One year ago today: June 21, 2013, fried ROM, comin' up.
Five years ago today: June 21, 2009, much techie talk.
Ten years ago today: June 21, 2004, SpaceShipOne.
First day of summer. While the heat drove me back, an increase in thefts in the area to the immediate west of here (near the projects) has me again planning another two-stage alarm system. One stage alarms easy to figure out, so I usually have one alarm set off or activate a second alarm. My best defense remains that thieves are generally very stupid and predictable. Like that spot along the wall of the empty lot next door. That’s the logical spot to dive when the security lights come on.
Fred saves me any catalogs of electronics or music and I was flipping through Sweetwater. I counted 44 devices to modify a singers voice. There was distortion, pitch correction, and many that sense a guitar chord and add harmonies. Music in a test tube. Fishman solos have not budged in price for seven years, yet I’ve never seen one in actual use. Then again, since the Hippie days, I’ve not been to a coffeehouse.
Why not? Well, there is a misconception about coffeehouses. The wrong one is that you can go there on open mic night, enjoy a coffee and a treat, and listen to local musicians strum and sing. That’s the most superficial way of looking at it. In reality, the house uses intentionally long wait times so that musicians awaiting their turn all too often wind up being the audience. Mind you, Florida is so anal that way, even though I spotted it on day one, I’ve been to a number of these sessions.
Speaking of anal, MicroSoft Vista let me down. Each time you run the anti-virus, the performance degrades until now, a week before the big gig, it will not play any MP3 files. That was the biggest waste of $150 this year, Vista my eye. Nothing but crap meant to control what you do with your own computer. Vista has been nothing but trouble from the first day. The worst feature was some weird-ass CTRL code that turns off the spreadsheet cell borders and no way to get them back. I mean, how does MicroSoft even come up with such sphincter concepts? Turn off the grid lines, I mean, WTF?
The addendum talks robots but here are a few more lines on robot design. I calculate it will take from this point onward some 160 hours of deep planning to get something working. While the booklets concentrate on getting the robot to move, the real challenge is sensing the environment. If all I wanted was a robot to follow a wall, I’d wire it up without a microcontroller. If anyone claims they did it in fewer total hours, they must have built a kit. I’m confident enough the code would work that I tack on another 40 hours for testing the final product, which isn’t much. That confident? Sure, I never learned the wrong way to code that they teach these days.
Celestial navigation. How’s that going? I gave up and threw the books out. Ken, Ken, I was just kidding! I’m at the calculation phase, which is the “big middle” part. A lot of it is mod60 math, which is child’s play for me, but the question is why? I’m making deep calculations for solutions I do not yet understand.
Well, I grasp the idea of say, the GHA or “Greenwich Hour Angle” but not yet the whyfor. Once again, it has to do with the single spot on the Earth where the sun is overhead at noon. That is what most of the “tables” are full of. That’s the numbers we now call the Sun’s “bus schedule”. I can calculate the spot to the tenth of a minute (careful, in navigation the term minute is both a unit of time and of distance).
EVENING
Anywhere you want to go tomorrow is fine, I earned it tonight. Top earning song was “That’s Amore” from the 40s I think. I’ll look it up, but it is a tune I’ve played at bingo for years without regard. But when I sing it up, sort of faking an Italian accent, it works. Skuzzah-me, Seen-your-ay. And before you know it, the tip jar is full.
You know, since the last time I saw two Canadians go at it in Seattle, I have not seen a decent bar fight in twenty years until tonight. Two thick-headed fat-neck jocks equally matched right down to haircuts and IQ were really freaking going at it. That is what jocks do, they live for that moment, so I watched and took a few photos. They were both that monkey-shaped Neanderthal types that consider hand-to-hand combat a sport, but only so long as they think their side can win. Oops, I didn’t mean that, Ike.
I took it upon myself to stop at the late night deli, buy a pound of sliced smoked turkey, and head right home where I belong. When I get a phone call Saturday night, I flip the phone open, but then set it on the table beside the bingo machine. Then I watch how long it takes for them to hang up. The record is something like four minutes. But generally, gang, the idea is don’t call me on weekend evenings
ADDENDUM
I was up late studying the plan of a robot that I could build with the new table saw. Wood isn’t really ideal but I did find out today’s trivia: balsa wood. It is an excellent insulator, making its main use the lining of LNG (liquid natural gas) tanks. How it is used I can’t say, it seems too light to bear a load. If you find anything not written in—say, what language to they speak in Belgium? In eastern Belgium it is German, but the LNG documents I don't recognize. Flemish? Anyway, the balsa is probably the lining of the tanks, or maybe a sandwiched layer.
Nor do I have any metalworking tools. As researched, meccano parts are too frightfully expensive. I have used lego pieces by permanently fastening them with carpenter’s glue. I’ve read a bit on early Russian aircraft design where metal was only used when necessary. Wood is also heavier, meaning slower movement or more power, which adds battery weight. I’ve planned to read 200 pages this weekend on the requirements of DC motors. We already know three types are required. Drive, stepper, and servos, all of which are programmed differently.
A relatively new style of robot is appearing with three wheels, all of them steerable and all of them power-driven. This is a giant step in programming code requirements. And I’ve only seen the specs, I have not yet found a video of how these three-wheelers perform. Four wheels remain the best method of traveling uneven terrain. (Three is easy to tip over, treads make steering difficult.) I’m impressed by the army’s mechanical mule, but I remember the original that had a human operator.
WiseGeek points out that balsa is a hardwood, not a softwood. Balsa is not the lightest "wood", that distinction goes to cork, kapok and bamboo (a grass). Raw balsa has a high water content and must be kiln dried for weeks before it is of any use.
What? You want to know why balsa is a hardwood? Because the seeds have a covering. That's the difference between hardwood and softwood. Hardwood seeds have a covering, like an acorn or an apple. Softwood seeds have not covering, like pine seeds. The actual density of the tree wood is not a factor in this classification. A three-foot length of 2×3" balsawood costs around $30 bucks. Balsa is the Spanish noun for "float".
Balsawood is graded by weight per cubic foot, which ranges from 4 lb. to 24 lb. However anything 6 lb. or less is considered exceedingly rare, more like a special order item for use in glider contests. It is almost impossible to find, they say.
This is a change of subject, but there are eight classifications of vegetables.
Greens (leafy)
Cabbage-like
Fruit-like (tomato, avocado)
Mushroom-like
Stalks
Pods & seeds
Gourds (pumpkin)
Roots & Tubers
Onion-like
The only one not on my regular diet are gourds. They taste funny and cost too much. Um, although your kids may not agree, the third most popular vegetable on Earth (after potatoes and carrots) is broccoli.
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