Jürgen Grau is the deigned behind this device  and he sells this clock as both a kit and fully assembled. The kit costs €149 and the fully assembled costs €179 (Currently: $190/$230)  Jürgen is very accessible and is fluent in German and English.

Now, on to the clock!  Stylistically, I like it.  The photos on NixieKits.eu do not do this device justice.  The LED’s are much more vibrant than I expected and the colorful effect that they create manages to look nice without looking gaudy.  There is a knob in the back which allows you to turn the brightness of the LED’s up and down (and completely off.)  The colors slowly cross fade and and produce a pleasing effect on the front of the case.  I didn’t think I use this feature much because I generally prefer simple designs – but the colors are mesmerizing.  I actually leave the LED’s on all of the time, something I would not have expected.

Be sure to watch the video after the jump.

Click here to view the embedded video.

It also functions as a clock featuring both 12 and 24 hour modes.  Once per minute, instead of displaying a word, it shows the time in HHMM format.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Tubes: IN-12 Nixie tubes, 18 mm digit height, decimal points with flashing LEDs.
Background lighting: brightness adjustable.
Alarm: adjustable time, snooze and tone.
Time format: 12- or 24 hour mode.
Display: time / alarm / date / or alternating time – date.
Effects: scrolling date, display fading, digit cycling in different styles.
Power: 12VDC 350mA max.
DC Power consumption: ca. 3VA (full tubes and background LED brightness).
Timekeeping: more than 1h with 1F SuperCap in the event of mains failure.
Time accuracy: internal 4 MHz crystal, adjustable with buttons for minimal deviation.
Dimension (w x h x d): app. 200 x 50 x 80 mm (incl. tubes)
Weight: app. 450 g

Click here to view the embedded video.

These are seven segment displays. Each segment is painted a bright yellow and fluoresces under UV light. The segments do not actually draw any power except when they are moved. Behind each segment is a solenoid that flips the segment on or off. Several units are then daisy chained together to form larger numbers. Watch the video below to see it in action and be sure to check out the image gallery.

(P.S. Sorry for the heavy Minnesota accent in the video.)

Click here to view the embedded video.

From Wikipedia:

A vane display is a type of 7-segment display. Unlike LED and VFD  segmented displays, vane displays are composed of seven physical surfaces, typically painted white, but occasionally other colors, such as yellow or fluorescent green. If a segment is to be displayed as “off”, it will be rotated so that its edge faces forward, with the painted surface pointing away and not visible. A segment that is to be displayed as “on” will be rotated so that the painted surface is shown.

Vane displays operate in a similar manner to flip-disc displays, in that the segments are quickly moved using electromagnets. Some variants used where the display need not necessarily be changed quickly use electric motors to rotate the displays in and out of place.

Learn more about the technology here: http://www.scoretronics.com/

Next time, I will make the effect a little more subtle to prevent motion sickness…

Good

Port

* 8/10 Fonseca Porto Aged Twany Port 10 Year Old
* 8/10 Noval Porto Special Reserve, 500ml
* 9.5/10 Chateau Reynella – McLaren Valle – Old Cave Fine Old Twany Port Aged 12 years  500ml (Australia)
* 9/10 Warre’s Otima Porto 10 year Twany
* 7/10 Smith Woodhouse 10 Year Old Twany Bottled 2006
* 7/10 Taylor Fladgate / 10 year old tawny porto / Portugal
* 7.5/20 Dow’s Fine White Porto
* 8/10 Osborne Fine White Porto – Portugal\
* 9/10 Noval LB Porto Finest Reserve
* 7.5/10 Cockburn’s 10 Tawny Matured in oak ( okay for the price, but would prefer Noval or Warre’s)

Riesling

* 7.5/10 Carl Schmitt-Wagner
* 6/10 Polka dot – German 2004
* 7.5/10 Loosen Bros Riesling “Dr. L” 2006
*

Mix

* 8/10 Escudo Rojo (Chile)
* 8/10 Primus (Chile)
* 8/10 Montes (Chile) Cabernet Sauvignon 70%, Carmernere 30%
* 7/10 Wollersheim Winery – Domaine Reserver Dry Red Wine 2007 (Lake Wisconsin Viticultural Area)

Malbec

* 8/10 Gascon (Mendoza Argentenia) 2007
* 10/10 Dona Paula Estate Lujan de Cuyo  (Mendoza Argentina) 2006

Merlot

* 8/10 Veramonte Merlot 2008 Reserva Casablanca Valley Chile

Cabernet

* 7/10 Red Diamond 2004 (Washington State)
* 7.5/10 Avalon
* 8.5 Bonterra Vineyards 2006 Cabernet Mendocino County (organic)
* 7 Famiglia Bianchi Cabernet Sauvignon San Rafael Mendoza 2007
* 7/10 Terra Alta Reserva Cabernet Sauvignon Golchagua Valley Chile 2008

Chardonnay

* 8/10 (Katie) St. Supery 2007 Chardonnay Oak Free Napa Valley (Rutherford, CA)
* 8/10 (Katie) Natura Chardonnay Valle Casablanca 2008 Emiliana
* 7/10 (Katie) Toad Hollow 2008 Unoaked Chardonnay Mendocino County – Healdsburg, CA
* 7/10 (Katie) Foxglove Central Cost 2008 bottled by Varner San Miguel, California
* 8/10 Ghost Pines Chardonnay Sonoma / Napa / Monterey (really good…)

Viognier

* 7/10 California’s Jewel Collection 2005

Moscato d’Asti

* 7/10 – Umbeto Fiore – Italy
* 7/10 – di Lenardo Vinyards – (In my next life, I’ll be thin.)  Pass The Cookies! (Italy)
* 8/10 Rosa Fiore Denominazione Di Origine Controllata E Garantita 2008

Moscatel De Setubal

* 7/10 Moscatel De Setubal S.O.C. Colheita 2001 Bacalhoa (not carbonated, very port-like)

Carmenere

* 7/10 Cino Sur – Wine of Chile . Colchagua Valley – 2007
*
Torrontes

* 7/10 Finca Navarrita Selection – 2006 – Argentina

Other

* 7/10 Ratafia – Minnesota (Katie does not like at all)  Rich, orange, 1 glass at a time

So-So

Cabernet

* 6/10 Hahn Estates (Cal)
* 5/10 Clara Benegas Chardonnay 2008 Mendoza Argentina
* 5/10 Rossi Wallace Napa Valley Chardonnay 2008 s

Cabernet Merlot

* 5/10 Covey Run Washington (Washington)
* 6/10 Trapiche Oak Cask 2005 Mendoza (Argentina)
* 5/10 Penfolds Koonunga Hill (Australia)

Riesling
•6/10 Weisser Burgunder Spatlese Trocken 2004 (Friedelsheim Germany)

Chardonnay

* 6/10 Twin Fin (california) 2005
* 6.5/10 Kali Hart Vineyard 2006 Monterey County, Gonzales, CA
* 5 Fess Parker 2008 Chardonnay Santa Barbra County

Gewurztraminer

* 6/10 Fetzer Vinyards VAlley Oaks California (Brian liked, Katie too sweet)

Sauvignon Blanc

* 6/10 Parducci 62% Mendocino Country, 38% Lake County (California)
* 7/10 2007 Paso Robles Jardine – Vina Robbles – Paso Robles, California

Bonarda

* 4/10 Broquel Bodegas Trapiche 2005 (Mendoza, Argentina)

* way too fruity for a red wine, hard to drink more than one glass
Port

* 6/10 Warre’s Warrior Special Reserve Ruby Port (Portugal)

* too fruity for more than 1 glass
* 7/10 Cockburn’s 10 Year Old Twany Porto 2007
* 7/10 DelaForce Porto 10 year Tawny
* 6/10 Wollersheim Winery Port 2007 American Port – very fruity and think for a port(WI)
* 6/10 Dow’s Lat Bottled Vintage Porto 2003
* 7/10 Warre’s Warrior Reserve
* 5/10 Dow’s Crusted Porto

Malbec

* 7/10 Gascon – Mendoza Argentina 2007
* 7.5/10 Alamos – 2007 Mendoza Argentina
* 6.5 Trapiche Oak Cask Mendoza 2006
* 5 – Piattelli – Juan De Cuyo – Mendoze Argentina 2006

Bad

Riesling

* 1/10 Starling Castle – Germany

Torrontes

* 3/10 Baguala Torrontes 2007

Shiraz / Grenache

* 3/10 Wallace by Ben Glaetzer Barossa Valley(Australia)

Malbec

* 2/10 Layer Cake Vintage 2007 – Mendoza Argentina
*
* Cabernet
* 0/10 Pascual Toso Maipu Vineyards (Mendoza Argentina) 2006

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What makes this tube odd is that the center supports in the middle of the digit are missing and the giver that is normally in the upper left corner is missing too.  Additionally, the back of the display is transparent instead of the usual black finish.  I cleaned the tube but the cloudiness is actually inside the of the display.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Gallery

Or, do you just have an interesting factoid about these guys?

SOLVED: Display #1: NEO8000

The enclosure is about 4″ tall and 1/3″ thick. On the front is stamped “Y.S” and on the back is written “NEO-8000M Made In Japan 3.9.3″  There do not appear to be any other markings.

SOLVED: Display #2: NEO5000

The enclosure is about 3″ tall and 1/3″ thick.  The only markings I can see are “”Made In Japan 2.d.3″

UPDATE: These are the NEO5000 and NEO8000 – I found clear photos of them on Neonixie-l from a post ajfranzman made 6 years ago… I’m still looking for specs if anyone has them.

(Egon warned against crossing the streams.  He did not warn against crossing the wires and reversing the polarity.  If you do, this is what happens)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Years ago a railway company was erected and one of its directors —probably the commercial bloke— discovered that the initial investments could be reduced significantly if only fifty percent of the cars would be equipped with a toilet, and, therefore, so was decided.

Shortly after the company had started its operations, however, complaints about the toilets came pouring in. An investigation was carried out and revealed that the obvious thing had happened: despite its youth the company was already suffering from internal communication problems, for the director’s decision on the toilets had not been transmitted to the shunting yard, where all cars were treated as equivalent, and, as a result, sometimes trains were composed with hardly any toilets at all.

In order to solve the problem, a bit of information was associated with each car, telling whether it was a car with or without a toilet, and the shunting yard was instructed to compose trains with the numbers of cars of both types as equal as possible. It was a complication for the shunting yard, but, once it had been solved, the people responsible for the shunting procedures were quite proud that they could manage it.

When the new shunting procedures had been made effective, however, complaints about the toilets continued. A new investigation was carried out and then it transpired that, although in each train about half the cars had indeed toilets, sometimes trains were composed with nearly all toilets in one half of the train. In order to remedy the situation, new instructions were issued, prescribing that cars with and cars without toilets should alternate. This was a more severe complication for the shunting people, but after some initial grumbling, eventually they managed.

Complaints, however, continued and the reason turned out to be that, as the cars with toilets had their toilet at one of their ends, the distance between two successive toilets in the train could still be nearly three car lengths, and for mothers with children in urgent need —and perhaps even luggage piled up in the corridors— this still could lead to disasters. As a result, the cars with toilets got another bit of information attached to them, making them into directed objects, and the new instructions were, that in each train the cars with toilets should have the same orientation. This time, the new instructions for the shunting yard were received with less than enthusiasm, for the number of turntables was hardly sufficient; to be quite fair to the shunting people we must even admit that according to all reasonable standards, the number of turntables was insufficient, and it was only by virtue of the most cunning ingenuity, that they could just manage.

With all toilets equally spaced along the train the company felt confident that now everything was alright, but passengers continued to complain: although no passenger was more than a car length away from the nearest toilet, passengers (in urgent need) did not know in which direction to start their stumbling itinerary along the corridor! To solve this problem, arrows saying “TOILET” were fixed in all corridors, thereby also making the other half of the cars into directed objects that should be properly oriented by the shunting procedures.

When the new instruction reached the shunting yard, they created an atmosphere ranging from despair to revolt: it just couldn’t be done! At that critical moment a man whose name has been forgotten and shall never be traced, made the following observation. When each car with a toilet was coupled, from now until eternity, at its toileted end with a car without a toilet, from then onwards the shunting yard, instead of dealing with N directed cars of two types, could deal with N/2 identical units that, to all intents and purposes, could be regarded as symmetrical. And this observation solved all shunting problems at the modest price of, firstly sticking to trains with an even number of cars only —the few additional cars needed for that could be paid out of the initial savings effected by the commercial bloke!— and, secondly, slightly cheating with regard to the equal spacing of the toilets. But, after all, who cares about the last three feet?

Although at the time that this story took place, mankind was not blessed yet with automatic computers, our anonymous man who found this solution deserves to be called the world’s first competent programmer.

I have told the above story to different audiences. Programmers, as a rule, are delighted by it, and managers, invariably, get more and more annoyed as the story progresses; true mathematicians, however, fail to see the point.

The City Of The Future

(click to enlarge)

Seriously, what genius thought up the naming of this box?

An improvised explosive device (IED), also known as a roadside bomb due to contemporary use, is a homemade bomb constructed and deployed in ways other than in conventional military  action. One may be constructed of conventional military explosives, such as an artillery round, attached to a detonating mechanism.

IEDs may be used in terrorist actions or in unconventional warfare by guerrillas or commando forces in a theater of operations. In the 2003–present Iraq War, IEDs have been used extensively against coalition forces and by the end of 2007 they had become responsible for approximately 40% of coalition deaths in Iraq. They are also the weapon of choice for insurgent groups in the 2001–present Afghanistan War.

[from WIKIPEDIA]

If you work for the city of Minneapolis and have any idea what this is about, please leave me a message in comments.

Here is a good response from Reddit user mcki0154

Ok….Here to save the day…As a resident of Minneapolis I can answer this easily. The storm sewer has a heating coil wrapped around it in order to keep the sewer from bursting due to a cold snap or heavy freeze during the winter months. As xoites said, the sign is there to warn engineers and workers of potential dangers b/c only some pipes (particularly storm sewers with less turbidity) are prone to freezing while others (high traffic) do not freeze b/c of constant rushing water (like how a river does not completely freeze)

Click here to view the embedded video.

The net effect: this process takes a lot longer than dealing with JPEG images.  @21 Megapixels, there is plenty of data to play with, especially if the final video will be 1080P or smaller.  However, processing the images takes, on my machine, nearly 5 times as long.  If I was producing footage to be used in an IMAX theater I would still use this process, but for every conceivable circumstance, I can’t see any practical benefits to using raw files over JPEG.

Feel free to tell me I’m wrong in the comments

Marty McFly: [looks through a camcorder] This is uh… This is heavy duty, Doc. This is great. Uh, does it run, like, on regular unleaded gasoline?
Dr. Emmett Brown : Unfortunately no, it requires something with a little more kick – plutonium.
Marty McFly: Uh, plutonium? Wait a minute. Are-
Marty McFly: Are you telling me that this sucker is nuclear?
Dr. Emmett Brown: Hey, hey, hey. Keep rolling. Keep rolling, there.
[Marty raises the camcorder]
Dr. Emmett Brown: No, no, no, no, no. This sucker’s electrical. But I need a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity I need.
Marty McFly: Doc, you don’t just walk into a store and-and buy plutonium. Did you rip that off?
Dr. Emmett Brown: Shhhhhh. Of course. From a group of Libyan nationalists. They wanted me to build them a bomb, so I took their plutonium and in turn, gave them a shiny bomb-casing full of used pinball machine parts! Come on! Let’s get you a radiation suit. We must prepare to reload.

View Larger Map

9303 Roslyndale Avenue,
Pacoima, California 91331

Other interesting facts, this is the Twin Pine / Lone Pine Mall: http://www.puentehills-mall.com/

And this is the high school: http://www.wuhsd.k12.ca.us/whittieruhsd/site/default.asp

I need some guidance and I hope you can provide some help.  Hosting my two websites (this one and tubeclockdb.com) is getting expensive.

I’ve used nearly a dozen shared hosting companies before going to Media Temple’s (GS) service.  The reason that I liked Media Temple was that their support was great and they proactively notify customers when there will be a potential outage.  They are far above other hosts I’ve used: Bluehost, PowWeb, Deamhost, and lots of other low end providers.

The (GS) service was nice, but being a shared server meant that my site would take longer to load than I was happy with.  The (GS) service allowed me to take a burst of traffic without thinking about it, but the flip side was that the overall performance was lower.

A few months ago, I migrated over to the Media Temple (VE) 512 service.  I setup the server, installed only the components I was going to use and voila, it worked!  It worked until I did the cut-over and the real traffic quickly caused it to exceed memory limits.  Crap.  So, I upgraded to (VE) 1GB and that work’s 90% of the time.  However, when I get bursts of traffic, I have to quickly upgrade to the (VE) 2GB server or my resources are quickly exceeded and I can’t even SSH in to the box.

I’ve ensured that my httpd configuration is limiting worker threads and that PHP has sane memory limits.  At the end of the day, the only real solution is to keep upgrading.

When I was on the (GS) service, I was paying $200/year.  The (VE) 1GB costs $50 per month and the (VE) 2GB costs $100 (when paid monthly.)  On top of that are the extra fees for snapshot backups.

This is getting more expensive that I intended for a personal blog and a niche-topic website.  I’ve started running ads to offset the cost but I hate the way the look and they don’t come anywhere near offsetting the operational costs of the website.  Nixie Clocks don’t have a large market and so setting up affiliate accounts for manufacturers is not likely to yield much success.

If you were in my situation, what would you do?  Stay with (VE) 1GB, revert back to (GS) and accept the slower speed, or change hosts?  (Or, is there some money-making opportunity that I am missing?)

TL;DR – this is getting expensive to host.  Do I switch hosts?  Go back to GS?  Find some creative way to make money?

As an interesting side note, I find that Joomla! can handle significantly more traffic than WordPress with the same server resources.   Granted, lots of my problems stem from the theme on WP I am using, but the difference is significant.

Cthulhu is a fictional cosmic entity created by horror author H. P. Lovecraft in 1926. The first appearance of the entity was in the short story “The Call of Cthulhu” published in Weird Tales in 1928.

Cthulhu is one of the central Great Old Ones of the Lovecraft Mythos. It is often cited for the extreme descriptions given of its hideous appearance, its gargantuan size, and the abject terror that it evokes. Cthulhu is often referred to in science fiction and fantasy circles as a tongue-in-cheek shorthand for extreme horror or evil.

72 Megapixel Michigan Beach

by me – will be updated as I learn more

]]> http://www.ineedcaffeine.com/content/2010/07/volume-controls-design-vs-expectation/feed/ 0 http://www.ineedcaffeine.com/content/2010/07/pythagoras-theorem-by-rearrangement/ http://www.ineedcaffeine.com/content/2010/07/pythagoras-theorem-by-rearrangement/#comments Fri, 02 Jul 2010 00:22:34 +0000 Brian Stuckey http://www.ineedcaffeine.com/content/?p=1998 One of my friends emailed me this GIF of the Pythagoras Theorem as derived by a geometric rearrangement.  We all know that a² + b² = c² but it is fascinating to watch it illustrated.

And, from my friend James T: “Archimedes, Pascal, and Newton are playing hide-and-seek. Archimedes covers his eyes and starts counting. Pascal looks around and hides behind a bush. Newton grabs a stick and scrapes a one meter by one meter square in the dirt and stands in it. Otherwise, he does not hide at all. Archimedes opens his eyes and looks around. Of course, he immediately sees Newton and calls, “I see Newton!” Newton calmly says, ‘but hang on, one Newton in a square meter is a Pascal!’”