Reflection Technology

A Wind Generator with high efficiency and no rotating parts

An amaziningly simple idea that results in a generator that really works and has about four parts – none of them rotating (so no bearings).

This is really impressive – the video really clarifies things …

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4224763.html?series=37

or http://tinyurl.com/3yod26

Now with some powerful magnets extracted from disk drives, hmmm …

What’s a 60pf Capacitor look like?

### Rockmite Mods ###
This post is a response to a query on the Rockmite Yahoogroup about tweaking the frequency of a Rockmite (see .

Hi Johnathan – here’s a 60pF capacitor I’ve added to my 20m HiMite tranceiver (just like the Rockmite) so I could bring the frequency up a bit (it was around 14.058 rather than 14.060MHz).

The different capacitance trimmers are different colours: Yellow is 60pf, from memory the 20pf are green …

Cheers – Giovanni – ZL2BOI

Making printed circuit boards at home with a laser printer

http://www.users.on.net/~endsodds/pcb.htm

EchoLink Install Hangs

Today I was shown how EchoLink works – it’s an amalgam of Amateur Radio and the Internet – see www.echolink.org for details, really neat if you can’t put up an antenna or the band conditions are horrible. It’s closely related to IRLP but enables you to access remote repeaters without a radio at your end.

Anyway, I came home and tried to install EchoLink on a recently received box with Windows XP SP2 and found the installer would start up and then just fails, it terminates with no message, no event in the Event Log, nothing …

Searching around I found the note about the InstallShield 16 bit installer not being happy with the %Temp% and %tmp% folders having names like C:\Documents and Settings\Fred\local settings\temp (or whatever it is – I just made that up but it doesn’t like having spaces in the name.

I went to the Control Panel/System/Advanced/Environment Variables and changed both tmp and temp for both “User Variables” and “System Variables” to be c:/tmpfiles and problem fixed … Any name less than eight characters is probably ok.

There was also a problem with MusicMatch V7.5 not installing (same symptoms) but this was related to Internet Explorer V7 – deinstalling that and it was happy too.

This is a new PC and I’m discovering just how much software is (was) installed and how little I use on a daily basis :-(

Empathy – How do you know what they’re thinking?

Another interesting neurological article – parts of our brains seem to be designed to “put us in someone else’s shoes”, although (sadly, some people seems to have this bit missing :-)

See www.livescience.com/humanbiology/050427_mind_readers.html

Science, IT & Music Podcast

Intellectual Icebergs – www.intellectualicebergs.org
A neat blend of IT/Science and techy stuff with music – sort of like a radio station without all the wretched ads. The music is a bonus – almost enough to make go go and get that IRiver T10 MP3 player :-)

“Sure, you already know all about computer science, physics, mathematics, yadda yadda yadda. But can you explain it to your boss in terms that won’t explode his managerial head?

More importantly, can you use your big, bulging brains to land dates? No, seriously? Okay, then. Intellectual Icebergs is for you. Join us, semi-weekly-to-monthly, as we explore topics ranging from cryptography and subatomic physics to geek dating tips and partyology”

the content on IntellectualIcebergs is similar to NewScientist New Scientist – www.newscientist.com but less wide ranging and more technical. If this suits you then NewScientist also has PodCasts.

Easy Windows Backups using Cygwin

I’m using CYGWIN (www.cygwin.org) with Windows XP to do things that are trivial under Linux/Unix and somewhat messy under Windows, such as provide easy platform independent backups.

Tips on using TAR

If you’re trying to add large numbers of files (eg with wildcards) and get:

> bash: /usr/bin/tar: Argument list too long

Use -T (–files-from) option, e.g.:

find /path/to/bitmaps -name ‘*.bmp’ | tar cfT archive -

the “-” at the end tells Tar to take its input from Stdin.

Encrypting TAR Backups

tar cf – secretdir | gpg -c > destdir/mysecretfiles.tar.gpg

“Waking Life” – are you sure you’re awake?

I’ve just finished watching this movie, which together with a couple of glasses of a good red wine and a dinner roast vegetables, have managed to both make me forget about my ever present PhD (_sign here for five years of pain and suffering_ :-) ) and slow me down to a pace that both feels more real and much more sane. I even did the dishes by hand rather than use the dishwasher. Sounds silly but sometimes the little things are worth paying attention to!

Anyway, about the movie – it’s a series of conversations about the meaning of life, perception, reality (and stuff like that) that normally would sound (and be) terminally boring. It’s interesting to try and figure out how they’ve managed to not only make it not boring but quite fascinating.

The presentation is a blend of real actors and animation where the scenes has been filmed and then “doctored” leaving a impression that hovers between reality (it’s based on real people and this shows through) and something quite surreal – which suits the material perfectly.

Very well worth watching *****

PS – I’ve just had a look at what’s at the end of the Amazon link and, happily, I’m not the only one who enjoyed it – it’s got four out of five stars.

Listening to music and learning Italian at the same time.

I’ve found Andrea Bocelli’s CDs wonderful way to learn Italian.
His pronounciation is amazingly clear (listen to the previews on Amazon), and unlike so many singers from an operatic background, you can actually hear the words, and the music has a sort of lulling effect so I sort of fade away listening to the music but part of my brain is picking the words out, and as the years go by understanding words, phrases and then complete sentences. Mind you the years of Italian class at nightschool probably help …

Even better, the CD insert has the words in both Italian and English, so when you get stuck just listening, you can look the word up.

As a hint, don’t wait too long if you can’t figure out what a word is supposed to be. I resisted for a year just trying to listen, but as it turned out, this wasn’t such a good idea. There were words that I thought were single words that turned out to be two words that sort of run together when spoken. This isn’t bad pronounciation – we all run words together – they sort of flow into each other, and learning to pick then apart is part of learning the language.

More later, it’s time for bed …

Now it’s later :-) Of the links below, the first three are my favourite CDs and the last two are DVDs. The DVDs have lots of Italian in them too but it’s more conversational and interlaced with English than the CDs. I especially like the DVD “A Night in Tuscany” which follows the transformation of a piazza from it modern day-to-day role into the setting for a fabulous open air night concert.

Colour Spaces – references

Good discussion of colour spaces for non-technical readers from :

Metal Finishing Part 1

MetalFinishing Part 2