How about an update on my electronics research? The good news is I read a schematic diagram showing a 4-bit computer and I understood what each piece was responsible for. I went further with studying logic gates on paper because of difficulties building them. The only model I can build reliably is the NOR gate but fortunately the overall concept [of gates] is no longer fuzzy. These gates are simply combinations of transistors. Sometimes large combinations. In turn, these gates are built up into larger functional circuits, some of which specialize in data, others with numbers, communication, and video. If only someone had told me this when I was ten years old! But I’ve already relayed how my high school had a storeroom full of baseball equipment but not a single transistor or microscope. They don’t go for that kind of nonsense, buddy.
The next difficult area of electronics is crystals and clocking. Once again, absolutely nothing useful available to help a beginner is available on line. It’s as if these eggheads think they are impressing each other by describing what they already know. Kind of reminds me of guitar players that way. The tiny delays experienced by differing electrical paths can upset logic circuits, so they are pulsed by a clocking signal. The logic gates inputs are all set, but they don’t react until the clock signal gives the go-ahead. That’s about as much information available that you don’t have to beg or buy.
Therefore, I direct you another United Kingdom site, this time f-alpha.net. Read this and you’ll know everything I know. If not, read it anyway to admire how teaching is done right. Please appreciate the phenomenal effort required to locate these good sites.
This particular one took from Colorado to here and hours of search time wasted on useless American geek-pages that never tell you enough about the flip-flop to rig one up. US sites just go on and on, every one talking in the same circle. I extend extra gratitude to f-alpha because they confirm many conclusions I had originally made in the dark were correct.
Thus, although it is not the best plan, we’ve succeeded in building most gates using combinations of NORs. You might say our logic is NOR-minded big time. Soon it is likely we will design and build a handful of these gates. They will cost around $4 each, so this won’t happen instantly. We may also test what is involved in building compatible parts in two separate locations. Here, and over at Agt. M’s.
I placed a large order from California. This time, the research is not on ordinary robot coding, but wireless commands and memory storage. This is a quantum leap even for experienced builders and we have not yet programmed a toy. Consider, however, that we never set out to copy what others have done, but to learn the technology.
Thus, acquiring the ability to command a robot by radio beams using information it feeds back from on-board memory is likely to produce a much better first product than a ground-up approach. Some may recall my disappointment when I could not get two wireless modems to communicate. This time, that is one of my targets. And I have a drawer full of perfectly good wireless modems.
The year has ended with no financial surprises. My life-long policy of staying within budget lets me live significantly better than those with higher but unbridled incomes. But bafflements do occur like my unexpected consumption of sixty pencils this year. Pencils? What is going on with that?
Can you guess that one faster than I did? Probably because when I spot this type of discrepancy, it can be months after the record was entered and I’m looking for causes, not effects. The pencil thing arose during a periodic check for “reasonableness”. I know, for example, I’m spending twice as much on coffee now. But sixty pencils from the coffee fund?
Hint: what am I doing differently during coffee breaks these days?
Favorite recent quote? Winston Churchill, “It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read a book of quotations.”
ADDENDUM
Okay. I’ve been prodded to define the fiscal cliff, to put it in plain words. Over the past five years a severe depression has been staved off by government over-spending, bailouts and tax cuts. Make no mistake about it, if the government had not started messing with the economy, “fantasy wealth” like real estate, government bonds, and moth-eaten factories would have been collapsing since 2008.
The so-called incentive money was plowed into failing, non-competitive businesses and untried technologies. Five years was nowhere near time enough to put down deep enough roots for the storm that is gathering now. All of these measures were temporary and (largely by coincidence) end or fall due in 2013. The tax cuts, the defense cuts, all will work in combination to mean $607 billion fewer dollars will be spent by the Feds. And this will take the steam right out of the entire artificial economy they’ve been propping up.I have no idea why the rotten structure has not already come crashing down. I understand the bank manipulation of foreclosures and the backlog of other bankruptcies. The credit clowns have been stalling, praying the next round of suckers will buy them out. Those who rely on inefficient methods, outdated “Yankee know-how”, defense industries, auto makers, all should have been allowed to die a natural death long ago. Now they get the fiscal cliff instead.
How bad is it out there already? I don’t think there is a secure investment or investor left in America. Those who put their cash overseas are taking an even greater risk. Anyone spending $100,000 (not very much money) these days has to explain where they got it. The fat needs to be trimmed and most of that fat is middle class. Essentially you are going to see more unemployed, higher prices, and fewer after-tax dollars to buy anything with.
What you won’t see is doctors getting 30% less from Medicare, the end of all unemployment extensions, welfare losses by not getting any increases, and about a million of the lower paying jobs that are dependent on civilian services to the military. The ripple will not take long to reach every sector of the economy this time, since half the populace is on some kind of welfare.
Also, much of the new employment will be structural. The unemployed will be highly trained for the wrong jobs, or jobs that no longer exist. That means the job loss is permanent. I went back to college at age 31 because I saw this coming. Those who try it at 51 or 61 will find even the US college system is antiquated. Even if they get re-trained, it will be for some lousy no-benefit job (think criminology, sociology, cosmetology, ology, ology, more ology).
If they have to borrow for college while off the job market, few will live long enough to break even. Worse, they can’t even protest because via complacency, they’ve allowed protesting to become illegal as well. That’s correct. The government can now arrest anyone who disturbs “public order”. This is the destiny of the Yuppies. Not one in ten thousand of them could live off the land.
