I solder SMT components by hand as well. Don't even need a microscope; just head-mounted magnifier glasses is plenty. Make sure you have good light and plenty of flux and you're good to go.
But the problem is the board. Sure, if you have a finished design already, and you intend to actually use it in the future, then sending off for a finished PCB is good. But if it's just a hobby, and you're prototyping or just playing around to better understand a particular circuit, then spending a good chunk of money and weeks of time for a board is simply not feasible. You really want to set something up, try it, then tear it down and try the next idea.
With that said, I don't know that this is the answer either. Hand-drawn does not sound precise enough to handle SMT, and a whole separate device just making prototype boards sounds like too much money and space for a hobbyist. Perhaps the answer is desktop mills that become cheap and precise enough that you can use them to cut out boards from copper blanks along with other building tasks. At least that would not be a single-purpose gadget.
A watch is a mechanical timepiece you wear on your wrist.
No. A watch is a piece of jewellery you wear on your wrist. The only difference between a wristwatch on one hand and a pendant, a bracelet or a brooch on the other is that a watch is the only widely allowed jewellery (other than a wedding ring) for men. Of course, the intricate mechanics and technical craftmanship is an added appeal, though the actual function of telling time is just a bonus, not the main point.
And that explains why there are such a large number of watchmakers, and such a huge number of models; with jewellery, the last thing you want is to wear the same thing as everybody else.
For citations central to your argument, sure, you need to track down the main papers. It's not that difficult - just look at what papers everybody else is citing. But most citations are just fulfilling the [citation needed] reqs for facts you use in your work. Any one of dozens, sometimes hundreds, of papers would easily fill in for that role.
You find two references about the same thing. As far as citing the fact you need they're essentially equivalent. One will take three weeks and thirty dollars - and half a day of arguing to make the lab pay those thirty dollars - to get, and half the time your thirty bucks will give you a badly printed paper copy. The other you can download into your paper manager and read right now. Guess which one almost everybody will use?
To be honest, as a kid I enjoyed chess and played with my friends right up to the point where you suddenly had to start memorizing openings and other canned sequences. At which point it felt more like a school subject than an escape from it.
Here is the number of legal positions: 6697231142888292128927 401888417065435099377 8064017873281031833769694562442854721810521 43260127743713971848488909701 11836283470468812827907149926502 347633
Why they chose to present it like that, instead of scientific notation, I'll never know but there it is.
I'm not quite clear how 6.697231142888292128 927401888417065435 099377806401787328 103183376969456244 285472181052143260 127743713971848488 909701118362834704 688128279071499265 02347633e151 is much of an improvement, to be honest.
Smart article yes, but it's still incredibly stupid to buy a lottery ticket.
Unless you think it's fun to play. Idle daydreaming about what you'd do if you won; the excitement as the numbers are called; the rollercoaster of emotion as you realize you may win - no you won't - oh but you did get a small price.
It's only stupid if you see it as an investment. See it as entertainment and it's no more dumb than paying to watch a movie.
It is ridiculous of course. It is also a common attitude among PI's toward their postdocs and students, especially in high-profile, high-pressure labs.
This letter from a PI to a worker made the rounds a few years ago. The PI claimed later it was a joke. It doesn't read like a joke, and the exact same attidude is not uncommon at all:
Automation changes the source of production from workers to machines. And that separates the source of production from the source of consumption.
To put it simply, robots produce wealth but does not consume it. Humans consume wealth, but (in this possible future) can no longer produce it. Robots have owners of course, but even if you ignore what happens to the majority of people, a few extremely wealthy people can not possibly make up for the consumption shortfall. Ten-thousand people with 10k each vastly outconsume (by necessity) a single person worth 100M.
So, if the entities making wealth and those using wealth become separate, you need a way to transfer wealth from one to the other. If not, you will see a slow-moving economic collapse, as lack of demand and cost-cutting automation drive each other down.
A basic income, generated from a tax on production (transaction tax, energy tax, direct tax on machinery) is one way, and has the benefit of being simple, straightforward and having low administrative overhead.
The time spent selecting questions, then answer them in a simple and understandable way is not free. Especially in a climate where even keeping a blog in your spare time is sometimes seen as a suspect frivolity that takes time from your research.
That said, I spend several years of my life helping to get rid of the Morse Code test for radio hams, so that smart folks like you could just take technical tests to get the license.
I'm currently assembling a Softrock Ensemble receiver just to play with SDR. I'm starting to become interested in more than passive receiving â" but a major part of my curiousity is about Morse, not voice. I can talk to anybody over the net after all, while Morse code communication feels like a very different kind of thing.
[...] and rather than cutting the least important program, they cut the most visible program, in an attempt to get their funding restored.
Honestly, though, a qestion-answer service for school children probably does rank among the least important programs for a research lab. I very much doubt this is part of their written remit (as opposed to communicate their actual research to the public), and the people spending time at work answering the questions certainly get zero professional recognition for it.
It does sound like a very nice, fun service. And I do agree that this kind of outreach is important. But if this is not part of what their funders want them to do, then it should come as no surprise if it's among the first things to go when money becomes tight.
You want this kind of thing to continue? Make sure there's funding (and paid time) earmarked for doing it. In fact, that may be a good idea in general: add a small fraction (.1% or even less) to any research grant over a certain size for general science outreach. If it's part of your funding, that also removes the career obstacles toward doing outreach we too often have now.
I'm talking about the silicon chips doing the things that our brain can do, such as designing the next intel chip.
The major stumbling block isn't processor speed or capacity. It's that we don't know how to architect such a system in the first place.
And if you think about it, a lot of the "smart" things we want to automate really don't need anything like human-level or human-like intelligence. A car with the smarts of a mouse would do great as an autonomous vehicle. Real mice manage to navigate around a much more difficult, unpredictable and dangerous environment, using a far more complex and tricky locomotion system, after all.
Lego is likely quicker to use and more easily accessible than creating the same from "real" mechanical parts. So not necessary, but quicker and easier - and within the zero budget they likely had for doing this.
Not quite what I'm saying. Your tools make some things easier, and other things harder. And what those things are will change depending on which tool you have on hand.
To take your kitchen analogy, if you have a blender/food processor it's easy to make things that need a lot of fine mincing or difficult blending. You _could_ still do it by hand with a kitchen knife, a bowl and a whisk, but as a practical matter you're less likely to even consider such recipes because of the time and effort required. Imperfect analogy, but it sort of points to what I want to say.
Back to photography, I have a DSLR, a 35mm compact and a medium-format rangefinder, all with the same field of view. And technically I can take the same shots and get the same picture with any one of them (modulo technical quality differences). Yet, the different way they handle nudges me to look for different kinds of situations and different subjects. In theory I _could_ take the same picture with any one of them. As a practical matter I could not.
Slashdot Mirror
I solder SMT components by hand as well. Don't even need a microscope; just head-mounted magnifier glasses is plenty. Make sure you have good light and plenty of flux and you're good to go.
But the problem is the board. Sure, if you have a finished design already, and you intend to actually use it in the future, then sending off for a finished PCB is good. But if it's just a hobby, and you're prototyping or just playing around to better understand a particular circuit, then spending a good chunk of money and weeks of time for a board is simply not feasible. You really want to set something up, try it, then tear it down and try the next idea.
With that said, I don't know that this is the answer either. Hand-drawn does not sound precise enough to handle SMT, and a whole separate device just making prototype boards sounds like too much money and space for a hobbyist. Perhaps the answer is desktop mills that become cheap and precise enough that you can use them to cut out boards from copper blanks along with other building tasks. At least that would not be a single-purpose gadget.
It's very inefficient to turn electricity into heat directly. If you wanted heating you'd be better off using a heat pump or other indirect means.
Suspension of business. All business. Until the line is connected.
No. A watch is a piece of jewellery you wear on your wrist. The only difference between a wristwatch on one hand and a pendant, a bracelet or a brooch on the other is that a watch is the only widely allowed jewellery (other than a wedding ring) for men. Of course, the intricate mechanics and technical craftmanship is an added appeal, though the actual function of telling time is just a bonus, not the main point.
And that explains why there are such a large number of watchmakers, and such a huge number of models; with jewellery, the last thing you want is to wear the same thing as everybody else.
It's not scratched, it's vintage :)
As a non-musician I'm curious: what is the problem of putting a metal case laptop on top of a piano? Scratches, or something more interesting happens?
Second a Happy Hacking Pro keyboard. I have the HHKB Professional JP and it's wonderful.
For citations central to your argument, sure, you need to track down the main papers. It's not that difficult - just look at what papers everybody else is citing. But most citations are just fulfilling the [citation needed] reqs for facts you use in your work. Any one of dozens, sometimes hundreds, of papers would easily fill in for that role.
You find two references about the same thing. As far as citing the fact you need they're essentially equivalent. One will take three weeks and thirty dollars - and half a day of arguing to make the lab pay those thirty dollars - to get, and half the time your thirty bucks will give you a badly printed paper copy. The other you can download into your paper manager and read right now. Guess which one almost everybody will use?
To be honest, as a kid I enjoyed chess and played with my friends right up to the point where you suddenly had to start memorizing openings and other canned sequences. At which point it felt more like a school subject than an escape from it.
I might just be lazy, and 151 is a reasonable-size prime number :)
How can you know I didn't just guess?
I'm not quite clear how 6.697231142888292128 927401888417065435 099377806401787328 103183376969456244 285472181052143260 127743713971848488 909701118362834704 688128279071499265 02347633e151 is much of an improvement, to be honest.
Unless you think it's fun to play. Idle daydreaming about what you'd do if you won; the excitement as the numbers are called; the rollercoaster of emotion as you realize you may win - no you won't - oh but you did get a small price.
It's only stupid if you see it as an investment. See it as entertainment and it's no more dumb than paying to watch a movie.
It is ridiculous of course. It is also a common attitude among PI's toward their postdocs and students, especially in high-profile, high-pressure labs.
This letter from a PI to a worker made the rounds a few years ago. The PI claimed later it was a joke. It doesn't read like a joke, and the exact same attidude is not uncommon at all:
http://www.chemistry-blog.com/...
Automation changes the source of production from workers to machines. And that separates the source of production from the source of consumption.
To put it simply, robots produce wealth but does not consume it. Humans consume wealth, but (in this possible future) can no longer produce it. Robots have owners of course, but even if you ignore what happens to the majority of people, a few extremely wealthy people can not possibly make up for the consumption shortfall. Ten-thousand people with 10k each vastly outconsume (by necessity) a single person worth 100M.
So, if the entities making wealth and those using wealth become separate, you need a way to transfer wealth from one to the other. If not, you will see a slow-moving economic collapse, as lack of demand and cost-cutting automation drive each other down.
A basic income, generated from a tax on production (transaction tax, energy tax, direct tax on machinery) is one way, and has the benefit of being simple, straightforward and having low administrative overhead.
The time spent selecting questions, then answer them in a simple and understandable way is not free. Especially in a climate where even keeping a blog in your spare time is sometimes seen as a suspect frivolity that takes time from your research.
I'm currently assembling a Softrock Ensemble receiver just to play with SDR. I'm starting to become interested in more than passive receiving â" but a major part of my curiousity is about Morse, not voice. I can talk to anybody over the net after all, while Morse code communication feels like a very different kind of thing.
Honestly, though, a qestion-answer service for school children probably does rank among the least important programs for a research lab. I very much doubt this is part of their written remit (as opposed to communicate their actual research to the public), and the people spending time at work answering the questions certainly get zero professional recognition for it.
It does sound like a very nice, fun service. And I do agree that this kind of outreach is important. But if this is not part of what their funders want them to do, then it should come as no surprise if it's among the first things to go when money becomes tight.
You want this kind of thing to continue? Make sure there's funding (and paid time) earmarked for doing it. In fact, that may be a good idea in general: add a small fraction (.1% or even less) to any research grant over a certain size for general science outreach. If it's part of your funding, that also removes the career obstacles toward doing outreach we too often have now.
Sing your code. Problem solved.
So, "assert(Ieiei == True)"
becomes
"Aaaand IIIIIIIIIIeeeeiiiiiiieeeeiiii wiiiiilllll aaaalways be Ttrrrruuuuuuueeeeeeeee"
The major stumbling block isn't processor speed or capacity. It's that we don't know how to architect such a system in the first place.
And if you think about it, a lot of the "smart" things we want to automate really don't need anything like human-level or human-like intelligence. A car with the smarts of a mouse would do great as an autonomous vehicle. Real mice manage to navigate around a much more difficult, unpredictable and dangerous environment, using a far more complex and tricky locomotion system, after all.
" 1 + 3 * 4 is still parsed as 1 + (3 * 4), but 1+3 * 4 is parsed as (1+3) * 4"
What. The. Fuck?
It's not, actually. It's a portmanteau.
Lego is likely quicker to use and more easily accessible than creating the same from "real" mechanical parts. So not necessary, but quicker and easier - and within the zero budget they likely had for doing this.
Not quite what I'm saying. Your tools make some things easier, and other things harder. And what those things are will change depending on which tool you have on hand.
To take your kitchen analogy, if you have a blender/food processor it's easy to make things that need a lot of fine mincing or difficult blending. You _could_ still do it by hand with a kitchen knife, a bowl and a whisk, but as a practical matter you're less likely to even consider such recipes because of the time and effort required. Imperfect analogy, but it sort of points to what I want to say.
Back to photography, I have a DSLR, a 35mm compact and a medium-format rangefinder, all with the same field of view. And technically I can take the same shots and get the same picture with any one of them (modulo technical quality differences). Yet, the different way they handle nudges me to look for different kinds of situations and different subjects. In theory I _could_ take the same picture with any one of them. As a practical matter I could not.