Category Archives: Tools

Get in, get out, get back to work: Wes Bos on the McMaster-Carr website

I was introduced to McMaster-Carr corporation early in my postdoctoral career, now well over thirty years ago.  The firm is renowned for stocking all sorts of parts and equipment and getting them to customers fast.  I went up one floor to the rapid orders room, checked the massive catalog, filled out a simple slip, and had electrical, mechanical, and/or vacuum parts the next day.  Sometimes they came the same day if I got the slip in early.  The paper catalog is not easy to get but I managed when I started my research position at UCLA after that postdoc.  The warehouse in Santa Fe Springs enabled California McMaster-Carr to meet the responsiveness of the New Jersey operation.

Fast forward to the era of e-commerce and the firm inspires affection even from the cynical, world-weary souls of HackerNews.  mcmaster.com is simple, well-organized, cruftless, and faster than any of its competitors in the Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul market.  Consumer websites aren’t even in the discussion.  I’ve even ordered from them for my personal needs when the slightly higher prices are more than offset by the speed from order to delivery.  Youtuber Wes Bos dives into why the website is so fast, marvels at the developer team that enables it, and the management team that maintains focus on the customer’s desire to search, order, and get back to business.

Youtube Channel: Wes Bos

Virtue of Reality: Peter Dibble on Modulex

The pendulum of modern engineering has swung to asserting that digital models can always represent reality faster, cheaper, and better than any physical manifestation of it.  Mockups, prototypes, and test articles are out, “Digital twins” and augmented reality are in.  More’s the pity.  While much can be represented in CAD/CAM, the compute horsepower required to mimic the real world drains budgets as fast as it drains the power grid.  Very few have the savvy to accurately represent the range of physical phenomena in bits and then know when the model can be trusted.  The craftsmen who enabled the preceding revolutions are in retreat and in exchange we get ever increasing development times and costs despite the glowing promises of hype men and the C-suites that golf with them.

In that spirit, Oregonian Peter Dibble looks back fondly at Modulex, a Lego spinoff for architects to present concepts to their clients.  An ingenious change in dimension yielded bricks ideally suited to metric and Imperial drawing scales.  Sliceable parts, slopes, ridges, and custom colors yielded a system that grew well beyond its original intent into project management and signage.  A Mark-1 eyeball can look at, around, and  into such a physical representation and get some idea of its strengths and weaknesses.  Digital design software and Lego’s surprising hostility to the product line unfortunately sealed Modulex’s fate as a modeling tool.  The company lives on for signmaking.

Dibble’s channel is a trove of meticulously researched and well-presented histories emphasizing  the Pacific Northwest.  The Spruce Goose’s move from Long Beach to McMinnville is eye-opening.

Youtube Channel: Peter Dibble

 

A Shaft of Gold When All Around is Dark: JWST is operational

One last glorious gasp from a decayed and dead civilization.  JWST’s Mid Infrared Instrument observes Stephan’s Quintet.   What else will it be allowed to do before the American Taliban takeover?

JWST’s MIRI looks at Stephan’s Quintet. Courtesy NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute

He who keeps cool will collect (photons): Christian Ready on the JWST instrument package

Sports Illustrated quoted this Japanese proverb back in 1975 in conjunction with Cal’s championship men’s gymnastic team of that era.  The adage abides with the James Webb Space Telescope now in its halo orbit around the Sun-Earth L2 point, its optics and instruments slowly cooling to their ultimate cryogenic temperatures, the better to collect the faint signs of heat from the early universe.  Little has been said to the public about the instruments nestled in the big box behind the 6.5-m primary mirror.  This is perhaps not surprising.  There are no secrets here, just that the real science goals and the optical engineering to meet them are fiendishly complex.  Friendly Neighborhood Astronomer Christian Ready tackles the challenge, explaining where the precious photons will go and what will happen to them once they arrive.  The comment section clamors for more detail on the MIRI cryocooler which will take the mid-Infrared Instrument’s focal plane array below 7K.  Here’s to hoping for a full video on this beast, built across the hall from me, and on which I spent a couple of weeks when the team was shorthanded.

Youtube Channel: Launchpad Astronomy