Test Equipment Anonymous

MED6753 wrote: ↑Tue Dec 02, 2025 5:33 pm I do like pickled herring either plain or with sour cream. So I'd like to try kippers but I don't even know if they are available here.

They are.

https://scottishgourmetusa.com/products ... -breakfast

The price isn't that bad, until you add in shipping.

There are almost certainly other suppliers.

"smoked fish USA" entered into a search engine produces a few hits

https://schaferssmokedfish.com/smoked-fish-shop/

They do salmon and a few types of freshwater fish; catfish, perch and carp. Spoonbill is quite cheap, but I thought that was a bird.

I didn't look at the shipping. It might be worth a try.

tggzzz wrote: ↑Tue Dec 02, 2025 6:19 pm Surely there are smoked fish in the US?

I've seen a big orange one

tggzzz wrote: ↑Mon Dec 01, 2025 5:17 pm Well, that was a good pre-Christmas day: a good start followed by three miracles.
(SNIP for brevity's sake)
It is the yellow shop on the left
https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4549406 ... FQAw%3D%3D

The whole area is like that; it will be entertaining watching installation of on-street EV charging

"Kitchen Artillery"...? *

Sadly, it may very well be those "itty-bitty shops" that get "eminent domain"-ed out of existence to acquire the space needed for such infrastructure.

mnem
* "For when you absolutely, positively, need to cook enough to feed a regiment."

AVGresponding wrote: ↑Wed Dec 03, 2025 6:26 am

tggzzz wrote: ↑Tue Dec 02, 2025 6:19 pm Surely there are smoked fish in the US?

I've seen a big orange one

If you're thinking of the one I am, this is the only fish that could possibly represent:


mnem
*hiding out far, far upwind*

Soooo... 9°F/-13°C this morning when I went out to defrost wifey's car. That's not "nipply"; that's "Nipples cracking off" weather.

mnem

Hmmm, it's 9C in the garage at the moment, and that's a bit brisk. 9F is definitely cold. But tolerable if it's dry. If it's damp (pretty well a given in Dampland) then it's seriously cold.

EC8010 wrote: ↑Fri Dec 05, 2025 3:43 pm Hmmm, it's 9C in the garage at the moment, and that's a bit brisk. 9F is definitely cold. But tolerable if it's dry. If it's damp (pretty well a given in Dampland) then it's seriously cold.

I know... I actually put on a vest. And pants.

mnem
even God thought pants were a bad idea.

just a heads up for agilent 5462x fan boys.

powered up my 54622d this morning and it was acting weird. when looking at the probe compensation output it showed a weird overshoot and when in "quick measurement" mode the peak to peak voltage shown was 2x or 4x what would have been indicated by the trace.

ran a self test and it came back "failed channel A gain". ran a self cal and it failed. (a couple of times)

oh shit.

pulled the case off and the main board looked ok. pulled the can off the analog front end and there was a little dust inside. then peeked at the gap between the main board and the chassis. things looked downright fuzzy under there.

pulled the main board, flipped it over and holy crap. the bottom of the main board directly under the front end can was encrusted with dust and crud. very gently used a toothbrush and vacuum cleaner to remove the dust and crud.

put it all back together. the self cal was then successful and the traces are now clean and match the "measure mode" results.

whew! that was scary ........for a while.

ps when you start the self cal it says something like "this procedure will take approx 5.8 minutes". really? wouldn't "approx 6 minutes" have been close enough? am surprised it didn't say approx 5.873 minutes.

For those who're wondering how he's doing, I pinged specmaster via e earlier tonight; just got a reply saying he's well and busy being dad-chauffeur, moderating on the NextDoor site, and generally being more active IRL.

He did say he plans to pop in here and drop a little holiday cheer in the next few days.

mnem
*damn Yankee dwagon in Mark Twain's backyard*

mnementh wrote: ↑Sun Dec 14, 2025 3:46 am For those who're wondering how he's doing, I pinged specmaster via e earlier tonight; just got a reply saying he's well and busy being dad-chauffeur, moderating on the NextDoor site, and generally being more active IRL.

He did say he plans to pop in here and drop a little holiday cheer in the next few days.

mnem
*damn Yankee dwagon in Mark Twain's backyard*

Thanks for checking up on him. I was concerned that he had not posted for quite some time.

I discovered this today. Something to aspire to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1ODwgX_KkQ&t=12s

Cop a load of her equipment shelves! And if you look at her website:

https://www.tatjavanvark.nl/projects.html

The stuff there is even more amazing. As a friend of mine said, "Humbling".

-Pat

"Weaponized Autism Chris" is back, and he made this one just for us old fucks...

mnem
*another refugee from the "dustbin of history"*

Just to prove that I'm alive and kicking, as Paul said, I've had a rather busy time of late with real life getting in the way of hobbies, hope to be back to normal soon and completing the items that I started posting about and never came back with updates etc.

Specmaster wrote: ↑Wed Dec 17, 2025 4:17 pm Just to prove that I'm alive and kicking, as Paul said, I've had a rather busy time of late with real life getting in the way of hobbies, hope to be back to normal soon and completing the items that I started posting about and never came back with updates etc.

Good to hear from you. I've been dealing with life getting in the way of TE too.

mnementh wrote: ↑Wed Dec 17, 2025 1:23 pm

"Weaponized Autism Chris" is back, and he made this one just for us old fucks...

mnem
*another refugee from the "dustbin of history"*

I don't even give seleniums a chance to release their toxic smoke. Any I find in equipment get removed without question.

mnementh wrote: ↑Wed Dec 17, 2025 1:23 pm

"Weaponized Autism Chris" is back, and he made this one just for us old fucks...

mnem
*another refugee from the "dustbin of history"*

Clearly not very much happened there, e.g. no nearby village was evacuated...

One of the simpler selenium-rich compounds, for example, is carbon diselenide, an exact homolog of the carbon dioxide in your breath and in your glass of soda. Instead of a gas, the selenide is an oily liquid with a higher boiling point than water. Most of us organic chemists have never seen it.
Which is just fine.

The first report of the compound in the chemical literature is from a German university group from 1936, and it was a memorable debut. A colleague of mine had a copy of this paper in his files, and he treasured a footnote from the experimental section which related how the vapors had unfortunately escaped the laboratory and forced the evacuation of a nearby village.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-po ... diselenide

"Clearly not very much happened there, e.g. no nearby village was evacuated...

One of the simpler selenium-rich compounds, for example, is carbon diselenide, an exact homolog of the carbon dioxide in your breath and in your glass of soda. Instead of a gas, the selenide is an oily liquid with a higher boiling point than water. Most of us organic chemists have never seen it.
Which is just fine.

The first report of the compound in the chemical literature is from a German university group from 1936, and it was a memorable debut. A colleague of mine had a copy of this paper in his files, and he treasured a footnote from the experimental section which related how the vapors had unfortunately escaped the laboratory and forced the evacuation of a nearby village."

From: https://www.science.org/content/blog-po ... diselenide

A bit naughty; it was only when I followed the link that I realised you had directly quoted from the source you gave. We really must make it absolutely clear when we're quoting someone else's words. And be careful about editing two speeches together.

"Humour and Humanism in Chemistry"

https://dn790007.ca.archive.org/0/items ... mistry.pdf

Page 288 on paper, 351 in the pdf

Chemists at Cambridge were experimenting with organic selenium compounds. Since this caused obvious problems, they continued the work on the roof of the laboratory. It was the day of the Darwin centenary celebrations in June 1909, which were disrupted by a nauseating smell.

"At last, the seat of disturbance was traced to the University Chemical Laboratory, and the Cambridge Daily News came out with the clarifying headlines: 'WHAT WAS IT? SUSPECTED DRAINS EXONERATED. SCIENCE THE SINNER.'"

They continued their experiments in the fens. The apparatus became clogged with flies homing in on the stench and the results were inconclusive. They abandoned this line of research.

Tellurium compounds are reckoned to be even worse.

It's a long time since I read that book.

One I read as a kid, and can see on the bookshelf, is A Random Walk In Science.
https://www.mehmetgokturk.com/files/ran ... r-1973.pdf

Ditto The Harvest of a Quiet Eye, by MacKay.
https://archive.org/details/B-001-014-4 ... 4/mode/1up

Specmaster wrote: ↑Wed Dec 17, 2025 4:17 pm Just to prove that I'm alive and kicking, as Paul said, I've had a rather busy time of late with real life getting in the way of hobbies, hope to be back to normal soon and completing the items that I started posting about and never came back with updates etc.

Xmas one and all.jpg

Good to know you are still in circulation. I was beginning to worry that your collection of calculators had fallen down on you.

I have a number of TE and other electronic projects to tackle and report on. No rallies until May next year, so no excuses - reasons perhaps.

Have a good Christmas.

tggzzz wrote: ↑Wed Dec 17, 2025 10:06 pm One I read as a kid, and can see on the bookshelf, is A Random Walk In Science.
https://www.mehmetgokturk.com/files/ran ... r-1973.pdf

Ditto The Harvest of a Quiet Eye, by MacKay.
https://archive.org/details/B-001-014-4 ... 4/mode/1up

I have "A Random Walk In Science" and it is excellent, and so is "More Random Walks in Science", but forget "Science With a Smile" (all by the same author). Sadly, it has only just occurred to me that the "random walk" bit of the title is a physics in-joke about DC drift. (If there was a bashing head against wall smiley here, I'd use it.)

As an inveterate bookworm, I've just ordered that Quiet Eye book. I used to be librarian at junior school because it got me out of hymn practice on Fridays, I enjoyed it, and I also got a rather nice blue enamelled badge to wear. I'm not sure the word "cool" had been invented then, but the badge was cool at age ten.

I looked up Zenith's reference on selenium stink. Wow! I've never wrecked a selenium rectifier, but it seems that's something to be seriously avoided (quite apart from the fact that the failure mode is short-circuit so they take out the mains transformer).

Ach; I forgot "More Random Walks..." which is right next to the other two books.

To me it didn't have the zing of the first book, which isn't surprising as there is a limited supply of the best material.

Zenith wrote: ↑Wed Dec 17, 2025 8:31 pm Tellurium compounds are reckoned to be even worse.

LP is Linus Pauling, in 1953

http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2015/06/how-linus-pauling-almost-gave-matt.html wrote:LP: Now, Matt, Hydrogen telluride smells as much worse than hydrogen selenide as hydrogen selenide does compared to hydrogen sulfide.
Me: Ahh ...
LP: In fact, Matt, some chemists were not careful when working with tellurium compounds, and they acquired a condition known as "tellurium breath." As a result, they have become isolated from society. Some have even committed suicide.

As Lowe drolly summed that up

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/thanks-but-no-thanks wrote:Given a choice between making my own fluorine and trying to crystallize tellurium compounds, I think I'd choose. . .well, hold on a minute. . .truck driving school? Cleaning out grease traps? As a character in the old Pogo strip put it once, "No! I can always rob graves!".