It's worth pointing out that *any* silicon chip is light sensitive. The advantage of the memory chip is that it has a large array of identical components which are effectively your pixels.
When you are making light sensitive devices on a CMOS process (rather than a CCD) you will often use photodiodes. A diode is just a pn junction so, strictly speaking, a photodiode is a diode that is exposed to light.
I make camera chips on CMOS chips and we have to use the top metal layer to shield everything apart from the photodiodes from the light. Shame really, it doesn't look as nice under a microscope!
I remember reading an article years ago, about research into mixed nuts. Basically they wanted to find out why the brazil nuts always tended to come to the top. It turns out it's a semi-complex interaction, when the can is shaken vertically, the nuts closer to the walls are pulled down due to the friction and they fall into the gap created at the bottom of the can, creating a sort of convection current. The larger brazils had less contact area with the wall and were not as likely to be pulled back down IIRC.
I was under the impression that in general, larger particles move to the top because the smaller particles fit into gaps more easily and so move downwards - the larger particles therefore have to move up. I suspect that this may play a small part in mixed nuts, but there aren't any really small nuts, so it can't be that big an effect.
Yeah. I realise that and wasn't trying to imply that Gentoo was the first to do so, I just prefer to talk about something that I actually know about (ie. not FreeBSD:)
The biggest gain I can think of would be moving from an initscript system in which all services are serially numered to one where dependencies are expressed with a directed acyclic graph. All you have is "X depends on network being up" "cups depends on network being up", etc.
Try Lyx, it's fantastic. A "What You See Is What You Mean" front end to Tex. If you don't want to use it for documents, you could at least use it to write examples and then export to tex.
I came across a fantastic game the other day "Stair Dismount". You have to push a guy down some stairs to see how much damage you can inflict upon him.
It looks like a rag doll physics test bed that the author decided would make a great game. It uses the Open Dynamics Engine.
The plot:
The legendary superhero Spector has found, to his shock, that he cannot write off all the damage he has caused to the city out of
his taxes unless he proves that he has sustained significant
damage in the process himself! Now it's up to you to 'help' him
with this little detail..
Download at http://jet.ro/dismount/ (Windows only, although it does mention that some people have had luck running it under Wine).
Obviously you're after laughs, but consider where oil comes from.
If Nasa said that they had found oil it would be a fantastic discovery - but not because it was oil as such, just what it means.
Cheers,
Roger
Re:50 thumbs on a page is too few ...
on
News at a Glance
·
· Score: 1
I disagree.
Think about a very simple "picture", the smiley.:);):P
Different people interpret them as meaning different things.
My girlfriend uses:o) exclusively because she thinks it looks cute, but I'm sure many people would see it as "smiley with a big nose" and infer something from that.
If such a simple image means so many thing to different people, how will it work for more complicated images?
Yes! I have on my desk next to me a dinky little pcb with an ftdi usb chip on - the FT245BM. This chip has an 8 bit parallel data bus for IO and a number of control lines and is very easy to use.
On the PC side, ftdi provide "virtual com port" drivers for windows, so the new device appears to the OS as a serial port making it very easy to interface to.
Linux has appropriate driver support in the standard kernel as well (since 2.4 I think).
Bill of materials for this PCB (caveat - one of my colleagues made it), ftdi chip, crystal osc, eprom (for holding device id and similar), 8 res, 8 cap, 1 transistor, 2x10 header, USB B socket. The whole thing is 3cm x 6cm.
ftdi also make a similar chip which has a serial input and can be used as a drop in replacement for an RS232 transceiver.
See http://www.ftdichip.com/
I don't work for ftdi, I just really like their product:)
It occurs to me that a ream refers to a number of sheets (nothing to do with the size of the sheet), and that a roll of tin foil is a single sheet. This means that "reams of tin foil" would refer to at least 1000 rolls and at, say 10m in length, 40cm in width (both guesses), you would end up with 10km*40cm (or 10m*400m) of tin foil.
Are you that paranoid?:)
Anyway, apologies, it's 9pm and I've been at work since 9am...
I recently purchased some birth/death certificates for my Mum (she is a genealogist), from this site: http://www.col.statistics.gov.uk/ I was very pleased that you don't have to create an account as the chance of me ever returning to the site is slim!
It is the only place I've ever see do it, but it shows that it exists.
I just run 'emerge gnucash' and it compiles and installs it. I didn't even know that it was considered hard to compile until reading the comments here.
A disclaimer - I didn't say that it was the correct way, just the way I would say it. See the other response to my post for an interesting take on the "and" situation.
Slashdot Mirror
FTDI do a couple of nice USB interface chips. One can be used as a drop in replacement for an RS232 tranceiver. The other has an 8-bit parallel input.
:)
Drivers are already in the Linux kernel as well
http://www.ftdichip.com
Cheers,
Roger
It's worth pointing out that *any* silicon chip is light sensitive. The advantage of the memory chip is that it has a large array of identical components which are effectively your pixels.
When you are making light sensitive devices on a CMOS process (rather than a CCD) you will often use photodiodes. A diode is just a pn junction so, strictly speaking, a photodiode is a diode that is exposed to light.
I make camera chips on CMOS chips and we have to use the top metal layer to shield everything apart from the photodiodes from the light. Shame really, it doesn't look as nice under a microscope!
Cheers,
Roger
This will probably get lost amongst the noise, but does anyone have a link to a downloadable video of a Saturn V launch?
Cheers,
Roger
When I was at TU-BS for a year about three years ago they had HP machines everywhere.
That doesn't mean their servers are HP as well, but it could be a fair indication.
This was three years ago mind.
Cheers,
Roger
I remember reading an article years ago, about research into mixed nuts. Basically they wanted to find out why the brazil nuts always tended to come to the top. It turns out it's a semi-complex interaction, when the can is shaken vertically, the nuts closer to the walls are pulled down due to the friction and they fall into the gap created at the bottom of the can, creating a sort of convection current. The larger brazils had less contact area with the wall and were not as likely to be pulled back down IIRC.
I was under the impression that in general, larger particles move to the top because the smaller particles fit into gaps more easily and so move downwards - the larger particles therefore have to move up. I suspect that this may play a small part in mixed nuts, but there aren't any really small nuts, so it can't be that big an effect.
Interesting about the friction though! :)
Cheers,
Roger
Yeah. I realise that and wasn't trying to imply that Gentoo was the first to do so, I just prefer to talk about something that I actually know about (ie. not FreeBSD :)
Cheers,
Roger
The biggest gain I can think of would be moving from an initscript system in which all services are serially numered to one where dependencies are expressed with a directed acyclic graph. All you have is "X depends on network being up" "cups depends on network being up", etc.
You mean like in Gentoo?
RogerTry Lyx, it's fantastic. A "What You See Is What You Mean" front end to Tex. If you don't want to use it for documents, you could at least use it to write examples and then export to tex.
Versioning support and lots of yumminess.
http://www.lyx.org
Cheers,
Roger
77000 or there abouts. Landing head first seems to be the way to go... :)
I came across a fantastic game the other day "Stair Dismount". You have to push a guy down some stairs to see how much damage you can inflict upon him.
It looks like a rag doll physics test bed that the author decided would make a great game. It uses the Open Dynamics Engine.
The plot:
The legendary superhero Spector has found, to his shock, that he cannot write off all the damage he has caused to the city out of his taxes unless he proves that he has sustained significant damage in the process himself! Now it's up to you to 'help' him with this little detail..Download at http://jet.ro/dismount/ (Windows only, although it does mention that some people have had luck running it under Wine).
Ace fun.
Roger
Sorry! :)
This guy tracks his location by phone.
Where is Calum?
Cheers,
Roger
Yes, but the point was to pretend to press some keys to hide your pin. This is made useless if the beeps tell you which presses were the real ones.
I think you mean escape velocity.
:)
Interesting question though
Roger
The Astronomy Picture of the Day showed a good quality close up of the "face" here: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap031214.html
APOD is great.
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Cheers,
Roger
Obviously you're after laughs, but consider where oil comes from.
If Nasa said that they had found oil it would be a fantastic discovery - but not because it was oil as such, just what it means.
Cheers,
Roger
I disagree.
:) ;) :P
:o) exclusively because she thinks it looks cute, but I'm sure many people would see it as "smiley with a big nose" and infer something from that.
Think about a very simple "picture", the smiley.
Different people interpret them as meaning different things.
My girlfriend uses
If such a simple image means so many thing to different people, how will it work for more complicated images?
Cheers,
Roger
Yes! I have on my desk next to me a dinky little pcb with an ftdi usb chip on - the FT245BM. This chip has an 8 bit parallel data bus for IO and a number of control lines and is very easy to use.
:)
On the PC side, ftdi provide "virtual com port" drivers for windows, so the new device appears to the OS as a serial port making it very easy to interface to.
Linux has appropriate driver support in the standard kernel as well (since 2.4 I think).
Bill of materials for this PCB (caveat - one of my colleagues made it), ftdi chip, crystal osc, eprom (for holding device id and similar), 8 res, 8 cap, 1 transistor, 2x10 header, USB B socket. The whole thing is 3cm x 6cm.
ftdi also make a similar chip which has a serial input and can be used as a drop in replacement for an RS232 transceiver.
See http://www.ftdichip.com/
I don't work for ftdi, I just really like their product
Cheers,
Roger
buy reams of tin foil
:)
It occurs to me that a ream refers to a number of sheets (nothing to do with the size of the sheet), and that a roll of tin foil is a single sheet. This means that "reams of tin foil" would refer to at least 1000 rolls and at, say 10m in length, 40cm in width (both guesses), you would end up with 10km*40cm (or 10m*400m) of tin foil.
Are you that paranoid?
Anyway, apologies, it's 9pm and I've been at work since 9am...
Cheers,
Roger
I recently purchased some birth/death certificates for my Mum (she is a genealogist), from this site: http://www.col.statistics.gov.uk/ I was very pleased that you don't have to create an account as the chance of me ever returning to the site is slim!
It is the only place I've ever see do it, but it shows that it exists.
Cheers,
Roger
All the references to "Jesus feet" on Google seem to have some sort of religious slant to them.
:)
Funny that...
Cheers,
Roger
Heh, you just wrote my comment for me. I was going to say exactly that but with different words.
It would be cool.
Cheers,
Roger
Heard of gentoo?
I just run 'emerge gnucash' and it compiles and installs it. I didn't even know that it was considered hard to compile until reading the comments here.
Cheers,
Roger
Hehe, thanks for that link.
Yes, indeed. Thanks.
A disclaimer - I didn't say that it was the correct way, just the way I would say it. See the other response to my post for an interesting take on the "and" situation.
Cheers,
Roger