Blackberry REACT June 2009 NewsletterQuick ClicksCrazy Wiring, Part 6A few dozen photos of electric and telephone cables strung from here to, well, who knows where? So many they darken the sky and threaten the poles. Some hang over sinks and commodes. Truly scary stuff. And this is part 6. Links to the first 5 at the bottom if the page. Space foodOkay, I’ve complained about hospital food and airline food, so here’s what the astronauts get stuck with. Biden vs. the airlines – sneezes on a plane(There may be an ad of several seconds before you can click through.) Patrick Smith has been writing online articles for years, and here he takes on the chances of getting a disease on a plane from sneezes. You know how you always complain about how dry it is when you fly? Your wrecked sinuses and skin? Another side effect of the lack of humidity is that it kills airborne germs, bacteria, and whatever else spreads disease. Your more likely to get sick from touching something than from breathing something. It’s an interesting article on how airlines filter and circulate air. Biden was wrong. MiFiThis is a fascinating device I wish I had a use for. Verizon is going to start selling a device that logs into Verizon’s G3 telephone service; you then have your computer or other internet device log into the MiFi using the laptop’s WiFi. You end up with WiFi connectivity anywhere you have 3G coverage. MiFi supports up to five laptops, iPod touches, or whatever you want with WiFi. The cost is a hundred dollars for the hardware (with a two-year contract), plus $40 a month for 250MB of data transfers or $60 for 5GB. The range of the device is about 30 feet between your computer and the MiFi, and it runs five hours of steady use, 40 hours on standby; it will run while plugged into mains power, too. The device is said to be a little larger than a credit card; from the photos, I’d say it’s bigger than a credit card, but easily shirt-pocketable. More information on its use. Homemade garage door openerWe all work with radios, and most garage door openers are radio- controlled. This guy did one with soundwaves. Enough with Steampunk – here’s true beautyIn the eye of the beholder, of course. Early computers from ancient Greece, a Cray 2, the PDP, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, and other beauties from companies you’ve never heard of. I had a Timex-Sinclair TS-2068, which ran a Z80A processor, and which was the cat’s pajamas in 1983 with 48K of writeable RAM. Yep, 48K. Timex Computer Corporation folded a few months later, in February 1984. Steampunk is dead, part two. If Faberge did computer cases instead of eggs, the czars would have owned this computer. Make your hand-cranked flashlight into a battery chargerIt takes some work and a laptop battery, but the voice over is by a Canadian, so you can hear him say, “Let’s try this oot.” Instructions, list of parts, and a video. Space tools used on the HubblePortraits of the tools astronauts used to do the repairs on the Hubble Space Telescope. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction according to some law I learned in the dark recesses of the Sixties. So space tools have to be built to cancel that – if you’re weightless and turn on your drill, you spin around. Oh, and everything has a tether. Things float off if they’re not tied to something. Statistics for cellphone-only usersIt turns out the best numbers on cellphone usage come not from the FCC but from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC’s statistics arm is the National Center for Health Statistics; the CDC does phone surveys to determine the state of our national health, and the NCHS determined that the results were skewed by using landlines only. The number of cellphone- only households rose to 17.5% in 2008. The NCHS estimates that half of all cellphone-only users are under 30 and rent their home. Surprising to me is that cellphone- only users are more likely than not to live in poverty. As a result, surveys of people through landline phones hides significant differences in health issues. According to the NCHS, because of the high numbers of cellphone-only users in poor households, they’re more likely to smoke, have no health insurance, and to be binge drinkers. These factors affect not only the adults in the household, but the children as well: kids may not be getting their health needs met, and they may not be getting their vaccinations. Because the NCHS has done this work determining the numbers, locations, incomes, and more for cellphone-only users, it turns out the CDC has better information on cellphone penetration than the FCC, which we sometimes think of as the regulator of wired and wireless communications. Some websites take the FCC to task for data that’s “totally bogus.” The NCHS report is at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr014.htm and is available online or in .pdf format. Engineering the IMAX camerasSome guy got a tour of the IMAX camera shop, and he took lots of photos of the cameras. Their carryable camera holds 500 feet of film, and that lasts a minute and a half at the speed the IMAX camera burns through film. Because the 65mm film is shot sideways, the camera runs three times faster than normal cameras where the film runs through vertially. The result is still 24 frames a second, but the frames are huge: 69.6 mm wide and 48.5 mm tall. Standard motion picture film is 35mm, with frame dimensions of 22 mm by 16 mm. Frame sizes are smaller than the film because the edges are used for perforation and sound recording, lessening the amount of film available for the image. Maker Faire videosI’ve added a couple of videos from Maker Faire to the Blackberry REACT Facebook page. One shows Rob getting a lengthy weather report from another ham, and the second shows a ham setting up a TV station at our mobile HF station. Black wireThink it’s hard to read those underground service maps so you don’t take out power or phones when you dig up a construction site? It’s worse. “Black wire” is government stuff that’s so secret it’s not on the maps. Here’s a story about what happened at Tyson’s Corners, a DC suburb. Events
UpdatesNone Programs
|