Starbucks of Berlin: Kurfürstendamm

It rained a little this morning in Berlin. I heard the dripping through my earplugs and when I woke up, I spotted the swift moving low gray clouds of september. Despite the wind I went on my bike ride along the canal to find a Starbucks in Kurfürstendamm.

Many other bikers formed the solidarity along the path there. We kept each other safe, parried delivery vehicles and maintained awareness to the honking commuters in their combustion vehicles. Sweeping around and over the canal I saw a u-boat-like structure along it, which I recorded on my special low-res camera. The Hause of CDU, frenemy of the SPD, whose house I previously recorded, stood proud over the canal and carbon devices of the political commute.

On the approach to Ku’damm one sees the fire-bombed church of memories as central landmark. There was much construction, scaffolding and grills around it as it perpetually floats in the center of the Ku’damm like a cave with a grid attached to it.

I approached a Starbucks by the train station. Here there were homeless people napping amidst the carbon exhaust of busses on the busy thoroughfare. I could choose to turn left back to the church of memories and inhabit the Starbucks in the mall there, but strange overthought memorials and a panopticon kiosk, crowded by sleepy homeless, beckoned me a little off the famous paths to a quiet avenue Starbucks which I now inhabit.

I came here to think about cathode coatings, inside the cave of the tube, surrounded by charged grids. Did you know that the oxide coating of the nickel core is actually classified as a semiconductor? That’s right, back in the days of tube research, they talked of semiconductors before they were even born.

The copious research material on tubes stems from the thirties, reaching its peak in the fifties. Dushman wrote his famous equation down for the electron emission of cathode materials in 1923. In the sixties however, it became passé and one sees a great drop off of material. However, the compendia and journals of the fifties are full of data and theories on the material science of the innermost part of the tube, the cathode.

The cathode is heated with the fires of electrons passing through a wire, like a lightbulb. However this wire is insulated by an oxide, and then the heat transfers to the nickel sleeve which one energizes included in their circuit. The nickel is coated with a layer of barium and strontium oxides. Much of the literature is concerned with the relationship of heat and charge on the crystal structure of this fluffy frosting.

Whether it loses its structure over time or how to keep its conductivity was very important to the tubists of the fifties. Tubes then were involved in war computation, and thus had to pass intense pulses of high current and sit waiting for data without cracking. So a lot of the articles deals with tube failure in digitally abusive circuits. I can use this data to proof my own tube work, which puts the tube under a power and heat load minuscule in comparison.

The decision on how much voltage to place on the anode and how much to activate the cathode heater, depends on an analysis of this research. Degenerative failures are identified by Rob Timber, in his book on how to get the most out of tubes, as a gradual weakening of the tubes emission characteristics over time, due to changes in the cathode composition.

No one really knew what happens to a cathode over time, and it is still a great complicated problem to think about. Topics such as poisoning and ion bombardment have always been identified, and ways to avoid them were heavily researched. One article from the 1952 teletype magazine gives the authors opinion that under heating a tube actually improves its life.

 Since I am sensing the tubes but not driving them. This means that I am hardly passing any current through them, and using a Norton circuit to transform the small current into a precise and wide range voltage. Thus this article is important reference because it also talks about using tubes in a lower power range than they were intended for and achieving supreme longevity; thus.

Talking with Ai about this, one reaches a brick wall, because most of it is based on contemporary forums which in turn are based on war time, pulse computer invectives against under heated tubes. In delving into this literature over the year, it is much clearer to me that heat is a destructive factor as well as current, and I hope to minimize both, to keep these soviet artifacts running audio for as long as possible.

It’s a little cold outside in September, so I move in to sit in the padded Starbucks cozy coffee room. Country music is playing in Berlin. I take a sip from my huge filter coffee. Indeed, it is a complicated problem. Doctor Phil S. Wagener lists a number of important variables as characteristic of the oxide cathode: 

• coating surface
• heater power
• radiation from the cathode
• brightness temperature
• spectral radiant emissivity
• emission current 
• saturation current
• emission density
• emission reserve
• efficiency, and so on. 

One prevents evaporation of the earths by keeping the heat down. One prevents glassing of the gas by keeping the envelope cool. Both would put ions inside the vacuum which can break things under charge. One prevents semi-conductivity between the heater and the cathode  by keeping the voltage down, and to avoid sparks one avoids pulses. I don’t have any problem with that. 

If the current is increased from the cathode, the space charge, a cloud of electrons around it, is thinned, and ions can get through to sputter against the cathode, hurting it. However, I am barely drawing any current so this military invective does not apply.

In conclusion, I have resolved to digest my knowledge of sparking, poisoning and bombardment, and create a unique anode-cathode solution in my upcoming Nortube products. I will eyeball the cathodes to a safely ruby red, by employing a special Kathodenzwerg, or filamentary voltage reducer. I aim to bring them somewhere to the golden ratio, although the product worked just fine at half voltage and infrared glow.

For the anode, I have been playing with clean DC voltages between 120 and 300 volts, but have permanently moved to 80 volts to further reduce ion movement within the tube. As is always the obsession with military tube heads, I will execute a soft start on the potential, to prevent sparking, although this is almost totally unnecessary, in comparison with the intense high power cliche of the cold starting mercury rectifier tube.

It’s said that under heating induced poisoning. I have contrary evidence in my unique use case. First of all, these tubes are seriously aged. That means the getters have been sitting for fifty years taking up all the spurious gasses within. Did you know that activation of tubes by heat and electron activity is also called aging? Yes, this new old stock is actually what you suspect it to be, a high quality hermetically sealed sensor that has been purified by the years of silent meditation.

I approach the church of remembrance again. The two buildings of old stone and new metal face each other, silently transmitting spirituality from the cavernous crevices. A Jesus hangs inside the modern building, gilded transmitting something from his eyes and nose. 

My eyeball will learn the color of 500 kelvin.

The pipe organ in the back of the church of remembrance is like a semi-conductor glaze, a set of complicated interacting lead pipes. And so on.

DDR Sci-Fi: Unheimliche Erscheinungsformen auf Omega XI

Strange Manifestations on Omega XI

Johnna Braun, born 1929 in Magdeburg. Together with her husband Günther formed an author team, which contributed various literature and reportage, and in the middle of the 1970s began to write science-fiction, mostly as a critique of social phenomena. Some works were banned from the DDR for not towing the party line, but as in most of Sci-Fi, critique can be disguised by layers of fantasy, alien fremdenschock, and invention. An alternative grammar is constructed in Strange Manifestations, where the authors leave out quotation marks, blending thusly acoustic speech with memory and thought processes.

A group of humans who called themselves the Sunflowers had left the earth a long time ago, because no one could understand or tolerate their visionary philosophy on genetic engineering. But they were indeed the best at reshaping humans into fantastic forms, which experiments they continued as colonists of Omega XI.

Now, the earth is receiving distress messages from the Sunflowers, asking for help with an incomprehensible social and environmental collapse, described mysteriously as a “manifestation.” In the spirit of humanity across the cosmos, the international (socialist) space commission decides to send a small mission to investigate.

Using advanced psychometrics, which a socialist space mission is apt to develop for its Soviet aptitude for people power, the mission coordinators choose Merkur Erdenson for his profound skills in improvisation, and Elektra, a skilled coordinator with a tendency to neatness. As the multi-generational socialist space science program could predict, the two become partners during the long mission. They marry once landing on Omega, due to local customs that prevented them from inhabiting the same house under common law.

On Omega, they learn of the radical cultural division between the inbred consumer class, who disposes daily of their complete set of home furniture and wall-coverings, and the genetically modified working class, who sleep in the factories as they constantly re-invent new processes for manufacturing luxury wall-coverings and furniture. In between the two classes is an environment increasingly wracked by toxic storms of chemical off-gassing, caused by constant cycle of blind consumption and waste. 

Although the consumer class numbers less than seventy, they hold power over the working class by manipulating their supply of psychotropic algae derivatives, which they have monopoly over. Due to their inbred nature, the consumers have degenerate senses for the environment and cannot see that their consumption is causing this disaster.

The inbred consumerist leader shows the visitors to a working class factory, whose inhabitants, viewed through protective observation window, act openly crass, pranking each other with industrial tools and creating other silly props.

Merkur improvises a breakthrough to the layers of the working class, to meet them and understand their story. He does this by spontaneously throwing a chair through the glass observation window and jumping down into the factory.

After the working class heals his wounds, they introduce to him their Roburen: genetically modified beings of great stature and simple conscience, who must always lift heavy things or die under the weight of their muscle mass; they never stop working.

Realizing that this manifestation, the need to constantly work, is also causing the toxic storms, Merkur improvises a solution: the workers must learn sports, and he coordinates with Luda, a games expert, a repurposing of the Roburen from industrial tools to epic sport and performance beings. Less manufacturing occurs as a result, and the toxic storms begin to subside.

Back in consumer land, Elektra realizes the importance of empowering the working class. Merkur improvises access to the underground algae deposits which form the base of the creativity drug which the working class needs to survive, allowing them to be independent from the consumerists.

In the end, the “strange manifestations” were never an alien monster, but the devolution of humanity through genetics and technology, that required a creative, human breakthrough to realign, and prevent the consumerist virus from spreading back to earth.

Glossary

• Spontanfigur: in space capsule social engineering, a personal type who leads in unknown situations through improvisation.
• Ergänzungsfigur: the complement to Spontanfigur, one who coordinates operational decisions and keeps the basic mission objectives in focus.
• Modderwind: a deadly storm of toxic gasses that has been destroying forests on Omega XI since the original colonists arrived.
• Roburen: A genetically engineered worker with bulging muscles and a dog snout, who speaks basic language but prefers to focus on manual labor.

Cover by Burckhard Labowski and Regine Schulz

Starbucks of Berlin: East Side Mall

Today I'm heading to the Starbucks in East Side Mall. To get there, I biked through Görlitzer Park. Drug selling was at minimal, but I did see a pink haired lady burning some paper on the ground in the style of crack glass preparation. In pensive retrospect, I think she was trying to incense the nearby drug dealers into some sort of submission. Approaching Skalitzer Strasse, I yielded to a car of cool dudes who nodded back to me. The elevated train tracks, a colossus of iron, guided me to the Oberbaumbrücke, a bridge completed completely out of bricks, with its gingerbread spires.

On the other side of the bridge, a breezy industrial strip lines the river. I biked over to Tamara Danz Strasse, and followed it to the back entrance of East Side Mall. I shot this picture of the mall, where it looks like a vented plastic shoe, next to a glass leg that is the new tower thereby. My encampment for the afternoon is the Starbucks below urban outfitters and next to a souvenir store.

As usual I ordered a filter coffee in a huge mug, and sat outside amidst the potted bushes under the black branded Starbucks canopies. A man in short womens clothing walked by, yelling about immigrants in German to a conservatively dressed woman. I would now like to settle down to the research task at hand.
 

Today I would like to read up about the Butterworth filter. Before we listened to juicy filter sweeps in acid techno, this was always more important, to signal processing and the military. Its not about juice, but more about brick. That is, a brick wall. It smoothly cuts away frequencies like butter, without adding extra drip. As I started computer music programming, in Csound, the so-called butterlp was always my favorite, and it never dripped. It seems to me that ongoing electronic experiments neglect it too much, in favor of the "easy" drippy biquad. 

To read up on the Butterworth filter, I sipped my huge mug of filter coffee and oat milk, and opened up some datasheets. The lm324 datasheet, by Texas Instruments, as usual has a trove of information. You can see the Butterworth, entitled "DC Coupled Low-Pass RC Active Filter," on page 16. The typical formation is a resistor, with a wide feedback capacitor that looks like regeneration, then another resistor and a capacitor to ground, followed by a simple follower, usually with unity gain. 

It's a cool day at Starbucks by the river. Nevertheless, I am swatting wasps away from my huge mug. The next step is to investigate how the Butterworth acts in a transconductance opamp, so the usual reference is the datsheet for lm13700, page 12. The challenge of this filter topology is that it consists not only of integrators purely, but a hybrid configuration of capacitors. To realize the "Voltage Controlled 2-Pole Butterworth Lo-Pass Filter," these designers put capacitors on the current outputs, before the darlington followers.

That is going to be a challenge for adapting the Butterworth to a Norton mixed circuit. I would define this circuit as a configuration of differential PNP transistors, feeding a Norton opamp with a combination of resistors and capacitors coming in from the side. It's quite easy to adapt a biquad filter to this topology, in fact it isn't even mixed, consisting of purely transistor sources, but here I have to be creative. One could say Butterworth is a challenge if it's not simply rc and opamps. The hip-looking cross-dresser is acting quite aggressive to what he perceives as immigrants. 

I feel rushed by his escalated cussing, as I sit outside in the bushes of Starbucks. So I take down a quick sketch of how this mixed Norton Butterworth might play out with voltage control. I drew it with integrators, nested, and because it is modelling resistors, each stage needs negative following feedback to the transconductors. Now, because of the huge mug of coffee in me, I will be riding the escalator to the third floor food court, to pay fifty cents to visit the bathroom, which is always dark to save lighting expenses.

As I peruse the food court, without intention to buy anything, I try to memorize the names of each slot in the panopticon there. The result is like a poem, for eaters sitting lonely under upturned plants staring at a column:

• fresh rolls
• chutney express
• abudan grill
• asia river
• slice
• bigburger
• sigmadog
• gochu gang 

 

 

Now I am sitting inside the Starbucks, because it is ever so lightly raining outside. I had asked the colleague if she could save my coffee and now I am resuming the session at a warm oak table with my huge mug of cooled coffee. I realize I had not summarized the two datasheets I reviewed earlier, so on this warm oak rondette, I draw with a coarse pencil, the simple rc buffered filter, and the voltage controlled, transconductance version.

 

Note that there is a loop but it is hardly in the shape of a classic integrator. It is the regeneration that makes the brick wall possible without ringing. We will see how I take my Norton sketch and try to adapt it without relying on the simple integrator formation. Maybe I will try capacitance to ground, or between shunted between version and inversion, when I sit down at a bread board and oscilloscope, at home. As such, I won't be showing the result since this series is only about what happens to and at the Starbucks. Listen up for buttery passing in future instruments!

Next on Starbucks of Berlin: Thinking about cathode coatings at the church of remembrance.

DDR Sci-Fi: Der Blaue Planet

 The Blue Planet

Carlos Rasch, born 1932 in Brazil, was a Sci-Fi author in DDR. This book is about the earliest history of humans, and the aliens that visited us then.

A long time ago, towards the middle of our galaxy, a red star created the Heloid people, who breathed different air from us. They learned atomic spaceflight while we were still in our diapers, and joined the tightly clustered society of spacefarers in that central region.

From the far edge of the galaxy they received a friendly message. The lonely Teloid civilization beckoned them for contact and the long journey to a galactic meeting. Thus the Kua set forth with its crew of seven, near the speed of light. Maybe they can meet the Teloids and even make contacts outside the galaxy.

The Heloids on board are described as shadows, and one imagines the darkened cabins and bridges of a people who evolved in the pleasant burgundy of a red star. They are creatures of time dilation on this long journey, and detours are calculated in terms of deceleration and deficit of lifespan to make it all the way to the rim. 

Another calculation on board is how much atomic fuel is spent. It is efficient in terms of time and fuel to zip at almost the speed of light, but something happens between Sirius and an unknown yellow star. The vacuum chamber of the ultrasonic gyroscope, without which they would be lost in space, springs a leak. The rotating spheres heat up and catastrophically explode within their chamber. 

The crew is prompted to land on the third planet from the yellow sun. To their red eyes, the surface of the Earth seems to be covered in blue magma, but they realize over time how lush and alive this planet is. On orbiting, it is yet unknown whether intelligent life inhabits, as no radio transmissions are received.

The Heloids send their Arrow, a slim rocket, down to the planet, descending on a column of blazing light. Meanwhile, Ia-Du-Lin, a messenger from the river cities, is leading his donkey through the desert. He witnesses the descent, and expects the sun goddess to emerge from the sleek ship.

When Sil the astronaut emerges in his environmental suit, his leather face unseen under a smoked glass helmet, Ia-Du-Lin knows his mission is holy, to implore the people of the ocean city to trade their lapis lazuli for the adornment of his temple to the sun goddess.

Sil noted the life-form wore clothing, and had a quadruped on a rope. The Heloids only wish to make peaceful contact and they respect all life everywhere. He is overjoyed to make contact with an intelligent being. He rubs cream on the radiation burns from observing the rocket, and gives him a golden space blanket, a magic cloak of the gods.

Sil floods his rocket with alien air, and invites the man aboard. He begins automatic translation of his speech, which will stay patchy throughout, leading to many misunderstandings of the religious sort. He asks Ia-Du-Lin about his friend, to which he replies "it's a donkey, silly!" On parting, Sil gives him a little obelisk, a beacon to stay in contact, and also some Gatorade.

Meanwhile, the rest of the crew clears a space out at the southern end of the Dead Sea, using atomic radiation to burn a landing pad, and hewing stones from the mountains into giant templar blocks to construct an atomic blast shield for further landings. All the humans around have now heard the celestial trombones and seen the columns of holy fire, and are anxious about the upcoming visitations.

The Heloids have good intentions but no prime directive. The book is a headache worth of entrenchment in religious situations and god-posing, but in the end the astronauts pay the most price because they truly love and respect the baby humans.

Ia-Du-Lin rings Sil on the obelisk phone. He is enslaved by sand people, can you come and help? Sil has godly wrath that intelligent beings would enslave each other, and almost smites them after freeing his friend, but chooses to deliver a speech instead. He tries to explain scientifically that the Heloids are astronauts, and are animals just like humans, but the universal translator says, "We are sons of heaven, and Ia-Du-Lin a donkey." Ia-Du-Lin, embarrassed, heads to the hills. 

The humans go back and forth a few times enslaving each other, and each time the aliens must cut their bonds with a laser and give a little speech. Each time the misunderstandings compound, and Ia-Du-Lin who was an innocent messenger, becomes more conceited to use the gods for his own career. 

The lapis lazuli negotiations did not go well, and now the river city is under siege by the other city. The Heloids must step in again, and convince them to lay down their weapons, amidst infighting between the priests and the army. Ia-Du-Lin stands to profit. The Heloids descend on their rings and stars of smoke, and force a peace between the cities.

There's something about a positivist sci-fi novel that avoids concepts such as the prime directive, or rules against interfering in primitive cultures. Maybe it's a Soviet concept that technology should be radically promoted and shared in a revolutionary way, to spread Marxist values as swiftly as possible?

Now that the two cities have agreed to trade lapis lazuli for wheat, the Heloids turn their attention to compulsory burials, and visit the catacombs outside the city. The priests traditionally poisoned all who served a decease noble, to be buried alongside. This disgusts the Heloids, and they save those who are buried alive. They also irradiate the tombs and give a little speech warning against the ancient custom and that anyone who steps foot in the burial grounds will be dead in a year. Radiation is a radical incitement to destroy the barbarism of the pre-modern.

As the Heloids have fixed their gyroscope and are prepared to leave, an earthquake strikes, and threatens a tsunami. The pre-history accounts for various mythical occurrences such as the great flood. The earthquake destroyed the Kua's nuclear fuel collector, and they realize they have only a few options, to head home or headlong to the edge of the galaxy without a return trip.

But they choose instead to sacrifice a great portion of their remaining fuel to help the humans, who have not yet taken refuge from the flood. Instead of loading it on board, they create a critical mass to explode the mountains between the sea and an inland lake, allowing the flood-head to dissipate. 

Ia-Du-Lin meets his fate, as he bum-rushes a Heloid, tries to steal her laser, and ends up melting his own face. His golden space blanket is flapping in the wind as the floodwaters recede. In a short conclusion, it is mused that perhaps the humans may meet the Heloids in the far future.

Glossary

• Lichtdruckschleuder: an efficient form of near-light propulsion, apparently driven by smaller amounts of nuclear fuel and using their electromagnetic emissions.
• Atomtriebwerk: the powerful reentry, deceleration, and escape thrusters that deplete atomic fuel drastically.
• Sirian: The Heloid name for a double-star system near our sun, probably Sirius.
• Erider: One of the few neologisms mentioned in this book. It refers to a multi-purpose viewscreen.
• Atomicer: The chunky power lander, in opposition to the slim "Arrow"
• Ring-Flyer: Small, local transport aircraft.
• Durug: Geology vehicle. 

Cover by Burckhard Labowski and Regine Schulz

 

Starbucks of Berlin: Lower Friedrichstrasse

Today I went to Starbucks to think about transistors. To do that, I biked due west on Urbanstrasse, and then turned north to cross the river. This road goes by some of my favorite postmodern buildings, such as the SPD Haus, center of social democratic party politics in Berlin. Also, it hosts my son's Kendo tournaments, I am told.

Approaching the old wall, and crossing it, we are reminded of the past history of surveillance, and the relationship with Eastern Bloc. The Embassy of the Czech Republic is a wonderful futuristic building from the seventies DDR. Unfortunately, it is gated, and I could not get in to snap some photos in dark walkways beneath it, which apparently featured some Soviet ceramic murals.

Oh well, moving on, and looping around to my destination, a spacious Starbucks on Friedrichstrasse. It is nearing some elections in Germany, and apparently the far right party AfD owns the block around this Starbucks!

Now I am thinking about what it means to be far right, or what it means to be social democrat. Since I am writing today about transistors, I am confronted with the bipolar relationship between PNP and NPN. Perhaps the PNP is the dark lord of right wing politics, because it is so over bearing from its populist core? And the NPN is social because they match and talk to each other, with social distancing intact inside the chip?

Let's dive deeper. Entering the 'bucks, I am greeted with Jazz house music, and order a large mug of filter coffee. I want to write a little about some recent research and practical experience with amplifier chips and their positive flavored substrate. 

Did you know that about half the silicon boules in the world are doped positive (with boron) and the other half (with arsenic) negative? We only use the positive ones for chipmaking, whilst negative wafers go almost exclusively to solar panels. I often think about the relationship between my discrete PNP versus NPN transistors, and they come from the two different flavors, but that is actually a small slice of the market besides chipmaking. 

I gazed at the indoor plants, sipped from my huge mug and checked, and the split is about half and half between chips and solar. I know that this system is optimized for holes and electron carriers in operation, but what if some foundry made a process that used negative boules? That is, the emitters of pnp transistors would have the strongest doping, and the npn transistors would be inferior but have access to the body diode for a vertical emitter follower. The body would be connected to positive, and this rail would be thought of more and more as ground, in a negative supply system. Like the old BOSS pedals.

The transistor structures in a regular silicon chip vary widely for different purposes: gain, current and voltage handling, and speed. In the earliest days, pioneers like Bob Widlar had to basically only use NPN transistors, because they were limited by process expenses. The collectors are the first light arsenical plateaus formed, then a heavier boron inset for the bases, and finally a rich arsenic in a tight core forms the emitters. This forms the best beta transistors, isolated from the wafer by reverse diode. 

The process for isolated npn integrated circuits is thus only three steps: n, p, and n. However, to form a pnp transistor, you first have to isolate an area from the body, which is already doped p. So a whole process step is wasted just to isolate the collectors. Furthermore, the rich arsenic isn't used and beta suffers. Silicon designers had to be really tricky, creating different ring structures for emitter and collector with the one boron step available. Since the base is the whole perimeter area, basically beta is upside down and out of control. They are more lateral than vertical and the results were always imprecise.

Later designers transcended the pnp limitations by adding extra processes and using p-channel field effect devices. However, it is important to note the one powerful form of PNP that was always available: a vertical emitter follower with the body as collector. For example, I sipped some coffee and then I started sketching on graph paper, how an LM3900 Norton amplifier would be doped. You can see my results here. It starts on the left with the NPN mirror and gain transistor. Their emitters stare at us like candy in a current bun. But then the fourth transistor is this powerful, PNP that only has two layers: the third layer is the wafer itself, so it is directly modulating current from the grounded chip!

 

In this chip there are also some PNP structures which are formed in the compromised process I mentioned above, with meta-structures and pseudo field effects. They are for micro-current references however, and one of them is basically a boostrapped diode, so they are not in the strict beta matching regime that the input transistors need to hold to. The output of this chip comes from the emitter of the body-collector PNP, coupled to a normal NPN emitter follower.  

This highly effective power relationship pervades most of the opamp output structures you can see, except for Bob Widlars very first effort, the 702 from 1964. One thinks that Bob was in the trickiest mood when he designed this; maybe he had written off PNP as frivolities, maybe he was inspired by older tube designs such as the Philbrick. In any case, he only used NPN transistors, but on his very next design, he immediately gave in and employed the body follower, his first and most powerful PNP placement.

My source is "IC Op-Amps Through the Ages," by Thomas H. Lee. You can see how I circled the PNP follower on the output stage of the OP-07, in Starbucks' house brew. 

Recently I had some experience which really brought the nature of this body follower home. I was using the TDA2822, low power bridge amplifier for a long time, in solar sounders and my line of Tocante solar touch instruments. Realizing the nature of the ground current loop in all amplifiers helped explain a big problem that I fixed by magic.

The ground on these devices was previously connected through a tenuous trace that wound under the input capacitors. Sure it had enough power available, but did it have the rf magic? Apparently, as time goes on, amplifiers like the TDA2822 use smaller, more efficient processes, making their input structure more sensitive and susceptible to magical interference. The size of the PNP body follower probably stayed the same, but it sinks current directly from the wafer, and that can easily start effecting the sensitive current sources that serve as bias and compensating. Basically, the sweetest Tocantes, the Zenert filtered noise and the Phashi sine waves, sounded like fart.

Actually, in the older version, the NJM2073, by Japan National Radio, you can see that the sink output was not a PNP follower, like Bob's original design. This may be intentional, to avoid having a body follower. In any case, they always sounded better, even in poorly grounded situations. The version input, however, always remained a PNP follower with grounded (body) collector. You can see it in both the NJM2073 and the TDA2822. The ground loop would be inevitable once it came to a body follower on the output. 

One day I cut some traces on the fart machines by mistake, including ground. Reconsidering my ground layout fixed everything, in an audio application that would normally not bother with rf magic. Now I'm drinking coffee and gazing at bustling Berlin, and realizing how tied together these PNP transistors are, and they can really mess up the politics of the chip.

 

If you look at my rough sketch of the TDA2822 silicon doping, you can see a sensitive PNP input transistor, and a powerful PNP output transistor all sharing the same boronic piece of silicon ohmically on their collectors. That is why we need to ground analog well. In fact, grounding is more important than bypassing the positive supply!

Next on Starbucks of Berlin: A Butterworth filter in East Side Mall 

DDR Sci-Fi: Sinobara

Sinobara

Thomas K. Reich, born 1951 in Reichenbach, Saxony, was an educated Meteorologist and Geologist. He wrote mostly scientific non-fiction. Sinobara is his only Sci-Fi work.  

In this future, the earth has received transmissions from the distant Eridanus civilization, which lies outside the reach of current space travel. Instead of going there directly, the earth must build a multi-generational chain of outpost worlds, such as Sinobara, where a colony is presently being built.

Sinobara has no complex animals or even insects, just plants and bichordates: a primitive and harmless crawling animal. A supernova had caused the extinction of all sophisticated life more than a million years ago. It has life, but not much diversity; it is lonely in a creepy way.

The outpost on Sinobara can survive with the mineral reserves it has found, but they need coal to be truly independent. A mission had already been sent into the wilderness of forests, but disappeared suddenly. 

The next mission employed an armored vehicle, like a camper with lasers for clearing the way. On this mission, two petrologists for preparing the test bores, a chemist for analyzing the minerals, a biologist, and the leader. 

The team quickly does find a limited amount of coal reserves, and the success ameliorates the colony’s energy deadline, but the team continues. A recurring theme is the friction between Ronson the chemist and Ingstorm the biologist, who have survived a gruesome incident together, wherein a beloved comrade, Mirjam, died, and which they blame each other for. Ingstorm has his famous astrobiological theory, which states that although life is infinitely diverse, plants remain immobile and animals mobile: 

"Plants are open Systems, animals are closed … there can be no intermediate form."

Ronson criticizes the theory as geocentric, and indeed the planet Sinobara threatens to undermine the theory, when it reveals a yet unknown denizen of the wild forest: the mobilophyten. These life forms have plant cells and growth characteristics, but are mobile like animals, and have a sensory ability to seek out the nitrogen afforded by bichordate colonies. The pose little threat to the humans, but may unwittingly have caused dangers, from their modification of the local geology to build terraced breeding ponds which spontaneously burst and sundered the previous mission. 

Ingstroms fundamental theory of astrobiology is under threat by the half-animal half-plant intermediate forms, and he defends his theory arrogantly, giving up in the end. The crew must think creatively to understand how the mobilophytes operate, to avoid endangering themselves and the lifeforms. 

The story is told from a group perspective, and instead of a violent monster or alien cliche, the challenges are more subtle, and a spooky depth comes from the perplexity of trying to understand the truly incomprehensible alien. No revelation or communication comes in the end, but the mission returns to plan the first coal mines of many at the edge of the wilderness.

Glossary 

• Protonenwerfer: the multipurpose weapon and tool of choice on board the Herkules, a titanic land exploration tank. 
• Mobilophyten: Plants that have mobility on planet Sinobara
• Zwischenformen: A form of life with characteristics in between two kingdoms.
• Reizempfindlich: Sensitive to stimulation. The problem is how does a plant communicate and react to stimulation without a central nervous system.
• Analogtheorie: A scientific process of relating two systems with seemingly similar properties, such as Sinobara's mobilophyten with Earth's plants. However, the limits of this theory are tested. 
• Kombination: A typical Soviet future has the crew dressed in one-piece uniform overalls. 
• Vernunftgabe: Beings capable of reasoning. It is hard to detect whether the mobilophyten can reason, or even communicate. However, they do modify the environment in a way that suggests goals, creating wetland habitat for bichordates as nutrients, and raised limestone structures for reproduction. In the end, it is dubious that they are reasoning beings with goals, but rather their life processes themselves induce survival. What Richard Dawkins means when he postulates that genes have a survival instinct. Also, like the scallops in St. Brieuc Bay, part of a network with agency assigned to non-reasoning actors.
• Geozentrismus: The idea that on an alien planet, scientists try to understand the phenomena by referencing earthly processes, that may be a false assumption.

Cover by Burckhard Labowski and Regine Schulz

Quantus Barney: Secluded Residence @ Radio Shack, Part XIII

The president wants to switch the internet off.

The button wants to be pushed. It has a force field of power of trembling hands that dare approach it, for fear of interrupting all online commerce instantly.

Monassi is an amber, assymetrical button, with an unpleasantly yet tacky side to the rear, a void of unmixed epoxy resin created by the artist, late at night, after a chariot ride, who all too hastily improvised a button out of too hastily stirred materials. Monassi seemls like a popup alien technology from a cheap movie. Little air bubbles are suspended in the improperly mixed material, along with a pubic hair.

"Might as well add a seashell and snow to make a duckpond landscape within," snorted Blanc, who was currently inside monkletto. "I've casted lead, i can steam bend wood, but i've never spent so long on a single resin button. This'd better be good."

"Monklert, it will be good." Monklert is the name of the persona when Monkletto talks to himself late at night, to the Blanc inside himself.

Monassi wants to be pushed, and wants to feel like an ancient relic, like grandma's face, when finally touched. There's no internet in grandma's house, but memories of freshly washed, old, bedsheets.

Monassi gives you your smell memory back. Like a band of scrolling material, impregnated with different touch sensations: gravel, duck feathers. At such a concert, the audience is invited to approach the band at the edge of the stage, and regain your touch memories. The scrolling touch band is the thin shoreline between the ocean of senses and the land of drinkers.

Monassi is another rocker on this stage, wanting to actuate, yet there is a powerful field surrounding it, the hesitancy, or angst, of other actors to actually trigger Monassi. 

Monkletto stepped outside. The clear sun warmed him, and the cafe chatted with itself behind its yarns. Monassi caught some sun and sparkled like honey.

"Maybe the gooey back part will cure in time, in the sunlight?" Monkletto wondered to himself. But it didn't ever really cure, remaining gooey to accumulate a crust of pigeon debris, as Monkletto and Blanc tossed it back and forth outside the cafe. 

After speaking for a bit with a grunge dude about last nights chariot rides, Blanc felt down on Monassi, bursting with the trembling of masked emotion, "This button isn't any better than a piece of gum embedded in the sidewalk of a tiny Ohio town."

"Monassi will be great, though, by forming an emotional field by her imperfect electronic materials."

Under the fearless hand of the president, Monassi as button, gooey in the back, creates emotional tension for all internetted Americans, some of them authentic, some not.

The idea of the band of touch sensations, I owe to my dad. Late one night, he was driving me alone in a car, through the mountains of Pennsylvania. He recounted this idea, as one personally beholden to him, that he had imagined as a child. In it, he imagines a musical show occurring on the stage, and at the front lip of the stage, a band of canvas is scrolling that has different materials embedded, so the audience can feel certain sensations on their fingers, cued to the music.

Bonus Poem

Blanc poked in the papyrus.

Blanc attended the conference of detritus painters.

Monkletto is the pharoah, naturally narcissistic.

Blanc teaches authenticity to gilded, but deaf, ears.

Good Blanc is ancient Blanc. 

Bad Blanc is modern. Their identities smudge,

Blanc and Monkletto together in a ghillie suit.

Blanc posing in ghillie suit, face unseen, in front of Hanumann's barn.

Ages later, the basement rooms are painted black, 

the new youth program is about astronomy. 

posters of planets and galaxies cover the walls. 

space rock is played there, after a prayer, 

micro doses of psychedelic mushrooms are distributed.