Ignition coil circuit

Here`s an ignition coil circuit in falstad circuits.

555 timer examples in falstad circuits

Few 555 timer chip examples built digitally in falstad circuit builder.

This one is Schmitt trigger with 2/3 and 1/3 Vcc hysteresis.
Check out extra sliders and see how current through led changes.

Simulation is here - http://tinyurl.com/y4rnjs4o


Another one - LDR logic board. Similar, but without hysteresis as threshold pin is connected to stationary 10k resistor, so the output is passed on at strict threshold level chosen by adjusting the variable resistor.

And the simulation - http://tinyurl.com/y6l7blt2


Here is a monostable circuit. Use switch as a push button and the LED will stay turned on for a certain time.

http://tinyurl.com/y6o47oxw

Telnet and ssh from cygwin on windows xp in virtualbox

Another way how to play with shell commands.
By default new cygwin is not possible to install on Windows XP.

1. Get a cygwin installation which suppors windows xp

https://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2016-11/msg00071.html

2. Create shortcut for cygwin installation file and add -X (*capital X) in target field.

3. Use fruitbat mirror where to get files from

32-bit ftp://www.fruitbat.org/pub/cygwin/circa/2016/08/30/104223
64-bit ftp://www.fruitbat.org/pub/cygwin/circa/64bit/2016/08/30/104235

4. Add wget from mirror

5. Backup cygwin1.dll from /bin folder

6. wget apt-cyg

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/transcode-open/apt-cyg/master/apt-cyg
chmod +x apt-cyg
mv apt-cyg /usr/local/bin

7. install telnet using apt-cyg (telnet is in inetutils package)

apt-cyg install inetutils

8. install ssh using apt-cyg (ssh is in openssh package)

apt-cyg install openssh

9. Enjoy!

That string is date or float?

Got an interesting situation where I had to distinguish if the piece of string is float or date in Python 2.7. No problems to do that when there is dateutil.parse library in Python. But in my case the tricky situation was that piece of string which actually is float, can be interpreted as... date.
So,  I came to solution - let there be two separate functions.
Checking if the string is float is straightforward.

def is_number(s):   
   try:   
    float(s)   
    return True   
   except ValueError:   
    return False   

Checking if the string is date - first of all, I check if it is a float. And if it is - lets return False.

 def is_date(d):  
   if is_number(d):  
     return False  
   try:  
     parse(d)  
     print parse(d)  
     return True  
   except ValueError:  
     return False  

And that`s it.

Ridiculously long wave.

Menmnonics. Anode VS Cathode

How to remember which of those is positive and which is negative?
Triple N could help.

aNode Not Negative.

How to download videos from facebook or vimeo (or youtube or any other service)

I hate long "how to" videos.
So here are my versions of how to easily save videos using just a web browser


Facebook video download steps:
1)open video page
2)change to mobile version
3)play the video and save it using right mouse button option


Vimeo (youtube and many more service) download steps
1)copy the video link
2)paste it in some service (keepvid or ssyoutube or savefrom.net)
3)download it