Author: John

Build knowledge // Improve the state of the universe for everyone // Repeat

This Is An Alert…

On By JohnIn psychology, sysadmin, workLeave a comment

Please god—you do not need to send alerts for absolutely every automatic process. And, no, “just in case” is even more meaningless.

Alerts are an interruption for someone. It’s a mechanism to tell someone that something has occured that the automation doesn’t know how to handle. This has happened, here’s why and what you need to do.

I can’t count the number of times that I’ve seen alerts going out to interrupt everyone to let them know that automation has done the automatic things that it was normally expected to do.

Image 5-1-19 at 10.12
In 24h, this channel was notifying the SRE team of — automation doing its job. 1,781 times.

It’s exactly like sending…

*thump*

…a notification for every…

*thump*

…heartbeat. I only want to know…

*thump*

…if it’s not doing what it’s…

*thump*

…implemented to handle…

*beeeeeeeep*

…automatically. Then I’ll worry about it.

Bloomberg Leaked Apple-Release Specifics?

On By JohnIn annoying, techLeave a comment

Wait, wasn’t it Bloomberg that did a hit and run piece about a rather implausible, science-fiction-y issue with SuperMicro hardware a few months ago? Entirely baseless, didn’t name names or give any other mechanism to substantiate the claims.

Stock on all three companies took a dive.

And now that same Bloomberg has released “leak” of the pending Apple release of macOS (v10.15), iOS (v13), and WatchOS (v6) that outlines a huge number of features.

Sounds quite suspicious to me, especially because of the source. They haven’t named a name or provide any other means to validate the claims they’re making. So, no, I certainly don’t trust anything revealed via Bloomberg.

Uh, This Message, Um, Is About, Er…

On By JohnIn annoyingLeave a comment

Sometimes, we’ll need to listen to someone drone on with variations of “uh” and “um” 1,440 times… in an hour. It would be quite annoyingly (and distractingly) interrupted by the occasional use of technical terms.

After a few minutes, I concluded that it must not have been the result of any distractions but was likely a psychological difficulty. It’s quite difficult, as a listener, to follow along with technical concepts when the presenter is struggling with a speech disfluency as significant as this.

California Air Tools

On By JohnIn home improvementLeave a comment

I am quite surprised with how quiet the California Air Tools compressor is.

How quiet?

The construction-grade Porter Cable compressor is 95dB at 1m above it. Loud. You’d actually require hearing protection if subjected to that for more than a few minutes. You’ll practically need to yell to be heard.

The California Air Tools compressor rates a staggering 62dB when measured at the same position.

You can easily have a casual conversation over it…or even a freaking whisper.

𝒇(𝓧) = The Generation of Functions

On By JohnIn electrics/electronics, radioLeave a comment

I honestly don’t really have a need for a function generator. This was inexpensive and small enough to fill an hour’s time.

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The most time-consuming part was understanding what orientation the electrolytic capacitors were to be installed. While the silkscreen on the PCB did have an indication that the capacitors had to go one way, there wasn’t a positive/negative marking. So I guessed that the white on one half of the circle must equal white on the capacitor.

fullsizeoutput_3f34

Oh, and peeling off the protective coating from the acrylic parts. There are a few bits still inside of some of the letters.

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There’s probably a slightly more elegant function generator — actually, there are several and more expensive — but this will do for now.

Before I build too many more things, I should see about building a power supply. Maybe the ubiquitous LM317 would be a reasonably inexpensive and capable project.

Also, it seems to me that I’m continuing to do things backward.

How so?

Because one would think that learning tasks would start with simplistic concepts and work toward more complex. I started with the complex (the QCX project) and moved over/back/into this, the simple.