While I've written a handful of plugins in the past for QGIS, I've always wanted to learn about the graphical modeler which is a lot easier than writing all the Python by hand, especially creating the dialogs and setting up the methods yourself.
Believe it or not they had noisy, hot resistance dimmers back when I was in elementary school on the stage. They were original - from the 1930s, still in use 50 years later! They aren't that bad but at 50% dim of a 500 watt load they discard nearly 200 watts of heat per channel. At lower or brighter dimming they aren't nearly as inefficient. Very crude technology but reliable as witnessed by the fact they were still using 1930s technology in the 1990s.
The USB protocol is quite clever.
Aerogels are the world's lightest (least dense) solids. They are also excellent thermal insulators and have been used in numerous Mars missions and the Stardust comet particle-return mission. The focus of this video is silica aerogels, though graphene aerogels are now technically the lightest. At one point Dr. Steven Jones literally held the Guinness World Record for making the lightest aerogel and therefore lightest solid. If you're interested in learning more about aerogels, let me know in the comments as there is a potential trilogy in the works...
This looks like a fascinating material, especially when you consider the amazing insulating properties of this ultra-light material.💨