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Showing posts from January, 2023
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I went down a few rabbit holes while researching the Advent Calendar last year, that didn't make it into the queue because they got too long or went too far afield. Here's one of them! One thing you notice when you watch a bazillion videos about old games consoles is how the design of circuitry has evolved. If someone says 'circuit board' today, you think a light piece of leafy green board, filled with parallel lines of copper at 45° and 90° angles, dotted with lots of tiny inscrutable plastic and metal doodads. But it took a long, long time for them to get that way. If you look at really old circuit boards -- and I mean really, really old circuit boards, like from the beginning of the transistor era, they look completely different. They're brownish, for one thing. And kind of... wiggly? Apologies for the transfer quality. It's not your connection, it just sucks. This piece appears to be some sort of promo-tainment thing from Tektronix themselves, from 1969. The

The Internet has made it rain

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A lot of groceries have been landing on my porch lately. Still, actually.  My roommates are a little confused, and asked me why the internet is mailing me sixteen jars of marinated artichoke hearts? And I had to explain that it's because Amazon is not really set up to let the internet mail me one or two jars of marinated artichoke hearts. They won't drop normal human quantities of perishables from Amazon Fresh on your porch without giving you a delivery window, and they can't book you a delivery window without ruining the "surprise" of getting things off a Wish List, so you can only order off Amazon Pantry, where people shop in bulk when they can't get a ride to Costco.  Ergo, sixteen jars of marinated artichokes. Which I will eventually eat, because I've also taken custody of sixteen boxes of pasta, a dozen cans of chunked tomatoes, and some amount of canned mushrooms and roasted bell peppers. I am generally a tired/lazy cook, and that's about the lev