Search Engines

Younger son finished the course work for his bachelor's degree (Yay!), so last weekend we drug his stuff back home. One of the items that came back was a laser printer that had become jammed during his last week at school. As my ink jet printer was on the fritz, I thought maybe I could unjam this one and easily get a new printer to use.
    It was thoroughly jammed. I took a screwdriver to it and took pieces off until I could get the black plastic do-ma-flach-er out of the center of the machine and turn the gear until the six inch strip of accordion folded paper that was gumming up the works backed out.
    Now I start putting it back together. It goes pretty well. I had to take the gearbox off and on a couple of times before I got the toner drive clutch sorted, but it's all looking pretty good. Except for this one small metal bracket. It's U-shaped with two screw holes and a dimple in the bottom of the U. Where does it go? I look and look but cannot figure it out. I sleep on it. For a couple of days, but nothing appears. Finally I go to Google, but I don't have much hope. I mean it's very rare to find actual, good, technical information on the web about any kind of device. Mostly you get a lot of "my gadget is broke, somebody help me!", and "I really love/hate this widget", none of which is really helpful. Might make you feel better, but it doesn't help solve the problem. Regardless. I found an actual service manual, with screw by screw instructions on how to take this thing apart and put it back together. Of course it's a four meg PDF file, and I don't have Adobe Reader installed. Then I remember Stu recommended Foxit, so I download and install it and with a little fooling I am able to find the page I want.

    And there it is! The culprit! Gear 21 pressure plate! It is only held on by one screw, the other hole fits over a little nubbin of plastic. No word on whether the printer lives yet, we have other apples on our plate.
    This morning I fire up the browser (Chrome) and there's a new toolbar across the top of the page. Where the devil did that come from? More importantly, how do we get rid of it? Click on the three bar icon near the upper right corner, and then from the displayed menu, click Settings. (How did they come up with that three bar icon? Does it mean anything to anybody? I think I only figured it out because there was nothing else to click on.) Now we get a whole new tab of stuff including a place to deal with Extensions, which is what this toolbar is. Don't ask me how I know. I just do. I'm a professional, after all. Disable the Foxit toolbar. Go back to what I was doing, which was reading today's posts from my peeps. Tam says "derp" and I say what? And double click (to highlight) and then right click to search for "derp" on - hey, wait a minute, that doesn't say Google, it says Ask.
    Back to Settings, where I notice Manage search engines... So I click and I find a laundry list of search engines. This was one feature I liked on my last setup. I could choose from three or four different search engines any time I wanted to look up something that Tam wrote. I just hadn't bothered to set it up on this machine. Part of my new policy. Don't install anything, or configure anything you don't really want and need. You can spend hours making everything smooth and conforming to your slightest whim, but if you don't actually use any of that stuff, you're wasting time. Well, it's your time. Suit yourself. Some people find it calming, and I'm all in favor of that.

Un-quote of the Day

"Economists are professionally trained to be wary of diminishing returns to any one activity, and to be entrepreneurial about starting new activities." - William Easterly and Laura Freschi on Aid Watch.

I can't tell just from reading the post whether they are being jackass serious, or suavely sarcastic, or maybe it's just something that slipped out in that space where you-need-to-say-something-to-explain-your-actions and nothing really comes to mind. Anyway, it just hit me cross-wise. I didn't think you could characterize economists in any way other than that someone (perhaps even themselves) called them an economist, and I certainly didn't know that they got professional training in how to run their lives. I mean, where would you get such training? I know I could certainly use some. Might not take, but one can always hope.

Petman

The PETMAN robot was developed by Boston Dynamics with funding from the DoD CBD program. It is used to test the performance of protective clothing designed for hazardous environments. The video shows initial testing in a chemical protection suit and gas mask. PETMAN has sensors embedded in its skin that detect any chemicals leaking through the suit. The skin also maintains a micro-climate inside the clothing by sweating and regulating temperature.

I think it was Stewart Brand, who started the Whole Earth Catalog, who said "we are as gods, so we may as well get good at it", which I pretty much agree with. But building a robot to test clothing just seems to be a back-asswards way doing things. The robot is obviously not ready for prime time, given that he is tethered six ways from Sunday, but he is pretty damn impressive. I would not be surprised if they came up with this clothing testing project just to have an excuse to exercise their machine. Learn by doing, so to speak.

Suez Canal Transit

The ship is the USS Kearsarge, an amphibious assault ship. It looks sort of like an aircraft carrier, but it is not as big and does not have a catapult, so the only aircraft it carries must be capable of short or vertical take off, like helicopters, the Osprey and the Harrier.
    I didn't realize the Suez canal was so long, nor that there was a lake in the middle. Two lakes, actually. The video is only one minute long, but we are flying. The canal is 120 miles long and transit normally takes upwards of 12 hours, so the ship is traveling at a real speed of 8 or 9 knots. Our virtual speed is up around 500 feet per video frame, or Mach 10, which is like an ICBM.

USS Kearsarge with dock door open.

Steam Powered Box Factory

A pleasant visit to a working antique steam powered wood shop. Almost 15 minutes long. Via Scott.

Too Much Information

My older son is just like me, except for the ways that he isn't. In those cases he is exactly the opposite of me. Kind of like a mirror image, or my evil twin, or maybe I'm his evil twin from another era. In any case where I am enthralled with all things mechanical, he is absorbed with words and music. We were talking about this the other day and he mentioned that my interests were arcane and when I inquired which subject he was referring to, he replied "all". I was a little taken aback. I thought all of the subjects I find fascinating would fall under the classification of "useful", I mean if you ever needed to rebuild our great industrial empire from scratch, I think I have pretty good handle on most of the knowledge you would need. Of course, that is unlikely to happen, but sometimes a bit of my arcane knowledge comes in handy for fixing things around the house, like a broken toilet. On the other hand, with our thoroughly interconnected and thoroughly interdependent society, you don't really need to know any of this stuff. All you need to do is be able to talk to other people and you can quickly locate someone who does have the requisite knowledge.

Anyway, due to my continuous collection of arcane knowledge, my brain might be full. The battery on my camera died, so I plugged the camera into the USB cable thinking it would recharge. I mean it did this the last time it died, so it ought to do it again, right? Except it didn't. I left it plugged in for a couple of days, you know, just in case it was really slow, but it didn't help. Well, fine, I've got a charger for my old camera, maybe I can use it on this battery (even though they are different sizes, maybe the contacts have the same layout), so I reach in the drawer where I keep the battery charger and out comes a battery charger for this camera. Where the devil did that come from? I don't remember this thing. It must have come with the camera, I mean it says Lumix right on the front, and this camera is only the Lumix thing I own, so it must have come with the camera, but I had completely forgotten about it. Huh. I wonder if there are any good pictures on the camera. I guess we will find out.

Town Without Pony

I'm back. My gardener cut the wire and it took like forever to get it fixed, but now I'm back and reading Dustbury and he points at Pope Hat, who I read sometimes, but not usually, but this post is just the snarkiest. I smiled. I'm still smiling. My face is locked in a grin. Or a grimace, I'm not sure, I don't have a mirror handy. Anyway it's very funny.