This water tower is featured several times in this blog over the previous five years. It is near Aventura between Dixie and Federal. I suppose I consider it a landmark and a dramatic photo. It straddles the St. Joan and Penny trailer park, now flattened in the foreground.I bit off a big chunk of hard work. Last day I reported a customer with VHS tapes who wants DVDs burned. I believe I am one of the last in the area who does this type of video work. It just doesn’t pay enough. But, I need the cash, so I took the job only to find out this guy has an $8,000 studio grade camcorder with what looks like 6,000 lpi (lines per inch) definition. I had to practically rebuild and rewire a computer to produce the first disk in, let me count, 2 + 1:40 + 1:40 + 1:40 is what? Seven hours to burn a single two-hour movie.
(Note: the 1:40 times are limitations of my computer system whereby such movies must be rendered in segments. That seven hours will drop to real time with subsequent disks, and I can do other things while the computer is working. This project may just buy me that drum box I’ve needed since November. I’m probably out a small fortune for not buying that instrument with my last dollar.)
I had to install a 236 gigabyte hard drive exclusively create the disk images. But the result is really beautiful home movies. The quality shows that guy was a serious camcorder user who is going to be pretty damn happy with the results. The “depth” of the color and clarity are truly outstanding, easily the best I’ve ever worked with. But then, I can be a cheap bastard when it comes to cameras.
Then, I ran out of disks. Four misfires trying to fit slightly over two hours data on a two hour disk caused bad burns. So I biked over to Best Buy to discover they now close early on Sundays. I rode the next half-mile over to Borders. The weather is beyond uncomfortable. Never visit Florida in the summertime, you will melt in the heat and it is useless to stand in the shade. Besides, it was 86 in the shade by 10:00 AM today. Trust me, due to the heat index, that is hot. Far too hot for any degree of comfort, it is not the same as a dry 86 day out on the prairies.
So, Borders it was, they have great A/C. Question. Why do people who have colds insist on going out in public and sneezing? Another thing you don’t want is a hot weather cold around here, it will linger for months. A cookie and coffee are now $4.00, it is funny how Borders took down all the stools and replaced them with tables. Now, instead of 40 singles sipping coffee, you get twelve singles each occupying one chair at a four-chair table. Strange how management loses common sense, isn’t it?
But Borders means trivia and new incoming ideas. According to PopSci, 50% of Americans born between 2000 and 2007 can expect to live to be 101 years old. I can’t imagine the next century, I probably won’t see 2020. PopSci is again glorifying jocks, something I am against. This time, it is men (always men) who jump out of space ships with no parachute. This does nothing for scientific advancement and sets a bad example for children. My heroes are not those who risk their lives for self-edification. People like Steve Fossett will not be missed.
Fossett is the dumb prick who spent a fortune buying his way into the history books, pulling dangerous stunts which often resulted in his having to be rescued at public expense. The only records he broke were how to waste money on publicity stunts. I think he eventually killed himself at it. No loss to mankind.
I still don’t have my Arduino. But now I can easily pick it out in photos of most robotic gadgets. Some guy took my idea of a sun-following tilt platform and mounted it on casters. It allows a solar cooker to follow the sun. He got some cooking oil up to 315 degrees. See, if I had the Arduino what I’d be doing soon? I just know there has to be a way to build an efficient water purifier using the sun because all the others aren’t thinking right and are trying to get “old” methods to work. They are stringing together standard ideas instead of thinking of new ones. Like trying to make robots that look like humans. Why bother?
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