I went to IKEA today and found this: the UPPDATERA for 5 USD. It looks like it is intended for knife storage, but look how well it works to keep a few Slide Rules handy at your desk! #sliderules#sliderule
@deborahh I get overwhelmed by notifications and clutter myself — modern apps are very noisy (literally and visually) and needy (please pay attention to ME!).
That's why I often make my windows fullscreen on my laptop, so that I won't see anything else, and why I use web sites rather than apps on my phone whenever possible.
My DIY circular slide rule side project — an excuse to improve my knowledge of CSS3 transitions and SVG — progresseth apace.
There is now a simple version (just multiplication and subtraction) and an advanced version (square and cube roots). It will also animate the solutions to random basic problems on either.
Coming soon:
advanced problems
DIY printables and instructions for assembling your own
Did you get a $15k quote for #HeatPumps swap from your central #methane furnace? Are heat load calculators really still this hard to use or are sales bros just not doing the work? We had cardboard #sliderules that did it in the 80's. LMAO just wait for the coldest day and measure it @TechConnectify 🤣
@TechConnectify@trachelipus yeah unless it is a multi-zone system, you've practically reinstalled it by the time you've cut the lines and pressure-tested both sides of that. Whoever can't find the leak hasn't bothered to take the refrigerant out and test (there are often valves on the outdoor unit that trap the initial charge inside but I'm not sure if they're considered re-usable, they could stop using it for long enough to gauge which side of those valves it's on, assuming it leaks if off.
Airplane altimeters over-read in colder-than-normal temperatures. If you were on a plane before the digital age and it had to clear a ridge, this is how the flight crew decided whether they were actually high enough to make it.
You don't need to have an E6B analogue flight computer (though it's fun); just hit any key to see the complex steps — one really hoped the navigator hadn't skipped their morning tea or coffee. 🙂
And yes, it was dangerous when propeller planes were already flying close to their service ceilings and margins were slim. The Allies lost nearly 600 cargo planes and over 1,600 crew supplying the Chinese army from India during #WW2 (to the Himalayas. not enemy fire).
Among my hobbies, probably the weirdest one is circular slide rules. I was introduced to them 22 years ago when I started flying lessons, and have since branched out from the E6B to non-aviation circular rules. I like them because
@nyrath The DC-3 (designed exclusively using #slideRules) has never crashed due to a design defect, according to people I talked to at McDonnell-Douglas in the late 1990s. You can't say the same for Boeing's latest aircraft. I suspect there are two reasons for that:
GIGO: People trust the output of computers and skip common-sense sanity checks.
The DC-3 was overbuilt (to be on the safe side), while modern CAD allows companies to cut things closer to the margins for extra $$$.
Another of my favorite slide rules, the Aristo No. 867U System Darmstadt. This rule has a pleasant graphical design, and it's a very legible pocket rule. I like that it includes log-log scales, and the P scale is an interesting feature you don't see on a lot of rules. Having the trig scales on the body of the rule adds a wrinkle to using trig scales on a slide rule. You also don't see a BI (1/x²) scale on a lot of rules. This is also me experimenting with Kbin's Microblogging. #sliderules
@_picklefork_ Like I say, I’m just experimenting with Kbin to see how things work, what gets better engagement, etc.
I meant for /m/Sliderules to be a continuation of r/Sliderules. I considered setting up a server for a slide rule community, but I don’t think it would get the exposure or discoverability that a social site like Reddit or Kbin gives it.
There really doesn’t seem to be an online slide rule community except for r/Sliderules. I don’t want to divide r/Sliderules, but I do want to give the community an alternate gathering place for those who don’t want to be on Reddit.
We’ll see what the future holds for the slide rule community. This might not get enough traction to make a difference. It also might be the beginning of something big!
I sure love slide rules. Endless things to relearn about logarithms. Beautiful to behold, pleasing to use and play with. Fun to collect. My favorite more modern one has to be the venerable Pickett N600-ES (it’s been to the moon! Kind of!), which I keep on me much of the time. Here it’s telling me that my voltage regulator was dissipating 5.6 watts before it died. #SlideRules