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What funny/interesting thing happened in your life today?


Ultimate Steve

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On 2/22/2022 at 7:50 AM, kerbiloid said:

The right side of the road is to the south, the left side is to the north.

Because it's warmer at the right side, and the snow melts...

Backwards, but correct. :D When it sticks around longer the left (south) side of the road where the sun never hits will be impassible while the right is bare & dry.  I hate sunny days more than usual this time of year, nothing but that horrible low-angle sunlight that constantly manages to get in your eyes. :confused:

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Ok I just learned something. Do you have an iphone? You know the apple logo on the back of your phone? Did you know its a programmable tool on your iphone? Neither did i until a few minutes ago! Go to settings, accessibility, touch then back tap. You can set it to do something on a double or triple tap. See for yourself the options it has. :) 

012602252022

Edited by AlamoVampire
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4 hours ago, AlamoVampire said:

Ok I just learned something. Do you have an iphone? You know the apple logo on the back of your phone? Did you know its a programmable tool on your iphone? Neither did i until a few minutes ago! Go to settings, accessibility, touch then back tap. You can set it to do something on a double or triple tap. See for yourself the options it has. :) 

012602252022

Dang. Seems to be iPhone 8 or later.

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Funny story of the day. My wife comes in to discuss scheduling.

Wife: "So, [Thing 3]'s youth group at church tomorrow night has been preempted by the Ash Wednesday service, but she still wants to go."

Me: "Okay. Did you warn her?"

Wife (puzzled): "Warn her about what?"

Me: "They're going to try to rub ashes on her forehead. [Thing 3} has serious personal space issues and only slightly moderated violent tendencies."

Wife: "Ah, good point. I'll warn her."

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On 3/1/2022 at 3:21 PM, TheSaint said:

Wife: "So, [Thing 3]'s youth group at church tomorrow night has been preempted by the Ash Wednesday service, but she still wants to go."

I grew up Catholic, so I should've known better, but decades ago I was walking up the hill at the U from the physics dept to main campus, and passed a girl I knew heading down TO the physics dept on Ash Wednesday... and I said to her, "You have some schmutz on your forehead."

 

Edited by tater
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This morning when I shuffled into the office for work, I noticed a couple sheets of paper on top of the shred pile. I bring them out to the living room where the offspring are doing their schoolwork.

"So, um, [Thing 1], I just have one question for you."

"What?"

"Why are we shredding your D&D characters?" (He's been playing in a play-by-Zoom D&D campaign with a couple of friends from California.)

"So, I, uh..."

"Is it really that bad? Is it just not worth going on?"

<Thing 2 and Thing 3 start laughing.>

"So, here's the thing..."

"Stay away from the light, [Character Name]! STAY AWAY!!!"

They were dying. Turns out he just printed two copies of the character sheets on accident.

======================================

So, I'm gonna brag on my wife here for a bit. She legit saved someone's life today. She's a physical therapist, she's working in home health right now. She's seeing a new patient today, and he's diagnosed with (among other things) diabetic neuropathy. But as she is watching him do his exercises and listening to him describe his symptoms, she's all, "Your doctor is wrong. You do not have diabetic neuropathy. You have chronic clotting in your lower extremities, and if you don't get it treated, soon, you're going to drop dead." She sits down with the patient during the appointment, calls the cardiologist, talks through the receptionist until she gets the cardiologist on the phone, describes the symptoms to him. He's all, "Yeah, we need to see him tomorrow." Got him an appointment tomorrow. My wife rocks.

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today i decided to characterize the linearity of my diy hall potentiometers. i had an idea to put a stepper motor on the input shaft and tick through at regular intervals, and sample the pot with the adc on an arduino. two arduinos actually. i got a cnc shield on my old duemilanove which is flashed with grbl. unfortunately grbl does not support analog probing (stop giggling) so i needed a second second arduino to actually get the data out. initially i wrote a simple sketch to output the adc value to the terminal on a button press. that got tedius fast. then i noticed a pin on the shield simple labled "coolant". if you were using this to build a cnc machine, as was the intent, this would connect to a coolant pump to squirt oil or whatever on the tooling. however its just like any other i/o pin. there is a gcode to toggle it on and off and its simply a matter of detecting the rising edge at the other end and sampling the adc. and along with the jog command i could run the whole test with a gcode macro. 

i printed up a fixture so i could run the test. really just a platform with a rail system and a slot for a square nut, and i designed it so i could adjust the spacing as well as change out the bracket for some of my other pot designs. one ive been working on would fit in the old school analog pot form factor. i of course printed two brackets for both designs, and can add more in the future if need be.  the only stepper motor i had was a cheap one with only 48 ticks per rotation. with 16x microstepping i can get that up to 768 ticks a rotation. thats less accurate than id like but it will do for a mere 10 bit adc. id want to source a better stepper if i plan on using that 16-bit adc in my parts drawer. that said i don't need to sample every possible angle. just a few at regular intervals.  a linear approximation is generated in a spread sheet, and i compare the actual values to the approximation to generate a delta. this actually is neccisary to compress the data down so it will fit in an mcu's eeprom where real estate is very limited. storing absolutes would need a 16-bit int, but storing deltas would only need an 8-bit int. i can then subtract the deltas from the actual reading to get the linearized value. if i have a value that was not linearized, i just find the values that bracket it and lerp it. its an approximation but enough to make those non-linearities go away. there is probibly enough variation between the sensors ive made to require individual calibration of each. less i find a way to get my tolerances tighter. anyway my hobbies made a scientist out of me. my room is a mess, it will take me an hour to put everything away so the cats dont destory it. 

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3 hours ago, Hyperspace Industries said:

Good news: First day of vacation baby! :D

Even better news: My physics teacher posted the results for my physics (or in this case practically just chemistry) exam on the class group. I did the best in my grade, with a staggering 118% (our physics teacher adds bonus questions). :D

Wow, the best I ever got was 101%!  But I think there was only one or two bonus questions…

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1 hour ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

This is clearly a violation of the laws of physics. Your physics teacher must not be very good. -_-

It’s the same as any other power rating, 118% of the rated maximum score. Just like the Shuttle usually ran the SSMEs at 104% of maximum rated power.

WWII fighters could run the engines at “War Emergency Power” beyond the engine’s normal max power rating, but it usually required a rebuild after…

Hopefully @Hyperspace Industries’s brain didn’t require rebuilding after that run… :cool:

Edited by StrandedonEarth
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1 hour ago, Vanamonde said:

He's a physics teacher, not a maths teacher.

Well, she either made a typo, or she adds an inordinate amount of bonus points. If she made a typo, I sure hope she made that typo when she typed it into the computer.

In bad news: we went to Clarens, and the alarm went off back home. It's been over half an hour, and we haven't heard a peep out of the security company. Thank goodness I brought my laptop with me. I hope it's a false alarm and not a robbery. :(

Edit: It appears it was a false alarm! :D Hallelujah!

Apparently they went to (redacted) street instead of (redacted) street.

Edited by Hyperspace Industries
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Today's APOD...

EquinoxSunset_Christen_960.jpg

brought back a searing memory from long ago: riding my bike to school as the sun rose straight ahead above a soaking wet road. I was absolutely blinded, couldn't see a thing; didn't even have sunglasses. I didn't notice (or don't remember) if it was at the equinox...

Edited by StrandedonEarth
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The ancient natives had built this road for ritual and astronomic purposes, because they were worshipping the solar cult, and the winters are cold at your place, so they were celebrating the spring coming.

Just have a look, how precisely they put the centerline of this way of processions to match the equinox sun position... And everything without the modern tools, just by hands, wands, and a fishing string.

Especially the pit in the middle is interesting.
It obviously symbolizes the underworld visited by the soul of the initiate on his road to the Sun, before he appeared again on top after passing its trials.

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