One year ago today: August 29, 2014
Five years ago today: August 29, 2009, I admit to gambling,
when I was four years old.
Ten years ago today: August 29, 2004, Naples, FL.
MORNING
First we need a picture. I still don't have a camera but in a way that contributes to diversity. But even if I had one, you think I'm going out in that Florida heat to take pictures. Ha, I'm safe inside, got my music, got my Arudino, got my bag of jumbo roasted salted peanuts in the shell. These photos can look the same to the untrained eye, but each is, I assure you, a complicated and thoroughly researched project by the time things get to this phase. Every scrap has to be right or failure is the rule. And this is a documented failure.
I just read my fan mail, and something needs to be said for the hundredth time. Here goes. I spend about or less time each day reading and writing, including this blog, than most people waste watching mindless television and whatever it is they really look at on the Internet. I do not care what boring people think of me. It's not like they could do much except maybe yawn until all the oxygen is gone and I black out.
My Fridays begin with coffee at my favorite bakery, now the focal point of the entire community and getting somewhat famous. Can I pick 'em, or what? I'll talk later about gear used for treasure hunting, but ask why they don't apply the same technology to the missing Flight 370. Today's Herald said Burger King, that Miami landmark, is moving to Canada to avoid paying taxes. Don't be mislead, Canada has one of the most confiscatory tax structures imaginable. BK obviously cut themselves a deal.
The fact is, there will be no overall tax cut, every penny not paid is squeezed out of income tax. Canada taxes the workers to buy votes from the shirkers. On the surface, the economy looks okay, but the law is clearly written in the tax code. Everything is subject to tax except those items specifically excluded by the code. (Thus, what you think is not taxed is, in Canada-think, just being temporarily taxed at a "zero rate".)
There is also a mistaken impression that taxation is equal in Canada. Far from it. Just like the USA, the eastern bastards cook up an imaginary family and that's where all the tax exemptions apply. This imaginary family has private retirement plans, college funds for the teenagers, and a portfolio of "qualified" investments. Qualified means registered with the government. Since it is impossible to be an ideal family, this system provides compelling reasons for less-than-great families to pretend they are conforming.
They do is all for the tax cuts. That country is virtually brimming with this type of hypocritial scoundrel who only obeys the law until nobody is looking. Those families not blessed with a surplus of cash or single workers not lucky enough to have a swell inheritance are, well, in Canada, they are, to put it mildly, fucked. Their tax law contains a clause that it is illegal to even try to conceive of a legal way to avoid paying tax by applying existing tax law. How degenerate is that?
Note to the uninformed. Canada's "free medical" system has not been free for the past fifteen years. It went the way that everything goes once the government gets their paws on it. You can't even avoid the payments by staying healthy. You have no choice, it is taxed off your pay.
America is no better. We are supposed to have separation of church and state. But when's the last time they elected a bachelor atheist? And why are certain religions except from Obamacare? And again, the police entrapped a "pervert" with an on-line sting. Before you say that's good, ask yourself how the police could charge him with soliciting a minor when the "minor" was, in fact, an undercover detective? The police would of course prefer that you take their word on everything, but they've long destroyed that reputation. It only happens today because the courts find it expedient.
My question is, should anybody be convicted because of what another person claims he was thinking. Because "thinking" does not turn anything into fact. It the police claim that his thinking it was a 15-year-old makes is so, what about the fact he was also thinking the police are liars who set him up? But as always, the association that it is all about underage sex will cloud most people's opinion and the police will get their conviction without any minors ever having been involved.
I find this the situation with Google Glass. Have you seen the latest. It not only identifies you to strangers, it has a graph showing what kind of mood you are in. ID is based on your credit file, so there is no hiding. Your ID, your net worth, and your mood. Sales to Miami street beggars should swell. And the Mafia, since perverts aren't the only ones who want to know who is a policeman.
NOON
Here's your controversy for the day, I'm too tired to come up with anything better. I'm having second thoughts about the "Now I Know" posts. He now accepts advertising, but the nature of his odd-ball theme attracts odd-ball advertisers. Here is today's blurb for a fat lady fashion site. I don't know about you, but fat lady fashions gross me out. What's she doing, looking at the bathroom scale to see if she looks fat? That's what the mirror is for, toots.
Damn MIcroSoft. They've screwed up the search function, at least as far as it was useful before. Worse, my entire filing system was adapted so that, if need be, I could set a whole series of searches in motion, minimize the windows, and carry on with my work. So they remove the global search, the clowns. But I understand their low mentality involved. They've also replace WordPad, which used to be its own application, with a version of Word with various features removed. Proof that the simple-minded cannot leave well enough alone.
Don't you love how Pictures and My Pictures are now two directories? But, follow their logic. Stupid people can't run many searches as once, so why not remove the capability? Now you must either already know the directory, or use the pop-up search from the menu button. But if you navigate away from that spot, the search is closed. The market is ripe for somebody to come along and kick MicroSoft ass.
This came about via my review of old Arduino code. I wanted to find the best method of displaying the code, not the code itself, so I thought to flip through the lot until I found a pattern. That's when I discovered I had 2,875 files. That's how much programming I did just to learn the basics. Now, rather than face the daunting task of searching through those, I'm moving them back to an XP computer where I know the can be batched. My kingdom for an Apple.
I was up late [last night] coding stepper motor control. Fascinating. If you are clever, you can program the controller down to a fundamental level that you don't need fancy H-bridge controls. But at what cost? By examining the sequence the coils need to be latched, I independently figured out (and later found an article) of how to boost the motor torque by carefully activating both a push and pull magnetic field on different phases of the rotation. NOVA will never catch me now.
While all this was going on, I watched some battery how-to videos and came across this goober and laughed my guts. You talk about home-grown, if you have 27 minutes, listen to this hick. Classic. "You wait up 'cuz I gotta go check the mail." "It's pickle juice." "Then we'll see if it'll start my truck."
He grunts and mouth-breathes the entire time. Now you know why I left home at such a young age. (These videos do not cover the basic problem of how long will this "reconditioned" battery hold a charge. The purpose of a battery is to store a charge, not show a good reading right while it is fresh. Almost any battery can do that.) Then when he realized the demo battery was too tall and he couldn't close the hood of his truck, well, I took pity and hit "Stop". That poor man had suffered enough.
ADDENDUM
And I'm compelled to read the treasure ship book again with my newfound navigation reading ability. Nothing like a wild hunt for sunken gold bars to sharpen one's sextant readings, I suppose. The thing is, without knowing the navigation, this book is a bit so-so. Once you see how they use non-standard sources to get their bearings, the book comes alive. For example, the rescue ships report only latitude most days because of the storm, but on two occasions they report longitude.
Later same evening, this book has now become a must-read. It is written in segments of three chapters, one in Florida, then one out on the ocean, and the other back in Ohio. I must have read this book before I began looking at robots. You see, after a bit of reading, I had learned to gloss over the Ohio chapters which were mostly concerned with attracting investors and filing court papers. I skipped those chapters. Now, in my traditional second-pass deep read for books that make the grade, I'm finding little gems that parallel my own experiences.
These guys were ordering robot parts and they went through, in small instances, exactly the same process I did. Work with aluminum. Buy on parts on sale. Don't tell anyone enough to guess what you are doing. Have a cover story. Talk prices but not money. I see it now only because it makes sense now. They can't afford to use a scoop, they need a robot that can sift through the treasure on site and choose what goes into the basket. And any single part they order can tip off the competition. That part I have understood since kindergarten.
The book also touches on the danger of meta-information, which is rare in the pre-Internet days. It details how one can narrow down what the other guy is doing without really trying. He bought a ship, okay, and he didn't ask about 220 volt gear, and he has a fifty food anchor. So, he's treasure hunting in shallow water in the US, which only has two coasts and we can rule out one because not enough wrecks.
(Consider also around the time of this book, there was a rash of deep-sea adventures. The Glomar Explorer, the Titanic, the Thresher, a big find in Greece, and the mother of all scores, Mel Fisher with the "Atocha". (Say "Uh-TOHW-sha".))
For example, the length of cable. Too short you miss the target, too long is too expensive. Or the pressure fittings, same thing for their depth rating. Plus, the law requires that new corporations publish the list of investors. When a group of Ohio millionaires appear on the name lists with a new company buying winches for an 8,000 foot cable, some newspaper reporter is going to start poking around. Capitalism is still the best, but it has unsavory aspects, one of which is that it encourages bottom-feeding. That's a huge rabble of people whose best or only hope lies in trying to cash in on the success of the few who get things done.
This also explains a lot about my advocacy of privacy laws. And I mean at both ends of the spectrum. Every person should have a right to as much anonymity as can be legal and safe, every other person should be penalized if they invade or attempt to invade that privacy. I have what I have today largely because I keep it under a tarp. Return in the next few days for updates on this book, I'm about half way through.
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