Seems like some of us can’t post, others can’t upload pictures and others are having no problems (exhibit 1: this picture).
BTW, that test picture shows a temperature monitor powered by a Raspberry Pi which uses a scavenged remote control from a space heater to control the display, and receives signals from a remote monitoring station. Or, as they call it in Texas, a bomb.
Open thread.
Mike J
Texas will no longer teach Wuthering Heights, lest kids start thinking about Heathkit.
SiubhanDuinne
You win the day, if not the entire week, mistermix.
JPL
My sons both laughed at the ignorance of the school but they are in their thirties now. Science experiments used to be cool.
Jeffro
Jesus, Mix, what are you trying to do, get us all arrested??
Punchy
Who knew wires and some solder could cause a state-wide Code Brown?
Elizabelle
@efgoldman: Best to Mr. gulag. Ouch.
JPL
@efgoldman: c u n d gulag, Here’s hoping for a smooth recovery. I just can’t imagine, how difficult it will be but I will be thinking about you .
sigaba
Solderless breadboards are for bombs, 3D printers are for grey-market machine guns. I used to have a butt set I would use when I was doing network installs out of college, the first thing people ever asked me when they saw it was, “can you tap phone calls with that?” Also, this.
SiubhanDuinne
@efgoldman:
Wait, he’s a Yankees fan? I had no idea, I always liked him.
He comments a lot at Gin & Tacos, and is almost always to the point. Really enjoy reading his thoughts, here and over there.
c u n d gulag, if u c this, I’m wishing you a speedy, painless, and complete recovery!
redshirt
Electronics = bomb
Omnes Omnibus
Eek! A clock!
rikyrah
@efgoldman:
Hope the surgery went well, and that the therapist gets him back on his feet ASAP
mai naem mobile
C.u n d gulag is going to think hes in.the gulag for a couple.of weeks. Good luck Cund.
Surprised Texas has any electricity since all electrical stuff looks like da bomb.
SiubhanDuinne
@Punchy:
Support our solders.
schrodinger's cat
Isn’t this missing a key ingredient for a bomb, you know, an explosive?
raven
@SiubhanDuinne: INCOMING!
SiubhanDuinne
@efgoldman:
I love it when you talk all music technical.
Doug R
I busted up one Quadcopter and fried the circuit board on another (identical looking battery, reverse polarity, actual smoke). So I hooked up the one circuit board to the other Quadcopter, and after some rewiring, I have a Frankencopter. Wires and electrical tape sticking out everywhere. Very suspicious.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@efgoldman: I built a couple of those kits in the garage with my dad.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@efgoldman:
My thought exactly. Excellent!
MomSense
@efgoldman:
Sending good thoughts his way.
SiubhanDuinne
@rikyrah:
Such an ableist comment :-)
divF
@efgoldman:
c u is almost always first up with a comment at WaMo / Political Animal, and his comments are always on the money. Best wishes to him, and here’s hoping he’s back on the job soon.
MomSense
@schrodinger’s cat:
Thank you. It’s not a bomb unless it can go boom.
redshirt
Kinda does look like some kind of gay bomb, though.
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
Har.
Aleta
They can tell it’s a bomb because it’s got wires.
Also, they have to keep calling it a hoax bomb to let everyone knows they weren’t really that ignorant.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@schrodinger’s cat:
See, that’s why they had to arrest the kid — a bomb without an explosive is just a clock, so *obviously* he must have been hiding the explosive somewhere else since there’s no way it was just a clock.
/moron
I really, really hope that one of the local STEM-focused schools offering him a scholarship is serious about it. There’s no way that the administration of his current school is going to forget that they made themselves a national laughingstock, and they’re going to blame Ahmed for it.
Aleta
@Mike J: brilliant
Roger Moore
@redshirt:
I think it’s actually Muslim + electronics = bomb.
trollhattan
@efgoldman:
Ouch. At least I had mine done years apart.
C U N physical therapy soon, I hope!
Steeplejack (tablet)
@efgoldman:
Jeez, what happened? Accident? Or fixing some longstanding condition?
RK
The PTA in Texas just put out an ABP on Flavor Flav.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@efgoldman:
I will raise the perhaps stupid question of why not do them one at a time? Crutches x 2 has to be better than (I presume) complete immobility.
redshirt
@Roger Moore: You’re correct. If I can diagram that:
(M+E ) = B
CaseyL
@Steeplejack (tablet): Maybe both ankles were in really bad shape? The thing about doing one at a time is, it puts extra stress on the other one, as that leg bears additional weight.
Best wishes to c u, and hope he’s back posting again soon.
Re: Texas – Sure is full of easily-frightened people, for all they strut around playing cowboy.
PurpleGirl
@Mike J: I remember Heathkit. My brother once wanted to build a TV from them, IIRC.
PurpleGirl
@efgoldman: He mentioned being away from Internet access for a few weeks at The Mahablog. A bunch of us wished him well there. Thanks for the detail of where the surgery was; he didn’t say reason for the surgery at Mahablog.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@PurpleGirl: My husband’s great aunt had a color tv from a kit. I don’t know who built it for her, maybe her husband, although he really didn’t seem the type of guy who would get off his Barcalounger long enough to do something like that.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@efgoldman: It’s exhausting being that frightened all the time.
stinger
@efgoldman: Thanks for the information — for years I have read his comments with appreciation here and, as you say, on other blogs. Hoping for a speedy recovery.
RSR
I’ve recently started playing around with some Arduino projects (I made the LED blink!). and my son has been learning Java playing with Minecraft coding. And he’s been going to a new science club with Snap Circuits and LIttleBits.
The bits and pieces of Arduino or Raspberry Pi or other prototyping setups, and especially the ‘breadboard’ look like central casting for a “24” episode–to the uninitiated.
No real point, other than as a 45 year old white guy, I’ve haven’t (yet) been detained for my techy bits and pieces.
pseudonymous in nc
As someone noted on the twitters, neither the school nor the cops treated the project like a bomb: no evacuation, no real emergency protocols. They decided that wiring + brown kid = mock bomb meant to scare them, which says much more about what scares them (and the inputs that make that fear possible) than anything else.
Marmot
Or, as they call it in Texas, a bomb.
Yes, very droll. Some bunch of idiots in Dallas is just like all 27 million of us.
I like Northeasterners, but I find you incredibly provincial.
Seriously, why the special hate for Texas? I swear it’s just a result of it being iconic. Not like y’all don’t have idiots. You just notice the Texas ones better.
Marmot
@CaseyL: Texas – Sure is full of easily-frightened people, for all they strut around playing cowboy.
Yes! And in Alaska they all live in igloos, playing like they have 37 names for snow!
Just what the fuck is it? What’s with the bizarre Texas fixation on you geniuses of wit?
Omnes Omnibus
@Marmot: Dude, I am in Wisconsin bathing in beer and eating cheese while drinking a brandy Manhattan. Lighten up.
Oatler.
Looks like my childhood Heathkit Li’l Anarchist Chronometer!
tybee
@Marmot:
everything is bigger in texas, including the idiots?
Cermet
@redshirt: Not exactly; rather:
Brown skin with Islamic name + electronics = BOMB!!!! followed by OH MY GOD – its a bong … I mean Bomb!
Keith G
Just so ya know….
I spent years happily teaching in a Texas high school wherein twice a year students worked on a “Clock Project”. I often had proud students bringing their creations into my classroom.
So yeah there are small minded and bigoted folks here as there are in every zip code in America. And then there are a larger number of folks who make a habit of not being irrational.(For example, irrationally stereotyping a larger group based on the stupid actions of a much smaller sample.)
Keith G
@CaseyL:
Sorry genius, but if one were to stroll down any given commercial district in a Texas city, the strutting observed would most likely be done by twenty or thirty somethings wearing skinny jeans and Chuck Taylors and way too many guys sporting overly styled facial hair.
The older ones, as often as not, wearing Khakis and Nikes or Sperry’s.
Easily frightened? Some are. Ignorance does that. While their number needs to be (and is) shrinking, they are not the majority.
Again, as I alluded to above, we have our share of mindless twats and overt ass clowns, but your-over simplified construction is amazingly misinformed and lazy.
satby
@Marmot: @Keith G: I’m hosting international high school exchange students this year, and one told me that “no one wanted [to have to go to stay in] Texas”.
When your state is internationally recognized as a hotbed of stupid, people will point and laugh. See also Florida.
Keith G
@satby: My last exchange student was from the area formally known as North Vietnam – a delightful young woman who enjoyed her time in our area and our school.
That said, more than just a few foolish folks here buy into hyped stereotypes.
But full disclosure….If I were advising an incoming exchange student, I would suggest Chicago through the East Coast. It’s good to be places where many types of communities can be experienced without much travel. And it’s the region where I grew up :)
Cermet
Texans are easily frighten? Really? WE created a vast Home Land security department, suspended many of our rights all because under three thousand were killed (more are killed on highways in what, two months!)? No, Texans are not easily frighten – rather amerika is filled with a vast number of cowards who can’t see a real threat from a minor, tiny threat that resulted in a very limited number of deaths caused by a series of stupid decisions. So, we spend many, many of billions of dollars trying to protect against a tiny threat that could never kill enough people to ever justify what we have given up in rights.
NonyNony
@Marmot:
Decades of Texans shoving how great they think Texas is into everyone’s faces? They’re like Bostonians that way, and nobody likes them either.
Joel
@Marmot: [idiots] higher in Texas, though.
Not that Jersey doesn’t have its fair share. They did vote for Christie, after all.
Chyron HR
Sorry, what was George W. Bush’s job before becoming President?
Marmot
@Cermet: Jesus. Are you illiterate?
boatboy_srq
@efgoldman: I was wondering whether they’d allow A Wrinkle in Timex…
Marmot
@NonyNony:
What are you even talking about? Some Sunday late-afternoon Western with a braggart Texan? It shows you’ve adopted a stereotype and you don’t even know it.
I like my state. It has problems. Is that shoving it in your face?
Marmot
@Omnes Omnibus:
Since that stereotype is delightful, it completely undermines your point.
kc
It’s fun to show our superiority by snarking for days about this, but really, it’s a bit much to expect a non-science oriented person to look at that and know what it is.
tones
@SiubhanDuinne:
Agreed, and I love Gin and Tacos quite well though I have neglected it for a few months.
I always assumed he was a fan of the book C – D -B!
tones
@kc:
But the fact they did not evacualte [which they did at my school for any “bomb threat” proves they never thought it was dangerous for a minute, and just wanted to show that kid his “place”.
ef the police.
Rick B
@efgoldman: Thanks for the news on Gulag. He is missed, and I hope his surgery and recovery go well and do so quickly.