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skypanther | 1 month ago | on: Ask HN: Make cemeteries in cities less offensive by using virtual headstones?

There's a cemetery near me where all the headstones are mounted flat rather than standing up. They even call it a park. Though, you can't go there to use it like you would a park. I really dislike it. I have a couple of relatives buried there. It's impossible to find their graves. In a typical cemetery there are different types of headstones and you can triangulate off certain shaped ones to find your way. I hope my family doesn't bury me there.

skypanther | 2 months ago | on: Astrophotography Target Planner: Discover Hidden Nebulas

Looks nice, easy to use. Though it wasn't clear at first that I had to select "Discovery Mode" to get anything more than just well-known objects. I still got only 10 objects. I'm surprised that the Equipment section doesn't include diameter and maybe telescope type, also something about camera sensitivity.

skypanther | 1 year ago | on: Veo

What struck me about the northern lights video was that it showed the Milky Way crossing the sky behind the northern lights. That bright part of the Milky Way is visible in the southern sky but the aurora hugging the horizon like that indicates the viewer is looking north. (Swap directions for the southern hemisphere and the aurora borealis).

skypanther | 1 year ago | on: Novell – If at first you don't succeed

This brought back some fond memories of writing courseware and teaching NetWare classes at a startup called Logical Operations. We published courses that were an alternative to the official Novell courseware for earning your CNA/CNE. I'm pretty sure I still have my CNE (and MCSE) pin in a box around here somewhere. One of my co-worker's classroom tricks was to establish a network connection via ARCNet over a length of barbed wire.

Logical Operations ran their own Novell network. I recall the server would freeze up periodically. Our admin rigged up a phone line and a relay...call the number and it would power cycle the server. That way, he didn't have to drive into the office to reboot the server at night. <shakes head>

From there, I started teaching DBase courses, which led to programming, which is where my career has been ever since.

skypanther | 2 years ago | on: Agile development is fading in popularity at large enterprises

Most of my career has been at startups, but I'm at a fairly large enterprise now. Agile is very different here. It's much more rigid. Every team has an agile coach, there are rules that must be followed, there are limits on who can make decisions about certain things, we do every sprint ceremony ever conceived every sprint, all pods must follow the exact same process. There's no flexibility and little acknowledgment of the original Manifesto principles (e.g. people over process). With an implementation like this, I can see why enterprises can fail to gain as much benefit from agile as promised.

skypanther | 2 years ago | on: All arabica coffee is genetically similar: how can beans taste so different?

I can. I recently roasted up two batches of beans -- some El Salvadoran and some Costa Rican. I roasted both to a Full City (dark) roast level. They were very different. I finished the Costa Rican quickly. It was delicious. I'm struggling to finish the El Salvadoran. I'm terrible at describing flavors, but I'd say it's sour with a tea-like flavor.

There's a lot that goes into the flavor of coffee. The beans themselves of course. Brewing technique has a big influence as well. But also growing conditions (altitude, soil composition, rain/sun mix, etc.), processing (wet vs dry process, fermentation time, etc.), handling and shipping (dry or moist conditions), and probably more I don't know about.

I strongly prefer wet-processed beans (mostly south American varieties) over dry-processed beans (mostly African varieties are processed this way). I haven't tried honey-processed yet.

Green beans stay "fresh" for a really long time, but once roasted beans become stale quickly. I can taste the difference between my roasts a day or two after roasting vs days or weeks later.

skypanther | 2 years ago | on: Battery-free self-powered sensor harvests magnetic energy

I'm sure this is a completely dumb idea. But I want wireless Christmas lights. Individual little clip-on LEDs powered by ambient RF like wifi background, the ambient field from a home's wiring, or an "antenna" that you snake up the trunk of the tree to emit a field. Then you just clip on the lights where you want them. I'm not knowledgeable enough in electronics to know if this is even possible.

skypanther | 2 years ago | on: Pythagorean Theorem found on clay tablet 1k years older than Pythagoras (2009)

I took a course at the university of Buffalo in the early 80s about pre-roman examples of Pythagorean geometry in henge monuments and early structures. Basically the class was watching slide shows of the professors vacations across Europe and his photos of old ruins. Then he'd show us a line drawing of the structure and pick out what at times seemed random points that created 3-4-5 triangles. He'd exclaim 'see? They knew about the Pythagorean theorem before Pythagoras!' Our only graded assignment was to write a paper where we "discovered" a similar example. I picked a picture of some random ancient church and "found" the right triangle in it's foundation. I got an A. Definitely just an "observation" no theorum involved.

skypanther | 2 years ago | on: Black currants were banned in the USA (2017)

Elderberries make great jelly and pie. Unfortunately the birds keep getting mine before they're ripe, it's hard to find them in the wild on public land, and no one grows them commercially around me. So I haven't had either in years.

skypanther | 2 years ago | on: Speeduino – Arduino based engine management

This has me thinking, are there any similar projects for antique "dumb" cars? I have a 1940 Chevy with a simple distributor, points, timing, etc that all need tweaking now & then. When any of those are out of tune, it runs rough, starts hard, stinks, and so on. I'm not looking for performance, but more efficient and reliable operation would be wonderful.

It would involve a lot more than just an Arduino & some wiring obviously. And a lot of the car's charm is its low-tech originality.

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