The other day we had soldering cl
ass at Oppedahl Patent Law Firm LLC. Everybody at the firm received a nice soldering station and soldering tools and a toolbox to keep everything in. We assembled several do-it-yourself kits that required soldering. Some of our people already knew how to solder and got through the kits pretty quickly, and others got to learn how to solder for the first time. Continue reading “Building a guitar compressor pedal”
A curate’s egg
Curate: “Oh, no, my Lord, I assure you that parts of it are excellent!”
I’ve been teaching patent law as an adjunct professor at University of Denver law school for some twenty years, and every one of my students over the years has heard my recommendation that they subscribe to The Economist. I think The Economist offers a very helpful non-American perspective on events of the day.
Today, reading The Economist, I learned the term a “curate’s egg”. As Wikipedia explains, a curate’s egg is something that is mostly or partly bad, but partly good. The term has its origin in a cartoon published in 1895 in the British humor magazine Punch. Drawn by George du Maurier, it pictures a timid-looking curate eating breakfast in his bishop’s house. The bishop says:
I’m afraid you’ve got a bad egg, Mr Jones.
The curate, desperate not to offend his eminent host and ultimate employer, replies:
Oh no, my Lord, I assure you that parts of it are excellent!
A Google search for the term “curate’s egg” yields over a hundred thousand hits.
The Next Big Thing in microcontrollers
As of a couple of years ago the big thing in microcontrollers was the Arduino. The Arduino was (and still is) a delightful board for hobby projects. But now there’s a new microcontroller board for hobby projects, namely the fetchingly named ESP8266 ESP-12E NodeMCU board, pictured at right. There are many nice things about this board. Continue reading “The Next Big Thing in microcontrollers”
Picking a smart speaker
It’s getting to the point where a person might choose to get a smart speaker. Which reminds us that we are in a fast-changing world. Used to be there was no such thing as a smart speaker. Which by the way makes me feel ancient. Just in case anyone does not know what a smart speaker is, I will now explain.
Using patents to learn how stuff works – Stud Sensor
One of the nice things about the patent system is that we can use the patent system to learn how stuff works. One of my favorite examples of this is the Zircon Stud Sensor. This product hit the market in about 1978, and I bought one of the first ones. Continue reading “Using patents to learn how stuff works – Stud Sensor”
Autumn in Colorado
Oppedahl Patent Law Firm LLC’s office is located not far from the hiking trail from which I took this photograph today. The aspen trees are at peak autumn colors this weekend. (Click on the photograph to see it full size.)
Hourglass update
I’ve been getting emails and texts from people asking how it is going in the quest for 
a good hourglass.
I think I can now declare victory, but it was a long road. Continue reading “Hourglass update”
Finding a good hourglass
Recently I was reading Penn Jillettes’s new book Presto. Lik
e his earlier books it is a fun, thought-provoking read. For reasons I will describe, it made me think about hourglasses. As it turns out, it is not as easy to find a good hourglass as you might think. Continue reading “Finding a good hourglass”
Making use of device trackers
Today I will talk about Tiles. Tiles are a particular b
rand for a general product category namely device trackers. Other brands include TrackR, iTrack, Nut, SwiftyFinder and Mynt. I will tell you about this product generally, and then I will recount a couple of success stories. Continue reading “Making use of device trackers”
Why a laser printer has three colors of toner instead of two or four colors of toner
One of my favorite listservs is the E-Trademarks
listserv. This community of trademark practitioners raises fascinating practice questions. Here is a question raised by one of the listserv members:
Does anyone have any recommendations on the best printers to use for trademark practice? We obviously need something that prints true colors. So a low-end printer probably won’t do. But we are also looking for high-capacity, non-shared printers that are economical on ink. Anyone have a printer they love?
The part about printing true colors got me thinking about how colors work. When I took physics class in college the notion of “color” was pretty simple — you would pass a beam of white light through a prism and what would come out was a spectrum of colors. The spectrum (literally a continuous spectrum) was composed of an infinite number of distinct wavelengths, each of which would be emitted from a prism at a particular distinct exit angle. But with printers, there are actually only three colors of toner. How can this be? Continue reading “Why a laser printer has three colors of toner instead of two or four colors of toner”