These were bulky powered “robots” that I do no believe could have been build by high school students even with a good instruction manual, but I’ll grant them the benefit of both the doubt and the superior skills they must have acquired. Skills out of any high-school context I’m aware of. The work is impressive, I’ll say, and they didn’t win first prize for nothing.But, there was a disturbing aspect to the entire display. Some fifteen robots were present all with the same theme. Combat. While I understand the attraction of teenage men to the glories of warfare, they identify only with the heroes, never the casualties. There is a strong association being reinforced that robots are for fighting and it is universal in these projects. Maybe it’s the only way these classes can recruit members but whoever is behind it is not right in the head.
I know there were a few photos of the Meccano pieces which I’ll dig out of the camera. The pieces seemed sturdier than I recall from my kit. Give me time to examine the girders, which were chrome colored so I could not be certain they were not plastic. If I find anything, I’ll post the photos in a day or two.
Since long ago, somebody was destined to steal that concrete patio set left behind in the vacant parking lot of the car dealership on Federal and 5th. It finally happened but I think the joke is on the thieves. See here the metal gate post ripped out of the ground. Now, let us reconstruct the crime. First notice the cable dragged out onto the street. That was done leaving the lot.
So how did they get into the lot in the first place? I’ve said before somebody would eventually not see that tiny wire rope strung across the only entrance. But this was damage was done by a vehicle leaving. I rode my bike over to investigate how they managed that. Here is my conjecture.There is no other entrance, so what happened is they backed a truck up to the patio table in the dark. Once the table was removed, there was just enough wiggle room through the fence to get into the parking lot. To avoid being seen doing the dirty deed or maybe they panicked, but for some reason the driver decided to keep backing up. They backed into the lot, left in a hurry and hit the cable.
If you look closely, the metal post is not just uprooted, it is also bent. Ha! The cable was above bumper height, so they did considerable damage to the getaway vehicle. All over abandoned concrete patio furniture. It was a local job, so I’ll be watching for paint scratches that matches how they dragged that cable forty feet up the road, as shown here. Toward Wallace’s old place, if you must know. I don’t mean nuttin’, I’m just sayin’.
I found out where the millions of lotto money disappeared. New Jersey, to somebody who doesn’t speak English, is all they’d tell me. I had checked the Florida site being that it is a Florida lottery, to discover they don’t report out of state winners. Insert joke here that anybody who doesn’t live in Florida is already a winner.
Then, I see these week old videos of mobile homes detonating in Tennessee. A bush fire engulfed the trailer park and the propane tanks were blowing up. What got me is the firefighters let the trailers burn because it was too dangerous to go in there. But they gallantly fought the blaze to keep it away from Dollywood. At first glance, that seemed so unfair. But then you realize nobody is safe around Dolly Parton if anything ever explodes her tanks.
Have you ever heard of (Edmund) Leach and Ehrenreich ? It seems none of the people who keep quoting them on their web sites have either. Last day I’d differed with a person who said the US Constitution was pro-family. (It wisely doesn't mention the topic.) Since I like her, I asked her to look up the phrase “the cradle of gruesome violence”. This was a study by the team mentioned above that exposed the fallacy that family is the ideal environment, "family" is more likely to be a virtual hell. I second that motion.
So I looked for it myself and there was never a mention of the those authors. They also wrote that what is idolized by the media and politicians as “family” is actually “the source of all discontents” and where children learn “hate, rage, and shame”. The fact is, it is someone you’ve been eating Christmas dinner with that is most likely to kill you. Why is it that our society glorifies family when so many view it as unnatural for men and legalized prostitution for women? As for those who want same-sex marriages, have they never heard of Lorena Bobbit?
ADDENDUM
The case of the bounceless switch. I’ve got one that works, but not the right way. Allow me to explain that in the best non-engineering terms that I can. A bounceless switch is one that turns a circuit off and on instantly, without any sparking or sizzling as the metal contacts open and close. This turns out to be a real challenge at the micro-electronic level.
When I build, I strongly prefer items that work because of strong principles in the design. Find a cure rather than some trick that works. “Satisficing” designs do work, but when something goes wrong, there is hell to pay. Designs that use tricks are prone to equally obscure breakage. The repair then requires non-obvious fore-knowledge of unrelated topics.See, I’m already having difficulty describing the problem since it’s really that enigmatic. I point to the analogy of the engineer who determines the number of cows by counting the feet and dividing by four. It works in theory but he’s asking for trouble.
In that essence, the bounceless switch I built is a bad design, but it was cheap. To me, a good design would either eliminate the bounce, or completely isolate it from the circuit. It would not just hide it or buffer it so that it doesn’t cause a problem most of the time. And, if it broke, one could quickly locate the malfunction because it is either physical, mechanical, or electrical.
But in this case the switch operation is theoretical. Transistors have an internal point where they become fully saturated. This point can never be exactly determined, it even changes with temperature. This switch design uses a capacitor to transmit the current flow. This causes tiny delay before the circuit reacts after you flip the switch (which is really annoying).
I included both the schematic and my breadboard. I’d love an oscilloscope but I can tell by the diagram this switch is a workaround. Maybe it is the ideal solution, who knows? And that is why I rate it is bad—the bounce is still there, meaning to me the real problem has not been addressed. I know the world is full of such patch jobs, but you can’t make me like it.
Soon I’ll test it in practice. I’ve been needing a set of debounced switches for some time now. These could be built with existing parts. I’m reminded of Thoreau’s comment about why he walked. In his day the trains were so expensive it took less time to walk than the number of hours work required to earn the fare. That sounds like trivia, so would you like some more about bad designs? The British tanks in early WWII were so bad that when they went on to invade Sicily, they left the tanks behind in Africa.
