Here is my new cactus. It isn’t as impressive as the forest but it’s mine. A good start for the day, I was up until 4:00 AM working on a circuit that did nothing but show the effect of increasing resistance on the brightness of LEDs. It was a lab experiment that I discontinued a couple months back when I lacked enough resistors, although I could have faked it. This time, I got it right, plus it was nothing to set up now that I have honed the art of plugging jumpers.
I took nine measurements, all documented. This is where the computer is a fantastic research device. If my desktop was working, I could graph the results in a few minutes where it would take over an hour to draw by hand. There is a correlation, either linear or logarithmic and viewing it later is enough for my purposes. I did not bother calculating units of measurement, as I was investigating patterns. Understanding what I'm talking about here represents the dividing line between college computer skills and the real McCoy.Later. Ask me anything about resistors and LEDs now. I'm continuing to learn more of the basics and my next target is capacitors. I know what they do, but how are they used? They range from very cheap to very expensive. I found a booklet about non-Arduino circuits that I'll quote if I buy it ($25) as a lot of my recent testing is borrowed from that source. It is nearing the end of the phase where I always tear down my working models to salvage the parts. That means learning to make printed circuit boards.
Trivia. A blockade is where a country uses warships to prevent neutrals from trading with an enemy during war. But did you know there are formal rules about it. You don't just sail in there and shoot anything that moves. First of all, it must be neutral shipping, meaning unlike enemy ships, you can't sink them unless they try to run the blockade. Next, you must openly declare to the whole world the blockade exists.
The rules are a result of a treaty signed in Paris although the pro-British and anti-German clauses are evident. For example, no half-blockades allowed, you must have a total blockade or nothing. At that time, around 1850, Britain had the only navy capable of such an undertaking. Most treaties of the era had the same flavor, kind of like writing your own ticket. It is not a brainstorm to see how this led directly to the development of the German uboat. As you know, Germany did obey all the maritime rules in both World Wars. The Lusitania was an illegal blockage runner.
Allow me to educate the public school crowd on yet another courtesy they are obviously not getting right on their own. To share does not merely mean you allow the other person to use something after you are finished with it, nor does it mean first come first serve. I understand that stupid people consider any schedule to be an attack on their "freedom", but that is because stupid people have no ability to allow for different levels of involvement.
Most importantly it means you leave it as you found it. That says next person does not have to clean up your mess before they can proceed. In the software arena, we have Instant Messanger. Every time I turn on this computer I have to put up with it, there is no cancel command. That piece of shit has no place on a working computer and today I find out how to uninstall it, permanently if I can. Blockade it.
Later, I have the instructions to kill Instant Messenger. It cannot be deleted from Control Panel because it is a hidden file. Typical MicroSoft mentality, letting dumbos who use the computer to waste their lives install a nuisance program the average user cannot delete. The bright side is when I walked into the Shack for spare parts, the staff has been contacted by another person looking to collaborate on robotics and seems to be around the same level as myself. I left my phone number, the best case scenario is someone who knows hardware looking to team up with someone who knows software.
For now, I've hit the robotics doldrums. I'm stuck in the middle. I'm over the easy part but not ready to build a robot. Two items on my wish list are some type of small sawing device for making tiny working panels and a small drill press. Maybe the new guy's great with tools and needs help with the computer parts.
That would be spot on. Some of my components have been used thirty times and should be incorporated into a permanent assemblies if I only knew how. This hobby has cost me slightly over $200 since late December, or roughly $50 per month. That total includes several one-time expensive tools like the wire wrap. One cannot imagine how much this education would have cost me attending a trade school. Probably thousands by now.
What's happening behind the scenes these days? Mostly subtle changes that reflect my new stability, never a good sign for my competition. Right now it is the basics, but if there is anyone who knows better than I how to set things up for tomorrow, we've never met. It's already chicken breasts instead of chicken thighs, today's entry represents long-awaited changeover from MicroSoft to Open Office and I'm expecting a letter this week that will make the sewing machine, computer and new printer into near certainties.
I know my own style. Once again, I am buying books and newspapers on a regular basis. Routine maintenance (one thing I never let slip) is progressing to preventative maintenance as fast as I can afford it. Blog readership is approaching 9,000 and with anticipation for February 2013 I am following foreign stocks again. This journal is, by nature, historical rather than predictive, but either a new car or the motorcycle sidecar is slated for December and Texas in the early Spring is almost a given.
Here's a few words on those foreign stocks. Everybody is watching China but I am also keeping an eye on Brazil. Both places are strange, corrupt and worship strange gods, much like New Jersey. Whereas China is beyond understanding, Brazil is industrializing in a systematic way most Americans would recognize. We have not built a new oil refinery in decades, where they already run their cars on biodiesel. We worry about deforestation [of the Amazon] while ignoring their brand spanking new aluminum smelters and hydroelectric dams.
For, unlike a centrally planned economy [communism], Brazil is not a house of cards that might implode in one day. I think if Brazil right now could suddenly turn on all the machinery they are putting in place and get it to work right, they would surpass the United States in almost every category. Metals, agriculture, manufacturing, everything except military. I would not invest in a Brazilian company, but in America we have multinationals, a fancy way of saying the Mato Grosso is chock-full of John Deere dealerships. And my investment plans go 28 years into the future.
