Odd Lots
- I recently reinstalled Windows on a 120GB Samsung 840 SSD, and have been wondering how long it will last. Here’s a nice intro; read the comments too. I’m guessing that it will last longer than the system itself–especially given my recent history.
- The just-released Firefox 19 has a built-in PDF renderer. So far it’s worked fairly well for me. One caveat: I haven’t figured out (yet) how to disable scripting within PDFs, which is worthless and an invitation to pwnership. It may not even be possible, since the renderer is itself a JavaScript app. Still researching it.
- Here’s a good overview article on SD card speeds, and where the extra money for a faster card could be worthwhile.
- I ordered a digital flash unit board from a surplus house, to see if it could generate 800-1000VDC (at virtually no current) for my Geiger counter circuits. I was surprised to see that the unit works perfectly while generating only 325VDC. I don’t have the schematic and so jiggering the circuit is probably not an option. I’m guessing that some sort of ladder multiplier is now the way to go.
- Although the majority of Sherlock Holmes stories are pre-1923 and thus in the public domain here in the US, the author’s estate is still demanding licensing fees from authors using the characters in new works. Now someone is suing the estate to get a court to declare that the characters (and not just the text) are in the public domain. Go for it!
- Does anybody remember Ann Hodges and the Bruise That Came From Outer Space? What I’ve never quite understood is why there’s any question about whether or not you own a meteorite that falls on your property. (Even if it doesn’t fall on you.)
- People are still fighting about camelcase (i.e., CamelCase) versus underscores (i.e., under_scores). Well, duhh. Fighting’s fun, eh? The gates of hell open upon my head every time I suggest that Pascal’s reserved words should be in uppercase. The bigger question is this: Why does such piddly crap make grown men so violently angry? (Thanks to Nick Hodges for the link.)
- A Napa winery is trying aging its wines by submerging them in the Atlantic Ocean. Hey, whatever floats (or sinks) your bottles. But…if you’re in Napa, wouldn’t it be cheaper to dunk them in the Pacific?
- From the I-Never-Thought-I’d-See-This-In-My-Lifetime Department: Yesterday the Denver Post published an article on how to grow your own marijuana.
Posted in: Odd Lots.
Tagged: fiction · hardware · pascal · software · wine
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Interesting about the static issues. I have a big system in a fairly large Antec case, and have had no trouble with it. That said, as I started in hardware, and was an early adopter of CMOS logic, I think I have nothing I wear in my office that is not cotton. In winter, it does get pretty dry here, but I have not found any need for a humidifier, nor yet for any carpet treatment.
Of course, I don’t come down here to the basement office in my socks, except for a very brief visit, as the carpet is on the slab. That is likely another reason for the low incidence of static.
As to the Z68 you bought, I bought a similar one, about the same time you did. But I had an Ivy Bridge, and discovered that although the Z68 chipset is compatible, the BIOS installed was not, and to update the BIOS required a Sandy Bridge. Grrr… After evaluating the alternatives, I got a Z77 motherboard, and the Ivy Bridge was perfectly at home.
I also have become a fan of the Zotac display cards, as I have been able to buy the ones with very large heat sinks and no fan, in lieu of the many cards which have fans that reliably die in 12-18 months, and for which replacements normally cannot be bought.
Jeff:
No learning exercise involved, but a CCFL inverter module is the easiest way to wind up with 1 KV or so. Mouser has one for $12 with 1.2KV output. Search Mouser with the term EL/CCFL Inverters & Accessories and you’ll find a wide range of input / output voltage abilities.
If you want to build your own flyback converter, then inductor choice becomes important. Since E = L di/dt, more inductance = higher voltage and faster current turn on/off = higher voltage. However, larger inductors can have more distributed capacitance than lower value ones and hence the self-resonant frequency can limit di/dt. I think the CCFL power modules use a more conventional approach with a transformer and chopped input voltage rather than trying to do it with a one winding inductor.
I wonder what you could get out of a piezo BBQ lighter – the raw voltage into an air gap is several KV, but coming up with a suitable rectifier may be challenging. The filter capacitor would have to have ultra low leakage – perhaps a Teflon dielectric of a high quality ceramic as there’s not a lot of current output.
I’ve used Firefox for quite a while and the built-in PDF rendering engine still have a way to go to be acceptable. One problem I see frequently is that one page will render fine and the next page is blank, although the file displays perfectly with Adobe Acrobat. Another problem with FF’s rendering engine I’ve seen is font related. Mouser’s PDF catalog pages are a good example. As you zoom in to enlarge the page, some fonts render oddly and don’t scale. I’ve also found printing problems where a PDF document can’t be printed from the internal rendering engine.
A CCFL output is AC, of course, at a frequency of some tens of KHz. A standard 1N4007 silicon rectifier will be suspect in that application due to long recovery time (buried charge keeps the diode conducting for some time after the input voltage flips from conducting to reverse bias. See my web page
http://www.cliftonlaboratories.com/diode_turn-on_time.htm for a discussion and measured data.)
There are fast silicon rectifiers and, of course, Schotkey diodes, so pay some attention to the turn-off time – often called “reverse recovery time” in the data sheets.
If you_Mix Camel_Case with under_scores can_you Call_it Ransom_Note?
We can even fight about your reference to CamelCase – it should really be camelCase. You mistakenly referred to PascalCase.