What is it? It is a hand-powered washing machine, available from Clean Air Gardening . No kidding. It takes around two minutes to wash five pounds of clothes, which is a couple pairs of jeans or 25 pairs of socks. It costs fifty bucks and is made in Thailand. It drains with a hose (included). Wash cycle is two minutes, rinse is 30 seconds. An interesting web page.
I was researching small houses, which I define as less than 960 square feet. (One site I check is always Tumbleweed but do be careful with their free downloads. They try to trick you into activating a “subscription”.) The claim is small houses can be built with 14 hand tools and around $20,000. Take a look, but I suggest all the housing you could want will soon be available with a much smaller price tag. I like stats on the baby boomers, they were the single best and worst influence on my life, and will likely be that for others the next few generations to come. I didn’t say I liked them, just the stats. I’ve been forced to compete with them and their credit cards my entire life.
So I’m not unhappy to learn as a group their number one goal after retirement is to become debt-free. That tells us they are retiring still owing money! That’s how you spell “wasted life”. There were almost 3 million foreclosures last year. The boomers kept electing governments that told them what they wanted to hear for forty years, and it was all lies.
Furthermore, the average boomer has only $88,000 put away. In the finest circumstances, that might last two years. Another third will rely on Social Security. This is nothing new to me. What is new is the Sakshat, India’s new $30 Android tablet. Now maybe a few dickweed companies in the USA will realize they could not export our jobs without giving away our expensive western technology for free. They saved money and lost the lead, and created a climate where these tablets will sell like mad because you don’t need a credit rating to buy one. (Remember my remarks about prices having to drop to what people can afford to pay cash.)
I’m currently downloading material on robotics and have noticed a distinct departure from what I am pursuing and the local hobby shops. The shops sell gear as part of a fixed system. Their machines rely on computer code to operate. To me this is the wrong approach. I cannot imagine the difficulty to programming a computer to fly an airplane by itself, and neither can they because they are holding a remote control.
My goal is different, stay with me here. No remote control. The robot makes its own decisions based on feedback. The code is important. Think of it this way: all the mechanics needed for robotics already exists. There is nothing essentially new in the robot catalog, but what is missing is the software to make it independent. Just thought I’d clear that up here since I decided early to avoid externally controlled behavior. I believe researchers call my approach “machine learning” but don’t quote me on that.
I watched the DVD “The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”. Not recommended. It attempts to be mysterious using the ho-hum tricks. Inverted time lines, missing logic, unexplained random events. It becomes tedious after the first half-hour, I only kept watching because the actress had nice buns for a scritch (the type who thinks because you sleep with her, she can start talking shit).
What do you know, my old home town has a job web page. There were seven jobs listed, if you count security guard as a job. The highest paying was manager of the local liquor store, paying $15.60 per hour. Scary.
Return Home
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
