[X] My Assistant

Dropped my laptop (thinkpad x201 tablet) the other week, crunched a corner of the lid up pretty bad. The screen survived, thanks to the large crumple zone of the bezel on the corner that got crunched, but I had to take the whole damn thing apart to replace the front and back of the lid/screen assembly. And of course I managed to partially crack the new replacement bezel I got.

Old thinkpads were pretty awesome.

On yeah, I refuse to get a new laptop thoughI'm using an intel stock fan (the kind with a copper slug) and some random ball bearing 80mm case fans and I'm idling at 32°C, going to maybe 55 or so under heavy load. Back when I didn't have the heat sinks' legs all clipped in properly and was using the original thermal compound from the cpu box (2012), I was idling around 50 and going to 70° or so in heavy loads. Now I'm just using some ceramic-based thermal compound I bought at a radio shack when that still existed here. I think it was called ceramique, or something. White tube. The only thermal compound they had.

Radioshack is dead? I suppose the version of them here has been random for quite some while.

The last intel stock CPU cooler I had disintegrated.

Me: "The fuck, did I drop mercury or some other liquid metal on this??"

I think there are no radio shack in my whole village & its surrounding (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif) even when I go to city, I never see it.

Recently, the fan at the behind of my computer (evacuating the air from inside) stopped working, like it did a few times in the past.
Hello +20~30°C (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/ph34r.gif) (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/ph34r.gif)
Had to open the beast and push it with my finger (somehow more indirect methods kept failing) for it to restart, weird.

Recently, the fan at the behind of my computer (evacuating the air from inside) stopped working, like it did a few times in the past.

If the fan bearings are shot, then that fan might also squeal while it is ramping up to full speed. If you can't use a thin object like a wire or screwdriver to gently nudge the fan blade to start it rotating due to the grille being a bunch of holes, use the vacuum. This way you don't need to open the PC case. If the fan blows outwards, use the vacuum to suck some air near the fan opening. The moving air will start the fan spinning. Don't leave the vacuum there a long time as too much suction makes the fan spin too fast.

Today I started probing the membrane of my new keyboard to work towards creating a new controller board for it, replacing the original flawed one.

Shorted all the "row" pins together and probed each column. Tomorrow I'll probably do the same for the rows and derive the matrix from that.

Then there are too many pins on this matrix for an atmega32u4 to handle, so either I'll have to go to one of the at90usb* models or use a shift register/multiplexer to read all the pins. I think I'll probably just use two 74HC595's tied together for the 16 rows (should require three I/O pins on the microcontroller to read) and read the 12 columns directly. I think that'll leave me enough pins on a 32U4 to control the LED's and other stuff, too.

I'm thinking AVR mainly because i'm a lazy bastard who wants to reuse existing keyboard firmware (TMK), but also because I think I have an Arduino Leonardo sitting around unused somewhere. And that should fit in this chassis.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Jun 26 2021, 09:22

Meanwhile my Google Keyboard is getting annoying again.....
Sometimes I can't type a new post in forum using my phone.....

[f-droid.org] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.pocketw...ion.pckeyboard/
The keyboard I used on android

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Jun 28 2021, 05:22

I learned something new regarding x265 encoding. Use ctu=32 & no-strong-intra-smoothing for DVD-based source.

I learned something new regarding x265 encoding. Use ctu=32 & no-strong-intra-smoothing for DVD-based source.

Why's that?
Just curious what those do. I'm not aware of them or why a DVD specifically should use that (maybe no strong intra smoothing due to interlaced video, or something?)

[f-droid.org] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.pocketw...ion.pckeyboard/
The keyboard I used on android

Yes, i also used that.

I learned something new regarding x265 encoding. Use ctu=32 & no-strong-intra-smoothing for DVD-based source.

Don't worry, you'll forget in a year.

This post has been edited by Pillowgirl: Jun 28 2021, 16:04

Yes, i also used that.

Don't worry, you'll forget in a year.

I don't need a year (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

Been tinkering with neon lamps, and simple relaxation oscillators based on them. Their behavior is kinda of hard to model. I was attempting to characterize them enough to make a clump of parts emulate one in falstad- specificly, the case of one fed via half-wave rectified 120VAC. I found some actual plots another person did- it turns out the things even have a negative resistance region.
Best I can tell with the NE-2s I have, strike voltage is roughly 95V, and holding voltage 65V, +/- several volts depending on lamp and polarity
If I recall correctly, using a smoothed 170VDC supply, the holding current was om the order of 2.8 microamps- but this is again dependant on lamp, polarity, and even ambient light. At that point the lamp was unstable, either glowing visibly or going out, in a rather random pattern. At 5 uA, it was pretty stable. These things are insanely non-linear.

This post has been edited by Wayward_Vagabond: Jun 30 2021, 12:49

I don't like the LED street lights, they feel colder and brighter.

I don't like the LED street lights, they feel colder and brighter.

They're atmospheric lighting for your subconscious sterile dystopian existence.

for the erudite

[www.erasmatazz.com] http://www.erasmatazz.com/library/course-d...2018/index.html

Why's that?
Just curious what those do. I'm not aware of them or why a DVD specifically should use that (maybe no strong intra smoothing due to interlaced video, or something?)

According to the Doom9 user: "prevent excessive blur" on small resolution videos. When I think about it, why not just turn off SAO as well? SAO has bigger impact on blur.

Encoding a smaller flat area (32x32 rows instead of default 64x64 rows) could theoretically prevent fine details from being lost. However encoding time in turn is increased. However, since DVD has a very small resolution, the performance loss might be minimal, unlike when encoding 1080p or 4k sources.

Haven't tried converting my DVDs yet. Still dozens of 1080p Remux need to be encoded.

Don't worry, you'll forget in a year.

HA! I'm documenting everything. Both for 1080p & DVD.

This post has been edited by elda88: Jul 1 2021, 06:00

My dvd encodes turn out fine without doing all this fine tuning, although I'm sure I could be shaving a handful of megabytes off of them.

Controller board in this keyboard (has one cypress PSoC1 chip on it) gets warm enough in use that it's actually discoloring a corner of the thermal printed sticker label on the underside of the keyboard.

Why they'd use a thermal printer for the keyboard's label which has serial number, FCC ID, etc. on it is beyond me.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Jul 1 2021, 06:32

They're atmospheric lighting for your subconscious sterile dystopian existence.

If they install RGB lighting I wonder if that is more dystopian.


Hahaha, maybe we could set the street light colors based on the crime rate or the socio-economic levels of an area.

If they install RGB lighting I wonder if that is more dystopian.
Hahaha, maybe we could set the street light colors based on the crime rate or the socio-economic levels of an area.

Giving a new meaning to "red light district"

Or that supposed blue color that prevents addicts from being able to see their veins to shoot up.