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| Was Don Lancaster really a "guru"? |
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| rstofer:
--- Quote from: rhb on November 10, 2018, 03:32:50 pm --- I'd like to suggest another conditional requirement; that your grandson start a card catalog of some type on electronic media. I'd love to have an index, but now it would require working full time for a month *if* you could do a book every two minutes continuously for 8 hours every day. While she was looking for work after joining me in Dallas, my girlfriend spent a full day working on a catalog for me. Then she turned off the computer without saving the file. I never had the heart to ask her to do it over. --- End quote --- His major, at the moment, is Mechanical Engineering (I tried to get him into CS or EE but no joy!). So be it! I have the vast majority of my EE books and my personal library is probably only on the order of 200 books or so - mostly EE and CS. I buy old books for arcane things like analog computing. I bought a 100+ year old copy of Bowditch (navigation) just to learn how they used to determine time from a process known as Lunar Distance. If you have time, an almanac and can see the horizon, you can get a fix on your position. At one time, I was really into the process of Celestial Navigation. So was Apollo 13... Like you, I remember what is where in which volume even if I don't remember the details. I re-bought a few of Don Lancaster's books just to fill in some gaps in my library. Seriously, an EE really should have the Active Filters Cookbook and, just for nostalgia, the RTL, TTL and CMOS cookbooks. No, we're not going to do things that way at this late date but it's always good to kick back and reminisce. There was a time before FPGAs. And there certainly was a time before microcomputers and microcontrollers. And I was there... |
| CatalinaWOW:
--- Quote from: rhb on November 10, 2018, 03:32:50 pm --- I'd like to suggest another conditional requirement; that your grandson start a card catalog of some type on electronic media. I'd love to have an index, but now it would require working full time for a month *if* you could do a book every two minutes continuously for 8 hours every day. --- End quote --- I can suggest Readerware. It is not expensive and does a pretty good job as a catalog. It accepts input from a bar code reader so it is really fast on newer books that have the ISBN bar coded on the back cover or in the front piece. Even hand keying the ISBN is relatively quick and that catches most books published since the early seventies or so. My library is not nearly so large as yours, only about 1600 volumes, but it only took a few months of intermittent effort to get it entered. A dozen or two books whenever I needed a distraction from whatever else was going on. |
| james_s:
--- Quote from: rstofer on November 10, 2018, 02:42:01 am ---I have insisted my grandson buy "new" copies of all textbooks and that he retain them indefinitely. Since I pay for the books, it's no big deal to him. The idea, of course, is that he build a library of books he has actually used. I still have most of my college texts and I actually use them from time to time. --- End quote --- Most of my textbooks were not very good and I got rid of them long ago, the whole textbook thing is a complete racket, new revisions coming out all the time with the same content just shuffled around or altered just enough that you have to buy the new revision. I kept several of my math textbooks for a long time but gave them to the used book store several years ago when I realized I hadn't opened one in years, it's faster for me to look up something online than it is to walk into the other room and grab a dusty book. I don't know your grandson but I would be shocked if he doesn't get tired of lugging around all those books and dumps the lot after his second or third move. My generation is one of the last to really value physical books and even I have pruned down my collection, keeping only the gems, vintage or unusual stuff and some coffee table books. Any sort of modern textbook material I can find online or in digital copies that don't take up precious space and are easily searched. I now work with a bunch of millennials and they seem to view physical books as quaint relics of their parents and grandparents generation. Everything is online or e-books now, most of them don't own homes and move frequently so they keep minimal physical possessions in order to stay mobile. You see their apartment and there are maybe 2 or 3 books in the whole place, if any at all. |
| GeoffreyF:
Don Lancaster was an informative inspiration to my electronics evolution in the 60's and 70's. I built the TV Typewriter by the way. However, I think this cartoon is relevant to Guru 'ate. |
| rhb:
For any who doubt the value of Don's books: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/curve-tracer-designs/msg1988960/#msg1988960 |
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