Illustrate your latest stupid goof - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: TerraHertz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 04, 2019, 11:38:50 am
content: Let's play a game. Show a picture of something you screwed up, and see if others can guess what dumbf*ck thing you did wrong.No prizes, but hopefully plenty of laughs.I'll start. I did this today.You're looking at the film advance servo motor from an incredibly expensive 70mm film theater projector. FORTUNATELY a scrapped one, being disassembled for fun, ie I didn't just destroy more than my yearly income in a careless instant. But I did want to play with the servo motor.

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 04, 2019, 12:39:13 pm
content: Threw a brush spring into the never never?

author: TerraHertz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 04, 2019, 02:37:36 pm
content: Bingo, you got it. I'm used to brush springs that are attached to the carbon brush. With this one I undid one screw on the terminal, slid the terminal to one side to see how things were underneath. Expecting one spring in the center. Oh wait, there's a small spring end right at the edge... aaaand it's gone. The visual effect was, it just vanished.I did hear a 'tink' somewhere on the other side of the room. Among the piles of scrap metal, machining swarf, boxes of junk, etc. Tried sweeping the floor and finger-sifting the resulting dust pile. No luck. It's gone.They are phosphor-bronze, ie non-magnetic. Also low resistance. Two brushes per terminal to minimize contact resistance and variation, since these are the servo tachometer connections.

author: vtwin@cox.net
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 04, 2019, 02:48:02 pm
content: my last oops:

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 04, 2019, 03:25:41 pm
content: Quote from: vtwin@cox.net on June 04, 2019, 02:48:02 pmI like his better. Anyone can make one of those. Heck I made 2 before I figured out how to stop it. Mine aren't that cute though.

author: bsudbrink
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 04, 2019, 04:31:51 pm
content: Quote from: TerraHertz on June 04, 2019, 02:37:36 pmAny instrument when dropped will roll into the least accessible corner.Corollary: It will not roll if it falls on shag carpeting and is small enough to hide.The above applies to parts as well.

author: GreyWoolfe
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 04, 2019, 11:49:14 pm
content: Quote from: bsudbrink on June 04, 2019, 04:31:51 pmCorollary: all through hole ICs will land with the legs up. The odds of this happening increase exponentially when you are barefoot and will land in such a location to guarantee you will step on it.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 05, 2019, 01:23:22 am
content: Quote from: TerraHertz on June 04, 2019, 02:37:36 pmJust stop looking for it and it’ll turn up!!!

author: GregDunn
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 05, 2019, 01:55:41 am
content: Quote from: bsudbrink on June 04, 2019, 04:31:51 pmOne important lesson I learned was NEVER to put berber carpet in a workshop. Anything can hide in that pattern. However, I have seen components land on it and bounce at a bizarre angle; when looking for something on the carpet I have to peruse a 6 ft radius to be sure.

author: Alex Eisenhut
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 05, 2019, 02:49:14 am
content: I disassemble things like that inside a ziploc bag. That catches things that would like to fly away.I took apart some odd 1960s SPDT switches like that to make sure the spring in the handle doesn't fly off to the stratosphere.

author: TERRA Operative
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 05, 2019, 03:32:55 am
content: Quote from: tooki on June 05, 2019, 01:23:22 amI've found the most sure-fire way to find a lost part is to buy a replacement.As soon as the new part turns up, so does the old part too......

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 05, 2019, 02:53:45 pm
content: Quote from: Alex Eisenhut on June 05, 2019, 02:49:14 amWhat a brilliant idea. Stuff like that is why I hang around here. I *always* learn something valuable from someone who has a better way to divest the feline of its pelt.

author: dnwheeler
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 05, 2019, 03:49:18 pm
content: Put a piece of nylon stocking over a vacuum hose and suck away. The stocking should catch any screws, springs, and even dust bunnies!

author: Iceberg86300
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: June 05, 2019, 06:06:23 pm
content: Quote from: TerraHertz on June 04, 2019, 02:37:36 pmROFL.Shot a carburetor jet out of an air gun from inside my garage "across the street" once. Double lane driveway between condos. Thought I had good grip on it, then GONE. Heard the "tink" of the neighbor's garage door.After 20 minutes of looking I roped 3 roommates into a grid search. Damn thing bounced ~20ft, nearly back into our garage. Of course, we had concentrated the search near the neighbors.Called it off & a roommate found it on the way back into the house. LOL. Last time I tried that. Now I lose carb parts in a gallon sized can of solvent.Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

author: bsudbrink
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 05, 2019, 08:36:32 pm
content: You ever have a five minute job that ends up taking an hour because you had to spend 55 minutes looking for that damned dropped screw?

author: Electro Detective
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 06, 2019, 12:08:52 am
content: Quote from: bsudbrink on June 05, 2019, 08:36:32 pmDon't get me started mateMy math: 55 minutes x pick any number over at least 300 times..If I'm lucky..sometimes the elusive screw/nut/circlip appears a day or two later,usually when someone else unaware of THE HUNT, just casually walks in and spots it immediatelyafter YT giving up on sweeping, magnet rolling, vacuuming, grovelling on the floor shining a torch etc etc etc. all that good free aerobix futile stuffor the littleexpletiverocks up years later, in another room or under the fridge,or stuck to the adhesive on a chair or table leg missing it's felt pad

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 06, 2019, 02:15:51 am
content: I will have to think a while about what my latest post worthy goof was.The extractor spring from a Glock can hide in carpet across the room ... after bouncing off of your eye blinding you.Seatbelt mechanisms in vehicles use a tightly wound coil spring to retract them. The coil springs have a plastic cover usually stamped with "Caution: Do Not Remote". They are not kidding.

author: xrunner
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 06, 2019, 02:25:27 am
content: Trying to fix an issue in my latest vintage buy (Drake SPR-4 shortwave receiver) I was reflowing some solder joints and in the process created a solderbridgewhich cost me another 1/2 day of trying to find out what happened.Fortunately it just made it lose CW/LSB receive with no damage.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 06, 2019, 02:26:06 pm
content: My latest goof: I just released magic smoke from an RGB LED matrix panel (one of those cheap chinese video wall modules) because I mistakenly remembered it needing 12V.It needed 5V.(At least the replacement ICs are dirt cheap on LCSC...)

author: larrybl
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 06, 2019, 07:27:13 pm
content: I have a couple....Floor jack needed fluid, removed the rubber plug, raised the jack, filled with fluid. (outside the shop). replaced the rubber plug, and lowered the jack (it was holding a riding mower up) rubber plug shot off like a bullet. Covered the hole with tape. 6 months later while looking for something else (in the shop) rubber plug was found on a top shelf.Removing a valve spring from a small engine, as soon as the valve compressor (spring fully compressed) was removed from the engine the spring took off and ricketshot off of three walls. Took several hours to locate. Luckily I was not in the flight path.Recent, weed whacker pull rope wouldn't retract. on dissemble (unlike the above seat belt spring warning) the tightly wound spring spronged and I came close to tossing the contraption and buying a new one.

author: Electro Detective
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 07, 2019, 12:18:31 am
content: Has anyone done the "weird mA value -glass encased springy fuse- rolls off the bench and breaks, or gets crushed on the bench" thing ?or... you do all the right things, but the metal ends pop off or twist/break due to aged/heat glue failureThen the hunt and wasted time/fuel to find another asap to finish the job,and or test to see if another T or F value will suffice,and or be better rated than the factory fitted oneand then there's the 'you can't buy these fuses in singles' thingand have to fork out for an overpriced 3 or 10 fuse packet,which leads to a 'short fuse' situation years laternot being able to find them to use in another similar fuse scenario...I reckon some people have jumped off bridges for lesser reasons

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 07, 2019, 03:57:15 am
content: If I didn't crush it, then I drill holes in the ends of the fuse and solder in the proper gauge of copper wire based on fusing current.

author: Electro Detective
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 07, 2019, 09:53:12 am
content: @ Mr. Hess, whilst I have no doubt in your abilities, good luck doing that with an exotic spring and solder blob 50ma or 63ma T-Fuse (from post horse and cart circa?)that only a magnifying visor and or low current ohm check verifies it being dead or alive

author: GlennSprigg
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 07, 2019, 11:29:32 am
content: DearTerraHertz......I've recently been reading a whole pile of your, should we say, 'Musings' on you website, like......http://everist.org/NobLog/20130904_Retarded_ideas_in_comp_sci.htmDon't get me wrong, I'm enjoying it as a distraction, but you seem to enjoy being verbally angry!!!So I can just imagine the choice words you said to yourself, trying to find that spring !!!

author: CJay
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 07, 2019, 02:33:54 pm
content: Quote from: GregDunn on June 05, 2019, 01:55:41 amA colleague was using a microsim with an adapter, it was a bit loose so he'd put a little tape onto it to hold it, while changing it into a new phone he dropped it.We spent 45 minutes looking for it, it had bounced and stuck itself to the underside of the base of a wheeled office chair

author: Cyberdragon
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 07, 2019, 11:14:08 pm
content: Quote from: bsudbrink on June 05, 2019, 08:36:32 pmIt's always when you leave stuff apart waiting for part X that the longer you wait, more bits (like screws/nuts, or any other small parts) seem to go missing even though you know you placed them somewhere you thought you'd find again. Usually happens because you see them later and go "what are those for? Eh, not important, in my way, go away." Then you get part X and are like "Where is Y? I wouldn't have put it somewhere dumb..."also

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 08, 2019, 04:29:58 am
content: Quote from: Electro Detective on June 07, 2019, 09:53:12 amThe real trick is having the smallest wire gauges available. In most cases, the place to start is unraveling 7x32 or 19x36 stranded 24 gauge hook up wire but even that would not work for your example.

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 08, 2019, 06:09:28 am
content: I had taken my laptop over to a friend's house to help with a networking problem and left it unattended for a while. They have a couple of parrots that are allowed free flight inside the house and one of them has a penchant for attacking buttons on things like remotes (which I knew about) and keyboards (which I did NOT know about).I came back to find 3 key tops were missing - and I was sure they were there when I first set up the laptop. I looked in the laptop bag, all around the laptop and I found two of the key tops on the carpet. Could not find the third. I was sitting in the lounge room later and noticed this bit of flotsam on the floor - and it was the missing key top. I can only presume I had stepped on it and walked it out to the lounge room where it had dislodged. In replacing the first two, I got a reassuring click and they stayed in place, but I had flattened the clips on the third - so now a piece of double-sided tape will be my hopeful saviour.

author: TERRA Operative
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 10, 2019, 05:41:00 am
content: Ooh, I know the pain. My 2 year old son had a phase of pulling buttons, and dug out a key off my Dell Precision laptop back when it was new.I ended up sourcing a new keyboard as the button and hinge thingo underneath was damaged so it wouldn't go back on.I wasn't happy, but he is cute, so I got over it quick. Replacement keyboards aren't too expensive.

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 10, 2019, 12:41:02 pm
content: I had to go over again today (for a different reason) but I took my laptop .....Rotten birds - but at least I didn't walk on any of them.(Maybe I'll remember next time.)

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 10, 2019, 12:52:29 pm
content: Just had a closer look.One of the keys has had the key top plucked off and then the hinge mechanism. Lucky for those birds I'm an animal lover ... at the moment.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 09, 2019, 06:16:28 pm
content: I was examining a tangle of extension cords, and wanted to check if a particular one was still plugged in (to find which was which). The tester pen was just out of reach, but my multimeter within reach. So, I grabbed that, and decided that since this is mains voltage that I normally don't touch, I better switch the probe to the 30A socket. Nice sparks, multimeter gonski. (It's >20yr old cheapie, so I'd rather just get a new one, than diagnose whether I blew a fuse or something more.)Yes, I am an idiot.

author: Gribo
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 09, 2019, 10:08:32 pm
content: 5x800W Resistors, not enough heat dissipation -> Solder splattered all over the place. I will post photos soon.

author: TerraHertz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2019, 01:29:46 am
content: Well, I've been NOT LOOKING for it as hard as I can, and it still hasn't turned up. Oh well.Quote from: GlennSprigg on June 07, 2019, 11:29:32 amActually no, I'm quite a laid back guy. But I see no reason to be pointlessly polite about f-ing stupidity, especially things that waste millions of man-hours and slow down human progress overall, as mentioned in that article.We're both Australian, you should understand. Verbal colour for effect, when appropriate.QuoteHa, wrong again. The mood was one of resigned disappointment with my careless dumbness. It's not terribly important, just a junk pull-apart for curiosity. Also kind of funny, in a Murphy Was Here sense.The most practically useful suggestion is the 'disassemble in a large plastic bag' idea. I will use that in future.I've done a HDD disassembly inside a large, clean bag plus new gloves as a 'clean room'. But wasted effort, the drive was dead.And I buy small ziplock bags in bulk from China for storage of parts, down to inch-square tiny ziplocks for sets of very small screws like with laptops. Put a label in each bag with the sequence number and description. Makes reassembly so much easier.

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2019, 05:46:29 am
content: Quote from: TerraHertz on July 10, 2019, 01:29:46 amI used to do that. Now I take photos of each part/stage as I go, print them A3 and stick the screws to the picture of where they belong with cellotape. Picked that one up from a poster on iFixit once and it has proved very valuable over the last couple of years.

author: Black Phoenix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2019, 08:58:22 am
content: When the screws weren't that big while repairing Laptops, I would basically group them by groups of zone taken inside small bags and with Tesa Film Invisible, the white one that let you write on it and put a number, sticking a small strip of tape in the location with the respective number. This tape was used because it doesn't leave behind any glue residue, even after long time application and temperature changes.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2019, 10:16:26 am
content: Quote from: TerraHertz on July 10, 2019, 01:29:46 amWell, some of those are genuine stupidity (like those bad JBIG2 implementations and the Windows registry, which is quite possibly one of the worst design decisions MS ever made).Other rants are based on fundamentally wrong assumptions about the situation (PDF isnotPostScript with document security bolted on, PDF is actually a declarative-only small subset of PostScript, whereas actual PostScript is a full programmatic language).Others (like the rant on XML) show ignorance of the design goals. XML isn’t really intended for web documents, it’s for structured data. You can press it into service as an extended HTML, but it’s really mostly used for hierarchies of key-value pairs.And others (like the “HTML doesn’t allow page layout!” rant) show both a fundamental lack of understanding of the design goals as well as not understanding that some decisions that come back to bite you in the ass later down the linewere actually the correct and best decisions at the time. HTML was never originally envisioned for the things it ended up being used for. If you’re setting out to design a compact sedan, you’re not going to be thinking about “well what limitations will this have when used as a delivery vehicle for construction materials”.And frankly, as someone who has worked extensively as a technical writer, structured documents with semantic markup are WILDLY underused. Decouplingmeaningfromdisplayis ahugeadvantage in many situations (I’d argue “most situations”, actually), since it makes it far, far easier to manage consistency in appearance, reuse for other display formats, and making changes in visual appearance later on. Most people do not understand how or why to use semantic markup, which is why they whine about Microsoft Word (which is essentially based on this principle) being complex, or HTML not allowing absolute layout, etc. (Like you saying how HTML lacks page sizes and numbers... OMG, just no! How do you define a “page”? What happens when the document page size doesn’t match the output page size?) I do agree that a page or section break might be a useful tag, though!HTML and its family of bolted-on standards are indeed a mess, no doubt. I’d love to see a new reinvention of them as a sort of “clean slate” implementation. But it got many fundamental principles right, and the last thing we need is to have it become a document layout page description language, which is what you seem to want. Just use PDF for that...

author: GreyWoolfe
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 10, 2019, 12:00:20 pm
content: Quote from: BradC on July 10, 2019, 05:46:29 amWhen I was repairing laptops on my old job, I would lay screws and parts out in a semi-circle in front of me. Now, I use foam egg crate on the work bench. I have a couple of 18 count and 1 cut in half for smaller jobs. I remove the lids and I am good to go.

author: TerraHertz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2019, 12:33:58 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on July 10, 2019, 10:16:26 amYou consistently view things from only one viewpoint. The Registry design is evil, but from Microsoft's perspective it was probably one of their best decisions. It achieved exactly what they wanted - an OS that was forever doomed to 'creeping installation senescence' greatly raising the probability that most users would regularly buy new systems.QuoteI do know a lot more about PDF internals now than when I wrote that. I know PDF uses a functional subset (and minified) version of Postscript. Essentially crippled and obfuscated Postscript, with no option for non-obfuscated format, if one didn't care about file size. But still fundamentally the same for document layout purposes, plus the object structuring and security features of PDF. So, that rant is still predominantly right, and PDF is still horrible. One most astonishing thing I found, is that the PDF standard still doesn't allow for newer graphics formats. Particularly no PNG, which is why I find I can produce better quality and smaller file scanned docs using html and PNG, than a PDF file can.I'm currently working towards being able to write a PDF forensic dissector utility (long story, no point going into that), and the more I delve, the more I hate PDF.QuoteI knew that when I wrote that text. I didn't say XML was intended for web document presentation, though it is a full markup language (thus making it overlap html in function.) Perhaps I didn't express it well, but I mean the XML creators extended and generalized the html syntax to encompass structured data. But they did a horrible, overly complex job. And all the XML texts I've found suck. Suffer from 'excessive abstraction' disease.This is probably why json is more popular than XML for actually passing data. And why XML playlists, bookmark files, etc are ridiculous.QuoteYou fundamentally missed my point. I know what html was intended to do. I'm saying that a design goal of creating a syntax that specifically excluded extensions to other objectives (such as representing fixed layout printed works) was insane. Because it meant millions of development man-hours and the entire infrastructure of the web, are incapable of representing books properly. And this was entirely predictable and stupid.QuoteAgain, you're fixating on one single viewpoint, and refusing to allow that there are other viewpoints and objectives.Fine, semantic markup is great for creating works intended to appear reasonably consistently on differing media. But you entirely fail to comprehend the need to accurately (and therefore absolutely inflexibly) represent the appearance of a historical artifact - particularly books. No, the display device does not get a say. It simply has to be capable of an accurate visual reproduction, or it's excluded. A true document encoding scheme MUST allow for exact, fixed, inflexible specification of a document's appearance, pages and all.HTML abjectly fails to provide that facility. For no reason at all, other than people like you who think 'semantic markup' and abstraction is the only acceptable way to do anything.I think it's quite delusional. Because the result is we still have no open, capable and universal format for capturing documents. And the longer this goes on, the more cultural history is lost. For eg all those people scanning technical works into PDF, often destroying the original document in the process. Spine chopping, scanning in two-tone (fax mode), then binning the paper afterwards. Result: an extremely poor digital copy with all the illustrations ruined, and the text all jaggy. The spirit and style of the document lost, irrecoverably. An insult to the effort the authors and publishers put into the work. Plus the original (maybe a rare, irreplaceable copy) gone. This is really very criminal and stupid.QuoteYou. just. don't. get. it.Go pick up a book. Open it. Look at it. That is what a page is. Why do I have to say this?And btw, all decent graphics utilities (eg photoshop) typically know exactly what the physical dimensions of an image are, in addition to the abstract pixel dimensions. So does html even, if dimensions are specified in em, etc. Which are physical units. Too bad the idiots didn't allow for metric/imperial units too.But allow an actual page break and page dimensions? Noooo....QuoteDepends on what you want. If you want a true-size reproduction, then you don't get anything, and have to hunt a device that can produce it. Or... gasp.... it could scale. Just like every single printer on the planet is perfectly capable of. (Excluding a few ancient dot matrix, etc.)Quote"might be" ha ha ha! But it wouldn't make sense to include it, without a lot of other extensions to provide full and easy representation of physical layouts.QuoteYou're very big on false dichotomies. Like there could never be an html equivalent that allowed BOTH abstract markup for flexible adaptation to display devices, AND rigid page/document representation. Allowing use of whichever type was appropriate to the intended target.So we have two retarded standards (each a mess): html/css/js/(and the rest) for the web, and PDF for 'documents' (anything that needs to be encapsulated in a single file.) Where there should be just one (and much cleaner.)The only thing on which we agree, is the need for a clean slate.

author: TerraHertz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2019, 01:19:24 pm
content: Quote from: BradC on July 10, 2019, 05:46:29 amYes, I do something similar too. Except I use A4 sheets, and just pencil quick-sketch enough of each area I'm removing screws from, to identify screw locations. Rarely needs more than a few lines drawn. Then I stick blobs of blu-tak at the screw locations, and stick each screw in its blu-tak blob. This also allows writing any notes where needed.Plus it's re-usable - after reassembling the thing, recover the blu-tak into one blob. File the paper sheets away for any future disassembly of the same thing. No waste, very low cost, low tech and practical.But I only use this method if the bits are not going to be lying around for long. If it's something I know will sit for weeks, then it's small ziplock bags and labels, all put in one bigger ziplock with the box of bits.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2019, 02:05:57 pm
content: Quote from: TerraHertz on July 10, 2019, 12:33:58 pmWait wait wait, did I just read that, for real?You're accusingmeof seeing only one viewpoint? Oh man, now I've heard it all!Look at your reply to me. Every. Single. Bit. of the HTML issue is focused solely on faithful, rigid layout representation, e.g. in historical archiving. None of it considers new document creation, or the fact that in many cases now, there need notexistan authoritative physical layout to begin with! This forum post, for example, has no inherent physical layout. Its rendered layout depends on the user's selected theme, whether they're on a desktop or mobile browser, or even using an app like Tapatalk. But by using semantic markup (like paragraphs, quote tags, etc), it renders correctly on each. So what's the "true" layout of this?There is none.Ithasno page dimensions or page numbers.What I see in your replies is someone who is judging HTML by the criteria of something it never wanted or tried to be (and deliberately so), seeing how it sucks for your applicationwhich is 180˚ diametrically opposed in its requirements, and then whining that it doesn't do it well. PDF (especially PDF/A) is designed expressly for faithful layout representation, which is part of why they removed the programmatic aspects of PostScript (only to later add in JavaScript...), and why it does support page dimensions, numbering, etc.Quote from: TerraHertz on July 10, 2019, 12:33:58 pmIt would probably behoove the PDF standard to add support for some newer formats. Who knows, maybe that's in the works for a future version of the standard. The flip side is breaking compatibility with the millions of devices and workflows that currently support PDF, and that's nothing to take lightly.Quote from: TerraHertz on July 10, 2019, 12:33:58 pmNon-PDF/A PDFs weren't really designed for that...Quote from: TerraHertz on July 10, 2019, 12:33:58 pmWhat's ridiculous about them? They're easy to parse and edit and do the job fine. How is XML "horribly complex"? It strikes me as being quite simple indeed.Quote from: TerraHertz on July 10, 2019, 12:33:58 pmNo, I get your point. You're just wrong about it. Itwasn't"entirely predictable" nor "insane" or "stupid". There already existed page layout standards at the time, for fixed layout printed works. HTML wasn't invented to format documents (never mind books!), it was for structured, hyperlinked content. And to a very large extent, this has remained the case still. And I'm not sure these two worlds ever will (or should) merge, since they have conflicting requirements and objectives.It's crazy for you to be whining that HTML is a lousy layout markup, when in fact HTML was never intended for physical documents.As for it being "entirely predictable", no, it wasn't. Do you knowanythingabout the contexts and environments of its creation? By the time it became clear that the web was going to be huge, HTML had already existed for years. (And its ancestor markup language, SGML, and its ancestors, had existed for far longer still.) And it wasn't until many more years that the web began to morph into its modern AJAXey flavor. If we were inventing HTML now, we'd do it differently, because we now have radically different requirements for it than back then.Quote from: TerraHertz on July 10, 2019, 12:33:58 pmOf course I understand the need to accurately and inflexibly display historical artifacts! I just don't understand why anyone would want to do that in HTML. That makes as much sense as trying to use a fish net to carry water. Use the right tool for the job, man! It's lunacy to use the wrong tool and then whine that it doesn't work well!Quote from: TerraHertz on July 10, 2019, 12:33:58 pmI never said that it's the only acceptable way. For some tasks it is, for others it's not. IMHO, many documents get created as fixed layouts that would actually be better made as semantic markup. But it's entirely situational, and even this is only referring to newly created stuff. Archiving historical printed matter is a completely, totally, entirely unrelated task from document creation.Soof courseHTML "fails" to provide faithful, inflexible document layoutbecause it was designed for a completely different task, with theexpressgoal of leaving final layout up to the viewer, not the document creator. Calling that a "fail" is like saying that a clothes dryer "fails" to adequately wet your clothes, when in fact its goal is toremovewater...Quote from: TerraHertz on July 10, 2019, 12:33:58 pmThat in no way means that HTML should be pressed into service for that task. If we need a new format for document capture, that's fine, but we shouldn't destroy another, existing format to do so.Quote from: TerraHertz on July 10, 2019, 12:33:58 pmAgreed.Quote from: TerraHertz on July 10, 2019, 12:33:58 pmBecause you don't understand the concept of a non-physical work. Not all document handling has to do with capturing archival printed matter. A lot is about creating new documents. And not all new document creation has to do with creating a printed document. These are all different tasks with different requirements.Quote from: TerraHertz on July 10, 2019, 12:33:58 pmNo, they're not. The em is an abstract "unit" that is arelationshipto a physical dimension specified elsewhere.And HTML didn't even support the em until CSS came along years later. It was added specifically toreduceabsolute dimensions and replace them with dimensions that are, in essence, percentages of each other. It's closer to semantic markup than to absolute layout markup.Quote from: TerraHertz on July 10, 2019, 12:33:58 pmSo what would specified page dimensionsmeanwhen viewing them in a browser whose window doesn't match those dimensions? Or if the document isn't layout-based to begin with?Quote from: TerraHertz on July 10, 2019, 12:33:58 pmAgain, you're operating under the assumption that it's a representation of a physical document.Quote from: TerraHertz on July 10, 2019, 12:33:58 pmThe thing is, HTML doesn't (and shouldn't) provide "full" representation of a physical layout. A page break would simply be there toaidin thecreationof a physical layout from the HTML, like when you print a web page. It's a hint to the renderer on what to do in certain situations. (Much like how hinting works in fonts.)Quote from: TerraHertz on July 10, 2019, 12:33:58 pmIt's not afalsedichotomy, it's a veryrealone based on the fact that they have diametrically opposed requirements. What is gained by creating one uber-standard that has two wildly different flavors? We already HAVE two formats that handle each set of requirements well: PDF for accurate physical layouts, and HTML for structured logical documents.Quote from: TerraHertz on July 10, 2019, 12:33:58 pmBecause things like that mean compromises for every document, rather than individual standards doing each kind of documentwell.There's a reason why in desktop publishing, page layout programs (like InDesign) and word processing programs and text editors (like Word) are completely separate: one is for creating a precise layout, the other is for creating and structuring the content. It's a continuum of sorts, with some programs (like FrameMaker) being somewhere in between. But it's always a give-and-take, where strengthening one aspect (say, layout freedom) means weakening another (like structural consistency) or vice versa, which is why different programs exist to accomplish different tasks.And indeed, when people try to force Word into service for strict layouts, they get frustrated. Just as a writer gets frustrated if they try to force InDesign into service as a word processor.Quote from: TerraHertz on July 10, 2019, 12:33:58 pmWell, you wantoneclean slate for everything. I'd say we need one clean slate for HTML, and a separate clean slate for PDF, if PDF is proving inadequate.Quote from: TerraHertz on July 10, 2019, 12:33:58 pmThat certainly wasn't the design goal. They wanted to eliminate tons of little config files and make it easy to save key-value pairs programmatically. But instead they ended up creating a single point of failure, which they're now separating back out via the rather complex (but necessary) method of registry virtualization.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2019, 07:32:55 pm
content: The goof in HTML design was not understanding that visual representation must be separated from the content/semantic representation, for hypertext to be device-independent. It is a valid rant, because it was designed to work for technical documentation across different display window sizes, and what we now have is a horrible mess of HTML and CSS augmented by JavaScript. In these almost-thirty years, we could have fixed it via a full rewrite, but have chosen not to; instead, we just glom on more and more stuff to get shit done.You only need to look at how websites are now implemented to see this. Especially if like me, you have difficulty with obnoxious adverts, and typically run JavaScript disabled and AdBlockers enabled, when encountering a new site (then enable stuff piecewise). The amount of sheer processing power now needed to display web pages in full fidelity is astonishing! So much waste.(I learned SGML just after HTML+ was drafted, but before HTML 2.0 was standardized; and got introduced to HTML that early. I was areallyearly adopter. Later on, for about a decade around the turn of the century, I did a lot of professional backend and frontend work, even early interactive stuff using Shockwave (that was before Flash). I stopped when I burned out. I still like the tech, but doing business with dishonest people and stupid people broke me; I'm way too easy to exploit. I knew people in the mid-to-late nineties who still thought the IMG tag was a travesty; that true hypertext should be text only, images being superfluous; and who still got employed as webmasters. Since then, I've done some occasional custom CMS work, "engines", in PHP and Python; Apache configurations for large organizations having multiple overlapping administrators and less-privileged content editors; and implementing device size independent layouts (not the design work, only the implementation of design guides) -- you know, those that donothave the "This page is best viewed onblah" in the footer, but instead scale to the font size and zoom used, using both HTML and CSS to achieve the desired looks (and a couple of levels of alternatives for visuals to scale correctly, because Microsoft really didn't want to include SVG support in Internet Exploder, and pushed their own abortion, VML, as part of the fight against OpenOffice standardization). For the last decade or so, I've wondered why people still use box-based editors on the web, instead of WYSIWYG-in-place. Sure, you need a JavaScript postprocessor to fix the stupid DHTML the browsers generate, but it isn'tthathard, especially if you can use TinyMCE license-wise; but it really looks like humans are stupid and glommed on to a really limiting user interface, without anyone progressing beyond that. So, I do claim I know this stuff inside out, just as well as you do, no matter who you are.)My second stupid goofis to not have published the solution I've tested to work, that not only fixes all this, but is easily parseable using a simple FSM. It supports arbitrary structured metadata for any content element. I even have the counterpart to replace the HTTP protocol, that essentially multiplexes a single TCP connection for all the data, and allows separating content from visual representation in an intuitive manner. (Initially, the reason was to allow multiple different server-side processes to generate the content required by a single client more efficiently, but as soon as I tried it, it was obvious what other problems it would solve as well.)To be honest, I think it would be pointless to push it, because the existing amount of HTML means there is immense inertia; meaning "fixing HTML" is already too late -- validating TerraHertz's rant --, so maybe the goof really is having spent any mental effort on it at all.That does not mean Tooki does not have a good point, too, though. HTML is a jack of all trades, but master of none. As for page description formats, in my opinion,SVGis the best one for now. Hey, don't laugh! I'm serious here. DVI is close, but not self-contained. Giving physical size in thewidthandheightattributes, and the machine/pixel size in theviewBoxattribute of thesvgelement, gives you exact visual representation (but with zero content/semantic representation, of course). You can trivially embed JPEG or PNG images, or even other SVG images, in SVG files. (One excellent use case is to overlay vector curves on top of a JPEG or PNG image, for small size but high fidelity illustrations.) A true paged ebook format could simply be a set of compressed SVG files! You can even convert the text to vectors, if the output device resolution is high enough, to ensure exact representation; I do that routinely for my SVG visualization images, but it might not yield the best results for eBook readers (lacks hinting for best font fidelity). For vector graphics, SVG is much less work than PS or PDF, in my experience. For things like plotters, cutters, and 2D routers, SVG is much better suited as an interchange format than PS or PDF, but not much used as such yet.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2019, 08:41:09 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on July 10, 2019, 07:32:55 pmHuh? That'sexactlywhat HTML originally did. It didn't even have tags for specific formatting (like italics, bold, or size), only semantic tags like <em> (emphasis), which browsers rendered as bold, but a TTS engine could render as intonation, for example. It wasn't until later that non-semantic tags began to be added.As far as I can tell, terrahertz's rant isn't just about HTML & co being messy, but primarily about it needing more rigid page layout features. That last point I disagree with with the utmost determination.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 12, 2019, 04:07:14 am
content: Quote from: tooki on July 11, 2019, 08:41:09 pmNo, evenHTML 2included typographic elements. If you mean the initial HTML version that did not suffice for its original intended purpose in practice, and had to be extended, then yes: the very initial version had the right idea, but when it was extended to actually work for us humans, the idea was lost. (This "losing the original idea" was also noted, by people who refused to use e.g. the IMG tag, also included in HTML 2. I remember; I too was there.)Quote from: tooki on July 11, 2019, 08:41:09 pmAIUI, it is not that TerraHertz needs all HTML to have a rigid page layout; he wants more rigid page layoutfeaturesto be able to do that exactly and not just roughly approximately like we can now with HTML+CSS+Javascript for some specific set of browsers and versions.To use HTML for the cases it is used today, we use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, in a mess that is neither clean design-wise (because part of the visualization is in HTML, part in CSS, part in JavaScript -- esp. calculations moving elements to specific locations on-screen depending on the screen size), nor efficient. It is almost like discovering paper, but then staying with chisels and styluses and using them to write and draw on that paper.It is us humans, who use HTML, who want precise control over the visuals. That's why HTML 2 had support for I, B, and TT tags: those who used HTML, wanted the control. You know this, if you've created web pages for somebody else.Sure, you could say that we use HTML wrong, but that's the same as saying overweight people use food wrong. It might be true, but it helps nobody, and contributes nothing towards a solution.Now, Isuspectthe issue here is a misunderstanding of what that exact control of the visual layout means. (What "rigid visual layoutfeatures" means.)It does not mean that the visual layout is fixed for everybody to see the content in the exact same way, like say PDF. It means that users want control overhow the visual layout adapts to different viewers and media. Not just display window size, but context also; just like we use media selectors in CSS, to have the rules apply on only certain type of devices, dropping navigation menus out from printouts, and so on.That control is not black magic at all. Your desktop environment windowing toolkits do it right now for you, with various degrees of success. The resource-hungry HTML+CSS+Javascript mess gets it surprisingly right, for a specific set of browser applications and versions. (However, I'd like the clients to have control over the tunables the service (now CSS+Javascript) makes its decisions from; meaning the service decides how the visual layout varies, but the client is in complete control over what kind of visual device the service sees. To do this today, I need NoScript and uBlock Origin. This will be one of the sticking points, if one were to try to push this forwards.)My point was, and I read TerraHertz' rant to agree in principle -- I could be wrong, me fail English, but that's the reason I thought the rant had merit -- is thatnow that we know, we can fix it by designing a model and markup language to do what we do with HTML+CSS+Javasript now, without the mess, and the resource wastage. And that we could do even better, if we were smart about it, allowing exact representation model (for historical accuracy and reproduction), and things like no-visual mode for audio readers. (I can't be the only one who dislikes how different audio readers handle the ALT and TITLE attributes of IMG elements differently?)To repeat: It is not about rigidifying the visual layout, but about precise control over how the visual layout is constructed -- and in my case, how to explicitly separate it from the content, into separate files. Right now, HTML+CSS+Javascript allows only approximate control, often using browser-specific quirks that get "close enough" for users not to notice. But, it is both messy, wasteful, and overly complicated, and often breaks for some (newer) browsers in unhappy ways. We could do better, much better. We just choose not to -- or I have, for not trying to push my suggestion; and I accept that as one of my stupid goofs. What's yours?

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 12, 2019, 01:00:14 pm
content: QuoteMaybe I’m understanding him wrong, but I’m understanding TerraHertz as absolutely wanting PDF-like exact same presentation to everyone, down to even specifying page dimensions. He talks about using it for archival storage of historical printed matter.I have no problem with the types of features you talk about, where the designer is guiding the browser in how to render. But it shouldn’t turn into another PDF.

author: vtwin@cox.net
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2019, 03:55:41 pm
content: my latest goof, 5 weeks ago

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 16, 2019, 01:48:39 am
content: Quote from: vtwin@cox.net on July 15, 2019, 03:55:41 pmWasn't the goof actually about 37+5 weeks ago?

author: DannyTheGhost
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: July 16, 2019, 04:23:32 am
content: Latest goof?I put electrolytics in my PSU in wrong wayAll 33 of them at onceI needed regulated 100A output, that's why, and because of home-made PCBs, i put so many of them on 2-layer PCB, where sides are + and -. They weren't soldered 'as intended', and I forgot to make more visible marks where is + and where is -, so I only noticed when one of them blew up

author: Black Phoenix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 16, 2019, 04:32:05 am
content: Quote from: vtwin@cox.net on July 15, 2019, 03:55:41 pmNot only you, not only you... 12 Weeks.

author: med6753
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 17, 2019, 08:39:14 am
content: Tantalums do not appreciate being installed backwards.

author: CJay
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 17, 2019, 03:34:07 pm
content: Tantalums just don't appreciate being installed full stop, I've seen them do that when they were fitted correctly too..

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 17, 2019, 03:43:47 pm
content: Quote from: med6753 on July 17, 2019, 08:39:14 amIndeed! They don't always show obvious signs of failure such as on your picture though. They usually fail as shorts. On occasion, I'ven seen SMD tantalum caps soldered backwards and shorting power supplies on the first try. The caps weren't burnt externally, but probably because the power supplies were shut down immediately after.

author: Gribo
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 28, 2019, 02:29:57 am
content: 800W Ohmite resistor, too little heatsink, the poor thing couldn't take it any longer.

author: Black Phoenix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 28, 2019, 07:26:32 am
content: Not my goof but I come around this while looking for stuff on Amazon...Just read the description