Electrical Engineering

4:44 AM

I guess this should be really simple to you guys, i would ask you what are those transformers in circuit 1 really doing

are they actually serving as a couple from one stage to another ?

coupling

So, in circuit 1 we have 3 stages ?

And my only last doubt, what is that L3 for in the circuit 2 ? I thought the current input Iin would go directly to the base of the common emitter amplifier .. What is actually the purpose of the L3 and C2 ?

@nerdy Is there a specific reason you are not posting this as a question on the site?

hehe, i posted one 2 hour agos dont know if i can spam on the site

can i ?

5:23 AM

@nerdy If you posted 2 hours ago, wait at least 22 more hours for answers. Not everyone is in your timezone, and not everyone just scans the site constantly. Also, no, spamming a question is not a good idea, it's just a way to invite downvotes and potentially administrative action.

Anindo Ghosh, it's that the question i posted was another one

not about the tuned amplifiers

but i was worried even then to post different questions in 2hours spam

is there a problem ?

@nerdy No, different questions are fine, just go ahead.

good moning

hi

Hiya @jippie

5:38 AM

@nerdy Just as a little feedback. Your first post is a little hard to read. It's best to type up your question in the panel (using LaTex for formulae) and then only post pictures of diagrams. In general people don't answer homework questions unless you have shown work and have a specific point that is confusing you, then they tend to be receptive.

Okay, my next question will be correct :)

Hallo.

@angelatlarge grEEtings

Awwww, crap!

@angelatlarge ? you missed a couple of days and got reset?

5:45 AM

@rawbrawb Apparently. I thought I was here...

member for 1 year, 2 months
visited 413 days, 238 consecutive

Hey room

EE is part of my waking up ritual

@angelatlarge it could just mean you have a life.

I have some questions regarding Electrical Stuff..

5:47 AM

@rawbrawb If that was only true.

@rawbrawb Alas

morning @codebrain

@jippie Yeah, it was part of mine too. I thought.

Morning @Jippie

@jippie You've undergone a name change?

?

5:48 AM

People are still on bed

@codebrain they're bound to be somewhere in the world

hmmm..:)

@jippie jippie -> room? :)

@angelatlarge funny

Hiya @rawbrawb and @angelatlarge

and @codebrain --- You're from India, right?

6:06 AM

@AnindoGhosh hey

Did I miss much in the last couple of days?

@AnindoGhosh Hallo.

Apparently I wasn't around:
http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/9429787#9429787

@angelatlarge I wasn't around much either. Busy few days.

@AnindoGhosh I don't know, I have been just peeping n every now and then.

@rawbrawb I have not even had that luxury. My other career has been keeping me verrrry busy.

6:12 AM

@AnindoGhosh hopefully in a positive way.

@rawbrawb Yep. Rather.

@AnindoGhosh good!

@AnindoGhosh yes, all the good stuff

@jippie Do tell.

and many chances to upvote good questions and answers

and many chances to cancel downvotes

6:16 AM

@jippie cool!

@jippie especially yours, if I read the subtext correctly. ;-)

@AnindoGhosh not necessarily

@jippie I do that quite a bit - I've noticed a fresh flood of drive-by downvotes to newcomer questions.

@AnindoGhosh I've seen a fresh flood of your 'cancel out downvote' comments too ;o)

@jippie I try. Not a flood, but I wish I could.

6:20 AM

@AnindoGhosh well with at least 3 of us, that might be a mini flood....

@rawbrawb I'm happy to pull my share of that again today. I'm home most of the day, and no pressing stuff (taking a breather after a particularly tiring few days out in the hot sun).

I certain someone has been posting .. but seems to be on his meds so I'm not 100% certain. THere is a chinese generator maf. posting questions that are spam but very subtly so. electronics.stackexchange.com/users/23872/user43995

Voting to reopen because the question itself is interesting, once one gets past the apparent maturity of the OP as indicated in the way the question is worded. If someone really can't cope with the abrasive way this question is written, please feel free to edit to your comfort, and people with review privileges can approve the edit. It seems the OP is disinclined to work with us on this, but the site is about answering questions for a broader audience, not necessarily for an individual. — Anindo Ghosh 41 secs ago

@AnindoGhosh I'm not sure what the guy is doing here though.

@rawbrawb He's opened up his car stereo to bypass the code (maybe he stole it, we are not the moral police), and while he was at it, he decided to incorporate a way of getting phone headset jack input (or output, I'll have to re-read) into the device.

@rawbrawb I've done something like this before with a car stereo, incorporated an auto-mute of the music when the phone rings, coupled with dumping the phone output to the car speakers. I didn't have to bypass security codes because I had them, but that's not the electronics part of the problem, merely the manufacturer's business part.

@rawbrawb Oh, and I've found, when friends lost their car stereo security codes, that the manufacturers can be quite the highway robbers, demanding a "processing fee" almost equal to the street price of the stereo. So my sympathy with the moral police is NIL.

6:37 AM

Well you can give my PLL/DL question a go. I added bounty!

Q: Planning an amplifier using a transistor

@rawbrawb Dude, if I knew enough about it to answer, I would have jumped in even without a bounty :-)

In this question, is it safe to assume that the OP means "Voltage" when they say "tension"?

0

I want to plan an amplifier of tension using a transistor: but I don't know how I can choose the values of \$R_1\$, \$R_2\$, \$R_3\$, \$R_4\$, \$C_1\$ and \$C_2\$.. I want to obtain a gain of 3, and I want \$Z_{in}=15k\Omega\$ and \$Z_{out}=3k\Omega\$.. could you help me? I've just started to s...

@AnindoGhosh well everyone else is missing the obvious, even with hints. I don't want to answer it because I want to get the badge for awarding bounty. I ask so few questions I thought that one would at least be useful.

@AnindoGhosh yep, that's old timey talk.

@rawbrawb Useful is one thing. Within my limited capacities is a different thing :-)

@AnindoGhosh Ahhh piss off, you lying sack of ....

@AnindoGhosh even the transistor symbol is old timey too. Next he's gonna be talking cps (cycles per second) and THAT will be a dead give away.

@AnindoGhosh I did assume just that. High voltage / high tension. I understand where it comes from.

6:45 AM

@rawbrawb When I saw that schematic, I had the feeling he was referring to some old textbooks (70s) that are still prevalent in India. I've seen one textbook, still taught at bachelors level electronics courses in some states, which essentially pooh-poohs FETs as a passing fad, and treats BJTs as barely tolerable alternatives to tubes.

("A silicon transistor can not have sufficient longevity in practical applications, because the silicon material is fragile in comparison to a proper metal-based vacuum tube")

@AnindoGhosh but they use the term tube and not valve?

Obviously, that must be hilarious to the students, any intelligent student would spend that whole class looking at their cellphone, imagining it implemented with vacuum tubes, and stifling a roar of laughter.

@rawbrawb "Vacuum Tube" is a popular term I've seen in textbooks.

@jippie I've edited the question accordingly.

@AnindoGhosh so that tells me that even though there is a close affinity to the UK the text books are American. Interesting...

@jippie you get what I was talking about with the STI? I thought since you are taking a transistor course that you would have discussed it.

@AnindoGhosh except the title ... ;)

not entirely, but with the clarification I did notice some extra details in the image. I'll come back on it when I have a bit more time than I have now.

@rawbrawb pretty much getting ready to get to the office this morning.

@rawbrawb On the contrary - the so called "Indian author" technical textbooks from the 70s as used in India are almost invariably plagiarized from Russian texts - to the extent that back in college I had several second-hand Russian textbooks, which were directly ripped off into our official textbooks without so much as an acknowledgement.

@rawbrawb I avoided changing the title because a strikeout does not work in a title (I think), or at least will look ugly.

6:51 AM

@AnindoGhosh Aaaah , i was wondering about that. I was going to ask given that in the early days after partition there was that connection. BUt I don't know what the eastern block called tubes.

@rawbrawb I think the words may be literal translation from whatever the Russians used back then. In many instances, even the grammar was from the Russian, literally verbatim translation rather than idiomatic English.

@AnindoGhosh Oh wow, so your schooling was truly a polyglot experience even in the text books.

Well all, I gotta head out ...

A: Starting with I2C on PIC18s

@rawbrawb Mine was, certainly. I had access to entire libraries of Russian, British, Japanese and American technical texts, official English translations of the non-English ones, courtesy my dad's workplace.

@rawbrawb By the time I was 10, I was regularly reading Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, several Russian magazines of similar nature, and a slew of magazines and journals on photonics (my special area of interest back then).

user61389

3

Microchip wrote application notes about this: AN734 on implementing an I2C slave AN735 on implementing an I2C master There's also a more theoretical AN736 on setting up a network protocol for environmental monitoring, but it isn't needed for this project. The application notes are working wit...

@rawbrawb Oh, and National Geographic - I used to borrow bound volumes by year, I've read them all up until the mid 80s.

7:01 AM

I you answer your own question, do you get rep for upvotes on the answer?

user61389

@jippie if the answer would be yes, would you not upvote me?

user61389

@jippie lets try :)

if the answer is 'no' I wuold upvote it.

user61389

@jippie I think it's yes, but not for accepting of course

PeterJ

7:34 AM

@CamilStaps, saw your chat ping back earlier, I'd just spotted a question at the time that needed the LaTeX properly formatted but someone else fixed it. I might go to meta and suggest they replace LaTeX with something decent like an ActiveX Microsoft Word plugin.

@PeterJ A via media could be a Word to LaTeX importer.

user61389

@PeterJ ah, I see. LaTeX not decent? Here in the Netherlands it's the academical markup tool.

PeterJ

@CamilStaps, beer coaster and pencil is all you need, plus a 20MP+ camera and macro lens so you can share in an easy and convenient format ;-)

7:56 AM

Morning!

@CamilStaps I was going to upvote that answer, but then I noticed the original poster is YOU!

I see what you did there..

@AnindoGhosh I know why I am not surprised..

user61389

@abdullahkahraman so what? :(

@CamilStaps Oh, that ":(" got me, upvoting..

user61389

@abdullahkahraman lol, thanks

@abdullahkahraman Why are you not surprised?

@AnindoGhosh You were 10 and you were reading that stuff, I am not surprised because you have the moves lol

8:10 AM

@abdullahkahraman The idiomatic English expression would be "Why am I not surprised?" (Rhetoric question, implying "Knowing the background, this fact does not surprise me"), rather than "I know why I am not surprised". Just saying.

@AnindoGhosh Yeah, that was what I was looking for :)

@abdullahkahraman :-)

OK, lunch beckons. TTYLA.

@AnindoGhosh Bye

8:23 AM

I'm off to school, see ya!

8:48 AM

Back

1:54 PM

Yo yo yo!

2:10 PM

It's been very quite in here for 5 hours...

David Kessner

3:09 PM

Hi all.

finished grading finals at about 9 last night, and just entered and sealed the course grades w/ the registar

Bon Jour

4:14 PM

@ScottSeidman Awesome, now you can answer @rawbrawb's question about DLL's so he'll stop harassing me.

@ThePhoton I'm not harassing you ... sheesh. I don't want to answer my own question, i'm doing it for a badge, plus people are missing the point, which usually really bugs you ... ;)

@rawbrawb ... um, I'm only joking around myself? ...

@ThePhoton no you're not, you're serious, I can tell .... We need more stinking badges.

Obligatory: We don't need no steenking badges!

@ThePhoton true ... Steenking Baaadjes

4:44 PM

Hi everybody

(echo echo echo....)

@tigrou allo

:)

user61389

If I subtract x from y on a PIC, how can I see if x>y?

user61389

I'd think the C flag would get set, but no

are you using signed variables ?

(maybe i dont understand what you want..)

user61389

4:48 PM

Uh, ASM :) just 0-255

@CamilStaps wouldn't you test it first?

user61389

@rawbrawb yes, I did, but the C flag doesn't get set in the simulator

user61389

I never understood those flags anyway... so if one could explain them.. :)

@CamilStaps I don't remember specific incantations off the top of my head, sorry.

i'm looking for a small rotary device that would give single pulses when rotated. not a potentiometer but something similar. does it ever exist ?

user61389

4:54 PM

@rawbrawb no problem, thanks

@tigrou it's called a rotary encoder, if a stand alone device. But you can do the same with many different cirucits

t2.gstatic.com/… just what i was looking for

thanks

(there is 3 pins which make sence, one for both ways)

@CamilStaps I seriously only ever look at the docs, uChip is pretty good. All these uControllers are all so similar anyways.

user61389

@rawbrawb yes, all datasheets look the same

@tigrou I'm not sure what that is.

@CamilStaps I'm talking about the designs, they are all so similar inside.

user61389

4:58 PM

@rawbrawb oh, like that

@CamilStaps the only real difference (other than supported peripherals) is word size. If you're using a 4 bit uController you have to do more bit manipulations and break functions apart. same as 8 bit vs. 16 bit (to a far lesser extent). Like what you are seeing with the 8 bit unsigned math.

@CamilStaps "C" flag is for "carry", isn't it? Is there a "BZ" flag or something for when the result is less than zero?

user61389

@rawbrawb yes, of course. But aren't there several uC families? Like Harvard, ...? A friend told me about it once

@CamilStaps PIC is Harvard --- it means the program memory is in a different address space from the data memory.

@CamilStaps Harvard is keeping the code and data on seperate buses.

user61389

5:03 PM

@ThePhoton it's carry, yes. The other flags I got are Digit Carry and Zero. According to some source the C flag gets cleared when x>y

user61389

Ah, I see. So basically all uCs use a STATUS register in a similar way?

Yo yo yo!

@CamilStaps not necessarily

user61389

@rawbrawb is there some name for a 'family' of uCs that use the STATUS reg like PICs do?

@CamilStaps There's an "N" bit in the status register (I'm looking at a PIC18F datasheet). It's probably set when the result of the last operation is negative. So if you subtract x-y and the result is negative, you know y>x.

user61389

5:08 PM

@ThePhoton Oh, sorry, I'm using the 16F628A, that one only has Z, DC and C

@CamilStaps not sure that that is enough of a distinction to cause people to think of them as separate. It's only broadly architectural distinctions (beyond what marketing depts will say) like Harvard vs. Von Neumann where most people would draw a distinction.

user61389

@rawbrawb okay, Von Neumann is... non-separate data and program memory?

@CamilStaps Looking at the datasheet, pg 129, summary of the SUBWF instruction. From the examples it looks like C gets 0 if the result is negative, C gets 1 if the result is positive or zero. Similar for the SUBWL instruction.

user61389

@ThePhoton ah, yes, you're right! But then I don't understand why the STATUS reg (pg 24) says for C=0: "No carry-out from the MSB of the result occurred" - doesn't that mean there was an overflow?

@CamilStaps I'm sure there are people who would debate the strengths of certain opcode sets vs. others but after a while you end up looking at them all as just different tools and perhaps for slightly different applications. But so many times the reasoning comes down to cost only, and engineering time is also a cost.

5:18 PM

@CamilStaps It's a pretty stripped down architecture. They may have just re-used the bit for one thing in the ADD instruction and a slightly different thing in the SUB instructions. Or it could have been a felicitous side-effect of the way they did subtractions that it was easy to set C when the result is negative.

@CamilStaps I don't know, but this might be where they put in an exception to the meaning of that flag because it would mean carrying around another flag for just one operation.

Aw crap @ThePhoton you keep getting in there just ahead of me ... ;(

user61389

Haha :) thanks both, I know how it works now, hope I'll remember as well!

@CamilStaps don't bother remembering, just think of the concepts behind it.

@CamilStaps I'd recommend looking at the ARM architecture. With the M0 they have a 32 bit uController, that is a few $0.10 and in 6 or 8 pin packages. They clearly are going after all the small uController companies. but they are using advanced processes. PIC and AVR etc. are going to be increasingly under pressure.

user61389

@rawbrawb oh, that's interesting! I didn't know there were DIP packages for ARM, will check that out!

@CamilStaps several from NXP are in Dip8 - just looked it up.

user61389

5:32 PM

@rawbrawb Wait, isn't ARM a brand?

Anyone here own 3DS Max, or anything that can export .3ds files, please?

@CamilStaps No, they are an IP licensing company. they design the cores but other companies license the cores and put peripherals around them and produce them in their own fabs.

user61389

@rawbrawb ah, cool. I sure should look into ARM :)

@AnindoGhosh sorry, no.

Thanks.

5:42 PM

@CamilStaps Noo0000oooOOoo! Stay in your little PIC world. Don't even get close to Atmel Awesomeness! ;)

JK JK!

No, but really...

6:20 PM

It's quite in here...

6:38 PM

@rawbrawb I explained to the lady who issued visitor badges at NASA Moffett Field why people kept saying "steenking badges" to her. Her entire job was managing these badges, and she must have heard that multiple times a day, and never knew why

@ScottSeidman I know a number of people there! Had a behind the scenes tour once. Was underneath that huge wind tunnel, that trap door where they stuff the planes into.

@rawbrawb Had a project going on at the Vestibular Research Facility there, and some money to to it. Lived through the base going ISO9001, Worked with the same group managing the 20g centrifuge, and got a tour of the inside cab of the Vertical Motion Simulator, which is awesome.

@ScottSeidman the 20g can kill people right?

@rawbrawb During daytime, it was only allowed to go up to 7g, as beyond that if anything broke off it could end up in the next building. It was in the movie "Space Cowboys"-- they had to make the control panel look more complex for film

@ScottSeidman I would capitalize the G, just because I thought it meant 'grams'.

6:45 PM

@ScottSeidman the superlatives that can be applied to the eqt. just lying around there ... the wind tunnels used to test the shuttle tiles etc. etc.

@rawbrawb Was in that cab, but it was stationary at the time. I was out to dinner w/ the head of the Human Factors group when he was paged as a subject passed out at 1.25G. Cab is padded, w/ dead mans switch, and flight surgeon on standby in the room, but that almost shut down the study anyway

@ScottSeidman Yes, people need to feel 'geekiness' in movies, thinking all us geeks are doing is playing around with green on black consoles...

@rawbrawb Should read about the VMS, aviationsystemsdivision.arc.nasa.gov/facilities/vms/index.shtml -- amazing piece of gear. NASA bigwig did millions in damage crashing it into the ceiling, resulting in a policy that pilots needed to be certified for fixed rotor flight

@rawbrawb I know a guy who manages a wind tunnel there.

@ScottSeidman I was dealing with the imaging group, the people who run the big 747 c/w telescope amongst other stuff.

6:49 PM

@ScottSeidman Not one of those guys, though his beard is as awesome as the guy on the left.

@ScottSeidman a friend used to write code for flight simulators, he siad that he always put the seat belt on because and accidental divide by zero can results in damage.

The tunnels are just incredible, with huge systems to just store gas

@ThePhoton so do you go in and do body surfing ?

6:51 PM

@rawbrawb Man, I hate going through discontinuities. Takes a pretty special seatbelt

@ScottSeidman the shuttle ones have the vertical tubes with incandescent ceramic balls to duplicate re-entry heat and they pull a vacuum from behind the tunnel for the high atmosphere stuff.

@rawbrawb I was using a 30-ft air-bearing sled built on a 30-ft slab of granite. They never found a motor that would drive it as vibration-free as it needed to be, so we drove the thing with wound-up bungee cords

just amazing stuff.

@rawbrawb It's some kind of helicopter wind tunnel...and I don't want to go body surfing in the same "airspace" as a helicopter.

@ScottSeidman oh man, if anything broke loose ...

6:54 PM

@rawbrawb Every shuttle crew apparently trained for one aspect of the return flight on the VMS, something like the final turn before landing or some such.

@rawbrawb The Vestibular Research Facility was in the same building as some facility that re-created the Martian Atmosphere. There was always red dust all over the place

@ScottSeidman don't you mean where the filming is done?

;)

;)

@rawbrawb maps.google.com/… shows a bunch of the big wind tunnel support structure

@ScottSeidman The biggest impression I had though was the unopened expensive test eqt. stuffed on shelves. If you have a budget for stuff and you don't exercise it, you loose it, so they would buy to the budget regardless of where or not they'd use it.

@ScottSeidman I know the area, used to go for long runs along shoreline amphitheatre and the shoreline park and you'd see that huge throat of the wind tunnel.

@rawbrawb You're not kidding. Many of the people walking around are contractors, just line items on one budget entry. To stay an extra hour would require a change order. Can be hard to get stuff done, but there are some damn fine engineers there

@rawbrawb How about Hangar 2, an old blimp facility, so big that it has indoor weather patterns like rain!

@ScottSeidman damn fine for sure!

7:00 PM

That might be Hangar 1. Memory a bit foggy

@ScottSeidman apparently the VLB or VAB (sp ?) vertical assembly building at kennedy can have clouds inside.

good morning

what's the pic? @ScottSeidman?

@jippie Hangar 1 at NASA Ames

@jippie an iconic image from Silicon valley (during construction of course)

what is ames..

oh

never heard of

7:03 PM

@jippie I'm sure you have

nope

The NASA base near San Francisco

gordonbiersch.com/brewery

@ThePhoton Spent some time there, too

those hangers were built for the MAcon and the georgia (?) rigid body lighter than aircraft. But NASA Ames is where all the shuttle research was done at, the center for airflow research etc. etc. other than Cape Kennedy and perhaps the redstone facility at huntsville it is perhaps the most mentioned facility.

7:06 PM

@ScottSeidman The brewery or the restaurant?

Apparently they're managed as completely separate businesses.

@ThePhoton or the grass out side ... ;)

@ThePhoton I think the brewery.

I don't know if they even have common ownership any more.

@ScottSeidman but for some reason your memory has a deficit ...

@ScottSeidman I got a tour a few weeks ago...but other than tours they're not open to the public.

tours and parties.

7:08 PM

I was out for lunch off base when our embassies got blowed up in the late 90s (I think), and base security went from normal to super high. I almost ran over the guard who threw himself in front of my car, I was so used to just being waved through

@ThePhoton They ran an open-house for the community once, and got a much bigger participation than they were expecting

@ScottSeidman I think they did that last year or year before.

@ThePhoton The red tape is impressive. I saw a manhole cover on base with a bunch of writing next to it. I went over to read "WARNING: CONFINED SPACE. Do not enter without confined space certification. For confined space certification, call xxxx"

@jippie Yo!

@ScottSeidman certainly before 9/11 I could show up (and did ) w/o proper ID, afterwards we'd meet at our offices, too much of hassle for meetings.

@ScottSeidman since you do vestibular research, do you know any of the people who did the early cochlear implant stuff?

@rawbrawb There's the 30-ft sled. They actually had to move the rock in on air cushions, with the side of the building dismantled. First try they broke the granite slab, and had to mine and lap a new one

@rawbrawb Nope, didn't know the coch. implant guys. I do know some folks working on vestibular prostheses now

Granite, as when rock chips, it won't leave a raised divot for the air bearings to crash on

7:19 PM

@ScottSeidman I had a customer once who was making a granite based optical bench, they forgot about looking at the building plans and checking concrete floor thickness and wheeled in it. by the time they stopped they had broke the slab into many many pieces. Air cushions seems smarter ...

@rawbrawb ouch

@ScottSeidman also very high young's modulus, used for low flexure mounts in optics.

It's absolutely amazing how many engineering resources NASA and contractors can mobilize to get a project right on the first try. They really think things through, and surprises are bad. They get ticked off when you say "it's not rocket science".

@ScottSeidman it's a procedural and cultural thing ... lots of good lessons to be learned for sure.

well I have to go ... have good one.

@rawbrawb When I'm teaching about failure mode analysis, I encourage my students to change modes from "how-can-we-make-it-work" design to "how-can-we-make-it-fail" sabotage.

@rawbrawb Me too. Just changing modes from getting grades in to more productive work, and got stuck. Have a nice day

7:32 PM

@ScottSeidman I've seen similar notices on doors around places I've worked (but not requiring "certification") --- maybe it's a newish safety/CYA thing?

7:42 PM

@ScottSeidman are you referring to Hubble's mirrors?

Speaking about epic fail

@jippie compared to how many other successes? and things that you don't get to see? That's just an example of sloppy thinking.

@rawbrawb Epic projects create the possibility of epic failures.

it was a rounding error in inches. I believe the mirror was made in "English" inches but specified in "American" inches. Not sure about the exact detail

@jippie "main null corrector, a testing device used to achieve a properly shaped non-spherical mirror, had been incorrectly assembled—one lens was out of position by 1.3 mm." according to Wikipedia.

the problem with nasa is that half the world is witnessing an exploding space shuttle live on tv and the other half of the world is watching it the other morning. You don't want that to happen. Apart from the lives that are lost which is very sad, it is also bad advertising.

I mean to say, I'm not really surprised that lots of money are available for such projects

7:51 PM

@ThePhoton precisely, and humans are fallible, anyone who thinks that we got anywhere by calculating and then getting it right the first time obviously doesn't know anything about the history of human advances. We have safe airplanes because people have died.

@jippie What about SpaceX, or Virgin Galactia?

@coding_corgi I think one major NASA goal was competing with Russian space program.

that's why it gets much more attention.

NASA was (is?) all about politics, cold war politics once

@jippie Is, is

@jippie Now I am all obsessed with ARM!!!! Maybe I will get a Raspberry Pi! Noooo! Must stay loyal to Arduino for at least 3 more months... Noo000oOO! Somebody help me!

@MLM Yo

MLM

@coding_corgi chill man

@MLM I wish I could, I wish I could, I need a chill pill....

8:03 PM

@ThePhoton It's not the cert that surprised me, it was the long bible-like message stenciled on the ground in big letters, including instructions on how to get certified

Tic Tac?

@MLM Wanna work on HackerRank?

MLM

@coding_corgi nah, i really wanted to just figure out the competition but both of us are stuck

@MLM Let's keep working on it....

MLM

@coding_corgi if we have no leads on what to do then its bit of waste of time

@jippie I was just at a talk by a guy high up in the fixing the mirrors project. When I was in college, it was where the Hubble receiver was. The Hubble was going up soon, and I was w/ the band at the party where they were celebrating the launch to come. Someone came in, and told us the Challenger just blew up, and we should stop the party

8:06 PM

@MLM Found two solutions on GitHub...

They've had some bad fails, but I'm always amazed that they can launch complicated doohickeys into the rigors of space, and have things work for decades. The Hubble designed to be field-repairable and upgradable, and its still going!

@MLM Naah, both of them didn't even have the solution...

@ScottSeidman field repairable :o)

@jippie Actually, the error (I learned last week) was in one of the jigs they used to verify the mirror as grinding proceeded.

@ScottSeidman sounds slightly familiar, yes. I believe it was caused by ever so slight differences in definitions of length (meter, inch, ... whatever)

8:15 PM

@jippie I think a metric/english conversion might have been responsible for a failed landing on some planet somewhere. Don't confuse your failed missions!

@ScottSeidman Not going to argue about that :o)

I'm already happy when I don't burn my fingers on a small signal diode ;o)

10:06 PM

Yo yo yo!

Just opened up my computer and anti-dusted everything!

Let's hope that stupid fan will be a little quieter...

11:17 PM

Can someone explain to me why HEF4053B has both Vss and Vee pins? I don't understand why both...