One year ago today: July 29, 2013.
Five years ago today: July 29, 2009.
Ten years ago today: July 29, 2004, Mars airplane?
MORNING
What’s this? Another band photo? Yes, but with a twist. I finally knuckled down and produced a gif. I never had reason to before, so I took ten stills from the last gig video. This is the first. I don’t have the camera or software to make rapid stills, nor does Win 7 appear to have any app to play them back. What I did was hold my camera up to the monitor while the video played and pressed the feature that takes three shots at a time. Unless I can automate the task, it takes too much time and talent.
Ah, some say, why that’s nothing more than my old “voicing” technique. Each must arrange what they play to match the size and sound of the band or get overshadowed. And yes, this band did reject the idea when I first suggested it. Not maliciously, mind you now, but because ALL musicians wrongly think they are naturally good at it until they go through the protracted and degrading process of learning otherwise.
Why bring it up? Well, to brag of course. That’s all I ever do. You can tell by the way I never talk about my failures and frustrations. Braggarts never fail and my camper never leaks. Anyway, the technique works in reverse. While they are not consciously doing it yet (they still tend to play only their own part), the improvement is enough to allow me to introduce ever more musically pleasing bass lines. For example, a tune like Del Shannon’s “Runaway” has a muddy bass line during the instrumental. The bass now follows that poignant, some say melancholy, piano riff from Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata”.
And who remembers the Ventures and “Pipeline”? That’s now got Mozart’s “Rondo a la Turka” overtones.
Um, around a month back, the Carly Simon tune “You’re So Vain” was vetoed. Fine, I never liked it, but as a challenge, I learned that spicy bass intro. Hence, the keyboards had to learn the fill, and so on. It has
Because this is Florida, I must qualify the above. I’m not saying I invented the technique. I didn’t say that. I’m not saying I’m first. I didn’t say that. I’m saying if anyone else is doing it, they’ve kept it a secret. I’m saying that. Nobody helped me work up this plan. I’m saying that. And I’ve never met anyone, not even one musician in Florida who is doing it right. I’m saying that. Point in time is important. If you show up tomorrow with somebody who beat me to it, that does not change a lick of what I just said at that point in time. Certain types of bad persons need to be told these things.
[Author's note 2023: I came back to this date to put in a working example of the GIF that did not originally function. That's the reason I'd forgotten this clip and have said other GIFs were the first. Here is the finished product, now cropped and labeled "Taking a Bow" in my archives. My memory left out this whole session, I would have thought the first GIF was 15 years ago but the watermark on the original tells me I could not have attempted this so far back. Not shown is how weak I was in those days and unable to work even around my own place. But the length of these blog entries show I was always able to type and focus. Imagine today trying to type in three sections per day.
It's a measure of blog evolution that this technology worked its way into a fairly static design at the time. That is, this blog was never intended to have even photos, much less photos that are relevant down to even the time of day they are taken. Enjoy the GIF, I sure enjoyed that gig. It was to be another four years before I could produce GIFs on demand.]
AFTERNOON
Navigation is complicated to the point of seeming like magic. And I’m only learning the basics. It’s doubly amusing in that it is also one of those topics that let you know if you’ve been paying attention as life rolls along. Remember those schoolmates who could not understand why they should learn something they’ll never use? You won’t find any of those sort in a navigation class, believe you me.
The reason is that a lot of that academic stuff, if you learned it when you had the chance, comes in handy. I learned the constellations and can pick out dozens of planets and stars since I was ten, so that helps. Knowing your trig makes it easier to follow the explanations. Same with modular (base 60) counting. Same with a dozen lesser disciplines that would be a real pain to relearn now.
Yet I warned us about test-passing. So I can work the arithmetic, but certain concepts such as “Meridian Angle are perplexing. Still, I come up with correct answers so I must be getting close. Who recalls my plan to find a compromise horizon on the beach and use that for land sights? Well, one of my books, on page 108, tells me I don’t need that.
This is the artificial horizon. The colored plates are for dimming the sun. Clear glass plates are used for star sights. Water or “a more viscous liquid” floats inside the pan and reflects back through the plates. The angle, 25°, is carefully matched to the refractive index of glass.
I have no intention of buying a boat, but the concept of celestial navigation on land fascinates me. For starters, dead reckoning is nothing. There are no winds or currents that throw a motorcycle off course. One’s estimated position is as simple as reading a road map. Dang, why didn’t I discover this before I set out for Cape Canaveral. I stop every few hours for gas anyway. Here’s where I remind us that there is no place on a motorcycle (other than the inconvenient saddlebags) to keep anything perfectly dry.
EVENING
These show the progress on the robot hand, called “humanoid” by the eggheads. Upper right pic shows an Arduino Uno at the top and you see there is a size constraint for all internal working parts. I’m enthused that the Nova meet-up is finally moving ahead (since May) and some of the previous drop-outs are now returning. And they are volunteering parts and tools. Gee, more progress in a month than all that went before. Who’s behind all this?
Next, look at the yellow plastic table. This has to remain heated during the print. The directions say to coat it with hairspray. But if you’ve ever dated a gal who used that junk, you know it builds up. Why not Teflon or silicon? I don’t know. Both printers belong to other members.
There is a limit to the size of a print job. When these same pieces were examined last Thursday, I noted several defects but also got several ideas. For example, what would happen if I was to, at a strategic moment, lay a small axle or pin into the plastic during the print process?
Overall, I was not thrilled by the quality of the printed objects. They are not the smooth and shiny examples that appear on the newscasts. The big deal has become printing artificial limbs for amputees but the motive there seems to be the warm fuzzies. Give me pure research any time.
