Lem & Lo - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: SgtRock
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 01, 2014, 08:02:45 pm
content: Greeting EEVBees:--Stanislaw Lem, the Polish writer, was an electrician before beginning to write stories. Some of the best are in "The Cyberiad" - Tales For the Cybernetic Age, 1965.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cyberiad.The Cybernetic age is populated only by machines, many of whom laugh with derision an any one who claims that machines were created in the image of the now extinct Paleopaleface. Featured are Trurl and Klapaucius, two robot constructors (read makers), who like to build things like Electronic Poets, and who have various adventures, which they call sallys, as in sally forth. In one sally, something thrown from the window of their passing spaceship strikes a giant asteroid which is completely covered in junked electronic and computer parts. An avalanche ensues and a super intelligent being is accidentally assembled. It then dreams the Big Bang, the Universe and the story and world line of every being and particle in it. Then after a few mere hundreds of years another avalanche and it is just a big junk pile again.--Uncle Wun Hung Lo, probably has dreams much like the above story. There he sits in a warehouse stuffed cheek by jowl with the detritus of the electronic age. His staff is busy unloading a couple of container loads of the HK Happy Lucky Grab Bag Wholesale Parts Assortment and Hodgepodge, which is everything in HK that did not move for 6 months, shoveled up to the brim into a #2 container and shipped back to the mainland. After sorting, and factoring off much of the load Lo tells his nephews to get to work. "If we do not get a solder and assembly operation going these boys are never going to find wives." Finally the nephs re-cobble some often re-cobbled designs. Linear wall warts that double as space heaters for happy lucky hamsters, 1.69 free shipping. A professional deluxe precision hot air soldering station station and paint stripper ala Hakko which can be redesigned on the fly, and at the drop of a hat to use different silicon. "Make sure employees wear shoes". And to use up some of those fire proof resistors, 4 designs for a USB Mug Warmer. "Tell Grandma to be careful if you send her on a picking mission up resistor mountain. We don't want anyone else buried if there is another avalanche....--Coming soon a teardown and repair (maybe) of an OCZ 600W MODSTREAM-PRO modular power supply possibly made by WHL& Associates."That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers."Laurence "Larry" van Cott Niven1938 -Best RegardsClear Ether

author: echen1024
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 02, 2014, 03:56:16 am
content: This was brilliant.

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 02, 2014, 07:03:49 pm
content: Worth a read.....http://worldtracker.org/media/library/English%20Literature/L/Lem,%20Stanislaw/Might keep you busy for a month or two. I like Lem, even though i only read the translations.

author: FrankenPC
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 02, 2014, 07:09:36 pm
content: I've read every Lem book ever written (I think...). Futurological Congress is still my favorite. It was the matrix before the Matrix.