The Coolest Appliance You Won't Have Under Your Tree

A little over three years ago, the electronics trade magazines ran some some articles saying that one of the last domains of power vacuum tubes, microwave ovens, were set to be invaded by power transistors.  Of course, I ran the story, too.

There's an unfortunate reality about microwave ovens and the magnetron tubes they use;  Microwave ovens pretty much suck and it's largely because of that magnetron.  OK, maybe suck is a strong word, but other than popping popcorn, heating soup, coffee and some foods cooked in sauces, they just don't do a lot well.  Microwaves and RF magazine's Barry Manz puts it this way:

Today even a high-end microwave oven complete with fan-forced convection for crispy skin and assorted features like multiple cooking settings and a humidity sensor costs less than $500. The microwave oven state-of-the-art is exemplified by products like some from KitchenAid that also steam food based on its type and desired “doneness,” and use the steam to help remove stains from the oven as well. They even have an acoustic sensor that listens to the sound of popping corn and turns off the magnetron when its fully popped.

But they still can’t replace every type of cooking appliance, are too small to cook a turkey, heat unevenly, thaw foods disastrously, can cause a miniature firework display when a fork is left inside, steal moisture from food, and remove some of its original nutrients. In short, they don’t do a great job of either defrosting or cooking.

Thankfully, a lot of research has been going on for the last few years to address the problems.  The research seems to have started with the reasonable question of how to improve the microwave oven but has branched out into the broader question: if you approach cooking more generally, what could you do technologically that would improve everything, not just the microwave oven?

Let's back up for a moment.  The basic problem with a microwave oven is that it uses a magnetron.  Maggies are power oscillators not amplifiers; that is, you feed them DC power and they produce microwave power.  They're free-running oscillators and share the unstable phase and amplitude control of other free-running oscillators.  Because they don't have adjustable power output, they're limited to using simple on/off power controls, and simple waveguides that dump the RF power into the oven's cooking space. To defrost frozen food, for example, the oven will cycle between power on and off at a duty cycle determined by either its programming or the user's commands.  The food is usually rotated, and most ovens have moving metal paddles like a fan as a "mode stirrer" to move hot spots around in the oven.  I don't know about your experiences, but even with those things to even out the hot spots/cold spots, I've found that defrosting something in the microwave oven is most likely going to produce hot spots, cold spots and maybe cooked spots.  I still see frozen vegetables that get burned in small spots.

The future looks rather different.  Having a modern radio frequency deck in the microwave allows possibilities like setting exactly the power desired and leaving it at that level.  Having variable phases across a small antenna array allows forming different power beams and directing the energy around the food in new ways.  Combined with feedback from sensors - receivers - in the chamber, the new appliance isn't very similar to the familiar microwave oven. 

Israeli company Goji Food Solutions has made huge strides in creating the basis for a modern cooking appliance based on solid-state power sources, with a portfolio of hundreds of patented techniques, including software and solid-state heating modules. The environment within an oven is extremely complex with millions of points representing an entire oven and food, and varies with what’s being cooked. This is why it’s necessary to assess this environment in real time as the process unfolds, something a magnetron-based microwave oven cannot do.

A Goji-based oven uses a proprietary software tool it calls SARA that combines information about RF parameters is collects every 2 s with a priori data about food characteristics, in order to make decisions. There are no limitations on what can be placed in a Goji-based oven, such as utensils like forks and other metal items as well as metallic-coated cups.

The oven can cook an entire meal, such as a steak, vegetables, a potato, and a dinner roll photo. As Goji has frequently demonstrated, it can cook a frozen fish embedded in a block of ice with precision—without melting the ice. The company hopes to have its first product for commercial applications this year, with consumer versions to follow, and it licenses the technology as well. While the company has not yet introduced the product itself, it is licensing it to appliance manufacturers for use in their own products. [Bold added - SiG]

The metal tray containing two cuts of beef, two cuts of fish, two rolls and a mix of vegetables would be challenging to put into any oven and have them all turn out ideally. 

Goji is licensing the technology and early models of ovens have started to hit the industrial trade shows.  German high-end appliance manufacturer Miele demonstrated what it calls the Dialog oven (it communicates with the food) with huge fanfare at IFA, Europe’s largest trade show, in August. It will reach the German and Austrian markets in April, followed by the U.S. later in the year.  Current price is $10,000, so it's not aimed at the home/small user, but it seems to offer features that are hard to match anywhere.

Miele says the Dialog oven reduces cooking time compared to conventional methods by up to 70%, and for example can cook pulled pork in 2.5 hr. versus 8 hr. for a conventional oven. As an example of what the Dialog can do, Miele suggests placing a leg of lamb on a bed of vegetables consisting of red peppers and green asparagus, with any remaining space consumed by potato wedges. After about 45 min., all the food will be evenly cooked to its different requirements, with the vegetables “slightly al dente” and the potatoes soft. This obviously couldn’t be achieved in a microwave oven or even a conventional oven. When roasting is required, the oven automatically applies radiant heat.

This is just the leading edge of the oncoming wave.  The Microwaves and RF article mentions an oven called IBEX One from Illinois Tool Works that is clearly aimed at industrial users.  It's list price is $18,000; it's big and feature laden.

It measures 26.6 in. high × 32 in. wide × 29 in. deep, and uses a real-time, adaptive, heat-sensing system that uses heating algorithms designed for custom menus and common kitchen operations. Programming and uploading of recipes and unique cooking functions is available via a USB port to expand menu offerings.

They also mention  what appears to be the first of these new RF ovens aimed at consumers: Chinese appliance company Midea has announced a 300W desktop oven called its Semiconductor Heating Magic Cube. 

You just know this is going to have to start a whole new generation of cookbooks, because nobody knows how to cook platters like the one Miele describes or Goji pictured above.

About the C-Word

We're only six days away from Christmas!  Ordinarily, I put up a holiday post early in the season, within a few days after Thanksgiving.   Somehow, although I regularly sit down and have an "Oh, God!  What do I write about?!?!?" block, I didn't think about posting about Christmas.  

You see, I love Christmas.  I mean, I've run across people in my life who decorate for Christmas way more than I do, and I've known people who plan their Christmas six months in advance, way before I do.  I know a guy whose house decorations for Christmas put the local shopping centers to shame, and focused his whole year around Christmas.  Maybe if you saw me, or saw my barely decorated little house, you wouldn't think so, but I love Christmas.

This year, we broke with a lifetime of tradition in two ways.

First, we got an artificial tree; a friend uses the term petrochemical tree, but since plastics are made from fossil fuels, I think I'm going to call it a fossil tree.  Except that it's not ancient tech at all.  The latest generation trees have gotten away from looking like, well, green toilet brushes and they use molded branch ends that look remarkably like a real pine.  The tree has built in LED strings in four colors, so we put the sections together, stood it up, plugged it in and started decorating the rest of the house.

The other way we broke with tradition was in putting up the fossil tree on December 2nd.  Previously, we'd put up a tree on the Saturday before Christmas - as long as it's a week to 10 days or so.  This year we would have done it last Saturday, the 16th.  This was followed by decking the rest of the house in holiday decorations.

Christmas is unique among holidays in America.  It has a very strong Christian tradition (well, duh!) as well as very strong secular traditions, and I love them both.  I love giving gifts to loved ones and friends.  I love the old favorite songs and the whole feeling of this time.  The gift-giving secular tradition is so big that people in retail will tell you that Christmas often determines whether or not they stay in business.  Getting back to the Christian traditions, another aspect of the holiday is the annual struggle to "keep Christ in Christmas" and not overlook the spiritual side of the holiday.  Did you know there is actually a court ruling that tells you how many reindeer (three) a holiday display must have to remain "sufficiently secular" to be legal to display on public property?  If I have three or more reindeer on display, it's secular, but if it's only two reindeer, I'm obviously trying to convert you!  Even two and half, say two reindeer and a package of reindeer sausage, won't make it secular enough.  You've just got to know that when lawyers are deciding that "three is the number and the number shall be three", someone had to suggest two and a half. 

Every year you hear about overzealous morons somewhere deciding that the most innocuous secular symbols are too Christian.  This year, the ubiquitous charge of racism joined the party as we learned that "Jingle Bells" is racist, joining "White Christmas" which was first singled out in 2014.  Colleges are at the heart of this fake diversity fest.  Take this 2014 notice from the University of Maine (emphasis in the original - as well as the two spelling errors in one sentence):

“Just wanted to remind everyone that Aux Services is not to decorate any public areas with Christmas or any other religious themed decorations,” the email states. “Winter holiday decorations are fine but we need to not display any decoration that could be perceived as religious.”

“This includes xmas trees, wreaths, xmas presents, menorahs, candy canes, etc.,” the email says. “What is allowed our [sic] winter themes, snowmen, plain trees without presents underneath, decorative lights, but not on trees, snow flakes, [sic] etc.”

“[T]he university makes every effort to ensure that all members – students, employees, alumni and the public–feel included and welcome on campus. Decorations on the UMaine campus are therefore reflective of the diversity found in our community,”

Hate to break it to them, but candy canes are nowhere to be found in Christian scriptures; nor are wreaths, trees, or decorative lights on those trees.  And even if they were, an absence of religious symbols isn't a diversity of views, it's presenting only one view: the atheistic view.  Diversity would be to allow other faiths to participate in the displays.  

As we go through the last days of the Christmas season, take time to enjoy it and your loved ones.  If you feel a need to get some perfunctory gift for someone you'd really rather not give to, I say don't.  That's some sort of bizarre social ritual, not Christmas.  Don't put yourself in debt for Christmas; even if it means the kids get a "meager" holiday.  It won't hurt them and may just help them.  If you're one of those who say they'd just as soon skip the whole thing - I say skip it.  It's still a federal holiday, so you have that going for you.

New Zealand's Upstart Private Rocket Company

While American news naturally seems to focus on the American private space companies: SpaceX, and Blue Origin are probably the first thought of, but industry giant Boeing and the smaller Orbital ATK have had successful launches as well.

The majority of folks in the US who aren't space geeks probably haven't heard of New Zealand's Rocket Lab, a company with an aggressive plan to lower launch costs, and increase access to orbit with some advanced design concepts (in the space business, whenever they read "advanced concept", they substitute the phrase "high risk").  The body of the their featured booster, the Electron, is carbon fiber, and the engine is a break from the history of liquid fueled engines.

(Rocket Lab's launch complex, on a scenic cliff in Mahia, about 350 miles southeast of Auckland.  Image source.) 

Much as SpaceX's Falcon 9 is powered by 9 Merlin engines, the Electron is powered by 9 engines they call the Rutherford.  Part of Rocket Lab's approach to lowering cost is to 3D print the engine in metal printers; the really new concept in their engine is to replace alternate pumps and tubing on the engine with batter powered pumps.  They claim the print time for an entire engine is 24 hours.  Although that article from Popular Science give me a case of Forest Whitaker eye, they explain:

Rocket engines today more or less follow the same formula. Liquid fuel and a liquid oxidizer combine within a combustion chamber and ignite. Ultimately, it’s this combustion that thrusts the rocket forward. However, feeding the propellants into the chamber is a complicated process, requiring separate turbopumps to transport the liquids at super-high speeds into a high-pressure area. Typically, another engine is needed just to operate these pumps, requiring extra hardware and additional fuel.

But with Rutherford, the engine’s turbopumps get a much more condensed energy source. Instead of running on liquid propellant, the pumps are powered by electric motors with lithium polymer batteries. This eliminates the need for extra spaghetti tubes and valves, which add weight to the engine and are frequently the source of engine failure. The electric pumps then easily combine the oxygen and hydrocarbon fuel into the combustion chamber.

“It’s really only the advancement in battery technology that has enabled us to go to electric turbopumps,” Beck says. “Even three or four years ago, the technology wouldn’t have been sufficient. But there have been enormous advances in a short time period, and now the electric motor is about 95 percent efficient, versus the 60 percent efficiency of the gas motor.”

My main issue with this is that anyone who refers to batteries as "much more condensed energy source" than refined kerosene (RP-1) and liquid oxygen has never heard of the concept of  Specific Energy, the amount of energy in a given weight of fuel.  Since space flight is all about that weight, I'd think batteries are a bad choice.  The best lithium polymer batteries still don't get 1000W*hours/kg; while RP-1/Lox is over 10 times that.  That said, an engine is a system of parts, each with their own design trades and I won't say it's not possible they came up with a way to run the pumps that works for their design. 

The Rutherford engine, courtesy Rocket Lab. 

Unlike Blue Origin and SpaceX, their approach to lowering costs doesn't appear to center on reusing the boosters and more components.  In other words, their batteries and pumps only have to work once, for a few minutes ... with nearly 100% reliability. 

Right now, Rocket Lab seems to be several years behind the better known competitors.  They have had one test flight, appropriately enough called "It's A Test", and that rocket was destroyed by range safety once it was about 224 km up (140 miles), which certainly qualifies as being in space.  They say, however, it was due to a radio data link error with one of their contractors and not the rocket itself.

Rocket Lab’s investigation team determined the launch, named ‘It’s a Test’, was terminated due to a data loss time out, which was caused by misconfiguration of telemetry equipment owned and operated by a third-party contractor who was supporting the launch from Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1.

This past week was reserved for a second test flight, called "Still Testing".  There were three launch scrubs in the week: an unspecified problem with the booster, one due to weather, and one due to a power fault.  Rocket Lab announced they would not try again until next month, after the start of 2018.  

The spread of launch technology to companies like Rocket Lab is one of the great movements of our time.  I'm glad to see it.  Whether or not their plan makes sense is up to the market to decide.  They talk about payloads under 220 pounds into low Earth orbit for $4.9 Million.  You can book a ride on their web page.  Whether or not the market is there is something we'll learn, however my guess is that the lower the cost, the bigger the market.

First Ever Video - Giant Robot Fights

Back in October, I posted an article about a giant robot fight that was being staged for TV, and how it was getting close to the premise of the movie Real Steel.

If you'll recall, the fight had already happened and was going to be aired for the first time within days of that article.  Over a million viewers watched the live stream of the fight.  It has since been released to YouTube video (embedding disabled) mercifully with commercials edited out.  The whole video is 26:42 long, but has a few minutes of fight in it.  Fights start around the 7:15 and 13 minute marks respectively if you want to avoid a bit of the TV drama.  You should watch it in HD or fullscreen modes on YouTube.

Design News presents the video and some details from it.

The affair, which featured a few moments that felt scripted, was nothing even approaching the intensity of Voltron, Gundam, Robotech, or any other popular anime and cartoons that inspired the giant robot craze. It didn't even match the speed and pace of the average BattleBots match. It was certainly no Robot Sumo in terms of pacing. But let's be realistic, it probably was never meant to. And despite all of this there were still some entertaining moments to be found. They even got Mike Goldberg a professional mixed martial arts (MMA) commentator to lend color commentary to the matchup.

The American team, Megabots, fielded two robots, Iron Glory and Eagle Prime.  Stats here.

The Japanese team, Suidobashi Heavy Industries, fielded one robot, Kuratas:

There are two fights, Kuratas against each American Robot.

Final words to Design News (editor Chris Wiltz)

MegaBots Inc. has always stated that its larger goal is to establish giant robot combat as a legitimate sports league. And while in part this battle with Suidobashi Heavy Industries showed that giant robot combat would definitely benefit from some rules and regulations (weight classes come to mind immediately) it also demonstrated there is a certain viability to the idea, provided the resources and budget are there. But who knows, if enough other groups get into the DIY giant robot game the tiny combatants on BattleBots could be facing some very large competition for the eyeballs of robot fight fans.

Volcanoes Can Be Beautiful - From a Respectful Distance.

Today's emails brought a "year in review"-type article from a friend, but this one was a photo essay on "The Year in Volcanic Activity" over at The Atlantic.

While this has been a relatively average year for the world's active volcanoes, the activity that did take place was spectacular. Out of an estimated 1,500 active volcanoes, 50 or so erupt every year, spewing steam, ash, toxic gases, and lava. In 2017, erupting volcanoes included Shiveluch in Russia, Villarrica in Chile, Mount Sinabung and Mount Agung in Indonesia, Turrialba in Costa Rica, Piton de la Fournaise on Réunion Island, Kilauea on Hawaii, Popocatepetl and Volcán de Colima in Mexico, Bogoslof Volcano in Alaska, Manaro Voui in Vanuatu, Mount Etna in Sicily, and more.

Piton de la Fournaise on Réunion Island, an "overseas department" of France in the Indian Ocean.  The long-time exposure shows both a lightning storm and the orange glow of molten lava from the volcano.  February 3, 2017.

Two views of Mt. Etna in Sicily, both are dated last February 28.

Daytime view from up close.

Nighttime view from a saner distance. You can see from the angle of the lava stream that the viewing angle isn't exactly the same, but it's the volcano and the cooling lava seen in the daytime shot. 

There's a total of 40 photos.  Well worth your while if you like this topic.

@*($&%#! Computers! - Part 3 - Windows Update Problems Again

I thought I had some sort of "stupid @*$&%#! Computers!" post within the last year, but I guess I've gotten off easily. Part 2 was in October of '16.

I have one of those little problems that ends up being an expanding PITA.  I have a cheap dial indicator, 0-1" in .001 increments, 10 rotations.  Mine doesn't have a brand name on it, but it looks more or less like this one.  Some time ago, I noticed that only one of the tiny screws holding the back on was there, and I took it off the bench before the last screw went to a parallel universe.  I went through every small screw I have and nothing fits. 

I want to put it back together.  Trying to get accurate measurements on a screw that measures across the threads at .076" and is .150 long is difficult for me, even under magnification.  Then I remembered we have a USB microscope that I got some time ago.  I could measure the pitch by counting thread turns under the microscope.  I'll just plug it in right here...

And it won't work on my computer.  Go to Windows Update and get the latest driver version.  Then I find Windows Update isn't working.  So the troubleshooting begins.  Microsoft has a support page for troubleshooting failures in Windows Update.  It had me type about 80 lines of commands into a Command (DOS) window and I found about 15 .dll files that are bad or missing.

So since I need Windows update running more than the microscope itself, I need to go troubleshoot that.

Then I can get back to the problem that started this cascade.  Measuring across the peaks of the thread, the screw looks really close to the M2x0.25, but the pitch is wrong.  By the pitch it looks more like a #1-72.  Neither of those are common screws that I could just find locally and try. 

Done Done

It has been a long time getting here, but the guitar project I've been calling "Son of Side Project" is done.  (You know, I don't have the slightest memory of why I came up with that name).  Since the last update, there have been hours spent in "fiddly bits" of the job, trying to come up with a match for the abalone inlay, three coats of stain, 15 coats of varnish, and today's visit to my friend to use his really large polishing system designed for guitar polishing.

Here's a look at some of the fiddly stuff.  All of those white and black strips get glued up separately, some are first glued to each other then into place.  This is before some light sanding, staining and varnishing.

A little detail in the corner that I'll see the most, after the staining and polyurethane.

Finished on the bench today.

This has been an interesting and very challenging project.  Machining is typically letting the machine do the work, with the occasional hand file work; most of this it was meticulous hand work.  Obviously, this isn't a normal guitar, and there's really no way I could have made it one without spending more money, time, and effort than it would take to buy all the same woods and make a guitar from bare wood.  This seems like a good compromise. 

I told the luthier who helped me out on the project that it had dampened my interest in making an acoustic guitar from scratch for myself.  He laughed and said this was nothing at all like building a guitar.  It's like a repair project that no sane guitar tech would ever do.  Building a guitar from flat pieces of wood would be easy in comparison. 

I'm still not looking to jump into doing one soon. 

Thanks again to Raven, who donated the wood for the side, and practice pieces.  From his own tree, no less!  The quilted figuring in maple is said to occur only in Western Big Leaf Maples and is truly beautiful.  It's really reminiscent of the look of the gemstone called tiger's eye (or tiger eye). 

Alabama and Two Cents Worth

We'll know soon (possibly by the time I finish writing this!) what becomes of the Alabama special election for senate.  The talking head consensus is that Moore would be 10 to 20 points ahead of the Evil Party guy if it weren't for the last minute allegations of sexual impropriety.  I haven't been completely quiet on this topic, but what I have written has been in comments to other people's blogs.  It doesn't matter.  I don't live in Alabama.  I don't even live in the Florida Panhandle, a placed called "LA" for Lower Alabama.  It's just part of my approach to politics.  I don't claim the ability to see the future. 

Years ago, I made the conscious decision to ignore political advertising within the last month or two before the election.  It might have been 2004 but it might have been before that.  Remember the Dan Rather report on the W in the closing months of the 2004 campaign?  Briefly, Dan Rather did an expose' on the time George W Bush spent in the Air National Guard.  The problem was that it was made up, mainly by a Democrat activist blogger.  It was supposed to destroy W's credibility, but there were multiple problems with the story that came to light.  The scandal concluded Rather's career on CBS and forced him into retirement (although he still has small gigs in other places).

Last minute attempts to nuke one's opponent have become known as an October Surprise, although that one started in September.  There simply isn't enough time available to reach a conclusion on the allegations, and that applies here in the case of Roy Moore.  Because of that, in my mind the burden of proof is entirely on the person or group that makes the allegation.  It shouldn't be the duty of the accused to prove their innocence.  An October Surprise is a political strategy for the same reason attack ads are: they get candidate to stop talking about their message and address the attacks. 

We're on a dangerously slippery slope here.  When allegations came out about Harvey Weinstein, Hollywood reporters could almost instantly call up videos of award shows with actors and actresses joking about Weinstein's behavior.  There were police recordings where a young actress was wearing a wire and we could hear him.  When allegations came up about Al Franken, it was easy to find the photographic evidence of him grabbing Leeann Tweeden while she slept during an airplane flight.  Those lines of evidence are more solid than anything I know about Roy Moore.

Call me old fashioned, but in serious accusation like pedophilia, I believe "innocent until proven guilty".  I use italics because that's a legal standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt in a jury of peers".  It has been explained to me as "over 90%" sure.  (Caught in the act is justifiable homicide in my book).  In civil cases, we often hear of "preponderance of evidence", which means 51% sure.  We have nothing but hearsay in this case; all that's needed for that to happen is that the campaign finds an "actress" or someone willing to make the claims for enough money.

Why should I believe that someone bringing up something like this 40 years after the fact is credible at all?  This guy has been in public life almost 40 years and the biggest objection to him has been that he has too Biblical a worldview. Supposedly he did all this crap 40 years ago and no one anywhere had heard of it?  It never came up in another election?
 
Then one of his accusers forges a copy of Moore’s secretary’s signature on some document into a yearbook, where she undersigned her initials (DA) to show it wasn’t him and some idiot thought it was Moore signing it as District Attorney.  Even though he wasn't even the District Attorney at the alleged time.  This is an stunningly stupid forgery; it's like being offered a Roman coin marked "100 BC", but it is Gloria Allred, so not surprising. 

Sorry, my bullcrap filter is clogged and has to be cleaned out.

There is a frequently rumored tape in circulation of a Democratic Strategist offering $200,000 to women to make up charges against Trump.  It's said that Trump has been given a copy of the tape.  If the standard isn't proof, and isn't even "preponderance of evidence", it's simply "she said", do you have any doubt "pay for say" is going to happen?  If Jones wins, it only gets worse. 

October Surprises work for the same reason attack ads work:  stupid voters.  First off, they force the candidate to get off their message and address the accusations.  In effect, these attacks force them to advertise for their opponent.   Second off, if you hear "where there's smoke there's fire" remind them that the military uses smokescreens all the time to hide things, and there's no fire.  Simply, if October Surprises work, you'll see them every election cycle everywhere.  We'll eventually see the most outlandish accusations you can imagine. 

At least tangentially related: no one called Trump a racist until he ran against the Evil Party for national office.  I don't believe anyone ever called Moore a pervert until he ran against the Evil Party for national office.

A Message to Vegans

The great Terry Border (remember the zombie peanuts?) is now on GoComics and puts up new images once or twice a week. 

I refuse to say anything serious about the picture.  However, the mother carrot on her knees sheltering her baby carrot from the carnage keeps making me smile.

The Palestinians are Revolting - So What Else is New?

You've heard that since President Trump decided to keep yet another campaign promise (as well as a promise apparently made by the last three presidents) and move our embassy to the capital of Israel, the Palestinians are revolting.  (Example)  Of course, it doesn't take much to make them riot.  Palestinians rioting are about as unusual as liberals calling everyone "Racist!" - after a while, you have to ignore them.  That threshold was about 20 years ago.  Unfortunately, it's not just them: much of the world seems to be upset about one country moving its embassy to the capital city of the country it's in. 

All of which makes me wonder.  Is Israel the only country in the world that's not allowed to declare their own capital?  Nobody cares if our embassy to the UK is in London, the embassy to France is in Paris, that the embassy to the Phillipines is in Manila or any other.  Those countries declare their capitals and we put our embassies there for efficiency.  (Obviously, this is by invitation with the approval of the hosting country.)  No, not Israel, though.  The world has decided to put their embassies about an hour away in Tel Aviv, so that if their ambassador has to visit anyone or anyplace in the capital, it requires a motorcade, moving security teams, and all that hassle. 

There seems to be an assumption that Jerusalem is just the small, walled portion called The Old City, about 0.3 square mile out of the 48.3 square miles of modern Jerusalem - 0.6% of the area of the modern city.  The Old City is well named; parts of it, though certainly not all, are nearly 3000 years old.  But that's not what we're talking about.  We're talking about the other 48 square miles - where the modern government buildings are, along with the parks, restaurants and nightlife you'd expect in any modern city.

View of Jerusalem, looking over the old city (the muslim "dome of the rock" temple is the gold dome on the right), but you get a small sense of how small the old city is inside the larger, modern city.  The same sort of view can be had in every cardinal direction.  (Source)

The whole thing strikes me as silly.  Why is it that every other sovereign country on the planet gets to decide what its capital is, but they don't?  For that matter, if their capital wasn't Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, but we decided to put our embassy in Jerusalem, why should that matter? 

The Coming Revolution in Medicine

The coming revolution that everybody has been talking about and everyone knows about is genome-based medicine.  Recently, I stumbled across a dramatic graph that throws some light on this.  It shows the decline in cost to sequence a human genome.

The first sequencing of a human DNA sequence was announced in 2001 and cost a team of scientists close to $100 million.  You can see by this plot that cost has dropped by five orders of magnitude in 15 years and continues to drop.  From 2001 to 2007, the speed and reduction in costs of genetic sequencing had been moving as fast as Moore’s Law – roughly doubling in speed and halving in cost every 18 months.  But something amazing happened in 2008… The cost of genetic sequencing began dropping at a speed five times that of Moore’s Law.   We see in the last year that at least one of the major providers, UnitedHealthcare, has decided to reimburse for DNA sequencing if the physician recommends it and in certain circumstances (pdf warning). 

Some of you may be thinking "$1000?  I know I can buy one from 23AndMe for $200.  What gives?"  I'm not sure, but I believe that 23AndMe doesn't do a complete sequencing, only decoding some percentage of the genome.  The company puts it this way:

The analysis we perform is called genotyping. Genotyping looks at specific locations in your DNA and identifies variations. These variations make you unique.

In choosing these specific locations, we focus on the variations that are known to be associated with important health conditions, ancestry and traits. Genotyping is a great way to start understanding how your genetics can impact your life.

At this point, this science is in its infancy.  There are some gene variants, called SNPs (snips), which are already known to be linked to higher chances of some diseases - I recall having written a somewhat philosophical piece on some of this, after hearing about actress Angelina Jolie's decision to have a double mastectomy after confirming she had the BRCA ("Brack-a") breast cancer genes, but my point was the deeper question:

If you could know what you were likely to die of and when you were likely to die, would you want to know?  Let's leave out Twilight Zone-style "seeing the future", and restrict ourselves to genetic things.  (The TZ did a story centered on a camera that could see five minutes into the future).  As the genomic research of the last 10 years progresses and grows, more of us will be faced with this question.  And the logical extension of knowing that you have a genetic tendency that will probably kill you is that you might want to do something about it. Would you want to know if there was nothing you could do about it?

Always into geeky self-experimentation, I signed up for the 23AndMe health and ancestry package back in September.  After they email your report, you have an option of downloading a text file of all your results; in my case, this file was 638,480 lines long.  Here's where it gets interesting: there are companies that have sprung up to help you interpret your results.  The one that hooked me is called Promethease.

According to the company

Promethease is a literature retrieval system that builds a personal DNA report based on connecting a file of DNA genotypes to the scientific findings cited in SNPedia.

SNPedia is worldwide central database of studies on the specific SNPs.  This personal report costs $5 and is mailed to you as an html file that opens in your browser and links to interpretations of everything in your (638,430 line) file.     

This information is interesting but interpretation is not as straightforward as you might think.  As an old guy, I might be interested in the chances of prostate cancer.  According to Promethease, there are 98 SNPs listed with an effect on the disease. They tell me I have 8 bad SNPs, 16 good ones, and the other 74 are unknown at this time.  Do I have more or less risk than any other old dude?  Beats me.  I don't have a clue.  They do tell me useful things, though, like I that have a gene that makes me a slow metabolizer of a handful of common drugs (which they list), that I'm more likely to have bad side effects from some other drugs by name, and that I'm 5x more likely to have side effects from statins. 

It's not uncommon to look at the Promethease report and find genes that say both a higher and a lower risk of some condition.   The only thing I know for sure is I'm too old to die young from anything - but I don't need 23AndMe to tell me that.  

As more and more people get sequenced and volunteer information on what diseases and conditions they suffer, the science will get better, and the information more useful.  We're already starting to see good things come out of the genome research. It's likely to get better. 

Another CNC Mill Upgrade

Back in May, I told the story of adding the parts for a rotary (4th axis) to my CNC Grizzly G0704.  That piece concluded at the end of comments with this little statement:

Unfortunately, I didn't notice until yesterday that the Tee nuts and clamping hardware for the mill don't fit! I thought they did. That means I can't hold any work to the table and run [any accuracy/repeatability] tests, at least for now.

The "at least for now" part turned into a long period of inactivity, while I worked on other projects.  I had measured the Tee slot and it didn't seem to correspond to anything standard I could find.  I posted to a forum about it and someone said it was a "sloppy 8mm slot", while another said it was 3/8".  I couldn't get a definite answer so it kinda just sat.

With other projects moving along and the guitar getting close to done, I started looking into this some more.  I was going through the online catalog of a place that sold Tee-nuts in quantity and saw that they offered CAD models to download.  I downloaded the file for the 3/8" nut and imported it into a drawing I had made of the slot.  It fit perfectly!  So all I had to do was find a 3/8" clamping kit, like the 7/16" kit I have for the mill (do NOT mix up those parts!).  Found it, bought it, and it arrived Wednesday.

Naturally, I needed to try it out, and while it's possible to drill a pattern of holes in a circle without a fourth axis just by using a little high school trigonometry, I decided to mount the flywheel of my little wobbler engine to the rotary table, figure out how to zero it and drill the holes on the table.   What I planned to do was center the flywheel on the table, set the Y axis to the circle radius I wanted the bolt holes on and rotate the table 60 degrees at a time, drilling six holes.

My first effort was a mistake from not thinking it through enough. All I did was use my dial test indicator to find the middle of the flywheel, which I had eyeballed into the center of the table.  That was nowhere near close enough to work.  The center of the rotary axis has to be in line with the center of the spindle and the flywheel has to be centered on that.

If you look closely, you'll see some pecks that I made on 60 degree intervals by touching the wheel with the spotting drill bit and turning the drill by hand.  If you look closer than that, you can see they weren't centered.  

What I needed to do was center the table under the spindle then center the flywheel on the table.  For the first one, I took everything off the table and put my MT2 dead center into the matching taper in the rotary table, then used a countersink in the mill's headstock (with a drill chuck) and centered the rotary table axis under the countersink.  This was done visually with my 4x Optivisors on and the Rumblepad in my hands, The wobble (runout) in the drill chuck was larger than the error I could see.  Then I took out the dead center, put the flywheel back on the table with the clamps in place, but loose.  I took the countersink out of the drill and replaced it with a smaller, MT1 dead center from my Sherline; put the point of the MT1 center into the hole in the flywheel making sure the flywheel was centered and couldn't move before tightening the clamps down.

Success.  Six evenly spaced center drill/spotting drill holes (about 1/8" dia.) all on the same circle.

Once I had that, I just went back to all six spots, drilled them with 1/4" bit, then went around the circle the third time with a 3/8" drill.  As my French visitors would say, le voila!

I didn't give a link to the 3/8" clamping set from Little Machine Shop because I'm not really pleased with the quality.  That said, I don't have one to recommend over it.  I'll keep it because it's a convenient package of raw hardware in a plastic holder, but I think every threaded stud needs to have a die run over it, and every nut needs a tap run through it.  Six of six pieces of hardware I picked up needed attention like that.

So now the rotary table is usable for real work.  Running it in this configuration is rather unusual for a fourth axis; this is parallel to the Z axis, and most common is with it parallel to the X-axis, called an A axis.  (Parallel to the Y axis is a B axis)  Also, instead of clamping sets like this, it's more common to use a lathe chuck on the A-axis.  Things like fluted barrels or fluted rifle bolts are some examples of what they're used for, but they're also used for making some types of gears, rotationally symmetric parts of all sorts, and in some industries, they're used to increase the capacity of the CNC tooling.  A group of identical parts are made in regular 3D machining, and then the fixture they're mounted to, called a tombstone, is rotated to bring up another group.  There are three, four or more sets of parts on a tombstone.  Doubtful that I'll do that.

(A rotary tombstone fixture with three identical pieces per side and four sides.  Using this, a shop gets four times as many parts in one machine setup.  Pic from CNCCookbook.com)

Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day

It's hard to match the things that other writers have done.  This is just a simple suggestion to take a few seconds and think of  it.  Pay respect to the WWII vets who fought and died.  Pearl Harbor was 76 years ago today.

In the last two years, I've come to find out that my brother's Father-in-Law is a WWII vet.  He's 95.  Still drives all over, still has a sharp mind, still mows lawns.  For most of the time I've known him, he worked as a bag boy at a Publix grocery store, but that ended around five years ago.  He's the first WWII vet I've known in years.  I'll use the term, "tough old bird".  Maybe on Christmas, I can get a few stories out of him. 

The Net Neutrality Argument Goes 2010 SEIU

My reference is to a protest covered here in May of 2010 in which SEIU hired goons showed up at the home of a Bank of America executive to protest loudly outside his house.  There were reports that the thugs were escorted by police, or at a minimum, the police were not willing to do anything to stop them.

The banker whose home was attacked had been at his child's baseball game.  Another, older, child was at home terrified and had locked himself in the bathroom.  Picture yourself in this situation; your child is home afraid and needs to be protected.  You're with a child that you just can't leave to fend for himself either, what do you do?  You don't have backup.  You aren't  a professional security guy or special forces operator.  You're a dad with two scared kids, and you're probably pretty scared yourself.

Dad parked some distance away, left the younger kid in the car and managed to force his way into the house.  Got older kid and escaped.  All was well.

The Net Neutrality protests crossed this Rubicon last week when protesters showed up at the home of FCC Chairman Ajit Pay, calling out his children by name and threatening them all with injury or death.  Dollars to donuts nobody protesting understands net neutrality, which is too complicated to put in a five second chant. 

Pai is now flanked by a Homeland Security protective detail everywhere he goes because of a deluge of specific, credible threats of violence toward him and his young children. He's also facing an onslaught of racist smears and attacks too obscene to quote – including an image asserting that Pai is Osama bin Laden after shaving his beard.

Members of Congress are coming under similar attack for supporting Pai's signature proposal. The most outrageous example resulted in a criminal indictment after Congressman John Katko received a message threatening: "I will find you and your family and I will kill you all. Do you understand? I will literally find all of you and your progeny and just wipe you from the face of the earth."

Death threats over arcane FCC rules? I think it's time to say, "Srsly?  WTF?  Why the rage over some law that hasn't really been in place more than a couple of years and was illegally passed to start with?"  In addition to not bothering to follow the Administrative Procedures Act that they're required to follow, starting in 2010 the Congress told the FCC they didn't have the authority to pass these rules.  In true Obama administration fashion, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski did it anyway.

Look, the Internet has been around since the late '80s/early '90s.  In the intervening 27 years, I've gone from accessing with a 14.4 kbaud dial-up to a 50 Mbit/second cable rate with no federal intervention.  The number of people connected is probably 10 million times the number connected back then.  Sounds like the market is working pretty well.  I think I remember hearing about the Net Neutrality concept in the '90s.  Seems like we did OK without it.  Quoting from the Townhall article linked above:

Nonetheless, in 2015, ultraliberal advocacy groups (fueled by $196 million from the Soros and Ford Foundations) and Silicon Valley giants like Google (which cycled a shocking 250 personnel through the Obama administration and saw regulating ISPs as a way to guarantee themselves access to below-market-rate downstream bandwidth) succeeded in getting the FCC to reclassify ISPs as regulated public utilities.

This was done under a Depression-era law designed for the old Ma Bell telephone monopoly. Thousands of requests to micromanage every aspect of the Internet piled up at the FCC Enforcement Bureau and the commission was set to adopt a sweeping new broadband tax to replace the private investment it scared off – with strings attached of course – during a Hillary Clinton administration.

The liberal organizers of the phony scare campaign had even bigger plans; Robert McChesney, the founder of Free Press – the group that was cited 46 times in the Obama net neutrality order – openly bragged: "At the moment, the battle over network neutrality is not to completely eliminate the telephone and cable companies. We are not at that point yet.  But the ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control." [emphasis added - SiG]

"Free Press"?  Like most Marxist organizations, Free Press is dedicated to the exact opposite of what its name implies; they don't want a Free Press, or Free anything; they want government-run press.  Think Pravda and Izvestia of the old Soviet Union and you're right there. 

Somewhere else on line, I noticed a statement from Borepatch who I consider a pretty well-informed guy, saying that fully 50% of traffic on the 'net is from two services: Google (mostly YouTube) and Netflix.  The Foundation for Economic Education adds:

Net Neutrality had the backing of all the top names in content delivery, from Google to Yahoo to Netflix to Amazon. It’s had the quiet support of the leading Internet service providers Comcast and Verizon.  Both companies are on record in support of the principle, repeatedly and consistently, while opposing only Title II which makes them a public utility – a classic "have your cake and eat it" position.

The opposition, in contrast, had been represented by small players in the industry, hardware providers like Cisco, free-market think tanks and disinterested professors, and a small group of writers and pundits who know something about freedom and free-market economics.
...
Here’s what’s was really going on with net neutrality. The incumbent rulers of the world’s most exciting technology decided to lock down the prevailing market conditions to protect themselves against rising upstarts in a fast-changing market. The imposition of a rule against throttling content or using the market price system to allocate bandwidth resources protects against innovations that would disrupt the status quo.

I can hear some people saying they figured Netflix and Amazon would want Net Neutrality but why Comcast and Verizon?  The answer is what the FEE says in that third paragraph, the same answer whenever you see industries lobbying congress over rules that cost them money: they're big so they can afford the expense much better than a smaller startup so it prevents competitors coming up and challenging them.

For established firms, a rule like net neutrality can raise the costs of doing business, but there is a wonderful upside to this: your future potential competitors face the same costs. You are in a much better position to absorb higher costs than those barking at your heels. This means that you can slow down development, cool it on your investments in fiber optics, and generally rest on your laurels more.

But how can you sell such a nefarious plan? You get in good with the regulators. You support the idea in general, with some reservations, while tweaking the legislation in your favor. You know full well that this raises the costs to new competitors. When it passes, call it a vote for the “open internet” that will “preserve the right to communicate freely online.”

If you're Google, Amazon or Netflix, the last thing you want is some garage-based innovator to have a level playing field and become a threat.  Can't happen?  Remember MySpace?  Remember Archie, the first search engine?  Too far back?  Then do you remember Altavista?  Lycos?  Kids, ask your parents.  Google was a startup from a couple of precocious college kids; at some level they have to know that if they do get knocked off their throne it will be by a couple of kids like they were.  They want to prevent that and Net Neutrality may be a part of keeping their throne. 

Looked at this way, Net Neutrality is probably the ultimate bait and switch; the ultimate con game.  People think they're going to get ultimate streaming rates for everything every time, but nobody can do that without spending tons of money on infrastructure.  The big ISPs can do something but they don't have to knowing that startup technologies will never take their tidy little profit away if they managed the government well enough.  Marxists like Robert McChesney of Free Press, and George Soros will get their wish of destroying the "capitalist media", and the useful idiots protesting or threatening murder for net neutrality get their little government teat to suck on, since they think if the wise and wonderful gubmint is in charge everything will be wonderful.  Everybody's happy except for the people who understand and value free and open markets - meanwhile, development of the Internet slows and the expression "Internet Speed" goes away.  As Ajit Pai said in 2015 (quoting Emperor Palpatine from the Star Wars universe), “Young fool … Only now, at the end, do you understand.”  At the moment, Pai is standing up for a return to free and open markets.  It is, after all, what voters seemed to vote for when they gave power to Trump and the Stupid Party.

(generic artsy picture of optical fibers - source)

As I've said before, you have to admire the way the left controls the message.  Ask any typical person and they'll reflexively say the idea is wonderful because the ISPs are screwing us and want to slow all our net feeds down because they're evil.  Pissing off your customers is such a successful business strategy.  I see similar arguments like this from people claiming to be in the industry, so they must not understand the business aspects.  There never seems to be the thought that the market brought them the continuously improving and faster computers, tablets or phones, and that the same market is also continuously trying to build out faster and faster internet infrastructure.  There never seems to be the realization that the heavy hand of government could grind that to a halt.  There never seems to be a realization that the reason they're pissed at their ISP is exactly because their ISP is a state-regulated utility.  No recognition of any of these at all.

Deal Alert - Sog Snarl Knives

The SOG Snarl, is a 4.3" LOA, 2.3" blade length, 1/4" thick stainless (9CR18MoV) steel knife  They sell it as neck or boot knife, a BUK (back-up knife), if you will.  Comes with a nice fitting plastic sheath and a blackened chain.  The sheath has a metal belt clip on it that fits 1-1/2" belts.  I just learned about these knives last week and after an hour or so of research ordered two: one for the Diminutive But Deadly one and one for me. 

Last week, I found prices in the $29 range at Midway, a little more at Brownell's, and bought the two for $23.38 (each) at Amazon.  Yesterday and today, Amazon has dropped the price to $16.89.  That's a deal! 

While I doubt it would affect cutting ability, I noticed that Mrs. Graybeard's knife (luck of the draw from our box of two) was ground asymmetrically.  The V was the right included angle but not centered on the blade.  The ground length on one side was half as long as the other.  The blades were sharp but still showed lots of marks from the grinding.  I sharpened both, and was able to easily reshape her knife, on the Work Sharp knife sharpener.  Even without putting on the finest belt, the Work Sharp puts a shiny edge on a blade and they just look sharper than one with grinding wheel marks.  

I think it's usable out of the box, though, so don't get wrapped up about my sharpening them (when you have sharpener, every problem looks like a dull edge, right?).  If you're looking for a small gift, or just watching prices to buy something for yourself, they're definitely worth considering. 

The Retro-Technical Buzz

This month featured a story making news about cassette tapes making a comeback.  Most people think of the cassette as obsolete technology, and the last month also brought this joke:

The comeback story is real.  This (self-starting) video tells the story of the National Audio Co. in Springfield, Mo., an American company at the heart of the story.  When music cassettes went away, they were largely producing voice tapes for the educational sector, and their business was steady.  Eventually, though, they noticed a problem.  Their sources were going away.

Experts from National Audio are developing new ways to make magnetic tape using rust and a 62-foot-long contraption that is normally used to create magnetic strips on credit cards, according to the Wall Street Journal story. [Note: paywall warning]

If production goes to plan, the machine should produce almost four miles of tape a minute by January.

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Stepp, said: 'The best tape ever made'.

'People will hear a whole new product.'

It's not just tapes.  Vinyl records are making a comeback, too.  Digital Music News estimated the vinyl market at around $400 Million per year almost two years ago Accounting firm Deloitte says in a 2017 report that record manufacturers are set to generate $1 billion in revenue in 2017, a  growth rate over 100%.  Sales are mostly used albums because the record companies had stopped producing vinyl albums until a few years ago.  Today, smaller companies are looking at the technology again, and some are talking about extending it to "High Definition Vinyl".  The HD Vinyl developers talk about a vinyl record that has 30% more capacity, 30% greater volume, and double the audio fidelity of a typical LP sold today.

The ‘HD Vinyl’ name is a working title, though the basic idea is this: instead of the manual and time-consuming process currently used for creating vinyl LPs, the ‘HD Vinyl’ process involves 3D-based topographical mapping combined with laser inscription technology to more quickly generate a far superior product.  Not only will the end product be vastly improved, but the time required to produce the LPs will also be radically reduced.

“…you don’t need to buy a new system…”

The result is a record that looks like the LPs being sold today, and more importantly, plays like them.   According to the companies involved, the HD Vinyl disc will play on all currently manufactured turntables and high end record players, though enhanced features will be better realized on upcoming, HD-compatible turntables.  “This is a completely backwards-compatible technology,” said Guenter Loibl, Rebeat CEO.  “It will play on any existing turntable, you don’t need to buy a new system to enjoy the benefits.”

Of course, if you have vinyl, you need turntables, and the old giants of the field are still in the arena.  Witness the McIntosh MT5 turntable. 

In the Christmas season of '15, Amazon's top-selling home audio product was a $50 Jentzen turntable.

If that doesn't convince you this trend is real, what if I told you that in 2015, Vinyl generated more revenue than YouTube, Vevo, SoundCloud and all the ad-supported, on-demand streaming services combined ?  The only thing missing would be to hear Taylor Swift is moving everything she records to vinyl - and owns the record company. 

Remember Polaroid instant film cameras?  Polaroid has revived the idea with a digital camera that prints on paper, the Polaroid Snap.  According to Machine Design:

The Snap merges the digital age with the company’s classic instant dynamic. You can take a 10-megapixel full-color 2×3 image and save it internally, transfer it to PC, upload it to your social media platform of choice or print it out using Zink Holdings’ Zink Zero Ink Printing Technology (photo paper). The technology uses photo paper made from a composite material embedded with cyan, yellow, and magenta dye crystals. Printing the image is done by controlling a heat pulse, length, and intensity within the camera before it’s ejected.

Perhaps the strangest of these "rebirth of old technology" stories belongs to Kodak, who is bringing back the Super8 "home movie" camera of the '60s in a strange digital/film/video hybrid. 

Kodak designed the Super 8 as a traditional video recorder that looks similar to the original but has a flip-out video display to see what you’re filming. Images are transferred to an 8mm film cartridge you pop inside the camera while recording. Once done, you mail the cartridges in to Kodak, which transfers them to digital files that can then be downloaded from the company’s website.

The camera also comes equipped with an internal SD card for recording audio (using an internal mic), as well as an HDMI port you can use to see the action on larger displays.

With the exception of recording the video to film that you send off for developing, it seems like any other video camera, and a large percentage of Americans carry one of those with them every day.

Machine Design tells the stories as part of the emerging small manufacturing sector in the US, but I see it as more than that, too.  Unless Kodak sold all of their manufacturing capability and is contracting it out, there's no way they can be considered a small manufacturer.  Same with Polaroid.  Still, just a bunch of cool stories out there for the interested. 

Joining the Save the Service Dogs Effort

Miguel at Gun Free Zone ran a post this morning about a petition to save three military/police service dogs scheduled to be euthanized in days over in the UK.  I signed the petition.  Does it matter to the UK if Americans want the dogs to be spared?  I have no idea.  But I think the dogs deserve to live out a life in peace and quiet.  The petition was started by a military/SAS veteran in the UK

This is the text from the petition.

Plans to put down hero service dogs Kevin, Dazz and Driver are in place to happen next week.

Experienced handlers have come forward to say they want to house the much-loved dogs, who have helped save hundreds of lives.

Kevin and Dazz served in Afghanistan where they searched for explosives and Driver worked for the police force.

Service dogs have saved my life on numerous occasions. We have a duty to save them.

In Afghanistan when I was on a patrol the dogs found an IED in front of us, I was number three in line, I was very, very lucky to survive.

They also saved countless lives when I was in the Special Air Service sniffing out explosives.

Dogs like Kevin, Dazz and Driver are an asset when they are serving but they even more of an asset when they are retired.

We owe them every chance possible to be housed and not killed.

 

A Followup On Soft Jaws for the Lathe

It seems hard for me to believe it has been almost five weeks since I posted (on Halloween) about a coming small project of making soft jaws for my lathe.  Particularly since I've been done with them since the middle of last month (16th) and never mentioned working on them.  Here they are mounted on my lathe's 4" chuck.

First off, none of the dimensions I'm going to talk about are critical and need to be within even 1/16".  These are made from a piece of 1-1/4" hex bar of 6061-T6 aluminum that I bought from an eBay seller.  I bought a foot long bar and cut off about 1-1/2" of it.  First, I put the cutoff piece on the lathe and drilled it down its axis with a couple of drill bits through my largest drill bit, 1/2".  The hole that clears the jaws needs to be close to 0.7", so I used a boring bar to open it the rest of the way.  Next came slicing it into three pieces about 3/8" thick, then I faced the saw cut sides, flipped them, and cut to final length right there on the lathe.

The original article showed tapped M8 (metric) holes on all six sides of each slice.  Mine are tapped 8-32 on three sides.  You can see the three screws each, so that they don't interfere with each other.  Drilling and tapping nine holes was an easy "drill, rotate, repeat" setup on the big mill using it as a very precise drill press. 

What I wanted to mention was that if you intend to make these, it might seem the idea is to put the aluminum slice on the chuck jaw and tighten the cap screws down.   Don't do it that way.  Leave them loose, tighten down on the stock you're going to machine first and then tighten the screws on the soft jaws.  It works better to use the chuck's own self-centering properties to reduce runout in the the piece you're working on.  That's a DAMHIK.

At least for a handful of test cuts, they work fine.  Non-marring on steel, yet hold well.  I haven't threaded anything, just used them to hold 1/4" steel round rods for test cuts. 

One of Those Guys We All Should Know, But Few Do

Have some USB connectors on your computer?  Of course you do.  They've become standard on just about every computer made in the last 15 years, and go back to the late 90s.  Meet the guy who was probably the most important co-inventor of the USB interface, Ajay Bhatt, now retired from Intel.

Do you remember the days before USB?  With serial ports you had to configure for your dial up modem before you could get online?  Before "Plug and Play"?

“When we started I don't think most people, including my colleagues at Intel, realized that USB was something that was needed,” Bhatt said. “I kept on saying that if you want to make computers useable to a common user then you have to make things easier to use. I always used my own family as an example. When my wife tried to use the PC at home she as always very frustrated even with basic things like printing or scanning. She always used to say, 'What good is this? Any time I need to do something it just doesn't work.' ”

Today Bhatt is using his retirement to experiment with the Internet of Things, building his own Smart Home (another undefined term), but trying to figure out how to make everything simpler and scalable.  Like most of the people I'd consider the great engineers, Bhatt has a relentless drive to make things simpler and better.

I was going to include some details from the original article on Design News, but I'll leave that for the history buffs to look up.  Suffice it to say they knew the connectors were going to be a PITA, but had to make them single polarity, non-reversible for cost reasons.  (You've heard about the so-called USB paradox that it takes three attempts to correctly plug in the connector that can only turn two ways and only connect one way.)  Remember, when a new technology is first introduced, it has to be better than the predecessor in the market, and if the new one can't beat the older one in cost, it's probably doomed.

No, instead of the facts, I want to point out this amazing video that Intel actually aired in a 2009 advertising campaign.


Intel hired an Indian actor to play Bhatt, and I have to assume that he just couldn't do that walk for the cameras.

In real life, this doesn't happen.  No, not the beautiful groupies and adoring fans for an engineer, don't be silly.  That's not happening given an infinite number of parallel universes.  I mean in real life companies like Intel don't do this.  Except that they did this time.

And now you'll remember Ajay Bhatt as a major inventor of the USB interface.

EDIT 2335 EST:  The gremlin that inserts nonsense sentences into my posts visited again.

Justice League - Best DC Comics Movie In a Long Time

Bottom line first: Justice League is thoroughly enjoyable fun and worth seeing.  It's the story of the formation of what DC Comics fans all know of as The Justice League of America.  As far as I can tell, it's about the tenth or 12th version of the story.  A month ago, I pretty much raved about Thor Ragnaraok, and if I had to see only one, I'd see Thor simply because it's more fun, and I like the characters more.  However (and you that was coming, right?) this is easily the best DC comics movie in a long time; possibly ever.  I recall the 1989 Batman movie, with Jack Nicholson as the Joker, had its dark side, but it also had music by Prince that gave it a light feeling, and I recall it as a lot of fun.  (disclaimer about DC movies: I didn't see Suicide Squad.  Never read the comics; don't know anything about it)

Ever since then, the DC movie folks have emphasized the dark side of their characters; for example that Batman is a "broken" man from losing his parents, and the costumes for all of them have gotten darker than the comic book version.  Like this comparison of new and old Superman colors.

In this promo photo, you can see how muted all the character costumes have become. 

Superman is central to the story, but the majority of screen time goes to the others.  The story centers on Batman (Ben Affleck) getting a group together to fight off a planetary invasion.  In the previous Batman movie, he meets Diana, Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) and the two of them are the team.  He first recruits Aquaman (Jason Mamoa) who initially rejects him until he realizes the seriousness of the problem.  Then he recruits Flash (Ezra Miller) and Cyborg (Ray Fisher) with varying degrees of ease.  The invasion begins almost immediately. 

Y'all know I'm a fan of these light, comic book movies, but if Thor: Ragnarok was a full five stars this one is four stars.  It simply wasn't as much fun of a romp as Thor was.  Both Mrs. Graybeard and I thought that Gal Godot pretty much owned the movie, but I also liked the baby-faced kid they got as the Flash.  He injected a few good pieces of light, comic relief into the movie.

Oh, and DC decided to pick up the Marvel habit of adding some teasers into the credits.  Stay for the whole thing.  If you're into that.