Later, I held two successful demonstrations of the ROM, one with the people who donated some of the parts and another to others who had shown interest in the diagrams I would sometimes draw in public. Successful, in that once they caught on, even those who knew nothing of electronics made the same suggestions: this is new, why don’t you sell it? That is the desired response.
Very little else occurred today. You probably imagined that. Once more, I learned more than I had bargained for. Want some important inside information that is not in any of the textbooks? LED, the light emitting diodes, have a certain bad habit. When a regular light bulb burns out it is because there is a break in the electrical conductivity. With LEDs, but not every time, when it burns out, it can conduct electricity back the wrong way. And this entire project is an arrangement of LEDs.
A project that is very easy to convert to a kit, mind you. It consists of three components, namely the keyboard, the ROM, and the display. They represent a matching set. Each is approximately equally challenging in different ways, and each is ideal for two people to work on. I wound up constructing my own “third hand” because the commercial models were more like “third pinky finger”, which I’ll describe in a moment. Another pair of hands would have helped immensely.
Shown here is a comparison of the expensive “third hand” on the top to my model on the bottom, shown holding a small circuit board. To direct you to the salient issues, you can see the store-bought model has been heavily modified. It had to be attached to a firm base, at least one clip has been replaced, and in general it was terrible to use. The clips bent easily and the butterfly nuts are painful when tightened sufficiently to prevent work from creeping away on you.My version can be worked with one hand and things stay put. This project, and it shouldn’t be that way, took at least twice as long as necessary because I had to construct tools and jigs along the way. The prospect of making money overrides this inconvenience even though the odds of making that money are still pretty remote. As said earlier, the difference is this time there is investment capital. Enough to give it much more than the old college try. That’s my department, for my generals know nothing of the economic aspects of war.
Some total peasant do-nothing dork is going to come out of the woodwork and trip things up. Why? Because that always happens the moment there is any potential for success. I’m wondering what form it will take this time around. Peasants have ESP when it comes to other people getting things done. It’s like a keen sense of smell. Remember Project 21, the million toothpick count? That one made $10,000 in one show. As we were just finishing up, my roomie decided she needed the spot in the driveway where we had been working. Needed it for what? Empty space, that’s what. Every time. It’s uncanny.
Interesting. Close to 14% of links to this blog are coming from a single source, Current.com, which is owned by Al Jazeera. An increasing portion of youTube videos are using MP4 format, making my life a little harder. My system is geared to MP3 and sterling service that has given. But I swear, if you came up with an MP5 format that was a step backwards into the stone ages, half the sheeple on the Internet would start using it because they were told it was new.
ADDENDUM
Let’s talk a little of economics. One should always have enough tucked away to protect against a wipeout by “liars, cheats, and inflation”. Whereas I have less fear of inflation than average, it still looms over us all. The majority of retirements involve fixed incomes and the government is printing money round the clock. The heavy inflation is still to come along and the way it is set up, it will land right in the lap of the retirees. A pity, since the one thing all those old people wanted was a point they could quit worrying about cash day to day.
Take food. It doubled in price in the past year—at least the food items most of us need. But there was no outcry. Why? Because everybody who would normally have been devastated [by the increase] all qualified for food stamps. The brief stint I was on food stamps, I never ate so well. In fact, it was so good it changed my diet. I don’t eat poor people food any more. Where I used to keep five packs of mac and cheese in the cupboard, I haven’t bought any in years. I don’t even look at chicken drumsticks any more, only the boneless breasts.
But to ignore inflation is plain foolish. No amount of manipulation is going to help a truly fixed income situation. When the rate gets going, you better have something you can sell at the going rate. Thanks to music, I will never go hungry. But as you know, I’m again looking at rental income as protection in the future. More accurately, I’m looking at control of resources, but call it income property for clarity. Food prices go up? So does the rent.
What worries me the most out there these days? The silence. The DOW hits a record 15,000 driven not by investment, but by speculation. All Europe except Germany is in over their heads with hardly a peep from the media. I haven’t touched bonds in years, yet they are being traded at record rates. Something like $90 trillion of them are out there. But a bond is nothing more than a promise to pay. Pay with what? Print up them dollars.
Actually, bonds are a fascinating study in the degeneracy of the fractional banking system. They are like loans to individuals that cause the entire public to pay the interest. And every modern capitalist nation pins everything they have on bonds. Every city, every roadway, every mortgage, somewhere along the line is based on a bond which has value only when one perceives it has value. I don’t. A bond collapse would do us all in. Well, not all of us. I have an escape clause. Or two.
