MORNING
Here’s a view of new at St. Jude’s, sent by Alaine today. I do not know if they are all new or just some, but this impressive display came just after I’d learned the significance of these from the movie “Monument Men”. I see there are 12 portraints along the top and a depiction of the last supper at the keystone position. Mind you, for all the times I’ve been in St. Jude’s I cannot place where this can be seen. Maybe next time but I’m supposing it is in the church. St. Jude’s is a big place.
In a similar concern, there was an article concerning the suspension of driver’s licenses. This is your typical example of what happens when you have nothing to hide. Your records eventually get scrutinized by uncaring bureaucrats. And your license can now be suspended for laws that have absolutely nothing to do with driving. Kids under 16 who skip school get suspension for licenses they won’t even have for years to come. Child support and failure to appear are also cause. How long before it spreads to every corner? You cannot work without driving. Think about it. Losing a license means losing everything.
NOON
How about legalized weed in Colorado? The state taxes sales at 12.5%. And they are bringing in six times as much as they predicted. Watch out, DC, it would be a fine kettle if individual states started garnering tax revenues in excess of what you take in. The federal government only exists because the majority of people are so dumb they think it is required. And for the dumb asses who want to know why the world hates us? Because once again Washington is sticking their noses into other people’s business.
DC has “vowed” to get tough with the Ukraine. It is this kind of hypocritical interference that makes the world despise the USA. We issue noble edicts because the Ukraine cracks a few skulls to keep people in line, whereas we want them to do it the American way. By invading privacy, eroding personal freedoms and conducting warrantless searches. DC claims they are only protecting a people who are opposing unrepresentative government. Pardon me?
I’ve been asked (by strangers over coffee) for my opinion on Chinese motor scooters. I think they are good for maybe 5,000 miles. (Later revised to 6,000.) Then get rid of them, beyond that it is cheaper to buy, register, and insure a car for the cost per mile. I didn’t suddenly turn statistic brain this evening. I ran across an individual who was studying computer science. We had a one hour conversation on brainy stuff. I have now moved from avoiding GMOs to outright opposing GMOs.
Here’s something. My first and only traffic ticket plea of not guilty was rejected. They want a case number that does not appear on the document. So I photocopied the document and sent them that, stating I cannot provide a case number unless they give it to me. The other option was to provide a credit card number. I declined that one. What a laugh that the court system and indeed the USA cannot survive without credit. The USA exists only on credit and that is just as true of my situation despite the fact I don’t partake. The only reason there is food on the store shelves and gas at the station is because everybody else is up their necks in debt. Let’s think about that.
I do not buy enough gas or groceries to support one other human. Look around you. If everyone was like me, there would not be a single jewelry store, or casino, or payday loan shop. No hotels, no strip joints, no rehab clinics, no mortgage companies. No drug dealers, no parking meters, no toll roads. These things would wither away. It is credit alone that makes it possible for me to walk down the aisle at Wiggly Piggly and see the shelves stocked to the ceiling. But I’m aware of the thin margins that keep things that way.
NIGHT
A quick progress report on QBASIC. There are numerous different versions, which they don’t say when you start. But for a laugh, look at the on-line tutorials. Like my family, all big talk but the reality is they have only narrow surface knowledge of the easy parts. Such tutorials demonstrate the near universal low caliber of “Internet experts”. Countless articles at the beginner’s level, tapering to a few intermediate, and nothing whatsoever that requires real brains. That’s how most people lead their lives—chapters that will never get written.
Am I guilty of the same? It depends on your attitude. I’m more of a facilitator. I don’t hold myself out to be the expert, although the world has to admit I know an awful, awful, awful lot about how to properly play the electric bass. That’s a joke, Glen, but you get it extra because you know it is true. Har-dee-har-har.
Say, have you seen the formulas behind the concept of payday loans? Unbelievable, yet those shops are everywhere. Define thievery, but in this era of 17-year-olds declaring bankruptcy, I’m not sure who to blame. The interest rates sometimes top 3,000% in the short run. The loans are designed to never be paid back. But shopping is such fun, is the message.
ADDENDUM
Last, this evening gave me time to relax and read more on QBASIC. At the moment, I’m covering the use of DATA tables to produce graphics. If I want a certain shaped article to appear on the screen, and plus if I want to make it move (an illusion), then DATA tables make sense. They are a logical (to me) combination of DATA statement at the tail end of the program. These get read into arrays, which most any computer processes very rapidly, and then PUT into screen locations.
See this photo of the minimum study arrangement? That is correct. Without that pencil and paper, there is utterly no way to learn anything important on a computer. And even if you find an adequate source, the trick is to print it out so you can take the papers to some quiet corner and study them by yourself. I chuckle at those who claim any different, since it explains the 15% difference in our marks on the final exam.
After an intense study session, I’ve decided the best option is the Mallard system. Classic computer animation involves printing something on screen, then printing a duplicate in an adjacent location, then deleting the original. When this occurs rapidly enough, it is perceived as movement. Mallard uses a background “page”, it is present on most computers but you don’t see it until it is copied to the viewing page. Right now, you are looking at a viewing page. In computer talk, you are viewing page 0. There is a page 1. Mallard creates the next graphic on page 1 and copies it to page 0. It is more complicated, but has better performance.
The original Mallard posts, which were a WordPress blog, have long since disappeared. However, I’ve located another series of posts by an author named Pete, who if he is not Mallard, is his intellectual clone or more likely, pirated the code from Mallard. You can’t fool me with computer code, each program is like a fingerprint. My code is easy to spot. There are more lines of remarks than of code, the way it should be. And I hard code everything. What’s that?
Easy. Suppose a bad programmer wanted to determine if a number was “5”. He would check to see if it was “4”or less or “6” or more. The thinking goes that it eliminates everything else so what is left has to be “5”. The world is full of such morons. That backward technique is also called “fall-through”. It works but it is unstable (it won’t spot a truncated “5.1”), error prone (uses two formulas instead of one), and is difficult to maintain (takes time to figure out what is going on). Another example is arrays. In my code you always see the LBOUND command even though in one-dimensional arrays the LBOUND has to be 1. But I prefer to hard code it rather than letting the logic “fall-through” to unseen defaults.
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