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Quorten Blog 1

First blog for all Quorten's blog-like writings

When searching for another subject “when news becomes old,” I had some interesting search engine suggestions, so I decided to pursue it. This is what I’ve found.

Signs that your body is too acidic. Salts come into your body that make it acidic from the food that you eat. Fruits and vegetables tend to be alkaline. Meat, dairy, grains (especially white), and sugar tend to result in an acidic pH. Sweating, i.e. from physical exercise, reduces acidity. But not too much sweating, because then you could get a salt imbalance, and hence you’ll need saltier foods. Grains are great for this, chances are you’ll need more energy at the same time you need more salt due to doing intensive physical labor. Drinking more water, of course, also neutralizes pH.

Normally this is a good thing, if you do intensive physical labor, you’re going to be sweating them out and will need salts replenished. But the problem is that our modern lifestyles have changed but our diets have not. So Americans tend to be acidic.

What are the negative effects of an acidic body? Your body will reduce bone mineralization to neutralize the acid and pull away minerals from your muscles, making you weaker. Also, your brain will not function as efficiently… of course we know the extreme cases of drinking salt water can result in hallucinations.

20191029/DuckDuckGo when news becomes on your body
20191029/https://www.thealternativedaily.com/signs-your-body-is-too-acidic/

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So, recently I was looking around at Ubiquiti Networks. Are they really all that great? Well well, I was not short of impressed when I looked at their product offerings in greater detail. In addition to their excellent Wi-Fi access points and IP cameras, they also provide point-to-point visible light communications, switches, routers, and a UPS with only 24 V DC output. Their net gear runs U-boot and Linux, via the AirOS firmware image. So, it’s pretty much what I want, except that is proprietary software and proprietary drivers sprinkled in there.

Alas… there may be a caveat emptor in their UPS offerings. They may only provide battery discharge, not battery charge, and it is expected that chemistry-specific equipment (lead-acid polymer, etc.) be used for charging. Also, unlike the seasoned UPS vendors, this UPS does not appear to provide any surge protection at all, not even the equivalent of a PC “surge protector” power strip.

20191028/https://www.ui.com/
20191028/https://dl.ubnt.com/datasheets/edgemax/EdgeRouter_DS.pdf
20191028/https://dl.ubnt.com/ds/EdgePower

Unfortunately, Ubiquiti Networks started off with bad faith when it came to providing the corresponding source code to their software, and it took quite a bit of push before they finally provided it as they must per the GNU GPL license terms.

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So I was wondering, how effective do people actually build friendships starting with someone met at a party, which they might not have certainty of meeting again?

Failed search.

20191028/DuckDuckGo how effective can you build friendships meet at parties

On the other hand, I found this interesting article on building friendships as an adult that compares it to dating. That seems to be a common theme, as I’ve seen in a previous similar article, as I’ve stated in a similar previous article on the subject. Well, yeah, but I have my suspicions that the tendency to be slow at building friendships is more common among non-tech people than among tech people. Because everything moves faster in the tech field.

But, what is particularly interesting about this article is how the author stated that she peaked in social terms at age 5. Wow, it’s quite an exciting read, that one part.

20191028/https://www.scienceofpeople.com/how-to-make-friends/

So, you wanted to know how to build an AppleTalk Raspberry Pi bridge to the Internet? Here it is, I found the information when searching for a different topic. Also, I’ve found a URL to the Inside AppleTalk documentation and some other useful AppleTalk information.

20191026/https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/58137-appletalk-net-cable/&tab=comments#comment-621400
20191026/http://www.applefool.com/se30/
20191026/https://www.macip.net/macippi/
20191026/http://www.tmetz.net/os/Apple/Inside_AppleTalk.pdf

In the old days, people had to use an expensive Shiva FastPath router box if they wanted to connect a Macintosh to the TCP/IP Internet proper.

20191026/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FastPath

Yes, I have been working with vintage computers a bit, and by extension, vintage television technology for the sake of using it as a display. This question has come up several times in my mind. Why isn’t vintage television technology valued the same way vintage computers are valued? I think it comes down to how much real work most people got done out of the old technology. What is most surprising is that intage computers, despite there not being as massive of a market for them, seem to be a lot more abundantly available than vintage televisions. By all means, it is definitely a difference in attitude.

A lot of innovation has happened in the computers, and they have drastically shaped the world as we know it today. But it is also true that the innovation television technology, though slower, has also drastically shaped the world as we know it today, so really, why aren’t they valued as much? When you really pry and prod apart at this a lot, yes, the answer is clear, it is the differences in the attitudes of the people behind the tech that is what matters, not merely the abundance of the tech itself at the time when the technology was prime in current manufacturing production and commercial sales.

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Recently I was reviewing television video standards, so I just had to visit the Wikipedia articles on the subject and read about the fools who sit on the other side of the television. This is what I found, again. Again, I reiterate, because this is important!

20191024/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television
20191024/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_consumption

How much time Americans spend watching television… surely people who watch a lot of television have trouble getting a boyfriend or girlfriend, regardless of whether they watch dating or romance things on the television, wouldn’t they? Well, that’s an inconclusive conclusion to draw.

20191024/DuckDuckGo do people who watch a lot of television have trouble getting a boyfriend girlfriend

Elsewhere on the Internet, I found some other interesting information about the fools who. On one hand, by finding an article about “how to get a girlfriend” with mention of “television” in it, it just had to have a few vibes of American culture sprinkled into its advice.

20191024/https://www.wikihow.com/Get-a-Hottie-Girlfriend

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In the process of trying to figure out how I can interface video with the Megascreen 3 video expansion card in my Macintosh SE, I’ve done a bunch of research on video signal standards. So, here it is.

First of all, information on the ECL video standard, which was used on Sun and Apollo workstations. It’s almost the same as the Megascreen 3 DE-9 connector, but not quite. The logic levels match, 5 V TTL, but pin assignments don’t quite match.

20191024/ECL video signals
20191024/https://allpinouts.org/pinouts/connectors/computer_video/ecl-video/
20191024/https://web.archive.org/web/20100103055725/http://www.monitorworld.com/Cables/video_standards.html

This looks like a good ECL to VGA adapter. It appears to use active circuitry, so it can handle odd-ball signals. Then again, it is designed specifically for the Atari TT, so I’m not sure if it is sufficiently general for other systems.

20191024/DuckDuckGo ecl video adapter
20191024/https://shop.inventronik.de/index.php?id_product=28&controller=product&id_lang=2

Interestingly, there was an Atari workstation built that also used ECL video.

20191024/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_TT030

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Ah, yes, this is interesting. Vintage Computer Festival Mid-west, it’s in Illinois.

Also, another interesting point from the FAQ. No printers in the free exchange pile! Why? It’s not a hard and fast rule, but printers are generally very hard to give away. Unless you plan on using them for scrap for other projects. Ah, good to know. I’ve already accumulated a few old printers and scanners to use for deconstructing to salvage parts, so why not go further?

20191024/https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/57921-major-setback/
20191024/DuckDuckGo vcf mid-west
20191024/http://vcfmw.org/
20191024/http://vcfmw.org/faq.html

Interesting website I found, “Wikipedia Refurbished.” Basically, a fork of Wikipedia that puts a greater emphasis on visual styling, of which Wikipedia is criticized to be frozen in time, possibly never having an update come.

20191024/https://wiki2.org/en/Macintosh_SE
20191024/https://wiki2.org/