Viewing profile — typhonic

I am a recently retired control systems engineer in the US with 45 years experience. In every project we worked on we made sure the end user owned the custom programming, system co…

In the 1960's, my brother and I would walk about three miles (over Red Mountain in Birmingham AL) to the closest Radio Shack. We would each get a free battery using our cards and u…

I got my third MRI after having a titanium plate put in my neck, and wow was I more nervous that time than the earlier two times. I made the tech let me test the panic button to pr…

I'm thinking I'm old too because I grew up with telephones that had crystal earphones connected with non-magnetic copper wire.

Twenty years is a mighty short time period for expecting a huge paradigm shift in industry. In 1973 I was touring industrial plants and got to see an automated retrieval and delive…

As if I'm not already spending too much time reading HN.

Pretty cool. I wish I could remove toll roads from the route options.

If I remember correctly, some have called it the "Zone" and it is described in the book "The Inner Game of Tennis" by W. Timothy Gallwey. It has been a long while since I read it.

Coming from the Controls Systems Industry, I have seen a few flavors of the SRS. Sometimes we call them Functional Requirements Specifications (FRS). The IEEE has a decent standard…

We have pet chickens that we close up every night. I built a door to let us open and close the chicken run from a web page. The door slides horizontally and is driven by a cheap el…

I learned this technique in the mid 70s, but I didn't attend MIT. I still remember a math class in 1973 that was sort of rowdy. One of the students was presenting. He wanted to dra…

Thanks. I realized I had the term wrong when the answers came in. Probably one reason I was having trouble finding information.

Thanks. I have it on order.

What resources do you recommend for me to learn Test Based Programming? I have a little exposure to the concept, but I generally do not think of programming in that way. While I ha…

What came to my mind is "An Introduction to Microcomputers" by Adam Osborne. I don't think I can find my copy anymore. If I remember correctly, there were block diagrams showing th…

There are plenty of technical comments here, but I have to say I got a great laugh from this post. I have dealt with many of the absurdities state side, so I can relate to your exp…

>My guess is that the people who used slide rules in their professions and were willing to pay over $50 to re-experience the nostalgia of playing with one again are now all dead. W…

A co-worker once told me he had two of three certifications for fireworks. I forget what they were exactly, maybe one for manufacturing, one for transportation, and one for operati…

In 1973 I visited the office of a chemistry professor. He and his research partner seemed to be on somewhat of a downhill slide. For years they had dreams of discovering a catalyst…

To break it down further, the 2D layers are laid down as a bunch of 1D structures when using the popular filament extruders.

I don’t think a really good title exists, but the closest might be “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Control Room” by Gregory McMillan. It is basically a comic book written…

I am now 66 and continuing to work as an engineer in a field not too far removed from a programming career. I have had the same inclination as your father and I hope he is successf…

In 1973, a high school student from another state told me that he became interested in astronomy because of a newsletter and activity he participated in. It seems there was a grad …

This is my favorite. It's hard to find, so I made a quick sketch. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hSCB8ZGGH7tlph-NuNRWa317HCV... I turn it so the flat side is horizontal. It expan…