If you are still reading, you are either truly bored, a geek, or much too curious. In any of these cases, I will tell you what you get when you …

… combine an old microphone, digital oscilloscope, band-pass filter, signal trigger, and signal capture …

I used Visual Analyzer and an old PC microphone that was left over from a Compaq 386 (yes, that old). I set the microphone under the escapement of my small antique clock and then set the necessary filters and trigger. The image is of a 10 second capture. The arresting of the escapement at each end of the pendulum travel is represented by an impulse on the graph.

Addendum: I did a little thinking about using the digital oscilloscope for timing a clock and realized a bit of a problem. I planned to use this technique on a clock I hope to restore soon. However, the clock should have an accuracy of 1 second per week. At that rate, I would need to measure to one 500,000th of a second. Not likely since I am using an audio card which presumably is only good to about 20,000 hertz. I’ll resort to averaging over long periods of time.

The problem I’ve had with VoIP service has been how it behaves with the inconsistent performance of the Internet. I have pretty good service right now but it not perfect all the time. I am sure the service at my new location will be less perfect.

VoIP services like Vonage are designed for good Internet connectivity. Bandwidth is not the critical measure - latency is. Latency is delay from when information is sent to when it is received. In the case of voice communications, it’s the time from when a person talks to when they are heard. A real world example of latency is the delay you notice from when a newscaster is talking to someone overseas and they are connected over a satellite link - there is a clear delay from when the local newscaster asks the question to when the person in the field hears it and responds.

If your Internet connection has more than about 100ms-150ms latency, you will have some issues with you and your party talking over each other. If you latency goes over 250ms, you definitely will have issues. This is less of an issue when there are just two of you as you will learn to adjust your behavior.

Where VoIP really falls apart is with conference calling. When there are a number of people on a call, they listen for pauses in the conversation to interject. The more people, the less time people will wait to “get their word in”. Thus, the more people, the less tolerance for latency.

Most consumers don’t make lots of conference calls, but business people do. It get’s really difficult if you use VoIP for your personal phone service and then dial into a conference call that is running over VoIP. You often end with your personal VoIP to traditional phone switching to VoIP conferencing service. You can see, latency times for the multiple VoIP solutions can become additive.

VoIP has come a long way. It use to be that VoIP meant you were tethered to your computer and there was little resemblance to a traditional phone. Now, the mainstream VoIP providers have broken from the computer-centric experience to a very familiar modern telephone experience.

The technology continues to improve and the Internet is evolving as well. At the same time, the volume of Internet traffic (music downloads, steaming video, and file sharing) is growing at an alarming rate and all of this data is competing with VoIP. There are methods for prioritizing the VoIP data but it is not ubiquitous so it doesn’t always help.

There is one more thing to consider. “What is your fall-back plan?”. Most people tolerate the fact that their cable modem fails when their cable TV goes out. When TV, Internet, and phone all go over the same connection, when you lose that connection, you lose everything. (Verizon has recently started to market to this weakness.)

So, for me, VoIP is still a “backup” that I keep in my business tool kit. I expect it to continue to grow in popularity and reliability. I’ll will re-evaluate my phone service every year or so, but given my next move to a “more rural” locale, I am not holding my breath that VoIP will be my solution of choice <grin>

[Poll=2]

The new poll is about health, lifespan, and instant gratification.

This book is now available as a free distribution under “Project Gutenberg”. Oddly enough, someone on eBay is trying to *sell* the downloadable PDF for $4.95.

It’s not “Harry Potter” but if you have an old clock, it’s interesting to sit down with the clock and this book and learn how the thing works and all of the inventions that went into it.

Warning: the text is a bit of an ego trip for Lord Grimthorpe (aka Edward Beckett).

partition the disk with four primary partitions

Source: theSalmonFarm Blog Building my Linux server - part 1

I now want to recant that recommendation. Having setup 4 servers now (mostly in anticipation of Sametime 7.5.1 for Linux), I have settled on a much more simple installation with just a root “/” and a “swap”. This is the default configuration for SUSE and is working quite well for my servers. It also means I am less likely to waste much disk space.

I’m of two minds on this question. I will admit, without hesitation, that the book I am reading would be a whole lot easier to understand if it were written in a more modern style. As a text book, I think “comprehension” and “transfer of knowledge” are high priorities. To make my point, here is one sentence.

If this can be managed with certainty, and without exposing the pendulum to some material variation of friction in the work of unlocking the escapement, wich it must perform, its motion and therefore its time must be absolutely constant, since there is nothing to disturb it.

Source: A Rudimentary Treatise on Clocks, Watches and Bells - by Edmund Beckett - pg 75

However, I could just as easily argue this is a historical text and should be preserved. The literary style of the late 1800’s impresses upon the reader a sense that the scientists, metallurgists and mathematicians described in the text, really were brilliant to have figured things out as they did. Add the fact the text was written by a rather famous person of his time and I’m convinced the text should be preserved.

If the style of the text conveys information as much as the text itself, then why are there so many English versions of the Bible? Wouldn’t the original King James be the best choice?

I think there is a case to be made for “re makes”. They do it in the movies all the time. “Oceans Eleven” was good when Frank Sinatra did it and it was good with George Clooney too.

If someone gave me an original print of “A Rudimentary Treatise on Clocks, Watches and Bells” by Edmund Beckett, I’d be delighted. But, if I could download a PDF of a modern English re-write, I’d probably read it and us it as a real reference (rather than treat it as a collectable).

I can’t believe all of these ridiculous laws designed to protect us from doing everyday things. I’d bet that nearly everyone over the age of 30 rode their bike without a helmet when they were kids; rode in the back of a pick-up truck; and went sledding (excluding those readers from Singapore, sorry). There were probably some scrapes and bumps along the way but I don’t recall an uproar that we should outlaw these activities. What has happened to our society ?!

I imagine its a combination of factors but you can bet many of them are rooted to one thing, “lawsuits”. Of course, the helmet manufactures scored on the whole bicycle thing, and politicians were running low on things to keep themselves busy in congress so why not spend 100’s of 1000’s of manhours passing frivolous legislation. I mean, they have nothing better to do ? Right ? It’s not like there is a rash of personal privacy issues to deal with; or identity theft running rampant; or ethical issues surrounding stem cell research. Those things would never happened ! Yeah, right.

Wouldn’t it be fun to watch State and national politics if they were tracked like the Nelson Ratings ? Every morning, politicians and the world could watch the tote board and see their approval rating tank when they did stupid things. Well, OK. It would be funny for a little while then we’d all get jaded and cynical and then go back to complaining and ignoring them all over again .. at least until the next election.