So, this is the new blog. More controversy. More nitty-gritty. More real names. And the big treat—probably more pictures of me. Ladies, contain yourselves, it’s another “I’m a plain old guy” act and the clever babes know I am hardly a plain old guy. I’m now officially over the hill and I welcome publicity, good or bad. Dear World: sue me if you can—I can use the exposure.
There’s the sidecar, parked beside the boat trailer on Marathon. The weekend is over but that doesn’t mean anything new or better has happened since then. I sorted all my resistors by color code (more about this in a few moments). How’s that for excitement? Actually, it was in the sense that I needed lots of table space, so I went up to the new location of the Dania Beach Library. It was empty except for the lineup to the computers. Another local “more-books-than-brains” establishment. And just when I thought it wasn’t possible to have a worse selection than the main branch. It sure was quiet up there, but arranged so you can’t smuggle in a thermos of coffee no how. You know, there is something desperately negative about computer learning, and I’ve noticed it gets worse with time. The information is there, but it doesn’t “stick” because it is so easy to find.
Before point-and-click, a certain amount of foreknowledge, planning, and effort was required to learn things. With the advent of easy access, why bother committing to memory? I know that I have spell-checked the same words for years instead of bothering to memorize them: Naïve, camouflage, maneuver. That’s what I’m talking about. Hey, I’m not a guilty as some. To me reading is a large-scale undertaking. Let me calculate, I’ve been reading about 2,000 hours per year for around 50 years. Today alone, I read for 7 hours. Do you think any of it will stick with me?
Another factor is the library computers have now detuned and filtered out everything except what they want you to see. Most searches turn up those useless compounded lists like yelp, or books for sale sites. Most of what does turn up wants memberships, logons, your email, or some other personal information. Don’t fall for it. Cybercrime is still the fastest growing sport in the known universe. And how about those East Indian websites showing up all over these days. Since they are in English, it makes them difficult to filter. Sorry, but my ideal woman doesn’t need a shave.
That’s why I think that education these days is too shallow. We had these people in our day. They could memorize the text but not tell you what it meant. These were the types that got the scholarships and bursaries but never amounted to anything. I’m not crabbing, I would have done the same if I could. I must even look different as I read because I regularly wink back at people who I see watching me read.
The media are again spouting that the real estate bust is over. Prices up. Sales up. Didn’t Churchill say truth was the first casualty of trying to sell newspapers? I see these, to me, troubling reports of billions being given away to homeowners to prevent foreclosures. It makes sense to not have the economy collapse, but it makes no sense to bail out people who live on borrowed money. Again, the saving grace is these handouts cannot continue forever and they must already be near the end of the money.
Silver is leveling off, I told you. Besides, most of the price quotes available do not represent smart money buying real silver, but silver futures and certificates. When the scrunch comes, that’s what the dumb money will be left holding.. For that matter, there is no daily or even monthly way to find out how much silver bullion is sold to speculators. That’s the beauty of getting yourself a hoard now.
Then I watched “Air Force One”, the movie where Harrison Ford is better looking than all the women. Pew, pew, pew, take that all you godless commie Ruskies. Do they really let news crews on that airplane? Does the President really take his wife and kids along? And what’s with this worrying about hostages? That’s Air Force One, not Virgin Airways. Every person aboard should ready and willing to die for their country. And the same goes for postal workers, unless of course unless I should ever become one. I represent the better part of valor.
And now your trivia. Have you ever wondered why the trivia here is better than ordinary trivia? There is a reason. With most sites you get only shallow facts and they do copycat each other a lot. The trivia here tends to require deeper thinking to even find the topic. Here’s today’s topic so you can decide for yourself. Ordinary trivia will tell you the movie rating categories (G, PG-13, etc), that CARA sets the standards, and blah, blah, blah. But we will tell you there is one movie rating that is different. Why? Because it is the only one that CARA allows movie producers themselves to apply the rating. CARA calls it NC-17 (No Children Under 17). Everybody else calls it X.
ADDENEDUM
I sometimes get asked why so many projects are mentioned on this blog but little seems to happen. I can answer that. First of all, just like real life, not everything that sounds like a project is, and most people would be lucky if they pursue one project to completion in their entire lives. Right, Patsie? The fact is, the ratio of success here is much higher, but this blog has a “sensitivity cap”, meaning there is a limit to the extent that any activity will be reported once it does take off. For reasons.
It is a result of common sense security and besides, this blog is to generate ideas, not archive them. That is why you’ll hear about looking for the motorcycle sidecar, then nothing apparently happens until it shows up in the front yard. Trust me, plenty went on between those points, from the phoning to the financing. It’s even more complicated here, where we don’t buy anything unless we can afford it in advance. We don’t run up the electricity and hide when the bill comes, type of thing.
So, to break with tradition, I’ll describe a project that has been completed—at least the part that takes the real effort. I’ve ragged on about how bad all electronics books were. All badly written by inconsiderate authors who don’t bother to proofread before selling. Analysis of the situation long ago revealed the underlying problem was not just the material, but the way it was printed. You had to buy the entire book to get one chapter. Worse, that chapter was rarely well-written. Imagine if you could go on-line and get only the information you wanted.
Some say that is possible, I say they must either have simple topics or have low expectations. I defy anyone to go on line and find me specific, targeted information, stripping away all unrelated come-ons and sales pitches, refined right down to honestly free information about a subject of my choosing. The example investigated was “resistors”. No, we don’t want to buy resistors or books about resistors or have anyone email us back or take out any memberships. It never happened.
If you waste enough time, you will eventually find all the sites regurgitate the same data. For example, color codes and series/parallel kindergarten level junk, then they move on. A fine lot of good that does you and even the most expensive sources out there pull that stunt on you. Like you are now supposed to completely grasp all worldly implications and go design space ships. Wiki starts getting into how the things are made, but not a word about how to use them.
Is there not a single place you can go look up any in-depth information? Nope, and if you actually find one, I’d like to know how you did it. So, it stands to reason there is a market for single-topic articles on resistors. How would you like a booklet that tells you why color codes aren’t important, what size of resistors to buy, and what to avoid? It explains the symbols, which resistors are most common, which ones to pair up with other basic components.
It goes on to give complete examples of how to store the resistors for easy retrieval, why and what to measure, how to guess what values to use, and the best ways to solder the resistors onto a circuit board. It even tells you how to use resistors to emulate a transistor.
There are sections about the use of resistors in voltage dividers, sensors, and how to arrange resistors to modify both voltage and current. Wouldn’t that be a handy thing to find? Well, the booklet is already written. Sixteen pages of the best information you’ll ever find about resistors all in one spot. And you just buy the resistor chapter, not the whole damn textbook. So there, you have the description of a project started and completed along with the how and why it was done. Are you happy now?
What’s left is to market the thing. And that is why we have a club and the meeting concerning the e-publishing of this booklet is on Saturday morning.
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