This guy explains RPN better then I ever could
354 days ago
The HP35s is the best calculator on the market right now at any price. I love mine to death.
On TextEditors
197 days ago
Many moons ago, when I was a CS student, I became interested in the editor wars. My intrest was sparked by how painful it was to edit files remotely using things like Pico or Nano. After a bit a of research I chose VI over Emacs because VI seemed more obscure and complicated, and thus I would feel smarter while using it.
While I like VIM on the command line is great, the GUI versions have always felt kind of kludgy to me. I think this is because VI was never really designed to have a GUI, it is a retrofit.
One day on reddit I was in an editor thread busily spamming out my favorite Emax jokes and I noticed there was a lot of support for an editor called Sublime Text . I decided to try it out and after a week I was hooked. After a month I had even paid for it!
Top5 things I like about Sublime Text :
#The neat little minimap on the right hand side.
#The defualt color shcheme is amazing.
#Multi line text editing!
#Super easy to turn on VIM mode.
#Works on all three major operating systems.
Wheatstone Bridge Demo
356 days ago
So I have a bad habit of picking up antique test gear from various places. I like old GR and LN stuff esp. They made the best knobs with the most satisfying click.
The build quality of this gear is very high. All hand wound resistors, beefy switch contacts, etc. Nowadays this stuff can be found for very cheep. None of the boxes in that picture cost more then $20. The 1947 GE Amp meter with mirror backed scale cost $400 when it was new, I got it for $5 and it works perfectly. The primary purpose of this stuff is so I can go down to the basement late at night and turn all the knobs and cackle like a mad scientist. However, I do occasionally find a legitimate use for this gear. This video explains how the Wheatstone bridge works.
The nice thing about this bridge is that it it gives you 4 significant digits of accuracy from mili-ohms up to mega-ohms. Few multimeters can bost the same.