No, not that one, although it’s a perfect example. No, this one:

A pentagon only has to have five sides. It doesn’t have to be symmetrical.

Anyway, a bright guy has discovered that the above shape can be tiled so as to completely match up and cover a plane, voila:

It seems there are only 15 pentagons that can “tile the plane” as above, with no gaps. The search is on to see if 15 is the final number. There are no hexagons, septagons, octagons, nonagons or higher sided shapes that will tile a plane. Fascinating.

Once again all this is courtesy of that marvellous on-line newspaper, The Guardian. As you can tell, I’m a big fan. I am an on-line subscriber – you can read it for free, but I feel I should pay so I paid about $100 for an annual subscription. Good value, in my opinion.

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I have the Navman MyVue Drive GPS navigator. The web site and literature say “free maps for life”. Oh yeah? What is this??

See the fine print?

Lifetime Free Maps. Only $129.

How the bloody hell is $129 free? What bullshit!

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What a rotten, sleazy, dishonest, untrustworthy government we have oppressing us at the moment. Federal or state? It doesn’t matter, it applies to both. Both Liberal-National coalitions, both as bad as each other. Both make any kind of promise or commitment that they think voters want to hear at election time, both never intend to honour their pledges. How can anyone seriously believe Abbott or Barnett? They tell lies! Neither intends to stick to his promises!

I’ve said before, but I’ll repeat, I don’t care about same sex marriage, it’s of no importance to me. But when 60-70% of the population are in favour of changing the law, Abbott blocks it because of his own personal prejudice. What a prick.

Barnett: he’s wrecked the WA economy. It will take decades to undo the damage he’s done to the state’s finances. This is not just my opinion – read the articles in the press. Now he’s refusing to release reports on the proposed new highway through wetlands on the south of the river. Why would he refuse? Draw your own conclusions.

The good thing is that, like the Republican Party crash and burn in the US, it’s making it more and more likely that this will be a one term federal government, and that Labor has a good chance in WA in the next election. Look at the WA Liberal Party – they simply do not have anyone capable of being the next premier. Hah! Ha ha ha. They do not have any quality ministers capable of taking over from Grandpa Barnett. What a joke.

Ah, enough of this. I feel sick at the injustices being done in our name. Australia is being labelled a “don’t care” country in the global warming mitigation drive. Abbott wants coal – why? Because the coal and mining industries pay bribes, that’s why. Big bribes. Draw your own conclusions.

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I posted the faulty Yamaha tuner back to the dealer in Sydney today; a real shop, by the way, found on-line but a real Australian shop. I spoke to them on the phone.

As I suspected, it cost me $35.40 for postage. I said to the guy on the phone that I wasn’t keen on paying this cost, and he sounded glum as I think he saw it as wiping out his profit. He didn’t say no, but … However, because I paid by PayPal, it looks as if I can get a refund of my return cost from them, PayPal. That’s handy. Let’s see if it works.

We had discussed the colour of the tuner on the phone – black or “silver”, i.e. brushed aluminium. I thought I’d ordered silver, but black arrived. No problem, either was OK. But the guy in Sydney said he has lots of sliver in stock but no more black. OK, send me a silver.  While I was boxing it up, I noticed that one end of the box has Silver printed on it, and the other end has Black. Huh? No wonder there was a mix up.

I’ve emailed them to say it’s coming and included the following:

so far, in the past 12 months –

• Postage of this item [the Yamaha tuner] at a cost of $35.40

• Postage to return a failed OCZ Vector SSD drive to OCZ in Taiwan $56

• Postage to return a faulty (2nd hand, sold with warranty) model train loco to UK firm $18
• Postage to return a wrong fit Metabones lens adapter to Hong Kong $26
• Return of a Pioneer BluRay player to JB HiFi Clarkson twice due to intermittent failure to turn on.
• Return of three failed coffee capsule machines – two to Woolworths, one to Coles.

Am I jinxed? It seems to me that quality and reliability is slipping in manufactured goods. Obviously due to the pressure on manufacturers to keep producing newer models faster, and because everything’s now made in China, to lower standards. That’s the problem – we keep wanting newer, shinier models faster and cheaper, and we’re suffering the consequences.

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Re the missing TV antenna, one of my mates raised an interesting point yesterday: there’s no TV antenna because the whole suburb is fed from a master antenna via a cable! Now that he mentions it, there does seem to be an absence of antennae in the streets around me. I hadn’t thought of it before. This is a planned suburb, I guess.

Well, if that’s the case, where’s the master antenna and how is it distributed? How do I find out? Who do I talk to? I don’t know. More work needed.

Another one! My Yamaha DAB+/FM/AM tuner arrived yesterday. I read the manual (yes), plugged it into the power and switched on. Nothing. D.O.A. That’s Dead On Arrival. Won’t even power on. Dead as a dodo.

Damn! First it was the OCZ SSD drive failure, costing me $53 to return it to Taiwan, for which I was never reimbursed. Then it was the Pioneer BluRay player that wouldn’t power on, costing me two trips back to Joondalup to have it replaced. Then it was the pair of lens adapters that interfered with the camera body, that cost me $25 to return to Hong Kong, again not reimbursed. And now this. Add to the list the three coffee machines that have each failed within a few months. I’m getting tired of this!

At least this Yamaha tuner came from a Melbourne hi-fi retailer, but it still means I have to re-box it and post it pack to them. That’ll cost me at least $35 I’d say. Grrrrrrr.

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I’ve exceeded my monthly 20GB download limit with iiNet. Holy cow, I never dreamed I’d ever use that much in the first two weeks of the monthly period, but I have. It just means I’ve been throttled to 256Kb/s, which is way above what I used to get with wireless internet at Trigg, that black hole of TV and data reception.

Part of the problem is that Windows 10 is downloading – 2.7GB worth. I’ve got three computers to download it for, but I’m only allowing one to do it at a time. I’ve had error messages already, which are utterly meaningless. Even Microsoft doesn’t seem to know what the error means. However, the download has picked up again and I’m letting it do it at 4am when I have 20GB of off-peak data available at full speed.

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Well, the car deal might be happening next week (it’s the actual car above and below). I talked to my good mate Barry, the former John Hughes car salesman, about the car at John Hughes’s yard in Victoria Park (Perth) and he volunteered to enquire for me.

Result: he’s haggled the price down $1500 and we’re going to go and see it next week sometime. Yes, there might be a spotter’s fee payable to Barry, but that’s fine with me. He helps me out frequently, for example by driving me to and from the airport and the cruise ship at Fremantle. That’s worth gold to me. He’ll pick me up and drop me back here.

This is a 5.5L injected V8 with every conceivable safety feature and item of electronic wizardry. It’s a 2006 model, way ahead of its time and has only done 43,000Km. Performance – 0 to 100Km/h in 5.2 seconds! Five speed automatic. (Why only 5-speed? Because the power of this engine is too high for the normal 7-speed, and with that much power available, it hardly needs to shift gears. It starts off in second, unless you tell it otherwise.) Anti-lock brakes, of course and big drilled discs all round. Electronic Stability Control. Etc etc. Looking forward to a test drive, at least. I’m not committed in any way yet, but see below.

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I had my six monthly eye tests last Wednesday and the doctor was annoyingly vague. He told me he was a little concerned, but to come back in six months. Worried about what? Cataracts, I think, or was it retinal damage? I’m not sure. And my bad sensitivity to glare? Dunno, might be dry eyes, try eye drops. Not happy with the guy. I think I might have to ask my GP to refer me to another eye specialist.

Speaking of my GP, my latest 3 monthly blood results came back last Friday and suddenly my kidneys are out of range. It’s odd, because they’ve always been fine. Why the change? She’s worried enough to immediately take me off the diuretic and to cut my metformin dose in half. I have to have another test this week and we’ll see on Friday if it was just an anomaly or whether it continues.

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While I was at SCGH hospital I bought the paper at the newsagency (I had to wait three hours for the eye drops to wear off). I noticed the very clear division – male magazines one side, women’s magazines the other.

Male magazines – lots of car mags, of course, but electronics, computers, The Economist, The New Internationalist, The New Statesman, New Scientist, Fine Woodworking, etc etc. All of them, even car magazines, needing brain power.

Women’s magazines – New Idea, Women’s Weekly, Hello!, Woman’s Day, Hollywood stars, dieting magazines galore, cooking, hair, makeup. No brains needed! Brains a positive impediment.

Call me misogynist by all means, but the day I see a woman reading any magazine or newspaper with any serious intellectual value is the day I’ll know I’ve won Lotto. Women read trash, utter vaporous rubbish. They believe any lies about weight loss and movie stars uncritically. Utter airhead stuff.

In all my years of sitting in cafes I cannot recall a single instance of ever seeing a woman reading a serious newspaper or news magazine. Look at the magazines in doctors’ waiting rooms – all women’s trash mags.

The one single instance of seeing a woman reading a serious magazine was coming back from Singapore last year, when I saw a Perth woman reading (well, she was carrying) a copy of New Scientist. I was astonished. A woman reading a magazine needing brain power??!

Prove me wrong. Women are airheads.

Ever since I moved into this house, I’ve had problems receiving TV channels and the FM radio reception in my tuner amplifier is almost non-existent. (TV and FM radio share the same part of the EM spectrum, so the antenna feed for the TV is also used for the tuner amplifier). Same for DAB+ digital radio. Very poor reception with terrible fading. As shown in the previous post, I’m in an outer fringe reception area.

Most of the time the TV reception is OK, but it’s weather dependent and sometimes I can’t get ABC channels. I’ve looked outside for a TV antenna but there is none. I assumed it might be in the roof space.

Well, my good friend Keith came here yesterday and got up in the roof space to have a look. Result? There is no bloody TV antenna anywhere! The signal I’m getting is purely stray pickup by the cables in the roof space. Bloody hell. No wonder I’m having trouble.

The good thing is that the house is properly cabled, with splitters sending cables off to the various sockets in the bedrooms. So if I get an antenna installed, I should have a good result.

I wonder what happened to the original antenna? Was there ever one installed? I’m the third owner of this house. I’m still in touch with the owners before me and I’m sure they wouldn’t have taken the antenna with them when they moved out. I’m inclined to think that there was never any antenna from the start. It’s quite possible. The builder would have installed the cabling in the roof but it would have been up to the owner to have an antenna installed. Maybe they did what I’ve done – plugged their TV in, saw that it worked and left it at that. Amazing.

Anyway, I’ve contacted a TV antenna installation company and I’ve just got to say Go.

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I recorded the new TV program The Politician’s Husband on ABC1 on Sunday but I haven’t watched it yet. I edited the start and finish and noticed that at the very end, where it shows the BBC logo with the production year in roman numerals, this – MMXXIII. Huh?? I looked closely. That’s what it says – MM XX III — that’s 2023. Maybe the show should be called The Time Traveller’s Husband!

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I still haven’t made a serious move to buy that Mercedes that’s sitting there waiting for me. But the latest housing price report has made me hesitate even more. Perth’s median house price fell about 2.6% in the past twelve months. My suburb is smack on the average, so it means the value of my house has fallen.

I’m not thinking of selling, but I’ve always regarded the house as my nest egg to be raided in a reverse mortgage at some stage. Buying a $40,000 car is just using that amount of my $500,000 equity in my house.

But a reverse mortgage depends, to work safely, on the house value rising at or above the interest cost on the mortgage. If the house is falling in value, then a reverse mortgage, where you don’t make any repayments to the bank, is a slightly riskier proposition. Although I’m eligible to do a reverse mortgage (over 65), I haven’t done it because I still have savings. But using those up, when the value of my house is falling, makes me nervous. Therefore, I think I’ll wait before making any rash moves. It wouldn’t be a rash move, but I don’t need a new car – it can wait.

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So Bronny “Chopper” Bishop has gone. HOORAY! What a travesty she made of the Speaker’s position in the federal parliament. She ejected or suspended members from the House on 400 occasions, and 390 of them were Labor members. Totally biased. Question Time became a waste of time. This is the Liberal Party way.

What a bloody disgrace. A Liberal Party member. Yeah. It seems to me that even though she’s apologised and repaid her doubtful travel expenses, that shouldn’t let her off the hook. I think she should still be investigated for fraudulent claims on her signature.

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I’ve often thought that I’m pretty lucky in having no problems with arthritis or joint pains. I’m 68 and many, many people have these troubles at this age. I’ve been free of anything except an occasional sharp pain in my knees.

But my right arm has started aching pretty constantly, and now, from a few days ago, I’m getting sharp pains in my right hip area. Uuurrrgh. I hope I’m not heading for hip replacement. The right arm is my mouse arm, of course.

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My new Sony Xperia SP phone has arrived and is now working. This the replacement for the one I lost a couple of weeks ago. The lost phone was an HTC Desire, a relative cheapie that I never liked very much. Very hard to use.

This new Sony is still an Android phone but it seems easier to use (I can work out how to answer and make calls!). It’s also smaller, so I’m more inclined to carry it in my pocket. I could never find the old one, so I often missed answering calls.

But losing my phone means I lost all my numbers that were stored, so I’ve got to rebuild the Contacts list. Very tedious work. I think I had a backup, but I don’t know where it is. Not much of a computer guru am I?

Digital radio coverage in Perth

Gaaah! From the ABC’s web site:

Red – Tertiary Coverage

I think I’ve found muh car. That’s it above, a CLK550, 2006 model, and only 43,000Km. That’s remarkable. $38K.

Strangely, it’s advertised as a CLK500 (5.0L V8), whereas the badge clearly shows it to be a CLK550 (5.5L V8). Their specs listing also refers to a 5.0L engine. Very odd.

But it’s an Elegance model, which means wood grain in the dash and console, which I love. It’s not an AMG, but if it was, then you can’t have wood grain. Mercedes’ view is that if it’s an AMG performance model, then you must have aluminium/metal in the dash and console. Not my idea.

Also strange – I’m pretty sure this same car has been for sale at Young’s Holden yard in Vic Park for a couple of months. Now it’s moved to John Hughes, down the road. Why isn’t it selling? Why has it moved? Obviously I need to enquire, and ask my tame ex-used car/ex-John Hughes salesman to help me.

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One of the attractions of buying a nice car like this would be to drive east and do a big road trip. (By the way, the fuel consumption of this big V8 is 13L/100Km city and 8L/100KM country, which is exactly the same as my 2001 Magna 3.5L V6. Sure, the cost of fuel is a factor, but I only need to fill up once a month in my present car, and this would be the same interval and the same cost, so I’m not losing anything.)

Back to – a driving trip – another factor for me in all my travel is that I need my CPAP to sleep at night. If I were to drive the Nullarbor, I would have to sleep at least one night out on the road, which would mean no power to run the CPAP. Problem.

Answer: I’ve just discovered there’s a new CPAP machine on the market specifically for travelling.

It runs off a battery. You can buy an add-on Lithium-Ion battery pack which gives a full 8 hours running. (I would hate to run my machine off the car’s battery, then wake in the middle of the Nullarbor or somewhere, only to find I’d flattened the car battery so that I couldn’t start the car. Urrrrrgh. No calling the RAC in the middle of nowhere, and no push starting the car either. Nightmare scenario.)

This also revitalises my ideas about international travel. Taking my ResMed machine with its humidifier has always been a problem. It;s bulky, it’s weighty, it takes a lot of space in my suitcase. A machine as small as that would revolutionise my travel

Price? US$575. This is from an American web site. Will they sell to me in Australia? I think so. (ResMed won’t! Even though ResMed is an Australian company, and the machines are made in Sydney, and they are half price in the USA, the US companies are not allowed to ship to Australia. We have to pay double here. Hmmmm.)

Anyway, no plans to buy yet, just food for thought.

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Today, I have bought this:

Yamaha T-500D tuner

It’s a hi-fi component DAB+/FM/AM tuner. DAB+ is digital radio, which I like, and to have AM available is good. $425 approx. from eBay. Aussie supplier, postage included in the price. At the moment I’m listening in my main living area on a portable receiver with a small low-fi speaker. I want this for my hi-fi system.

It’s gone from the web – sold? I was too slow. See below.

I’m the same age as Joanna Lumley, 68. I heard her say it on TV the other night in the Trans Siberian Express program. But I’m better looking. She’s aged. Nice voice, nice person, but women lose their looks as they get older, men gain. Men improve with age. Fact. Just sayin’

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Except that, boy I’m tired. Lots of sleeping. Can’t sleep more than 2-3 hours at first at night, so after lying there for an hour or more trying to get back to sleep, I get up, have a hot milk drink, go back to bed about 6am, sleep for an hour or two, then around midday, crash again. Cycle. Repeat. Just occasionally, I sleep a full night but I can’t work out why and how to make it happen again.

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I thought I’d found my next car on Friday night. There’s a 2004 Mercedes CLK 55 AMG in Adelaide for $28,990. Very dark-blue metallic, 95,000Km. Crikey, it seemed to tick all the boxes. Quite a low price. I was almost ready to phone and place a deposit.

But closer examination makes me think it’s a 2003 model, not a 2004. The odometer shows 98,000Km when they advertise 95,000Km. Why? The radio/sat-nav console looks different to other 2004 models. There’s no engine start/stop button on the gear shift lever. The grille has only three slats versus four for other models. Lots of doubtful things, in other words. Bugger. It looked good for a while. Back to the grindstone.

Why do I need a 5.5L AMG V8? It’s the same price as a lesser engined car. AMG is a Mercedes offshoot which hand builds and tunes the engines before they’re installed in the car – what we used to call blue-printing. Making sure everything fits to the precise tolerances. In my opinion, this should make the engine run smoother and last longer.

They also make small changes to the suspension and exhaust, again making for more power and smoother running. I’m convinced. Besides, that badge on the back!!

Not this one, although this is top shelf. I really should buy this one. It’s in Melbourne.

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You’re probably getting tired of my tirades about climate change politics, but just read the article by Mike Seccombe in The Saturday Paper this weekend: https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2015/07/25/the-true-cost-green-energy/14377464002171

I am an on-line paid subscriber, by the way, and I drive to Quinns Newsagency every Saturday morning and pay my $3.50 for the paper version – I recommend it.

This article clearly sets out the blatant lies put forward by the climate change/anti-renewables deniers such as PM Lord Rabbott and Alan Jones, “Shock Jock”. They are just liars!

The economics have become clear: it is now cheaper to derive electricity from wind (wind turbines) and solar than from coal. So much for our prime minister! So much for the idiots in this country who have chosen him to be the leader. If he can’t understand this simple stuff, what chance does he have with the hard stuff. Answer: he doesn’t cope with the hard stuff. All he does is repeat three or four word slogans, ad nauseum.

The science is clear, the economics is clear – there’s no argument left. only stone age Liberal politicians and the stupid people who vote for them.

Woolies has done it again. See the pineapple above clearly marked $2.50, but I was charged the original price, $5 (right).

Woolies is not doing too well in profits. What better way to boost the bottom line than by deliberately overcharging. Nine out of ten customers won’t check their bills and won’t complain. Those that do find the errors are no problem – we’re just given the price difference and sent on our way, even though we might be fuming. I can’t go crook at the poor girl behind the counter and the manager is probably out on a long lunch. We never see managers. Presto, increased profits. Check your till receipts if you shop at Woolies! You are almost certainly being ripped off. Coles – no problem, never an error. If Coles can do it, why can’t Woolworths?

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Ah, memories.

I used to be in the habit of keeping a diary, as you can see above. The green one on top is 1995-96 and the one below it is 2012, although the edge is not marked. Sometimes I missed a year but most of the intervening years are there.

It was a cursory record because I didn’t write it up every single day, and even when I did write, I wasn’t recording my innermost thoughts. I just recorded the major things I wanted to remember, especially when I sent letters or made some official action. I kept track of the magazines I bought and their cost, just to have an idea of how much I was spending, because I’ve always been a magazine addict. I spent a lot of money, probably $70-$80 per month or more. I used to buy New Scientist every week at $8 each. That’s $32 per month for that one alone. And Amateur Photographer weekly at $6.50 I think. Ouch.

Anyway, they came with me to this house but I never look at them, so in the interests of reducing clutter, I’m thinking of throwing them into the recycle bin. But I can’t! How can I discard all these memories? So I think I’ll try to scan them, just the important pages, the ones I want to remember. Then I can make a multi page PDF for each year. Why? Who’s going to be interested? I keep thinking someone in the far future, because I’ve got records of everything. I keep a notebook with every cent I spend each day. That must be interesting to someone in 50 or 100 years’ time.

I’ve resurrected my old 2009 computer, a Core i7 with 6GB DDR2 RAM, and installed the OCZ solid state hard drive that I got replaced under warranty. This computer is no slouch, even though it’s six years old now. I’ve got four hard drives of 750GB size or thereabouts, so it’s a powerhouse. Ideal for scanning work. That makes two good desktop computers, both Core i7s, and the Sony VAIO laptop, a Core 2 Duo with 8GB RAM and a BluRay burner. All three have legal copies of Windows 7 Professional 64bit, which will be upgraded free of charge to the new Windows 10 starting on 29 July, nine days away. Zowee. This’ll keep me busy for the foreseeable future.

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Speaking of foreseeable futures, a young woman came to my door this morning, very, very chatty, but trying to sell me roller shutters for my windows (there’s that word again!) She was obviously trained to engage the potential customer in chat, and we talked about our ages. She guessed my age at late 40s, bless her little cotton knickers. She was 22. I was tempted to invite her in to see my images but … that would have obliged me to get window shutters. I told her she has no chance of selling them to me. I hate the look of them and I would hate to be in a darkened, shuttered house. No way. Perhaps for security, but it would be bloody expensive security. I’ve already got window locks and a house alarm.

She was nice, though. English, Midlands accent, 22. The mind wanders …

Lord Viscount Marquis Sir Anthony Abbott VC VD AO OA BO DFC AC DC OM MO, suppository of all scientific knowledge, doesn’t like wind power generators and says they have “other undesirable health effects”. This is the claim of opponents of wind turbine generators, that they have strange health effects as well as fading the curtains.

Professor Simon Chapman AO PhD FASSA, Professor of Public Health, University of Sydney, who you’d have to admit has the expertise to comment on these claims, has published a list of all the adverse claims that have been made in this country against the windmills.

There are 244 of them! They range from excessive yawning to delayed wound healing to autism to weight gain and weight loss – the list goes on and on for about 28 A4 pages. Here are just a few more:

• Vomiting blood
• Visual acuity reduction
• Viral skin infection
• Varicose veins
• Urination, painful
• Teeth, “arcing”
• Stools, loose
• Speech problems

244 claims like these! It’s the same as phone towers, mobile phones causing cancer, power lines causing cancer, all these bullshit claims by people who have no idea what they’re talking about.

But Lord Rabbott believes this stuff and has blocked and killed investment in the wind generation of power for the foreseeable future. The alternative energy industry bodies (solar, wind, wave etc.) have said enough is enough, we must actively fight the government to allow these industries to operate. I never thought I’d ever stand with an industry group, but I do on this one. This stupid, stupid government has to be defeated. We can’t go on like this!

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In the same vein, the IPA, the Institute of Public Affairs sounds like a pretty bland organisation, yes? In fact they are an extreme right wing body which published a list of aims for the Liberal Party to achieve once they gained power. There were 100 items on this list and it’s interesting to note what’s been happening in the past 20 months since the hard right wing Australian government was elected. Here are just a few of their aims:

48 Privatise Australia Post
49 Privatise Medibank
50 Privatise and Break up the ABC and put out to tender each individual function
51 Privatise SBS
63 Privatise the Australian Institute of Sport
72 Privatise the CSIRO
75 Privatise the Snowy-Hydro Scheme

47 Cease funding the Australia Network
66 Rule out any government-supported or mandated internet censorship
69 Immediately halt construction of the National Broadband Network and privatise any sections that have already been built

Climate Change
1 Repeal the carbon tax, and don’t replace it.
2 Abolish the Department of Climate Change
3 Abolish the Clean Energy Fund
6 Repeal the renewable energy target
10 Withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol

Human Rights
4 Repeal Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act
5 Abandon Australia’s bid for a seat on the United Nations Security Council

If you read through the whole list, this vile, evil government are working to the plan set by this shadowy bunch of hard liners. This is a nightmare. This is takeover by an unelected group whose aims are very similar to the Republican Party in the USA. Looney, pro guns, anti abortion, closure of abortion clinics and fertility clinics, cutting taxes on the rich and increasing taxes on the poorest, telling the poor they should just work longer hours, anti-immigration …. again, the list goes on and on. Another nightmare.

And the infiltration of the Liberal Party by the Italian Mafia! Notice the complete silence from the Libs? Yes folks, the Liberal Party takes the donations from the Mafia in Australia. And they have the gall to run an $80m Royal Commission on unions. I think the right wing Liberal/Nationals have far worse questions to answer.

Above is a LIVE feed of a traffic camera in Holland. (Click on the arrow to start.) You can see the time counting at the top. Amazing, boring, yes, but this is new technology.

“MT4C1024-HD” by ZeptoBars – http://zeptobars.ru/en/read/how-to-open-microchip-asic-what-inside. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MT4C1024-HD.jpg#/media/File:MT4C1024-HD.jpg

When you buy and use a USB thumb drive, as they’re called, do you wonder what’s inside that bit of plastic?

Above is a 1 megabit (approx.) Large Scale Integrated Circuit (LSIC) containg many individual memory chips to make up the 1 MB of Random Access Memory (RAM). Notice that it’s four rows of eight squares. We tend to think in terms of powers of two, and eight is a good number.

I find these images beautiful:

This one is the printed circuit board layout which holds the ICs and all the associated circuit components. Look at the beautiful complexity! Human hands did this. Computer software plays a bug part in laying it out, but a human wrote that software anyway.