This uninspiring picture of the eBike is actually telltale. Once you use this transportation as a serious way to get things done, you treat it progressively more like a regular vehicle. Notice how I subconsciously took up a full parking spot. It never gave me a second thought until I tromped into the store and the staff said I parked like a boss. Pull up, brake hard, kickstand down, lock on, march right in to the newspaper rack. Hey, my take is at least one person in this town has to look like they know what they are doing.
First things first, the whirlwind news of the previous week, which in total does not look so good for the music and entertainment industry. Remember Sweeney’s up on the boulevard? Gone says the rumor, and in spectacular style—a major police raid. Seems they weren’t paying their taxes. A police raid over taxes? Are you thinking what I’m thinking? I have not confirmed any details.Wise was I to sidestep the Karaoke vacancy at Jimbos, a lot of ignoble goings-on over it, at least from my point of view. The slot has been taken over by an unrelated act, a lady I recognize from Laura’s shows, but whom I can’t place otherwise. She knew my song list, so we’ve certainly met. She reports three more places have cancelled Karaoke nights. There has never been enough to go around in south Broward.
Who remembers the praise I gave the crossword clue about the compass point? It now transpires this type of clue has become an industry standard. That’s where the author gives you a number of degrees and you figure out the compass setting. Why the honorable mention? Because it was instantly recognized by this blog as something new the instant it appeared, and it got reported here first—at least first enough for it to become a major keyword draw despite the fact I only mentioned it once.
[Author's note: the crossword clue was the compass bearing in degrees, the hint being the decimal point. I found it blog-worthy on many counts. It is real brainwork to come up with new style in crosswords. Formerly, the conventional clue ran something like "Detroit to Chicago direction". This was not only stale, but begs the question of how someone smart enough to do a crossword would care about the geography of such places. There were many times I had to consult the atlas. I've flown over these towns and that was close enough.]
A stunning success with the recording gear this morning. My equipment is “new school” where they record everything except the guitar with flat sound, adding the effects in later. Called post-production, I don’t see it so much as progress [but rather] as a sign of the diminishing aptitude of the user pool. I come from an era where people had to do the job right. Now [meaning these days], recording devices try to eliminate the need for skill except in the guitar and vocals and damn, it sounds like it. Take this Boss [BR-600] I’m using.
The input on the mixing board has dozens of pre-set guitar noises. Alas they cannot be turned off, you have to pick one. There are several “can’t-really-play-bass” settings like Punk, Fretless, and Squeeze but in general the Roland records what bass it feels like. To really make friends, the Roland has no memory and cancels all your settings when you power off.
I finally dug out my old Radio Shack equalizer and forced a real bass sound into the Roland. To the untrained ear, there’s not much difference until playback. Wow, what a great sound, it was like I was in my teens with a stack of Ampegs. That's the success I'm talking about. I also like to capture fret buzz and string zip, your assurance of live music in this wasteland of indie recording perfection. By under-driving the input, I can get it just right.
Looks like I’ll be missing Andre Rieu tomorrow. I asked all the women in my life to go but none could make it although nobody outright said no. I will not go to the symphony alone; it’s one of my rules. I’ll wait for another turn. What’s the bright side? Think of the money I saved. But, but, I’m not in this to save money. Carry on.
The club meeting this Friday ran over into the early evening. We now have a massive screen projector if we ever go on a lecture tour. It was retrieved from a dust bin and needed only a $38 repair. Agent M cut a hole in the closet wall to beam the light onto the entire north side of the living room. It has been slightly over two years and we have no robot, but that’s a well-covered subject. It boils down to money. It is satisfaction enough to know we could build it. And we may, yet.
We’ve decided to look into the communication capability of the Arduino. The extra parts, called a “shield”, cost twice as much as the microcontroller, but we can manage. In all these years, I still have never found a clear, nothing-left-out explanation of how modems work over the Internet. I’ve connected and repaired them by the dozen, but I don’t know what I’m doing and that is why I know that others don’t know either. Have you detected the paradox here?
How is it I fix things without knowing the score, but when it comes to my own hobby, I must study and test for years? It is the nature of work itself. At the phone company, I was around people all the time who didn’t understand the electronics, but I as I’ve made clear before, the work got done. In general, the phone company runs their equipment right. So there is no absurdity to my fast-paced work and slow-paced hobby. Just completely different goals in mind.
Taking inventory, I have exactly 29 integrated circuits in my little lab work area. After over two years, that is it. They aren’t even a matching set. Yes, there are common groups of ICs and except for the displays I was into last year, nothing [in my parts bin] is compatible. That's another thing the "experts" don't tell you about. I’m also low on relays. I like to watch videos of home-built computers. From my own experiments, I can tell by the clacking [relay] sounds when the computer is adding. Neat.
The degenerate search engines have imploded again. No matter what you plug into Google or Yahoo!, you will not get more than one direct match. This blog went from three pages to a single hit—without SEO I point out. Is this a change for the worse? Hard to say, since it is clearly a counter-measure of some sort. The good news is those who rely on cheating the system must really be hurting. And that is only right.
ADDENDUM
Much later, I got taken for thirty bucks. I admit I’m a schmuck on that one. I drove up to Jimbos to get some cables to repair. Then I stopped at the French place, expecting to see Harley but he was gone. I’m about to leave when Sally comes along and she is actually half-decent to talk to, initially. As soon as I’m buying, she switches to $8 drinks.
She was smooth. It took her an hour to slip up and let on she was married. There must not be enough problems in the world already, the way some women go out looking for them. What? You want a few more particulars? Okay. I intentionally bought the last drink because she didn’t at first realize she’d messed up. I wanted to see how far she’d go before she clued in that I knew. How long? About a half-hour before I walked out on her.
During that time, I asked plenty of leading questions. Yes, folks, she was one of them women to whom all men were horny, so therefore they would commit adultery at the drop of a hat. Thus, she considered herself a catch. She did not see herself as a sinner, but more like an outwardly unwilling participant, but inwardly plotting the deed. What comes next is even funnier. She brought up the subject of sex, in general terms, third person. That is, she was talking about other people in the room.
Her vocabulary kept me glued in place. All the men had “worm-things” and “doing-doings”. The women had a “naughty place”. She thinks she’s captivating because I’m in stunned disbelief that I’m hearing this. Women complain about a double standard but how else could a kook like that have survived? Let me see if I can estimate the number of times she said, “Everybody’s doing it.”
Twenty-five?
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