Odd Lots
- From the “…And Then We Win” Department: Lulu is eliminating DRM on ebooks published through the site. (I was notified by email.)
- The Adobe CS2 download link everybody’s talking about (see my entry for January 10, 2013) is still wide-open. If it was indeed a mistake, you’d think they would have fixed it by now. New suggestion: They’re arguing about it. New hope: They’re really going to allow CS2’s general use without charge.
- I didn’t get the art gene from my mother, but I did indeed enjoy the Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies. I still have my full drafting set in a drawer somewhere, replete with bow compasses, French curves, triangles, and so on. How many years will it be before nobody under 50 has any idea what those are? (Thanks to Jim Rittenhouse for the link.)
- And while we’re doing peculiar museums, check out this selection of implements from the International Spy Museum. I believe the surplus houses were selling CIA turd transmitters twenty or thirty years ago. Shoulda bought one when I could. As the late, great George M. Ewing would have said: “Forget it, Jeff. Nobody will pick that up.”
- Strange transmitters you want? From Bruce Baker comes a video link that no steampunker will want to miss: The annual fire-up of the only Alexanderson alternator left in the world, station SAQ in Sweden. From the sparks to the swinging meter needles, it’s just like Frankenstein, only it’s real–and sends Morse telegraphy at 100 KHz or so. No vacuum tubes, and I don’t see any reason why it couldn’t have been in operation in 1890.
- Every wonder who was behind Information Unlimited? Here’s the guy.
- Here’s more on how fructose messes with your brain. It’s not just the number of calories. It’s the chemical composition of those calories. Whoever says “a calorie is a calorie” is wrong, and probably has an agenda.
- It’s almost pointless to link to the first video ever made of a giant squid (since we won’t see the whole thing until January 27) but Ars Technica has a background page that’s worth reading. “Hello, beastie!”
- The BMI is worse than worthless. But I told you that years ago.
- Brand fanboys may have low self-esteem. Or they may just be tribalists. Or tribalists may be people with low self-esteem. No matter: Defend no brand but your own. Big Brands can damned well defend themselves.
Posted in: Odd Lots.
Tagged: drm · ebooks · electronics · health · psychology · software
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There are other types of turd transmitters that were available surplus. I have one that has a simple seismic sensor that would send a signal if anyone walked near the thing. I bought it from some surplus house decades ago since I had worked with much larger air dropped seismic sensors while in the Air Force during the Vietnam war. It looks more like dog poo than the one on the CIA might have used.
I still have a K+E Leroy lettering set on the shelf. With original box and a couple extra lettering guides.
Once you’ve worked with a Leroy set, it’s easy to recognize graphs and diagrams produced with a Leroy set when reading old manuals and technical articles.
I saw a K&E lettering demo at my high school in 1966 or 67. I was good with lettering, but it was a serious lust occasion. Never actually got to lay hands on one. We had drafting for two years at Lane, and I took another semester at IIT in 1970. Computing had yet to make any sort of dent, though I know now that it was just around the corner.
Technical / descriptive drawing (drafting) was a mandatory class for first year electrical engineering students. I think I also had a semester of it in 8th grade along with basic shop. Turned out to be useful because I had a summer job for a couple years during university breaks in the drafting department of the oil refinery where my father worked. Still have the tools I bought for that – triangles, french curves, Ames lettering guide, etc. as well as my Leroy set.
The Ames guide had a plastic disk with holes that rotated in a fixed frame. After rotating the disk so that the holes were vertically spaced to match the lettering size you wished to make, you put a pencil in one of the holes and slid the contraption along your T-square. Then for the next hole, etc. This provided guides for overall letter height, descender height, etc. If you worked in ink, the pencil guide lines could be erased. If you worked in pencil, as was the norm at the refinery, you could draw the guide lines with a blue leaded pencil – lightly of course – and those would not reproduce in the wet ammonia reproduction process — the Ozalid machine.
After some internet research, it seems that the closest match to Leroy font is Coniglio Sublime — it features the slightly uneven lines and blotchy corners characteristic of a real Leroy lettering instrument. Since it used India ink, you could never get the lines completely sharp – the velum would always have a slight difference in the surface sizing and hence ink absorption. And at the junctions, such as where the T horizontal and vertical lines intersect, you were almost guaranteed a filet would appear as it would take far too long to let one stroke dry before making the second.
http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/coniglio/sublime/ and I bought it yesterday.
I read a few years ago that one of the first commercial transmitters for voice broadcast was wired in such a way that the microphone carried several thousand volts.
That’ll keep you alert on the job!