I ALMOST bought a pre-planted pot of Peonies yesterday, but decided against it, my black thumb will kill anything lately, including hostas. I'll just enjoy other people's flowers.
Working in the semiconductor industry SEMs were a staple tool to help debug chip failures.
I wasn't a failure analysis engineer but those guys had lots of really cool tech at their disposal. I used to hate being informed about field failure from certain customers knowing there would be immense time pressure to find the root cause of the problem - Hey, you are selling us 100 million devices a year and we have one failure after it has been in the field for 6 months...... don't make us stop our production lines. Having said that I used to relish the challenge (from a chip designer's perspective) to help find the issue and pacify the customer. SEM helped a lot, as did FIB (focused ion beam) work. Imagine etching a 0.2um trench thru your diatom so you could see inside.
Colin
James Markus wrote:
Colin, I was driven to it by the culture taking a turn into chaos. I need order, facts, truth, and love to breath. One place laws remain unchanged are diatoms who live in geometric marvel glass houses. Feeding birds and squirrels - these are ways for me to look at the world with the distopian crap stripped away. If I could afford an electron microscope I would use it.
Jim
DeltaSigma wrote:
Working in the semiconductor industry SEMs were a staple tool to help debug chip failures.
I wasn't a failure analysis engineer but those guys had lots of really cool tech at their disposal. I used to hate being informed about field failure from certain customers knowing there would be immense time pressure to find the root cause of the problem - Hey, you are selling us 100 million devices a year and we have one failure after it has been in the field for 6 months...... don't make us stop our production lines. Having said that I used to relish the challenge (from a chip designer's perspective) to help find the issue and pacify the customer. SEM helped a lot, as did FIB (focused ion beam) work. Imagine etching a 0.2um trench thru your diatom so you could see inside.
A boyhood friend's little brother Eric sat on their living room floor with a hammer and bashed the family bake-a-lite radio into little pieces. The mother and father were theater actors - always sing Frank Sinatra tunes - blew a gasket. "Why, Why did you do that?" Eric calmly said; "I wanted to meet the little people inside the radio." That's tenacious curiosity, and I never forgot it.
Hunting down the root cause of a failure is something I really can appreciate, and I hope this doesn't horrify you. However, in light of the Eric story - I decided I wanted to meet the little people inside a burnt out Pentium III 866 mhz cpu. When I read up on how to properly open it up, and it taking days to weeks to free the silicon - I got out my hammer, and kitchen blow torch, and got my look see within minutes. If I wanted to see entire cores beautifully photographed I can go to Apple's site anytime. This was me looking with my primitive biological Leica compound microscope, and an adventure. I hope your chip designer sensibilities aren't too upset, but it literally was trash from my perspective. Torched outside, utility knife flick, 6000 grit sand paper left over from refinishing a tub, some safe mild acids, and a quick bath in an ultrasonic cleaner late (about 15-20 minutes) I got this
I couldn't tell what part is what, but you could. It is amazing that human's make such small complicated switches/transistors - and much smaller now-a-days.
NightOwl Cat wrote:
I ALMOST bought a pre-planted pot of Peonies yesterday, but decided against it, my black thumb will kill anything lately, including hostas. I'll just enjoy other people's flowers.
How cold does your area get, Laura? Clearly not cold enough here as they were tried in 2023 but died off. Give them a short, at least you'll know you tried.
DeltaSigma wrote:
Working in the semiconductor industry SEMs were a staple tool to help debug chip failures.
I wasn't a failure analysis engineer but those guys had lots of really cool tech at their disposal. I used to hate being informed about field failure from certain customers knowing there would be immense time pressure to find the root cause of the problem - Hey, you are selling us 100 million devices a year and we have one failure after it has been in the field for 6 months...... don't make us stop our production lines. Having said that I used to relish the challenge (from a chip designer's perspective) to help find the issue and pacify the customer. SEM helped a lot, as did FIB (focused ion beam) work. Imagine etching a 0.2um trench thru your diatom so you could see inside.
Nikon must make more of these small form factor lenses. They are lovely to use on these small mirrorless bodies. The only improvement I'd like on the 40 is to have a little more resistance on the focus ring. Otherwise, lens is great. Enjoy it.
It can get quite cold here, though lately not as cold as the first year we were here, Jan of 1994 we had two straight days of -25°F/-32°C. With the hostas, those were the third attempt, they lasted me about three years, dying off slowly. I'm done.
I've never had peonies though.
SiMuMe wrote:
How cold does your area get, Laura? Clearly not cold enough here as they were tried in 2023 but died off. Give them a short, at least you'll know you tried.
The bluebells are in full swing at the moment.
I screwed up the aperture. I thought I was at f/11 but must have knocked in whilst leaving the path.
Not enough DoF and mid-day flat light wasn't the best. Excuses out of the way.
NightOwl Cat wrote:
It can get quite cold here, though lately not as cold as the first year we were here, Jan of 1994 we had two straight days of -25°F/-32°C. With the hostas, those were the third attempt, they lasted me about three years, dying off slowly. I'm done.
I've never had peonies though.
Peonies need up to 40 days of less than 4 deg C(~39F) temperature to flourish. We have maritime climate and it never gets that cold here. So, I understand why they didn't thrive.
I'll just enjoy other people's flowers.
