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Switching power supplies are nothing new, but it's only within the last decade that the electronics have gotten cheap enough to enable such supplies to be incorporated into low-cost consumer equipment. Besides saving energy(which is inarguably a good thing), there is less waste heat to get rid...

How about giving CEOs ridiculous pay packages and golden parachutes? This is what I think is mainly wrong with businesses in this country-the huge gap between the lowest paid worker and the CEO. If jobs are being moved overseas, and costs cut in other ways, then the money saved should not go...

Those seem cool but also $$$, and not as fun as making it yourself. The driving circuit for my headlight was built from spare parts not worth more than $1. I modified this circuit to drive 20 LEDs(in two series strings of 10) off of 5V(4 AA NiMH cells) instead of 1.5V. I used a 100 uH...

Candlepower forums is a good place to look for different types of lighting projects. They mostly modify flashlights but bike lights aren't much different. If you lived nearby I'd be happy to do this for you. Besides the headlight, I also put 5 red LEDs and a blinker circuit on a standard rear...

Looks like there's a new efficiency champ in town. 8) Good enough reason to resurrect this thread in my book. :mrgrn: 65 lm/W using industry standard packages and 74 lm/W using special laboratory packages! Better than compact flurorescent, and starting to approach T-8 linear tube...

Just like fusion-it's the power of the future and always will be.

I'm glad to hear the (relatively) good news. Now the big questions are can you nurse her back to health, and what exactly caused this problem so you can prevent it from happening again? I've never had anything quite like this happen to any of my cats, so much as I might wish to I can't draw on...

No mention of 0 to 60 time. I guess you have to keep the brakes on until the engine spools up for the best times(same as they do for airliners). Must be noisy as all hell, too.

So that's what happened to James. :mrgrn: I wondered why he hasn't been here for a while. Seriously, I hope this means I won't be getting that Nigerian bank scam crap in my inbox any more. Come to think of it, I heard that worldwide only a couple of dozen people account for 99% of the...

I really wish you lived near the vet I go to. Dr. Kirk has a reputation for diagnosing conditions in five minutes that other vets were puzzled by for weeks. Letters all over his office attest to that. I don't know if anything can be done long distance, but if you want to try, I can give you...

Needless to say, that engine won't fit inside a car. In fact, quite the opposite seems to be true. :mrgrn: Those cylinders are huge. I'm guessing it's used for either electrical generation or powering very large ships like tankers. Nothing else I can think of would require that much...

I thought this part was interesting: Sounds suspiciously like the way older(pre-thyristor controlled) subway cars used to work, except for having four motors and using series, series-parallel, and parallel. Yep, those old controllers only had three positions. You controlled speed by...

I'm really sad to hear about this happening to you right now, Mercutio, especially with all the other trials you've had in your life the past year. I hope Gracie can be cured of whatever she has. How old is Gracie? I'm asking because you say she's been on the skinny side her whole life much...

Thanks Buck. I've had the pictures on my hard drive for a few months, so all that's needed is to make the text to go with them, and also to brush up on my html. I'll give you a PM when it's ready to email to you(hopefully in a few weeks or less-I have writer's block right now, but I know once...

This has more to do with the quality of construction than with the lack of weight. For example, filling hollow spaces under body panels with some sort of energy-absorbing foam would give these cars a more solid feel and offer greater crash protection without adding much weight. The key to...

Does it have to be computer-related? A while back I was thinking of posting something about my thermoelectric temperature chamber project on SR, complete with lots of pictures. I never got around to it, mostly because I have nowhere to host the pictures. Assuming I write something, would it...

I'm sorry to hear this, even though we all knew it was coming eventually. Your dog died in your arms, as I'm sure he would have wanted. You did all you could, you cherished every remaining moment with him. He couldn't have had a better friend.

I mentioned somewhere above that a reasonable spread of weight for all types of vehicles, excluding heavy trucks and buses, would be a factor of 1.5 or less. If the lightest econobox is 2000 pounds, then the heaviest commonly used passenger vehicle should be 3000 pounds or under. Or you could...

Sounds like something from one of the MadMax movies(i.e. the one with Tina Turner). A mental picture of Mel Gibson shoveling pig shit just popped into my mind. :mrgrn: Still, it seems like a good idea-the CO2 put into the air by burning methane is taken up by the grass the cows eat. There...

Shame on all of you. :nono: Not a Yankees fan in sight. :( Seriously, if the Yankees lost today I would have had to listen to my father for the entire winter. :crucified: You wouldn't want to subject anybody to that, now would you? P.S. I can't afford to move out as much as I might...

A couple of interesting links I came across: Hydrogen Fuel Cells May Hurt Ozone Just Learn To Stop Worrying About Oil And Love Hydrogen Compressed Air Fuels City Cars

Visual linguist, Bill? Now that doesn't surprise me a bit. The whole Giver charade you pulled off was sheer genius. I don't think anyone else here(except maybe Tannin) could have fooled so many people for so long. :mrgrn:

You certainly bring up an interesting point here. Some people are just good test takers and do better at these types of tests than their intelligence in everyday life would predict. For others, quite the opposite is true. And remember, an IQ test only tells about one facet of how your brain...

Here's my results on that Super IQ test SteveC linked to: I'm guessing SuperIQ and regular IQ are measured on different scales. I've pretty consistently scored in the upper 130s on almost every regular IQ test I've taken. It's also funny how everyone else who has taken this test so far has...

I'll say this for it-about the only thing that can match the acceleration besides race cars would be fighter jets screaming down the runway. I'm not thrilled with the interior, either. A little dated for my tastes. I'm not a big fan of analog instruments because of their inherent inaccuracy...

This should read: "And as I said earlier, an SUV or econobox will both fare very poorly against a bus or truck, so no point even worrying about that type of collision." CraigLC, Point taken if you only drive 2500 miles a year in your T/As(I cycle more than that some years). However, there are...

It's only a factor in a crash because of the presence of monster SUVs on the road. If all cars were about the same weight there would be no advantage in a collision because of weight. And besides that, the restraint system is more important. The restraints on American cars stink, period...

Fuel cells still require fuel to make power. Current fuel cells will probably use fossil fuels, and future ones likely LPG or hydrogen. Thus there is still the need to conserve fuel. While you can make hydrogen from water, you need lots of electricity to do so. In fact, you put more energy...

:mrgrn: I have little doubt the IQ test was invented by someone like me. We engineers need to quantize everything. Anyway, I started this thread for fun. I don't put too much stock in tests like these, but the results so far confirm my suspicions. We're all in the upper 1% or 2%...

Without reading the article(because I'm too lazy right now to register) I'll say before what I've said again-I'm tired of hearing the words "we can't" from the US auto industry. You can build a 75 mpg vehicle today, and you can build a 150 mpg one by 2015(assuming we don't make the switch to...

Here's an interesting read I found: The Effect Of Urban Flight On IQ Distribution Merc, I see your point but consider that IQ is something you're born with, and isn't necessarily a predictor of success in any one endeavor. Sometimes perserverence makes up for a lack of IQ, which probably...

I was thinking the same thing. I'm also wondering about Tannin, cas, and Gary H., to name a few who I think would best the scores posted here so far. As IQ gets higher measuring it becomes more difficult for the simple reason few people are smart enough to think of hard enough questions...

Nice idea but I doubt Maxtor or anyone else would be able to get six platters of that density to work well together. Two-stage sliders would be one way, but I don't see that happening any time soon. Besides, the cost per GB for a 6-platter drive would be way more than for a 2-platter one. I'd...

I think the test score is adjusted for age for the simple reason a person with more life experience will get more questions correct than he would have when he was younger. As timwhit said, though, past a certain point age doesn't make much difference. Seeing that our ages here range from...

Since some people here have already taken tests for AQ, EQ, and SQ, I figured we might as well throw IQ into the mix. The test results seem accurate compared to other IQ tests I've taken. I got 136. Last time I took one of these(about 20 years ago) I scored 138. Somehow I don't think we'll...

The pumps just move the water through the cooling towers. And yes, they are loud.

I think any microprocessor under about 100 watts can be passively cooled using a setup similar to the one in that article. Actually, anything can be passively cooled if you use a large enough heat sink. Look at nuclear power plant cooling towers, for example. Nothing but convection at work...

I tend to think we're not too far from the death of the three-platter drive. Still, I would also like to see a three-platter version of this drive. Even a 2-platter version is great-350 GB. :D

Funny, the link is dead now. I read about that in the newspaper. It's a shame that these so-called leaders have no sense of humor. It's no more insensitive than jokes about Italians, Asians, or Catholics, all of which seem to be in vogue at the moment. You should be able to laugh at...

How about that aspirin factory in Sudan that Clinton bombed, not coincidentally at around the time his affair with Monica was coming out? I'm sure that endeared us to some of the people in that region. And speaking of the environment, which Mercutio brought up in his reference to ANWR, why...

That brought tears to my eyes. Not just because it sounded so special, but also thinking about your profound sense of loss recently. And in so many ways it was reminiscent of my time with my one true love so many years ago. Not in the details so much, but in the same way we were friends...

Do what I do-cannibilize old systems, including those you find by the curb. Or look for 6-32x1/4" or 6-32x3/8" screws at your local hardware store. That's the size most case screws appear to be(except the ones for floppy and optical drives.

I found this. Here is the schematic: A Google search turns up plenty of these things. The circuits look relatively simple to build. Just get a breadboard from Radio Shack and solder away. If you don't have an assortment of parts you may need to buy those, as well as a nice case. I doubt...

I read about that in Electronic Design this month. Very interesting. Using liquid cooling there is essentially no practical limit to the power the chip can dissipate, provided you're able to fit a large enough radiator to dissipate the heat from the liquid coolant. For a PC-sized case, you...

PCBs are generally made of epoxy. The traces are copper(for maximal conductivity). Solder is generally tin-lead although non-lead based solders are starting to be used. ICs themselves contain a host of toxic materials such as arsenic used as dopants. In short, they're far from benign.

I usually get download speeds in the 5.8 KB/sec range, which accounting for overhead means 48 Kb or better connection speeds. I guess Pradeep has the honors all to himself. :(

I think we share that title, Pradeep. I'm still on 56K. :( If we had Canadian prices on broadband here I'd switch in a New York minute.

Places exist that take your old computers and either refurbish them to give to those without machines, or recycle them properly if they're hopelessly outmoded. Two in NYC are Per Scholas and the Lower East Side Ecology Center(email: oreinc@earthlink.net). I'm sure similar organizations exist...

Somehow I don't think we'll be seeing much of Merc for a while. 10 years is a lot of porno to catch up on. :mrgrn:

Sorry about the way I phrased that question. I suppose the way I asked it may have seemed a bit insensitive. What I really meant to ask was do your siblings have anything resembling a social life, and are they as isolated as you apparently are? BTW, you're far from the only one in that...