One year ago today: June 26,2013, daily philosphy?
Five years ago today: June 26, 2009, shear the dog.
Ten years ago today: June 26, 2004, springtime on Neptune.
MORNING
Six hours on the new clubhouse. It’s one of the cheapest garden sheds that ever passed a building code. When we stripped the walls to mount shelving, it was framed with 1×3”s four-foot on-center. See top photo. There was a lot of junk in there, but at least we didn’t have to buy nails and screws. This shed is for rough assembly, we never planned to manufacture delicate doodads over there. I’ll bet you can feel the Florida summer heat Other pics show the yard and shed entrance. That’s me handing the saw inside. Its rustic digs, no denying that, but it is infinitely better working conditions than we have been used to.
Discussion was the Arduino programming. That, and which one of us has dated the prettier women, hey, it’s a construction site. Up to now, if a project didn’t fit on my kitchen table, it didn’t get built. This expands our dimensions by around a factor of six. Better still, we will have two each of all the most-used tools. No, the drill press stays right here where it belongs.
So everyone knows, this shed is only ours to use. We took everything out, what a mess. We installed shelving brackets at work height around the perimeter so that all the other stuff will fit in boxes underneath, leaving use the counter space for our own. I was truly disappointed when I saw how flimsy the structure was and immediately insisted we install cross-bracing over the walls.
It’s actually nearly 2:00PM but I’m calling it a morning’s work. It feels like working underwater, this Florida humidity isn’t just muggy, it is a killer. I lost four pounds myself. But, we will be done by tomorrow and we’ll have something robotic soon. Agt. M is leery of my confidence that my code will work without a field test but I’ll make a believer out of him. My coding is old-school and these days that makes it world class. Now, about that Arduino code.
AFTERNOON
My personal reminder that time is passing is when I pull up my last Arduino code and it is dated something like August 8, 2011. It’s been three years since I compiled code! I’ve written it, tested it, but if I did not compile it, then it was not physically exported to an Arduino. My gosh, has it been three years! You bet, but fortunately my code is exceptionally well documented and I have my transistor motor controller of March 15, 2011, ready to go. The nice thing about good, tested, modular code is that it never goes out of date.
Let me do a quick count. Hmmm, seven lines of documentation per line of code. My school taught me right. But that includes comments that are nothing but lines to divide my code up into readable sections. The C+ people forgot how important that was, just like they forgot to use any method to easily tell when a subroutine is being called. But I was taken aback by how much time has passed with the Arduino sitting in my storage cabinet. I used to belittle others for the same. Or is it the same. It’s not like I ignored electronics totally in that time.
On top of that, my brand new much-vaunted video security system keeps turning itself off. It’s intermittent but seems that the cameras don’t auto-start after any type of power interruption. That’s all I need. I’m glad these are my biggest worries, but it isn’t like I have everything my own way. Like two days ago my priceless zipper folder of new ideas, diagrams, and sketches went missing. Those are irreplaceable booklets. What sets our work apart is not its complexity, but that we keep good records. Fortunately, it turns out I forgot it behind at the clubhouse.
Further tests show that even my description of the innards of the Ping))) may be wrong, in that the Arduino detects a signal but does not time it. So what does time it? We don’t know yet. What’s important is that we learn it so much better than the competition that we don’t make mistakes programming it funny. Mistakes like emitting a signal so long that it mixes with the returning echo.
EVENING
I figured a couple words tops on the Nova meeting. No way, and I feel (for me) it was one of those experiences called “harrowing”. I’m dead tired, ready to sleep past noon tomorrow. You see, what happened, was the entrenched status quo of the group did not show up tonight. I seized the opportunity to present how we lacked defined goals, that members could skip a session and know they wouldn’t miss much. What kind of meeting is that? There was no learning, no harmonized congruent objectives. Purely by coincidence, the majority of the room were Russian guys who never said a word before, but had been concerned about the same issue. When are we going to build something?
Now I only persuaded, I did not convince. I get paid to convince. Return tomorrow when I calm down and walk through it. We defined certain objectives, mostly which I had a lot to do with. Potential problem? By next month the old guard could very well return and vote us back into the same old routine. Which consists of logging on to a simulator and saying, “Wow!” I’ll write a bit more on it tomorrow.
ADDENDUM
Computer security. While I liked the system of downloads giving only enough data to call back for the main program, I see the major software outfits have begun to abuse it. You used to download the program to a folder, if you were wise, and install it later on your own. Now, the programs will only self-install and the computer must be connected to the Internet. This allows shady operators like Java to take a quick inventory of your hard drive. Worse, it installs things you would never allow if you were aware of them. It’s pretty slick because it forces many computers normally kept off-line to be connected at least momentarily and that’s long enough for them.
Again, the solution is to keep one computer with minimum information on it for Internet use only. (Some in the robot class were shocked to hear that one could take measures against provider and operating system snoopers. They felt you had to let Gogggle and MicroSoft control your computer.)
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