One year ago today: September 11, 2013, peanuts, that's what.
Five years ago today: September 11, 2009, mostly music.
Ten years ago today: September 11, 2004, composite photo.
MORNING
Here's an annoying ad cropping up on my computer. Why? From my continual searches on electronic components. Like China, India is another entire culture best at copying Western products and inventions without realizing they will eventually get nowhere unless they also adopt our values. Quick, name a famous invention or composer that has come out of those countries in the last 500 years. That's what I'm talking about. The electronics sites are no different, except they have now gone through hoops to disguise that they are East Indian. Until you see ads like this from the country that, one gathers from the news, has nearly but not quite perfected date rape.
But not aluminum as in the metal, but the progress made in working with the stuff. The club may receive a bandsaw as a donation. And we can now drill perfect holes, in a side-by-side comparison, you can easily tell which hole was cut by the club. Largely, ahem, thanks to my pilot hole studies last week, I bother to add.
Also, bending to shape. We cannot yet produce the crisp angles like the bench vise crowd, but we can get the templates to match up where it counts, first try. Where we are falling short is cutting straight lines. No matter how hard we try, it is easy to tell a cut edge. But we got this far didn't we? Since we derived our best methods by not following the instructions, I believe we will discover the solution. Meanwhile, we live with substandard results. Because unlike some, a month from now we will not still be writing in Calibri 11, if you get my meaning, Theresa.
And we talked food, as in the healthy ingredients in the donuts. Is that important? In one sense, you bet. I know that the cholesterol medicine I'm taking is new, just being tested, and has performed on me like the ideal lab rat. I further know the name of the medicine, the company that makes it, and how well the world-wide tests are working out on 28,000 people. I also know the date when the test will be complete and that this product will likely be a boon to mankind. The stock is publicly traded. And last, I am the secretary-treasurer of a robotics club where nobody has ever gone hungry which possesses a hoard of hard cash in it's investment coffers.
NOON
What's in the paper? The case of the little girl who starved to death. Four people were charges, two psychologists and two social workers. Today the charges against the doctors were dropped when "a series of prosecution-related mishaps rendered the case unsustainable". The case workers, being far less able to afford such mishaps, face up to 15 years in prison. Welcome to Florida.
Consistent with Marvel's inability to field anything new since the big war, it is again four heros (a la "Avengers" and "Fantastic Four") getting heavy on the mushiness and happy endings after the invincible foe is dead. The movie is action-packed, no dull scenes, logical to follow, but introduces nothing new. The fact they were recently bought out by Disney probably doesn't help on that count.
Something to keep an eye on, the Fortis exoskeleton. Why is this one different? It has no external power source. It works by transferring the wieght of anything you pick up (up to 36 pounds) directly to the ground instead of via your bones. That would come in handy around here.
NIGHT
After stopping at Five Guys for some less than great fries, I dashed home before the rain came. There is a storm a-brewing over the horizon to the east. Don't need no TV to know that. So I carefully conducted a four hour experiment to examine the effect of two sonar sensors acting independently. The experiment failed, but I learned heap plenty. Shown here are the two communications ports, one transmit and one receive. Skip this section if you don't want the details.
What I did was reprogram the microcontrollers so that Module A was in constant or intermittent transmit mode. This involves over-riding the way the sonar boards are manufactured, but it is easy. The other module was set to receive and at 5 second intervals, again a design consideration.
What I discovered was the two sensors can't see each other. I was expecting the transmitter to act like a beacon and the receiver could be walked around, always finding its position and/or distance. For openers, the Arduino does not like to run more than one instance on one computer. But I figured out how to trick the computer and here they are running side by side.
Also, there is always a delay between the time a loop (the body of the program code) is run and the time the serial monitor can be activated. That's what the picture shows. I cannot pick up a beam starting at zero. I need some major think-time on this.
Both of these ping sensors are the identical two that I had working independently last week, so they are functioning within specs. I also discovered only the transmitting sensor blinks. Another revelation is that none of the Arduino on-line documentation says anything about operating two Arduinos in tandem. I found there is no software command to evoke the serial monitor, it must be turned on manually. But the dang thing will shut itself off over any excuse it can find.
Nor can the COM ports be manipulated by any code I've learned. Give me time. I would very much like to connect both TX and RX to one board and save money. Well, maybe it can be done. But why hasn't anybody in the universe ever said anything about it?
ADDENDUM
This addendum has been re-written to be better understandable to non-musicians
Face it, some guitar players get carried away with their lead breaks. Out west, our old guitarist Jeff Tacak, used to play his lead breaks twice in a row if some hussy winked at him. This kind of showing off irks the band, you know. So I'll tell you a rotten trick I use when this happens. Our current guitarist is not bad, but he needs sizing down.
I grabbed my bass and learned the stuffing out of two of the "guitar songs" on the list. Just because I can't play lead breaks doesn't mean I don't know exactly what is going on. I simply play slightly ahead of the lead player. I "give away" on the bass what he is going to do next on lead. The audience loves it and it creates the impression the guitar is following the bass, his worst nightmare.
Wait, there is more. The knee-jerk reaction of the guitarist is always to try to outplay me. Ha, THAT will be the day. He quickly learns he cannot possibly play anything I have not heard before and that I can mechanically read his mind over what he is going to try next. Nothing works, so he's best to wrap it up.
(Note, of course there are guitarists who can outplay me--but I've never personally been in a band with one that fantastic and that's what I'm talking about here, Grasshopper. Want a contest? Name the time and place. I follow one of yours. Then you follow one of mine. And we let the audience decide.)
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