One Lonely Picture

I only took one lonely picture this trip. A small town in northern Ohio. I can imagine, when the road was narrower, that this garage had old time gas pumps out front with a gas/oil sign hanging from the pole on the front.

There will be videos. It just takes time to edit.

Small Town Names Again

A couple of small towns from last weekend's motorcycle ride. I took my first ride with the MSTA (Motorcycle Sports Touring Association). They seem like a good group of people. The roads were great and I learned a lot. Many of the roads were like rally roads and you were challenged in your road reading skills. Yeah!

Both of the towns in question are unincorporated and in W. Virginia. Because of the pace, I didn't get a chance to stop and take a picture, but they do exist.

Left Hand - For all us lefties out there.

and

Pickle Street

Old Man's Eyes - The Fix

I've talked before about my electronic projects. About how my eyes are getting weaker and electronic components are getting smaller. Here is another example and a fix.


The circuit board, above, is my first attempt at designing a circuit board. It's kind of fun. Lots of different options to tradeoff.

I needed precision resistors for this circuit and, it turns out that available precision resistors are surface mount devices. There are 4 sizes of surface mount resistors. I chose the biggest size, a strip of 10 resistors is shown below with a dime. The smallest size is about 1/4 this size.

Think about it this way. The size of the number printed on the resistor is between the "In God We Trust" and the date on the dime.


For another circuit, I need to solder the 8 individual terminal of this opamp. How was I ever going to see stuff this little to solder it? I needed some help.


My answer, the fix if you will, is a stereo microscope with 20x and 40x.

The rule is, when your body can't compete, cheat.

TED Radio Hour

Because I get up at 5:00 am during the week in order to get to work a few minutes late, I tend to keep the same schedule on the weekends. As my clock radio is set to my local NPR station for morning news, that's what I hear on a Saturday morning as well. Recently, they have been playing a new program at 6:00 am on Saturdays, the TED Radio Hour, and it has been very interesting so far.

They talk to experts and researchers about interesting topics like;

What happens in the brain when you are being creative?
How does modern society devalue introverts at the cost of good ideas?
Coffee shop as model for invention environment.

All of this stuff is thought provoking and a little hard to concentrate on early on a Saturday morning. Thankfully, there is a website.

www.ted.com