SAE's online operations produce some good videos of mechanical operation of car parts. Here's a video on contemporary manual transmissions (conventional) that they link to at DriveLineNews.com. If detents, synchronizers, blocking rings and clutch cones are a little vague in your mind and you want to see them in action, take a look at this.
Thanks for the link Ed. Even though I already knew how manual transmissions work, and have rebuilt a few, I still like looking at animations of them working. In fact, I like to watch just about any type of mechanical system working. I still get fascinated watching my CNC machines make a part even though I am the one who programs and sets up the machines and can see in my mind's eye what the machine is doing as I write the program. Eric
I love those things, too. I'll bet that most of the people here, at least the mechanical types, enjoy it as well.
I have some great videos that I'm planning to use as the cover "photographs" for the online magazine I'm working on. You go to the magazine home page, and the video starts right up.
It looks good and it really communicates. I don't know what issue I'll use it for, but I'm planning on it.
People on dialup will not be happy with this. (No, I'm on cable.)
As for this magazine who cannot yet be told, in what subject area is it?
Joe Gwinn
If they're on dialup, they probably won't be reading our issues. We're "direct": we send out 71,000 copies by e-mail.
And we're on the Web with the same material. But it's a byte-heavy online-reader format, and I think what's left of my hair would fall out before I paged through an issue with dialup.
It can be told now. It's FAB Shop Magazine Direct:
The publisher, TechGen, was planning a new automotive magazine to begin in January. I was to be chief editor. But Russ Olexa, the editor of FAB Shop, which is a several-years old, profitable and going operation, died suddenly two weeks ago. Instead of the automotive magazine, which is now pushed up a year, I've had to take over FAB Shop.
'Not much chipmaking. It's laser cutting, plasma, welding, punch presses, bending and forming, band-sawing, and other fabrication technologies. I haven't done much with those subjects in recent years, so for the next few months, I'm just following the previous editor's schedule.
Me, too but I close any page that pulls that crap as soon as I see it starting, unless I know video or music will start before I click on a link. Leave it to Ed to use sleaze tactics. That is almost as stupid as one website that had their entire electronics parts catalog in 'Flash'.
I hate that online-reader crap, particularly when they combine slowness with that stupid "I'm going to pretend I'm a paper magazine" page-turning crap.
If you're going to do an online magazine, then for God's sake do it in HTML, with decent crosslinking and a good search function on the home page or even as a permanent feature of the header bar.
(grumpy mumbling fading off into the distance...)
[snip]
I use broadband cable internet too, and am not happy with websites that start a video playing when a page is loaded. During google searches I usually open several pages at once (on new tabs, via right click) and it's aggravating when several start playing videos at the same time. When that happens I find the offending page and click stop or close, then come back to the page in its turn (or not, if I closed it).
No problem, Michael. I'll see if I can block you so you won't be tempted.
FWIW, this is a magazine that has extraordinary click-in rates from e-mail, and other very good numbers. They've been doing it for three years and neither you nor I are going to change it. d8-)
In general, I agree with you. I've never liked those things, preferring Acrobat for anything that requires precise page makeup. In fact, the underlying format of FSMD is Acrobat.
But it's improved quite a lot, and I now find it very convenient. I have fast cable Internet, 6 GB of RAM, a terabyte hard drive, and a rip-roaring CPU. That's where the price of entry is at the moment; anyone with a lot less just isn't in the game these days.
Face it: You, me, and the kind of people who are on this NG are *not* on anybody's trendline. We're the past. And to drive it home, an ad-agency exec I've known for 30 years brought me up to date last week on the industrial-advertiser use of Twitter. When I saw the link rates and the traffic, I almost fell off my chair. Two of those companies are machine-tool builders.
I never would have believed it. Things are moving a bit faster than I realized, and I have some catching up to do.
The online magazines are shaping up the way print magazines were 30 years ago: The really good ones are going gangbusters, and the rest are being left in the dust.
Would the first person who sees this site post the URL so I can add it to my blocked sites list?
A lot of the trade mags are going this way, and it's a problem. I've stopped reading a number of old standbys because the interface is just too awkward.
In a number of cases, the content also became insipid. I think the core problem is that the magazine isn't profitable enough, so the editorial staff is a bit thin. This could easily become a death spiral.
Oof. That had to be a shock to all. Russ Olexa is still listed on the website.
Think of it this way - the chips are very large, and people pay to get them. With those tiny oily chips, you have to pay to dispose of them.
Joe Gwinn
Yes, they have been awkward. The latest ones are a lot better.
Some have already augered in.
The online magazine business is still evolving, and some models have already been abandoned. And you're right, many of them are little more than cut-and-paste press releases. That's what's happened to the greatest of them all, _American Machinist_. When I was there, we had 7 full-time editors, of which 3 or 4 were degreed engineers. Today, it has one editor, and it's an empty shell.
Magazines are "push" communications. The Web is inherently a "pull" medium for people who are looking for something. Most of the models try to emulate the push model. Ours is halfway in between, but I'm sure it will become more "pull" as it evolves. As Tim (I think?) said, we expect a good search engine, and the push models don't have that. They need to.
It was a shock, and his son is one of my staff editors. The kid pulled himself together.
A lot of people in industry knew and liked Russ. I had written a few articles for him in the past, and he will be sorely missed.
Good point. d8-)
I used to do exactly the same thing until I got the "Flashblock" plugin for Firefox. Now I don't see any flash animation unless I either click the placeholder (as I did for this video), or whitelist an entire domain (as I do for youtube).
Jon
I haven't stumbled on any just yet.
My latest adventure is with PCWorld, a paid-subscription magazine that just went all-digital using Zinio. It has not been smooth. And I still cannot print an article. I'm working with Zinio tech support, but this should not be necessary, and will deflect many potential readers. Actually, pdf would work far better.
The problem with pull is that I have to know what to ask for.
The core advantage of a magazine is the hordes of editors toiling to find interesting things for me to read, things that I never knew existed, and pushing them to me.
With a paper magazine, it's random-access and thus easy to skim and find the stuff I care about without having to plow slowly through everything.
With an online magazine, it's slow and clumsy to achieve reasonable random-access. It's also harder to read if your eyes are not perfect, and the reader (a desktop in my case) is clumsy.
Most websites that have a search function don't have a very good search function, and what usually works better is to search via google using the "site" qualifier. For instance, enter:
"plasma cutting site:fsmdirect.com" (omitting the quotes).
So one cheap dodge is the ensure that your site is accessible "from the side" (deep-linking not prevented), and tell your readers of the site trick, or decorate incoming requests with the site qualifier and pass them on to Google.com.
Another trick is to buy from Google a search engine appliance (a piece of computer network hardware) and install it in your web server architecture, and aim it at the stuff you want to be publicly searchable. While this costs money, it's immediate and guaranteed to work.
Our condolences to all.
Joe Gwinn
"Michael A. Terrell" on Fri, 02 Aug 2013
17:05:53 -0400 typed in rec.crafts.metalworking the following:Firefox has an add-on "stop autoplay" as well as the ability to "shut it off": [I have not tried this part] ^C
^V:
Instructions
1 Click the "Tools" menu at the top of the Firefox window, then click "Options." 2 Click the "Applications" tab. 3 Locate the file type that you would like to modify the autoplay settings for. Because this may be a long list, you can type the file extension in the search box to locate it more quickly. 4 Click the file type, then click the drop-down menu next to it. Select "Always Ask" or "Save File" to prevent Firefox from automatically playing that type of file. 5 Click "OK" to save your settings if you only want to modify the autoplay configuration for one type of file, or continue until you have disabled autoplay for each file type.hope it helps
-- pyotr filipivich "With Age comes Wisdom. Although more often, Age travels alone."
Y'know, it was impressive and the video was nice, but it really seemed like it imparted very little information for the amount of time spent.
(I must just be negative this week)
Totally useless video.
i
Was it Rumford Press in Concord NH?
Yeah, I think that was it.
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