asleep but not both.  Did some errands on Saturday, then started arguing with my body again.  Threw some stuff out and rewrote.  (How do some of the people here keep turning stuff out!  I hope that practice helps.)

Finished wiring the new version of the 12-volt LDO supply--and found that I made a couple of serious errors because I couldn't keep the thing straight working upside-down.  (Should have gotten sleep instead.)  Fixed it.

Then I realized that I used a larger heat-sink, and it wouldn't fit next to the LEDs epoxied into the case sides.  I cut the heat sink down--a really ugly hatchet job.

It worked perfectly--except that the voltage divider that sets the turn-off threshold was off.  The tolerances on the resistors in the voltage divider added in the worst possible way.  I replaced them with a 100k multiturn trimpot. http://allelcdn.upshotcommerce.com//mas_assets/cache/image/3/8/b/5/150x150-14517.Jpg
In the process I cut one wrong resistor lead (replaced the whole resistor) and somehow created a short circuit that made the whole thing go haywire.

With that fixed (and some heat-shrink over various twisted leads) I got it working nicely.  Then I discovered that the heat sink also interfered with the circuit board mount.  I used a composition cutoff disk this time.  It's still a hatchet job.

As I was wiring the circuit board into the box (with its strain-reliefed wires) I managed to sever the main ground line.  But I did the fix and a pigtail with the same piece of wire.

And then I discovered that the cover wouldn't fit.  I needed to clip off 1/10'' off two corners off the circuit board.

Oh, and one of the two ground contacts in the power plug isn't really connected.  They also make a VERY tight contact.

BUT the box works.  Nicely.  I can recharge my iSound boxes in the car now.

I have six tasks listed to get the next project finished.  Some are mechanical, some electronic.  Some are well-defined, some less so.

Meanwhile, some ideas came to me in the shower.  It will take me at least half an hour to reconstruct them and another to put them together cleanly enough to go in the notebooks.  BUT they may play a major thematic part and maybe help round out Melayne's thread in Book 2.  (And maybe it will show up back in Lifspynth as well.)

First, two reviews and one to reply to.  Then try for this next approach to my next (current project) chapter in B2.

Norm d'Plume wrote:

I just discovered that the new menu stays on screen even as I scroll down the home page. Terrific!

Not terrific--terrible.  That screen is your only way to communicate withe the computer and web sites, and that menu parks itself on the screen taking up space--and you can't scroll it out of the way when you don't want it.  Imagine a notebook or dictionary that fused itself into your physical desktop and couldn't be pushed away when you wanted to do something else in the space.

Depends on how hard.  Heck, if the kick were strong enough, it could kill him (shock to the vagus nerve, I believe).  But it has to be very strong, and very well executed.  More likely he'll be severely impaired for half a minute to several minutes.