userse31

[userse31]

An electronics nerd complains about engines

Over in the electronics industry where I "call home" there's this term called "jellybean part".

A "jellybean part" is a basic component that is interchangeable with another. Resistors are a great example of this.

A resistor from one company isn't different or have weird quarks compared to one from another company, no! You have the specifications of the part (form factor/size, resistance, voltage range, max power dissipation, etc) and that is IT! Nothing more, nothing less.

The same principle applies to many more complicated electrical components like voltage regulators and serial EEPROMs.

There's also something called the "E series of preferred numbers". E12 is a common series: 10, 12, 15, 18, 22, 27, 33, 39, 47, 56, 68, 82.

The closest example in the automotive world would probably be bolt sizes and <i>maybe sparkplugs?</i> It defines a limited series of parts where you can still build anything but factories don't need to produce 10 trillion different things that are <i>slightly</i> different to each other, and one's junk drawer isn't filled with weird oddball crap like 10.57 ohm resistors.

The only outliers to standardization in electronics I can think of are PCB designed and VLSI IC's. To some extent inductors too. High voltage transformers can be pretty weird.

----

Sometimes I like to "visit" other professions, especially if it's something I got for free of the side of the road.

Unlike electronics, it doesn't seem like there's a similar stigma against putting small engine lawn equipment in the trash. The "Covered Device Recycling Act" here in the Pennsylvania Capitalist Liberal Republic talks about stuff like COMPUTERS! And SMARTPHONES! And yeah as a kid I noticed a drop in people throwing electronics out in 2013, but <i>small engine stuff?</i> Nah, that's basically untouched. (I'd like to imagine that law applies to <i>electric lawn equipment</i> but I'm not holding my breath.)

I mean, it's not like small engines contain toxic petrochemicals like pils, fuel, and plastics, all which can leak into the environment and raise hell. But hey, what do I know? I'm just an autist with a Rats of NIMH fanfiction.

Tangent aside, I enjoy the occasional engine tinkering. It's a nice little pallet cleanser you know? So I'm always excited to see something like a weedwacker on the curb.

And as a fellow nerd/DIYist, it's always interesting looking at a mechanic's junk pile, just like looking at an electronic's engineer's junk pile.

But then..... <i>Project time comes.</i>

-WHY IS NOTHING COMPATIBLE!?-

Being American I'm naturally dirt ass poor. Because of this I can't just <i>buy new parts.</i>

The level of standardization in the electronics industry? Well it really comes in clutch for my situation. A large portion of the parts I need I can pull off the pile of scrap boards I have.

But small engine stuff? No.

If anything, engines are SIMPLER when it comes to basic principles.

-Mix fuel and air.

-Make it burn.

-Use that to make a thing move.

I'm massively oversimplifying stuff, but you get the point! In electronics we learn ohm's law, ferromagnetism, capacitance, radio waves, strange dark magic crystals which are also known as "semiconductors", it just goes ON AND ON!

Oh, and different circuits do completely different things.

Ignoring ECU's mechanics largely have to deal with physically putting stuff together and taking it apart, which isn't easy because many automakers have uh.... "Creative" ideas on how to build a car. They also have very "creative" ideas like interference engines where bad timing means the <i>pistons and valves slam into each other.</i> It's a good thing cars don't set timing using toothed rubber belts!

Yeah uh.... Crap design is everywhere.

The parts all so the same basic function, so <i>WHY THE HELL ARE THERE SO MANY PARTS!?</i>

Why can't I take the carburetor from a weed eater and put it on a STIHL? Why can't I take the recoil off a Honda lawnmower and put it on a Briggs and Stratton? <b>WHY!?</b>

These are all pretty much the EXACT SAME small engines, why isn't ANYTHING interchangeable!? <b>FUCK!</b>

And don't get me started on the consumables! Gas and oil, I understand those, but then you have the WEIRD STUFF.

Carburetor cleaner, break parts cleaner, fucking..... <i>oxygen sensor cleaner!</i> What the fuck happened to good old plain acetone?

Then there's all the one off stuff. Seafoam, different types of automatic transmission fluid, 10 trillion different types of silicone for gasket making, fuel additives, 2 stoke fuel, I go into the store and all I can think is "WHAT THE HELL AM I LOOKING AT?"

Like, <i>is the world going to burst into flames if you put "MAZDA M5" transmission fluid into a Honda Accord?</i> It's all just these really weird MYSTERY CHEMICALS!

Like, what's stopping the engineers from designing a transmission that runs off SAE 0W-30? Is there a law of physics that says "you can't design an automatic transmission to work with standard motor oil"?

There's also crap like diesel and gas variants of motor oil. WHY!?

So I go look stuff up, and there's ALL OF THIS DISCORD ONLINE. No consensus! No standardized mass line! NOTHING! Only 10 million anecdotal stories where's someone's grandmother's brother's cat uses XYZ. (Thank GOD for Project Farm, that guy is AWESOME!)

There's even discord with regards to fuel grades!

Okay explanation for non-Americans: Here in the US our gas pumps mix different liquids when pumping gas. There are buttons on the gas pump that select <i>octane rating</i> which instructs the pump to slurp up different amounts of the liquid for different ratios.

What is octane? It's the rating of gas that measures how much the gas resists pre-detonation. (Engine knocking)

Does this all matter? Uh....................

I understand the core science behind it, but like..... I always go for 87 octane because it's the cheapest.

Everyone I know does the same: They go with 87 octane because it's the cheapest! Not once have I or anyone I know had an issue because of that.

Even for small engine stuff, zero issues. Hell, I have some ~6 month old gas my grandpap wanted to toss, but I took it instead and it runs the lawnmower just fine. (Gasoline is like milk, it "spoils" with age, it's octane rating decreases with time.)

People also like to complain about ethanol or "corn juice" in gas. But honestly? Ethanol gas hasn't given me any problems, nor do I know anyone that's had problems with it.

The only time gas is truly bad for an engine is when it starts going 🪄WEIRD🪄 Like, becoming gummy type of weird.

Or when the gas's octane drops below the threshold where the ECU managing the complex engines in a car or truck or something pisses it off. The ECU will probably try and "hunt" for the correct fuel/air ratio and complain about knocking.

Engine stuff is just..... WHY ISN'T IT STANDARDIZED!? Standardize your stuff automotive and small engine capitalists! Fuck.....

[userse31]

Qwerty's Guide to Gambling: Coin Dozer Algorithm

Qwerty's Guide to Gambling: Coin Dozer Algorithm (Tumblr)

Alright, so I recommend first looking for dropped change both around and underneath the machine, and inside the deposit shoot, especially for coin dozers (or "Quarter Games") installed in bars.

Basically, you'll have buzzed people playing these things whose hand-eye coordination is impaired, so they'll be dropping coins everywhere, overlooking coins jammed into the corner of the deposit area, etc.

Remember: Only play when sober! You become stupid when drunk.

----

These machines can take multiple types of coins, so as an abstraction, we're going to <i>count the number of tokens</i> not the raw monetary value.

First, we have our amount of tokens. This will be set to <i>the amount of coins we start the game with.</i> In layman's terms: The amount of change in your pocket.

<code>unsigned int token_count=starting_tokens;</code>

Second, we need to set threshhold where, when our amount of coins drops to this point, we stop playing the game.

<code>unsigned int minimum_token_count;</code>

Where "minimum_token_count" is a value in the range [0,starting_tokens]. In laymens terms: You don't want to waste all your money!

An example: You start with 8 tokens, but you want to keep at least 4 tokens. So when your token count during play drops to 4, you stop playing.

(Everyone reading this is probably going "Why is this loser autist-splaining common sense?" lol.)

Third, set our threshold where, when our token count reaches or exceeds this amount, we quit the game. This is our <i>profit threshold</i> and is here to prevent us from <i>pissing away what little good luck we get.</i>

<code>unsigned int profit_threshold;</code>

Where "profit_threshold" is a value in the range [starting_tokens+1, UINT_MAX].

Example: We start with 8 tokens and have our profit threshold being set at having a total of 10 tokens. We get lucky, so on the first play the machine returns 6 tokens, so we now have 13 tokens. 13 is greater then 10, so we quit playing.

Alright, let's write an extremely autistic C program that demonstrates the algorithm (I don't like pseudocode. There's like, 70 trillion different interpretations of it, which ironically makes it more confusing then standard code.)

<code>

unsigned int token_count=starting_tokens;

unsigned int minimum_token_count=/*something*/;

unsigned int profit_threshold=/*something*/;

void spend_token(){

token_count--;

....

token_count+=tokens_deposited_by_machine;

}

int main(int argc, char *argv[]){

 do {

 spend_token();

 }while((token_count&gtminimum_token_count) &amp&amp (token_count&ltprofit_threshold));

}

</code>

Setting the initial value for "token_count" is easy, but determining the values for "minimum_token_count" and "profit_ threshold" is tricky.

The safest value for "profit_threshold" is starting_tokens+1, as that would mean whenever our total coin count is larger then our starting amount we end the game, even if it's just one coin more.

And that isn't a bad strategy as when these machines do pay out, it's often a decent amount as the way the coins bunch up at the edge, they sort of "interlock" with each other, causing the coins not directly overhanging the edge to fall into the payout chute, leading to fairly chunky payouts.

But there's a nonzero chance for payouts greater then one coin to be deposited, so by having such a low payout limit might prevent us from receiving a larger profit.

One possible solution to this is to change "minimum_token_count" and "profit_threshold" on the fly. If we get to a point in the game where we now have more coins then when we started with, it might be advantageous to update those values so that we can continue playing for a chance at a bigger profit, but still ensuring we don't significantly eat into the profit we just got.

Likewise "minimum_token_count" has a similar problem. We don't want to put <i>just one coin in</i> and not continue if we don't immediately get a payout. Oftentimes it takes putting a couple coins in so that the coins on the playboard become agitated and pushed forward enough in order to obtain a payout.

Fortunately unlike most gambling machines, we can <i>see the internal state of the machine!</i> No microprocessor here, only coins pushing up against each other! It's all deterministic! (Well, technically everything is deterministic because the <i>universe itself is deterministic</i> bit SHHHH!!! Don't tell the free will believing losers that!)

Another thing is that with these pusher type machines is that the slider, which allows for rough positioning for where the coin should fall, does give us some ability to manipulate how the coins on the playfield behave. It's not much, but it is something.

And finally: Try messing with the button that pauses the pusher's movement. It might be called something cheesy like "skill stop". Other then as an accessibility feature (eg, you have poor fine motor skills or have difficulty timing things) this button is pretty useless. It's not hard timing you putting the coin into the machine up, and it isn't a time save either because these usually don't react immediately and only activate when the pusher is dead ahead or behind.

But..... The small idiosyncrasies of <i>how</i> it's implemented might be useful. Maybe one machine doesn't stop the pusher as gently as it should, causing a stronger then normal deceleration on the coins, possibly causing some to fall. Idk, it wouldn't hurt to experiment.

Oh, and sometimes you can win something that aren't coins. Usually whoever maintains the machine puts "bonus prizes" on top of the coins. Those are worth considering.

----

Of course there's various <i>unscrupulous</i> crap you could do, like nudging the machine or tilting it forwards. We call those "tricks" <i>asshole behavior.</i>

First: It's cheating. Unless this is in a big chain casino, your just screwing with some petit-bourgeois small business; Second: These machines usually have balanced mechanisms that activate when tilt, preventing payouts; Third: It's an excellent way of getting kicked out.

[userse31]

Macaroni and Cheese

Both Bud Light and Kraft Mac and Cheese have two things in common:

-They are popular here in the United States.

-The people who like them are MASOCHISTS!

If I wasn't autistic I'd probably eat literally anything. I mean, for fuck sake, my mom forgot she had a massive tub of vanilla greek yogurt in the fridge and it sat there for a year.

But it passed the smell, taste, and small bite test, so I ended up eating the whole thing. If I had to guess yogurt being made via <i>spoilage</i> bacteria meant <i>pathogenic</i> bacteria couldn't establish a beachhead, so it stayed safe. Don't.... Don't do what I did there please.

Baloney, raw "SPAM" meat, and hotdogs are disgusting. The textures are just BAD! But I heard fried "SPAM" kicks ass, so I cooked some up and sure enough, it kicked ass! Also got rid of that nasty texture! Corn dogs are delicious too.

Stringy cheese is also unpleasant. It gets all stretchy and weird in your mouth, and then it touched the back of your throat and it <i>makes you want to gag.</i>

None stringy melted cheese? Perfectly fine! Grilled cheese is also pretty good. (When hot, not cold.)

Oh, and then you have the microwave. It's really only good for leftovers and canned/frozen meals.

The microwave wrecks havoc on the textures of foods, especially anything bread related (Microwaved pizza is NASTY). For the love of Stanley the Cat do your cooking with ANYTHING ELSE in other cases. If you want to cook some frozen fries but only have either a microwave or a magnifying glass on a cold cloudy winter's day, choose the magnifying glass. The microwave is THAT bad.

And to think when microwaves where new the manufacturers where all like "iT's JuSt LiKe A rEgUlAr OvEn! YoU cAn CoOk/BaKe AnYtHiNg!" ugh.

Oh, and there where microwavable cake mixes from "Betty Crocker". My only guess is that the people there where on LSD, just like everyone else in the 1970's....

----

But both Mac and Cheese and Beer doesn't have any real texture. Beer, well, is a drink, and it's impossible to ruin pasta (except via food poisoning).

But the flavor.... Oh god the flavor.

Bud light is this horrible nasty bitter piss water.

"Oh, you just don't like beer then."

No, I've had some Miller Light and some petit-bourgeois brewery canned stuff. I wouldn't say beer rivals some off brand Dr. Pepper, but I like it! Beer has a nice soft bitterness to it and the ethanol compliments it very nicely! It's a complex, albeit somewhat acquired taste.

Now onto the Mac and Cheese.

Alright, so when growing up my family only, and I mean ONLY, got "Kraft Mac and Cheese". And I didn't like it.

Thought it was the cheese! You know the thing where I don't like stringy melted cheese? Yeah I thought I didn't like cheese in general because of that and I got flack because of it.

So here comes my senior year of high school and for lunch one of the options is that generic mac and cheese. For us Americans school food is LITERALLY the F-Grade output of our agricultural and food processing industries. The capitalists would <i>rather feed our children slop instead of anything actually good.</i> That's how bad the situation over here is: Not only do you have to <i>pay for your school lunch</i> but it's also overpriced industrial waste and rejects.

There was also that incident where I got food poisoning from the """"Mexican Pizza"""" back in 1st or 2nd grade and ended up having to leave school early due to vomiting. School Mexican Pizza "PTSD"! Fun...

Needless to say, I did not have high hopes.

But it was actually good. Just like that "Cat in the Hat" game on the PS2 I went "IT'S ACTUALLY GOOD!?"

Slight existential crisis later and I realize it wasn't Mac and Cheese I hated, but instead <i>Kraft Mac and Cheese</i> that I hated.

It's this horrible partially bland flavor that has a hint of artificial cheese taste to it. It's deeply unpleasant, but edible if you try <i>really</i> hard to ignore the flavor. Adding extra ingredients merely makes it tolerable, you're essentially polishing a turd.

So fuck you Kraft for making me think I hated Mac and Cheese in general!

At the very least, it seems like even my older sibling has finally wisened up because I've been noticing he's mostly been getting stuff like Velvetta instead of Kraft.

[userse31]

TwoKinds' Has Too Many Characters

No seriously, it's getting ridiculous!

Somewhat recently I've read TwoKinds. Entirely. As in, <i>the whole thing.</i> Catching up to it's current state in ~2 days. Probably could've crushed it down to a couple hours if I did NOTHING else but read the comic. Didn't do that though, because that would be a miserable experience. (Looking at my phone screen for so long, and the ADHD itching to swap to something else.)

Anyway, it's good! To broadly summarize so far:

Trace Legacy, former "Grand Templar", pulls a western version of Joseph Stalin, seizing power and committing VARIOUS warcrimes. But then the mask god thing "rm -rf /" his brain, completely removing all of his memories. As a result, Trace undergoes character development, becoming a better person. He also relearns his past, and goes about correcting it.

I'm suddenly remembering those "25 Word Summaries" I had to do back in school. Essentially you read some <i>text</i> and then you <i>write a summery.</i> Simple, right? Well, no. Our teachers where ADAMANT with that word limit. Exactly 25 words. <b>EXACTLY.</b> No more, no less, not even a single FUCKING character more or less. There was also weird rules regarding specific contractions "not counting", so you spent 70% of class trying to make the damn summery satisfy the requirements.

There's also the literary analysis based problem where 25 words is <i>just an awkward size for a summary.</i> It has both too much and too little data entropy. Too small to allow any real detail (Trace gets his memory wiped, meets Flora and Keith, mechanisms of dark magic, racial tensions between Humans/Keidrian/Basitins, Kieth banishment thing, ...), but too big to allow a broad general summery (Trace gets his memory wiped, becomes a better person, and confronts his past.)

<a href="https://libguides.greenriver.edu/ld.php?content_id=42876346">Found it!</a> Could of sworn we had to nail EXACTLY 25 words! But I recognize that sheet as being nearly IDENTICAL to the ones I got at school (except for the lack of a grid), but it says right there: "Write a 25-word summary of the short story. (YES - only 25 words or less!)". Also allowing summaries less then 25 words makes the assignment MUCH more reasonable!

Uh.... What was I talking about? Oh yeah! TwoKinds!

My critique stems from the contradiction between how <i>Tom</i> does writing vs how <i>I</i> do writing. Tom's writing is <i>Character driven</i> but my writing is <i>"Systems" driven.</i> World building, essentially.

For fuck sake, I'll spend hours on end walking around brainstorming how the Rats of NIMH would prefer sliding doors over hinged ones because rats are quadrupeds and have evolved to "nudge with their head" as opposed to primates, being bipedal, evolved to "Push, grab, and/or pull with their hands". I'll also spend hours going over <i>Exclusive Economic Zones</i> and fishing rights. (Salmon is a big business!)

I like covering foundational stuff, it's both fun and my strength when it comes to writing. In comparison whenever I do character based writing and go back to review it just feels.... Odd.

Tom is pretty damn good at character based writing. The characters in TwoKinds <i>actually read like people!</i> Heavy emphasis is put on stuff like relationships (both platonic and romantic), how one character reacts to another character doing "a thing", characters judge other characters and try to predict/judge what the other thinks. Characters also grow and change.

This is good! But Tom..... Can't seem to help himself from keeping characters around.

There's this bit very early on where Trace, Flora, and Kieth all get intercepted by a duo of assassins (Zen and Natani). The assassins get pushed back but Natani tags along because he was seriously wounded and... Honor codes? I don't know. I like Natani, but honestly? He really didn't need to tag along.

As Trace and friends leave the Basitian island Kieth's state appointed assistant and Madeline just.... <i>Sneak onto Eric's ship!</i> This feels like a bit of an on-the-fly retcon. Kieth, being the ambassador to the Basitian state, makes sense from a story aspect: Contrast the strict Basitian cultural norms with Kieth's loosened values. But Tom might of inserted this after the ship left dock so he made him sneak onto the ship off page.

I don't think I need to explain why "stowawaying" your foreign public officials is a really REALLY bad idea.

And then there's Madeline. Comic relief character who also sneaks onboard off page. She works well as a comic relief! <i>Until she gets a more serious backstory later.</i> Just.... WHY!?

How about Red and friends? Honest to god I thought Trace's old friends where one time side characters.

Fun fact: No.

Instead, Red and friends become the <i>B Plot.</i> Sythe inadvertently pisses his superior officers off and <i>WHOOPS NOW HE HAS TO JOIN TEAM RED AND TAG ALONG!</i> Yet another permanent side character my dumbass autistic brain has to keep track of!

Then Zen is tasked with assassinating "Team Red" for reasons I now forget. But <i>WHOOPSIES!</i> We can't let anyone die and the mental link with Natani so now Zen tags alongside Team Red.

And then Clovis shows up. He turns into a dragon, unlinks Zen and Natani, and then get's his ass kicked. I am aware of the <i>lore</i> behind Clovis, but his inclusion is somewhat oddball from perspective of the main story.

As of the 19th of December 2024 there's this giant ass main cast consisting of everyone from Eric's old slaves (including his sex slave), Rose's magic ghost thing, to the entirety of Team Red.

----

But why am I complaining? Well, I feel like Tom could've focused more on world building.

As part of the current Canis-Sapian war the humans and tigers team up. The Grand Templar emancipates their tiger slaves and the tigers agree to not go to war against the humans (or maybe they ally with the humans).

This.... Doesn't make any real sense. Why would the tigers (who are Keidran) ally with the humans (who oppress them)? Why would the Grand Templar emancipate some of their slaves?

The way I read it, the Templar arose out of the contradiction between humans enslaving Keidrans, they are somewhat an arm of the state, an "A Special Body of Armed Men". (If you can't tell, I'm pulling a Marxism Leninism on TwoKinds.)

The Templar's economic underpinnings are the ruling, oppressing, human slave owning class, and we see evidence of this in the comic! It's members are hostile to Keidran, some of them own slaves, and ultra reactionaries like old Trace might be disliked but are <i>tolerated</i> and even allowed to wield power if it serves the interests of the ruling class.

For the Templar to make such limited reform there must be a damn good reason for it. Unfortunately the comic doesn't explore this, which is really unfortunate, it would make an excellent plot line!

Perhaps revolting slaves pressured the state to emancipate some of them to calm the situation down. In response the slave owning class enact a "Capital Strike". The masters refuse to release the slaves, the surplus created by the slaves is withheld from the markets, causing economic shock via artificial scarcity. This whole mess leaks over to the "Tiger Territory" and the Tiger Keidran threaten military intervention as a result.

It's a missed opportunity to flesh out the world more.