That state of metric conversion in the US

[Ralph Barone]

Oddly enough, when I read black text on white background of just the
right pitch on my laptop, it tinges in red. I really shouldn't have
tried to scrimp on the computer and bought one with an LCD screen instead
of a CRT! lol But really, I get red tinging sometimes on smaller fonts.

That might be Microsoft's "ClearType", which does some funky sub-pixel
anti-aliasing on smaller fonts.

 

[Spehro Pefhany]

I had a retina detatchment from the first lens replacement, so I'll wait until
that settles down before doing the second lens. It's astonishing that they can
replace lenses and repair retinas and stuff these days. I can't drive for a
while, so the folks at work hired a limo service to ferry me to and from work.
Very strange, especially being forced to be on time.

Will the driver at least have a steaming latte waiting for you?


Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany

 

[[email protected]]

I just did one, namely replaced the lens in my right eye. We made that one focus
at 22" (for computing) and I think I'll do the other one at about 12" for
reading. The result will be sort of a double-hump bandpass curve of resolution
vs distance, usable from maybe 10" to 24 or so. I'll get some bifocals for
driving, distance corrections on top and no correction below, for reading the
instruments.

I had a retina detatchment from the first lens replacement, so I'll wait until
that settles down before doing the second lens. It's astonishing that they can
replace lenses and repair retinas and stuff these days. I can't drive for a
while, so the folks at work hired a limo service to ferry me to and from work.
Very strange, especially being forced to be on time.

My wife couldn't drive for six months. She worked downtown, which
really screwed with my schedule. I had to force the kid to get off
his lazy ass and get a driver's license so we could share the car pool
tasks. ;-)

 

[[email protected]]

Dr B slurped the vitreus humor out of the eye and replaced it with freon! It
will slowly refill, eta 6 weeks. Actually, it's almost half filled already,
after two weeks. Imagine seeing the world through a porthole that's half under
murky water, with waves. Tons of cool optical effects.

A couple of years back, she had the vitreous humor separate. I don't
know why, but evidently it never heals. The brain does learn go cope
with it, though.

If people would quit pampering me I could take public transit. BART and MUNI
would get me to work in about 20 minutes.

There is no issue with sudden motion (impacts)?

 

[[email protected]]

A couple of years back, she had the vitreous humor separate.  I don't
know why, but evidently it never heals.  The brain does learn go cope
with it, though.

That's normal, happens with age. The vitreous humor is a sac of clear
jelly, attached to the retina in back. It shrinks with age and
eventually pulls loose from / detaches from the retina, causing
floaters. (Floaters are anomalies at the back end of the sac.) If
you're unlucky (or it pulls loose too early in life--when it's still
strongly bound to the retina) it'll rip off part of the retina with
it.

Myopes are predisposed to detachment, since their eyeballs elongate in
myopia, putting a tension pre-load on the vitreous. Risk is quasi-
exponential with degree of myopia.

I think they're pretty lucky re-attaching retinas in general if you're
QUICK--ASAP. If not, you're blind. If you see lots of "lightning
flashes," an ophthalmologist will get you in that same day.

There is no issue with sudden motion (impacts)?

Yes, absolutely--it's easily ripped loose again. Nothing to fool
around with.

Whew, that was a close one John. Glad it turned out well.

 

[JW]

Crap. Gamers have infinite money to spend on such things. LCDs are
still the way to go.


You can never get the guns (circuits) aligned perfectly, either. LCDs
are made that way. Color corrected LCDs are also available (at a
slightly higher cost ;-).

But there are color CRTs that have perfect convergence. The color Tek
TDS500 through 700 series of scopes use a single gun monochrome CRT, that
has a color LCD shutter glommed over the face. I always wondered if the
motivation was price or convergence... Probably the latter.

 

[[email protected]]

I seem to remember that a few dacades ago (maybe in the '70s) there was

some kind of federal push to convert the country to the metric system by

a certain date that is already in the past. As it's painfully obvious by

now, not much came out of that initial excitement.



Why do you think it is that the US public so resistant to such a change

when the metric system is so much simpler? Much of the rest of the

industrialized world is already on the metric system and not following

their lead just impedes international commerce.

 

[[email protected]]

Make sure they don't put them back in the wrong sockets. ;-)

The VA doctors say I have a cataract, that isn't 'ripe'.



I have computer glasses, and bifocals for driving. Some days, the
computer glasses are in better focus than the bifocals.

I now have bifocals for both. I don't really need them for driving
but I can't read numbers on the dash without them. Interestingly, I
can see the dash better with the distance lens (top) of the bifocals
than the bottom. The bottoms are set for reading, which is much too
close.

 

[[email protected]]

That's normal, happens with age. The vitreous humor is a sac of clear
jelly, attached to the retina in back. It shrinks with age and
eventually pulls loose from / detaches from the retina, causing
floaters. (Floaters are anomalies at the back end of the sac.) If
you're unlucky (or it pulls loose too early in life--when it's still
strongly bound to the retina) it'll rip off part of the retina with
it.

Myopes are predisposed to detachment, since their eyeballs elongate in
myopia, putting a tension pre-load on the vitreous. Risk is quasi-
exponential with degree of myopia.

I think they're pretty lucky re-attaching retinas in general if you're
QUICK--ASAP. If not, you're blind. If you see lots of "lightning
flashes," an ophthalmologist will get you in that same day.

That's exactly what happened. We were watching TV and she made a
comment about lightning. Huh? It's clear! They got her in the next
day. The other eye went within weeks, as the doc said it would. That
was about three years ago and she's had no problems (except floaters,
as you note) since.

Yes, absolutely--it's easily ripped loose again. Nothing to fool
around with.

That's why I was wondering why he'd even think of screwing around with
public transportation.

Whew, that was a close one John. Glad it turned out well.

Indeed.

 

[Jeroen]

Normalized scientific notation has the coefficient between 1 and
9.9999... so is nice and clear.

We usually whiteboard in engineering form, but use n and u and such
for the exponent. One quickly learns to multiply and divide these, as
in n over m is p. It's a game here to do math in one's head, on the
fly; you lose points for pulling out a calculator or a phone.

That'd be n *times* m.

n over m is u. OK, greek mu, but that's a nuisance on a US keyboard.

Jeroen Belleman

 

[Tim Williams]

But there are color CRTs that have perfect convergence. The color Tek
TDS500 through 700 series of scopes use a single gun monochrome CRT,
that
has a color LCD shutter glommed over the face. I always wondered if the
motivation was price or convergence... Probably the latter.

Shades of the ancient CBS system.

You'd think if they can make an LCD do color, they'd have just used it
directly. Was this back in the days of passive panels and twisted nematic
formulations, when color LCDs sucked?

Tim

 

[rickman]

No, Uwe had a good mental shortcut for converting fractional inches to
mm--multiply 1/16ths by 16, divide by 10. The result is high by .8%,
but easy to compute.

Example: 13/16" (20.64mm). 13x16=208, divided by 10 ~= 20.8mm.
Example: 1/4" (6.35mm) = 4/16ths. 4x16 = 64, divided by 10 = ~6.4mm.

It works because 256 is just 2 more than the exact conversion factor,
which is 254. If the number's in 1/16ths, they've already done half
the work.

Thanks Uwe.

Yes, that is a great shortcut. But my point isn't that there aren't
great shortcuts. My point is that just plain going metric is a *ton*
better, and I mean a ***metric*** TON!

BTW, the shortcut doesn't work so well when your fractions are decimal
inches. That's just more crap on the pile, the mix of stuff we deal
with in the
inch/foot/mile/tsp/tbs/cup/pint/fifth/quart/gallon/oz/lb/ton/°F world we
live in here in the USA.

You gotta love it! ...or leave it?

PS A friend is giving lectures on cold water safety and often says "mil"
to mean mm. Not that anyone in the audience will get confused, but it
hits a nerve in me.

 

[rickman]

PADS has the "complete" operation, which does a decent job of
finishing a route if you were kinda close anyhow.

I use FreePCB which doesn't have a lot of fancy features. But this is
not a hard one to work with. Say you are routing on a 0.635 mm grid and
approach a chip with pins spaced 0.5 mm. Pick up the route at the off
grid pin heading back toward the unfinished trace. The first two
vertices work back onto the grid one coordinate at a time including 45
degree angles. It works very well without a lot of programming (by the
developer I mean). This is one of two programs I use that load in less
than a second and open files in about the same amount of time. It even
interfaces to an autorouter!

 

[rickman]

That all depends on my blod pressure& Glucose levels at the moment.

Keep that shit under control! Both of them! All that stuff kills and
that is no joke. Whacked out glucose levels will mess with nearly
everything in your body and a lot of it is irreversible.

If you are overweight, lose those pounds. They may well be the cause of
the whacked glucose levels and that is *often* reversible even if the
long term damage isn't.

Not trying to be a pain, but this is one of my hot buttons. Americans
do a lot of harm to themselves just by the lifestyle they live. Yes,
I'm assuming you are American, not sure certainly. I see it every day,
especially where I spend a lot of time here in central Virginia. Well,
enough said on that topic. Like I said, it's one of my hot buttons.

 

[rickman]

That's normal, happens with age. The vitreous humor is a sac of clear
jelly, attached to the retina in back. It shrinks with age and
eventually pulls loose from / detaches from the retina, causing
floaters. (Floaters are anomalies at the back end of the sac.) If
you're unlucky (or it pulls loose too early in life--when it's still
strongly bound to the retina) it'll rip off part of the retina with
it.

Myopes are predisposed to detachment, since their eyeballs elongate in
myopia, putting a tension pre-load on the vitreous. Risk is quasi-
exponential with degree of myopia.

I think they're pretty lucky re-attaching retinas in general if you're
QUICK--ASAP. If not, you're blind. If you see lots of "lightning
flashes," an ophthalmologist will get you in that same day.

You sound like you know something about this.

No lightning flashes, but I do see stars from time to time from
relatively minor movements of my head. This is always in the dark of
course. I asked an ophthalmologist about this many years ago and he
said it was normal...

I do have floaters... by the truckload it seems. They used to be pretty
innocuous very faint traces of individual cells and short strings of
cells, like you would see under a microscope. But lately they have
become a bit more pronounced and often with a dark spot. When I look
closely at them the dark spot seems to be a knot of cells with multiple
strings. Is that a normal progression? I have been a bit concerned
about this, but it is not progressing at any fast rate.

 

[rickman]

it is probably "ClearType" it is Microsofts implementation of
enhancing the
resolution of text by "abusing" the known RGB layout of LCD screens
effectively
getting more pixels at the price of a slightly wrong color on the
edges

doesn't work on CRTs or rotated LCDs because the layout is different

you can try turning it off

Thanks, that was it! But turning it off pretty much sucks! I may need
to turn it back on. Right now the red tinging is gone, but characters
of a given font are multiple levels of boldness. 'w', 'v' and 'y' all
seem to be very faint compared to the rest of the characters. So I get
my choice, variable font face, or I can see red.

 

[JW]

Shades of the ancient CBS system.

You'd think if they can make an LCD do color, they'd have just used it
directly. Was this back in the days of passive panels and twisted nematic
formulations, when color LCDs sucked?

Perhaps when the TDS color scopes were first introduced, but they were
still making them with CRTs in 2000 when LCDs were looking pretty damn
good. At the same time, Agilents offerings that were competing with the
TDS700 series in the 548XX scopes all used LCD screens, and were quite
nice - bigger too at 8.5", while the usable area of the Tek scopes were
only about 6.5".

 

[[email protected]]

You sound like you know something about this.

No lightning flashes, but I do see stars from time to time from
relatively minor movements of my head.  This is always in the dark of
course.  I asked an ophthalmologist about this many years ago and he
said it was normal...

That's normal and benign. A star seen or two without actual optical
input means mechanical force, generally pressure--if you rub your eye,
for example--or displacement if you whip your head. Retinas don't
register pain or feeling--anything affecting them is perceived back at
headquarters (so to speak) as light.

Unexplained bright flashes generally signal detachments and tears,
which are considered emergencies.

I do have floaters... by the truckload it seems.  They used to be pretty
innocuous very faint traces of individual cells and short strings of
cells, like you would see under a microscope.  But lately they have
become a bit more pronounced and often with a dark spot.  When I look
closely at them the dark spot seems to be a knot of cells with multiple
strings.  Is that a normal progression?  I have been a bit concerned
about this, but it is not progressing at any fast rate.

My 1st vitreous detached when I was 32, causing some rare tiny pin-
point sparkles at night, and swarms of floaters indistinguishable from
flocks of mosquitoes by day. That was inconvenient--I kept swatting
the decoys, and the real mosquitoes got away.

 

[[email protected]]

Yes, that is a great shortcut.  But my point isn't that there aren't
great shortcuts.  My point is that just plain going metric is a *ton*
better, and I mean a ***metric*** TON!

BTW, the shortcut doesn't work so well when your fractions are decimal
inches.  That's just more crap on the pile, the mix of stuff we deal
with in the
inch/foot/mile/tsp/tbs/cup/pint/fifth/quart/gallon/oz/lb/ton/�F world we
live in here in the USA.

You gotta love it!  ...or leave it?

PS A friend is giving lectures on cold water safety and often says "mil"
to mean mm.  Not that anyone in the audience will get confused, but it
hits a nerve in me.

I much prefer metric. Decimal inches isn't bad. Fractional inches is
the pits. Converting between the three crashes space probes, and
wrecks the occasional part on my lathe.

 

[Frank Miles]

I'm unclear. When you say Philips is tapered, do you mean the profile
of the flutes are tapered to the point at the end or the thickness of
the flutes are tapered so they are more narrow at the edge than at the
center?

I've never seen a Pozidriver or the corresponding screw... that I know
of. I have used a few screws lately that seem to fit my drivers so
well, I have trouble getting them out of the screw. This is using bits
in a bit and drill collection from some years ago, Costco possibly. Tons
of bits and drills of varying shape and sizes.

It's the constant thickness of the flutes that distinguishes pozidrive.

Have any old Tektronix gear around? As in 5K or 7K series lab scopes, or
400 series portable scopes, or TM500 test gear? _LOADS_ of pozidrive
screws in them. As whit3rd said, using a phillips on these is a bad idea.