nbsp; It was a perfect motorcycle day, 77 degrees max. There was a crisp breeze coming off the Atlantic so I wisely didn’t take a day trip. In the end it didn’t rain but nor did I get caught out in the open. Plus, the scooter was only repaired, not totally restored to new condition. It still has a rare but tricky starting problem. It occasionally has to be kick started. Who remembers the kick starter lever that wouldn’t fit? See photo. It does now.
MSN has reported a first, the 85 mph speed limit on a Texas road. It is controversial, my take on it is anyone who speeds is going to have a shorter than normal lifespan. So keep out of their way. I once drove my car 135 mph or was it 125? Anyway, right up to top speed of a 1974 Maverick. In a matter of minutes I’d burned a half tank of gas. That was on a flat and straight deserted highway through the eastern Montana prairie.It was library time and I followed up on a few dozen avenues I’ve been meaning to check. Here’s what I found. Panavise, makers of specialty vises, reasonable. Makerbeam, slotted aluminum mini-girders, very expensive. Garrettwade, small hand tools, expensive. Adafruit, confusing site, can’t find items advertised. MicroMark, small electric tools, very expensive.
Next, the Arduino is now available in special editions that work from -25 to 40 degrees Celsius. Why? An Arduino on Mars? I wonder how the $25 cost would compare to cards on the Curiosity which probably accomplish much the same thing. Hmmm, what’s this? The next generation of 3D printers scheduled for production in 2013 is already sold out and the newer models have two print guns.
Study is swinging back to the Arduino from strictly electronics. More study material is available than a year ago and some of the barriers, like how to save logged data, have been posted by other users. Like the Internet itself, I cannot find out where these people go to school to learn these things. I would go there myself. This is not to be confused with my resolution in 2008 to go back school. In the end, treachery, lies, and bad health put a stop to that. Those were tough times.
I’m not buying the claims coming from Chicago that iPads improve “reading, math, and science” skills. Bull crap. Test scores maybe, but skills. I doubt it. What’s happening is the students are reading it because it is on an iPad. That will wear off. There is no deep learning available because the content doesn’t exist. Give these little geniuses an exam from my day and we’ll see how many of them can even understand the questions.
How slow was the day? The biggest event was trying that new chicken parmesan sandwich at BK. It’s good, but get the meal or it won’t quite fill you up. The sandwich by itself is nearly five bucks. Yeah, I might do that again some day, but not this year. While there, I read the first article I’ve found about a circuit called a “Schmidt trigger” that explained the operation in plain language. Once more, it was an English site. They are more civilized in realizing that someone who is seeking information is going to try to find it for free no matter how much advertising gets shoved in his face. Did you hear that, Digi-Key?
And what’s with Google? The idiots have changed the text box so it jumps to the first character typed--before you finish typing. That’s great for everyone who want to look up the letter “T”. (Psssst, Google: most words have more than one letter. And it is now on file that I told you, but don't worry, the file is like, totally secret and stuff. And that's as honest as Hewlett-Packard and Sony combined.) Some of the Google stupidity has even reached Opera, who has changed all the tabs to the same color so you can’t tell which one is open.
What I found out is the Schmidt trigger has two switching voltages compared to the single voltage of regular gates. When power is applied, it doesn’t turn on until a certain voltage level is reach, but when turned off, it has to drop past that voltage to a lower level before switching off. This chip is used to “clean up” a dirty signal because the gap between the two levels eliminates the effect of stray signals. And that’s what I learned today. I will build such a circuit to test it. What’s mystifying me is all the articles about a SR switch (set-reset). They talk us to death about how it works, but not one example of why. You get used to that with Americans.
The final accounts are in for the Colorado trip. I track such things. And except for buying property, that “jaunt to Aurora” was the single most expensive event of my life. Even my many trips to Thailand each cost less than half what went out on that epic crossing. I attribute a lot of the price tag to inflation, particularly gasoline. It should not cost $700 worth of gasoline to go to Denver and back by motorcycle. I traveled solo, stayed in budget motels, avoided tourist traps. My one extravagance was taking my best friend to Outback. Yet the final tally was still twice anything I’d spent before on one visit.
[Author’s note: the total above is derived from my habit of “desert island accounting” and is therefore a larger amount than GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles). Desert island is my own personal term for an accounting method I developed while going to school. It includes every cent spent on something that would normally have been spent someplace else. Thus, $3,850 was the cost of the Honda sidecar, where in regular accounting, only $2,400 would be recorded. Example, you may have included the cost of two men traveling to Sarasota to pick the thing up, but what about the lost income for the day because the men were not doing their regular work? Desert island includes these type of "opportunity costs".
It may be enlightening why I even have an alternate accounting methodology. It was how I discovered, at age 19, that it was practically impossible to go to university solely on student loans. That has since changed, I see. No slums near campus these days. I quickly ran out of money whenever I tried to live like others. Since nobody was a poorer student that I, the answer was simple. For all their denials, my fellow students were getting free money from home. Back then, it was cool to pretend to be poor. I was not pretending.]
Last, I watched the Crackle movie “Termination Point”. Pretty cheesy even for a grade B. A string of clichés as bad as they get. Even the teenage daughter was dweeby. Then I watched another movie, “Stranger Than Fiction”, the type of script created by desperate hack writers who know a producer with a tight budget.
ADDENDUM
Finally, I have near-proof that this blog is being plagiarized. I don’t yet have a name, but I certainly have an article. Who recalls that printer I tore apart for spare robot parts? I am not against being quoted, but the plagiarist is supposed to mention ‘veryatlantic’. Take a look at the current issue of Makezine for a virtual duplicate of my original article. Even the way the parts are laid out for the photograph is the same style. I can’t prove anything, but the article matches mine on all the categories I itemized, which include keywords, general content, and the one year waiting period. Regular readers here will instantly recognize the format of the magazine article as a blantant rip-off of my hard work.
True, maybe I’m not the first author or such a topic, but I can tell you for sure I did not get the idea from somebody else. I’ve long since pointed out the pattern and habits of my copycat. Actually, I think it is two different authors due to differences in sentence length. But you’d think the other guy would have at least salvaged different parts, or not grouped them in the same fashion I did. I fired off a letter to the magazine owner but what can he do? They solicit submissions and in the year since my piece 20,785 people may have read that particular post.
What is the motive? Money. Take my word that it is really difficult to consistently come up with relevant topics. I have no idea how many times this blog repeats itself. My sources include visits to NOVA, jimmyr, and Science Daily. But by far the majority of my ideas come from deep research at the library and I know for a fact most contemporary authors don’t do anything like that much work. They grab my creative idea, reword it, and submit it. And they are getting right brazen at it.
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