What is this photo? If you know, don’t give it away. Everyone else has to read down to the addendum to find out. Trivia day. Why not, nothing else happened. Did you know that Scottish salmon tastes better because the fish farms are built in strong flowing water. Unlike Canadian coastal salmon, this forces the fish to continually swim, which tenderizes the muscle flesh. How’s that for trivia? How long ago did the first solar powered airplane cross the English Channel? Thirty-one years.
How many banks actually failed during the Great Depression? Nine thousand. And nine million people lost their savings. In 1840, Melville (the Moby Dick author) writes that the US whaling industry employed 18,000 men in 700 ships. That’s a major workforce of the day. As whaling declined, that’s where we saw the rise of Clipper ships, which were the only vessels that could cross the Pacific fast enough with perishable cargo.But perishable isn’t the same as profitable. The owners soon found tea from China was top dollar. The problem is the Clippers were built for speed, not strength, so one in four sank rounding Cape Horn. In those days, that was the ship’s tough luck. The Atlantic was still the major trade routes, although the US slave trade was no longer big business. It turns out that of all transported slaves, only the US population was self-replacing. This also meant that, unlike ALL other slave nations, the US slaves were able to pass on African traditions, something to ponder.
The original Hell’s Angels were ex-pilots, particularly those combat pilots who fought in China against the Japanese. Upon demobilization, they formed a loose network of motorcyclists. Careful, they themselves were not demobilized, as they were not in the American forces. They were volunteer, which explains the club’s insistence there are no military malcontents in the membership. As expected they were a rough and unconventional bunch.
But as far as the biker gangs we know today, it is mostly Hollywood hype. The bikers held a “convention” in a small town (Hollister) where they outnumbered the locals and the legend is based on nothing more than around 30 of them got traffic citations that weekend. It was blown into a riot by Life Magazine, where in fact, the town welcomed the annual rally for the dollars it brought in since 1930.
That’s trivia, how about some humor? My ex-union, using the company letterhead, has resumed sending me letters for charitable donations. This is their “Charitable Giving” drive. The humor is that I applied for their scholarship and was turned down flat back in my twenties. Why? Because they maintained that I was not the dependent of an employee, whereas I was, in fact, totally dependent on my own paycheck back then. This same union gave away handfuls of free money to the children of millionaires but never helped me one lousy penny over the six years I had to go back to college. And of course, using the same logic as my old man, once I graduated, why that just proved I didn’t really, really, really need any help in the first place.
That’s the union that gave money (back then) to riding academies, married students, summer camps, and retirement homes for Jewish bankers. Union money went to “underprivileged” Chinese and African students with money to fly across the oceans. They changed the wording from “dependent” to “offspring” the year after I applied. The union money also goes to a lot of recipients who are already receiving other forms of welfare (they claimed to be unaware of this before I pointed it out). Not one red cent for me. And now they want what? Really, really, really?
[Author’s note: I do believe that I changed at least one other charity’s way of doing business by publishing, over several years, a list of the more outrageous destinations of donated dollars, such as those above. Our union heavily gave to United Way—an organization I still do not respect or support. But at least they now allow contributors a say where the money goes. It still winds up in a big pot, like tax dollars, and gets sent to the causes that scream the loudest. Why do professional sports, churches, and the Boy Scouts need charity? With the advent of the Internet, the United Way has quit circulating its annual list of recipients, making it difficult to know where the cash really winds up.
I’m aware that government guidelines often conflict with charities. For example, donations cannot be carried forward to subsequent years. There is a difference between helping disaster victims and regular handouts. But disasters don’t happen every year and thus handouts get encouraged. One year during my employ, the United Way gave Bob Hope millions for a token appearance, because they had to get rid of the money or lose their tax-free status. But that is another issue entirely.]
To end on a happy note, here is a link to all those snappy sayings like Murphy’s Law*. Allow a half-hour to read them all. My favorite? “If you tell the boss you were late because you had a flat tire, the next morning you will have a flat tire.” That is also known as Cannon’s Comment. Best military advice? “When in doubt, empty the magazine.” I also find sites like this demonstrate how vastly better the Internet is put to use in the United Kingdom. Over here, the page would want your membership and 99 cents for each quote of somebody else’s work.
*links like this that go dead are the reason you don't see many in blogs that endure.
ADDENDUM
Once again, when a day is spent as I like to, there is library time. Thanks again to Hacktronics, the California company only too glad to ship our orders. Who remembers how I planned and saved six months for the original Arduino? It is now such a common article that Hacktronics sent one free as a promotional item. Today’s photo. Here is an item we order in bulk, it is some mini-breadboards which have proven an marvelous learning tool. It is far easier to break a design into single-purpose components than staring at a full size board full of mysterious pieces. This photo shows three of the mini-boards of different colors, linked together.
The robot? It hardly figures much any more as the focus of our study shifted to the electronics and mechanics. We are certain we could assemble the most complicated robot kit available and unlike the high school teams, both understand every function and make it run the first time. Maybe we’ll do that yet, but it is not the challenge we thought.
This time around, we are looking at coils, the turns of wires inside radios, mainly. We still have, in perfect preservation, the radio coils that didn’t work last year. They are stored with the coffee reserve up in the kitchen, now that the weather is cooling and we brew coffee again.
What I’ll do next is describe, in plain English, something we’ve never built, but could with a few simple parts and the Arduino. The idea is to demonstrate that the build is completely understood, which if that were not true, our description would be as terrible as the alleged experts. An anemometer measures wind speed. It is that thingee with the three little twirling cups. But it is not so simple to get an accurate readout of wind speed, try it. Here is how I would approach matters.
Connect the twirling cups to a shaft in turn connected to a surplus electric toy motor. When spun, the magnets in these motors act like a generator and output electricity. The faster the spin, the more current. But only a bonehead thinks that is good enough. We need a meaningful display. If you hook it to voltmeter, you’ll get volts, not windspeed. Ah, enter the Arduino.
The analog current can easily be digitalized in steps of 0 to 1023. I’d like to calibrate for wind speeds of 0 to 40, after which the anemometer is destroyed. I look on the Internet weather report and find out which voltage reading matches the airport wind speed. I can then calibrate by dividing this voltage by 40/1023rds and sending the digital result to a BCD driver chip, which in turn displays the speed in mph.
As an extra challenge, alter your computer code to account for wind gusts, which cause up to a 30% error in measured average wind speed with this model of anemometer. If you get stuck, ask Patsie to help. She’s a programmer, you know.
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