Here’s Ray-B playing the ultimate set of super-slinky guitar strings. The easy individualism of solo playing makes it difficult to see any advantages to trading that for the hassles of duet playing, but nobody is making money in this town. Something has to change. Last day I cited my philosophy of the two-hour gig. Many local clubs know the hours likely to bring in sit-and-stay customers. The bottom line is are there any musicians in town clever enough to change this situation into a money-maker?
Here’s the whirlwind tour of today’s top events. I’ve got the termite spray that treats finished wood. Maybe I can salvage my fancy desk yet. My permanent plates for the scooter arrived today, now maybe I’ll take it out of the county for a spin. The weather has been absolutely beyond perfect. Dave-O came by on his way to the clinic and is finally looking chipper again.Here’s the trivia. Do you know the incentive behind placing twin motors on the airplane wings? It was because mounting a motor on the fuselage allowed noise and vibration into the passenger compartment. I’ve flown a lot in DC-3s, which are a twin, and they weren’t exactly a treat. The same book mentioned that 1930s advertising stressed how a businessman could leave New Jersey at 4:00 PM and arrive in Los Angeles at 7:00 AM. In the 80 intervening years, someone has yet to justify this strange activity to the shareholders.
My favorite Jeopardy was on today (it was on while I was testing an HDTV antenna). A contestant named Tom waxed the competition on factual questions. My man! He amassed $30,000 leaving the other two in the hole. It was telling how the lady lawyer never got a single technical answer, but lamely tried to pinch a few points on bobo categories like celebrity marriages. Gee, that is an important field for an attorney to be well-versed in, don’t you think? Good for you, Tom.
Allow me to introduce a new term, the “zig-zag architect”. Face it, the most useful shape for a room is rectangular, all things considered. In every generation some dork comes along and thinks he is original by designing something with weird angles. Let me say to them, “Ho-hum”. It’s been done. By children. It isn’t creative. It’s the first idea a klutz comes up with. It’s like handing an electric bass to a guitarist. He’ll try playing it with his fingertips, for that is how juveniles behave.
Some may say I’m being crusty today, but let’s check to see if that is a fact, or just their attitude. Here’s the test. I say, “I’m being followed.” What about that?
A jerk would say that I’m paranoid. So, are you a jerk? No, I see that you instantly figured out I was referring to the thousands who read this blog. They are indeed following me. But you can probably now imagine how well my brothers liked me.
Besides that, I am being crusty on purpose. I spent some intense hours looking at matrix information again, although I could not find anything that was on topic. That topic is “The Construction and Code for an 8 x 8 LED Matrix Using the Arduino Microprocessor”. That would seem a little too focused for most authors on the Ethernet. I learned that the correct name for the object is a dot matrix. I learned each LED should have its own resistor. Plus, transistors are used as switches in a dot matrix, and the transistor must be off or on, never in between because apparently the transistor makes a very efficient switch.
I found a wiring diagram that I may be able to adapt. I learned the two arguments for the placement of the resistor either before or after the LED are valid. Logically, it goes before the LED, but placing it right after means one is less likely to forget it. I will break my habit and begin placing them after. I don’t know, what did you learn today?
Years back, I looked at Liberty Reserve. This was an on-line payment system that is an alternative to PayPal. I’ll see if it is still in existence. Remember, these Internet cash places got attention by all making the same promise: that your payment was anonymous, nobody could trace these electronic “cash” transactions. Isn’t it a telling commentary on public intelligence that the biggest liar (PayPal) came out on top?
Later, I see that Liberty Reserve is also fudging the rules. To use their anonymous service, you have to open an account, which requires identification. For those who remember a while back when I commented on the Federal government cracking down on gift cards, well they also made spending cash on the Internet very difficult. Furthermore, there are some nasty comments about Liberty on the review sites, mostly to do with lack of security.
[Author’s note: that is not quite the way it happened. eBay was originally only an auction site, that is, they did not get into how the two parties paid each other, they didn’t care who or how. They should have left it at that, but found out that they could scoop gravy out of the arrangement by handling the cash. So they purchased PayPal. From there it was a short step to matching up the cash with the names. Someday I dream of an invention that allows people to spend money anonymously over the Internet.]
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