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What funny/interesting thing happened in your life today?


Ultimate Steve

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I just had the fulfillment of a tradition. A nerdy one to be sure. I just took a few pictures of Orion!!!!! Its finally starting to be visible in my sky! This marks the earliest (not counting the start of the year) this today marks the earliest in august ive seen Orion!

054108112023

new page!

Edited by AlamoVampire
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6 minutes ago, AlamoVampire said:

This terrifies me, but also sadly explains certain things. Good luck!

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Grin - it's the start of American history, and summer is barely over. 

It either indicates my baseline for instruction... Or easily as plausible, they're playing 'mess with the new guy' 

Thankfully, I'm an old hand at both games. 

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I gotta say, back in the old days (pre y2k) we were a riotous lot when it came to substitutes but we didnt mess with newer teachers much. But hopefully they are playing. If not im doubling down on my worry. Especially given the current climate if you get me.

183608112023

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17 hours ago, AlamoVampire said:

I just had the fulfillment of a tradition. A nerdy one to be sure. I just took a few pictures of Orion!!!!! Its finally starting to be visible in my sky! This marks the earliest (not counting the start of the year) this today marks the earliest in august ive seen Orion!

054108112023

new page!

I still think "Orion Rising" would make a great name for a movie...

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On 8/11/2023 at 6:41 PM, AlamoVampire said:

I just had the fulfillment of a tradition. A nerdy one to be sure. I just took a few pictures of Orion!!!!! Its finally starting to be visible in my sky! This marks the earliest (not counting the start of the year) this today marks the earliest in august ive seen Orion!

054108112023

new page!

wow. recently i went out with a few friends that had a telescope to look at some stars. we could only see part of sagittarius-scorpius because of light polluted skies.

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My dad: we decide to drive the EV to Seda (色达, in the west northern part of Sichuan province, one of the Tibetan areas, famous for its Buddhist temples). Remember to back home every few days to water the plants.

Me: You... what? Are you overconfident in your car?

Dad: Don't worry, we are going to take all the highways with good roads instead of those hills we had last time. I've already searched the map and there are enough battery swapping and charging stations along the way.

 

Looks like he is really satisfied with his new car. If there's a religion in the world called 'EVism', I'm probably the one that is pretty fervent. But now seems that my dad is more fanatical than I am. I'm just curious how it works on the 4000m plateau.

Edited by steve9728
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For the past 2 days, I've been working on a ship in Minecraft Pocket Edition. I was on the bottom floor stage and I was making the boiler... With real fire...  But I made the ship from coal... And wood. So it caught on fire. I managed to extinguish it.

Screenshot-2023-08-14-22-24-24-701-com-m

But then I tried again and it caught on FIRE again. 

Screenshot-2023-08-14-22-44-42-676-com-m

What a kerbal moment...

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1 hour ago, Aerodynamic Kerbal said:

For the past 2 days, I've been working on a ship in Minecraft Pocket Edition. I was on the bottom floor stage and I was making the boiler... With real fire...  But I made the ship from coal... And wood. So it caught on fire. I managed to extinguish it.

Screenshot-2023-08-14-22-24-24-701-com-m

But then I tried again and it caught on FIRE again. 

Screenshot-2023-08-14-22-44-42-676-com-m

What a kerbal moment...

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." -Anonymous

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been working on some grips for my joystick project. i didnt feel like jumping down the ergonomics rabbit hole and decided to just get a grip off thingiverse. of course i did have to tweak it to fit the adapter and for what buttons i had in my inventory. unfortunately i dont have many, just a bunch of those little square clicky buttons that most electronics hackers use.

the grip has positions for a hat and 4 buttons (thumb, pinky, trigger and a hat and button up top). im using a 5-way hat of my own design for the upper, and i was thinking of putting a hat in the thumb button position like my ch fighterstick. unfortunately my 5-way design was too big for the socket. so i came up with a design for a small hat using some salvaged rc-heli parts, a kind of barbell looking thing with a linkage ball at the mid point. i figure if i sandwich it between two 3d printed half sockets, with a pair of buttons above and below it (rotated 90 degrees).  got it down to 19mm across. 

the trigger i want to be analog with a tactile switch at its maximum. debating whether to use a cheapo hall sensor or a photodiode and led. would be pretty straight forward to use a slot and wedge config to modulate the amount of light coming through. unfortunately none of my filament is opaque to infrared, including black, apparently. the cheap hall sensor on the other hand costs a lot of range, since you have to rotate the flux lines about the hall plate. a theoretical 180 degrees, though there is a dead zone on the first and last fifth and so actual range is roughly 108 degrees. unfortunately the trigger only rotates about 15 degrees and that would further reduce range. i could probibly use multiple magnets to come up with an exotic b-field geometry to  use better range, but that sound really hard. i suppose i could use one of my fancy sensors but that seems overkill. so i think i might instead try to find a coating or material i can use to make the pla opaque. even if i have to dremel the required geometry out of an old razor blade or something.

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I just learned thanks to youtuber Tom Scott of a tradition in Honiton in England has an 800+ year old tradition called The Honiton Hot Pennies. They (the rich) used to toss scalding hot pennies (July 25th) at the poor folk and laugh as they (the poor) would burn themselves picking up the coins. It still happens now, but the pennies are merely warm (usually by the sun) and are then tossed to people below. 
 

Citation:

032208172023

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20 hours ago, AlamoVampire said:

They (the rich) used to toss scalding hot pennies (July 25th) at the poor folk and laugh as they (the poor) would burn themselves picking up the coins. It still happens now, but the pennies are merely warm (usually by the sun) and are then tossed to people below. 


 

Spoiler

 

 

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I’m heading to Japan for the first time since the pandemic in three hours :D

I’ll be visiting JAXA’s Tsukuba Space Center (provided no typhoon delays our sight seeing plans) so I’ll post pictures over in the JAXA thread in the Science & Spaceflight section.

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5 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

I’ll be visiting JAXA’s Tsukuba Space Center

If that is still in Doho Koen Odori (along with AIST), I used to live and work in that same street.  Goldrush was my goto bar and the little park (Doho Koen) is beautiful.  Tucked away near Andersens cafe near Nishi Odori were great little Italian, French and Korean restaurants.

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On 8/13/2023 at 11:28 PM, steve9728 said:

My dad: we decide to drive the EV to Seda (色达, in the west northern part of Sichuan province, one of the Tibetan areas, famous for its Buddhist temples). Remember to back home every few days to water the plants.

Me: You... what? Are you overconfident in your car?

Dad: Don't worry, we are going to take all the highways with good roads instead of those hills we had last time. I've already searched the map and there are enough battery swapping and charging stations along the way.

 

Looks like he is really satisfied with his new car. If there's a religion in the world called 'EVism', I'm probably the one that is pretty fervent. But now seems that my dad is more fanatical than I am. I'm just curious how it works on the 4000m plateau.

My dad: qwFWZcY.jpg

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second iteration of my hat switch looks good. i havent put the microswitches in yet, but it looks good. the first iteration was a little bit loose. it was really complicated and that led to nasty print quality, so i simplified the part. originally i wanted the part to be symmetrical so you could print 2 and orient it in any direction, but i realized i could cut out half of the wiring tubes and make it a little bit more compact. i also was able to offset the screw holes so they only partially intersect one of the wiring channels, but thats for clearance and the screw should stay out of the space. before i had crossed into way too many of them. according to my lame calipers it came in at 16.6mm which should fit well within the alloted space.

Edited by Nuke
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On 8/13/2023 at 11:28 PM, steve9728 said:

I'm just curious how it works on the 4000m plateau

As expected, he said there’s nothing different between costal city and plateau: one of his friends who was traveling with them drove Mercedes-Benz GLS and had problems with insufficient horsepower when climbing because of the lack of oxygen at four thousand meters above sea level. But this doesn’t have anything to do with EV. The only factor that can affect it is the temperature. But he said it’s around 16 to 26 ℃. Which is the best temp for the batteries I think.

If my memory is correct, there’s somewhere around 4500m in elevation they nearby. Don’t know their travel plan, or they have just been there lol

Edited by steve9728
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A friend of mine asked me: "have you tried using any of the LLM tools like GPT or Bard for programming?".

Nope.  No interest.  But rather than be a curmudgeon, I was willing to give it a try...

Coincidentally, I've been wrestling with an unscrupulous/scurrilous insurance company (indeed, RACketeers they are!) for the last 15 months after being side-swiped (mirror collision) by a joker who resented sharing the road with me when he claimed I was 'overtaking'.  Five parked cars.  It's been very Kafkaesque, as I had expected the insurers to set him straight.  But a reminder to me that insurance companies are MINO: money-in/nothing-out.

Spoiler

    Me: Can the term overtaking be used in reference to passing parked cars?
    
    ChatGPT:
    
    The term "overtaking" is typically used to describe the action of passing a moving vehicle that is
    traveling in the same direction as you on a road. It involves moving past another vehicle that is ahead
    of you and is slower than your vehicle.

    In the context of passing parked cars, the term "overtaking" might not be the most accurate choice. When
    cars are parked along the side of the road, they are stationary and not in motion, so you are not
    "overtaking" them in the traditional sense. Instead, you are "passing" or "driving past" the parked
    cars.

    So, while the term "overtaking" might not be the most precise word to use when referring to passing
    parked cars, the context and clarity of your communication are important. Using terms like "passing,"
    "driving past," or "navigating around" would better describe the action of moving past parked cars.

 

Wikipedia, Wiktionary, and the SA Driving Handbook all said the same, but I'm happy to add GPT's opinion now to my formal complaint heading to arbitration.

                                                            

People respect AI.  We should do what it tells us.  And I do like how polite it is...  We are heading in to a better world.

Edited by Hotel26
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