Do You Know Vail Code?
We talk about Morse code, named after its inventor, Samuel Morse. However, maybe we should call it Vail code after Alfred Vail, who may be its real inventor. Haven’t heard …read more Continue reading Do You Know Vail Code?
Author Archives: Al Williams
Minecraft in…COBOL?
When you think of languages you might read about on Hackaday, COBOL probably isn’t one of them. The language is often considered mostly for business applications and legacy ones, at …read more Continue reading Minecraft in…COBOL?
Stream Deck Plus Reverse Engineered
[Den Delimarsky] had a Stream Deck and wanted to be free of the proprietary software, so he reverse-engineered it. Now, he has a Stream Deck Plus, and with the same …read more Continue reading Stream Deck Plus Reverse Engineered
Tech in Plain Sight: Incandescent Bulbs
While they are dying out, you can still find incandescent bulbs. While these were once totally common, they’ve been largely replaced by LEDs and other lighting technology. However, you still …read more Continue reading Tech in Plain Sight: Incandescent Bulbs
Tweezers Probe Reviewed
Over the last few decades, electronic devices have drastically changed. Radios that once had point-to-point wiring gave way to printed circuit boards with through-hole parts, and now microscopic surface mount …read more Continue reading Tweezers Probe Reviewed
Pi’s Evil Twin Goes for Infinity
Most people know about the numerical constant pi (or π, if you prefer). But did you know that pi has an evil twin represented by the symbol ϖ? As [John …read more Continue reading Pi’s Evil Twin Goes for Infinity
Calling Pink Floyd
[Corelatus] said recently that “someone” asked them to identify the phone signals in the 1982 film The Wall, based on the Pink Floyd song of the same name. We suspect …read more Continue reading Calling Pink Floyd
Faster Integer Division with Floating Point
Multiplication on a common microcontroller is easy. But division is much more difficult. Even with hardware assistance, a 32-bit division on a modern 64-bit x86 CPU can run between 9 …read more Continue reading Faster Integer Division with Floating Point
Optimizing Your Linux Shell Experience
Are you familiar with huffman encoding? That’s where you pick shorter codes for more frequent letters. Morse code is the same way. Shorter characters are the ones you are most …read more Continue reading Optimizing Your Linux Shell Experience
Inside a Diamond Plant
While you tend to think of diamonds as ornamental gemstones, diamonds also have many important industrial uses, and many of those diamonds are now synthetic polycrystalline diamonds. How are they …read more Continue reading Inside a Diamond Plant