June 11, 2014

Yesteryear
One year ago today: June 11, 2014, what are "VPLs"?
Five years ago today: June 11, 2009.
Ten years ago today: June 11, 2004, an anniversary.

           What a gloomy day and all that rain. I stayed put and spent an afternoon doing what I like best, sitting and reading. Well, not totally, since I have to go get up for coffee since the maid quit, and I have to move across the room to type like this. But I wanted to learn more about voltage dividers, since there are some aspects that don’t make sense. There is plenty to cover on star charts still, and I want to study a bit more electronics. At least the rain keeps people from coming to the door.

           I can relax and putter around. But productive things, not yard work or pretending I can still play baskeball. Here is my collection of small bolts and splicing gear. I have accumulated eight containers of similar material, pointing out that these are properly sorted into their own little bins, there Ken.
           By nightfall, it let up and I drove up to Homeless Depot for supplies, cost me almost three dollars. After all these years, I still do not possess the technology to make boxes but I’m about to try. As luck would have it, about 80% of the people I know in town live between here and that store, so each trip turns into an excursion.

In the following, I'm making a joke about strange shapes. Miguelito is an alien spaceport buff who downloads all those pictures of optical illusions from outer space. He was pointing out Martian landing strips on the moon, while I was telling about how I would locate these objects on a map. He sees Elvis, I see rocks.

           Biggest stop was Miguelito, who keeps finding those strange objects on the surface of the Moon. I showed him the angulator and told him I didn’t see anything but piles of rocks, however, I could measure their declination. That’s the ornamental word for height above the rotational circumference (the equator). Although I divulged to him that I could distinguish a couple of shapeless entities that reminded me of a 1987 Toyota, two fat ladies at a square dance, and the Oakwood K-mart.
           No where was I? Oh yeah, the lumberyard. If you don’t believe inflation is kicking butt, go price out some of the bolts and fasteners in the hardware aisle. Eight bucks for what I’d expect to cost fifty cents. It’s fine I have the eight bucks, but only because so many others do not. Harsh as that sounds, it is what keeps prices from getting even more outrageous. Generally, I have enough supplies for the next five years.
           I was hoping the overcast would clear so I could shoot Polaris. No such luck, to I took the Moon readings again. At 21:35:10 the angulator showed 40° 00’ at 152° clockwise from magnetic north. I have no charts or tables, but I know roughly where I am on the map. Thus, I’m going to attempt to draw my position as indicated by these angular measurements. “Dumb” exercises like this often prove spellbinding reading years later and it would not be the first time I’ve had to work backwards from a solution to figure out what the heck the teacher is talking about.

           From a road map, shown here, I extrapolated that Hollywood must be almost precisely on Lat 31°00’ N and Lon 80°00’ W. It says here that one nautical mile is 1/60th of a degree of longitude, so let me set my dividers and measure the distance to Orlando. Hmmm, a little less than 170 nm, or about 150 statute miles if you could sail there. Geocities says the distance is 181 miles at a bearing of 345° 00’, I measure 337° 30’. I now know that this difference in bearing represents a significant error on somebody’s part. (That’s the red line near where I’m pointing on the map.)
           Here, you can take a look at how far I got. I marked the latitudes in red crayon but worked only with the 80° longitude marking, having figured out that is a handy scale for nautical miles—but only if you use the exact north-south scale. Next, from the compass rose, I drew a black line at the 152° bearing of the moon ( A°), and a parallel black line passing through Hollywood (A’). Now I know why navigators use those split rulers—to transpose parallel lines.
           I could not figure out how to use the height of the moon but this picture is taken from approximately the 40 degree angle. I could spin the map around centered on Hollywood and maintain that angle, meaning what I really did was place the Moon on the rim of a cone instead of my position on Earth. I have no idea if that is an important realization.

           I took a quarter-hour to run over the finances of the five-piece band. We are wasting time practicing, we know more than enough material already. Thus, we should play out at pretty well any place that does incur the band a loss. We already know the group lacks stage time and nothing is being done about that. Thus, I began dropping into places with an older clientele and putting my own reputation on the line. I strongly emphasize the brand of music this band plays and I’m getting positive responses by pointing out most anyone in the audience would know the words to every song we play. (In the corollary this tips us off that other bands must be burning enough clubs on this point to make this a problem out there.)
           As a reward for a productive day, I did some deep reading about voltage divider circuits again. This is where the value of a voltage between two resistors varies according to the ratio of the resistors. I can build and measure these circuits, but I need more theory as they form the basis for how sensors are wired and are often used to “bias” transistor input. This bias means to take a varying voltage and take it down to the narrow range where a transistor behaves like an amplifier. I also found my notes from early 2011 when I was really struggling to understand memory circuits.

           Author's note: the pink dot in the upper corner of the map is my own system to indicate the readings were taken in the evening/night. Green means morning, yellow means mid-day.