danielsenhwong.com

There is something about seeing a city on your own, if even for only a day, that can completely change your life.

I have that feeling about today. This has only happened once before, and eerything that followed was amazing.

This post was written after I read comments on a Seattle Times article on the failure of I-1033. http://bit.ly/2haRLs

As with many things I learned about growing up, there’s a significant difference between the idea of a democratic society, and reality.  In the ideal democratic state, or even the ideal republic, every voter is an informed voter, who casts their vote with full knowledge of the issue at hand, and in the best interest of the society as a whole.  This is not the case.

If such an ideal were to be reflected in reality, none of Tim Eyman’s ballot initiatives or any similar “tax liberation” measures would collect enough signatures to make it on the ballot.  For example, I-1033.  It may have been defeated in this year’s election, but many political analysts have said that that may be due in part to the attachment of Tim Eyman’s name to the measure, casting aside the fact that this kind of measure inhibits the ability of the state to provide adequate basic services.

I-1033 would have limited any increase in state and local government revenue to inflation and population growth, with any excess being returned to the taxpayers in the form of a property tax break.  Washington doesn’t have an income tax, so sales and property taxes are levied instead.

The problem with this is that it would commit all levels of local government to a path of perpetual decline.  Maybe that’s the point.  If the revenue raised by various levels of government cannot grow faster than inflation or population growth, but it shrinks in response to economic downturns, it can only become smaller.  Have a relative on state health insurance, in public school, or drive on any road built and/or maintained by the state including interstate highways? See the connection?

Too many people are selfish, narrow-minded, and short-sighted — and it happens to the detriment of our society.

I’m very confused as to why my blog suddenly received 40+ hits a day starting the day after Halloween, but okay. 286 views for my “Windows 7, and Disabling Windows Live Messenger Automatic Startup” post. Amazing.

Examining the posted schematic, PCB layout, and parts list for the Word Clock at Instructables, there appear to be several inconsistencies.  I believe that this is due to the fact that the project was revised a few times after the schematic was drawn. Improvements

• It should be possible to swap out the PIC16F877 that Doug used for a PIC16F887, which has the same pinouts, with minimal changes to the code, should you decide to rebuild his clock without any modifications aside from upgrading the microcontroller.  And added benefit of using the 887 versus the 877 is that the 887 has a built-in oscillator with a default frequency of 4MHz, so an external oscillator is no longer needed.

Inconsistencies

• The parts list supplied by Doug lists the power regulator as a 78L05, whereas the outline on the PCB layout is for an LM7805.

I had a few other things in mind, but I originally drafted this post a while ago, and now no longer remember what else I was going to write.

I just installed Windows 7 Professional on my desktop and Windows 7 Home Premium on my laptop.  Both computer are now running faster than they were under Vista and XP, respectively.  I don’t know exactly what Microsoft did differently this time, but they did it right.  Vista and XP didn’t run this quickly even after clean installs.

In any case, I installed Microsoft Security Essentials as antivirus software on both, partly to test it out, and I’ll move my Avast license over if I can once I’ve migrated over from Vista.  No complaints yet.

I also installed Windows Live Essentials, which is a suite of programs, including Windows Mail (formerly Outlook Express), Movie Maker, Photo Gallery, and a few others.  One of the “others” is Windows Live Messenger, which just like MSN Messenger before it in XP, starts up automatically when you boot up your computer, and it’s annoying as hell, especially considering I don’t plan on using it.  So, to disable it, follow these steps:

• In the search box at the bottom of the Start menu, type “msconfig” to bring up the System Configuration utility.
• Click the “Startup” tab.
• Find the “Windows Live Messenger” entry, and uncheck the box to disable.  I sorted the list by Startup Item to make this easy.
• Click OK, and you’re done!

I should not need to send out e-mails like this:

Several issues have come up in the cell culture room lately that need to be addressed:

• Dirty hoods: The working surface inside of the hood must be sprayed down with 70% ethanol and wiped both *BEFORE* and *AFTER* use.
  • I have noticed that the working surface of one of the hoods has consistently been left dirty with dried media spots and the UV light turned on.  The UV light alone is not sufficient the decontaminate the hood.  Most recently, the surface of the hood actually looked even worse under normal fluorescent light.
  • Bleach left on the metal surfaces of the hood will lead to corrosion.  This is not a reversible process, and the parts are expensive to replace.  Clean spills immediately.
• Open hoods: The sash on the hoods need to be fully closed for our safety once the UV light has been turned on.
  • I want to preserve my vision and also not grow tumors.
• Vacuum traps/waste flasks: Bleach must be added to these flasks to neutralize any organisms within, *especially* before being emptied (down the drain with copious amounts of water).
• Unlabeled PBS & media bottles: If you open a bottle, you are responsible for it.  Unlabeled bottles are effectively a waste of valuable and expensive lab supplies.
  • I do not have confidence in any bottle that has been opened but was not labeled with someone’s initials and dated, and therefore will not use them.  I also cannot tell if anything has been added to the media or not, and again, will not use it.
• Empty serological pipet holders: It is everyone’s responsibility to refill these when the pipets are running low.
  • With the exception of the 1mL and 2mL pipets, an entire bag of pipets will fit in each compartment.  Please don’t just refill with only enough for you to continue working.
• Empty 70% ethanol spray bottles: It is also everyone’s responsibility to refill these.
  • Matt and I have made up many bottles of 70% ethanol, ready to be used to refill the spray bottles.  Please use them.

The cell culture room should be kept as clean and orderly as possible in order to minimize the risk of contamination, and to make cell culture work as fast and efficient as possible.  It is therefore the responsibility of every member of the lab who uses the culture rooms to maintain the space, regardless of rank and position in the lab.

- Daniel

K: “She writes little notes about everyone in her Contacts list — you should see what she wrote about you!”

Me: <nods> “Mmhm.  Maybe.”

I didn’t look.  I assume she trusted me not to when she let me use her computer.  Besides, if I don’t know what she actually wrote, I can pretend it says anything I want it to.

Since that day, I’ve believed that it says what I have to tell her will be well-received.

I have only ever used Outlook on a consistent basis twice. The first was during my internship at Amgen, and the second is now here at Children’s National Medical Center.

I tried to use Thunderbird in college, and it worked well in the beginning. Once I started to use Gmail, however, it was clearly less efficient, and since Gmail introduced themes, the AJAX-based webmail interface of Gmail is too good not to use.

I do appreciate Outlook, though, so long as people know how to use it properly.  One very useful feature comes from its integration with a calendar, and the ability to invite attendees to meetings, events, etc.  This was done very effectively at Amgen, and not so much at CNMC.  My PI only just learned how to do that, which is good, but to be honest, the meetings I forget about are not the ones with her.

The things that both Outlook and Gmail do well seem to be related to the fact that while people want tools that will do everything, each specific function still needs to be segregated.  I don’t want to look at my calendar, my documents, and my e-mail all at once — but I do want to be able to if I need, and I want edot be able to switch between them quickly.  I also want to move something from my e-mail to my calendar or my documents easily, with as few dialog boxes as possible.

One annoyance I have with Outlook is is someone send me a meeting reminder as a normal e-mail and not an Outlook invitation, I haven’t figured out a way to easily add that to my calendar without switching between my Inbox view and my Calendar repeatedly.  Of course, as I’m writing this, I just noticed I need to hit Ctrl+Shift+A.  Yup, that will work.  Nevermind.

A while ago, Sumeet and Ashley came across a clock which displayed time using words rather than numbers.  It’s nice, but expensive at €885 or €1,099 for the new stainless steel version.

Nice, but not €889 nice.

Someone named Doug from Australia (?) came up with an Instructable detailing how to build your own Word Clock for significantly less money, though it may take some refining to make it pretty.

I don't know Doug or Megan.

This guy Doug also redesigned the faceplate for the clock to include both his name and I’m assuming the name of his significant other, Megan.  Since I already plan to change the circuit, I’ll probably change this too, since I don’t have any good friends named Doug or Megan, and certainly not a Doug or Megan who I’m both friends with and are significant to one another.

Proposed Modifications:

It seems that the new version have four extra LEDs, one at each corner, to provide more accurate time.  The original clock could be accurate to within five minutes, displaying something like, “It is five past one”.  The new clock should keep track of exactly which minute in that five minute interval it actually is, e.g. 0 = x:x0 or x:x5, 1 = x:x1 or x:x6, 2 = x:x2 or x:x7, etc.  This should be relatively easy to implement — the easiest would be to use one of the pinouts from the PIC microcontroller to send a digital signal to either a series of transistors that would essentially count to five and reset.  Since I don’t have a whole lot of experience designing that kind of a circuit, the fastest way for me would probably to use a shift register to virtually expand the number of pinouts and address each LED for the minute counting individually.

You can't turn it off.

David suggested that an extra button be added in order to disable illumination of the clock by the LEDs, in case you know, you wanted to actually go to sleep in the same room as that clock.  This would maybe need a pusbutton connected to a comparator that would be connected to an input pin on the micrcontroller, then using one of the pinouts from the microcontroller connected to a transistor to turn on and off the power connection for the LEDs.

In addition, the original clock has 110 characters in an 18″x18″ square frame with a fairly large border around the text area.  I’m guessing each letter in the text area has a square inch to itself, for a text area dimension of 11″x10″ (WxH).  A problem I see with the clock made according to the Instructable is that there are a few more letters, 117 total, in what seems to be either the same or a smaller area (likely smaller), which results in some light leakage between and around characters being backlit.  Therefore, sufficient spacing between characters for dividers to segregate the various words from one another will be necessary.  One possible root of the problem for the Instructables clock is spare PCB panels were used as baffles, and if these spare pieces were etched to remove the copper first, then they would be translucent, leading to light leakage.

Cost Issues

The single largest component cost for this project would probably be the circuit board — turns out they’re really expensive, either to have printed or even if you’re going to use a generic board and do all the wiring yourself.  Looking just at the circuit board needed to mount the LEDs for the display, the costs are pretty high, and this doesn’t even include the etched circuit board used as a face for the clock, or the controller board.  For example, this 10.5″x10.5″ circuit board would be perfect as a surface to mount the LEDs and necessary transistors and resistors, but it’s $62, or $1.78/sq. in.

It is also possible to etch your own board, and at least for the display portion of the clock, this would require something 10″ square or larger.  Digi-Key has 12″ square unpunched, copper-clad boards starting at $19 single-sided, 1 oz. copper, or $21.50 for double-sided.  The price goes up significantly for pre-punched boards that are copper-clad.

Thinking about this more, it should be possible to shrink the face of the clock, as long as the size of the letters were shrunk as well, which would also reduce the cost quote a bit.

In any case, the third circuit board option would be to design it with some CAD software and have it professionally printed, like from any of these places: barebonespcb.com, expresspcb.com, or batchpcb.com to name a few.

Why use screw terminals?

It seems the best option would be to divide the project between hand-wired parts on a board and a professionally-printed board.  The controller board should be professionally printed, and the LED backing for the clock should be wired by hand, with ribbon cable used to connect the two halves via the screw terminals, or better yet, a pair of sockets.  The face of the clock could be etched as before, though I’m sure there’s a better way.