Sometimes a random color appears twice in a row, either leading or trailing, and covers half the screen in a single color, as in the mauve in the second panel and the yellow in the last panel. (In the second to last panel, you can't tell if it is about to happen, as the color change only begins once the beam passes a boundary.)
Technically, it is possible for all four triangles to be the same color. We will eliminate that chance. There are 16 colors max, well, 15, as black is rejected by the way I arranged the formulas. Use your imagination and you’ll see the radar effect.
Our plan is to divide the screen into 16 sectors, or pie-slices and eliminate consecutive duplicate colors. Yes, you could easily run my code on your computer, as long as you don’t have a 64 bit Windows model. Return next Monday or so and I’ll attach a copy of the code that you can download and run in Qbasic. It is fully documented and debugged, ready to rock.
To any new readers, by all means, you can try this at home. However, I am already an advanced programmer from the 70s, so don’t expect instant results if you’re just starting. I had to boil my brain to get these to work right, and I haven't done anything I consider complicated as of yet. Motive? I’m saying I can already program, and am returning to learn Qbasic for my own reasons. This is a new language for me, but I have both university and college degrees (the theoretical and practical) to help me along.
And I know what the sharper brains out there are thinking. Yes, if it swept clockwise, why not make it a clock? Because you are thinking to use the CPU pulse speed divided into seconds, minutes and hours. Not me. Recall what I said about DOS shells. I would use DOS to read the computer's built-in timer, and translate that move the clock hands a corresponding number of radians. But that is far beyond my skill as of today. For all I know, that is how other computer clocks really work.
Here's something about Win 7. It is indeed dreadfully slow and I may have a good guess at why. Once again, the big problem is MicroSoft itself. Their entire approach is plain rotten. As I read the specs on Win 7, and anything beyond Vista, it becomes evident MicroSoft is targeting the portable device market.
So nice of them to warn the people who thought they were buying a computer operating system. It isn't, and that is why it sucks. It is optimized to run on tablets and pads. Thus, unless you are exclusively running MicroSoft products, the system has to emulate a desktop computer.
That is why, running Opera and Ixquick means Win 7 has to use up to 70% of your available speed and memory just to pretend it is a real computer. That's my theory, and furthermore, it requires almost as much resources even when you are not on-line just to have a non-MicroSoft browser present on your computer. How many times I gotta tell you MicroSoft sucks.
The novel “Don’t Turn Your Back On The Ocean” is a bit of a drudge. I’m beginning the twelfth chapter and I can sum up the plot in three sentences. Boy and girl have fight. Girl is found dead. Boy is a suspect. But I can tell you what everybody was wearing, who is distantly related, and that all female detectives drink chardonnay. I’ve got a handle on California flora and much greater insight into constructive gossiping, based on the premise that there is such a thing.
ADDENDUM
Chalk up one excellent rehearsal spot this morning. There is no doubt if we get out there, we will give the guitar gods a run for their money. This morning was the first full rehearsal after a critical review of the Valentine’s Day performance. We’ve taken some important elements to the next level, which I should keep on record here. For a long while, it seemed like time wasted to endlessly go over musical technique without learning any given song. I’d say we invested the time wisely. I’ve had other musicians complain this was like “taking lessons”. Yes, and the way to stop that is to play it right.
For all the big talk, very few musicians actually record and analyze their gigs, except to choose the best scenes to compile into a misleading demo. I’m the opposite, I’m after those out-takes, those mistakes, those bad scenes. But not as a critique, for I frequently incorporate “stage errors” into my act. Musicians who try to achieve that goal by elimination wind up sounding like the clones they are. On the flip side, Jag has been properly schooled from day one on how to keep that audience on their toes using only their own volition. I never crank my amp to get attention, Glen.
Rehearsal this morning was a delight, as we went over the video. Things go wrong on stage, you can’t avoid it. We flubbed chord patterns and in one spot entirely mixed up the beats for two songs. Chops which sounded okay at my place had missing chunks in the real world. We have found we often have to switch “beats” as many as three times in one song, another technique I’ve never heard applied to this situation. I did NOT say I invented this, just that I never heard of it before. But I think common sense tells us most musicians would play the same beat throughout a song. As we found out today, this is not always the best approach.
An example would be “Spiders and Snakes”. The intro has a “swamp beat” that matches the lead notes we otherwise leave out. Then switch to a “bo-diddley” pattern during the verses, except make the chords “monotonous” on the changes . Careful, in the muted guitar parts of the chorus, the beat becomes “chicka-boom”. Note the highly professional pedantic terms with which I describe guitar rhythms. And all this without the benefit of a single lesson.
Mind you, Jag still has an understandable lack of a sense of urgency, he may not grasp the full implication that he is learning an invaluable trade, that I would have given anything if I had such exposure when I was his age. I had to learn it all myself, which took a lifetime. Northern Texas was like northern Alberta in the 1960s, not the place for an ambitious kid to find any good examples or advice.
So many musicians talk about taking songs apart and putting them back together. But I remain the only person I know of who actually does it. And because it is not something that can be properly accomplished in solitude, yes, I do have to see it to believe it. Um, no, Zack, it is not the same thing when a guitar player wants to force the rest of the band to reassemble the sound to your liking. My system works toward the entire band sound, as in group or collective sound, not your backup band.
This is where progress is very inspiring, as Jag has learned to find the character of a song. I didn’t teach that, I only could describe how important it was. This is causing me to change my philosophy. Where I used to say avoid playing the same thing I do, I’m changing to never play the same thing. This is caused by finally meeting a guitar player who listened and learned. And the sound just sparkles, it is almost inspiring on a close listen which is the presentation style that invites the audience to do just that. You don’t get consistent good results without going the extra mile. It’s just that it sometimes seems more like a hundred miles. Expensive miles.
