We're back!

Sorry all, we've been on Holidays and now we're back.

I have a couple of projects going on but one is "secret" and the other is... trash... I'm trying to make art out of trash (or making less valuable trash out of more valuable trash).
The secret is something for my loved one (that's why it is secret), the trash one is a mini-wind generator, another of the projects involves LEDs, batteries, Solar cells and a jam jar and some other bits and pieces... Something like this.



I've noticed that postings are running low, at one per month.. I'll try to increase that this month to two... as any statistician would tell you, "it's a 100% increase"!! (and this one doesn't count, I promise!)

Some other projects in my head are around analog electronics, I've studying a lot of transistor circuits (band-gaps, differential pairs, current sources) and special op-amp circuits (integrators, analog computers). I'll try to post something on the matter later.

I've been unable to stick with the "cult of done" motto, 15 days is almost nothing in my development cycles. I have a lot of "diaper change" in between and it's hard to get some spare time during the week.

Meanwhile I also lost my beloved Rotring Quattro... two months after the blog post! Now I can't get used to the new one... it was my precious... I got a "cheap" (read not cheap) Parker Multi-pen Executive for replacement... The Lamy 4pen only comes with a 0.7mm pencil and I can't write with those, they're just too thick, kind of grocer's pencil...

Well back to work and I'll write soon..

Pen Life - Rotring Quattro

When these pens came out I could not afford them, they costed about 50EUR (in today's money something like 80EUR) and they looked great... Geeky and Engineer like. As soon as I started working and received my first engineering salary I bought one. Recently I found one (new old stock) in Epay... here are the two, side by side, check the differences...


There's another difference that I didn't even remember... when I bought it the finishing was black matte and kind of "rough" or "sand" paint, with 15 years of use that is all gone.
One not so good side of the pen was that the main writing refill would not last long enough (during meetings I tended to write a lot, not anymore though) and the marker pen was "inconsistent" when you wanted it to write. (here's a product review for a product that does not exist)...