Here’s a photo of the Lamp Post, a pub. I hear people mention it time to time, I think I actually played in there once, anyway. The drunk driving laws make the local pubs rather segmented by neighborhoods and clientele. I remember I did not care for the place. Did I play there or stand in on the bass with somebody? If I hear a subject often enough, I sometimes record it here. Who knows?
Today I mourn the passing of the space program. Not NASA, not the budget, not the trip to Mars, but the program. What is gone is the one great good that America should have been eternalized for. It was the epitome of what a nation like this would have done if our people had only evolved out of politics and wars. Instead, we are financially and morally bankrupt, led by weak politicians, and stuck with our noses in everybody else’s business.It Mars trip was the grand ideal, the one thing all good-thinking people agreed upon and would have paid more taxes to preserve. Our system has become so corrupt that our leaders dared not ask the question directly to the populace, for it would work so well there would follow other questions. Instead, the program was sabotaged by glory-seeking politicians borrowing money to fight unpopular wars and support outdated agencies. It takes a divided and complacent citizenry to allow our leading position to be overtaken by foreign brute force. Shame on the whole bunch of you.
Now back to robotics. I won’t amount to an expert, but at least it is a project that could potentially do the nation some good. Sadly, I’m finding that to make things work, one has to resort to trial and error. Lack of good documentation is a bane in electronics, no matter how ill I thought of computer texts, electronics is worse. And worse still as it has been around longer and should have learned. Don’t look at me, I can already write. But I set out to learn something new, not publish the rulebook.
Up until now, the Club has done all computer work here. That has to change. The sensor feedback requires a computer with the Arduino serial monitor feature installed, something we do not have at the clubhouse. Without a monitor, one can only see the effect of the code, not the actual values of the data that streams back. It also means that prototyping can no longer be done on a breadboard alone. The connections will be too fragile for most robotics applications. Again, this avenue points toward making our own printed circuit boards. We had not really planned on that.
Also, I have an academic hurdle with the ICs. I cannot find any literature that describes if they are meant to be controlled by software. And I cannot imagine anything more than some basic flashing lights. Up until now, none of the circuits tested with these components have been controlled by code. I know it must happen in some wonderful and brilliant combination, but where to look for examples? To put it more scientifically, where can I find out how ICs are used as intermediary controls for motors and gears?
Writing jobs appear to be one of the few legal occupations that pay less than minimum wage. For example, the one likely ad today wanted someone to write lessons for children on subjects such as “rainfall”. They wanted a definition, an explanation, an interactive activity, and a photograph all packaged as entertaining to a four year old. For this, they offer pay of not $2,500. Not $250. But $25. Anything else, your majesty?
Hot or not, I straightened out the work shed, weeded the yard, and connected the eBike charger through the front wall of the building. Beware, the charger only comes with mayber a ten foot chord, not enough in the majority of cases. Yet it carries a caution not to use it with an extension chord. Typical. You know what went missing? My case of resistors. That’s right, my plastic case with twenty compartments of sorted and labeled resistors. It’ll turn up, but for now I am baffled.
Last, let me explain what social blackmail is. That is when you meet somebody who demands to know your last name, your address, where you work, this type of personal information. If you comply, they will begin to interfere with your life, if you refuse, they will put it about you are a serial rapist drug dealer child molester. Because if you weren’t you’d be okay with telling them what they want to know, right?
I note there are three ways in my life I have ever associated with such people. They are: family, working at the phone company, and people imposing their acquaintances on you. This was the third, a person I know setting me up with a person I don't know and probably detest. It happens. Y’day I had the misfortune to meet Phil Simms of Hollywood, Florida. Beady-eyed, beer-gut, mouth-breather, alcoholic and social blackmailer.
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