All these things

I always have to look up how to wire an iambic paddle to a 3.5mm or 6.5mm TRS (tip, ring, sleeve) jack and which paddle is which. I’m left handed and have over time taught myself different left handed and right handed paddling so what I’ wiring to what is easy to get backwards.

You want the dits on the thumb, and the dahs on the fingers. And on the connector, the tip pulled to ground makes dist, the ring pulled to ground makes dahs, and the sleeve is the ground.

Here’s the table to explain this:

Symbol	Left handed	Right handed	TRS Connector
dits	right paddle	left paddle	tip
dahs	left paddle	right paddle	ring
ground	–	–	sleeve

Ideally I’d wire all my paddles the same, and that should be to use the right-handed setup — more common, then adjust to reverse the paddles in software. This to allow swapping paddles and avoiding confusion.

Link to another good reference on this from AD6DM

Something I’m experimenting with… consciously slowing my thoughts and speech — for a couple of reasons or occasions:

• In the late evening, close to bedtime I slow my speaking and slow my thinking to prepare for sleep. I don’t mean zoning out, I mean just slowing down thinking and speech — and thus breath as well. It also is nice and helpful to sit in front of a fire, or turn the lighting more yellow/red, or turn the lights off or down. Very relaxing and leads naturally into sleepiness.

• In the early morning before stuff kicks off, and at spots later in the day, slowing thinking helps to bring me back down from the stressy speed of full on work or life. Again, this is not stopping thinking or zoning out. Keep at it, but slow down. There’s a quality improvement here in thinking too, when done a bit more slowly. And it feels great.

New Normal (RadioLab podcast)

Stories around the possibility of change — temporary and permanent. Listen in the player below or see the website above.

Operant Conditioning Chamber aka Skinner Box (Wikipedia)

Slot machines and online games are sometimes cited as examples of human devices that use sophisticated operant schedules of reinforcement to reward repetitive actions.

Wikipedia

Roblox sounds awful for young kids (twitter thread by @Arumi_kai)

It appears that many all-ages games have dodgy content and programming. Not really surprising, but it is easy for parents to just assume that somebody is actually trying to moderate content. Doesn’t look like moderation is fit for purpose.

Wikipedia: Incompatible_Timesharing_System

Computer operating system built by MIT AI Lab – notable for interesting principles of openness, collaborative approach, development of hacker culture. For example; adding a available-to-anybody system command to crash the computer to help take away the temptation of hackers trying to find a way to crash the system. Led to emerging early programming hacker culture and principles, and ideas around free and open source software.

Zen and the art of Radiotelegraphy

Ebook by ham operator Carlo Consoli, IK0YGJ. I think this is the best description of why and how to learn to use Morse Code for telegraph and radio communications. Suggests meditation before periods of practice.

PiDP-8/I – Hardware emulation of digital PDP-8 including front panel

Includes a front panel with proper switches and blinking lights.