Category Archives: Vocabulary

Homework

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This is a part of the homework feature of my blog, which is an ongoing conversation with my mate S.F.

Hey mate. Lovely to see you again, as always.

First, two things from last time which I forgot to write up:

I mentioned Veritasium which is a video blog of interest.

I have a note here that says “ASI”. And that’s all it says. Not sure what that was about?

I did consider writing my response to Mark Fisher‘s work Capitalist Realism (which is available on the web here), but in researching him and his work this evening I have learned that he died by suicide in 2017. I think suicide is the worst thing ever and I can’t bring myself to write something which tears strips off people who are no longer here to respond. (I intend to read Mark’s PhD thesis Flatline constructs: Gothic materialism and cybernetic theory-fiction.)

You mentioned Pick of the Litter, noting that dogs are trained to sometimes ignore the command of their master, particularly when it wouldn’t be safe.

One good thing about arguments with friends is that there is always time to pee.

Norvig’s Law: Any technology that surpasses 50% penetration will never double again (in any number of months).

This marketing dude Rory Sutherland is actually quite impressive. I hadn’t expected as much from someone in advertising! He has given a number of TED talks and there are many interviews with him on YouTube.

The documentary about the 2008 financial crisis that I mentioned was Inside Job. Not to be confused with the TV series with the same name (which is excellent, by the way).

My favorite philosopher of the day is Iain McGilchrist. I suspect my own beliefs and preferences diverge from those of McGilchrist but I do really enjoy his thought. I have watched a number of interviews with Iain McGilchrist. He has written a number of books, a few of which I have purchased and intend to read: The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, and The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning.

The book Thinking, Fast and Slow by psychologist Daniel Kahneman demarcates two systems of thinking: one fast and automatic, the other slow and deliberative.

The quotation “the stupid are cocksure, while the intelligent are full of doubt” is variously attributed (including to Bertrand Russell).

Check out Mr Inbetween, it’s really excellent!

Love you my brother, see you on Christmas Day! <3

Historical Figures from God Created the Integers

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I made some notes about God Created the Integers by Stephen Hawking which I have been reading recently. I’m in the process of creating a new book teardown for it. I needed to make some notes about how to pronounce various names. I didn’t do this until I was half-way through the book though. If I had have taken the time to do this activity sooner I would have embarrassed myself less. Anyway. Better late than never!

Subversion @ GitHub

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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

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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.

Let’s go shopping!

New Book Teardown #5: Electrical Engineering 101 3rd Edition (2011) | In The Lab With Jay Jay

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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 Electrical Engineering 101: Everything You Should Have Learned in School…but Probably Didn’t 3rd Edition written by Darren Ashby and published in 2011.

In the book the author mentioned that they used to write for chipcenter.com which appears to have since been taken over by EE Times. ChatGPT provided more information.

The author also mentioned Mathcad. I’m planning to check that out over here: https://www.mathcad.com/

And some terms which came up (ChatGPT explains further):

Vcc
Voltage at the collector
Vee
Voltage at the emitter
Vdd
Voltage at the drain
Vss
Voltage at the source

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 100pcs Releasable Cable OrganizerThis is an image of the product.

Let’s go shopping!

Refactoring jjlab.net

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I just spent two whole days refactoring and improving my jjlab.net website.

One thing I had to think very carefully about for my modeling was the class/instance distinction for various things, you can see my notes below.

So channels have shows, and shows have features.

A series has segments, and segments have a video.

A series is an instance of a show, and a segment is an instance of a feature.

Everything is easy when you know how!

John's notes about the design of his model