I went to Borders. How absorbed was I? I had noticed a blonde lady glance at me across the coffee shop. When I got up leave hours later, she had moved to the table beside me. I didn’t see that, and I was too obviously packing up to reverse and follow things up. Dang!
You know the distressing thing about Florida? So damn many women with no concept of the universe beyond their own personal daily needs. No wonder they all wind up on the skids. Women by the ton, but not one of whom has even a single intellectual pursuit. How I need another Robyn, who studied mathematics, history, music and auto mechanics. The blonde could have spoken up. Instead, she sat there. Alone.
I had picked up a text book and read 309 pages of computer code that made flawless sense to me. Code isn’t for everyone, and this code was a type I’d never looked at before: the control of electromechanical devices. Recently I lamented how all my life’s coding was financial programming and to that I add my regret that I could get no hands-on experience without signing up for terribly complex math courses.
In my mind, I know that people who build things are not necessarily smart, they are often ordinary folks responding to a need. They also happen to have lots of spare parts. I am convinced the best way to learn such things is to grasp the basics of Ohm’s Law and jump right in. It is not merely a challenge of measurement for you can buy all the sensors needed on-line. Last count I saw at least forty for sale, such as temperature, acceleration, gravity, light, sound, infrared and momentum. What I don’t know is how to connect those instruments to a computer, hence my recent fascination with the Arduino controller apparatus.
Stay with my thinking for a moment. Why would I want to build my own clock for $40 when a new one is a buck? Well, let’s look at that store-bought clock. It has no input or output jacks. I want a clock that responds to the environment, makes decisions, and takes action. Can’t do that with an ordinary clock. But I read that 309 pages with relish. If I had a controller, I could make the clock start timing, say, at daylight and stop at dark. I could have it decide to ring an alarm if it got dark when it should not be dark. And I could easily program it to send me an e-mail to check outside for an eclipse. The code I read was a complex set of timing modules, using a latitude corrector to keep a solar panel facing the sun. I learned that a counter is nothing but a timer that takes input from an external source. While reading, I came up with a far simpler “sensor” that would do the same thing. And that, peeps, is what I’m talking about. In fact, I’ll present my solution to the problem, along with my original sketch.
I use two cheap light sensors and a servo motor to tilt the shown table until equal sunlight falls on both. I have the spare parts in my tool chest. I have the code in my head. What I don’t have is the method to hook this to a computer. We already know what happens to people who don’t have challenging pursuits.
Maybe I’ll never build a Mars rover or a drum machine. But at least I won’t remain one of the faceless masses of the era who never even looked into the technology. (The “No, but I watched the movie” types.) If by straining and calling my little design a robot of sorts, I believe those few (thousand) lines of code today have already given me more than a primitive understanding in the field.
Some may ask why do I have my head in the stratosphere when there are unresolved issues at home? Well, let me ask the same question another way. Why, when there are complex challenges in the world, do some people insist on dragging everything back to the lowest possible altitude? I don’t know. But I’ll bet of the two parties it takes for that tango, only one of them is capable of thought at both levels. This world is full of fools who would fight over a deck chair on the Titanic.
Today’s trivia. Of all the e-mail sent last year (2009), 92% was spam. For the record, I received only 21 spam e-mails that same year on my very heavily used multiple accounts. There you go.
