June 25, 2016 at 02:53AM

Today I Learned: 1) Somebody has been reading my TIL blog (positivederivative.blogspot.com) from France. I don't know why, but I suspect web crawlers. 2) If you have a vacuum pump in a critical operation on an expensive piece of equipment, it's a good idea to buffer the pump with a large vacuum reservoir. That way, if the pump goes out for a short time, or loses pressure for some reason, or has to draw really strongly for a short time, the downstream vacuum-sink will draw from the reservoire instead of breaking the pump or just plain breaking. 3) There is such a thing as a reusable zip-tie! Sort of. It's a C-shaped piece of fairly tough plastic that's almost closed off, with opposing teeth that click together when you shove the C-arms past each other. If you slide the arms sideways, the teeth disengage and the thing pops off, ready to use again!