A nice rainy day to balance the books. My solo stage show has now cost me over $4,000 in equipment, most of it too used to sell. And I consider myself barely furnished, since I don’t have to move gear every gig. I don’t even have backups for anything except batteries. That serves as a lesson to anyone thinking of getting into this business. On the other hand, the club is about to make some lavish purchases. For this week’s project, we are connecting all sensors to a voltmeter and separating out the units that work by returning a varying voltage. Trying to determine the same thing by reading data sheets is inefficient, even if they didn’t bury the facts in unfamiliar language. Some return varying current, others a digital signal. The purpose is to see if we can find a matching set or settle on one format.
We, the club, did have a teleconference pep rally later this morning over the appearance of the Arduino at Radio Shack. The concern, naturally, was that it creates competition and we are underfunded and without formal training. I assured everyone we are a club, with tools, contacts, shared experiences, and a hundred other things these newcomers lack. I predict the opposite will transpire, that the people that get this for gifts will abandon them the instant they discover it takes work and study to operate the thing. It may even create a market of used Arduinos by next March.
There is also another potential member, an environmental engineer with an interest in how robots work. I have no idea what such an engineer actually engineers, but like the USA in general, we need all the engineering talent we can find. While we aren’t planning any irrigation systems that I know of, any we produce would certainly be robotically controlled.
Afterward, I returned to RS and buy a protoshield, a type of clip-on device that allows direct contact with the Arduino as opposed to running jumpers. There is a lot more to all of this than a beginner can realize. In an unrelated twist, blog rules say I must mention a coincidence because it was the most unusual event today. Late y’day, Scottie and I were talking about warships and twice mentioned the uncommon word “ironclad”. It was one of the acrostic clues in today’s paper.
The eBike is showing signs of poor design. It’s understood most people don’t use it like I do, but after only 200 miles, the battery is down to 9 miles per charge (from a claimed 25). The warranty is still valid, so I’ll begin finding out what the problem is tomorrow. Oddly, bike usage is down with the good weather because it gets dark so early.
I’m around half finished the book on Bin Laden, and I see the patterns he used. The management was like tax evasion as I said a few days ago, but the physical structure is based on the French Underground of WWII. The use of “cells” where the loss of one did not jeopardize the whole is far more studied in Europe than America. I now have no doubt how Bin Laden was able to pull the terrorists together when they were as likely to attack each other as their enemies. He produced spectacular results.
I remain unable to recommend the book. It is complex, almost grueling reading. If every fact is not sifted, when you encounter a related passage in the next chapter, there is no going back to find the first instance. That, and long 20-sentence paragraphs loaded with several ideas each, it reads more like a fourth year law text than a bestseller.
After bingo, I stopped for Karaoke. It was not so hot. The otherwise experienced DJ played some strange versions in the wrong key and my duet partner let me down. I’ll leave that a few weeks, it just isn’t proper to mess up things that we aced months ago. What went wrong? I dunno.
