tingilinde

creativity and the wandering mind

Showers, walks and other actives to spar creativity.

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“How many things can you do as successfully in the shower as you can while you’re at your desk?” he said.

But those spontaneous thoughts in the shower had another advantage: They were more likely to be “aha” experiences — modern Archimedes-in-the-bathtub Eureka moments — that overcame a creative impasse.

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looking at a 1977 airspeed indicator

It gets the Ken Shirriff treatment.

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How does a vintage airspeed indicator work? CuriousMarc picked one up for a project, but it didn't have any documentation, so I reverse-engineered it. This indicator was used in the cockpit panel for business jets such as the Gulfstream G-III, Cessna Citation, and Bombardier Challenger CL600. It was probably manufactured in 1977 based on the dates on its transistors.

You might expect that the indicators on an aircraft control panel are simple dials. But behind this dial is a large, 2.8-pound box with a complex system of motors, gears, and feedback potentiometers, controlled by two boards of electronics. But for all this complexity, the indicator doesn't have any smarts: the pointers just indicate voltages fed into it from an air data computer. This is a quick blog post to summarize what I found.

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christo-fascism in montana

It's very foreign to the place I grew up in..

 

a harp player as a studio musician

cars and cybersecurity

An afterthought - a dangerous afterthought.  Tesla isn't mentioned, but issues have been documented.  A different issue, but their self-driving feature is flawed and should be (in my opinion) banned as it's a danger to others. 

The potential for evil people to control the operation of a car is terrifying. 

 

 

 

taking better smartphone photos

Use the RAW file format and editing software.  If you're buying a new smartphone, you may want to get as much memory as you can afford.

 

 

a camera-trap for your home

Study birds and wildlife.

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I’m a wildlife conservation pho­tographer used to roaming the Catskill Mountains around my home in Upstate New York, but a couple winters ago I was rendered homebound by a persistent foot injury. I spent hours upon hours watching my backyard birds, which is fun—but I needed to try something new.

Then I happened on an idea for an experiment—connecting my camera to an infrared sensor and setting the sensor out near my bird feeder, so the birds triggered my camera’s shutter instead of me. It’s a remote photography technique called camera trapping.

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a cryptocurrency primer

 

 

mary trump on the current crop of republicans in congress

She calls them for what they are..

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The mainstream media, in trying to make sense of the intra-party chaos, tried to look at the conflict through an ideological prism but that only makes sense if there’s an ideology organized around the principle of hating Kevin McCarthy.

They decided to label McCarthy and his supporters “moderate” and the approximately 20 anti-McCarthy holdouts “conservative” but unless there’s a universe in which “conservative” and “moderate” are synonyms and they both mean “treasonous,” this is patently absurd.

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unjustly frightened

Too many Americans are terrified of very rare threats and don't do anything about reality.

A piece on children walking a very short distance to school alone.

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After school, my granddaughter, 9, walks a quarter of a mile — by herself — from the bus stop to her house while her father works from home. She texts him when she gets on the school bus, and, most days, she is the only child walking in the direction of her house. They live in a fairly safe suburb, but the situation seems dangerous to me. My concern is the constant traffic of gardeners, painters and delivery people through the neighborhood who could harm her. Her father believes the walk is good for her confidence, but I don’t think it’s worth the risk. I’ve offered to pay for someone to meet the bus, walk her home and get her started on homework, but I was refused. My daughter defers to her husband. This situation keeps me up at night!

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