Subversion @ GitHub

I wanted to use Subversion to checkout one of my GitHub repo branches, because an svn checkout only downloads the files it needs, not a full copy of every file ever added. But I discovered that GitHub sunset Subversion integration earlier this year. Sad face. Still, I suppose the economics justify that decision. As a consequence of my research, which was a bit sketchy because there is still heaps of documentation out there referring to the GitHub features which no longer exist, I did happen to learn about:

Old Book Teardown #9: Basic Electronics – Volumes 1 through 6 (1955) | In The Lab With Jay Jay

I mostly published this ten hour long video just to exasperate Dave Jones. ;)

This post is part of my video blog and you can find more information about this video over here.

You can support this channel on Patreon: patreon.com/JohnElliotV

Silly Job Title: Buzz Boss.

In this video I take a good long hard look at the entirety of this book.

The book is Basic Electronics – Volumes 1 through 6 written by Van Valkenburgh, Nooger and Neville, Inc. and published in 1955.

The book is about the state of electronics at the time it was written. It was commissioned by the United States Navy, who used it to train their technicians. Later, it was released for civilian use.

In the book there is lots of material on vacuum tubes, which were state of the art at the time. The sixth volume adds material on transistors and frequency modulation, which were bleeding edge technology at the time.

I learned heaps from reading this book, particularly about the various types of vacuum tubes (also known as “valves” by the British): diode, triode, tetrode, pentode, and Klystron, among others.

Also I learned that the name “transistor” is a contraction of “transfer resistor”, I didn’t know that!

If you would like to watch this video but don’t have ten hours to spare, you can find out how to increase the playback speed more than 2x on my YouTube hacks page.

The links to archive.org I mention in the video are these:

Also I found PDFs for Volumes 1 through 5 here:

Oh, and the link for Make: magazine is here: https://makezine.com/

Thanks very much for watching! And please remember to hit like and subscribe! :)


Following is a product I use picked at random from my collection which may appear in my videos. Clicking through on this to find and click on the green affiliate links before purchasing from eBay or AliExpress is a great way to support the channel at no cost to you. Thanks!

RV77 4K HDMI USB 2.0 4-Port HDMI KVMThis is an image of the product.

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Mail Call #6: More Loot from Amazon and AliExpress! | Learning Electronics In The Lab With Jay Jay

This post is part of my video blog and you can find more information about this video over here.

You can support this channel on Patreon: patreon.com/JohnElliotV

In this video I take a look at the following equipment which arrived in the mail.

The large scales I mention in this video (which can measure up to 30kg) are these ones: Disenkelubo 30kg 1g Electronic Scale.

You can find more info about how to use the screw pitch gauge on YouTube: Stainless Steel Pitch Scale Gauge.

Thanks very much for watching! And please remember to hit like and subscribe! :)


Following is a product I use picked at random from my collection which may appear in my videos. Clicking through on this to find and click on the green affiliate links before purchasing from eBay or AliExpress is a great way to support the channel at no cost to you. Thanks!

JST XH2.54 Pre-crimped Connector KitThis is an image of the product.notes

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I figured out how to avoid connascence of position

Instead of passing positional arguments to constructors (or functions), instead pass a list of value objects. The type of the value object will tell you the type of the value, so you don’t need to worry about the position. This is a super powerful means of supporting back-compat within your code base so you can move ahead at speed. Having value objects instead of simple types (bools, ints, floats, strings, etc) might have performance implications, but it also can be quite handy. So far so good for my use cases.

Symbol Keyboard | Mini Project JMP001 | Learning Electronics In The Lab With Jay Jay

This post is part of my video blog and you can find more information about this video over here.

You can support this channel on Patreon: patreon.com/JohnElliotV

This is the inaugural Mini Project! I introduced the Mini Projects recently. They are developed and published by Silicon Chip magazine, and sponsored by Jaycar Electronics (which is an Austrlaian electronics store, similar to Radio Shack in the USA, hopefully it doesn’t end up suffering the same fate.)

In this project, codenamed JMP001, we develop a USB keyboard which can send interesting and unusual symbols (which aren’t usually available on a keyboard) to a Windows computer using the alt-codes that it supports in a typical codepage.

For this first Mini Project I felt it was important to actually buy my components from Jaycar which I did for roughly eighty Australian dollary doos. Approximately US$50. The parts I ordered were these:

Belatedly I did also search for rubber feet.

There was quite a lot that went into the production of this video, and we accumulated a lot of links. Those are here:

In the end this first project was relatively successful, and we did get it to work fairly well on one of my Windows computers. As for the rest you can find out for youself in the video!

Thanks very much for watching! And please remember to hit like and subscribe! :)


Following is a product I use picked at random from my collection which may appear in my videos. Clicking through on this to find and click on the green affiliate links before purchasing from eBay or AliExpress is a great way to support the channel at no cost to you. Thanks!

Yum Cha HSC8 6-4A Ferrule Crimper KitThis is an image of the product.notes

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Getting info about recent core dump (on Debian)

This is a note for Future John about how to report a recent coredump (with debugging symbols) on Debian:

DEBUGINFOD_URLS="https://debuginfod.debian.net" coredumpctl gdb

Then bt is a magical gdb command to run to give you the call stack of the thread which… failed?

Speech Conductor | Project 10/20 | Maxitronix 20in1 | Learning Electronics In The Lab With Jay Jay

This post is part of my video blog and you can find more information about this video over here.

You can support this channel on Patreon: patreon.com/JohnElliotV

In this video I do the tenth Maxitronix 20in1 Electronic Project Lab project: Speech Conductor.

In this project we learn a little about transistors, amplifiers, and astable multivibrators.

Note: while I was making this video I took a detour into making a cable, which didn’t work out. You can see the video about that over here: Extra Content #13: Failing to Attach Banana Plugs to Microphone Cables | In The Lab With Jay Jay.



Thanks very much for watching! And please remember to hit like and subscribe! :)


Following is a product I use picked at random from my collection which may appear in my videos. Clicking through on this to find and click on the green affiliate links before purchasing from eBay or AliExpress is a great way to support the channel at no cost to you. Thanks!

ALKOY Capacitor Discharge PenThis is an image of the product.notes

Let’s go shopping!