Odd Lots
- Movers are coming imminently to reassemble my lower level, so I will be mostly out of touch for the rest of today.
- If you’ve never had an account with Verizon in the past, don’t get one now. Verizon sold a huge number (over a million!) of expired debt accounts to a debt collection agency called AFNI, which has been attempting to collect on some of them, even when the debt has long since passed over the horizon of the statute of limitations. Some of these debts were long since paid off, some were mistakes, and some may possibly be complete inventions. Verizon’s action was legal; AFNI’s may not be. Still, Verizon started it, and I’m encouraging people not to do business with them.
- Here’s an aurora prediction site I’d not seen before. We’re a little too far south to get much from the current outbursts, but having seen some of the 2005 auroras here (if barely) I’m certainly watching that red line. (Thanks to Jamie Hanrahan for the link.)
- From the Words-I-Didn’t-Know-Until-Yesterday Department: A tuya is a volcanic landform created by a smallish volcanic eruption that occurs under a kilometer-class ice sheet, as from our most recent ice age.
- Roy Tellason wrote to tell me about his tube data sheet page, which has more scanned data sheets (all PDFs; typically under 1 MB) in one place than I’ve ever seen, with no ads nor any fussing (registration, etc.) required to access them.
- Rich Rostrom sent a wonderful link to a collection of photos and drawings of the Hindenburg, including its passenger areas, which included (egad) a smoking room! Originally (it was later expanded a little) the airship could carry only 50 passengers, tops. Those must have been expensive tickets…
- I was starting to get this message almost fifteen years ago: Heart disease is about inflammation. It’s not about meat or fat. Inflammation comes from smoking, chemicals of various sorts, infections, and (most commonly) sugars and vegetable oils. No inflammation, no heart disease. (Thanks to Mike Bentley for the link.)
- I’m shopping for vacuum tube intercoms, and found that someone on eBay has listed the Talk-A-Phone set that my parents bought (they were made in Chicago then) and used as a baby monitor after my sister was born. I’d really prefer one of the mid-60s tube-based carrier-current models. All the majors had them. (Carol wants a better way to reach me when I’m in my office than yelling down the stairs…)
- The beautiful 1920s Des Plaines Theater has reopened after some major restoration, and is now slotting upscale live acts rather than movies. It’s literally around the corner from our Chicago-area condo, and I’m itching to find an event as an excuse to go in and look around.
- If you’re afraid of spiders, don’t go to Australia for awhile. (Thanks to Pete Albrecht for the link.)
- Dinosaur fossils don’t get a whole lot better than this.
- While doing my semiregular scan for pirated copies of my books, I happened across something fascinating on alt.binaries.e-book.technical: a scan of the original service manual for the Nazi V-1 flying bomb. I don’t know how to create an NZB that points directly to the file, but the item was posted on 10/25/2011. Search for “Gerate-handbuch FZG-76”. A dieselpunk pulse-jet is what it was, and now you can see what was inside it. (Being able to read German is a plus, but the photos are very good.)
- A wonderful photo collection of vintage ice-cream trucks. We saw the Good Humor trucks regularly on our street in the 50s and early 60s. The driver rang bells by pulling on a string. He did not play obscure hymns or creepy recorded voices saying “Helllo!”
- How’s your scene? (I had to look it up to see what a “scene” was in this context.) My “scene” is not listed, but you can see what the chap thinks of steampunk. And if you want a timeline, it’s here. (Alas, it starts in…2000. Do you feel mondo-creaky old looking at this? I do.)
Posted in: Odd Lots.
Tagged: astronomy · health · history · humor
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I lost my Usenet feed a while back, so I don’t know how it compares in image quality, but here’s a Scribd-based version of the V-1 handbook:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/32602857/V1-Technical-Manual-FZG-76-Gerate-Handbuch-Germany-1944
I have a two station GE 3 Channel FM carrier current intercom that I have been using between the kitchen and basement for at least a decade or more and it works well as long as you watch out for two things.
1. Of course you have to be on the same phase with both units.
2. If ONE of the units is on a circuit beyond a GFI device the other one HAS to be on the same circuit — the GFI device apparently blocks the signal even if on the same phase.
These are NOT tube type intercoms, however.
We also have some fairly new Panasonic cordless phones with an intercom function and with one on my workbench and two upstairs that covers things pretty well.
One other idea for about the house communications is the FRS radios that are pretty cheep these days. These work fine if I am outside doing yard work (or antenna work!)
I bought a pair for my wife and I to carry when we needed to split up while shopping in a mall or big box. They seem to work better inside that Faraday cage than the cell towers do outside.
Of course I DO seem to remember some construction articles in some of the electronics magazines from the late 1950’s and early 1960’s that may have been tube type carrier current intercoms.
I actually just bought a pair of Lafayette tube-type carrier current intercoms on eBay…because I just like tubes. No GFIs in the way between Carol’s office and mine, so with some luck it should work. And if it doesn’t, well, I only paid $35 for the pair.