Dunno if it’s true anymore, but when I was a kid the shotgun shells were right behind the cashier in many establishments, including Walmart. I was too young to purchase them, but buying a canister of 4F gunpowder wasn’t a problem. You know, for my flintlocks.

by Don Eyles, about the "development of software for the Apollo program". This book contains far more technical details than is the norm, and the tone is that of an actual engineer rather than a biographer/editor.

There are plenty of cheap coatings available, but the last time I looked none of them looked to be good enough. However, I just looked again, and ran across Mobile Outfitters. which has matte coatings cut to size for most laptops. They also have kiosks where they apply it for you, but none near me. Even so, worth looking at when the inevitable happens.

Couldn't agree more about the glossy screens. I'm currently using a 2011 Macbook Pro, one of the last models available with a mat screen. Not sure what I'm going to do when it becomes no longer viable. There doesn't seem to be a decent aftermarket material you can apply to "de-gloss" a screen, at least not that I've been able to find.

My first language was FOCAL, a BASIC variant for the PDP-8. I learned that pretty quickly. I then taught myself PDP-8 assembly language by studying the PDP-8 assembly language handbook. I then wirewrapped my own 8080 system and learned to program that.

This was in high school.

Once I got college I taught myself FORTRAN, PDP-10 assembly, Pascal, Simula, LISP, and so on.

I only ever took one CS class where I learned Algol 60 of all things. Except I attended two lectures at most, so I don't think it really counts as having taught me anything.

I learned how to speed read in high school. For me, it only works on straightforward fiction, and (a) I miss stuff and (b) The effort involved spoils the enjoyment of reading. It had some limited value in lit and history classes, but now that I'm no longer in school it's useless to me. And I get annoyed if I catch myself doing it with a book to get to the "good parts"

Don't forget Katherine Blodgett. If you aren't aware of her contributions, by all means look her up.

Better than Leithold, not as good as Frahleigh.

That all we need to do is to replace existing robots with Robot 1-X?

This is just a stronger formulation of hydrocodone than what was previously available. The summary makes it sound like a new type of opiate.

A new opiate could, depending on its characteristics, be a most welcome addition. Existing opiates have a lot of drawbacks.

But this? Not nearly as significant as the summary would indicate. On either side of the argument.

It seems the folks at Tesla had the detection idea too. A software update to the car arrived last night. It contained a single new feature: The car now actively monitors the incoming voltage, and if it starts to fluctuate it lowers the current draw accordingly.

I should also note that the various different adapters have some interlock that informs the car how much current can be drawn. And of course the J1772 standard has a facility for this. Additionally, you can force the car to charge at a lower rate by dialing the current down manually.

There also was a report on one of the Tesla forums that a NEMA 14-50 adapter melted while charging at 40A. From the picture it's not clear if it was a fault in the adapter or because it wasn't plugged in properly.

Actually, it does rule out the actual charging system, since that's entirely inside the car. What isn't ruled out is the universal mobile connector, although I'd say a problem there is much less likely than the house outlet.

The Model S arrives with two connectors that fit into the connector on the car.. One is an adaptor for a standard SAE J1772 EV charger cable, which makes it possible to charge the Tesla at any Level 1 or Level 2 charging station. You can install one of these in your home if you want, although they aren't cheap. The J1772 plug includes interlocking circuitry that among other things prevents arcing when you disconnect.

The second connector is the so-called universal mobile connector. This is a cable with a plug for the car at one end and a plug that fits various adaptors. A bunch of adaptors are available but the car ships with a NEMA 14-50 (commonly used for RVs) and a standard 3-prong adapter. This thing is quite well made, but there's no way for it to interlock in such a way as to prevent arcing.

There's also a high power wall mount unit available from Tesla. It also has an interlocking scheme.

What a lot of people do - and what Tesla actually recommends - is to install a NEMA 14-50 outlet. They're quite cheap, as in less than $10, and any jackass can install one - or at least thinks they can.

Having spent many years dealing with a wide variety of theatrical lighting equipment that used various NEMA connectors, I'm not a fan of the NEMA 14-50 approach. All it takes is one or two disconnects while the power is flowing to pit both the plug and the socket pretty badly. And that's all it takes to start a fire. This cannot happen with either a J1772 or Tesla charging station.

And even if the outlet is the cause, IMO Tesla does have some responsibility here, because NEMA 14-50 is the approach they recommend.

Yeah, my foo is weak on this one too, and it is pissing me off. I even tried paging through Food Network recipes and no joy. As for the paste, I don't recall there being any other ingredients, but it's been a long time and I don't trust my recollection so neither should you. The stuffing had all sorts of stuff in it but nothing really unusual.

I did find a recipe for "Saffron, turmeric Roast Turkey with Glutinous fried rice" that looks interesting. I may have to settle for that.

Someone else mentioned sous vide cooking - there are a bunch of sous vide turkey recipes. Another is smoking. I sometimes serve a smoked turkey with a pecan sauce. Very nice combination. If I'm going all out there are pastry-enclosed cinnamon apples with a dab of whipped cream infused with Earl Gray tea for dessert.

But the geekiest turkey I ever made was from a recipe I saw on TV (which I just looked for but cannot find). The stuffing had over 10 ingredients, which of course took a long time to do. Once the bird is stuffed, you make up a paste of turmeric and some other stuff and slather it all over. Put it in the oven at 500 degrees, wait for the paste to dry, then apply more paste. Keep doing this until the bird is completely enclosed in a thick hard layer. Then let it cook until it's completely black. You then crack it open and serve. The result was excellent, but was way too much trouble to do again.

The J1772 plug has five pins: Two for power, ground, pilot signal, and interlock. The interlock pin is wired to a bit of circuitry in the plug. The car checks for this circuit and won't come out of park if it is present.

Additionally, the pilot signal is what tells the car the amount of available amperage, since that's something the car cannot sense, like voltage. I won't bother to go through all of the details of the handshake, but this piece of information is provided by the duty cycle of the 1Khz square wave pilot signal, with 50% indicating 30A available. Not only does this let the car know what power is available so it won't try and draw too much, the amount of power can change over time (when there is, say, a power shortage) and the car responds accordingly.

The plug is also designed so that the signal pins disengage before the power pins, so both ends can sense the impending disconnect and stop the flow of power, preventing arcing.

The plug is also designed to be safe to use in wet conditions. There's also a ground fault detector.

With the exception of the ground fault, which I haven't tried to test for obvious reasons, I can attest to the fact that all of this works flawlessly on the Leaf. The situation with the Tesla Model S is more complex since there's an adapter involved and I haven't been willing to play with it to see what happens, but if anything it should be harder to move the Tesla in park since the emergency break engages automatically.

EVs used to be a big hacked up mess but that time is long since past.