Back to main sitelie detector stuff
recent;y stumbled on: https://antipolygraph.org/ and it kicked off some memories…
Ever since working at Raytheon and making a (pointless) trip to some place in DC for an interview for an ‘extra’ security clearance I’ve been kind of curious as to how such a silly thing keeps coming back to life. I didn’t actually get far enough to get to the “lie detector” test…they were very upset that I had friends in foreign countries and said I would need to curtail such unpatriotic activities. At that point I decided the ‘investiagtor’ or whatever he called himself was an a-hole and if the government didn’t want my (in hindsight perhaps limited) expertise then that was their problem.
But being an engineer, I was certainly interested in this big “doohicky” of a strip chart recorder with enough knobs to look like it belonged in a recording studio. One way glass in the room, etc., I’m sure the whole setup would intimidate someone who didn’t know that these things were useless…
In some respects too bad I didn’t get hooked up as it could have been fun to mess with them. But the no-friends thing already killed my chances so I left, flew back to Boston, and that was that. But I still wonder if in some file in the DoD I’m viewed as a security risk for refusing their BS.
Gullibility and the audio biz…
I’m always forgetting links to the true weirdos of the audio biz, luckily someone else maintains a great list:
http://www.ilikejam.org/blog/audio/audiophile.html
And an excellent collection of “no BS” commentary on speaker wires but also illustrates how the audio industry has fallen into a death spiral of promoting woo-woo instead of actual value. And then we’re all shocked that people think MP3 at 64 kbits/sec sounds good…
http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm
Another analysis – wish there was a bit more info on the ABX tests
http://andreconsulting.com/Audio%20Equipment%20Snake%20Oil.pdf
Yet another good set of links to materials on the silliness that pervades the consumer (high-end) audio business:
online EE book
Looks like a lot of effort is going in to these to create a comprehesive book http://www.ibiblio.org/kuphaldt/electricCircuits/index.htm
Online calculators
yet another one with some convenient formula and discussion on a range of EE topics.
Good page for old (mostly) tube audio
lots of old books too. http://www.pmillett.com/index.html
HP software hogs CPU Photosmart D7400 printer
As a reminder in case weird stuff starts happening:
fix (for Windows XP use) is to go into service management and stop anything with “HP” in the title and set startup type to manual. This bug looks to be pretty old.
As an aside, on Vista, it fails to find the printer. Have to reboot a few times before it “catches”. What junk HP is making for software these days…
Series excerpt Bob Pease (edited) book an analog
More stuff for my reading list
http://www.industrialcontroldesignline.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212501261&cid=NL_icdl
Noise articles
Always a constant problem and easy to get confused about the real cause. This article might help:
Online science stuff
I’m always looking for material for star party presentations. Two sites that I need to explore more:
http://www.freesciencelectures.com/
and
http://www.imagineeringezine.com/index.htm (also has a lot of EE stuff)
DNA articles
NYTimes one: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/11/science/11gene.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
and some feedback:
http://scienceblogs.com/transcript/2008/11/100_years_of_genetic_research.php
Need to scan them for anything useful for the Project Astro Astrobiology stuff…