Bodging my way through life

When you show up, you get a goodie bag containing a flight suit with a name badge (upsid down — his is an old NASA tradition - astronauts would wear their name badges thus until they completed their first mission) and socks, along with a souvenir T-shirt and hat. There was a light breakfast available (they recommend this for minimum risk of nausea, but I'd read the material they had sent me, and had already had a light breakfast). Then there was a video, showing how the process works, what to do, what not to do, and various tips and tricks.

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For those interested, you can download a brief movie of my flight here.

fizzygeek

A few days later, I was playing with my TiVo and I tried keying in "P. J. Soles" to see if she would be in anything airing in the next couple of weeks. Sure enough, it came up with Out There, a movie I'd never heard of, which had an amazing cast, including Julie "Earth Girls are Easy" Brown, Carel "The Addams Family" Struycken, Tom "Spongebob Squarepants" Kenny, Cindy "Tron" Morgan, and June "Lost In Space" Lockhart, along with many others. So I recorded it.
Eventually, I watched it. It's quite a quirky little film, and one of the plot points was that accordion music would repel aliens. The final credits rolled, to the accompaniment of "Mexican Radio", on accordion.

That's when the trouble began. I decided I liked that treatment of Mexican Radio, and went to find a recording. I was able to glean that it was by Frankie Blue and his Accordion Orchestra from the credits, so I went looking. No joy. I couldn't find it in any form, anywhere.

As I'd deleted the recording by then, I looked to see if it was airing again. No joy. So I'd search for it occasionally, hoping it would come back around. Finally it did, and I recorded it. I figured I'd transfer it to my computer, separate out the audio track and transcode it digitally.

Denied! The broadcaster set the "no transfer" bit, and I couldn't transfer it to the computer. Grump. Okay, I'll just hook audio cables to the TiVo and digitize it that way. So I rounded up my fancy Firewire Solo digitizer, a firewire cable, a pair of RCA to phone jack cables, a laptop, and its power supply and hauled it all downstairs to the TiVo.

Oops, didn't have a copy of Audiocorder. Downloaded that, only to find my license had expired. Chased down how to obtain an upgrade license, did that, waited for the registration email, and registered the software.

The software came up, with the input source set for "Firewire 1393" which seemed a little odd (firewire is also known as IEEE 1394, so it seemed to be off by one. But I couldn't get any signal, with any settings of the controls (physical and onscreen). I tried switching to the internal mic and that worked fine. I tried the sound system preferences, and I could see the signal from the firewire device just fine. I tried switching back to firewire in Audiocorder and only then noticed that choice was greyed out. Restarting it remembered the previous (internal mic) setting, so there was no way to get it back to the firewire one. Maybe it's a driver issue?

So I went to the manufacturer's web site and navigated to the driver download page. It offered a 32-bit version and a 64-bit version, and I wasn't sure which I needed. There was also a dire warning that their software wasn't approved for the current version of the operating system.

A little investigation revealed that I'd get the same software download either way, so I downloaded and installed it. This required unplugging the device, installing the softare, shutting down the machine, plugging it back in, and booting up.

When the machine booted up, I got a little alert informing me that the device firmware was out of date, it was updating it, and this would take about two minutes. The alert disappeared after a few seconds, the front panel lights went off, and the device seemed dead. I really hoped I hadn't bricked it! Unplugging and replugging it resulted in the lights coming on, the "updating firmware" alert reappearing, then the device going dead. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I did some research, and this was a known problem. The company's advice was to shut off WiFi and bluetooth and wait for a couple of hours and it might fix itself. Or probably not, according to most of the people who had that problem.

Then I remembered I had an old machine in the basement that couldn't run the current version of the operating system. So I went down there, downloaded the software, installed it, shut down, plugged in the device, and booted up. I got the now-familiar "updating firmware" alert, and the light went out. But this time, the light came back on after about 30 seconds. A quick check looked as if the firmware was up to date (2007, it turns out) and the driver recognized it.

Then I unplugged it, went back upstairs, cabled everything back up, and was able to record the audio. Then I cleaned it up, transcoded it, and now I'll be able to listen to it in my car.

Well, last month the software update got installed. Whereupon my phone went into it's "I can't boot" mode, and stayed there.

It's still there. They've replaced the wire, replaced the phone, reset the system, all to no avail.

Then they told me they were out of phone IP addresses and would have to wait until another division can come and reprogram the phone switch to get more IP addresses.

At first, I accepted this, but then I started thinking about it. The phone switch doesn't hand out IP addresses, the DHCP server does. And that's not the problem anyway, the phone (eventually) gets an IP address. And if they were out of IP addresses, nobody could get new phones, and they're bringing on new people all the time.

Then I saw the address on the email: eit.helpdesk@largegovernmentcontractor.com.

Eit.

People who know me will not be surprised by my next move. The ballast (called a "gear pack" by the seller) is clearly marked "DO NOT OPEN. NO USER SERVICEABLE PARTS INSIDE." maugorn and others might remember me reciting the litany "Do not open, no user serviceable parts inside, pilot lamps soldered in place, danger high voltage, warranty void if opened, etc." as I tore into things.

Well, I found out some things. The manufacturer claims that you can't just make your own lamp by buying a gear pack, because the gear pack doesn't include "the transformer". I had initially believed there was a transformer tucked into the base of the lamp, as the lamp was sufficiently large and heavy. But there isn't one. The AC leads go straight to the gear pack. You could easily retrofit any ordinary threaded-tube lamp by buying a $60 gear pack and screwing it on top.

The ballast is patented. This means I can download the schematic. It's not quite the same as the one used in the lamp, but it's pretty close. It's just a current-regulated DC power supply with a transformer-coupled starting pulse network, run off a voltage doubler. Armed with that info, and the failure mode, I deduced that it isn't the starting circuitry (the lamp failed when it was already started), and it probably isn't the current regulator (those generally work right or not at all). That leaves the voltage doubler. Not much to it, an inrush current limiter, a pair of diodes, and two big electrolytic capacitors. And electrolytic capacitors are famous for drying out and failing. So I read the specs off 'em, measured the relevant dimensions, and found equivalent units on Digikey. The inrush limiter was a house-numbered part, but a little research convinced me that it was a 10Ω, 1.7A unit or thereabouts, and such things aren't critical (it's just there to make sure that the discharged capacitors don't pull too much current when first turned on). I chose a similar unit that would physically fit and ordered it too.

While I waited for the parts to show up in the mail, I considered my other options. These days, low-wattage metal halide bulbs aren't too hard to find, and ballasts can be had from Fulham (a manufacturer whose products I like) and cheaper manufacturers. If it dies again, I can always re-use the lamp body and nice, high-temperature ceramic socket with a 70W (or more!) metal halide bulb and ballast.

Zero G corporation has outfitted a 727 to fly parabolic arcs like the original NASA KC-135 "vomit comet", and the later C-9. NASA now also buys time from Zero G corporation. They're returning to Dulles airport on September 12, which is when I'll be going. I'll be flying in the "Blue group", if anyone wants to join me.

Wheee!

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As time went by, less and less data was required, as the projectors could handle more and more of the task. Movies were delivered by wire, resulting in near-instant distribution (as most of the production and post production was now done on-the-fly by the projection equipment).

Then Sony's habit of buying up weird small innovation companies bore fruit once again, resulting in mindreading video game controllers. This technology was (of course) deployed by Sony Pictures as well, so audiences could influence the course of the film, as they watched it. People would see movies over and over, because they could be different every time.

But while some people were happy with this, others weren't. It turns out that movies made by — effectively — democracy tended to be a little shallow. And if you didn't want to see the movie everybody else did, tough luck — the same complaint people had been making about Hollywood since the beginning of film. But processing power continued to get cheaper, and soon people could watch their own customized movies in their own houses.

However, when movie-watching became a one-on-one experience, it became clear that there were no surprises, and you'd be all too aware of the effort you were expending to move the plot forward yourself. So the mindreading interface was extended to harness the power of your subconscious, so it was still your movie, but effortless and with (usually) pleasant surprises.

People really enjoyed this, and would watch a movie or two every night, which tended to really cut into their free time. People wanted a way to experience this and still have time for everything else in their lives. So the next step was taken, and people could watch their own self-made movies in their sleep. Being able to take your entertainment while you slept, leaving all day free for everything else was an incredible achievement, the pinnacle of civilization.

And that is where we are today.

¹ "Mom in low earth orbit discovers tooth whitening secret!", "Low earth orbit: Acai Berry EXPOSED", etc.
² People might object that I'm "stealing" by viewing content without looking at the ads. I am unapologetic about this. I do it with broadcast TV too. And I'm not alone — I read an article recently that states the web is basically supported by <10% of the people using it. I'm fine with that.

Fortunately, there's a market for retrofitting old-style microprism focusing screens into modern DSLR bodies. A little poking around and reading reviews yielded two main contenders that have offerings for my camera. Haoda and focusingscreen.com. Prices between the vendors are basically similar (not exactly cheap at around $72, but this is a specialty item and genuinely useful), and presently I decided to go with focusingscreen.com, as they offered more choices (four) for my target camera, and generally seemed to have more info (such as installation instructions with pictures) available on their site. I opted for the Nikon-style K3 screen, as it was similar to the one in my old F-series body, with a split prism in the center and a microprism ring around it. I'm accustomed to this arrangement, and I know it works well for me. There's a nice writeup of screens there and focusingscreen.com offers a comparison of their offerings there (odd url, "privacy.php", and I like the page heading reading "Let's see what we have here"). The English on the site is a little dodgy, but easily understandable. The installation procedure looked like something well within my skills, so I wouldn't need to take the camera to a shop.

The site mentioned that the machine that cuts the focusing screens would be down for maintenance, but I went ahead and ordered anyway, figuring I'd get one that was cut with a freshly serviced machine. Shipping from Taiwan was fast, it was sent on the 22nd and arrived two days later. I picked it up today (I had to go to the post office to sign for it). It was very well packaged in a sealed bag in sealed bubble wrap in a box in a plastic shipping envelope, and included a very nice container for the screen itself, a plastic tool to manipulate the screen without scratching it, a nice pair of fine-point tweezers, two finger cots, and a pair of transparent plastic shims for fine-tuning the focus plane. The focusing screen box was shrink-wrapped with a little sticker reading "Opened packing can't returns." There was a sheet of paper reading "Dear all, Thanks for your using very much. Please read the instruction before installation to make it more smoothly." It also listed their URL to access the detailed installation instructions.

After dinner tonight, I decided to give it a whirl. I fed the (Chinese) installation instructions page to Google translate (it's clear enough from the pictures alone, but I wanted any useful details from the text). It starts off "Please send your little brother", which I assume means you don't want kids running around whilst performing surgery on your nice camera. It also suggests turning off fans and windows and so forth to keep down dust. The installation was actually pretty easy. Remove the lens, invert the camera, pop free the retaining bail, remove old focusing screen, put in a shim and the new screen (right side up, with notched corner on the left, toward me), snap the retaining bail back into place. Easy.

Then I installed a lens, cranked the aperture all the way open, and did several test shots. They were pretty close, but the camera was focusing slightly too close. This meant I needed to move the focusing screen in or out slightly. I mused on how the optics worked briefly, and decided that I needed to move the focusing screen out, away from the lens. So I opened it up again, removed the shim, and put it all back together. Another trial showed that it was focusing correctly now (in effect, the focusing screen was the same distance from the lens as the film plane). Now it's easy for me to use my nice old lenses with the new camera and get sharply-focused shots.