I just received some sad news from my friend Shahriar: our old school teacher Rick Morris has passed away.
The funeral is 2pm in Leura today, 7th May.
Mr Morris was perhaps the most central figure in putting me on the path to computer programming. He used to run the computer lab at our high school and he was our computers teacher in junior high. I had him as my advanced mathematics teacher too.
You know how in Excel if you want a relative reference you use something like ‘B8’ and if you want an absolute reference you use the dollar sign as e.g. ‘$B$8’. Well it was Mr Morris who taught me that, some time back in the early 90s. I’ve been using that syntax my whole life, and every time I do I think of Mr Morris.
It wasn’t so long ago that Shahriar and I caught up with Mr Morris for drinks at the Lappo. Of course we didn’t know at the time that would be the last time we’d ever see him. At least we did have that time together before we lost him.
I will miss his quiet intelligence and his big laugh.
p.s. I just got back from the funeral. Apparently he died suddenly from a stroke on 24th April. It was a beautiful ceremony. 50/50 laughing and crying. They had speeches, poems, photos, and music. They even played the Star Wars anthem! I was confused and accidentally went up with the family when it was time for family members to come to the front and pay their respects. Whoops! I think Mr Morris would have laughed.
I am running late with Lab #1 from Learning the Art of Electronics. That video was meant to come out today, but I’ve pushed it back to next Tuesday so I have time to prepare the notes and record the lab.
See you next Tuesday? :)
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This video is me making a false start on the Learning the Art of Electronics series which I am just about to embark on. What happened was after I got a bit more than two hours into recording the video for the first lab exercise I realized that it was taking too long with my approach. I didn’t want to make another twelve hour video! I was planning to go through the literature in painstaking detail and cover everything, but it turned out there was way too much material for that approach to be feasible.
What I am planning to do instead for the actual first video (due out next Tuesday) is do all the reading by myself in advance and then offer a brief summary and some recommended reading. I’m going to try to make the bulk of the video the actual practical experiment/circuit and leave the reading out.
But since I recorded the video for this “false start” I figured there’d be no harm in posting it by itself. Most of this video is the Appendix O material from The Art of Electronics 3ed which is a brief introduction to oscilloscopes.
In this video we mention CMOS technology, particularly MOSFETs.
We mention the Josephson effect which can cause a current to flow across superconductors in the absence of an applied voltage.
If you’re planning to follow along with the series the pre-reading for the first video coming out on Tuesday is: E&M ch. 1, 2; PoEC ch. 1; AoE app. A, ch. 1; LtAoE ch. 1N, 1L.
Thanks very much for watching! And please remember to hit like and subscribe! :)
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You read that right. We made one of these before and I liked it so much that we are making one again! I get better at it this time round, I don’t make any of the mistakes I did last time.
The microcontroller in this clock is the STC15W404AS. It comes in the kit pre-programmed and I’ve not been able to find the software anywhere. Bummer. If you know where to get the software please do let me know!
The temperature controlled resistor is a 10K NTC thermistor which seems to be used for the room temperature function (which I don’t use and didn’t calibrate).
We use the Hakko CHP 3C-SA Precision Tweezers to hold our solder and poke about. At one point I drop a component lead offcut into the board and it shorted two resistors, so lucky I found it and pulled it out!
And that’s everything to know about this project!
Here’s a photo of the completed project installed next to the symbol keyboard on my desk:
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!
