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Audio Phoolery

This is for geeks, and people who like geek culture.

I have always been fascinated by what people will believe. Particularly interesting to me are the many halfwit audiophiles who believe a lot of whacky (and invariably expensive) voodoo. The pinnacle of moronity is in speaker wire — where 'oxygen-free' copper and metallic crystal structure are used to con morons into spending hundreds and thousands of dollars for — well, for wire.

What follows is Dave Jones, an Australian electrical engineer who has probably the only EE video blog. Don't listen to the whole thing but skim enough to enjoy an engineer's passionate plea. Best part is at the end where he says (and you need to hear it in the genuine Aussie) how the really interesting thing is that the voodoo actually works. People who spend $1000 on fancy wire will hear a difference, even if no one else can.

http://www.eevblog.com/2009/09/07/eevblog-29-audiophile-audiophoolery/

I saved the best for last, though. The original perpetrator of audiophile voodoo is Monster Cable. If you think they're scum (and discriminating EEs do), you have to love this:

http://gizmodo.com/380055/blue-jeans-cable-calls-bs-on-monster-cable-patent-suit-vows-to-fight-to-bloody-death

Maker Faire, May 30-31, San Mateo

I have attended this for the past couple of years and it is awesome. Huge -- they had over 50,000 people last year. Hundreds of exhibits, mostly by people or small clubs, show off cool things they have made. A little art, a little science, a little magic. Fire, electricity, and some serious welding skills.

The site gives details. I think they make it seem like it's for kids (and it is a great event for them) but really, it's for anyone. Plenty there to interest adults. The video (scroll down the page) does a good job.

http://makerfaire.com/

I wouldn't miss it!

Don't Mess with Bacon

One of my godsons, Daniel, knows how I am about bacon and let me know about an article, in Popular Science, in which bacon cuts metal. Bacon. Metal. Fire. That boy is growing up with some proper values.

Ten Famous People You Didn't Know Were Engineers

 Since we have exposed my geek cred (thanks, Carolyn, Keith), here is an interesting article: Ten Famous People You Didn't Know Were Engineers. (I knew about the first four, plus the guy from Boston). Which is worth not much, but I have to maintain my geek cred. Hey, is there any geek bling?)

xkcd for EEs

This is for all the EEs out there.

From xkcd.com.

Car Skin Revisited

What is the skin of a car were more like skin? Instead of sheet metal, a stretchy fabric? Do you really need the skin to be rigid? What does the skin really do?

BMW's answer is a design idea they call GINA, documented in an article on Autoblog. When you get there, click on the photo to see more and scroll down to see the video.

Hubble Alive Again

Happy news. The Hubble Space Telescope is sending pictures again.

Imagine this: Your car fails and you're stranded. Instead of sending a tow truck, your mechanic electronically connects, runs some diagnostics, and enables some alternate circuitry. That fails, but they take additional readings and restart modules in a different sequence and with a bit of diddling (yeah, that's a valid technical term), your car comes to life.

That's what this was like.

Hubbley Goodness

For Hubble Space Telescope fans: NASA has been achieving steady progress toward restoring operation. The 'scope failed on Sept 27 and NASA delayed a Space Shuttle repair mission, which will be the final service call to the Hubble.

They decided to switch over to the "B side" electronics -- a dicey proposition, since they have been idle for 19 years. Imagine finding a radio in your garage that you bought in 1987 and turning it on, and you get the idea. Except that this is a bunch of radios, three processors (including a pre-Pentium Intel '486 and a '386), and a mess of — well, other stuff.

The blow-by-blow description has been interesting to watch. The systems tossed themselves into "Safe Mode," powering down due to detected faults, but these so far have been artifacts. As they learned the causes, they have gotten more and more systems to wake up. Most recently, they found that the safety system was checking for a supply voltage before the monitoring gear had collected the data. The voltage was up, but the monitoring gadget didn't know it yet.

See the report from Popular Mechanics. If you want to really geek out, a blog from electrical engineer Steve Leibson goes into great detail on the engineering challenges. There are several articles. Click on the Hubble-threads listed under "Recent Posts."

Hubble Trouble

Who doesn't love the inspiring images we get from the Hubble Space Telescope? Alas, it has had troubles and just weeks before the launch of its lastrepair mission, Just two weeks before the next schedule repair mission, the whole machine has failed. NASA has a good record for rescuing victory from the jaws of defeat and the mission is delayed while they revise the strategy.

This interesting report, on the blog of electrical engineer Steve Leibson, gives an engineer's inside view of the troubles.

This is too cool. The "Tilted Twister" is a robot, built from Legos, that solves Rubik's cube, with no external PC. It was built with standard Lego Mindstorms NXT kit.

You need to see it in action to appreciate it. First, it scans all the sizes and determines the colors the cube has. Then it begins twisting sides:

More info on the Tilted Twister page to the video.

From: Tilted Twister, via Hackzine.