A perfect day, I successfully avoided all negativity and got everything back on schedule. As a reward, I was at the bookstore on 203rd, Borders. They have live bands there again, this time featuring a jazz group. I’ve been invited by the coffee shop, but I feel that jazz is associated with the cerebral and country music is the opposite. A coffee shop isn’t my venue, or more accurately, country music isn’t theirs. If I can pick out 30 tunes that are crossovers, I’ll reconsider. I have a hypothesis of why some people favor jazz, and it isn’t because they are smart. I have no doubt that a large reason for the dominance of guitar in American popular music is due to its portability, not its superiority. Now, the guitar as we know it came along around the time the big band era was winding up.
This is one of those rare occasions it is okay to think in a circle. Jazz, with its interminable solos, kept big band members waiting their turn, which pushes them to always play at the margins of melody and beat, hence Jazz. Nobody disputes that jazz can be complicated music, and that is where my idea explains things. Once you finish learning to play guitar, 90% of all instructors will push the student to “continue on to jazz”, as if it was the desirable pinnacle. The real tune being played is on the student’s pocketbook.
Now, the conclusion. What sort of person has money to waste on complicated music? Right, the rich brats, whose parents are far more likely to also waste money on putting them through college. Hence, over time, jazz acquires a veneer of being popular among the “intelligentsia”. Billionaires like Gucci, Revlon and Foster-Grant have read this effect to the maximum.
I was at Borders to read myself to distraction, and electronic circuits are holding my attention longer than usual. Most such topics, I’ll dive a little below the surface, but not plumb the depths. Years earlier, I toyed with those electronic learning kits, getting nowhere because face it, anybody can hook up a doorbell. My present interest is something different: not everyone could program a computer to control that bell.
As soon as the computer is introduced, the bell can be manipulated. Everything from how long it rings and the tone can be not only controlled, but varied. That is what captivates me. The limitation is solely one’s imagination rather than the confines of the physical components. Some of the “science” projects that amazed me a month ago are already beginning to seem embarrassingly rudimentary.
This change in my point of view is a result of looking past the toy robots in action, that is, examining the computer code. The next time I see a robot battle, I’ll assume they are not autonomous, but that there is some dude just outside the ring with an ordinary Radio Shack joystick control. Those are no-brainers, no wonder kids can do it. But a self-controlled robot beating a dumb human; now that would be something to see.
And that is the exact robot code I’ve been reading. A disparity arises I should point out to the reader: I have zero experience building the type of electronic circuits I’m studying. I can’t even solder well. But I am magnitudes ahead of the code which I’m reading that interfaces with those circuits. The existing code is darn simple. This gives me a logical place to start, and that means back to the Arduino. Maybe I’ll never build even a toy, but I intend to grasp the principles.
One angle I can already ponder is the robots that self-navigate. The design indicates the use an off-the-shelf sensor and furthermore (this is my observation) the code means only one sensor. No wonder the performance is sluggish. In such a situation, you mount a bettor sensor, but failing that, more of the same sensor. The code must be altered to take average readings, and that is where the existing programmers seem to high-tail it. All code I’ve seen reflects the teenage mind.
Today’s trivia is Gillette, the razor blade guy. He almost gave up because all the skeptics told him nobody would buy something they’d use once and throw away. By 1917 he’d made millions selling to the US Army. By 1931 he was broke, you see, he held on to all his company stock which became worthless when the Depression came along. He had to sell it at pennies to pay for property bought for dollars. Can we say he shaved it a little too close?
