I woke up this morning thinking about childhood days shocking grain that had been cut and bundled by a farm machine I could not remember "binder" for anything. Did a Google search for "machine to make grain bundles. That turned up a very interesting link with a pdf of McCormick 1903 grain, hay and forgage machines. Sure enough, images of several of the old machines my father was still using. One other memory from those days. We had oat bundles shocked in the field. Dad hired a 90 year old neighbor who knew how to stack bundles. Jens Peter Jensen got it done as if he were a 30 year old. Anyway, below is a link to the old machinery which will probably still work today if anybody held onto the antiques.
So much for old memories. At first I did not know how to save the ad brochure, but it is easy. Right click on the brochure and select "download page". It is fulltext.pdf and has about 35 pages. Just takes seconds to download. Worth having if you are at all interested in old farm equipment or had the misfortune of riding on the back of a binder or dump rake originally made to be pulled by horses.
****Stay tuned even if the information probably preceded the invention of radio--- Doug Wiken
SDPB has been broadcasting classical music on their Freq.2 HD signal. Here that is 91.1 mhz and HD 2. Sounds more complicated than it is. After SDPB-radio dropped classical music on their FM stations, I checked out the continuous classical music on their TV signal. Their channels here are something like 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, 10.5 and 10.6. The first four are TV channels. The last two are "audio only". 10.5 is the regular FM radio signal, and 10.6 is continuous classical music.
It seemed a bit silly to have a 40 inch TV only producing audio, so I asked SDPB about their HD radio broadcasts. With an HD radio, they can be found by clicking a tuning button something like " - HD Seek +." I purchased a $50 Tabletop Insignia HD radio(NS-HDRAD2 ) at Best Buy . (Amazon may have it for around $32) It worked perfectly in Rapid City on the 89.3 signal. Back here in Winner atop a hill, it would work next to a north window in a house with wire lath which makes it something like a Faraday Cage. In our old farm house on the second floor, I could get it to work on the north side of the house (Reliance, SD TV-Radio towers are north of us about 45 miles). But, if I moved it 10 feet south and south of a wall, it would pick up regular FM signals, but not the HD signals. In other words, HD worked in a stairway and nowhere else. Not quite what I wanted.
I did a search yesterday and got the dimensions for a dipole antenna tuned to 91.1 mhz. Dipoles output for a 300 ohm twinlead unless a balun transformer is used to convert to 75 ohm coaxial cable. The transformers are only a few dollars. But, the little Insignia portable has no port for connecting an external antenna. I thought I would experiment with about 8 feet of electric fence wire.. I wrapped a spiral about 3/4 inch in diameter with 6 turns or so. Stuck the wire over a door frame and slipped the loops over the 3 foot extendable antenna on the radio. Worked like a charm. The HD channels at 91.1 came in loud and clear. I will probably make this arrangement a bit neater, but it works. There are HD radios with antenna connections, but price is more in the $100 area. This little Insignia radio will work with the included AC adapter or on 4 AA batteries.
So, if you want something like CD quality from a radio (and 24 Hour Classical or regular FM news aand music), this is probably a workable option for many areas of South Dakota. We have been unable to find any other HD broadcasts in South Dakota. Right now, SDPB appears to be only source.
*** Stay tuned and if you have any more info on HD radio and radios, please let me know--- Doug Wiken
I pretty much avoid endorsing or even mentioning products, but with not much else to say today, I will say that the "Dishers" that are sold at Sam's Club work better for hard, frozen ice cream than any other such tool we have had. It has sort of a lip on the sharp edge that apparently makes it work better --which seems somewhat counter-intuitive. The product is "Daily Chef Food Service Thumb Action Disher with a 3.25 oz. stainless steel bowl". Packaged with 2 on a sheet of cardboard. Price was reasonable, but I don't actually remember. The price of our previous "best" was zero. It was more like a spoon and I sharpened the edge. It was a Christmas gift my son-in-law provided to his veterinary customers.
So far about the only thing wrong with the Sam's West product is the "Made in China" notification. But as usual, no guarantees and as they say, "your mileage may vary" YMMV.
*** Stay tuned even if I will never be able to write that in Chinese--- Doug Wiken
I have a laptop. It is a 17 inch or so and heavy. I bought a case for it when I bought it. Something like $35 for that case. Then after getting and using the laptop, I detested the keyboard and the pad for mouse simulation which I always managed to touch at just the wrong time. So, I bought a wireless keyboard and mouse to use with it. That helped a lot. But, it was tough stuffing laptop, mouse, charger, and keyboard in the original case. It also turned out to be hard on the added keyboard. Soon keys weren't working, etc.
I bought another keyboard and mouse and decided to keep it in the box it came in. But, that and the laptop, etc would not fit in the laptop case or bag. We looked at some for larger laptops, etc., but the prices on anything larger than that for small laptops alone were ridiculously high for a few cents more leather or plastic and a slightly longer zipper. Then while buying groceries I saw those zipper insulated bags for hauling frozen foods home in the hot summer. Hmmmm. Interesting.
Price was only about $7, so I got one. No problem sticking the keyboard, mouse and box in it and the laptop with the original case also went into it. Not the classiest looking case by any means, but it sure does work and the insulation provides a tiny bit more protection for everything. It is easy to carry, but a bit large compared to custom cases. Probably room for a few sandwiches, etc in there as well, but that is probably less than a wonderful idea when another one just for grub and drinks would cost less than half of a wireless mouse at a good sale price.
***Stay tuned even if you would never, ever put a laptop in a case sanitary and insulated for frozen meat and vegetables--- Doug Wiken
Finding materials exactly appropriate for making anything of any kind is a bit more difficult in small towns than in larger cities. Anyway, sometimes necessity really is the mother of at least something close to invention. The tethers below make use of dress shoe shoe laces and electric clamp-on spade lugs butchered a bit. I have used a shoelace like this for several years with my cellphone. Cord was still good, but my twisted wire and shrink insulation was getting a bit ragged. Both that tether or cord and the one I made for the Nikon in a previous post were both also just a bit short. The images below give an idea of what resulted.
The camera tether:
I cut the clamp part of the spade lugs off and opened them a bit with a knife to get the doubled shoelace into them. The crimp part of the lug had to be filed a bit to get rid of jagged edges. Then once lace was in the crimp ends, the were crimped and squeezed with a plier. I tested these by pulling hard on them, but they seemed to hold well. This all wasted some time, and I am sure could have been done for less cost were such crimp ends were available for cords and string. Anyway, it seems so far to have worked and is at least a bit neat in appearance at least. I put the lace end through the hole I had made previously in the lenscap with a 1/16 inch drill bit. It had to be enlarged slightly. Once through the hole, I cut the plastic end off the lace and tied a knot in the cord so it could not pull out of the lens cap. Pays to do some measuring with cheap string before cutting up a shoelace.
Cellphone tether: The crimped metal was also from an electrical spade lug. The clip is from an old ID name tag. One like this clipped to my shirt collar has prevented this phone from being dumped out of my shirt pocket and nto waste oil and toilet water more than once.
I hope you can find easier solutions than these, but if you can't, I hope these gizmo how-to methods can be useful to you.
***Stay tuned for much less practical ideas--- Doug Wiken
The Winner, SD area got a day of really rotten weather with several inches of snow which almost all came down horizontally in the 35mph wind. A few drifts here and there meant some shoveling. But the real problem was the rain and freezing rain which preceded the snow. That left a nearly one-quarter inch of ice on car windows and roads and the rain meant the first inch or two of snow is soaking wet and turns to ice as soon as compressed by a vehicle tire. Of course, Winner city always waits until the last flake falls before clearing snow. By that time it is too often unmoveable ice. Rural highways were rough. The finger drifts turned into a washboard of ice.
Then as the snow slightly diminished, the electric power went out about 7PM last night and stayed off until around 7:30 or 8:30 AM depending on which part of town or which part of the country you lived in. Some areas west of Winner apparently did not lose power.
The most serious fallout from this is the continued worthlessness of cellphones when there is a power outage. The PUC and the FCC must require AT&T and others to have alternate auxilliary power supplies for power outages by regular suppliers. Many people rely on these phones for messages when there are blizzards and other rotten events.
I purchased Dragon Dictate home version (naturally speaking) a few months ago. Today I decided to see if I could set it up and use it. Partly because of the program and partly because of other factors, this has been one very frustrating afternoon. Needless to say, I am not trying to use the program to type this.
First off, the CD player did not work on the first old clunker computer I tried it on. So off to the basement to try one of the other dinosaur computers. The "on" button did nothing. Hmmm. How did I plug that computer in anyway? Follow that cord to there and then another cord from there to the outlet. Appeared to all be OK. Check fuses and breakers. No problem there. Outlet is a ground fault outlet. I finally get smart (or at least less oblivious and ignorant) and press the reset button. Desk light goes on. Power to the computer if not to the people.
I insert the Dragon Dictate DVD into the drive. Whirrrrrrr. It is working. First screen that comes up is "Dragon Dictate is not compatible with this OS". Computer OS is Windows XP. Then I finally find the "W7 and W8" logos on the software box. So, off to the new Windows 8 computer.
Looked like everything was going to work. Had microphone and headset plugged in to correct color portal, etc. I think the install took nearly an hour. Then to calibrate the microphone. That did not seem to work. Instructions said to repeat until I heard a beep in the headset. Nothing, Nothing again...several times more. Check the "Help" option. One suggestion was plug microphone and headset into the REAR of the computer. Why it did not work on the front plugins I don't know. Soon as it was in the rear plugins, the microphone test started and completed perfectly almost immediately. Then more setup and then "check for updates". Update was found. That took 3 minutes to downloard, and another 10 minutes to install.
Then the training fun started. It could have been worse, but it could have been better. This is a program with a steep learning curve compared to most I have messed with. Menus, error messages, etc. for training are OK, but sure could be better. I did get it to insert text into Jarte before I completely ran out of patience. I suspect this can be useful, but I really don't know if I have the patience to get proficient with it. Maybe a few minutes every day.
So, about 3 and a half hours later, I am typing this the old fashioned way and being glad I took High School typing from a very patient Mr. Robert T. Lang...now deceased. And very, very glad I can still type and see what goes on the screen. My sympathy to those who have no choice but to use options like speech recognition, etc. I may have learned barely enough to help them with it however.
***Stay tuned for more on the software front...sometime--- Doug Wiken
Elon Musk of Tesla Motors has produced some very, very expensive electric cars and some moderately expensive electric cars, and may be on the verge of introducing a remarkable $35,000 electric vehicle. Check online PC magazine for an article.
Elon Musk and his Tesla Motors may be demonstrating the economic spinoffs possible with increased emphasis on energy not necessarily reliant on fossil fuels. The US pisses $billions away on military boondoggles trying to change 14 Century old mythology, wars, and religions in the mideast and more on weapons designed to again fight the cold war with the latest version of the Soviet Union and the Chinese Dragon.
And, the retrograde Republican tools of the fossil-fuels industry have or are trying to prevent the US military industrial complex from working on so-called "green" energy. And they are busy pandering to the religious freaks who think only their GOD influences climate on Earth, or Mars, or Venice, etc for all the other billion year old parts of the universe.
Meanwhile California is drying up and New York City and Florida may be on the edge of major flooding.
Better vehicles not burning fossil fuels are more important than we may now realize.
*** Stay tuned as the world turns and the weather churns and the tides rise and fall--Doug Wiken
CPU is an acronym for "Computer Power User" in the case of the Sandhills Press Magazine. It appeals to computer modders and cutting edge gamers. I am neither, but even so the magazine almost always has something useful or interesting or both.
In the August 2014 is a kind of curiosity. It is a computer case that is also a desk. The idea is good, but the price seems a bit rich. Despite the $989 or $1189 prices, the combination might be very useful in some tight situations or need for portability of full desktop systems. Computer mainboards and components go into a "drawer" which is several inches deep. On the front of the drawer is a shelf for the keyboard. The glass top of the case is the desk top. The "desks" are 35 inches or 47 inches wide depending on the previous prices. Made by chassis make Lian Li this is a major diversion from the traditional idea of "desktop" PCs.
I suspect a woodworker or metal craftsman could make a desk which did essentially the same thing however and stuff a computer or two into the homemade drawer.
The computer world vandals and thieves have now made ransomware that hits Android Tablets. AVAST has produced an anti-ransomware product for Android-based tablets. It Is available from the Google Play Store.
And if you want to get an idea of the activity of the computing pokers/snoopers, vandals and thieves extent, you can look at a visual representation map of such activity at Norse. Check the Norse Map at map.ipviking.com. You may have to right click on options in window and then open link in new tab etc. Kind of scary to watch real time attack sources and targets on a glowing map of the world.
Apache OpenOffice 4.1 includes new features for communicating with assistive technologies which apparently will help blind users utilize text to speech systems. www.openoffice.org.
And if you buy the magazine, digital or paper, you can read a very interesting detailed article on the development and current status of 3-D printing in plastics, ceramics, and metal...as well as meat and who knows what. The article is titled, "The Revolution will be Printed." You can also find an article with links to research using the wi-fi signals in your home and office to determine how many people etc are in a space. Kind of scary. Also of course, are ads and articles on a whole raft of other products and beta software coming soon to a website near you.
***Stay tuned even if like me, you probably won't be buying or assembling the latest and greatest expensive gaming platform-- Doug Wiken
I needed a bench grinder. I have two of them..or had two of them. Either I put them in such a good place I can't find them or somebody else decided they had a better place for them. Whatever, I need to sharpen an axe. So, when I saw the "deal" at ACE hardware for a Craftsman Bench Grinder coupled to a free thermometer, I decided to buy the grinder. The image below shows the relevant sale bill information. Click on image for a larger version.
So, I pulled the grinder in a box off the shelf and headed for the checkout. Usually that doesn't mean waiting even a minute here in Winner's Outlaw-ACE hardware store. But today the grinder was getting a bit heavy by the time I got to checkout and pay.
I asked about the free thermometer. No deal I was told. We don't have any of the thermometers and neither does the warehouse. Hmmm.
I bought the grinder anyway. I did not feel like wasting more time on finding a grinder. I asked who do I write to in order to complain about this sham deal. The clerks had no idea..ACE or Craftsman. No links or phone numbers in the sale bill.
Then it took about an hour to get the left and right parts identified and then installed. Not a real great design for ease of assembly coupled to a not terrible manual, but also not the world's greatest. Anyway, it is done except for tightening the 16 or so bolts.
Apparently there is not enough penalty on regional and national sales corporations to prevent them from putting together sham "deals" like the "free thermometer" Offer. Perhaps it is time Consumer Protection divisions of Attorney General offices or the feds start making this kind of sham "deal" impossible.
Now, to see if I can sharpen the damn axe (purchased at True Value) . They don't come very sharp anymore. Safety considerations mean they have a rather dull blade protected with a plastic safety guard and shaped to be really good for splitting jello in a pan, but not so great for branches. They might be good for smashing ice in a stock tank or creek as is however.
***Stay tuned, but beware the not-so-hot deals--- Doug Wiken
Residents of South Dakota. Check your broadband speed with the SD Speedtest. Your test will both let you know how speedy is your ISP and also help get us better service in South Dakota.
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