@clacke @drahardja @lispi314 I wrote code in the early 1980s that took full notice that two-digit year fields were a liability and that some folks who were in the datasets were possibly *born in the 1800s* and that the dataset might endure past the end of the 1900s or require forward calculations into the then-distant 2000s. Agreed there were some systems that had so little memory that date compression was needed, but we used binary fields for time, not truncated text dates.
Notices by Neil G4DBN (g4dbn@mastodon.radio), page 2
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Neil G4DBN (g4dbn@mastodon.radio)'s status on Tuesday, 02-Jan-2024 22:50:59 JST Neil G4DBN -
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Neil G4DBN (g4dbn@mastodon.radio)'s status on Tuesday, 02-Jan-2024 19:12:04 JST Neil G4DBN @drahardja Every time some cretin mentioned that Y2K was a hoax, the entire team would respond and suggest that they take their uninformed opinions and go elsewhere. Even 20 years later, we were easily triggered and responded with overwhelming rage. I've almost moved on and now just add them to the idiot pile and treat them with due caution. Two years of our lives wasted on fixing the work of idiots. Marvellous. See also C/C++ coders who didn't understand bounds checking. Idiots everywhere!
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Neil G4DBN (g4dbn@mastodon.radio)'s status on Tuesday, 02-Jan-2024 19:09:46 JST Neil G4DBN @drahardja My team worked for two years on identifying and eliminating shitty applications written by idiot coders who had zero foresight. The business had over 300 apps and a huge shadow IT problem. By the time we hit Y2K, we'd wiped out almost half of the apps and most shadow IT apart from the crappy local databases. Embarrassing the crap out of the hobby coders who thought they knew what they were doing, and holding them accountable for being a significant business risk was mildly satisfying
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Neil G4DBN (g4dbn@mastodon.radio)'s status on Tuesday, 02-Jan-2024 06:03:31 JST Neil G4DBN @HopelessDemigod Heh heh, I have a few of those, including a 50 GHz SpecAn, a load of xxxVNAs, lots of signal gennies up to 26.5 GHz, 6.5 digit Fluke multimeter, , 20 GHz and 8 GHz counters, five power meters rated up to 50 GHz, three GPSDO frequency standards, Rubidium frequency standard, a fancy EMCO EMF meter, digital scope, logic analyzer, variable power supplies up to 100 amps and up to 50 kV, many directional couplers and RF bridges, microwave cavity wavemeters ...
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Neil G4DBN (g4dbn@mastodon.radio)'s status on Tuesday, 02-Jan-2024 06:03:29 JST Neil G4DBN @HopelessDemigod Also function generators, an ultra-low-distortion AF signal generator, a 7 MHz to 4 GHz Agilent Transmitter Tester (basically an FFT specan), oh and a precision buried-zener voltage reference
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Neil G4DBN (g4dbn@mastodon.radio)'s status on Tuesday, 02-Jan-2024 06:03:27 JST Neil G4DBN @HopelessDemigod Oh, and sound pressure level meters, airflow speed measurement (for cooling fans), a set of precision slotted lines for waveguide and coax, sliding shorts, sliding loads and other pre-VNA testgear for measuring impedances and return loss from UHF through to mmWave. I really do have a serious testgear addiction here...
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Neil G4DBN (g4dbn@mastodon.radio)'s status on Tuesday, 02-Jan-2024 06:03:24 JST Neil G4DBN @HopelessDemigod I love the fact that I can machine up a slotted line in my home shop that can make impedance/Smith Chart measurements at the same precision and high GHz frequencies as a $100k+ VNA for less than the cost of the cheapest NanoVNA. In fact, I'll be making a vid about that probably in April
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Neil G4DBN (g4dbn@mastodon.radio)'s status on Tuesday, 02-Jan-2024 05:56:30 JST Neil G4DBN @M0PWX @M0KHR @mw1cgg One benefit of waveguide and stripline construction is that you can make a passive amplifier combiner to run 32 or more power amplifiers in parallel for MOAR PWEOR. 25 years ago there were examples with 272 chips being combined to make 35 WATTS!!! at 60 GHz. Definite Antenna Pr0n in this area of human endeavour
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Neil G4DBN (g4dbn@mastodon.radio)'s status on Tuesday, 02-Jan-2024 05:54:51 JST Neil G4DBN @M0KHR Nope, it has a 1B40 Argon-filled plasma tube with a 0.2 microcurie Cobalt-60 source. When it is in a strong RF field, the Co-60 and bias voltage cause a plasma to form, which shorts out the intermediate cavity between the 1 kW TX and the delicate crystal diode RX cavity. It can take 500+ watts, but only for a microsecond, at about 1000 pulses per second. Problem is that Co-60 half-life is only 5.3 years, so after a decade, it stops working, and by now, nowt left. https://lampes-et-tubes.info/mwtr/1B40.pdf
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Neil G4DBN (g4dbn@mastodon.radio)'s status on Tuesday, 02-Jan-2024 05:54:48 JST Neil G4DBN @M0KHR Uh-huh. Yup. Not a lot of nasties in 0.2 microcuries though, even when it was new, so now only 6 femtocuries left. 0.2 microcuries is about 7 kBq, so by now, the activity is about 2e-15 times that, so well under one decay per second. Although those are mostly 310 keV electrons, the products then decay by emitting gamma rays at 1.2 and 1.3 GeV so it's a bit spicy
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Neil G4DBN (g4dbn@mastodon.radio)'s status on Tuesday, 02-Jan-2024 05:53:50 JST Neil G4DBN Look what followed me home from that ebay. Original early 1950s AN/APX-6 Identification Friend or Foe transponder. These were using during the Castle nuclear tests as well as in many thousands of aircraft, with a base station mounted on the X band radar systems. In the late 1950s, many were bought as war surplus by radio hams and converted to the 1.3 GHz/23 cm band. It makes over a kilowatt from a pulsed disc-seal triode and has a radioactive T/R switch and three explosive Destructors
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Neil G4DBN (g4dbn@mastodon.radio)'s status on Friday, 24-Nov-2023 09:31:28 JST Neil G4DBN @f4grx He's developing into a brilliant cross between Styropyro and ElectroBOOM. I have questions about the treatment of capacitance and ignoring leakage inductance in the mains transformer. I worry hugely about the effects on his corneas and perhaps earlobes and nose tissues. Corneas and eye tissues in particular though. He didn't really get into the physics of coupling into the waveguide. I have some 80 kW pulsed magnetrons on my desk right now. This video inspires me to try crazier stuff!
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Neil G4DBN (g4dbn@mastodon.radio)'s status on Tuesday, 21-Nov-2023 13:02:21 JST Neil G4DBN @jmorris @azonenberg I'm going to try to get to Seattle next year when I'm giving a lecture at a Microwaves conference in Vancouver. I want to visit the Connections Museum in Seattle and meet some microwave folks in the area
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Neil G4DBN (g4dbn@mastodon.radio)'s status on Thursday, 16-Nov-2023 11:19:10 JST Neil G4DBN @jmorris @azonenberg I tend to prefer making the feedhorns - usually Pickett-Potter dual-mode or with integral chokes or septums. Wideband transitions almost always need to be made in two halves to get the sharp corners to mate with rectangular waveguides. I can do centrifugal casting, but getting a good enough finish is tough. Oval iris narrowband transitions are easy enough of course, I can make those on the manual mill. SMA, N and 3.5/2.91 mm transitions to w/g are always popular
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Neil G4DBN (g4dbn@mastodon.radio)'s status on Thursday, 16-Nov-2023 11:18:46 JST Neil G4DBN @jmorris @azonenberg of course what I REALLY need is a wire EDM machine and a die sinker
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Neil G4DBN (g4dbn@mastodon.radio)'s status on Thursday, 16-Nov-2023 02:14:24 JST Neil G4DBN @jmorris @azonenberg Definitely, I'll mostly be building up a stock of popular parts for sale rather than doing a lot of custom work, but it's only a matter of scale. I can do gold/silver plating, anodizing, laser marking, electroforming and casting, so most things are possible other than precision dishes more than about 230 mm diameter. Once I get the lathe modified for one-axis CNC, I should be able to make large cast aluminium dishes up to 18 inch diameter, but 12 inches is easier
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Neil G4DBN (g4dbn@mastodon.radio)'s status on Wednesday, 15-Nov-2023 23:02:33 JST Neil G4DBN @azonenberg The main driver was so I could machine elliptical and offset-parabolic reflectors, plus things like laterally-displaced ellipse Gregorian antenna systems at mmWave frequencies, and slot arrays with hundreds of elements. The stress of doing manual machining for even a 2 x 24 slot array at 10 GHz is way too high, so 100+ precision slot arrays are best done on machines. Same with making batch runs of waveguide parts
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Neil G4DBN (g4dbn@mastodon.radio)'s status on Wednesday, 15-Nov-2023 23:02:22 JST Neil G4DBN @g0fcu @g7vkq @2m0sql By the time you take into account the tooling, vices, probes, induction shrinkfit thingy, transport, installation, training, compressor, fancy coolant, 3 phase inverter and building mods, the total cost is the wrong side of £40k. It should pay for itself over a few years though
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Neil G4DBN (g4dbn@mastodon.radio)'s status on Wednesday, 15-Nov-2023 23:01:43 JST Neil G4DBN @Dtl I rather imagine she'll either be very sniffy, or go full-on nerd-out about it
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Neil G4DBN (g4dbn@mastodon.radio)'s status on Wednesday, 15-Nov-2023 17:52:04 JST Neil G4DBN My new Syil X5 CNC mill is ready to ship from the factory. Might be here by New Year if I'm lucky. This is it, just completed QA testing