Livermore Night Life

So Livermore, California, has all you need for a Friday night out. There were art galleries open, and bars, and restaurants. This city has apparently reinvented itself in the last 10 years.

Some of the reinvention is a tastefully presented sex shop. I don't think they are catering to the same audience as say Berkeley or San Francisco, but not scrag end of Oakland either. A step in the progressive direction.

Also like the rest of the Bay Area there are protests. This was a pretty militant Christian group. Quite a bit of hellfire and brimstone really. I kinda like the composition with the Stop sign in there.

So a little bit of everything, and some night photography from me, something that's easier to do with a DSLR.

Diverging Diamond Interchanges

So I took one look at the front cover of this months "Roads and Bridges" magazine and thought the proverbial WTF.
 (http://www.roadsbridges.com/Diamond-de-Triumph-article8447)



It's called a Diverging Diamond Interchange. For the span of the overpass the traffic lanes are reversed, but otherwise looks like a traditional Cloverleaf. They say it's safer, but it makes the freeway on-ramp left exit, and the offramp merges into lane 1. Neither are expected modus operandi of a freeway interchange.

Call me old fashioned, but I prefer a roomy great roundabout that you don't even slow to enter.

To show it's not just a concept, here's real video of one in use.




Next week - Single Point intersections.

Cellphones

I was just tidying up around the office and I found one of our old cell phones.  It's  a Motorola Transportable phone of the late 80's, early 90's.  I put my comparatively large Samsung Alias 2 on top for comparison.
Why is it so large?  Well, all cellphones are composed of radio, battery and hand set.

This is one of two batteries in the Motorola.  Yes, the phone needed two of these!

The sizable battery compartment, with one battery removed. 

Here we have the handset, keypad on the back, and yes a two line display.   

Color display?  Of course blue backlit LCD.

 

These are some of the vintage radio I was using in Callbox applications in the day.  Left to right, Oki, Motorola 3W OEM ,Motorola OEM.  Also for reference a handset and my Samsung.  We used to be able to achieve 9600bps data over the analogue network with an MNP10 modem.  We also were authorized by Motorola to use their command interface, the 3-wire bus.

Now we have three more modern radios.  These, two Enforas, and one MultiTech are all data capable and digital. It's strange, instead of waiting 2 minutes for the modem to train we can now establish a IP connection in a mere second.

Pi Day

As you will all undoubtedly know, 14th March is Pi Day, best celebrated with a pie at served 1:59 or there abouts.