I am continuing my attempt to self-educate myself at electronics by working through Charles Platt's book Make: Electronics: Learning Through Discovery, 2nd Edition.I'm currently working on an oscillator circuit. I was going to take a picture of my actual breadboard with the circuit on it, but this representational diagram from the book is a lot cleaner:The … [Read more...] about The Mystery Of the Oscillator That Didn’t
Technology
Some (Very) Basic Electronics
In an attempt at self-improvement, I'm trying to teach myself some basic electronics.I was fascinated by electronics when I was a kid. I remember my parents had given me a Science Fair electronics kit, which was a shallow wooden box that had electronic components mounted inside, with spring terminals wired to each of the leads. You could wire components together by bending … [Read more...] about Some (Very) Basic Electronics
Greg Laden Illustrates the Case For a Carbon Tax
Science blogger Greg Laden is having trouble figuring out whether or not to install a solar electric power system in his home. I want to put a solar panel on my roof so that I am releasing less greenhouse gas into the environment. But then I hear that manufacturing solar panels causes the release of greenhouse gasses, so I have to subtract that from the good I think I’m doing. … [Read more...] about Greg Laden Illustrates the Case For a Carbon Tax
Mysteries of Comcast
So last night around 2am I sat down at my computer and...no internet. Called Comcast and accepted the automated system's offer to reset my modem. When that didn't work, I asked for a human being. The technician told me there was an outage in the area, but they couldn't give me anymore information, and they couldn't take a trouble ticket because their system was down … [Read more...] about Mysteries of Comcast
Don’t Dis the iPad
I think it's fair to say that Scott Greenfield is not a fan of Apple's iPad. From reading his banter with Brian Tannebaum, I gather there's been a lot of hype about how the iPad is a "game changer" for lawyers -- I guess because it can serve as a thin client front-end to some sort of "virtual office in the cloud" web application. Whatever. As criminal defense lawyers, Scott and … [Read more...] about Don’t Dis the iPad