Cavalcade of Mammals

Here’s a JDM programmer for PIC microprocessors that works for me.

docs

I used it to put the bootloader on a usbpicprog PIC programmer I am building. It also programmed my PIC18F46K20. It worked with picpgm and picprog on Linux. Picprog still gave me config bit errors.

I have tried other JDM programmers–simpler ones using no transistors like Simple JDM programmer (though with not-quite-right zeners). It worked intermittently for a while, then stopped working altogether on my PIC18F46K20.

Here’s a JDM programmer that usbpicprog recommends. I haven’t tried it.

Chris Hayes on how some voters make their decisions
Thoughts on making GFP yoghurt
DIY bio postcards
IDT (oligonucleotides) demo protocols
IDT tech notes on attaching DNA to solid supports
The tame press in Japan
Ayn Rand, performance artist
Kung Fu Monkey: The Crazification Factor
DIY Bio: using a microwave to sterilize media

Cooked food has more calories than raw food
USB Pic programmer
Pickit2 clone
The Reactionary Mind by Corey Robin and the Deep Roots of Conservative Radicalism
Making dies: steel rule, dieboard, routed slot, tabs, notch steel rule, butt together the ends, aluminum backer, sponge foam to strip out the cut material. Suppliers: Helmold

Note to self: on my HP LaserJet6L, board traces printed from Eagle using the PS device need to be printed out at 110%.

Nepotism and wealth go together like father and son

Source

US corporate tax rates:

Source

Revenue Statistics of O.E.C.D. Member Countries, 2010, Source

Polyvinyl alcohol, neat stuff

Making an inkjet nozzle with a piezo buzzer. Drop size and speed not measured. Both seem to be on the order of a µl.

Inkjet 3d printer that prints into dental power / PVA
3D DLP printer build log. What is being built is unclear.
Tests of UV curing resins for 3D printing

At Windycon, I went to a talk by Christian Ready from the Space Telescope Science Institute on the solar system and saw pictures of the surface of Titan. Wow, I didn’t realize that a probe had made a landing!

Simple JDM PIC programer
PICgm software (and progr schematics)
Pololu, a specialty electronics store
Seeed, a specialty electronics/bazaar

Picprog, programmer software for PIC microcontrollers
Serial interface using MAX232
PCB trace width calculator
RC filter for PWM output calculator

Templar, Arizona. An alt-history comic.
Bob White web comic
Biostar, a Stackexchange forum for bioinformatics.
EAGLE Circuit Layout Editor
Adafruit’s Eagle parts library

Dreaming Metal by Melissa Scott (1997).

No word cloud for this book, it isn’t on the net.

This book is a sequel to Dreamships (1992). I haven’t read Dreamships and as this book is clearly a sequel that left some gaps in this book. I didn’t know it was a sequel when I started it, but it is very clear.

That said, I enjoyed Dreaming Metal immensely. It’s one of the best written and most original books I’ve read in quite a while. The setting, an human settled world, is very interesting–complex, and yet very foreign and intriguingly different from the societies in most sf.

There is a lot that is not explained–Scott doesn’t give one of those top down explanations of the society, and the plot runs at the mid level of the society. I don’t know how much of this is covered in the first book of the series, I hope it handles it similarly. And interestingly, it’s not clear what the political system is. The characters are free to act within the plot, but there appear to be limits, different from the US, but not clear because the story isn’t about that, and the characters don’t butt up against them.

This book is about AI and music. It posits a world where AI is rare but crops up now and then, and it is considered inevitable but not predictable. It is very well written and Celinde Fortune is a great character. As described, the future of music sounds great. Also, deafness is common on Persephone, and signing and other physical performance is a integral part of the music.

Melissa Scott only wrote these two books in this universe.