Harcourt Fenton Mudd!

Yes.  The point is that English's brobdingnagian lexicon (did I spell that right?) often has a specific word for 'very X', and very often that specific word is a better choice.

Link via The Passive Guy, 128 words to use instead of 'very'

In Russia, truth tell you.

1,505

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

And the glue is a delaying measure that makes the attackers temporarily available to counterattack.  It's one more step in the battle.  Once they get free, they throw sand or paper down wherever they suspect the glue.

1,506

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

Norm d'Plume wrote:
njc wrote:

Glue grenades/mines.

I have something called molten grenades, but the treaty forbids their use (except against your own people) What you may do is set your flesh eater on overload and through yourself at the enemy.

So have some clever person raid the stock of contact cement in engineering and pour it on the floor in the corridors/intersections that the invaders need to use on their way.  No more a treaty violation than jamming the hatch latches with bars blocking the handles.

1,507

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

Glue grenades/mines.

1,508

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

Play "It's a Small World After All" in Carol Channing's voice in the maze.

More replies ...

For Sale: Gently used coffin.

Chopped (devilled?) logic.

I'll condense the opening of the preamble to the first volume of The Last Lion:

Help Wanted: Messiah.  Experience Required.

pfui!

Replies up to your Ch4 replies.

1,515

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

No, but was some thought a while ago that the human female pelvis might provide some advantage in high-g maneuvers.  I don't know if it was ever proven or disproven.

Sarah Hoyt has a short travel report from her trip to Portugal to see her family.  Buried in it are notes about history's mark on the present, including naming: People name their children after Trajan and their dogs after Nero.  Nothing is named after Caligula.

Oops!  That part is in the previous article.

1,516

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

Another 30 notes on rolodex-cut cards.  (Only 30!)  I've got at least two hundred more to do and I come up with three or more every day.  I also need to cut some more of the smaller cards.

I'm running into things to catch up on every way I turn.  I'm falling into behinder-I-get mode.

1,517

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

O, gee, just what is this chord?  (No, I'm not a musician.)

1,518

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

Oh, I forgot to mention the time on the voltage stabilization for the head amp.  I've got an idea that might work, and an offshoot to consider.  It depends on using the low-voltage exponential behavior of BJTs balanced against the linear behavior of resistors.

Barsoom

1,520

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

Okay, I see I have to get more new stuff out for you!

Just to tell you what's up here: I had my trip to visit my brother and his wife.  I was able to overlap my father's visit, so we got an evening together.  I was able to do several reviews and do a little work on my notes.

My notes have been taking a lot of my writing time.  I have dozens of small notepad notes not trasferred to rolodex-cut cards, and probably over 500 of those cards to file and organize.  Some things, like plot bits, will more or less organize themselves.  Others will be harder.

And I've not been getting that much writing time.  That little electronics project--the regulated 12V charger--has grown tentacles.  The plug is too short to fit the socket extender where it needs to go, so I need a different plug.  The LDO regulator doesn't shut off well enough on low voltage, so I need to put that in, and I decided that for safety I want the cutoff devices to break the hot side rather than the ground.

The interrupting devices are power mosfets.  Unfortunately, the positive-side ones (P-channel) that I have in stock have a very limited gate voltage--8 volts.  (NDP6020).  The max drain-source voltage is a bit low, too, so I may end up finding new ones for future work.  For the present, I can use high-resistance voltage dividers on the input, wasting a few (tens of) microamps for them.

But I need undervoltage detection.  I let myself tinker on paper with a couple of circuit topologies derived from the Schmidt trigger, but I put them aside.  I'll play with them another time.  (Among other things, they require two transistors and seven or eight resistors.  That would be a VERY cramped board.)  So I turned to a pair of similar ICs, one by ON Semi (previously Motorola) and one by Seiko.  The Seiko device operates on a tenth or less the current of the ON Semi device, but the ON Semi device has more complete documentation.

Either way I need a voltage divider, which will waste some current.  The Seiko device would waste less, but I can use the ON Semi documentation to reduce that waste, including an approximation of the device's internal behavior in the circuit theory model of the divider.  That, unfortunately, yields a messy quadratic, but I found, after a few hours of sleep, that I can simplify it greatly.  It's still a pain, but it should only cost me an hour or two to get all the terms into their proper places.

These monitor circuits have the wrong polarity for the need (ground the output when the voltage is too low) so I'll need another transistor to invert the output.  An N-channel low-power mosfet will do.  Ironically, the one I stock is the TN0620.  The output will require another voltage divider to the NDP6020's gate.

Sigh.  Such a simple little thing.  The circuit board will be VERY busy, but it will be a very solid design--up to 20 volts.  I'll also replace the input side tantalum capacitor with a 25 volt job.  (I ordered a variety when I ordered the voltage monitors.)

That stuff will be in in a day or so.  Right now I'll finish the algebra and select the resistor values, and finish up the modified perfboard layout.

Later today I have to take my car to the dealer.  The check-engine light is on.  I fear that a gas station attendent has reuined another charcoal cannister.  If that, I'd let it go except that it will mask other trouble indications.  And, of course, it might be something else.

I have to find out what Best Buy/Geek Squad will charge to swap in a new hard disk on my flaptop, transferring all the content to the new one--if I buy the new disk from them, and if I don't.  (I'd like to go to a 1TB drive, but I'll only buy drives with 5-year manufacturer's warranties, which mostly means WD Black.  BB only offers a 750GB drive, but Newegg has a 1TB WD Black at a very decent price.)

And I will reduce the backlog of notes.  (I produced about seven more last night.)

And that is why Paddy has been away from work.

You've been reading PDQ's Missa Hilarious, discovered by Schickle in the archives of the Vatican, along with other documents related to PDQ's excommunication?

Highbrow

MrsPiddles wrote:

...I am following this thread with joy in my heart and a bowl of popcorn!

I feel the rapier of well-earned humiliation!

Does she wear the Pantheist's boots?  If so, perhaps I should rest my case?

The Man Who wasThursday wrote:

... the Professor, finding that the learned and mysterious method left him rather at the mercy of an enemy slightly deficient in scruples, fell back upon a more popular form of wit. 'I see,' he sneered, 'you prevail like the false pig in Aesop.' 'And you fail,' I answered, smiling, 'like the hedgehog in Montaigne.' Need I say that there is no hedgehog in Montaigne? 'Your claptrap comes off,' he said; 'so would your beard.' I had no intelligent answer to this, which was quite true and rather witty. But I laughed heartily, answered, 'Like the Pantheist's boots,' at random, and turned on my heel with all the honours of victory. The real Professor was thrown out, but not with violence, though one man tried very patiently to pull off his nose.