Ciro Santilli @cirosantilli 37

The first diodes. These were apparently incredibly unreliable, especially for portable radios, as you had to randomly search for the best contact point you could find in a random polycrystalline material!!

And also quality was highly dependant on where the material was sourced from as that affected the impurities present in the material. Later this was understood to be an issue of doping.

It was so unreliable that vacuum tube diodes overtook them in many applications, even though crystal detectors are actually semiconductor diodes, which eventually won over!

For a long time, before artificial semiconductors kicked in, people just didn't know the underlying physical working principle of these detectors. What I cannot create, I do not understand basically.

First watch: Video "Oscillators: RC, LC, Crystal by GreatScott! (2015)"

The generic tool recommendation question: unix.stackexchange.com/questions/7425/is-there-a-robust-command-line-tool-for-processing-csv-files

Simple example:output:

More verbose description:

Lots of features, but slow because written in Python. A faster version may be csvtools. Also some annoyances like obtuse header handing and missing features like grep + cut in one go: csvgrep and select column in csvkit.

A fast version of a somewhat subset of csvkit, written in C.

Build failed with undefined reference to pcre_config on Ubuntu 23.04: github.com/DavyLandman/csvtools/issues/18

Unfortunately it is lacking some basic options, like optional header + selecting column by index on csvgrep (though csvcut has it). The project seems kind of dead.

Also unclear if it allows to filter + print only selected columns.

Example: github.com/cirosantilli/cpp-cheat/blob/d18a11865ac105507d036f8f12a457ad9686a664/cuda/inc.cu

This is something worth investigating!

Bibliography:

Mostly on vintage electronics. Lots of focus on microwave, which he has worked a lot with.

Has been going wild with restoration and reverse engineering of the Apollo moon mission.

Anywhere north, including NE and NW: fenlands, i.e. marshes. Quite a few quarries as well. Extremely flat, very uniform, towns often have to be on top of small hills to escape the incessant flooding. Norfolk Coast AONB is beautiful if you take a train ride first, the beaches are very wide and many of them have few people if you avoid a few very busy spots.

East and SE: rolling hills towards Suffolk and the coast. Beautiful county, both Dedham Vale AONB and Suffolk Coast AONB.

South: first one of the hilliest nearby areas around Elmdon and Arkesden, then gently going down to the lush Lee River valley.

Southwest: larger and larger cities as you move towards London. From a train starting point, you can reach the Northen Chilterns, for some serious hills.

West: mostly flat farmland until you hit the River Great Ousse.