*stretches* I forgot I had this... blaaawg. LOL Currently I'm mostly posting to Gab... https://gab.com/Onideus It's like Twitter... but without having to worry about getting banned. Keep in mind there is a particular infestation of educationally absent little white power rangers on the site, but they're easily ignored... or mocked. I enjoy making fun of them, but that's just me.

Are You Raising A Disease Or A Child?

That's a question I keep coming back to, the more I read up on parents of children who ~supposedly~ have things like autism, aspergers, ADD, ADHD and the like. Now, I don't deny that those things exist, but it honestly seems as if some parents are more interested in labeling their child than they are raising them. There also seems to be a *LOT* of parents who seemingly "self-diagnose" their children, for whatever twisted reason. It's almost like a new form of Münchausen syndrome, one that the medical community seems very happy to accommodate in order to sell pharmaceuticals to parents so they can drug their child off to school everyday. Daddy's little disorder. Mommy's little malady. *shakes head* I feel a great swell of pity for those children, I really do.

Teh Scanning Continues!

Heh, I really was uber kyoot as a baby:



^__^

People say all babies are beautiful, but honestly, I've seen some ~pretty~ hideous looking babies out there. Both my sister, my brother and I all came out looking like happy little bubbly, blond cherubs when we were babies. Josh was the odd one out though, he was born as bald as a billiard cube and then when he did sprout hair it was blond like my sister's and mine, but it was ~uber~ curly...stayed that way a long time too.

My hair eventually turned light brown, although my beard and stash come out fiery red and blond for some strange reason. A regular "ginger beard" if you will. A trait that's also shared with my cousin Chad, but with no one else in the family that I'm aware of. According to my mom, apparently we have some pretty strong Irish roots, so that might be where it's from...a genetic atavism and all like that.

On the scanning progress, I've got around 450 pictures scanned so far...although scanning is actually the ~fairly~ easy part. It's the whole "clean up" process that's ~really~ time consuming, so that's going to go much slower.

Right now I'm primarily concerned with getting all of them scanned, partly so I can be rid of the originals and give them all back to my mom, to free up some "personal space" (I'm a bit of an uber minimalist) and of course, once scanned it will ensure that they'll be fully protected from any accidental destruction (ie a fire or something like that).

Of course I'm also keeping multiple backups of the scanned versions, two at my place, one at my brothers and one will eventually be on my server as well. I'm also going to build PAR2 sets for the images as well, to protect against any minor, bit level corruption that may occur over time.

Equivocation

LOL, I've always been fascinated with the human preoccupation for creating problems that don't actually exist, seemingly going out of your way to turn mole hills into mountains, screwing people over on a whim and doing unto others what you would ~never~ want done to yourself...yup, that's very much the central core of the deranged little human psyche. Personally I would describe myself as a "more evolved" (mentally) human being...however the last time I did that it generated quite a number of hate mails, with frothing little tantrums about how I ~apparently~ have "no right" to call myself a human being...LOL...as if *THAT* would really be a bad thing. ^__^

Anyway, it seems that here, suddenly, out of the blue, someone I ~thought~ I kind of knew has taken it upon themselves to arbitrarily try and screw me over...without any particular reasoning or goal in mind...other than to try and cut off their own nose to attempt to spite their face it would seem...either that or they're just plainly fucking stupid...I haven't quite decided which yet.

The question remains though...what to do, what to do...on the one hand simply exposing the truth about the situation and the particular company behind it would certainly inflict a rather enjoyable mass level of damage, a literal public relations nightmare for the originating franchise...especially if I actually take them to court over it.

On the ~other~ hand though, doing it that way would very much prevent me from using my...~usual~ methods of "equivocation" if you will, as taking such action would generally make me look like something of a hypocrite if I want to try and play out the truth, do nothing, and simply be a "helpless victim".

So I'm really a bit torn...I mean either way produces rather nth level amounts of fun and excitement all around (not to mention teh drama), but the later method ~would~ be *MUCH* more satisfying to me personally, especially since the person in question was someone I ~thought~ I could trust, someone whom I ~thought~ was at least semi-honorable. I mean if someone you know to be a fuckhead goes out of their way to try and screw you over it's not as if it's that big of a surprise, I mean you pretty much expect that sort of thing from them...but to be betrayed by someone you ~thought~ you could trust...yeah, that makes it personal, that makes the "crime" just that much more insidious and disrespectful.

I haven't decided as of yet which course I'll take, but I'm sure I will have to take one of them. If there's one thing I've learned about humans it's that they don't learn, even if you verbally bitch slap them right across their idiot faces with just how fucking stupid they're being, even if you expose them to the same level of damage they seek to inflict upon others...they *DON'T* learn.

I'll keep ya all updated with what I go ahead and decide to do though, and you can all be guaranteed a front row seat for the fun! ^__^

Family Photo Archive

I have begun teh photo scanning!

I'm already done with *THREE*!

Family Photos

...only 87 bazillion more to go!

...heh. -_-

Those are the "online versions" in that directory, most of which are based around a res of 1024 x 768 and look pretty good on a computer screen. I'm also keeping hi-res, 600 dpi lossless scans as well, most of which have a resolution of around 3,000 x 2,000 pixels and are better suited towards printing and editing.

Because of the sheer volume of pictures I'm not really going crazy with the editing/fixing, so the hi-res versions have a lot of specks, grains and other typical anomalies (mostly from dust and micro-scratches which aren't normally noticed by the naked eye).

If I was printing the photo for some specific purpose I would likely manually edit all those anomalies out...however that usually takes like 20 minutes per photo, so it's not really feasible to do it on every single one of them since there are so many.

Luckily, when scaling the images down to monitor size, most of those artifacts and specks are automatically lost in the resampling/conversion, since at that point it's basically like looking at the photograph with the naked eye, rather than uber close up with a magnifying glass, which is what the hi-res ones represent. And those artifacts that aren't removed that way can be removed pretty quickly with a basic despeckling filter (which won't work on the hi-res versions).

Technically speaking the hi-res versions are a bit over-kill and it's actually scanning at a resolution that's effectively higher than what the camera captured in the first place, which is why I'm not putting those up online right now (that and they take up a tremendous amount of space), but it gives me peace of mind to scan that way, especially since I don't plan on keeping the originals at all.

If any family member wants hi-res copies of anything that's in there let me know though and I can put 'em up for ya.

I'm going to try scanning at least five photos a day, I think that'll be a pretty good pace, so you can just keep checking the directory say every week and see what updates are there.

The photos are, unfortunately, vastly unsorted, so I'm not really organizing them at all at this point, just numbering them as I scan them. Once I eventually get them all scanned then I can worry about sorting and organizing.

I will include any relevant details though in the file summaries. For example if there's text written on the back of the photo I'll include it in the file summary, which can be accessed by right clicking on the image after you've downloaded it, choosing "properties" and then clicking on the "summary" tab. If the file has a summary it'll be mentioned in the file name (none of the ones up so far do).

Anywho, that's one of the things I hope to get finished with this year. I'd also like to get finished digitally recording all those old audio cassette letters from grandma and grandpa...although that requires a ~whole~ lotta sorting, since they're all mixed in with a bunch of Lawrence Welk recordings, some of which have both on the ~same~ tape...OY...not lookin forward to having to listen through all *THAT* material. -_-

I'm also still trying to track down the old Hi-8 video reels, which may or may not have been thrown out back in the mid 80s. See at one point back in the mid 80s I guess some of the family members talked grandma and grandpa into getting the old reel to reel video converted to VHS format. However VHS resolution at the time was limited to about 252 lines of resolution, which effectively destroyed about *HALF* of the original 480 lines of resolution from the Hi-8 video reels. As such, what I've got currently, from ~25~ year old VHS tapes looks like video that was run through a washing machine six or eight times...it ain't pretty.

The Color Of Smell

As human beings we tend to take things for granted and often think that the whole world revolves around us and our ~superior~ species, but as nature would have it, we're really not all that perfect, especially when it comes to our senses.

Humans have very good eye sight and can see an estimated 10 million or more colors, which is quite incredible compared to most animal species... BUT!... consider for a moment our sense of smell.

Now, comparatively speaking, a dog for example has a sense of smell roughly FORTY TIMES greater than a human being! A number which, seems pretty impressive, but it's really kind of hard for us humans to really grasp that difference, since we really have no way of knowing what it is that we're actually missing.

Keeping that in mind, and being inspired somewhat by the interpretation of sound into graphics in the movie Mr. Holland's Opus, in order to give deaf people a way of, effectively, "seeing sound", I figured I could do something similar with smell.

We humans are effectively near deaf, or near blind as far as our sense of smell, compared to that of a dog. Let's say we take an image that has roughly 450 thousand colors:

If Smell Was Color - Dog

Let's say that, that is the full amount of what a dog can "smell" (in color). Now how would a human's sense of "smell" (in color) compare to that? Well, looking at pure colors, forty times less than that would be roughly 11 thousand colors. As such, there are a variety of ways we can present our near "deafness" of smell, by reducing the overall color gamut, by reducing the saturation, by decreasing the brightness, etc, etc...all of which would provide an end result of less overall color.

So, with that in mind I created two artistic models of color reduction, utilizing a variety of methods including color reduction, contrast and brightness alteration, saturation reductions, shadow and midtone alterations and gamma alteration, that represent our limited sense of smell in a visual representation, right nyah:

If Smell Was Color - Human - 01

If Smell Was Color - Human - 02

Pretty neat, huh? Kinda scary when you think about all that we're missing out on in life, all that we could have, that we could experience...if we were only dogs.

It's interesting to think of what the future might hold, as science advances, advanced brain to computer interaction may become possible, which may enable us to experience things that we never could in our normal human bodies, to be able to smell in the way that a dog can perhaps, or it could even allow us to create brand new senses that don't even exist in nature as we know it. A Matrix like world where being able to fly like Neo would seem like a cheap parlor trick compared to the level of experience that could be truly offered by such a near limitless construct.

You might liken it to the use of heroin, which can allow you to experience pleasure levels dozens of times greater than the most intense sexual pleasure, which is generally the maximum level of pleasure the human body is capable of achieving on its own.

The problem however with the human brain is that if you're getting too much pleasure, well your brain starts shutting off and closing pleasure receptors, which means it takes more and more of the drug to be able to keep experiencing that intense pleasure and if you suddenly stop, well those receptors take quite some time to "open back up" so to speak, which basically creates withdrawal and feelings of horribleness.

But, if we can wire our brains into a computer, it would theoretically be possible to experience those pleasure levels constantly, without any degree of tolerance, and without any physical sense of withdrawal from stopping. It would still be addictive of course, and it likely would have a large psychological impact, after all, if you could feel pleasure that intensely all the time, well regular things like eating, socializing, creating things and even sleeping wouldn't really give you any form of comparable satisfaction, and as such you likely would just stop doing them altogether...until you died.

On the other hand though, with such precise control, we could effectively use pleasure in a controlled manner in order to manipulate our behaviors. For example you could up the overall level of pleasure in the brain by a small factor and then have some kind of control software in place that could, basically, reduce that level of pleasure say...every time you started biting your nails...or say every time you started eating. Used in that way it could be very beneficial to us. Of course on the other, other flip side, it could also be used to effectively manipulate people in any number of horrible ways.

To put it simply...the future is gonna be pretty interesting. ^__^

Electronic ComponentDealer Comparison

Recently I had a flat panel monitor that I bought a few years back from Wal-Mart burn out on me. Now, I realize that Wal-Mart generally sells "disposable" technology, designed to last a few years, burn out and then you buy another one...hence the real cheap prices and all. But I decided to look into this one and see about repairing it, mostly for fun, more than anything.

So I popped open the little puzzle box of parts and after taking out what must have been about two or three dozen screws (honestly I lost count) I uncovered the power control board! Oooh, aaah, covered in a vast array of capacitors I decided that this would be the best place to look for problems first...and I would be right. I found, not one, but three, *THREE* popped capacitors!

Now for those not familiar with what a popped cap looks like, well, the one on the left is a good cap, the one on the right...yeah not so good.



Basically a popped cap looks sort of like a soda can that was put into the freezer too long, sorta bulging a bit, with often a reddish, brownish nastiness leaking from the top. Some popped caps are more spectacular than others. Keep in mind though that a cap doesn't have to appear popped at all for it to be fubar, at which point you need to break on out yer multi-meter and start checking everything manually...tedium! Yeah, but most times it'll be fairly obvious what the problem is.

Sooo...I needed new caps! At first I decided to try Radio Shack! LOL, yeah, I know, RS has become a bit of a joke in recent decades as far as hobbyist electronics go. Most of the flunkies working in their stores probably don't even know what a capacitor is, much less the difference between radial and axial caps, voltage, microfarads and so forth.

Anyway, on Radio Shack's website I ran a search for "220uf 25v"...and I got nothin. Big surprise. So I then tried to dumb my search down to the Radio Shack flunkie level and searched for just "capacitor" and that brought up some hits...none of which were actually relevant to what I was looking for, but hey, good try Radio Shack, good try!
^__^

Okay, enough with the amateurs, now it's time to look at the *REAL* electronics distributors and see what they got to offer. I'm going to be looking at six companies here, including Digi-Key, Futurlec, Mouser, Jameco, MCM and Allied. Most of which are fairly big names as far as electronic component dealers. I'll now go through each one and describe my experiences on their websites, their prices, their shipping, etc and finally I'll round it all up with the company I finally went with and who I think the best overall is. Okay, here we go!


Futurlec

---

This is the first company I looked at. I was able to find them via a Google search of "220uf 25v capacitor". They were the first hit (sans the sponsored link by Digi-Key).

Their component search lacked any product pictures, but they did have a "more info" icon you could click on that would bring you to another page that had a picture of the product. Somewhat cumbersome, but at least product images were available.

The caps I selected were just .10 cents each and they let you order in singles. Their "standard" shipping, via USPS is just $4, for orders up to $29, which brought my total up to $4.30, the second cheapest out of all the companies I looked at.

The downside to this company...well, I placed my initial order on 12/29 at approximately 6pm, that was a Tuesday. Not including New Years Eve, New Years or the following Sunday, they could have shipped it out on Thursday, the 30, Saturday the 2nd, or heck, how about today on Monday the 4th? Well, as I write this, it's already just about 5pm pacific time and their order tracking page still has no information at all regarding shipping.

So sans any mistakes I'm ASSuming that they still haven't bothered shipping it out yet. Of course, while they don't seem very speedy as far as shipping, boy they certainly wasted no time at all charging my debit card, that was done right the next day on the 30th.


Mouser Electronics

---

This company had a pretty extensive array of products ...almost too extensive. Out of all the companies I looked at, each of them either had too few or too many products to choose from, not a single one had a nice, medium range of products...you know like say twenty...twenty is plenty. My search at Mouser for "220uf 25v" brought up over 150...yeah...a lil overkill there.

Their prices were good, only .12 cents a cap for the ones I was interested in and they let you buy them in singles which was nice. They also had product images within the search results for most of their products, which was also a plus.

The cheapest shipping they offered, via USPS was $6.95 and that would have brought the total up to $7.31 for my three caps (not including any potential tax charges). Overall not that bad. Not the best price by far, but certainly not the most expensive either.


Jameco Electronics

---

These guys didn't have a huge selection, only 5 results from my search of "220uf 25v", however they did have product images and once a product was selected they had a nice, simple, well designed display of the product specifications.

The downside to this company is that with all the products I found, you had to order in multiples of 10. Their price per cap wasn't too bad, the one I was interested in was only .15 cents each, so overall it would have just cost $1.50, similar for what the price was for buying just 3 or 4 at other outfits.

I did think it was a bit wasteful though, since I really didn't need any extras and they likely would have just been thrown out in the long run...and keep in mind these things are made out of lead, not exactly real environmentally friendly.

The point that broke the deal on this company though was the shipping charge. Their cheapest shipping method was $8.45 for the 1st 2lbs, via UPS ground (residential).

That would have brought the total up to $9.95 for 10 caps...not including any potential tax charges.


Allied Electronics

---

I'm afraid I didn't get far with these guys. I ran a search for the caps I was looking for and got 64 results for "220uf 25v"...but I couldn't order from them.

Why not? Well, first of all, only *ONE* of those 64 products even had a product image, so I really had no idea at all what I would even be getting. This was compounded by the fact that the majority of their search results had no real descriptions, only a couple were listed as being axial or radial or surface mount, etc, etc.

Upon later inspection of the site I did find that there was a string of seemingly random letters tagged onto the product names and I was eventually able to decipher some meaning out of them to figure out (I think) whether or not they were at least axial or radial in design.

Of course by that time I had already moved on and ordered from someone else. And no, no they didn't even include any sort of a legend or key as to what all those seemingly random letters were for...hell I don't even know if I was able to decipher them correctly or not...I mean what with no product images and all.


MCM Electronics

---

By far the most expensive, these guys literally rape their customers wallets on several points. First of all, for the 3 caps I selected, they were $1.82 ...EACH! Of course they only had *TWO* kinds, THE WORST selection out of all the companies I looked at. And the other kind they carried, the cheapest, they were still $1.03 ...EACH!

But oh, the wallet raping with MCM Electronics goes deeper than that. Once you select your products and go to the order page you'll find that the minimum shipping price is, get this...$8.99! And that's the *SAME* "lowest" price as shipping USPS, FedEx or UPS. Now, last I checked, USPS, FedEx and UPS all didn't charge the exact same flat rate for shipping, but I guess apparently no one has told the guys over at MCM Electronics that.

In total, if I had ordered with this company, I would have wound up spending $14.45 (not including possible tax) for just THREE measly little capacitors. Yeah...don't do business with these guys, they're just looking to rape you.


Digi-Key

---

By far they were the cheapest, I was able to buy my three caps for .33 cents each, with .08 cents sales tax and $2.41 for shipping via USPS first class mail. My total was just $3.48 in all.

The ~problem~ with Digi-Key though is that you don't ~actually~ know how much your order is going to be...even when you submit it. It lists the shipping as "unknown" and you have to look through their shipping page and try and calculate the weight of what you ordered in order to try and figure out how much they're going to charge you for the various shipping methods they offer.

Their product search page was also overly confusing, poorly designed, cumbersome and suffered from "information overload" so to speak. They also carry *SO* many products that it's just a confusing mess to potential customers. I think they would do far better if they cut their selection down to a more reasonable size so as not to overwhelm customers with search results in a giant, unending grid of potential products.

To make the mess even worse, their search brings up identical products with different quantity options. Quantity options should come AFTER you've selected the product you want, not molesting your screen and brain with unending reams of useless information.


Overall Comparison

---

Digi-Key - $ 3.48
Futurlec - $ 4.30
Mouser   - $ 7.31
Jameco   - $ 9.95
MCM      - $14.45
Allied   - $ ?.??

Order from Digi-Key. They're the cheapest, and although their website search is a horrible fucking disaster, you know you'll be getting the best deal once you manage to find what you're looking for in their horrible mess of a website.

Alternatively I would also suggest Futurlec, they were also very cheap, although their shipping seems to be a bit on the slow side...er, I'm sorry, their getting around *TO* shipping seems to be a bit on the slow side...don't wanna place any blame here on USPS after all, it's not their fault if a company sits on their ass for days at a time before sending out ordered products.

Since I just placed my order with Digi-Key I don't know how fast their overall shipping is, but I'll post an update once I do. I'll also post an update when Futurlec finally gets around to actually shipping off my order as well. ^__^

...er, no, wait...I just got an e-mail from Digi-Key, not only did they send me a new total, it's now only $3.13, thirty five cents LESS than what it originally said on their site, but they also just shipped it...I mean like right now they just shipped it. o_O

Well...I guess everybody knows who to order from now. All those other companies...yeah you can just go out of business, Digi-Key is running circles around you and laughing all the while.


UPDATE!

---

I just got an e-mail from Futurlec and they have confirmed that my order *HAS* actually been shipped, so it seems they're right in line with Digi-Key on the order processing. Digi-Key is slightly cheaper, although Futurlec has a more reasonable selection of parts and a better interface, so I would go with either of them.