The perfect companion to the French countryside.
The perfect companion to the French countryside.
Evaporating pcb traces turned out to be a symptom of a failing rectifier and the latest update is that this may not be the end of it either.
Repaired two of my five broken-and-fragile-but-still-great FG504 Tektronix signal generators. I repaired a third but then it grew a new problem in the output amplifier similar to the problem also shown by a fourth. There are 12 transistors in those output amplifiers and in each case it is a bit of a puzzle to try and understand which one is the cause of the problems.
This week I was experimenting with a principle that was explained for the first time *exactly* a century ago, to the day.
#PiezoCrystals #ErichGiebe #AdolfScheibe #79 #SystemsThatMatter
About five years ago I had six working Tektronix FG504 signal generators, most of them quite seriously repaired after I managed to find eight of them, but with only one working as-found. They are fantastic but also fragile (and 40-50 years old): yesterday I was again down to only one working generator: time to start on those postponed repairs.
A very interesting rabbit hole that opened up when I wondered when and how the piezo-electricity of ammonium dihydrogen phosphate was discovered.
Back to the books.
Part of a great, intriguing and layered installation by Ade Darmawan in the "Magical Realism; imagining natural dis/order" exhibition in Wiels in Brussels. Smelled great too.
Tried something and it didn't work at all (yet).
Finally succeeding in farming some crystals that are (more than) large enough to use as seeds.
Yet another recent arrival, an offprint of three articles from 1928 by Hélène Metzger. #HélèneMetzger #HistoryOfChemistry #SystemsThatMatter
The "Liberate the Machines!" book is starting to be available so I made a page for it even if it hasn't had a launch moment yet.
https://www.joostrekveld.net/?p=2781
#LiberateTheMachines! #DialoguesWithMachines #SystemsThatMatter #AnalogComputing #MediaArchaeology
Finally all the hardware is coming together, so now the question becomes whether these parts will cooperate with eachother and with me, and whether this is actually fit for purpose ?
And this recent arrival almost completes the collected works by Hélène Metzger.
Very slowly I am learning (by failing) how to grow single crystals to use as seeds for larger ones. But I find the shapes of composites are much more intriguing, and I'm really curious how their inner seams may affect signals going through them.
Crappy picture of a very interesting talk by Bart Zantvoort on quantity-quality transitions in Hegel and Marx, as part of the "Technology, Nature, Politics" Summer Research Seminar hosted by Yuk Hui and Milan Stürmer at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam.
This is news to absolutely no one but it is crazy how much stuff you can dissolve into a small volume of water.
built some more crystalfarming hardware !
So for some reason this took ages, but finally the controlling part of the crystal farming hardware is tested and working.