Simplified one-wire transmission system

If the secondary does not have distributed capacitance which cancels the coil's self induction, then an appropriately sized capacitor should be added between the coil and ground.

Magnifying transmitter replication

Key tuning factors

Coil length must match one quarter the wavelength of the impulse frequency.

Coil capacitance, including a capacitor added to coil, must cancel self-induction of the coil.

Impulse rise and fall slopes must be as sharp as possible, possibly in the nanosecond range.

Impulse duration must be as short as possible. The duty cycle of the wave should be as close to 0 as possible.

The center tap on a bifilar pancake coil will be the point at which the output voltage is highest. The terminal goes here. (? -- is this true? Take measurements)

How to calculate the capacity of the terminal? Terminal construction? Terminal should possibly be glass, although could also be metal

How is the size and positioning of the extra coil calculated?

One wire electrical transmission driving loads

Step-down coils, wound in the opposite direction but otherwise exactly the same as the transmitter, can be attached to the one-wire transmission system to drive loads.

The AV plug and a smoothing capacitor is added to power a load.

As many receivers as desired may be added to drive loads.

The wardenclyffe tower magnifying transmitter used the earth as the one wire.

Spawning 0.8.8 released

Another minor Spawning release cleans up some log messages, the way PYTHONPATH and the location of python are determined, and adds some convenient command-line options for controlling the operation of the server. Here are the release notes:

• Added --access-log-file command line option to allow writing access logs to someplace other than stdout. Useful for redirecting to /dev/null for speed


• Correctly extract the child's exit code and clean up the logging of child exit events.


• Add coverage gathering using figleaf if the --coverage command line option is given. When gathering coverage, the figleaf report can be downloaded from the /_coverage url.


• Add a --max-memory option to limit the total amount of memory spawning will use. If this is exceeded a SIGHUP will be sent to the controller causing the children to restart.


• Add a --max-age option to limit the total amount of time a spawning child is allowed to run. After the time limit is exceeded a SIGHUP will be sent to the controller to cause the children to restart.


• Instead of just passing the PYTHONPATH environment variable through to the children, construct the PYTHONPATH from the contents of sys.path.


• Instead of just trying to run 'spawn' with /usr/bin/env when restarting, just run sys.executable -m spawning.spawning_controller, making it more likely that the controller will run correctly when restarting.


• Add a --verbose option and change the default startup procedure to not log the detailed dictionary of configuration information.

Python binding for Mongrel's http11 parser

Last weekend I wrote a Python binding for Mongrel's http11 parser. I will probably integrate this into eventlet.wsgi and Spawning at some point, but it's not really that much faster than eventlet.wsgi's existing pure python http parser, so I'm not in a hurry.

I decided to release the code on github in case anybody else is interested in playing around with it in the meantime. This is the first time I've used git to commit and push. So far my impression of git compared to darcs and hg is very good. git seems easy enough to use and is very fast. There's not a compelling reason to use it over hg except for the fact that pretty much everybody else in the world seems to be leaning towards git.

Evolution of Codependency in Antagonistic Relationships

I'm reading Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, & the Economic World, a most excellent book about complexity. This quote caught my eye:

In defending itself so thoroughly against the monarch, the milkweed became inseparable from the butterfly. And vice versa. Any long-term antagonistic relationship seemed to harbor this kind of codependency. (p 74)

This made me realize something about the nature of governments and war: Governments evolved to protect resources and people from the threat of outside invasion. An organizing structure was required to create and maintain a fighting force capable of resisting invasion from neighbors. However, it's now obvious that governments are in a codependent relationship with war: If there were no more war, then there would be no need for a government's ability to organize a fighting force. Therefore it's in a government's best interest to ensure that war never ceases.

However, just like any other codependent relationship, a lot of denial takes place. I doubt most politicians would come out and say that a prime function of government is to create war. Actions speak louder than words, though, and it's clear that in the thousands of years of human civilization there have been plenty of wars.