It’s fair enough some people ask me for specific reasons I don’t go out on a Friday. There’s habit and I don’t require much more explanation than that, but this may fill in another blank. Remember Agatha Christie, the author of quaint Brit spy novels? Up in Ft. Lauderdale, you can attend a play based on one of her books in an un-acclaimed local theater with actors you never heard of. And all for just $232.00. Or, for another $153 take the cheapest TripAdvisor fare to London and find some place offering it for free.
There’s more. It isn’t just me, but the crowd I run with doesn’t do Friday’s much as a rule. Thus, I got Marion on the line for a Colorado update. After some gossipy good news she reports a mainly quiet or uneventful season. Xmas without a turkey for the first time in longer than I remember. She has not found an affordable doctor so is still at home quite immobile. I cannot complain, for I drove the scooter up to Radio Shack today. These are exciting times.
There is a rumor Craigslist was finally wising up to its single largest problem by a ban on flagging, but I can’t find the source. It is known that they go well beyond flagging and will block accounts for nothing more than dissent, I know because I used to teach people how to get around that. If I knew how to program such sites, I would right now create one that looks like Craigslist and call it “Craigslist Without The Flagging”.
I surprised myself. I don’t do slow music, but today I managed a piece that I know has never been bass-soloed before (and would be worse on a player who was schooled in the one-finger-per-fret method). It is also the trickiest bass playing yet, as the only notes within [physical left-hand] reach mean practically playing them “upside down”. This requires far more mental effort than musical talent. It came to me riding my bicycle to the bakery this morning.
I want you to think of the guitar beat, not the chords in the old tune “Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone”. You hear that strong boom-shick between the vocals? The guitarist gets away with that because he’s always got enough higher strings to downpick a triad. I figured out a way to emulate that entire guitar lick on the bass, playing only the tonics and the single note that creates each chord variation. I have to sit down to play it, the pattern hurts my fingers, and I don’t know if it is in my voice range, but there you go.
And a big boo on Virgin Mobile. Outside of indecipherable menus and late message notifications, I found out they charge me 15 cents per incoming text, most of it crap I did not solicit. It was costing so much I finally disabled it. What idiots, charging me for what other people do. Their service will often wait for a week before all the missed call alerts appear at once—in alphabetical order and co-mingled with all earlier calls. Virgin can’t even get basic telephone service right.
This afternoon I took the eBike to Aventura. Good exercise. I’m still amazed by how many drivers need to turn exactly at the intersection I am crossing. You know, the ones that drive behind you for ten blocks, but as you get to those nothing roads west of Gulfstream, they have to speed up and turn in front of you. The point is, I should not be amazed but I am because there will always be somebody who says it is my imagination or it isn’t intentional. Sorry, they don’t know my family. Just because some prick does it so often it becomes an unconscious habit does not mean he isn’t still doing it on purpose.
The robot, how’s that coming along? Well, a test of the available sensors shows that unless you conjure up the money for laser rangefinders, the best sensors I’ve got are the cheap sonar style. They work well enough, but require constant calibration for heat or humidity, and vary enough in performance to have to be teamed up and averaged. The good news is between the eBike, the scooter, and the BatBike, I may soon have plenty of power to drive a robot. I will have replaced four batteries in two months.
The principle here is the batteries, which are sealed lead-acid, are plenty powerful enough for the workbench long after they are too weak for anything else. I’m replacing the eBike batteries myself for $76 a pair, or half price. They are BP10-12, ordinary scooter batteries. The code means 12 volts, 10 amp-hours. I’m seriously considering switching to 35 amp-hour units, but I’d have to build a new waterproof casing.
I would not have attempted this a year ago, but I’m learning, and in particular, learning the parts not often included in the textbooks. For instance, I’ve seen people wire up different DC voltages without knowing they are wrecking their motors. Now I know that each motor has a specific design rating. Too high a voltage and it is burning out, too low and it won’t turn, which is also causing damage because these motors are self-cooling.
ADDENDUM
Sooner or later, every influential person right or wrong has to be taken seriously. For that reason, I read and watched what I could about Kim Dotcom, the German guy who the Americans raided in New Zealand. They claimed his service was being used for copyright infringement as though it was his fault. It made America look ridiculous. That's like storming the hardware store because a knife they sold was used in a robbery.
The Internet is piracy, but that is no reason to target any particular site. It is piracy and porn that made the Internet a success where numerous other global schemes had previously failed. MegaUpload, his business, was no more or less guilty than the next guy. It appears he was targetted because his site was the most popular. American stinks bad when they attack people with meaningless trumped-up warrants, hoping afterward to uncover something illegal. In this case, since he wasn’t breaking any laws, the Feds claimed he was “racketeering”. Talk about losing your credibility.
The point at which I decided to take Dotcom seriously (he kind of looks like the Pillsbury Dough Boy, really, he is six-foot-seven) was when the US Attorney General, an obvious political appointee named Ortiz, was directly implicated in the suicide (some say murder) of a kid who downloaded files from a university. Sure, he did it five million times, but I hear a lot of the material was publicly funded academic research. His name was Aaron Swartz and he was really being hounded for his successful leadership of the movement against SOPA, the original US law concerning the selective shutdown of websites. The average person does not understand it is not the website that is responsible for any piracy that might go on.
Many citizens do not view the US government as representatives of the people, rather a completely private corrupt business community above the law and isolated from the consequences of their own mistakes. Those who attack the US government are not necessarily attacking nor even endangering the US population. But when the Feds pull this kind of stunt, it sure makes it easy for reasonable people to take sides. Therefore, Mr. Dotcom gets a fair hearing here. I’ll let you know my conclusions.
I make no pre-decisions based on Dotcom’s background, which is checkered at best. Then again, he was born into a realm where all the “legit” channels to success were already taken, which is far more true in Europe than America. But Washington, of all places, should know it is wrong to arrest people on “suspicion” hoping to stumble across some evidence later. It is not illegal to be “suspicious”, the authorities are supposed to present compelling reasons before obtaining a warrant, not afterward. There is something fundamentally outdated with the US justice system and this Internet affair is bringing it to a head.
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