Too much time on their hands!

On Mon, 17 Mar 2025 05:25:29 -0700, Don Y

Post by Don Y
I stumbled on a nice little "tin" that I figured would be
great to repurpose. Maybe store a selection of OTC medications
in it to keep on-hand, in the car? It contained some round,
<https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/LvEAAOSwIXlkH5k2/s-l1600.webp>
Chasing down the Logitech branding, it appears these are
<https://www.ebay.com/itm/388072568821>
Sheesh! Do these guys (PC gamers) have that much time/money
to spare that they are concerned with how *heavy* their
mouse feels? Prior to the development of this mouse,
were gamers busily *taping* COINS and other masses onto
their mice just to improve their score?? Is the mouse's
mass that critical to its use?
[Shouldn't there also be a huge selection of available
COLORS, shapes, etc.???]
<rolls eyes>
OTOH, it gives me something else to consider in developing a
universal UI!

My PCs were purchased my our IT consultants. They have insane gaming
GPUs and weigh 42 pounds each, and are almost impossible to carry.
Nothing that I do (Spice, PCB layout, twirling SolidWorks models
around) needs that. I'm planning to dump them and get some nice little
Dells.

Gaming seems to be an addictive thing like TikTok or fentanyl. Natural
selection should kick in on those.

I do buy expensive (over $20!) laser mice because they work on Ikea
varnish.

The Pi400 does come with a cute red and white mouse.

Martin Brown

2025-03-18 09:08:32 UTC

Post by john larkin
On Mon, 17 Mar 2025 05:25:29 -0700, Don Y

I still remember the good old days (early 80's) when the Swiss firm
Logitech started out by marketing the ETH Zurich Modula2 compiler and
bespoke word processing software. "Logiciel" being software in French.
(French language police would not allow the nasty English word)

Long before they started making any hardware. The mouse was an
unexpected consumer success when Windows took the world by storm!

Post by john larkin

Post by Don Y
Sheesh! Do these guys (PC gamers) have that much time/money
to spare that they are concerned with how *heavy* their
mouse feels? Prior to the development of this mouse,
were gamers busily *taping* COINS and other masses onto
their mice just to improve their score?? Is the mouse's
mass that critical to its use?
[Shouldn't there also be a huge selection of available
COLORS, shapes, etc.???]
<rolls eyes>
OTOH, it gives me something else to consider in developing a
universal UI!

My PCs were purchased my our IT consultants. They have insane gaming
GPUs and weigh 42 pounds each, and are almost impossible to carry.

You need to eat more shredded wheat!

Post by john larkin
Nothing that I do (Spice, PCB layout, twirling SolidWorks models
around) needs that. I'm planning to dump them and get some nice little
Dells.
Gaming seems to be an addictive thing like TikTok or fentanyl. Natural
selection should kick in on those.

Gaming machines can be decent general purpose machines if you delete the
graphics card entirely. Doing that prevents you from running most AI
codes and various gofaster GPU based parallel processing libraries.

Post by john larkin
I do buy expensive (over $20!) laser mice because they work on Ikea
varnish.
The Pi400 does come with a cute red and white mouse.

Unless you do a lot of video editing or 3D rendering the GPU built into
the modern Intel chips is entirely adequate for 2D business graphics.

--
Martin Brown

Don Y

2025-03-18 14:21:21 UTC

Post by Martin Brown
Unless you do a lot of video editing or 3D rendering

It also helps with SfM applications; anything that can be seen as
massively parallel. OTOH, as displays get larger and denser,
the amount of resources spent painting pixels increases
significantly (I think each of my GPUs has 6GB of VRAM to
offload a lot of that from the host).

Post by Martin Brown
the GPU built into the
modern Intel chips is entirely adequate for 2D business graphics.

I suspect most "business applications" are rapidly becoming
obsolescent. We've seen (in terms of the sorts of kit that
gets recycled in large quantities -- corporate donors) the
shift from "desktops" to SFF, then USFF, now NUC. I suspect
we are about to (re)enter yet another swing of the pendulum
back to centralized systems with just display services at
the edge -- at least in business applications.

[How long that will last before the pendulum inevitably swings
back the other way -- again -- is anyone's guess. A lot will
depend on the resource needs of AI-based services and where
those are supplied (cloud vs. locally vs. per seat).]

[[We will also likely see a shift towards general purpose GPUs
(instead of those that are just tuned to video) as AI creeps
closer to the user's keyboard]]

john larkin

2025-03-18 15:03:46 UTC

On Tue, 18 Mar 2025 09:08:32 +0000, Martin Brown

Post by john larkin
On Mon, 17 Mar 2025 05:25:29 -0700, Don Y

I still remember the good old days (early 80's) when the Swiss firm
Logitech started out by marketing the ETH Zurich Modula2 compiler and
bespoke word processing software. "Logiciel" being software in French.
(French language police would not allow the nasty English word)
Long before they started making any hardware. The mouse was an
unexpected consumer success when Windows took the world by storm!

Post by john larkin

My PCs were purchased my our IT consultants. They have insane gaming
GPUs and weigh 42 pounds each, and are almost impossible to carry.

You need to eat more shredded wheat!

I'm hardly a body builder, but the boxes have nothing to grab, and
have doors and filters that slide around. One has to rig them with
ropes or straps to move them around. Sitting on a carpeted floor, they
may as well be welded down.

Post by john larkin
I do buy expensive (over $20!) laser mice because they work on Ikea
varnish.
The Pi400 does come with a cute red and white mouse.

Unless you do a lot of video editing or 3D rendering the GPU built into
the modern Intel chips is entirely adequate for 2D business graphics.

I wish they would help with Spice. Yesterday we were running a pretty
simple power supply sim at around 100 us/s. It takes many minutes to
settle out, and it's hard to learn with such delayed feedback.

Martin Brown

2025-03-19 09:42:37 UTC

Post by john larkin
On Tue, 18 Mar 2025 09:08:32 +0000, Martin Brown

Post by Martin Brown
Unless you do a lot of video editing or 3D rendering the GPU built into
the modern Intel chips is entirely adequate for 2D business graphics.

Have you tried running two instances of Spice at the same time?

On a suitably beefy machine with plenty of ram it might be possible to
run two different sets of parameters at the same time on the performance
cores without saturating memory or disk IO bandwidth.

It will depend critically on how big the matrix problem gets but for
some smaller problems it might possibly be an option.

--
Martin Brown

john larkin

2025-03-19 14:32:29 UTC

On Wed, 19 Mar 2025 09:42:37 +0000, Martin Brown

Post by john larkin
On Tue, 18 Mar 2025 09:08:32 +0000, Martin Brown

Post by Martin Brown
Unless you do a lot of video editing or 3D rendering the GPU built into
the modern Intel chips is entirely adequate for 2D business graphics.

Have you tried running two instances of Spice at the same time?
On a suitably beefy machine with plenty of ram it might be possible to
run two different sets of parameters at the same time on the performance
cores without saturating memory or disk IO bandwidth.
It will depend critically on how big the matrix problem gets but for
some smaller problems it might possibly be an option.

Two instances would be confusing. One use of Spice is to train one's
instincts and iterate a design.

At times yesterday, the power supply sim was running at picoseconds
per second. LT Spice allows one to set the max time step, but not the
minimum time step.

The Gear solver and some relaxed tolerances seem to be better for this
case.

In one recent case the sim kept stalling. I added a 1K resistor off to
the side, one end grounded and the other end connected to nothing.
That fixed things.

Inductors, especially coupled inductors, are quirky. A little ESR
often helps, but that may be random, like the 1K resistor.

I wonder if just moving parts around the screen affects the sim. Gotta
try that.

I think LT Spice was once called Switchercad. But it's terrible with
switchers.

Martin Brown

2025-03-19 22:00:50 UTC

Post by john larkin
On Wed, 19 Mar 2025 09:42:37 +0000, Martin Brown

Post by john larkin
On Tue, 18 Mar 2025 09:08:32 +0000, Martin Brown

Post by Martin Brown
Unless you do a lot of video editing or 3D rendering the GPU built into
the modern Intel chips is entirely adequate for 2D business graphics.

Have you tried running two instances of Spice at the same time?
On a suitably beefy machine with plenty of ram it might be possible to
run two different sets of parameters at the same time on the performance
cores without saturating memory or disk IO bandwidth.
It will depend critically on how big the matrix problem gets but for
some smaller problems it might possibly be an option.

Two instances would be confusing. One use of Spice is to train one's
instincts and iterate a design.

You could try two alternative values for one parameter at the same time.

Post by john larkin
At times yesterday, the power supply sim was running at picoseconds
per second. LT Spice allows one to set the max time step, but not the
minimum time step.

That is usually an indication that there is something stiff about the
differential equations being solved and that the algorithm has halved
the time step many times in a desperate attempt to control the error
budget. I once had a plot job from solving a very stiff set of equations
cancelled by the operator "because the red pen began to work loose". The
line segments approaching zero got very very short indeed!

Post by john larkin
The Gear solver and some relaxed tolerances seem to be better for this
case.
In one recent case the sim kept stalling. I added a 1K resistor off to
the side, one end grounded and the other end connected to nothing.
That fixed things.

That is odd. I can imagine adding a 1M resistor between some pair of
nodes might take the edge off it.

Post by john larkin
Inductors, especially coupled inductors, are quirky. A little ESR
often helps, but that may be random, like the 1K resistor.

Resonant tank circuits with high Q can sometimes cause trouble.

--
Martin Brown

Gerhard Hoffmann

2025-03-20 02:14:05 UTC

Post by john larkin
In one recent case the sim kept stalling. I added a 1K resistor off to
the side, one end grounded and the other end connected to nothing.
That fixed things.

That is odd. I can imagine adding a 1M resistor between some pair of
nodes might take the edge off it.

Post by john larkin
Inductors, especially coupled inductors, are quirky. A little ESR
often helps, but that may be random, like the 1K resistor.

Resonant tank circuits with high Q can sometimes cause trouble.

Trying to solve the matrix equations ( i.e. calculating the nodal
voltages from the G-Matrix and the current vector ) may result in
divide-by-0 errors when a node has absolutely no conductivity to
other nodes. Therefore, some artificial conductivity is introduced.
Otherwise you could not solve a circuit with 2 capacitors in series
and nothing else. The art is to choose the conductivity so that the
equation system can be solved without div by 0, without changing the
original circuit too much. Different spices may handle that
differently; usually there is an option to set the minimum conductivity
to GND if the automatic choice does not work.
There is no such thing in spice like a node that floats in nirvana.

AFAIR there is also a limit variable for g-matrix elements that are
considered for pivoting during solution of the equation system.

Last time I looked deeper into this was when I tried to compile
Spice 2G6 or so on my new 10 MHz 286 with 70 MB disk under
Interactive Unix. Oh, those 64k segments! Fortran memory management
was done by indexing out of the bounds of a small array. =:-()

That a student had a 70 MB disk all for himself was quite close
to hubris. The institute VAX had 2 * 300 MB Fujitsu Eagle with one
disk for us mortals.

Gerhard

john larkin

2025-03-20 02:32:56 UTC

Post by Gerhard Hoffmann

Post by john larkin
In one recent case the sim kept stalling. I added a 1K resistor off to
the side, one end grounded and the other end connected to nothing.
That fixed things.

That is odd. I can imagine adding a 1M resistor between some pair of
nodes might take the edge off it.

Adding the dummy resistor, or maybe moving parts on the screen,
probably changes the martix hence the order that things are done in.
It is a strongly chaotic system, at least for non-trivial circuits.

Sometimes changing a resistor from 50 to 51r will fix a stall too.

The LT Spice initial conditions solution can take ages too. Best to
skip it.

Post by Gerhard Hoffmann

Post by john larkin
Inductors, especially coupled inductors, are quirky. A little ESR
often helps, but that may be random, like the 1K resistor.

Resonant tank circuits with high Q can sometimes cause trouble.

Trying to solve the matrix equations ( i.e. calculating the nodal
voltages from the G-Matrix and the current vector ) may result in
divide-by-0 errors when a node has absolutely no conductivity to
other nodes. Therefore, some artificial conductivity is introduced.
Otherwise you could not solve a circuit with 2 capacitors in series
and nothing else. The art is to choose the conductivity so that the
equation system can be solved without div by 0, without changing the
original circuit too much. Different spices may handle that
differently; usually there is an option to set the minimum conductivity
to GND if the automatic choice does not work.
There is no such thing in spice like a node that floats in nirvana.
AFAIR there is also a limit variable for g-matrix elements that are
considered for pivoting during solution of the equation system.
Last time I looked deeper into this was when I tried to compile
Spice 2G6 or so on my new 10 MHz 286 with 70 MB disk under
Interactive Unix. Oh, those 64k segments! Fortran memory management
was done by indexing out of the bounds of a small array. =:-()
That a student had a 70 MB disk all for himself was quite close
to hubris. The institute VAX had 2 * 300 MB Fujitsu Eagle with one
disk for us mortals.

I had a DEC RSTS timeshare system with a 64 K word fixed-head hard
drive as the swapping disk. Fortunately it failed pretty soon.

Post by Gerhard Hoffmann
Gerhard

The old ECA circuit simulator was cool. You specified the time step,
and once in a while it might say "divide by zero error" and just keep
going.

Lasse Langwadt

2025-03-17 22:48:57 UTC

there is ...

why is it so hard to imagine that you want to do something with speed
and accuracy, weight and feel can make a difference?

Don Y

2025-03-18 04:27:11 UTC

there is ...

There are cosmetic differences, not structural/functional ones.

I've probably tested 200 different mice, over the years. (I can access
probably 40 on any given day) None "fit" my hand; they're all just
rehashes of the same basic design/size. (gyromice being a notable
difference yet still a poor fit)

Post by Lasse Langwadt
why is it so hard to imagine that you want to do something with speed and
accuracy, weight and feel can make a difference?

Then a mouse would be the wrong sort of pointing device, wouldn't it?
E.g., signing your name requires speed and accuracy -- yet a mouse
is far from even being an *adequate* device to achieve those goals!

There's a reason motion controllers exist -- wouldn't it seem obvious
that a "pointing device" suitable for gaming should exist as a different
beast, entirely?

Lasse Langwadt

2025-03-19 21:49:33 UTC

there is ...

There are cosmetic differences, not structural/functional ones.

ok, if you say so ...

Post by Don Y
I've probably tested 200 different mice, over the years. (I can access
probably 40 on any given day) None "fit" my hand; they're all just
rehashes of the same basic design/size. (gyromice being a notable
difference yet still a poor fit)

obviously. as always for every answer you get you add five new reasons
why it wasn't the answer you were looking for

Post by Lasse Langwadt
why is it so hard to imagine that you want to do something with speed
and accuracy, weight and feel can make a difference?

Then a mouse would be the wrong sort of pointing device, wouldn't it?

no, it is games played with a mouse

Post by Don Y
E.g., signing your name requires speed and accuracy -- yet a mouse
is far from even being an *adequate* device to achieve those goals!

playing a game is not signing you name

Post by Don Y
There's a reason motion controllers exist -- wouldn't it seem obvious
that a "pointing device" suitable for gaming should exist as a different
beast, entirely?

it is games played with a mouse.

Don Y

2025-03-20 02:18:43 UTC

there is ...

There are cosmetic differences, not structural/functional ones.

ok, if you say so ...

*LOOK* at the mice available. They all highly resemble each other
in size and shape. There are only a couple of different motion sensing
technologies used. The interconnect is wired (PS/2, 9 pin serial, USB,
BT) which doesn't change the "feel" of the mouse.

The number and location of the buttons varies from a minimum of one to
as many as 6 or 7. A scroll wheel may or may not be present -- and
the number of degrees of freedom can vary. The contour can be
tailored to right-handed or left-handed users.

But, the basic "mouse" is the same -- just with differences in
"decorations".

obviously. as always for every answer you get you add five new reasons why it
wasn't the answer you were looking for

What have I added? The fact that a silly marketing gimmick doesn't
address a more important issue -- how the device actually *fits*
the user (*a* user -- me)? Do you buy mice based WITHOUT concern for
how they fit/feel in your hand?

If you dislike my questions, posts, why get involved?

Post by Lasse Langwadt
why is it so hard to imagine that you want to do something with speed and
accuracy, weight and feel can make a difference?

Then a mouse would be the wrong sort of pointing device, wouldn't it?

no, it is games played with a mouse

It is a game played with a POINTING DEVICE. Why use a technology
that doesn't do what you want, *well*?

Post by Don Y
E.g., signing your name requires speed and accuracy -- yet a mouse
is far from even being an *adequate* device to achieve those goals!

playing a game is not signing you name

Signing your name is a task that requires "speed and accuracy".
You decided this was the important criteria; I've provided an
example of just such an application where a mouse fails miserably.

Or, is there some other notion of "speed and accuracy" that applies
to games but not other activities?

Post by Don Y
There's a reason motion controllers exist -- wouldn't it seem obvious
that a "pointing device" suitable for gaming should exist as a different
beast, entirely?

it is games played with a mouse.

It is a game played with a POINTING DEVICE. Why use a technology
that doesn't do what you want, *well*?

Lasse Langwadt

2025-03-20 19:53:22 UTC

Post by Lasse Langwadt
it is games played with a mouse.

It is a game played with a POINTING DEVICE. Why use a technology
that doesn't do what you want, *well*?

why play baseball with a bat?

Don Y

2025-03-20 22:13:18 UTC

Post by Lasse Langwadt
it is games played with a mouse.

It is a game played with a POINTING DEVICE. Why use a technology
that doesn't do what you want, *well*?

why play baseball with a bat?

Baseball *is* played with a bat -- because there are RULES
governing its play.

There are no "PC Game police" that verify you are
using a mouse instead of any other pointing device,
motion controller, etc.

The fact that folks think they need to adjust the *weight*
of their mouse in 1.7g increments is ludicrous (they
can't alter the center of *mass* so what about folks who
want the mouse "tail heavy").

[A modern penny is 2.5g... why not TAPE those to the mouse
wherever they want -- instead of being constrained to
load the weight in the special "weight tray" which resides
in a fixed location and orientation in the mouse]

john larkin

2025-03-21 15:52:23 UTC

On Thu, 20 Mar 2025 15:13:18 -0700, Don Y

Post by Lasse Langwadt
it is games played with a mouse.

It is a game played with a POINTING DEVICE. Why use a technology
that doesn't do what you want, *well*?

why play baseball with a bat?

Baseball *is* played with a bat -- because there are RULES
governing its play.
There are no "PC Game police" that verify you are
using a mouse instead of any other pointing device,
motion controller, etc.
The fact that folks think they need to adjust the *weight*
of their mouse in 1.7g increments is ludicrous (they
can't alter the center of *mass* so what about folks who
want the mouse "tail heavy").
[A modern penny is 2.5g... why not TAPE those to the mouse
wherever they want -- instead of being constrained to
load the weight in the special "weight tray" which resides
in a fixed location and orientation in the mouse]

The computer mouse is like a real mouse. It has been optimized by
mutation and natural selection.

I was talking to some neighbors that we met hiking on a stairway (we
have lots of stairways around here) about how bad it is for ones body
to sit in front of a computer most of the day. We decided that we need
a Peloton Mouse, really heavy with buttons that are very hard to push.

Liz Tuddenham

2025-03-21 19:25:59 UTC

john larkin <jlArbor.com> wrote:

[...]

Post by john larkin
The computer mouse is like a real mouse. It has been optimized by
mutation and natural selection.

The pressures of natural selection in this context might be maximum
profit because it looks nice, not user convenience.

--
~ Liz Tuddenham ~
(Remove the ".invalid"s and add ".co.uk" to reply)
www.poppyrecords.co.uk

john larkin

2025-03-21 20:53:06 UTC

Post by Liz Tuddenham
[...]

Post by john larkin
The computer mouse is like a real mouse. It has been optimized by
mutation and natural selection.

The pressures of natural selection in this context might be maximum
profit because it looks nice, not user convenience.

Users don't select products based on the suppliers profits.

I buy a fabulously expensive ($19) Dell laser mouse.

Liz Tuddenham

2025-03-21 21:28:48 UTC

Post by john larkin

Post by Liz Tuddenham
[...]

Post by john larkin
The computer mouse is like a real mouse. It has been optimized by
mutation and natural selection.

The pressures of natural selection in this context might be maximum
profit because it looks nice, not user convenience.

Users don't select products based on the suppliers profits.

Suppliers profits depend on users selecting their products. Most people
select on what looks nice - by the time they discover it gives them
repetitive strain injury it is too late to change it and the supplier
has pocket the profit. ...So they chuck it away and buy a different
model of the same make because it looks nice ...and so on.

Post by john larkin
I buy a fabulously expensive ($19) Dell laser mouse.

--
~ Liz Tuddenham ~
(Remove the ".invalid"s and add ".co.uk" to reply)
www.poppyrecords.co.uk

Don Y

2025-03-21 23:42:11 UTC