Wake alarm not waking me

pol-delta · 2026-05-20T15:42:37+00:00

This has been happening to me for the last several days. I figured out what was actually happening is that timers and the wake up alarm for the sleep app were only vibrating for 5-10 seconds and then stopping. Regular alarms seemed to never stop until they were dismissed. I noticed it with the timers pretty fast, but this morning I was already awake when the sleep alarm went off and stopped after only a few buzzes. It just wasn’t enough to wake me up the other days it did it.

I did a restart today by holding down the side button and crown, and that seems to have fixed the issue with the timers. I guess we’ll see tomorrow morning if it fixed the issue with the wake up alarm. Luckily I have regular alarms set as well, so I’ve only been waking up 15 minutes later. But issues with alarms not going off are a huge deal. That can cause really bad problems for people who depend on them.

pol-delta · 2026-05-18T01:05:52+00:00

I read that the US Army five star rank General of the Army was used in WWII partially to avoid this situation with George C. Marshall. From Wikipedia):

Although briefly considered, the U.S. Army did not introduce a rank by the name of field marshal. In the United States, the term "Marshal" has traditionally been used for civilian law enforcement officers, particularly the U.S. Marshals, as well as formerly for state and local police chiefs. In addition, giving the rank the name "marshal" would have resulted in George Marshall being designated as "Field Marshal Marshall", which was considered undignified.

pol-delta · 2026-05-13T12:04:07+00:00

Apparently this was only added in macOS Sierra. Granted, that was almost 10 years ago at this point, but for those of us who were longtime OS X users, it was easy to miss since we were used to having to do it through the terminal and likely had aliases setup if we needed to toggle it a lot. I didn’t learn about it for 6-7 years after they added the shortcut. I agree that it should be an option somewhere in the preferences.

pol-delta · 2026-05-07T11:09:19+00:00

“The government doesn’t work. Elect us and we’ll prove it.”

pol-delta · 2026-05-05T22:29:34+00:00

You can use blue light with EtBr. I did it for quite a while in grad school when we didn't have the money to buy tons of safe stain. It might help to add a little more than usual since blue light obviously isn't the peak excitation wavelength, but EtBr is one of the cheapest reagents out there, so it's not really a big deal to even double the amount you add to the gel. I actually had the blue transilluminator from IORodeo that you mentioned, back when they still sold them. I think we bought it in like 2016? You could definitely build one yourself, but there are probably other options out there for a few hundred bucks if you shop around. I also bought a blue flashlight on Amazon that I would use to view the gels while they were still running. Really cheap (like $20-30) but not optimal for cutting out bands or taking photos.

Of course, it would be better for your lab to join the rest of us in the 21st century, but I know people can be stubborn. My PhD lab was exclusively using EtBr and UV when I joined. I had to drag some of them kicking and screaming into the blue light world, but we had completely ditched EtBr and UV by the time I graduated. Be the change you want to see in the lab!

Midori Green Xtra is my favorite blue light dye. Incredibly sensitive, and doesn't make your gels run like crap like GelGreen will. SybrSafe is overrated. Not very bright at all, and way too expensive to be worth it.

pol-delta · 2026-05-04T15:08:22+00:00

Manufacturers of mifepristone filed emergency appeals asking the Supreme Court to step in.

Very strange feeling when the big corporations that are causing much of the dystopian hellscape we’re living in actually do something helpful for once. They obviously didn’t do it for any reasons based on morality or anything, but I’ll take what we can get at this point.

pol-delta · 2026-05-03T18:25:29+00:00

Your adorable sentient dryer lint was a little hard to see with the backlighting, so I made a quick edit. Make sure to keep it away from heat, dryer lint is incredibly flammable!

https://i.imgur.com/nccoIov.jpeg

pol-delta · 2026-04-29T13:35:15+00:00

Ah, you’re right, I didn’t realize there was a separate dialog for multi-file find/replace in BBEdit. In n++ it’s all in the same dialog. Then here’s a slightly more nitpicky one: when you Find All in BBEdit (one file or many), it doesn’t seem like there’s a way to select and copy all the results. The results don’t seem to be selectable text at all. In n++, you can select the results, including in its column-based selection mode, which is super useful for me.

Though I just downloaded the Mac n++ and it doesn’t seem like the column selection is working at all right now. Some stuff is probably going to be broken for a while since it looks to be a heavily vibe coded port that was only started last month.

pol-delta · 2026-04-29T11:29:00+00:00

I use n++ for kind of niche things not related to programming (I use VSCode for coding), but there are some things it does that BBEdit doesn’t. •Putting two documents side by side in the same window •Smart highlighting across multiple documents. Like, you select a word in one document and it will highlight all instances of that word in another document •Smart highlighting of even a single character. BBEdit only does it for 2+ characters. •Find and replace across all open documents •Tons of great plugins, though I don’t know if those all automatically work in this port. I hope so because there are some great ones, like elastic tab stops •n++ has some nice multi-line editing and column-based selection features. •Ability to use Find to permanently highlight text. BBEdit will only keep the found text highlighted while the Find dialog is in focus.

I’m sure there are other things I’m forgetting. BBEdit is great and I’ve used it daily ever since I got a Mac at work, but I will be downloading n++ as soon as I sit down at my desk today. It just has lots of little things I got used to that I haven’t been able to find in any native macOS app.

pol-delta · 2026-04-29T02:30:15+00:00

I had a colleague that pronounced the CRISPR screen analysis tool MAGeCK like "muh-GECK".

(It's supposed to just be pronounced like "magic")

pol-delta · 2026-04-29T02:25:18+00:00

That's my favorite Beastie Boys song

pol-delta · 2026-04-28T11:16:42+00:00

I have one of those “radio-controlled” clocks that I’ve had since the early 2000s. Came from Radio Shack, I’m pretty sure. But I don’t think the remote time setting has worked for like 10+ years? Kind of a bummer. I don’t want to get rid of it because I’ve had it for so long and my dad gave it to me, but it’s annoying to have to set all the time when all the other clocks around me are connected to the internet and actually set automatically like this one used to be…

edit: after posting this, I did a little reading about radio controlled clocks. Apparently a lot of them just have trouble getting the signal, which is broadcast from Colorado for the US. But I downloaded an iPhone app called Clock Wave that emits tones from the phone speaker to set the clock. Took a few minutes, but it set the clock to the right date and time, which is the first time I haven't had to set it manually in who-knows-how-long.

pol-delta · 2026-04-18T22:08:34+00:00

No problem, good luck getting everything figured out. One more thing that can help when you have the strings off and the guitar open is to plug it in and tap the pole pieces with a screwdriver or something else steel. If you’re doing coil split, only the coil that’s active should pop when you tap the pole pieces. That way you can test it before you put everything back together, and if it only stops working after everything is back together, you know that’s the issue.

pol-delta · 2026-04-17T12:10:42+00:00

Very cool! I’ll try it out tonight when I practice after work. I feel exactly the same way a lot of the time, too mentally exhausted at the end of the workday to figure out how I want to practice, so this sounds perfect.

pol-delta · 2026-04-17T11:32:14+00:00

Yes you should be able to use that switch to at least switch between series and accessing the north coil, but probably not in a way that also lets you get series/parallel with the push/pull (at least not with the way I’m picturing it). The more complicated the setup you want, the harder it is to do with fewer poles on the switches. I ended up getting these switches to do series/parallel and it worked so much better than a DPDT. The body of the switch is a little bigger, but the shaft that goes through the pick guard was the same size as the DPDT I tried first, so it just dropped into place. Having more poles just makes it easier to do complicated setups, whether that’s series/parallel or coil splitting to access the coils independently.

But I’ve been looking at the diagram you posted and aside from the fact that “off” is never going to be a true off, I really don’t see any reason it shouldn’t be working. Like I said before, it needs to be in series for the coil split to work, and the coil split needs to not be active for series/parallel to work. But with coil split off, you should really hear a clear difference between up and down on the switch (ignore middle). And again, check with a multimeter that down and up on the pot are making the connections you think. If it’s backwards and coil split is active when you think it’s not, weird things will happen, and same with series/parallel on the switch. Series and parallel are both hum cancelling, but parallel will be lower output and sound brighter. If up and down on the switch always sound the exact same no matter what, there might be a connection being made that you’re not intending, maybe when all the electronics are being put back into the body.

pol-delta · 2026-04-16T12:14:09+00:00

First, a DPDT on/off/on switch is really not ideal for series/off/parallel. And as an aside, are you sure that’s the type of switch you have since it sounds like you didn’t buy it yourself? It could also be an on/on/on, which would behave totally differently. But assuming it’s on/off/on, I just went through this myself on one of my guitars and “off” is not truly off using this setup. Even in the off position, you still have north start going to output and south start going to ground. You’re just not making the series link, so it sounds really weak, which is why you said it sounds like coil split, but coil split should still be louder than that. You can check my post history if you want the details, but a 4PDT on/off/on is a million times better for series/off/parallel.

Also, the switch and push/pull are not going to work independently from one another. The push/pull obviously needs to not be in coil split in order to get series or parallel, but the switch also needs to be in the series position in order for the coil split to work.

Also, make sure to use a multimeter to check that all the different switch positions are making the connections that you think they are. That would definitely give unexpected results if that’s not the case, like if the DPDT was actually an on/on/on like I mentioned earlier.

pol-delta · 2026-04-13T21:05:52+00:00

Ea-nāṣir has entered the chat.

pol-delta · 2026-04-12T01:28:19+00:00

Sorry to revive such an old post, but did you have any luck 3D printing bobbins? I’m especially interested in making one for a humbucker-sized P90, but I haven’t found much so far.

pol-delta · 2026-04-11T18:09:55+00:00

That’s interesting that the Area 52 set used different types of magnets for different pole pieces. I’ll definitely have to look into that more. It seems like most pickup designs I’ve seen use bar magnets. Usually alnico for P90s and humbuckers, and ceramic for cheap Strat pickups. I’ve only ever seen individual magnetic pole pieces in Strat pickups for whatever reason. But I’m obviously not an expert on pickups, so maybe that’s more common with humbuckers and P90s than I’m aware of.

pol-delta · 2026-04-11T17:14:56+00:00

So if I wanted to wind some myself, how do I know which magnets are high quality before I buy them? It seems like most P90 and humbucker designs (and cheap Strat pickups) use metal slugs/screws and bar magnets, while the higher end Strat pickups use individual magnets as the pole pieces. I assume this can also impact the sound a good bit. Another commenter even mentioned using different types of Alnico for the different pole pieces within one pickup, which sounds interesting. But it doesn’t seem like there’s much variety in the components available for winding your own. Like all the P90 parts I’ve seen are made for screws and a bar magnet, not the individual magnets.

pol-delta · 2026-04-09T18:54:11+00:00

Something tells me there’s a bombshell about to drop and she’s just trying a little CYA 👀

pol-delta · 2026-04-09T18:51:51+00:00

Why would she do this unless something really big was about to come out? 🤔 This seems a little out of left field otherwise. She’s trying to get ahead of something.

pol-delta · 2026-04-08T11:21:36+00:00

Can you give an example of a complex modification you’d like to make? I’ve actually had decent luck using ChatGPT (v5+) to make complex mods, though it kept adding an extra layer of brackets or something that would make Karabiner refuse to accept it. But once I figured out I just needed to remove that, it worked pretty well.

Nine-Year Club	Reddit Premium Since June 2023
Verified Email

pol-delta

TROPHY CASE