October Diversions

Adventure Time links:

A complete timeline of the mythology of the show:
atchronology.com

A more concise timeline:
https://www.reddit.com/r/adventuretime/comments/66ku1x/complete_adventure_time_timeline_spoilers/

Undoubtedly the worst plot summary of Adventure Time: https://www.google.com/amp/s/kotaku.com/adventure-time-explained-1703199261/amp

Sim's remixes:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TtZ-k3KfeUI&list=RDTtZ-k3KfeUI&index=1

The original "Conversation Parade" clip:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U_JbTHp6uzI

A nice collection of BMO clips:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=heHylvp05R4&list=PLRrcNeDY-Mq8fwy72vkn-5y37OGrgF4gY&index=6

The transcript of "Shh" which seems to be as close as I will be able to get to watching the whole thing:
https://adventuretime.fandom.com/wiki/Shh!/Transcript

The list of Adventure Time Episodes:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Adventure_Time_episodes

The head of a search on the wiki for background about the MOs:
https://adventuretime.fandom.com/wiki/MO_Co.

And this is also a good starting place for this search:
https://adventuretime.fandom.com/wiki/MOs

Adventure Time is getting a four-part miniseries on HBO, crazily enough, after its ending in 2018:
https://tvline.com/2019/10/23/adventure-time-new-episodes-distant-lands-hbo-max/

Spiderman Into The Spiderverse links:

A great family costume set!
https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/dpyaiz/my_wife_finally_let_me_pick_out_the_outfits_this/

Everything from learning G-g-g-ghost:

The original Karaoke video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-clPKPBSoI4

The best chords:
https://www.e-chords.com/chords/misc-cartoons/steven-universe-g-g-g-ghost

Sadie Killer And The Suspects chords + video together:
https://chordify.net/chords/sadie-killer-and-the-suspects-steven-universe-karaoke-phizzy

Sadie Killer and the Suspects chords, but a confusing mix of guitar and uke chords:
https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/misc-cartoons/steven-universe-sadie-killer-and-the-suspects-ukulele-2765257

Misc Articles:

I've tried reading this article several times about making a Turing machine out of Magic:The Gathering, and I can't convince myself that it's not bullshit:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/06/its-possible-to-build-a-turing-machine-within-magic-the-gathering/

Amazing discovery in Egypt:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-50068575

A funny reminiscence about the dark storylines in the original MLP:
https://www.tor.com/2019/10/15/gormenghast-with-hooves-learning-the-art-of-dark-storytelling-from-my-little-pony

The U.S. is reduced to bombing its own abandoned bases during the Trump retreat from Syria:
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/10/16/politics/us-airstrike-storage-site-syria/index.html

The killing of old timey TV shows by CBS and other networks in the late 1960's was known as "The Rural Purge". It led to the Mary Tyler More show and M*A*S*H:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_purge

Aside from a couple of classics, these are not actually great cat photos but eh:
https://www.freshedits.com/funny/cats-who-immediately-regretted-their-poor-life-decisions/40.html

There's been a burst of finds of sunken Midway battleships this year:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/battle-of-midway-akagi-ship-discovered-historic-world-war-ii-battle/

The FB page of the underwater exploration company that found the Midway ship shows a lot of fascinating discoveries that they've recently made:
https://www.facebook.com/rvpetrel/photos/a.2578421032193362/2578429078859224/?type=3&theater

This wasn't so much about lines of code or a scientific measure of effect on the world so much as a walk down internet memory lane. But it was a fairly well done and enjoyable read:
https://slate.com/technology/2019/10/consequential-computer-code-software-history.html

Breathless headlines betray that this was a fun mini house build by a kid who did a good job with it even though there isn't any plumbing in it:
https://www.google.com/search?q=Luke+Thill,+an+8th+grader+from+Dubuque,+Iowa

A sweet tribute to Weird Al: he does a Tiny Desk concert for NPR:
https://www.npr.org/2010/06/22/127983640/-weird-al-yankovic-tiny-desk-concert

A nice explainer for the new Terminator movie, from the point of view of someone who liked it:

An interview with Arnold about the new Terminator movie:
https://io9.gizmodo.com/arnold-schwarzenegger-doesnt-care-that-terminator-dark-1839400170

The story behind the funny cake with the picture of the thumb drive on it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/17o4yi/a_friend_of_mine_ordered_a_picture_cake_and_gave/c87b615/

A great collection of comic-con costumes:
https://www.cnet.com/pictures/the-very-best-cosplay-we-saw-at-comic-con-2019/

I didn't know that this meme was called "Woman Yelling At A Cat" but now I know the whole story:
https://www.truthorfiction.com/the-sad-backstory-of-the-woman-yelling-at-a-cat-meme/

The Terra Cotta Army and the First Emperor:

20 Outlandish scientific theories people used to believe:
https://historycollection.co/20-outlandish-scientific-theories-from-history/

The clickbait that lead to all my research about the Terra Cotta Warrior tomb. It was the tomb of The First Emperor whose rise to power is very interesting. He was apparently fascinated with mercury and the legend is that the central tomb had fountains and rivers of mercury:
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=973104796380580&id=605447116479685&anchor_composer=false

A better article:
https://www.history101.com/orig/mystery-terracotta-warriors/

The Mausoleum's wikipedia page:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mausoleum_of_the_First_Qin_Emperor

The First Emperor:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin_Shi_Huang

A scientific investigation into the legend of the rivers of mercury, but it's behind a paywall:
https://www.chemistryworld.com/features/flowing-rivers-of-mercury/8122.article

Will ever see the inside?
https://www.livescience.com/22454-ancient-chinese-tomb-terracotta-warriors.html

So many facts in this thought experiment of whether the rivers of mercury could have existed, including that the tomb was vandalized by the subsequent emperor!
https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4566

Eternal Links:

Again from a previous month: The Crane Wife essay. A story about relationship failure and grief and dealing:
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/07/16/the-crane-wife/

This is the CCTA semi-professional kids' theater group that we keep hearing about. They tour a huge amount of the year!
https://cctarts.org/the-young-columbians/

Politics:

An unusually clear explanation of what the Putin-Erdogan treaty actually does in Syria:
https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/22/middleeast/putin-erdogan-syria-deal-hodge-analysis-intl/index.html

I don't know why discovery of yet another one of Romney's secret liberal twitter accounts is news, but it is true that it's strangely fascinating:
https://news.google.com/stories/CAAqOQgKIjNDQklTSURvSmMzUnZjbmt0TXpZd1NoTUtFUWp1elpPdmpvQU1FZjFoUXdUOG1ldHJLQUFQAQ?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen

This bit about Trump flashing the finger after being corrected by the female astronaut seemed true but so stupid that I figured nobody would pick it up. Boy was I wrong:
https://mobile.twitter.com/DrGJackBrown/status/1185404612238438400

Rudi accidentally lets some of his dirty laundry slip out. He has so much of it that the author struggles to figure out which corrupt business it's related to:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/rudy-giuliani-butt-dials-nbc-reporter-heard-discussing-need-cash-n1071901?fbclid=IwAR2lWICdVzpwLXtB_Slf350ZqIUmw9o4pwqJMmYnkFWGMDdunp3xQ63N5ZA

I can't quite decide if this article, now from ages ago, fully makes its point. But it's an interesting observation that "Conservatives" believed that they could constrain somebody with dictatorial ambitions, and also that people in the past are not that hard to understand:
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/07/donald-trump-and-hitlers-rise-to-power.html

Work Links:

Here is the manual for the Stanford Research Systems DS345 function generator. It's a good unit:
https://www.thinksrs.com/downloads/pdfs/manuals/DS345m.pdf

One of our E36312A's was returning an ID of E3631. After some searching I was reminded that this unit can be set to emulate the older unit. More searching revealed that it's called "Persona Mode":
https://www.google.com/search?q=E36312A+persona+mode&rlz=1C1GGRV_enUS753US753&oq=E36312A+persona+mode

How to set and unset "Persona Mode" is referenced in the SCPI manual for the E36300 series:
https://literature.cdn.keysight.com/litweb/pdf/E36311-90008.pdf

The Glenair datasheets for the jackposts. IT HAS THE TORQUE SPECS!
https://cdn.glenair.com/micro-d/pdf/n/080-00-00-1xx-and-500-069-x-x-and-177-504-x-x-and-177-505-x-x-x.pdf

The Glenair datasheet for the microbands:
https://cdn.glenair.com/tools/pdf/c/clamping-bands.pdf

Keysight 36312A quotes

Because the new site design makes it practically impossible to get to the page where I can request quotes, This is an attempt to bookmark the page here:

https://www.keysight.com/main/partnerfinder.jspx?N=1%20187629&pageMode=RS&cc=US&lc=eng&nid=-35673.1215251&pn=E36312A&ct=PRODUCT&pid=2804535&jsUrl=true

Arbitrary Waveform Generator

Link relating to trying to set up the AWG to buffer the signal to the LED driver:

A general purpose article on AWG setup: http://literature.cdn.keysight.com/litweb/pdf/M8190-91050.pdf

Heater Power Supplies

Looking for a 60V 5A power supply, here are some of the options that fell out of Google. Of course the TDK-Lamda would be perfect but it has a long lead time, and the Keysight equivalent is too expensive. What was left was lots of links to the antique Agilent 6646 and some BK supplies. The BK supplies are cheap because they are switching supplies. You wouldn't think that this would make a difference for pissing away electricity through a heater, but my boss was too scared to get something that wasn't a linear power supply.

Here's the old Agilent:

BK makes some nice single-output benchtop switching supplies: Here's the super cheap one, model number 1685B: https://www.amazon.com/Precision-1685B-Switching-Bench-Supplies/dp/B00B03VNTS/ref=asc_df_B00B03VNTS/

Here is the next higher level BK. It doesn't seem all that much different from the cheap one though. Model number 1902: https://www.amazon.com/Switching-Supplies-NIST-Traceable-Calibration-Certificate/dp/B072QLD3Z8/ref=sr_1_6

Here's a nice Keysight bench top supply that is capable of 50V and almost enough amps: https://www.keysight.com/en/pd-836423-pn-E3634A/200w-power-supply-25v-7a-or-50v-4a?cc=US&lc=eng

We used to have a lot of old Sorensen supplies around, but apparently they are quite antique because there are a lot of newer replacement models out now.

Here's a benchtop dual output model that's pretty impressive, the Sorensen XPF60-20 .https://www.testequity.com/products/24089/

TDK Lambda heater power supplies

Used almost exclusively by Mario, the TDK lambda supplies are cheaper than the Keysight equivalents, but they don't build one until you place an order:

Here is Genesys's store top page. Scroll down to see links for the 750W full and half rack units. I love the half rack units and would have gone for one of them if we hadn't been in such a hurry. https://www.genesysdcstore.com/

Here's TDK's site. It looks strangely out of date. However clicking any button from this page takes you to the Genesys store top page. https://www.us.tdk-lambda.com/hp/product_html/genesys1u.htmhttps://www.us.tdk-lambda.com/hp/product_html/genesys1u.htm

For reference, here is the equivalent Keysight supply. It is humorously duplicative. https://www.keysight.com/en/pd-839913-pn-N5747A/dc-system-power-supply-60v-125a-750w?cc=US&lc=eng

N6700 OVP error

Trying to power something with a Keysight (formerly Agilent) N6700 rack mount power supply with some N6751 modules, we kept getting OVP (Over Voltage Protection) shutoffs.

Looking through the user manuals, it seems like the OVP circuit cannot be disabled and is on all the time!

Some links seemed to suggest that the problem might be a sense error (open or shorted sense lines are an Achilles heel for this model of supply), or perhaps a poor choice of wire size (it's not clear how this could be a problem, it sounds like a bit of a desperation suggestion).

We eventually learned that, counterintuitively, the cause of our troubles was that we had been setting the current limit too low. The box we were powering draws much more current than we had expected, and by setting the current limit to a less conservative level the OVP shutoff does not get tripped. Why this wasn't an OCP error instead is a mystery.

Here are some links:

Here is the user's guide for the N6700. Very little ink is devoted to the OVP in this manual. http://literature.cdn.keysight.com/litweb/pdf/5969-2937.pdf

I found an older version of the manual here, which has a tiny bit more about the OVP, although nothing about what our problem turned out to be. There is mention of a SCPI command to disable OVP "tracking," this is not apparently the same thing as disabling OVP as other sections of the manual clearly say that OVP cannot be disabled. https://www.topdogtest.com/inventorypdf/N6700usr.pdf

Here is a very interesting forum thread where somebody was having trouble commanding an N6700 setup of OVP, and the problem was actually an error in the Labview driver VI because the structure for commanding the OVP does not include a setting for enable/disable. Because it can't be disabled, I guess.

Here is the article from Keysight with several guesses as to what can cause an OVP error. https://keysight.jiveon.com/community/keysight-blogs/general-electronics-measurement/blog/2017/03/09/what-can-cause-a-power-supply-output-voltage-to-exceed-its-setting