Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) : Discussion and Group Therapy Thread

[tggzzz]

I'd buy black Christmas lights

They are difficult to find in the shops, but I'll sell you my spare set for £50.

I expect hipsters will have a kickstarter for a half-hearted gray version in 2025

[Zenith]

I've only had cheap strings of solar powered outdoor lights. One problem is that the LED leads are not well sealed, moisture gets in and the leads corrode away. Electrolysis may play a part. The solar charger/battery component also has problems with not being sealed against moisture and the battery must have a hard life with frost. They never seem to last longer than six months.

Outdoor Christmas lights are put out for a week or two and taken down and put away, so as well as probably being better made, they don't have the same exposure.

I was given a three metre strip of Govee LEDs with one side adhesive. These are 16 million colours and have a controller that does all sorts of effects. It isn't USB, it supplies 12V @ 2A. It looks as if it's strictly for indoor use. I believe they were an Amazon return. The LEDs are in six pin packages and for every few LEDs there's an eight pin package which I guess is a microcontroller which can be addressed by the control box/power supply.

The other thing that came from the same source is a White Noise machine that's supposed to get you off to sleep. That's USB powered.

[Zenith]

I'd buy black Christmas lights

They are difficult to find in the shops, but I'll sell you my spare set for £50.

I expect hipsters will have a kickstarter for a half-hearted gray version in 2025

Those near UV fluorescent tubes were called black lights. They have their uses but not as Christmas lights.

[bd139]

I'd buy black Christmas lights

They are difficult to find in the shops, but I'll sell you my spare set for £50.

I expect hipsters will have a kickstarter for a half-hearted gray version in 2025

Beige is the new grey which was the new beige which was an improvement of the previous brown.

[tggzzz]

I'd buy black Christmas lights

They are difficult to find in the shops, but I'll sell you my spare set for £50.

I expect hipsters will have a kickstarter for a half-hearted gray version in 2025

Beige is the new grey which was the new beige which was an improvement of the previous brown.

Are you stuck at ~1985 (beige) or ~1995 (grey), or is this the wheel of time going round again?

Arrow of time? Maybe w.r.t. physics. But the Hindus are right when it comes to human affairs (we are back in ~1935 )

[bd139]

They are difficult to find in the shops, but I'll sell you my spare set for £50.

I expect hipsters will have a kickstarter for a half-hearted gray version in 2025

Beige is the new grey which was the new beige which was an improvement of the previous brown.

Are you stuck at ~1985 (beige) or ~1995 (grey), or is this the wheel of time going round again?

Arrow of time? Maybe w.r.t. physics. But the Hindus are right when it comes to human affairs (we are back in ~1935 )

I think I'm at 1960s shiny silver and black myself.

But yes society is definitely mirroring the mid 30s. Hopefully someone will shoot all the problems away before we have to get involved.

[mnementh]

but what if you need more than 16 million colors? don't we all need 20 to 30 million colors in our holiday display?

Wasted on 8% of men and 0.1% of women.

Besides, who wants almost-but-not-quite black lights outside a house (Unless you are designing a black control panel front door bell illumination, of course).

Hot Black Desiato, for starters...

Disaster Area.JPG

mnem
" 'It's the wild colour scheme that freaks me out,' said Zaphod, whose love affair with the ship had lasted almost three minutes into the flight. 'Every time you try and operate these weird black controls that are labeled in black on a black background, a little black light lights up in black to let you know you've done it.'

Zaphod Beeblebrox, The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe"

[25 CPS]

Beige is the new grey which was the new beige which was an improvement of the previous brown.

Are you stuck at ~1985 (beige) or ~1995 (grey), or is this the wheel of time going round again?

Arrow of time? Maybe w.r.t. physics. But the Hindus are right when it comes to human affairs (we are back in ~1935 )

I think I'm at 1960s shiny silver and black myself.

But yes society is definitely mirroring the mid 30s. Hopefully someone will shoot all the problems away before we have to get involved.

I was talking with one of my friends the other day about COVID-19 era predictions that never came true. We were remembering the speculation there was that there'd be a period of prosperity like the Roaring '20s after the previous pandemic. My friend's comment was that we totally skipped over the Roaring '20s and landed in 1937. I'd have to agree.

[tggzzz]

History doesn't repeat itself, but does rhyme.

I can't remember which TV/film it was, but a doctor was testing an elderly patient for dementia. One of the questions was "when did WW2 start?" . The patient said 1919. After a pregnant pause she added "Because of the treaty of Versaille". Quite right too.

The 1920s ended in 2008, because the Glass-Steagall banking restrictions imposed in the 1930s were repealed in the 1990s. The Sudetenland experience re-occurred in 2014, potentially the start of WW3.

[bd139]

Civilisation comes in waves I suspect. People who lived through wars tell stories. Eventually they wear off and new people demand more wars.

——

And now for something completely different… or not. Another civilisation failure. Just spent the day wandering around here …

IMG_3837.jpeg

[Specmaster]

Civilisation comes in waves I suspect. People who lived through wars tell stories. Eventually they wear off and new people demand more wars.

——

And now for something completely different… or not. Another civilisation failure. Just spent the day wandering around here …


IMG_3837.jpeg

Pray, do tell, where is this place?

[tggzzz]

Civilisation comes in waves I suspect. People who lived through wars tell stories. Eventually they wear off and new people demand more wars.

Civilisations rot from within. A classic warning sign is when an unnecessarily high proportion of the total wealth is held in too few hands, and too many people feel they will never be able to access sufficient wealth to live tolerable lives.

And now for something completely different… or not. Another civilisation failure. Just spent the day wandering around here …

The giveaway is the relief of Silenus resting on a wineskin. Must be the corner of Via della Fortuna and Via del Vesuvio.

[bd139]

Correctly guessed. It is the Pompeii archaeological site.

Currently lying in bed in Naples. Off to the archeological museum in an hour. Hopefully the rain stops by then. Yes it’s bloody raining.


Edit: discovered how to travel and stay in (nice) places cheaply thus have been spending the TE budget on that. I can’t remember if I posted last month’s excursion. This one’s a bit easier.

DSC_0447-Enhanced-NR.jpeg

[Robert]

For moment I thought you were in LA.
Glad you are not.

[tggzzz]

Correctly guessed. It is the Pompeii archaeological site.

Currently lying in bed in Naples. Off to the archeological museum in an hour. Hopefully the rain stops by then. Yes it’s bloody raining.

Do try some local excessively sensual fresh fruit, but don't gorge on them. Ficus carica, of course.

You might consider visiting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlegraean_Fields where the altitude is increasing 2cm/month.

Edit: discovered how to travel and stay in (nice) places cheaply thus have been spending the TE budget on that. I can’t remember if I posted last month’s excursion. This one’s a bit easier.

If you like that, seriously consider Sicily. Even though she was less than 4yo, my daughter still remembers the amphitheatre and temple at Segesta, and the monks strung up in the Catacombe dei Cappuccini, and the reason they stopped stringing them up: Rosalia Lombardo.

There are many many other sites and sights worth seeing, some of them Norman.

[25 CPS]

I got a marketing email from Rhode & Schwartz the other day. They had the fill out a form to receive an RF spectrum allocation poster promotion going on and that made me realize something:

I filled out that promotion several years ago and I never received the poster.

Then I realized I filled out a Keysight promotion form even longer ago for one of those RF PCB rulers they were giving away and I never received that either.

This leaves me wondering if these large companies are hyping up promotional giveaways to get people to fill out their information so marketing databases can be populated without actually sending out any of the items in question except to high profile social media personalities who contribute to the marketing hype while regular people see nothing.

I was still thinking about the Keysight promotional PCB ruler that I never received the next day after I wrote that post about it on November 4th and ended up browsing eBay. One seller offered a set of three PCB rulers for a reasonable price and free shipping so I ordered two sets on the 5th of November. The free shipping from China wasn't the fastest though and they arrived in Canada a couple of days after Canada Post went on strike. The strike lasted about a month before the government effectively legislated an end to it and then there was the backlog of mail that built up. The rulers finally arrived today. I barely had enough time to unpack them and get a picture of them before heading to work this afternoon (I slept in. I needed it. I was exhausted.) but here they are:



Since I had the two sets I laid them out to show both sides of each one.

As for Keysight and R & S promising promotional items if you sign up so they're marketing departments can harvest contact information but then not delivering unless you're a social media influencer or someone with signing authority to authorize large corporate purchases, I don't know what to say.

[AVGresponding]

Keyshite and Rotten Sports are both on my shit-list these days. Marketing their stuff through social media maker-influencers is pure slime, given they will refuse any support for non-business (and even many small businesses it seems) customers.

Shame on the tubers shilling their shitty products.

[25 CPS]

I had an unexpected multimeter fall into my lap today. A Fluke 77.





I found the manual on the Fluke website and was reading up on the specs on this meter and luckily there was an illustration of the segment test it does as part of the power on self testing. I originally thought that the upper left segment in the first digit was out despite the rest of the display being perfect until I saw it documented that way:



Taking a once over through the manual, it looks like this meter was roughly contemporary to the 8060A which leaves me more impressed with the capabilities that Fluke put in the 8060A than I was before.

[AVGresponding]

Yeah I think the 8060A was aimed more at electronics guys, the rubber baby buggy bumper brigade are more a sparky thing.

@Robert, identifying the connector on this seems the sort of thing you excel at: [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdHZahE ... DJDMxpZBFm[/youtube]

[vk6zgo]

Yeah I think the 8060A was aimed more at electronics guys, the rubber baby buggy bumper brigade are more a sparky thing.

@Robert, identifying the connector on this seems the sort of thing you excel at: [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdHZahE ... DJDMxpZBFm[/youtube]

I would disagree---- in my experience, the silly side switches on the 8060A were a "pet hate" of Electronics Techs.
It was common to see them with one or more of the buttons missing, making them less than useful.
The 77, with its offset knob, offered a much more rugged way of using a DMM "one handed".

The early desktop Fluke DMMs were not really popular with Techs, either, as they tended towards fragility, leading to the less than complimentary "slogan" ----"if it works, it's a Fluke"!
No doubt,"ginger beers" liked them!

[nixiefreqq]

took me 10 minutes to figure out that you guys like to rhyme things.

ginger beer apparently equals engineer?

what's next....videos of morris dancing?

guess that's what happens when you are isolated on a little island. too bad the roman empire pulled out and left you to alone to develop your strange ways and culture. AND you fucking drive on the wrong side of the road.


edit am old and senile.....and forgot for a moment that swmbo was naturalized here but born a brit. ok.......that's something else that annoys me about the UK (but not as much as morris dancing).

edit 2 so what are the rules about UK citizenship? any chance you will take her back?

[MED6753]

took me 10 minutes to figure out that you guys like to rhyme things.

ginger beer apparently equals engineer?

what's next....videos of morris dancing?

guess that's what happens when you are isolated on a little island. too bad the roman empire pulled out and left you to alone to develop your strange ways and culture. AND you fucking drive on the wrong side of the road.


edit am old and senile.....and forgot for a moment that swmbo was naturalized here but born a brit. ok.......that's something else that annoys me about the UK (but not as much as morris dancing).

edit 2 so what are the rules about UK citizenship? any chance you will take her back?

[tggzzz]

took me 10 minutes to figure out that you guys like to rhyme things.

ginger beer apparently equals engineer?

Haven't heard that, but Cockney rhyming slang continually mutates. If it is that, then you would only ever say "ginger"; the "beer" must be omitted.

Hence "I'm going up the apples to have a butchers to see if there is a whistle" would mean "I'm going up the stairs (apples and pears) to have a look (butchers hook) to see if there is a suit (whistle and flute).

A few have become common parlance; "butchers" is widely understood.

what's next....videos of morris dancing?

Most people recognise the concept that you should try everything once, except morris dancing and incest. Morris dancing is principally an excuse to go out to a country pub, and become gently sozzled.

AND you fucking drive on the wrong side of the road.

You almost got that correct; better luck next time..

[vk6zgo]

took me 10 minutes to figure out that you guys like to rhyme things.

ginger beer apparently equals engineer?

what's next....videos of morris dancing?

guess that's what happens when you are isolated on a little island. too bad the roman empire pulled out and left you to alone to develop your strange ways and culture. AND you fucking drive on the wrong side of the road.


edit am old and senile.....and forgot for a moment that swmbo was naturalized here but born a brit. ok.......that's something else that annoys me about the UK (but not as much as morris dancing).

edit 2 so what are the rules about UK citizenship? any chance you will take her back?

I'm from a very large island, & I don't really know if the Brits use the term "ginger beer" or not, but it is common in Australia.
I had a Morris once, & it did dance a bit on corrugated roads!

PS: A quote from Bill Bryson;

"Why do Morris Dancers wear bells?
"So they can piss off blind people, too!"

[25 CPS]

Yeah I think the 8060A was aimed more at electronics guys, the rubber baby buggy bumper brigade are more a sparky thing.

@Robert, identifying the connector on this seems the sort of thing you excel at: [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdHZahE ... DJDMxpZBFm[/youtube]

I would disagree---- in my experience, the silly side switches on the 8060A were a "pet hate" of Electronics Techs.
It was common to see them with one or more of the buttons missing, making them less than useful.
The 77, with its offset knob, offered a much more rugged way of using a DMM "one handed".

The early desktop Fluke DMMs were not really popular with Techs, either, as they tended towards fragility, leading to the less than complimentary "slogan" ----"if it works, it's a Fluke"!
No doubt,"ginger beers" liked them!

I didn't like the slide switches at first either and didn't find them intuitive until it clicked that they form a truth table for function selection. That part of the 8060A and the other similar meters that Fluke made with that setup was definitely something that was designed by a digital guy for sure. For electronics use, particularly audio, the 8060A's AC bandwidth and dB relative measurement functions beat the 77. According to the history out there on the 8060A, audio electronics considerations were a major design influence which explains why it's well suited for that application, function switch notwithstanding.