White noise -- twilight zone

True. When I present one of my ideas, and the response is "that's insane" or "you're out of your [deleted expletive] mind", I know that I have a winner. I associate sanity with mediocrity.

Drivel: For many years, just before the alarm clock sounded, my dream would end with the lion roar and the scrolling of the credits. I'm not sure exactly what caused this effect. Destroying the alarm clock dramatically reduced the incidence rate. Also, I dream in black and white. Colorized dreams are reserved for when I'm under the influence of controlled substances, prescription drugs, and Mexican foods.

Brainstorming is a delicate art form, like waltzing or something. Crazy ideas need to be encouraged. Even zany ones often evolve into great ones.

I have been studying the design of some competitive products, and most are impressively klunky and component-rich. I wish I knew more about the cultures that created those monsters, so I can avoid doing anything like that.

I dream in b+w (I think) but my visual hallucinations are postcard-color brilliant. Really cool.

he chances someone screwing around with a white noise generator has experie nced the same thing.

r acts up. I normally use the air cleaner.

er BUT the other night, I very vividly heard a low male voice that repeated ly was singing a short maybe 6 or 7 seconds long, faint sounding melody tha t was unintelligible but constant -- over and over again in a perfect cycle . The same melody over and over again. Got up, turned off the generator and it stopped. (And fixed my damn air cleaner).

was NOT asleep or nearing sleep. I have insomnia often.

Post a wav file. Let's hear it!

-RS

What about amateur radio? They typically use SSB, and that's basically AM with carrier suppression*. Ham rigs can be quite powerful, and when one is located nearby, demodulation effects aren't rare.

Besides, SSB voice transmissions, when demodulated with a normal AM detector, really do sound like voice. But they sound like a rumbling unintelligible voice. You can try to listen to some on HF bands with a shortwave radio, it's immediately clear (by the speech-like pattern) that what you hear is indeed a human voice, but it sounds mangled and you usually can't make out what exactly is being said.

I think, this could fit OP's description of hearing a voice, but a particularly strange voice that's not intelligible. Also, the semi- regular push-to-talk transmission pattern (some seconds speaking, then some seconds listening, and so on) isn't unrealistic, particularly in a DX contest.

Sort-of like: CQ, CQ, CQ calling CQ xx meters. This is AB2CD. Alpha-Bravo- ... CQ, CQ, CQ calling CQ xx meters. This is AB2CD. Alpha-Bravo- ... and so on, repeating

Did it sound anywhere like that?

Yep. When asked to do something new, many people fall into the rut of past experience. I've only pointed out once in this newsgroup, but I've been tempted many times by many examples. The analog designers will provide a solution that involves an analog solution. The digital designers will offer a digital solution. The PIC people will offer PIC's. The mechanical designers will offer a mechanical solution. The Neanderthals (like me) will offer something that's been obsolete 30 years. In all, it makes for some rather interesting discussions, but no easy answers.

I used to run into that problem at meetings. What I would do is offer a really off the wall suggestions that is guaranteed to be universally unacceptable by everyone present. It's usually an easy target that is good for about 15 mins of wasted time. However, the various participants have by then cleared their brains of whatever rut they happen to be stuck allowing new ideas to enter. I won't claim it works every time, but over the years it has served me well.

Might be the "rut" problem again. When I was in the marine radio biz, a manufacturer of marine deck hardware decided to enter the radio market. The finished design looked like a piece of deck hardware (casting) and weighed almost as much. At the company where I was working, it was hell trying to get the designers to *NOT* use sheet metal, which had served them well for many years, and try something new.

Another possible culprit is the "band-aid" effect. Instead of fixing the original problem, just add another circuit to mitigate the effects. The problem is that nobody wants to irritate the designer by suggesting that the design is defective and needs replacement. Instead, they offer an "improvement" (band-aid) or "enhancement" (band-aid), which tend to be less offensive to sensitive egos.

As I've mumbled previously, most of engineering work is cleaning up someone else's mess. I've seen what you're describing but did not wonder why they existed. They were all the result of conservative design, recycling old designs and components, and avoiding components with better specifications or higher levels of integration. In other cases, it was an odd belief that power supply bypass caps are a good thing. Therefore, filling every possible square inch of the PCB with bypass caps was an even better thing. Besides, they could be removed later when proven un-necessary, which never happens. Much the same thing can happen with gain stages, where adding an extra gain stage insures oscillation as well as sufficient gain.

For amusement, take a small team, and have them "cost reduce" a product. The objective is not really to reduce the cost, but to see what parts of the product could be literally removed and still have a working device. It works best with a team because individuals tend to have a fixation on some section with which they're familiar. You can tell it's working when individuals suggest removing those sections that they designed. They know best when the bloat is hiding in their own back yard. (This also works for budget trimming).

My best hallucination was when I had some wisdom teeth pulled and the dentist shot me full of some general anesthetic. I told him that I'm rather sensitive to the stuff, but he overdosed me anyway. So, I had a 45-60 minute dream that I was skiing down the ultimate powder slope with brilliant blue sky and puffy white clouds above. I was really disappointed when I finally awoke and asked to be put under again.

I have a ham license and will confess to occasionally spending some time on the HF bands.

Listening to SSB on an AM receiver doesn't sound intelligible to me. What you might be thinking of is one of the modes that don't quite suppress the carrier completely. The carrier is useful for AM receiver compatibility, running a carrier squelch, and AFC (automatic frequency control) so that it doesn't sound like Donald Duck. A3H at

-16dBc carrier was common in marine radios during the transition between AM and SSB operation. If it's one of these modes, it's possible for a simple diode detector to demodulate intelligible audio. Without the carrier injection, forget it.

Did you get my PACKET?

Jamie

Niels Bohr seems to have said something like

"We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question that divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct."

Looking at other people's designs often creates that impression. If you loo k at them for long enough you can often work out the particular kinds of di sasters they were guarding against. You then have to work out how your own design would work out in that situation.

Or you can be unimaginatively over-confident, which saves a lot of time and boosts your ego (until your product fries in an unforeseen situation).

Some interesting quotes. One I like regards the language of science vs. poetry. I have come to realize we run our lives for the most part by "feeling" our way through decisions. We like to think in science we use logic to make our decisions, but that is only indirect. We actually tie our emotions to logic as best we can so that when the logic tells us something, we "feel" good about the outcome. When the logically produced emotion conflicts with our other emotional judgement we have dissonance which must be worked out.

How many times have you said about a solution, "that doesn't feel right"? Or that a result feels "good"?

We are emotional animals and anyone who says science isn't ultimately guided by emotions is in denial. The recent subthread here somewhere about Cold Fusion is a perfect example. Fear is a *huge* motivator and very few people are able to get past the fear of being associated with the cold fusion stigma to do any research on it or even to read about it with a critical, but open mind.