The essence of Florida, a sign telling people the bus doesn’t stop here any longer. For those that cannot figure these things out by themselves. Bct stands for BCT or Broward County Transit for those who can spell, a rarity in Florida. Don’t be fooled by the fact the bus shelter, sign, and bench are still in place. This notice is the official one, yep, by golly.
I’m still waiting for the breakthrough with my electronic sensors. I’m getting nowhere. I should not say that, you know. I’m learning what isn’t so. People say learning is difficult, but it isn’t really. In my time, I grew up and worked with a lot of people who put themselves in that strange no-win situation where they could not learn a single new thing without admitting they were dead wrong in too many other areas. They get so sick of themselves they eventually move to Ontario, where they can feel at home.Yep, call me grumpy today. My excuse: I just found out from my Seattle lawyer that my retirement home investment fund is taxable. Looks like it might be cabin in Colorado time, folks. Taxes will take away half what I had forecast as available cash on my normal retirement date, years from now in case you ask.
One unknown is house prices could conceivably fall below the disaster values I’ve projected (a 2/3rds drop of their early 2006 selling price). A real glut of houses is about to hit the market so I’ll be watching for a steal. Not a bargain, a steal. Another unknown is gold prices. They could be headed for the exosphere.
[Author's note 2016-03-22: keep in mind the information that was available at the time, in 2011. At that point there were slightly over 100,000 houses ready to hit the market. Myself and many others were poised to leap at the bargains. But we did not know the extent to which the big banks were conspiring to keep those houses off the market by a legal trick called "pre-foreclosure". Nor how the banks would then dribble the houses onto the market at around 200 units per week, and even then, only grant mortgages that showed a fake housing recovery.
To cheer us up, I made headway with the LED matrix, if only to discover it is known by the natural and intuitive term “multiplex”. Why, is that not the very word that sprang to my brain the instant I wanted to connect some lights together so they would flash in a pattern? Google, the world’s largest search engine, was no help at all since its creators can’t grapple more than a single word at a time. In the end, I wound up painstakingly tracing the paths of single LEDs on blurry schematics until the connections made sense. I’m on the right track no thanks to anyone on the Internet.
[Author’s note: I am quite aware that multiplexing is not an exact description of my task, but the concept of using an array to control an array has always been part of my goal. I’ve known since before day one the Arduino, with 16 pins, cannot by itself control the huge number of circuits in a useful matrix. However, multiplexing makes it possible and if that is what it takes, then that is what I will learn.]
I swear again I will never waste my money on another Brother printer. It is criminal the things that go wrong with that junk. Now my 420CN sits there with $65 worth of brand new ink cartridges telling me to replace the cartridges. There are no instructions with the software on how to fix this problem. But that is typical of the Brother bastard-rat mentality, that they even build a printer where this can happen. I’ll start looking on line tomorrow, but what slope-headed dickweeds they are. And of course, the place that sold you the cartridges denies responsibility for the printer.
Yep, I just got off the phone with their customer service. They say it is a bad “ink supply sensor”. Funny, the error message did not state any such thing before I spent my $65.00. Other weird features include an off switch that does not work, it merely places the printer into standby. And no print head cleaning function, so can’t even try that.
They referred me to a service center. What’s the bets the most basic service is more expensive than a new printer? And none of the new printers will use the ink cartridges I just bought. I dream of the day I read in the paper that Brother has gone bankrupt due to poor customer satisfaction.
Ah, but later. I successfully built and programmed a 3 x 3 LED dot matrix display. To take my mind off the world, I sat down and designed, wired and coded an LED array. You’ll find details at Minutes . Suffice to say I would not have believed such a feat possible two weeks ago. Since I applied the code to different patterns, that means I thoroughly understand what the apparatus is all about. One has to know the subject inside out and backwards before coding a computer. Unless you work for the school board, but that is another story.
I documented the entire process, including a video of the final stage as the matrix alternated between two patterns, both programmed the hard way. There must be other ways to do all this but I’ll wager when I see them I’ll be glad I took the five hours to build this one from scratch.
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