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Circuit Safety: Common Sources of Hazard

Circuit Safety: Common Sources of Hazard

Circuit safety is a really important consideration, and you need to be constantly thinking about safety precautions and how you can protect yourself and be safe any time you are dealing with electricity. There are certain situations that happen to be especially common sources of hazard, and as such you are going to need to put extra consideration into these potential risks.

First and foremost, you need to be aware of the fact that wet conditions can significantly increase the risk of an electrical shock because they lower the amount of natural resistance in your skin.

Next, you are going to want to replace any worn or damaged power tools or extension cords immediately. You will be able to prevent the innocent use of a bad tool or a bad cord by immediately cutting the male end of the plug off, but only when it is properly unplugged from the electricity. If the male end of the cord is missing so that you cannot plug it in, then you know immediately that you are dealing with a bad cord or a potentially bad tool and you can chuck it rather than risking injury by using it.

Keep in mind that power lines are extremely dangerous, and so you are going to want to avoid them at any and all costs. If you see that a line is going to touch down on the ground, then you should stand on just a single foot or you should run so that only one foot is touching the ground at a time. The reason for this is because it will prevent the experience of any voltage shock from the voltage dropped along the ground between the systems’ ground point and the line.

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Circuit Safety: Shock Current Path

Circuit Safety: Shock Current Path

When it comes to circuit work and safety, there are a number of considerations that you are going to want to make in order to ensure that you are safe. Many of these considerations have to do with shock current path. The least that you need to know is that the electric shock is only going to be capable of occurring when a contract is made between at least two different points of a same circuit and where voltage is being applied across the body of a victim.

Power circuits are typically going to have one designated point that is designed to be grounded. This means that it is firmly connected to either metal rods or metal plates that are buried down in the dirt. The purpose of this is to make sure that at least one side of the circuit is always going to be at ground potential, meaning that there is zero voltage existing between the earth ground and that specific point.

It is also important that you understand what a ground fault is. What this is, is an accidental connection that exists between the earth or ground and a circuit connector.

You should take the time and effort to get special insulated mats and shoes that will help to protect you from any shocks coming from ground conduction. It is important also to consider that this type of gear has to be in a clean and dry condition in order for it to be effective in protecting you. Normal footwear is not going to be good enough in order to provide you with protection from the shock, because it may insulate you a little but is not going to insulate you enough from the earth around you.

Although it is apparent that dirt is generally a poor conductor, dirt is more than capable of conducting enough current that it would be able to seriously injure or even kill an adult human being.

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Circuit Safety: Shock Current Path

What is electrical potential, voltage, earth a...

Image via Wikipedia

Circuit Safety: Shock Current Path

When it comes to circuit work and safety, there are a number of considerations that you are going to want to make in order to ensure that you are safe. Many of these considerations have to do with shock current path. The least that you need to know is that the electric shock is only going to be capable of occurring when a contract is made between at least two different points of a same circuit and where voltage is being applied across the body of a victim.

Power circuits are typically going to have one designated point that is designed to be grounded. This means that it is firmly connected to either metal rods or metal plates that are buried down in the dirt. The purpose of this is to make sure that at least one side of the circuit is always going to be at ground potential, meaning that there is zero voltage existing between the earth ground and that specific point.

It is also important that you understand what a ground fault is. What this is, is an accidental connection that exists between the earth or ground and a circuit connector.

You should take the time and effort to get special insulated mats and shoes that will help to protect you from any shocks coming from ground conduction. It is important also to consider that this type of gear has to be in a clean and dry condition in order for it to be effective in protecting you. Normal footwear is not going to be good enough in order to provide you with protection from the shock, because it may insulate you a little but is not going to insulate you enough from the earth around you.

Although it is apparent that dirt is generally a poor conductor, dirt is more than capable of conducting enough current that it would be able to seriously injure or even kill an adult human being.

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Circuit Safety: Physiological Effects of Electricity

Circuit Safety: Physiological Effects of Electricity

The first thing that you are going to want to understand when it comes to circuits and electric currents is that an electric current is quite capable of producing both severe and deep burns in your body due to what is known as power dissipation across the electrical resistance of the body.

Tetanus is the name for a condition when your muscles contract involuntarily due to an external electric current passing through your body. When the involuntary contraction of the muscles that control your fingers causes you to be trapped and unable to release an energized conductor, this is known as being froze on the circuit.

Diaphragm muscles in the lungs and heart muscles are both affected in a similar way by the electric current when it passes through the body unexpectedly. Even currents that are not strong enough to induce tetanus can still actually be strong enough that they can interfere with the pacemaker neurons of the heart, which can cause your heart to weakly flutter rather than beating strongly as it is supposed to.

A direct current, also known as a DC current is going to be much more likely to cause tetanus in the muscles in comparison to an alternating current or an AC current. What this means for you is that a DC current is going to be much more likely to freeze up a victim in the event of a shock scenario. You need to be aware of the fact, however, that AC current is much more likely to cause the fibrillation of a victim’s heart, which actually happens to be a much more dangerous condition once the shocking current is no longer flowing, as it can cause serious harm to the victim on a longer-term basis.

Understanding how electricity can affect the body is essential when you are working with circuitry, as this understanding can protect you and even safe your life when put to good use.

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Smart Email

I live for the day that an email provider invents a smart program for the “Attach” function. How many times have you labored over creating the perfect cover letter/email for your resume, cut and pasted it into the body of your email message to the potential hiring manager or recruiter – which certainly says “attached is my resume”- then pressed the Send button without actually attaching the resume? It has happened to me more times than I care to admit. And to my chagrin, it’s not just with resumes. The gaffe includes sending pictures to friends and family, and various other documents. In fact, it has happened so often that I have considered trying to create some kind of magical macro; something that would see/read the word “attached” or any variation of it in the text of my email message, and prompt me to actually attach the document I refer to in the email message. Alas, my programming skills are not up to that level, nor do I have the time to learn how to do it. Years ago, that cruel goddess know as “Fate” decided that I would not live on the cutting edge of technology. And apparently she is in cahoots with the cruel goddess of financial fortune. But I digress-

Surely I am not the only one who suffers from this lack of technology; this intense lack of an email program’s ability to read the body of a message, see any form of the word”attach”, and prompt the sender to actually attach the intended document, picture, file, etc. BEFORE the message is actually sent. How difficult can it be? Has this magical feature been invented already? Did I somehow miss all the news and hype about this? Surely this would not require an overhaul of one’s PC circuits nor installation of complicated hardware.

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Thoughts and Wishes for New Technology

As we’ve all seen, technology changes very quickly. While it may take years for some wunderkind’s idea to go from a concept to a functional product, once it IS a viable product, next thing you know it’s on a virtual and/or brick and mortar shelf at your fingertips.

Of course, demand is a huge driver. Many have been able to turn their brilliant idea into a sellable product – at least long enough to (hopefully) break even on the investment it took to get the product to market. I still recall my astonishment at the success of the “Pet Rock” back in the 1970s. Since then, there have been hundreds of other endeavors like that. Some successful and continuing (Facebook, YouTube, Google); some that were a flash in the pan, and not worth mentioning.

I’m no wunderkind. But in my travels on the road of life, I’ve had a few light-bulb moments for “new technology” products. I don’t have the engineering background, talent or skill to create these things. So I rely on time and others to realize the need for them, and to create them.

That said/admitted, here is one of my favorite ideas that I hope to see soon:

The “Time Bank Register”: A type of game where you can enter the amount of time you spend doing innocuous things like standing in line at the grocery store, waiting on hold on the phone to speak to a human being, sitting in a massive traffic jam. I suspect many would be surprised at how much time is spent on these value-less activities. Like a bank checking account, you could deposit this wasted time, and make withdrawals for the activities you REALLY want to spend your time on: a few more days of sunning on the beach, a few more hours with a loved one, a few more minutes of that precious commodity known as sleep. Perhaps it should be called the “Reality Time-Check” game.

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Morrowind: ten Years of Awesome

If you have never played The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind (preferably for the PC), than you are seriously missing out on something great. Yes, it did come out back in 2001, which was a decade ago. But there is more than just the most modern novelty to be had in a great game, after all. Go back and play the original Super Mario Brothers, if you want to understand that the newest games and the best games are not necessarily one and the same. Not only can you use exploits to create spells which can hit an entire town like an atomic bomb. Not only can you literally spend real life months tracking down and doing a lot of the quests (it might not even be possible to get them all, no matter how many characters you use).

Morrowind is the kind of game that just does not come out all that often. The quest lines, the variety of monsters and the beautiful, exotic architecture of the in game world all give it an ambiance that you just do not find with most games. And when you add in the fact that you can actually add in your own custom content (through a utility provided by the game’s maker, the venerable Bethesda Softworks), the game takes on a special quality which may never be repeated.

From the moment you first step off of the boat in the little ‘back end of nowhere’ town of Sedya Neen to the time when you have destroyed an evil god and claimed your rightful status as the reincarnation of an ancient king (and really, even beyond that point), you will feel like you really have stepped into an ancient, mostly uncivilized world where your skills will be tested to their utmost level at every turn. If you have what it takes and want a great experience, find a used copy of Morrowind on the cheap, and kick it old school.

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Oblivion: Potentially the Best Game Ever

If you have ever played any of the Elder Scrolls series (a veritable dynasty of absolute masterpieces created by Bethesda Softworks over the past twenty years), then you may count yourself among the most fortunate people in the world. It is downright tragic to think that for so many people in the world, being able to play such incredible games is a luxury which is beyond their grasp. But while every entry into the series has been incredible in its own way, perhaps the best of the series (not to mention one of the great games in all of gaming history) has been The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Granted, it is not perfect, but it does have an incredible amount of room to branch out beyond mere awesomeness.

Before we get to how incredible the game is, remember that it does have a few limits to it. For one thing, the architecture does carry a sort of bland, “yeah, it’s basically England” vibe to it. And there is a strange sense that, considering that this is an empire which essentially rules the entire world, it still lacks the funding to explore and police the ruins of ancient civilizations within walking distance of its cities (where its population could very well be vulnerable). And considering that any thief or assassin can become Archmage of the Mage’s Guild, there are moments where it just doesn’t make sense.

But once you get past a few puzzlers like those, you realize that Oblivion is still incredible. The graphics, which can be made even lovelier, are pretty incredible looking. There is ample variety in the enemies you can fight, and there are a decent number of challenging quests you can undertake. And if you want to loot dungeons, you could turn that into your character’s full time job and never be able to keep them all cleared out. When people produce custom downloadable content, the game becomes even better still.

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The Kinetic Gaming Rivalry

Competition is a major part of what creates many of the best products. You can always tell when a product or a service is the “only game in town,” because it tends to be crafted lazily, designed lazily and delivered on a schedule which can only be described as “whenever we feel like it.” In those kinds of cases, it is easy to become a little bit resentful of the apathy which the monopolist puts on display- they obviously could not care less, unless their contract is under a serious review. However, thank a higher power that most companies do not operate in this particular fashion, because it ultimately inspires some of the best products imaginable. Take, for instance, the kinetic gaming rivalry which is sweeping the world.

A few years ago, the Nintendo Wii introduced the world to a whole new type of gaming controller in the form of its Wiimote. While a few other game controllers had previously tried to put people “in the game” in the past, this was the first time that a game company had really committed to making the interface and the number of games which the people could play as robust and easily accessed as humanly possible. The simple fact is, while this kind of control had been played with in the past, Nintendo was the first company to really get serious about it.

But just when you thought they might be unbeatable, out came Microsoft with their Kinect. Not only does it completely free up the player from having to hold any peripherals (which is a nice change, considering that the Wiimote and the Nunchuck tended to get tangled up a little bit). While Nintendo had started the ball rolling with being serious about this type of gaming apparatus, Microsoft threw its hat in the ring with more than a little bit of vigor about it. Now that these two compete, it is seriously now anybody’s game.

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The Competition of Rock Band and Guitar Hero

When two companies compete, it seems like the public is who really wins. While there will never really be perfection to be found in any product which gets released outside of heaven, a lot of times the fact that two warring companies will push the envelope further than anybody can initially believe really makes you wonder if those 19th century philosophers might have had the wrong idea about capitalism. After all, once you restrain the more cruel tendencies of the capitalists, they can make some incredibly sweet hardware when they put their best minds to the task. And in a lot of cases, that is exactly what the companies end up doing for the gaming public- putting forth the very best that is humanly possible.

A perfect example of what can happen when two companies are really competing against one another is that beautiful duopoly of Rock Band and Guitar Hero. While at first they may seem to be pretty much identical to one another, on any kind of a closer examination you can easily see that these two products, between the songs they offer, how customizable they are and the peripherals which come with them both, are both designed to be just a little bit better than “the other guy” is. After all, it would be a truly rare gamer who has the money (and even the space) to possess both games, so they both need to bring their A game to earn your patronage.

And earn it they most certainly do. While both games deal with “rocking out” in a video game sense (the controls are simpler than actually playing the songs), the difficulty can get pretty high up there. And as if that were not enough, you can even upload your own songs. And this does not even take into account that you can now move beyond just the guitars, to sing and to play the drums. This competition stuff is great.

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