In the 80's I was altering prewritten games in BASIC on the TRS-80 as well as the Apple ii.
We were given working, proofread code on paper, initially, then a starting program with the desired alterations and what the effects should be, then a starting program and the desired effects and we had to alter the code ourselves.
There were dozens of games that were used. I am sure copies of these old workbooks and examples are available somewhere online. It would be a good stepping off point for making something nicer in modern languages.
Coax is horrible and near worthless as it is mostly non-recyclable plastics, foil and plated aluminum - no solid copper. My scrap yard will take it, but will not pay for it even if I bring in over 100 pounds of the stuff. I dug out 10 different phone and TV coax runs from my lawn a few years ago, pulling out every possible piece of wire just to be told I wasted my time. It was at least satisfying to tie the cable to the truck hitch and slowly drive pulling the cable out of the ground!
Abandon in place is best if it is not in the way. Remove easily removed sections that are drilled through walls and floors fully exposed, but hidden stuff just leave alone. External wall piercings are best filled with exterior caulk after removing the wire. Next best is cut the wire to the closest anchor point and leave it in the wall so a later installer can easily locate the hole and reuse the hole when replacing the wire.
TV aerial antenna to hide in the attic, or put onto a pole outside, since you may want local channels, and will need some type of connection so reusing the coax for this application is fairly easy.
Fab up a J-pole (or large dipole if that is what your receiver requires) for radio from some copper plumbing parts, or from some leftover coax. I get amazing reception with my J-pole with almost every valid frequency having a clear station on my radio. Not bad for some plumbing parts and a bit of wire. I made a J-pole from a piece of network cable before the plumbing parts and it was not nearly as good as 1/2 inch pipe, but was a superior antenna compared to the original stock antenna.
So the computer produces a list of possible diagnosis. This list I understand is called a "differential diagnosis" and may have as few as 2 or 3 items or as many as several hundred.
I would expect that this diagnosis list, as well as a management plan, to be then put in the hands of a human. After a series of tests I would expect the AI to be consulted again if necessary.
In today's world and probably the near future, say the next decade, I doubt that medicine will become "autodoc" "robotic physician" the holographic "Doctor" or some "magic cryokit" There will be a human with a powerful tool to aid in diagnosis of the patient.
Now, what will happen in 50 years, that is to be seen.
I am working my way through Terry Prachet's Diskworld series. It has been quite some time since I read most of them.
If you want some fun the "Don't tell my parents I am a super villain" series by Richard Roberts is a quick funny series more directed towards middle school and high school age readers.
$50 dollar knife by Wayne Goddard since....well... Making knives
Adding in some classic literature such as Moby Dick (Herman Melville) and Jules Verne 20000 leagues under the sea and Journey to the center of the earth (both the counterfeit and translation) many of which are free on Kindle I have been reading quite a bit lately.
Frequently I get sensational fluff. OOO Wow! - not all that helpful unless it is a "show off" type thread.
Frequently I get a person who won't answer anything ask for more information then let others follow up. - Sometimes this actually qualifies as very helpful, but mostly not so much.
Some sites I frequent are more about hands on things like building model airplanes (RC and CL) so I'll get a a vast number of often CONTRADICTORY means to achieve the same goal. This can be very hard to filter out the signal from the noise because different ways are not necessarily wrong ways but mutually exclusive sometimes.
5 unhelpful to 1 good response is very good I would say. If that is instead 5 flame bait to 1 serious then that is pretty crappy response. I expect less than 1 in 10 potential flame bait responses or I generally try to go elsewhere as I don't need abuse while online.
I have WIRED landlines in my house, not just cordless. Next to my bed and in the kitchen. I have the cell phone. I have the battery packs, chargers, and all that.
Pager, no. Never again.
The wired phones were installed the day after the cell phone was dead, and the cordless phone too. A concerned coworker ended up showing up with the cops at 3am...
As previously mentioned fencing lessons (or any martial art really) slide rule, but get something nicer than a "student" model
Add in Arduino or some other microcontroller that has a practical interface. Get the development kit.
Model aviation is a blast. Free flight, control line, remote control, drones, rocketry, they are all good and I recommend all of them. I find control line most satisfying, but have flown all of these. I fly RC about as much as control line. I currently do not do rockets but this will probably change again.
(Remember that balsa can be glued really well with common school glue, just an annoyingly long drying time, with performance equal to expensive stinky glues.)
Applied ballistics are pretty fun. A small trebuchet set up to launch tennis balls, or golf balls, can make for many afternoons of fun. Back up with martial arts, firearms, air rifles, and archery also provide quite a bit of satisfaction.
Sit down and design a project - THEN GO DO IT TOGETHER. Time is probably the most valuable gift you can give your child, so whatever you choose to get, make it something you can both participate in.
My address is off by more than 1/4 mile in gps, google maps, google earth, and mapquest. Truly awful.
Getting regular deliveries is sometimes a problem especially since I am on a road named with a SOUTH at the end and the same road exists in my zipcode as a NORTH! My house number exists on the north too, although there is no structure there.
Now a computer is going to get this right? I am slightly skeptical.
I know an old mainframe tech who would "clip a resistor" to "upgrade" a system from one clock speed to a faster speed. This was also in the days when 1K of RAM was a rather sizable card.
Now if you have a HiTech Flash 4 RC radio, an early computer radio in 72mhz, one can "upgrade" to a Flash 5 by adding a couple switches, and jumping certain pads on the board. The firmware is already loaded.
For an apartment you are somewhat limited. Wall hangings made of heavy fabric are helpful. You can add inexpensive moving blankets behind the decorative layer to aid in sound control.
For your own house added insulation is really effective. Insulate the exterior walls, blown in is pretty effective.
If you really need quiet ripping out the interior walls and putting in isolation walls with fiberglass or cotton batting will be much much more effective, both as insulation and soundproofing. You only need to treat the exterior wall although doing select interior walls will provide added privacy as well.
Replace your old windows with high quality high R value, multi pane windows properly installed.
Become friends with the dog and the neighbors. Yappy dogs yap less at people they know.
I don't have much need for color, and not much need for printing at all. Typically I print about 10 pages a month. With an inkjet printer I would have a cartridge last one or two months, so 10-20 pages, then the cartridge would be dry. Dried out dry. This was on two different printers, an HP (horrid) and a Cannon.
I bought a Brother laser printer and have been on the same toner cartridge for over a year. OK, the refills are expensive, nearly $100. The ink cartridges were almost $60, because it would not let one just replace the BLACK... I still see it as having saved the cost of the printer over buying ink every month!
When I need color, which is for presentations, I have them professionally printed. I have yet to spend $60 on a stack of color printouts for a single presentation.
Naturally your mileage may vary much more than mine has.
A smartphone and a blue tooth keyboard is fully capable of what you ask, as long as the videos and websites are capable. The headache will be on your end with supporting several different word processors, as the better ones are not free, and there are several respectable free choices including Google Docs.
So what does this offer? The middle class American child already has a smartphone, or their parents do. Pretty high power devices are also available as the "low end" option, and older devices are capable so a castoff or hand-me-down phone that is in good shape will do the job quite well (yes, batteries need replaced about every 2 years). All smart phones have wifi access without having phone service turned on. This means that they can use wifi at the coffee shop or use data on their parents' devices for the actual submission.
Bluetooth keyboards start at about $25. A prepaid smartphone is about $50 for the device. Yes, this operates on the assumption that the student has access to a good smartphone (with or without service), and can get wifi access via local businesses.
Try this before you expect your students to use it, they will expect you to support them technically.
Car camping? Sure! RV? No problem! Live-aboard size boat? Why not?
Engine+battery means near unlimited power. If you are within range of cellular then a cellular booster on the roof (not cheap) will get you pretty good range. Basically makes 1 unreliable bar into a usable signal.
Not cheap at $600 for a Shakespeare cellular booster, but not any more than any other nice piece of technology. Less expensive than a nice laptop or tablet. Check Westmarine.com
Going a little farther with the RV or boat? HAM it up with your radio license. Packet radio is real, and useful. I have only information handed to me from others who use it, there is a lot of information available.
Hiking? Well Ham Radio sets are now quite portable. There are portable handsets that weigh less than a pound capable of packet radio.
Hiking in an area with cell signal? There are a lot of these kind of areas around. Pack some lightweight Lipo batteries, such as from model aircraft, and a power converter to USB, available for about $10. (check Hobby King USB charging adapter)
With old cell phones external high gain antennas were a real thing. Aiming a nice directional antenna at a tower on the horizon (5-10 mile away) would make a phone go from no signal to full signal as long as the aim was held. I am unsure if this type of thing exists for modern phones.
Don't discount modem over satellite phone. Yea, I wouldn't want to go there either.
So having to walk with equipment for making these calls and having internet access? I wouldn't want to though it can be done. Camping with a car, boat or RV, not a problem
So true. My phone has a better speakerphone than my new Silverado. The mapping is better than the built in nav system, AND I can set up my route from the comfort of my armchair or dining room table where I have all the written information NOT in my lap. Onstar is less than stellar, although having the added safety of dispatch service is rather nice to think about (never have needed it, hope it stays that way).
Heck a nice chassis, reliable drive line, and adequate suspension are all I *NEED* in a vehicle. Radio optional. OK, I like a radio, but I don't need 5 billion features, just make it sound good and give me a half a dozen preset equalizer settings *on one button* so I don't have to spend 20 minutes fiddling when I change stations.
This is the first time I have my own brand new vehicle that I got to choose. Huge step up from the used cars and beaters I have driven the rest of my life.
True modular design is not necessary. Simply making it come apart in small enough pieces for two people to take through a door is all that is needed. Some bracing on the underside of mating panels that can be bolted together rigidly with probably 4 or 5 more bolts than necessary.
Some thoughts as to layout around the breaks - a lot can be done to make the breaks come apart cleanly without having to redo the entire section of landscaping use stiff plastic to make sure the "fault lines" are going to divide nicely. use flocking - redoing a small area of flocking is pretty easy... messy but easy. use fabric over the base material then decorate the fabric. Make sure the fabric has a seam that can peel near the mating edges have the town roads split. The split will be near invisible if a "naturally straight" feature is part of the edge, such as a car road, track bed, or building.
Plan for grade plan for access with hands. Use tunnels, building and other features to make "trap doors" so there are reaching holes that allow access to the center of the board.
Pre-plan the whole diorama. If you have access to CAD use it. Have poster printouts made to become templates that can transfer information quickly and easily
Make sure there is wiring paths, plan these to be accessible from underneath so use conduit, loom, or other means to organize the many, many wires that inevitably happen.
I do a small Christmas layout most years using O27 Lionel. The track all comes up, and the boards get put away in the basement. Even though this is super simple and dead flat the failures are mind boggling at times.
Decent quality disposable injection molded plastic stethoscopes are available for less than $1, packaged sterile, make part of the need here difficult to accept. I am sure the sound quality on a disposable stethoscope is not even similar to a Littmann cardio III.
I am surprised that the git appears to only offer molds for making silicone ear pieces. I am not going to deny that the silicone earpiece is likely superior both for comfort and for ambient noise elimination. It seems like having additions options available would be important.
If these are being printed in a resource poor area a set of ear tubes that have ball ends built directly onto them so added material resources of liquid silicone is not necessary would seem to be an essential! Of course several diameters would be required since not all ears are the same size. Yes, this will prove to be a duplication of parts, but the cost of having an alternate design available is minimal, especially if it means that the device is more readily useable.
Availability of the diaphragm plastic is happily not essential as a stethoscope without a diaphragm will still perform better than an ear pressed to the patient.
A noble project. Stethoscopes are used for listening to the heart and lungs, the abdomen for digestion/gas sounds, taking blood pressure, and likely more.
Most of the world uses Windows, unless they use Mac. Also many employers use Adobe. It would be of benefit to NOT eliminate Windows and Mac entirely. Maintain a class size lab of these different platforms, while switching everything else to Linux and Linux based software.
Gonna take a lot longer than 50 years to get robotics to replace straight/bent stick laprascopy. Payers (Medicare, Medicaid) have a strong preference for the older technology - to the point of dropping robotic certified physicians!
It also turns out that the advances in ROBOTIC surgery have lead to advances in Laprascopic surgery! Laprascopic surgery has more trained surgeons (effectively ALL of them), is part of regular surgeon training, has typically shorter anesthesia time (although this gap is closing), and is not going away anytime soon. Open surgery is also going nowhere because robotic cases, like laprascopic cases, must have a fail-safe option of open procedures.
Laprascopic procedures are faster, use cheaper instrumentation, and the surgeon population is much better trained that in robotic surgery.
Effective robotic surgeons ONLY do robotic surgery. They also do not do procedures that are already optimized for existing procedures, such as gall bladder and appendicitis.
Robotic surgery is just another tool in the kit. The old tools will not be thrown out because of a shiny new tool. Robotic surgery will likely remain in the realm of specialists and sub-specialists for a long time
Well, yes that is an option. Problem with reducing the mass of semi-automatic handguns is many of the parts that are held are doing double duty for the user interface (grip, magazine holder). By the time you strip it down much of it needs to be custom fabricated. Suddenly it is no longer an off-the-shelf build. Sights are very little weight. Maybe stripping a rifle would get the results you are indicating.
The point is have you looked at quadcopter control boards recently? Every control board has active stabilization, and can be set to a mode that is very stable. This will hold level fairly well. Add GPS and it will hold position in all axis. Add a FPV camera and use a bore laser to aim, simply put a mark on the monitor on the pilot/shooter's end and it will be good for 25 feet range without second thought, probably much longer range but that would require test firing. Add a tilt servo if desired otherwise the firing line is locked in, and 5 or 10 degrees of up/down adjustment would make aiming potentially easier.
All the electronics are off the shelf to do this There is nothing special needed, no special programming skills. No electronic wizardry other than using a soldering iron, and that can be avoided even by choosing components with connectors already installed. _ALL_ the fabrication can be done with a saw and drill, even the gun rest and (optional) tilt mechanism. More robust material than hardware store square dowel would be needed, so aluminum, fiberglass, or carbon fiber square tubing with PCB, fiberglass, or CF sheet, and a couple boxes of nuts and bolts. These are all easy to get materials.
The hardest thing with I see with this build is keeping the machine close to balanced AND having the thrust line of recoil pass through the center of gravity. Both are trivial design problems.
I would not try this myself, well, maybe for paintball but that seems silly.
As a proof of concept, someone building this kind of machine, I am still surprised this was not seen a few years ago.
This might half the time required. You say you have a VM already on the laptop. Get a handful of external ethernet adapters. I think the best number will be in the neighborhood of 4, but learn with 2.
Run the VM and have one adapter present in each VM. Connect to device inside the pump. Start the next VM. etc. This is still a 2-node network, each instance will have a "fail safe" in an error will stop the one instance. With a typical gas station having 2 double pumps per island having 4 connections means one island at a time. 2 connections means 1 double pump at a time.
Best part is the headache is all in the VM working properly, and should be transparent to the software and to the pump. I am sure you have a training system to practice on before taking this live to the field.
I agree. I know a physician who laments taking a mere HOUR to dictate the day's procedures, with the paper charting completed at time of visit. EMR takes 10x longer according to this physician.
I just want a middle button! My new M525 functions, and has a wheel button, but pushing the button so it doesn't register rotation is a pain since the rotation sensor has very fine graduations. It also has left and right push on the wheel.
Even if the software would create an increased, adjustable "dead spot" of N clicks prior to action on the wheel might be what is needed to make it work to my needs.
I purchased one of those induction hot-plates to try induction out before buying a (rather expensive) range top
Induction is a surprising pain in the a$$. Expensive (you knew that though) and full of safety interlocks so the only cookware you might own that works is the cast iron bacon skillet! In order for the interlock to allow operation a magnet must stick to the pan bottom, which is not the case for most stainless steel (yes, some flavors of stainless a magnet sticks to, but not what they typically use to make cookware) Copper or aluminum clad are out too. No glass, ceramic, or aluminum pots and pans either!
Resistance heating is more versatile than induction.
Since I live in an all-electric house, I would rather not have propane installed. The option is not ruled out completely since I like cooking on gas, but my wife prefers the perceived safety of not having gas lines. (She lost a cousin to a propane gas explosion) In the mean time I rebuilt the 1970's range top with new burners since I need a counter top to change the cook top! The counter is a drop in vs slide in headache. I have a slide in, and only drop in cook tops can be purchased currently.
Slashdot Mirror
In the 80's I was altering prewritten games in BASIC on the TRS-80 as well as the Apple ii.
We were given working, proofread code on paper, initially, then a starting program with the desired alterations and what the effects should be, then a starting program and the desired effects and we had to alter the code ourselves.
There were dozens of games that were used. I am sure copies of these old workbooks and examples are available somewhere online. It would be a good stepping off point for making something nicer in modern languages.
Coax is horrible and near worthless as it is mostly non-recyclable plastics, foil and plated aluminum - no solid copper. My scrap yard will take it, but will not pay for it even if I bring in over 100 pounds of the stuff. I dug out 10 different phone and TV coax runs from my lawn a few years ago, pulling out every possible piece of wire just to be told I wasted my time. It was at least satisfying to tie the cable to the truck hitch and slowly drive pulling the cable out of the ground!
Abandon in place is best if it is not in the way. Remove easily removed sections that are drilled through walls and floors fully exposed, but hidden stuff just leave alone. External wall piercings are best filled with exterior caulk after removing the wire. Next best is cut the wire to the closest anchor point and leave it in the wall so a later installer can easily locate the hole and reuse the hole when replacing the wire.
TV aerial antenna to hide in the attic, or put onto a pole outside, since you may want local channels, and will need some type of connection so reusing the coax for this application is fairly easy.
Fab up a J-pole (or large dipole if that is what your receiver requires) for radio from some copper plumbing parts, or from some leftover coax. I get amazing reception with my J-pole with almost every valid frequency having a clear station on my radio. Not bad for some plumbing parts and a bit of wire. I made a J-pole from a piece of network cable before the plumbing parts and it was not nearly as good as 1/2 inch pipe, but was a superior antenna compared to the original stock antenna.
Phil
So the computer produces a list of possible diagnosis. This list I understand is called a "differential diagnosis" and may have as few as 2 or 3 items or as many as several hundred.
I would expect that this diagnosis list, as well as a management plan, to be then put in the hands of a human. After a series of tests I would expect the AI to be consulted again if necessary.
In today's world and probably the near future, say the next decade, I doubt that medicine will become "autodoc" "robotic physician" the holographic "Doctor" or some "magic cryokit" There will be a human with a powerful tool to aid in diagnosis of the patient.
Now, what will happen in 50 years, that is to be seen.
Phil
I am working my way through Terry Prachet's Diskworld series. It has been quite some time since I read most of them.
If you want some fun the "Don't tell my parents I am a super villain" series by Richard Roberts is a quick funny series more directed towards middle school and high school age readers.
$50 dollar knife by Wayne Goddard since ....well... Making knives
Adding in some classic literature such as Moby Dick (Herman Melville) and Jules Verne 20000 leagues under the sea and Journey to the center of the earth (both the counterfeit and translation) many of which are free on Kindle I have been reading quite a bit lately.
Phil
Frequently I get sensational fluff. OOO Wow! - not all that helpful unless it is a "show off" type thread.
Frequently I get a person who won't answer anything ask for more information then let others follow up. - Sometimes this actually qualifies as very helpful, but mostly not so much.
Some sites I frequent are more about hands on things like building model airplanes (RC and CL) so I'll get a a vast number of often CONTRADICTORY means to achieve the same goal. This can be very hard to filter out the signal from the noise because different ways are not necessarily wrong ways but mutually exclusive sometimes.
5 unhelpful to 1 good response is very good I would say. If that is instead 5 flame bait to 1 serious then that is pretty crappy response. I expect less than 1 in 10 potential flame bait responses or I generally try to go elsewhere as I don't need abuse while online.
Phil
I have WIRED landlines in my house, not just cordless. Next to my bed and in the kitchen. I have the cell phone. I have the battery packs, chargers, and all that.
Pager, no. Never again.
The wired phones were installed the day after the cell phone was dead, and the cordless phone too. A concerned coworker ended up showing up with the cops at 3am...
As previously mentioned
fencing lessons (or any martial art really)
slide rule, but get something nicer than a "student" model
Add in Arduino or some other microcontroller that has a practical interface. Get the development kit.
Model aviation is a blast. Free flight, control line, remote control, drones, rocketry, they are all good and I recommend all of them. I find control line most satisfying, but have flown all of these. I fly RC about as much as control line. I currently do not do rockets but this will probably change again.
(Remember that balsa can be glued really well with common school glue, just an annoyingly long drying time, with performance equal to expensive stinky glues.)
Applied ballistics are pretty fun. A small trebuchet set up to launch tennis balls, or golf balls, can make for many afternoons of fun. Back up with martial arts, firearms, air rifles, and archery also provide quite a bit of satisfaction.
Sit down and design a project - THEN GO DO IT TOGETHER. Time is probably the most valuable gift you can give your child, so whatever you choose to get, make it something you can both participate in.
Phil
My address is off by more than 1/4 mile in gps, google maps, google earth, and mapquest. Truly awful.
Getting regular deliveries is sometimes a problem especially since I am on a road named with a SOUTH at the end and the same road exists in my zipcode as a NORTH! My house number exists on the north too, although there is no structure there.
Now a computer is going to get this right? I am slightly skeptical.
Phil
I know an old mainframe tech who would "clip a resistor" to "upgrade" a system from one clock speed to a faster speed. This was also in the days when 1K of RAM was a rather sizable card.
Now if you have a HiTech Flash 4 RC radio, an early computer radio in 72mhz, one can "upgrade" to a Flash 5 by adding a couple switches, and jumping certain pads on the board. The firmware is already loaded.
Phil
For an apartment you are somewhat limited. Wall hangings made of heavy fabric are helpful. You can add inexpensive moving blankets behind the decorative layer to aid in sound control.
For your own house added insulation is really effective. Insulate the exterior walls, blown in is pretty effective.
If you really need quiet ripping out the interior walls and putting in isolation walls with fiberglass or cotton batting will be much much more effective, both as insulation and soundproofing. You only need to treat the exterior wall although doing select interior walls will provide added privacy as well.
Replace your old windows with high quality high R value, multi pane windows properly installed.
Become friends with the dog and the neighbors. Yappy dogs yap less at people they know.
Phil
I don't have much need for color, and not much need for printing at all. Typically I print about 10 pages a month. With an inkjet printer I would have a cartridge last one or two months, so 10-20 pages, then the cartridge would be dry. Dried out dry. This was on two different printers, an HP (horrid) and a Cannon.
I bought a Brother laser printer and have been on the same toner cartridge for over a year. OK, the refills are expensive, nearly $100. The ink cartridges were almost $60, because it would not let one just replace the BLACK... I still see it as having saved the cost of the printer over buying ink every month!
When I need color, which is for presentations, I have them professionally printed. I have yet to spend $60 on a stack of color printouts for a single presentation.
Naturally your mileage may vary much more than mine has.
A smartphone and a blue tooth keyboard is fully capable of what you ask, as long as the videos and websites are capable. The headache will be on your end with supporting several different word processors, as the better ones are not free, and there are several respectable free choices including Google Docs.
So what does this offer? The middle class American child already has a smartphone, or their parents do. Pretty high power devices are also available as the "low end" option, and older devices are capable so a castoff or hand-me-down phone that is in good shape will do the job quite well (yes, batteries need replaced about every 2 years). All smart phones have wifi access without having phone service turned on. This means that they can use wifi at the coffee shop or use data on their parents' devices for the actual submission.
Bluetooth keyboards start at about $25.
A prepaid smartphone is about $50 for the device.
Yes, this operates on the assumption that the student has access to a good smartphone (with or without service), and can get wifi access via local businesses.
Try this before you expect your students to use it, they will expect you to support them technically.
Car camping? Sure! RV? No problem! Live-aboard size boat? Why not?
Engine+battery means near unlimited power. If you are within range of cellular then a cellular booster on the roof (not cheap) will get you pretty good range. Basically makes 1 unreliable bar into a usable signal.
Not cheap at $600 for a Shakespeare cellular booster, but not any more than any other nice piece of technology. Less expensive than a nice laptop or tablet. Check Westmarine.com
Going a little farther with the RV or boat? HAM it up with your radio license. Packet radio is real, and useful. I have only information handed to me from others who use it, there is a lot of information available.
Hiking? Well Ham Radio sets are now quite portable. There are portable handsets that weigh less than a pound capable of packet radio.
Hiking in an area with cell signal? There are a lot of these kind of areas around. Pack some lightweight Lipo batteries, such as from model aircraft, and a power converter to USB, available for about $10. (check Hobby King USB charging adapter)
With old cell phones external high gain antennas were a real thing. Aiming a nice directional antenna at a tower on the horizon (5-10 mile away) would make a phone go from no signal to full signal as long as the aim was held. I am unsure if this type of thing exists for modern phones.
Don't discount modem over satellite phone. Yea, I wouldn't want to go there either.
So having to walk with equipment for making these calls and having internet access? I wouldn't want to though it can be done. Camping with a car, boat or RV, not a problem
Phil
So true. My phone has a better speakerphone than my new Silverado. The mapping is better than the built in nav system, AND I can set up my route from the comfort of my armchair or dining room table where I have all the written information NOT in my lap. Onstar is less than stellar, although having the added safety of dispatch service is rather nice to think about (never have needed it, hope it stays that way).
Heck a nice chassis, reliable drive line, and adequate suspension are all I *NEED* in a vehicle. Radio optional. OK, I like a radio, but I don't need 5 billion features, just make it sound good and give me a half a dozen preset equalizer settings *on one button* so I don't have to spend 20 minutes fiddling when I change stations.
This is the first time I have my own brand new vehicle that I got to choose. Huge step up from the used cars and beaters I have driven the rest of my life.
Phil
True modular design is not necessary. Simply making it come apart in small enough pieces for two people to take through a door is all that is needed. Some bracing on the underside of mating panels that can be bolted together rigidly with probably 4 or 5 more bolts than necessary.
Some thoughts as to layout around the breaks - a lot can be done to make the breaks come apart cleanly without having to redo the entire section of landscaping
use stiff plastic to make sure the "fault lines" are going to divide nicely.
use flocking - redoing a small area of flocking is pretty easy... messy but easy.
use fabric over the base material then decorate the fabric. Make sure the fabric has a seam that can peel near the mating edges
have the town roads split. The split will be near invisible if a "naturally straight" feature is part of the edge, such as a car road, track bed, or building.
Plan for grade plan for access with hands. Use tunnels, building and other features to make "trap doors" so there are reaching holes that allow access to the center of the board.
Pre-plan the whole diorama. If you have access to CAD use it. Have poster printouts made to become templates that can transfer information quickly and easily
Make sure there is wiring paths, plan these to be accessible from underneath so use conduit, loom, or other means to organize the many, many wires that inevitably happen.
I do a small Christmas layout most years using O27 Lionel. The track all comes up, and the boards get put away in the basement. Even though this is super simple and dead flat the failures are mind boggling at times.
Phil
Decent quality disposable injection molded plastic stethoscopes are available for less than $1, packaged sterile, make part of the need here difficult to accept. I am sure the sound quality on a disposable stethoscope is not even similar to a Littmann cardio III.
I am surprised that the git appears to only offer molds for making silicone ear pieces. I am not going to deny that the silicone earpiece is likely superior both for comfort and for ambient noise elimination. It seems like having additions options available would be important.
If these are being printed in a resource poor area a set of ear tubes that have ball ends built directly onto them so added material resources of liquid silicone is not necessary would seem to be an essential! Of course several diameters would be required since not all ears are the same size. Yes, this will prove to be a duplication of parts, but the cost of having an alternate design available is minimal, especially if it means that the device is more readily useable.
Availability of the diaphragm plastic is happily not essential as a stethoscope without a diaphragm will still perform better than an ear pressed to the patient.
A noble project. Stethoscopes are used for listening to the heart and lungs, the abdomen for digestion/gas sounds, taking blood pressure, and likely more.
Phil
Most of the world uses Windows, unless they use Mac. Also many employers use Adobe. It would be of benefit to NOT eliminate Windows and Mac entirely. Maintain a class size lab of these different platforms, while switching everything else to Linux and Linux based software.
Gonna take a lot longer than 50 years to get robotics to replace straight/bent stick laprascopy. Payers (Medicare, Medicaid) have a strong preference for the older technology - to the point of dropping robotic certified physicians!
It also turns out that the advances in ROBOTIC surgery have lead to advances in Laprascopic surgery! Laprascopic surgery has more trained surgeons (effectively ALL of them), is part of regular surgeon training, has typically shorter anesthesia time (although this gap is closing), and is not going away anytime soon. Open surgery is also going nowhere because robotic cases, like laprascopic cases, must have a fail-safe option of open procedures.
Laprascopic procedures are faster, use cheaper instrumentation, and the surgeon population is much better trained that in robotic surgery.
Effective robotic surgeons ONLY do robotic surgery. They also do not do procedures that are already optimized for existing procedures, such as gall bladder and appendicitis.
Robotic surgery is just another tool in the kit. The old tools will not be thrown out because of a shiny new tool. Robotic surgery will likely remain in the realm of specialists and sub-specialists for a long time
Well, yes that is an option. Problem with reducing the mass of semi-automatic handguns is many of the parts that are held are doing double duty for the user interface (grip, magazine holder). By the time you strip it down much of it needs to be custom fabricated. Suddenly it is no longer an off-the-shelf build. Sights are very little weight. Maybe stripping a rifle would get the results you are indicating.
The point is have you looked at quadcopter control boards recently? Every control board has active stabilization, and can be set to a mode that is very stable. This will hold level fairly well. Add GPS and it will hold position in all axis. Add a FPV camera and use a bore laser to aim, simply put a mark on the monitor on the pilot/shooter's end and it will be good for 25 feet range without second thought, probably much longer range but that would require test firing. Add a tilt servo if desired otherwise the firing line is locked in, and 5 or 10 degrees of up/down adjustment would make aiming potentially easier.
All the electronics are off the shelf to do this There is nothing special needed, no special programming skills. No electronic wizardry other than using a soldering iron, and that can be avoided even by choosing components with connectors already installed. _ALL_ the fabrication can be done with a saw and drill, even the gun rest and (optional) tilt mechanism. More robust material than hardware store square dowel would be needed, so aluminum, fiberglass, or carbon fiber square tubing with PCB, fiberglass, or CF sheet, and a couple boxes of nuts and bolts. These are all easy to get materials.
The hardest thing with I see with this build is keeping the machine close to balanced AND having the thrust line of recoil pass through the center of gravity. Both are trivial design problems.
I would not try this myself, well, maybe for paintball but that seems silly.
As a proof of concept, someone building this kind of machine, I am still surprised this was not seen a few years ago.
I am surprised it took this long for a video that looks like it is not CGI, showing reasonable mostly off-the-shelf hardware demonstrating a firearm.
I am not surprised by anything in the video.
This might half the time required. You say you have a VM already on the laptop. Get a handful of external ethernet adapters. I think the best number will be in the neighborhood of 4, but learn with 2.
Run the VM and have one adapter present in each VM. Connect to device inside the pump. Start the next VM. etc. This is still a 2-node network, each instance will have a "fail safe" in an error will stop the one instance. With a typical gas station having 2 double pumps per island having 4 connections means one island at a time. 2 connections means 1 double pump at a time.
Best part is the headache is all in the VM working properly, and should be transparent to the software and to the pump. I am sure you have a training system to practice on before taking this live to the field.
I agree. I know a physician who laments taking a mere HOUR to dictate the day's procedures, with the paper charting completed at time of visit. EMR takes 10x longer according to this physician.
I just want a middle button! My new M525 functions, and has a wheel button, but pushing the button so it doesn't register rotation is a pain since the rotation sensor has very fine graduations. It also has left and right push on the wheel.
Even if the software would create an increased, adjustable "dead spot" of N clicks prior to action on the wheel might be what is needed to make it work to my needs.
Phil
I purchased one of those induction hot-plates to try induction out before buying a (rather expensive) range top
Induction is a surprising pain in the a$$. Expensive (you knew that though) and full of safety interlocks so the only cookware you might own that works is the cast iron bacon skillet! In order for the interlock to allow operation a magnet must stick to the pan bottom, which is not the case for most stainless steel (yes, some flavors of stainless a magnet sticks to, but not what they typically use to make cookware) Copper or aluminum clad are out too. No glass, ceramic, or aluminum pots and pans either!
Resistance heating is more versatile than induction.
Since I live in an all-electric house, I would rather not have propane installed. The option is not ruled out completely since I like cooking on gas, but my wife prefers the perceived safety of not having gas lines. (She lost a cousin to a propane gas explosion) In the mean time I rebuilt the 1970's range top with new burners since I need a counter top to change the cook top! The counter is a drop in vs slide in headache. I have a slide in, and only drop in cook tops can be purchased currently.
Phil