One year ago today: May 19, 2013, the batbike at the Miami condo.
Five years ago today: May 19, 2009, shoemaking.
I need one of these, but they are so dang expensive. It is a prototype test board from the Shack. It is a few pots (potentiometers), an old-school analog meter and a about 80 connection points not counting the central breadboard. Excuse me for taking another day off, but that is why they call it retirement. I live to my own schedule most days. I picked up this month’s “Discovery” magazine, which now regularly outshines PopSci for quality of article. And it is still only $6 a copy. It must be quiet all over town, nobody came to the door.
Next, here is something impressive. The first new design in bricks* in 150 years. They interlock like Lego and have some remarkable statistics. Like 50% overall reduction in building costs. The bricks contain channels for wiring and such. Certainly everyone spotted that the construction vehicle was not a robot, but it could be. Which reminds me, the Nova club meets this week.
I’ve been lax with plans for the Nova meeting. I would like to show them some of the projects I’ve built, for so far the club appears to be nothing but programmers. My notes and algorithms drew plenty of attention which tips me off nothing has changed since I did my first code (back when I was 17 years old). Most people instantly start typing on a computer, precisely the wrong thing to do. I immediately start sketching the flowchart. Still, I could do with a room full of coders who seek a common cause to get into a project.
After coffee and brunch at the Panera (it’s Monday), I thought to test the water at next meeting. I have several diagrams of my former plan to devise a sonar robot cart to navigate a maze by always choosing the longest pathway. I learned long ago the best programs are modular, that is, a main session calling a subroutine for each task. More, I learned to ignore the usual advice to only put repetitive tasks into the subroutines, I tend to write as much as possible into the calls. Why? Because it disciplines one’s thinking and produces transportable code.
If I get a positive reaction from the meeting, I will invite teams of two people to write each of the six basic activities I’ve isolated for robot movement, dammit Ralph, I said movement, that means to make it move and nothing else. Turn, stop, creep, speed, reverse, accelerate. Some may consider this trivial, but they have not seen the specifications that I’ll accept. The code has to be self-documenting, which means even the names of variables must be chosen with care. I’ve never had a complaint of my code not being well-documented. Of course, I expect that nobody is going to believe I actually sit down and extensively write out explanations of my code, I mean, who on Earth ever types that much?
Overall, I need that Nova lab. Robots are expensive. I also know that except for toy-bots simple to the point of useless, that a robot is a team effort. I’ve got some experience to tell you that organized teams do not come ready-made. I’ve by now detected a departure from the norm. In the wide world, people want to be the leader. In the robot field, people want to be the one who built it and made it work. That means I can safely predict that any worthwhile robot will be team-built and the result of thorough, painstaking management effort. That’s another nugget they “forgot” to tell you in the user manual.
What’s this? I just got an e-mail saying the meeting has been moved to the Dean’s conference room. And another inviting me to an Agile tools convention. Agile, as far as I know, is a software “methodology” that gives programmers a general goal and allows them to pursue it without strict guidelines, but with the requirement to tell all others on the project about any changes they encounter. Yes, you history buffs, I know that is exactly how the German army ransacked France in 1940. I dislike Agile because, like Linux, the meatheads who designed it filled it full of bizarre and non-descriptive terms, probably in an effort to sound lofty. Imposing a new vocabulary on old ideas is not my definition of progress.
The e-mail further announces the meeting will focus on robot simulation and neuro-systems. Unless there are working models, I’m leery of such advanced topics covered in a two-hour session of strangers. Assignments and reading I can do on my own time. Computer simulation belongs more in Arts than Sciences, or as the French guy said about Balaclava, “C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre”.
Here’s an amusing shift, the business card printing option in MS Word. You choose from a selection and download the design. The examples reflect the horrific decline of the American business model. Instead of advanced, worthwhile, and permanent occupations, it is mostly designs for realtors, landscapers, and personal trainers. True, you change the card, but I’m saying the examples themselves show what we as a society have become. It ain’t pretty.
And here. Here's another random picture of my work area:
*this dead link is a major reason this blog uses so few HTML references. You simply cannot rely on Internet sources to keep their shit together. And social rejects like Berners-Lee (notice I said social reject, not scientific reject) could not be bothered to include some type of indication that a link was bad so millions later would not waste time clicking on it. And what do you call people who thoughtlessly pass problems on to the next person? Right. A social reject.
ADDENDUM
Documentaries. I like them but not the patterns they’ve been following lately. Does every producer, I mean Nova, PBS, CBC, and BBC absolutely have to do a documentary on beehives, Israel, and the Galapagos, where nothing has happened since Darwin packed up? There’s two even worse themes. Please, please, no more Stephen Hawking, I’m sorry but that man has become more totally annoying than he was to begin with. (If you think his theories are advanced or far out, you are obviously not a trained physicist.) But worst are those exasperating people who constantly try to mix the topic of AIDS in with general discussions of other diseases like measles. Nuh-uh, we’re not buying that. Kids don’t get AIDS from each other.
I’ve mentioned how BBC documentaries have deliberately worsened by getting off topic, by adding "filler" about people who work there. Before, they’d stick to telling how the spaceship was built. Now half the air time is wasted telling us how Sally, the single mother over in propellants, had a hard time getting her twins to ballet practice because those insensitive Mars rover-things keep landing at night. I don’t agree that science needs democratizing. Those who want the humanistic side of every little situation should go watch soap operas.
Another favorite over here are the big titles like “Ancient Secrets of Atlantis Revealed” and you notice the run time is one minute twenty-seven seconds. Must be a real epic.
