Meanwhile, I spent the day in deep study. This time, Zener diodes. Like 101% of all available material, none of it explains in simple English what the component does or how to use it, and all are guilty of lingo and jargon. Don’t these people comprehend how badly that discourages the newcomer.For instance, the Zener “reacts”, is “discrete”, can “avalanche”, and may “act as a clamp”. Gee, now go build something. I’ll sift through this junk and find the facts, but very little of what I’ve learned can be attributed to terrible writers in the electronics arena. These diodes are one of the remaining single-purpose components I have not used in a circuit. Still to go are coils, relays and chokes.
The lure of integrated circuits is more powerful every round of study. They, ICs, appear to fall into three categories. Those that count numbers, those that count time, and those that take analog input and change it to digital. If that turns out to be true, I may be the first author who managed to say it so clearly. For example, the LCD display on your watch is the result of a time counter.
I zipped to the library, noting my license plate light is out. That is a prime candidate for an LED replacement. The soldering is quite intricate, using the existing tungsten supports. Last week I saw an ad for a “precision solder table”, which consisted of a flat base and a soldering iron mounted on brackets that guided the tip to an exact position of any circuit board resting on the base. But what if what you are soldering isn’t nice and flat? It’s great I may have finally found a use for those otherwise useless clear LEDs they stuff in the variety packs.
My first practical device is on the drawing board. While I’ve built several working circuits, these were never installed in a fancy case and really put to the test. The plan is to build a fake car “alarm” around the theory that car thieves worth their salt will know what any mass-marketed brands look like. Using the 555 timer technology, and a simple light sensitive resistor to turn it off in the day, I will do my best to calculate the lowest battery power possible to make the thing flash as a deterrent.
Ideally, the battery should charge itself in the sunlight. That is, until you see the prices they want for solar cells. Even the broken pieces cost three times what I’d pay. FYI, silver is one of the determining costs of the cells, the more silver, the better the performance. Therein exists the tradeoff. I’ve read it reliably that the finest cells can’t be made economical unless silver drops to $14 an ounce. Hardly likely.
Trivia. I think I found the first recorded use of the name “Festus”. Sorry all you Gunsmoke fans, that was not a word created by the series writer. It turns out to be the first name of a Roman poet or writer. If you’ve never heard of him, recall that most of the ancients were known by a single name, usually their last name.
Music practice is going fine. I’m finding my key to be good old C, with selected tunes in E and G, and a rare couple in D. I know the technology to change the key is widespread today, but it wasn’t when I mastered it back in ’03. That chick singer never got back after Thanksgiving, leading me to conclude she was another local big talker. There is a guitarist is the wings, he’s 35 and lives out in Davie. Either way, this time I’ll have my own act to fall back on in 2012.
I suppose my doing a solo was made inevitable by the horrible Florida guitarist situation. They claim they want to play yet always have the same hidden agenda. They hallucinate about being a star but haven’t the ability, so the alternative is, like my brothers, to not to let anyone else star either. Their stock method is to insist on exclusively playing tunes that feature heavy guitar work [the “everybody loves this song” syndrome]. There are at least sixteen such losers in Broward who psychologically cannot admit they’ve been fired by a lowly bassist. Seventeen if you include the Hippie.
Did you know I test market each new tune up at Jimbos? The only time I played bass before like I do now was when Robyn and I did the bass-vocal duet thing twenty years back. A case could be made that I learned to play bass solo gigs at Jimbos. Learning guitar is only the next logical next step. I need to perform publicly a minimum amount to keep my act sharp and I don’t get that with other guitarists. Today’s top numbers were Trick Pony’s “Pour Me” and Roger Miller’s “Singin’ The Blues”.
But I have my 28 songs. This is the traditional number I regard as a gig minimum. So as not to confuse, this means I have a list of 28 tunes that I have both played and sung, something that was not so two months ago. It means I’ve realized I can do it and concentrates my efforts on the attainable. It does not mean I can do a bang-up job. It will be a milestone and a miracle if I pull it off.
