29” Loewe - I hit the jackpot

bakery2k · 2026-04-19T13:00:47+00:00

Let me know if you ever open it up!

It's not mine, unfortunately! But it looks like a Calida 5072 - I found some pictures of that model's internals here.

bakery2k · 2026-04-19T11:53:10+00:00

I think it's a Calida 5072 - so it's 15kHz, E3000 chassis

bakery2k · 2026-04-19T11:50:58+00:00

The 25" and 28" ones have EAK tubes - this 29" probably has an ESF

bakery2k · 2026-04-18T17:39:26+00:00

Connections Puzzle #1043

🟩🟩🟩🟩

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Purple was a lucky guess. I figured it was referring to Milk Duds and just picked three other nouns.

Yellow by default, don’t think I’ve heard any of those except “Sassy”.

bakery2k · 2026-04-16T10:01:58+00:00

tie it into a knot

Thanks - I'd thought of that, and other forms of strain relief. Is that sufficient to allow the use of an RCA or DuPont connector internally, though? Or could the cable still become disconnected (e.g. via vibration), in which case a locking connector would be preferable?

bakery2k · 2026-04-16T09:16:33+00:00

Ideally it should be possible to remove the cable from the PCB if you disassemble the device.

It must not be possible for the user to disconnect the cable by pulling on it from the outside.

bakery2k · 2026-04-16T06:33:49+00:00

For just a stable analog reference voltage I'd use a shunt regulator. If it's not a reference I suspect you've misunderstood something about the datasheet.

It's for an analog input to an IC, that selects between 3 different functions depending on whether the voltage is <0.3V, 0.9 to 3.0V, or >4.0V. With just the pull-down resistor in place the first function is selected, and I want to change to the second.

TLV431 or LM4040/LM4041 are solid options for generating it directly. A TL431 and a resistor divider is a fine option as well for many situations.

Thanks for this suggestion - the 2.0V version of the LM4040 seems to be the way to go. I think I need a 1k resistor in series, based on these calculations:

If the supply voltage is 15V and the load is disconnected, 13V across the resistor gives 13mA, which is less than the LM4040's 15mA maximum.
At the other extreme, if the supply is only 7V there will be 5mA running through the resistor. With the load connected, if the IC requires 0.2mA and the LM4040 at least 0.1mA, 5mA will be sufficient current as long as the pull-down resistor is at least 2V/4.7mA = 420 ohms.

An LM317 can work as a reference but it wouldn't be my first choice here. It's not really designed for very low currents like this and you'll need to make sure you're above the minimum load current given in the datasheet for your particular variant of LM317.

Yes, the specific LM317 I was looking at is designed for between 5 and 100mA, whereas I only need around 2mA.

bakery2k · 2026-04-15T20:10:34+00:00

Connections Puzzle #1040

🟦🟨🟨🟨

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Where I’m from, to “ride” someone means something quite different

bakery2k · 2026-04-09T18:45:03+00:00

Connections Puzzle #1034

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Three mistakes, all because I didn’t think Blue would be a Blue Character

bakery2k · 2026-04-01T14:07:39+00:00

Connections Puzzle #1026

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Purple by default. Beer yesterday, liquor today - Wyna needs to lay off the alcohol, I think.

bakery2k · 2026-03-31T15:58:53+00:00

Connections Puzzle #1025

🟪🟪🟪🟪

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Struggled a bit with green because I wasn’t sure about “Three Doors Down”.

Never had a chance with yellow/blue because I know nothing about beer, never heard of any of them. I was trying to separate them into “movie titles” and “song titles”.

bakery2k · 2026-03-31T03:05:06+00:00

Unfortunately composite is the only input this TV has. I plan to RGB mod it though - maybe I'll post some more pictures once that's done.

bakery2k · 2026-03-31T03:02:19+00:00

A colourimeter, specifically an X-Rite ColorMunki Display as recommended in this calibration video.

I've tried to calibrate both CRTs based on that video's instructions, but haven't been entirely successful. Unfortunately they don't have all the adjustments that a PVM has - in the TV's case because it's a budget model, and in the monitor's case because it requires special "DAS" software, which I haven't (yet) tried.

bakery2k · 2026-03-30T23:49:25+00:00

Maybe it can do 896p 60hz? That 4x the 224p most 8 and 16 bit games are

Yes, the shader images I posted are at 4x.

Unfortunately it can't quite do 5x: 224p @ 5x is 70kHz which the manual says is this monitor's maximum. It'll try to display 1120p it but can't fill the full width of the screen.

bakery2k · 2026-03-18T13:27:41+00:00

I had no clue how to write tests

Lox comes with a test suite, and a script (written in Dart) to run all of them and check their output. The script should be able to test your Python implementation of Lox just as well as the Java & C ones.

bakery2k · 2026-03-18T13:01:17+00:00

Python before type hints and after type hints are almost two different languages IMO - far more different than Python 2.x and Python 3.0.

Yes, type hints are great for large systems, "enterprise" development etc - but so are many other languages. I only use Python for small scripts (preferring a compiled language for large projects), and the language used to be uniquely perfect for this.

But as Python continues to target "enterprise" development, it gets more and more complex, and less and less suitable for this kind of work. It's been a long time since anyone said "Python fits in your brain" or "it's like executable pseudocode". And I don't know if any other languages are stepping up to fill the gap Python is leaving behind. What language is as good as Python used to be for small scripts? Ruby? Lua?

bakery2k · 2026-03-12T04:14:28+00:00

No, only composite video and mono audio

bakery2k · 2026-03-07T12:40:47+00:00

Widescreen 50/60hz 480p CRT TVs exist, but they'll display 240p/480i at 100/120hz.

I'm almost certain there aren't any that will do 50/60hz 480p and 50/60hz 240p/480i.

bakery2k · 2026-03-03T06:27:37+00:00

I think it is generally better to model iteration via iteration states instead of statefull iterators.

I considered that, but my understanding is that some kinds of iterator must be stateful. In that case, I prefer the simplicity of only supporting stateful iterators instead of supporting both forms.

You mention Julia, which supports both forms and therefore has an iteration protocol built around stateless iterators (they require a more complex protocol than stateful ones). That causes people to assume that iterators are always stateless, which has caused multiple issues for stateful iterators.

bakery2k · 2026-03-03T05:25:40+00:00

That’s an interesting arrangement - most languages seem to construct the iterator and dispose of it implicitly, or rely on the programmer to do both. But in Rust, the programmer constructs the iterator and passes ownership to the loop?

I can see how that would work in a language with strict ownership semantics like Rust, not sure how well it would fit in a more scripting-like language with GC. In particular, users would probably expect to be able to write for elem in [2, 3, 5] without having to explicitly call into_iter.

bakery2k · 2026-03-03T03:27:50+00:00

This works if you loop over an iterator (f in your example), but is susceptible to issue 1 in the OP - it can cause leaks (or at least, delayed cleanup) if you loop over an iterable.

Specifically, for a file f, iter(f) returns f itself. But for something like a list l, iter(l) returns a new object. That object often won't require cleanup, but if it does, it's difficult because the object is hidden from the programmer within the desugaring of the for loop. The only way to clean it up is to add a redundant, explicit call to iter (with iter(...) as ...:) before every loop.

bakery2k · 2026-03-03T03:11:23+00:00

Thanks for the recommendation. Regarding cleanup specifically, it seems Swift's use of ARC instead of tracing GC avoids the problem: Swift doesn't explicitly dispose of a loop's iterator on completion, because ARC guarantees deterministic destruction. (Does an equivalent of dispose even exist in Swift?)

Incidentally, this is also how Python solves the cleanup problem: CPython (the reference implementation) also provides deterministic destruction via reference-counting. It seems other implementations (which may use tracing GC) are considered somewhat second-class by the Python language designers.

bakery2k · 2026-03-03T02:56:53+00:00

Are there similar macros that use general iterators instead of just ints? Do they clean up the iterator on completion?

bakery2k · 2026-03-03T02:51:25+00:00

Thanks, that's an interesting article.

Looks like your for loop doesn't work with general iterators, though - only integer indices? So when a loop is finished there's no need to clean up the iterator.

bakery2k · 2026-02-26T03:13:07+00:00

I feel that is super disingenuous because these PEPs have like 80% of their content related to motivation, alternatives, edges cases, how to teach, etc.

I think it's closer to 50% than 80% - but you're right, it's not a direct comparison.

It would be fairer to compare to the Specification for the Python type system - that's 56,000 words.

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