[Michel Jean] asked a question few others might: what exactly is going on under the hood of a classic HP scientific calculator when one presses the ∫ key? A numerical integration, sure, but how exactly? There are a number of useful algorithms that could be firing up when the integral button is pressed, and like […]
IBM Selectric typewriters have a lot of unique parts that can be tricky to source, but one we didn’t think of was the clear acrylic(?) dust covers, that are apparently very hard to find in good shape. [Eric Strebel] has a few Selectrics that all have issues with these parts. While you could come close […]
This unusual clock by [Moritz v. Sivers] looks like a holographic dial surrounded by an LED ring, but that turns out to not be the case. What appears to be a ring of LEDs is in fact a second hologram. There are LEDs but they are tucked out of the way, and not directly visible. […]
Debugging an application crash can oftentimes feel like you’re an intrepid detective in a grimy noir detective story, tasked with figuring out the sordid details behind an ugly crime. Slogging through scarce clues and vapid hints, you find yourself down in the dumps, contemplating the deeper meaning of life and the true nature of man, […]
Alzheimer’s disease remains a frustratingly difficult condition to manage for the millions of patients affected worldwide and their families. The cause of the disease is still not properly understood, and by the time memory loss and cognitive decline become apparent, the underlying brain pathology has often been quietly building for decades. Soon, though it may […]
Who among us does not have a plethora of mains-powered devices on their workbench, and a consequent mess of power strips to run them all? [Jeroen Brinkman] made his more controllable with a multi-way switch box. At first sight it’s a bank of toggle switches, one for each socket. But this is far more than […]
That fireball was LZ37. Nobody wanted to see repeats post-war.Image: “The great exploit of lieutenant Warnefort 1916 England” by Gordon Crosby, public domain. After all the crashing and burning of Imperial Germany’s Zeppelins in the later part of WWI – once the Brits managed to build interceptors that could hit their lofty altitude, and figured […]
There have been many questions about what direction Arduino would take after being bought by Qualcomm. Now it would seem that we’re getting a clearer picture. Perhaps unsurprisingly the answer appears to be ‘AI’, with the new Arduino VENTUNO Q SBC being advertised as ‘democratizing AI’ in the Qualcomm press release, although it also references […]
If you think about it, you can’t be sure that what you see for the color red, for example, is what anyone else in the world actually sees. All you can be sure of is that we’ve all been trained to identify whatever we do see as red just like everyone else. Now, think about […]
Some PCB corrosion on the bottom of the 1541 drive. (Credit: TheRetroChannel, YouTube) Recently [TheRetroChannel] came across an interesting failure mode on a Commodore 1541 5.25″ floppy disk drive, in the form of the activity LED blinking just once after power-up with the drive motor continuously spinning. Since the Flash Codes that Commodore implemented and […]