AdSense One Year In
I started using AdSense ads in my various Web pages here on Feb. 16, 2006. It's been a year now, and a closer look has been instructive. (See my February 22, 2006 entry for a summary of my thoughts going in.)
My original idea was to see if a writer can make money on the ad model. ( Read more... )
I hadn't perused your homebrew gallery before, but I was interested to note your use of double-sided PC stock, which is the same way I have breadboarded video circuits for many years. Video doesn't work well without a ground plane, and in fact, a simple piece of wire makes a pretty good LP filter, if you're not careful ;)
Many years ago, there was a surplus place in Mountain View, CA where I purchased dozens of pieces of double-sided stock about 12"x3" for next to nothing. I then used an old shear to slice a good stock of 12"x3/8" strips. These became voltage rails, and when chopped into squares, were also used as circuit nodes that could be isolated from the plane. I initially used hot-glue to tack these down, but as video is necessarily a low-impedance game, I later began using 10M resistors as supports, too.
I still have a few old circuits packed away that were built in this fashion, and they're surprisingly rugged, though they often need some "reshaping" when I want to fire them up.
I wonder how few kids never think of dabbling in electronics, now that Heath is but a memory.... My first radio was a single-tube superhet, and I had no clue how it worked, but my father designed it for me, and we worked together on its fabrication. We bent aluminum, wound coils, and had a great time. Though I didn't learn much from that radio project, I learned how to use basic test gear, and that was key to my later launching myself into a video career.
Bill Meyer
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What are the RF characteristics of hot glue? I've got a glue gun here and have wondered if the glue would be too lossy to use at VHF.
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From my years in television broadcasting, I have learned to avoid RF -- a guy could get hurt! Besides, I prefer my voltages low, and not oscillating ;)
I do recall (with pain) the experience I had with back-EMF on a 120VDC relay coil, however! A suppression diode could not be used, as this was in a switcher using something called "hysteresis switching". As I understood it, the idea was that in a one of n crosspoint selection, the matrix was set up so that when you selected a new coil, all coils were initially disconnected, but the field collapse time prevented the selected relay from dropping out, or some such voodoo. In logic circuits, I'd call it a miracle race condition. ;)
Then there was the time I got 800VDC on my fingertip while exploring a color vidicon camera...
So I try to stick with logic voltages.
Bill Meyer
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