This morning’s paper contained an article about deployment of a new missile guided onto target by a camera. TV-guided missiles are old news but this one weighs six pounds. The idea is to take out a sniper without calling in a drone that flattens the whole building. Good news? Not when the terrorists capture one and realize that they can build one with off the shelf components. I know I could. Remember a year back when I speculated about a flying news camera into a burning building? Same concept. The military version is called Switchblade and is classified as an anti-loitering device.While the robot club has slowed to a crawl for lack of components, we have continued with the study of this type of device. One major justification for the added complexity of the feedback monitor on our master flowchart always was the wireless communication of the back to an observer. While we have not done so with hardware, the details of short-range radio (X-Bee, Bluetooth, RFID) are very much required reading.
Trust me, if we got this far on a hobby basis and a $300 budget, it is only a matter of time until somebody starts flying these contraptions up the government’s nostrils. The target will be the administration since the whole world knows the government no longer represents the people, making them a separate entity that can be assailed if you have the right equipment. Watch for the proliferation of these tiny missiles, which by the way, are propeller driven. For all we know, the innards could be some rubber bands.
I’m reminded of how, as a child, I pieced together a balsa frame plane from three kits and regularly flew this up to 360 feet as measured by a protractor. I climbed up on the roof and launched it upward with a large slingshot. More than once it flew high enough to disappear, not bad for an eleven year old. For those who absolutely must know, the Switchblade sells for $40,000 to $50,000 per missile. Yeah, I know, that’s pure “balsa” when we’ve got 30 million unemployed.
There’s a Lexulous game in the background. I have a cautious but worthy opponent (Cathy C.) and we play about one round per day, a game taking up to one week. Her major defensive tactic is to play tight groupings. She produces some real surprises but generally she looks at every possible play and invariably chooses the move with the highest immediate score rather than what will produce overall victory. (That means she won our first game but nothing since.) She keeps me on my toes.
The new band passed the milestone of a third practice. Idiosyncrasies and personalities are showing through, but nothing that’s a death knell for the project. I’ll quickly tally some of those items for those who’ve never been in a group. Each musician, particularly guitarists, fall into a habit of doing things a certain way. I do this when following unfamiliar music. These habits give the band the impression they are good at comping, an outdated term for faking along. Musicians who claim they can “play hundreds of tunes” are probably comping.
In the new band, I already know the guitarist is inconsistent with his V-IV turnarounds, one of the most difficult situations for a bassist since there are no common scale tones. One the other hand, I can be impossible for certain guitarists to follow, as I never pump out root notes and don’t like bassists who try to fake it that way. I’m amazed by how many “pro” guitarists will change to a IV because they see me hit a third.
As a soloist, I play entire gigs without ever repeating the same bass pattern in any two songs. This makes me practically impossible to follow unless you really know the music. I expect tune familiarity in a band when we agree to learn each other’s tunes. Nor do I like bands that change too many parts of a song. Customizing over-much disappoints the audience. And then you can’t play the music with any other band.
Judith M.
Elizabeth F.
Julia K
Sandra M.
Elizabeth B.
