One year ago today: April 12, 2014, begin GMO study.
Five years ago today: April 12, 2010, dating over-30’s.
Ten years ago today: April 12, 2005, coffee $3.69 a package.
MORNING
Nobody made the morning meeting, so while I had breakfast alone, I also got together a preliminary list of what is needed to build a pedal pub. The only major pieces are the metal equivalent of the 2X6” frame pieces around 18 feet long. One has to assume this city already has an ordinance against the pedal pub, so this is an accounting exercise. Let me rephrase that. There may be no actual rule against these vehicles, but that the city will simply refuse to issue a license for any business they think is too freelance for them.
It was 94 degrees inside the house when I returned at mid-morning. That means a day under the air conditioner. Shown here is the full gear assembly being tested. This is only the running gear, there is no microcontroller involved yet. This represents a milestone in that it is the first full-sized original mechanical robot-oriented device built here. Or at Nova.
The assembly is easy to follow, a drive motor that powers four successive speed reductions to (a calculated) half at each stage. You can actually see the effect as the gears go from blurry at the left to stop motion on the large gear at the right. There is no concession to efficiency. This get-up will drain a set of batteries to dead flat in ten minutes. The stripes in the wood are natural coloration. This project is growing outta control!
My temptation now is to produce and attach the largest gear I can cut onto the top of this train and see how fine it can be controlled. Even a microcontroller with PWM (pulse width modulation) cannot, or at least should not, attempt to keep a motor running out of a reasonable range determined by its design. But my work is durable. I connected this to the 60% motorcycle battery and it just flies along. Dangerous at those speeds.
That is why the final planned stage will use a set of relays and a governor to around 4800 rpm at the fastest rotation wooden part. Gefahr is German for “Fire”. It is slang, there is no such word in relation to starting a motor. The word for ignition is even harder to spell. But not as hard to understand as nobody this morning showing up for a free breakfast. Has everyone won the lottery? Now hold on, even if they did, they would still show up for free food. Hmmmmmm. Big party somewhere last night?
NOON
I produced a video of the gear assembly running at high speed. If I ever find my password, I’ll post it on youTube. For now, it is for distribution to the inner circle only. Five years it took to get to this stage. Not that I worked on it full time, but there you go, proof that much of the world is very, very lucky guys like me are held in check by grinding poverty at an early age.
This is my latest contender for a replacement Goldwing. It’s a 1200, which is a 20% increase in displacement. I have this guy talked down to $1600 but allow me to explain my hesitation. There many such machines coming on the market in a similar price range with similar mileage of around 40,000. That represents only four years of normal riding, so it seems we are dealing with some kind of demographic here. What do several dozen people selling 30 year old Hondas with low mileage all have in common?
My speculation is that the Honda is a lot of motorcycle and after a certain age, it isn’t as much fun to pull up and park these things. That’s not what stops me from wheeling around town, but I do notice the size and weight is a factor. It is far easier to putt-putt up in a scooter. For me, the Goldwing is just too thirsty. It’s a gas-gobbler. The thing is, these other Goldwings have been averaging only 1100 miles per year and are in plentiful supply.
My Goldwing is simply still good enough for another major trip or two. My cost of ownership is around $1,000 per year and I’ve been to Denver twice. I have no intention of scrapping it yet. I’ve made arrangements to trace the electrical problem before summer really gets here. One thousand a year for prime chick-magnet transportation is my kind of situation. Have you seen the guy around town with the camo Ural sidecar? Those units just don’t have the class of a true original.
Anyway, I’m not going to buy the Goldwing, instead use the $1600 for something else. And wait for a total deal to come along. Something in perfect condition for a grand. Remember, I still have to pay to have the sidecar placed onto the new frame. That’s around another $1,400.
NIGHT
Is there anything better than a Sunday evening at home? Making potato soup and watching documentaries? I think it might depend. If you have your scooter in the shop, your front bearing gone on your motorcycle, and your bicycle is stuck in one of the higher gears, yes, a quiet evening at home makes all kinds of sense. To really spice things up, I read about gear ratios.
This picture is old, around 75 years old. It would have had me stumped except for my computer background and my navigation studies. Ah, I heard that, there were no computers 75 years ago. That’s why this got my eye. I recognized it as the way a teleprinter type device would display navigational readings. Well, why not just watch the video and find out?
I thought of that. It is in Czechoslovakian. But what printing as is visible is English. This is a printout of some bearing information from an early radar set. When computers came along decades later, the concept of printing out analog readings like this was well established. I first programmed in my mid-teens, so this format was what they taught us in computer school. That’s why I recognized it.
So much nothing happened today and over the last week that I may be able to afford something nice, maybe an extra little trip out of town or something. Besides, these little trips just to see what’s there have a wonderful impact on my ratings. People must like vicarious vacations. That’s what I should do, go to the Keys. Then again, a great day for me could consist of taking the bus to up the Pro Bass Shop and drinking coffee all afternoon.
Why didn’t I do that today?
Before I leave, I put out several paragraphs by e-mail on what I changed on the bass line to “Sugar Sugar”. Turns out a lot of people “now that you mention it” really like that bass. Most of what I change is a tricky-to-grasp concept I’ve worked out over the years. Some will know I call it “playing ahead”. Yes, I have used it maliciously to zap over-playing lead guitar breaks. A lot of bass centers around a “root and fifth”. This is what causes people to say things like “bass is easy”.
Not always. The way I play it can be particularly difficult, but not because I play fast or complicated. What I found is that not all “fifths” are created equal. You can demonstrate this yourself if you play any guitar at all. Grab a bass and try to root and fifth your way through a three chord song. Most of the time you’ll get wedged into a riff that you cannot play without breaking the rhythm. Try it.
Because I get a laugh out of the idiotic methods most guitar players try to cover this up. You get stuck having to either play a wrong note or dropping the beat, both of which make you a lousy bass player. What I’ve done is pick out the fifths that can act as passing notes to the upcoming chord change. Does this work? Like a hot damn.
It is far more pleasing to the ear and lets the audience know something is about to change. It’s something most bassists never think about because they’ve been conditioned to follow. People who watch me play often spot that I wag my left elbow around a lot more than most bassists. This is those famous “thirds” I love to inject into the music. They leave the left hand in the wrong position to play what a trained bassist would logically do next. But you see, I am not a trained bassist.
ADDENDUM
Ready dream interpreters. This one really happened. The dream was about a conversation in a car with one of my first serious girlfriends. She went on to marry a series of oil executives or their sons, I don’t know. I never visit unless asked, although this is the same lady I promised I would contact later in life. That never happened. This dream was about something that really happened.
It was when I was quite young and dumb enough to believe that family had some obligation to act in the child’s best interest. Doy! Well, I used to introduce my girlfriends to my parents. Oddly, my younger brothers did not start dating until years after I did, that is, not until they were nearly twenty. Weird. And they didn’t do so well in that department.
But the dream was about after Sweet Judy Blue Eyes had met my parents. It was the second Xmas we had been dating, so she knew what there was to know by then. In the car on the way home a thousand miles away, we talked. She asked if those were the parents who promised to put me through university.
When I said yes, she simply said flat-out, which was rare for her, that “those people are never going to help you. If they owed me any money, I would get it now.”
I had no idea how right she was.
Last Laugh
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