fotbr

It comes down to the fact that these things are tools. Now that reasonably affordable "turnkey" or "off the shelf" options are available, what you're really seeing is the divide between those wanting building the tool itself as their hobby, and those that just want a tool to use on their other hobbies. There was less of a divide previously because for most people, the "just buy one" option simply didn't exist. Now it does.

I spent a lot of time over the years wire-wrapping circuits, then manually laying out and etching/making circuit boards, then using software to do the layouts while still etching/drilling boards myself, then learning and switching the bulk of my projects to surface-mount. It was a necessary part of making electronic bits for stuff I wanted, but I didn't enjoy that part. Now that I can draw something up, send it off and for a few bucks have professionally manufactured multi-layer boards in days/weeks, with many/most components already placed and soldered, why wouldn't I cut out the part I don't enjoy?

I played with 3d printers off and on from about 2006 onwards, though I never kept one around for any real length of time. I found that while I really wanted the capabilities, I didn't want "building and keeping a 3d printer running" to be my hobby. 20 years later, there are options that don't require printer maintenance to be it's own hobby, and I'm much more willing to keep one around.

I've had a couple Chinese-made mini-mills since 2002 -- Sieg X2s, if I remember the old naming scheme correctly, though they were sold by various importers with their own names/model numbers. I converted one to CNC operation in 2004. While I appreciate the work done by others that I could learn from, I did not enjoy the process or the project. If there had been a reasonably affordable "turnkey" option with the capabilities I wanted, I would have 100% taken it. If I needed another one now, with the options available, there's no way I'd bother to build my own. Even then, I would have gone with sherline's early cnc offerings -- they fit my budget, but were just too small for what I wanted to do.

My first CNC router was scratch-built in the early 2000s. My current one came in a crate 4 years ago, and cost about half of what building a new one with the same capabilities from scratch would have. Instead of spending a several months' worth of weekends building it, I spent one weekend unpacking it and setting it up, another fine-tuning it and the software settings, and then was able to start using it for projects I enjoyed.

The ability for people to make things at home is expanding, just not in the way you'd like to see. That isn't a bad thing.

At the end of the day, time is what is ultimately valuable, and I don't have nearly as much of it as I did when I was younger. At this point, I'd much rather spend what time I do have enjoying my hobbies and creating the things I want to create, not building tools or suffering through tasks I hate simply because someone else thinks that is the important part. It seems I'm not the only one.

As for companies that "care" disappearing, well, that's just the current business environment. When the only measure of success that's deemed important is the stock value -- or potential stock value, in the case of startups -- customer service is an expense that can be cut to inflate next months' quarterly report. In exchange, the concept of customer loyalty is dying as well.

It provides a distraction-free environment for writing.

Save it to a 720kb floppy that my linux box can still read, and move it to a "modern" system for editing and such.

Given: Aircraft power is on, signs are on. Aircraft power is off, signs are off. Aircraft power is operable by the flight crew.

Therefore: Signs are operable by the flight crew.

In addition to the aircraft main power system(s), there's almost certainly a circuit-breaker that would turn the signs off. It might turn other things off as well, and circuit-breakers are not generally designed to be used regularly as switches, but there's a circuit breaker in reach of the crew that would turn those signs off.

4 Founders

6 Board of Directors

14 Advisory Board Members

3 Staff

I'll grant there may be a 4th staff member not (yet) listed on their webpage, but their organization seems a little top-heavy.

Many years ago, my univerity's choice of calculus book also had the solutions to half the problems (evens or odds, doesn't really matter).

Department policy was also one of "we won't provide you the correct answers" even after an assignment had been turned in because the book was used for multiple years. The publisher had a new edition every year, but the university stuck with the same book because it was used for Calculus I, II, and III, which for most students was 3 or 4 semesters between starting I and finishing III, usually due to a scheduling conflict requiring a semester off between them, or because they had to repeat Calc II since the math department's selection of instructors was particularly bad for that course.

Those same (usually bad) instructors were all too happy to follow the department policy and not provide any feedback other than "correct" or "incorrect".

On the other hand, the university book store carried, and put on the shelf right next to the calculus book, the publisher's "teacher's solution guide", in two very reasonably priced volumes, which had the answers for the other half of the problem sets, as well as the step-by-step process for most of them, which was the valuable part, as you could see where you were erring.

Math department policy was that you weren't allowed to have those, either.

You can guess how well that policy was followed.

Those that put the effort in and learned the material did well. Those that just copied from the solutions book and turned it in did not.

http://wiki.gis.com/wiki/index.php/Decimal_degrees

If it's DMS, again assuming location is correct, ignoring spheroid vs sphere: something between 80 and 100 ft (24.4 - 30.48 meters).

https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/how-much-distance-does-a-degree-mi...

Breaking things with ResEdit was pretty much my jr. high school hobby. It took a bit before I figured out how to restore things when I was done.

Head "tech" guy in the building eventually figured out it was me, showed me a few things and ended up just giving me an un-limited login and a few rules. Also taught me how to intelligently use ResEdit instead of the brute-force method(s) I was used to.

Second, and I'm not trying to be snarky, just trying to understand: What is the limit on size? I understand there's a point where physically building and maintaining it isn't practical, but is still theoretically possible.

As for defeating the point, I'll admit I only somewhat understand that argument.

As far as I understand -- and I'll readily admit I do not have a great understanding -- the whole concept of the eruv is specifically designed to "defeat the point" of another rule (or set of rules).

Why is "defeating the point" considered to be "ok" or not "ok" based on scale?

Likewise, if "defeating the point" is wrong, why is it not always wrong?

Again, my intention is to understand, not to be snarky or otherwise inappropriate about it, and I'll apologize in advance if my questions cross lines I was unaware of.

It seems logical to me, and I've never heard a reason it can't be done other than "that's defeating the point."

Which I admit, it entirely is, but I don't see it as any more "wrong" than encircling entire cities, and it's a whole lot simpler to maintain.

I have no idea what California's laws are regarding the matter, or the laws governing any of the other participants. I'm just speaking in the general case, that some states allow it, and the argument that could be made.

I thought about finding an elegant solution, but in the end decided that just doing a (psuedo-)random selection of the remaining set and then running through the resulting ordered list checking each one for all the constraints (ie, random sort). As soon as it failed a hard constraint, or failed > x soft constraints, toss the list and do another random sort.

Ugly, but it worked. Chose this solution because 1) I knew how big the data set would be, and I knew it would not change size enough to matter; 2) The other, very jr developer could understand the method; 3) The constraints, while semi-complex, were simple to check; 4) would be needed once or twice a year, could run completely off-line, and could be started well in advance of when it was needed; 5) and finally computers are fast & cheap, while my time is finite and valuable

As a result, the decision that "brute force" running on any available workstation for a weekend was an acceptable solution. In it's lifetime, I think the longest time it took to find an acceptable solution was a few hundred thousand sorts, finished in a few minutes.

It's now been retired as the program it supported went away.

I wish I'd had the time to explore better, more proper solutions, but at the time, quick and dirty and done was more important.

My issue with wifi is really just a matter of too-many-networks and interference making it a bad solution for me.

But I understand the appeal of the ESP8266 (and the rest of that family of chips) and don't blame you one bit. IIRC it has a serial port on a couple of pins, so that's another comm option.

In any case, I look forward to seeing your progress. Good luck!

Also rather wish it didn't rely on wifi/android, but that's mostly because I don't use anything android based, and don't run any wifi on the home network anymore.

All in all though, it's still a pretty nice looking little az-el rotator. With different control software, it might also be a useful little addition to give your static security camera a bit of extra capability without breaking the bank.

I've never noticed a measurable difference when filling up the 20 gallon tank in the truck.

I suspect you'd have to buy a LOT to make a meaningful difference.

I think I still have a bunch of their airshow flyers and other give-aways squirreled away in the basement somewhere.

Thanks for the interesting trip down memory lane.

1: http://www.conniesurvivors.com/N6937C.htm

Then there are their research partners, which again may be scattered around the world, etc.

So, no not customers in the traditional sense, but they depend on University services, and many of them are paying for the privilege.

The next day, when they sent the shipping confirmation and tracking email, I saw the error. Of course, contacting them was too late; they did ask that I give the post office time to sort it out but were happy to send another one if it was time critical. I opted to wait as the initial mistake was mine, not theirs.

The package arrived a day later than expected, having gone to the small town in the wrong state, been kicked back as "no such address", sent to some big USPS facility in Chicago where they apparently figured out where it should go, manually crossed out the bad city/state/zip and wrote a correct one in and then came straight to me via the local post office, skipping the nearby sorting center that most packages go through.

I don't know how they pulled that one off, especially in a pre-christmas shipping glut, and without the package ever having had the correct address on it until someone working for the postal service figured it out and fixed it. Having a unique name probably helps, as does having a fairly unique street address, but I'm still impressed it didn't just get tossed into the dead-letter pile.

Living in the middle of the country, the post office's abilities are almost magic. Need to send a letter anywhere in the US? Two or three days, for a few cents (no idea what it costs now, I bought a few rolls of "forever" stamps at 40 cents apiece). Need to ship a package? USPS is often cheaper than UPS ground, nearly always cheaper than FedEx ground, and faster than either of them at still only two or three days. Same goes for receiving mail or packages.

Quality of service of all three, I recognize, varies with location and people involved. Around here though, it is damn hard to beat the post office.

I suspect it's a matter of the "special relationship" the US and UK have had for decades; Trump doesn't want to be seen as the one throwing our UK friends under the bus, especially with the promises he made during the lead-up to and implementation of Brexit.

HS graduation requirements vary (in some cases, much more than you would think) between districts. Usually, each town/city has its own district -- in rural areas a district may span many towns, in more urban areas, you may have more than one district in a single city. There are state guidelines, but we also have 50 different states. Federal guidelines are pretty sparse, and often only enforced by accepting funding -- don't take their money and you don't have to play by their rules.

I suspect that there is no blanket statement about the US public school system that will hold true nationwide (except, perhaps "it could be better" or "it makes no sense").

The reaction to not having a license is probably simply due to 60+ years of "The American Dream" for a kid was having their own car and the freedom^tm that came with it, and the simple fact that in the majority of the country, public transportation is crap, and our cities are not designed around walking. So a car, and license, is pretty much a requirement.

If Tesla had introduced a factory version of Simone's, I'd be screaming at them to shut up and take my money.

This thing...I'm sorry, I can't get over the styling. I love the numbers, and don't even find the pricing to be too horrible, but there's no away I'll have something that looks like that. Maybe Tesla truck 2.0 will be worth looking at.

With that said, there's no shortage of small farms growing most anything that can be grown in the area, but they tend to not be exporting anything beyond the local farmers market.

Now, everything is about how little material you can use, how close to the minimums you can get and still maintain a theoretical factor of safety. The problem is that in doing so, small mistakes have a much bigger impact.