One year ago today: February 12, 2014, begin GMO study.
Five years ago today: February 12, 2010, trip to Miami.
MORNING
Another cold front, so things will get domestic around here. Last day, I mentioned old John Wayne movies, and I put one on in the background. I arbitrarily chose ”Star Packer”, somebody’s slangy term for a sheriff. But if you want to see the entire gamut of oater clichés, the movies only an hour long.
Get ready for more of this as the thermometer plummets down into the forties, as cold as it ever gets in Florida. This last happened around 2003. Fortunately, I have all the winter gear I bought in Denver back in 2013. The rest of Florida does not. Let the games begin.
Also be ready for a change in format if this blog is to continue. There are changes in the way it will be presented as I bow to pressure from social media. I do not like Google’s interference under the guise of “protection” that was not asked for and I do not like their ownership provisions. Remember, I never started with Google, they took over the outfit I had chosen. Google my eye, more like Gobble.
Furthermore, you may notice a trend back toward those features which proved most popular. Biggest change is the name of the new blog (not yet specified). Plus, they (Google) have never ceased to try to discover information that is none of their business. They are also sneaky about passwords. For titles, “Tales From The Trailer Court” was never the first choice and it does not advertise well. Yes, I’ve made some trials at advertising and nothing seemed to make an ounce of difference. I’m not done with that yet, so stay tuned. Note, that is ONLY if I decide to continue with the new blog, which would not be subject to the same restrictions against advertising.
However, should the change happen, there is no doubt the basics will remain. Everything will be familiar. As for the writing and content, shall we say I've not got the experience. I have never had a single moment of training in writing, research, or journalism, but I'll handily compare myself to anything that hit the market since 1991. It's not like somebody came along with a clear set of instructions on how to get underway, you know. To this day, I'm still the only person I know who has a blog.
The pretty New York gal from the bakery has vanished. This is an unbroken trend since my thirties. You meet the gal just as she’s leaving town. Do other men experience this so regularly? Is there a name for the phenomena? The ones I really like are on the way out the door. And just when you think you’ve heard the last of penguins.
NOON
“You and I come by road or rail, but economists travel on infrastructure” –Margaret Thatcher. For the record, ‘infrastructure’ has got to be one of the hardest Morse code words I’ve ever heard.
Here’s fifty acres of land for sale, only 25 miles out of El Paso, TX. I didn’t think there was anything that far out of El Paso. When I didn’t think of it again, by looking at this picture, maybe I was right. What a f’in god-forsaken place.
Or how about that Canadian broad who published the list of restaurants that are “not nice fancy” so the men who meet her on-line won’t take her there. No link. I’ve only taken one girl ever out to dinner on a first date--it was a waste of $80, and this was 1980 (around $230 today). My philosophy since is that if a girl is hungry, take her to Winn/Dixie. (To any of little brain who stumbled in here by mistake, I’ve taken hundreds of women to dinner. Just not on the first date any more.)
In robotics, we were able to cut perfect threads on steel rods up to 5/8” diameter. Basic as that may be to some, it’s new here. Where this is going is the ability to join metal rods of differing diameters, one of the greatest stumbling blocks of building a robot vehicles. There are commercial couplers, but the cost is petrifying. To date, we’ve not done anything small enough a diameter to be useful. Managing this far was enough for now. And we did get it right the first try, so that’s encouraging.
The evolution of this work is the benefit of a volunteer team. The fine work is now done here, in controlled conditions, the heavy work is done at the clubhouse. Where I have very little reason to go except to visit. Heavy work meaning anything I can’t pick up and put on my work desk. Or anything I can’t cut here without taking forever, like said 5/8” diameter steel rod.
In other news, non-figuratively, the Miami Herald lost the “no-fag” bet on the first day. Three pro-homo articles. The bet was they could not go a week, Feb. 11 to Feb. 17, without an article on the topic, which seems to fascinate the Miami Herald to an unhealthy degree. For the record, nobody here is anti-homo, we only want them to shut up about it. We are sick and tired of them pretending it is a major issue of everybody’s day. It isn’t. Nobody cares. Anyway, in a week, I mail them the clippings. They are one sick-minded bunch over there. Not normal at all, those boys.
Where is Ann Coulter when you need her most?
AFTERNOON
This is the mini-studio, utilizing the last of the last possible space left on these premises. There is no big mixer if you devotees are looking for that. Since these “8-channel” recorders can only grab one channel at a time (some do two, but one has to be vocals, often the chintzy built in “left” microphone), I don’t need a lot of input controls. The keyboard is on a wall rack. It does not get recorded that often, but I need it to figure out certain passages.
The setup consists of the Tascam recorder, the Zoom drum box, and the small four-channel mixer on the left. The mixer’s purpose is not to mix, rather so I can plug instruments in without reaching in behind the Tascam to find the input jack. That’s a hassle. Said again, the mixer is there to cut down the number times I have to move the jacks.
Did I record anything? No, I tuckered myself out building the rig. It took most of the day, involving drills, power saws, and rearranging the furniture. With NPR radio in the background to remind me that no matter how frustrating some things got, like the insane power supply situation, at least I’ll never be as totally screwed up as the people on public radio. Hang on while I go turn it off, those poor people have suffered enough.
The Tascam is difficult enough to use without having to continually plug in each instrument as the recording progresses. The trick is to record all the instruments at line level and do the mixing after all tracks are completed. This is the process, called post-mix, that gives most indie music its plastic quality. Nothing beats good native sound but I've explained before that great sounds rarely happen one track at a time.
I mentioned the power supply. This is a nightmare. The manufacturers, I think, have agreed to disagree. The Behringer is 18.3 VAC, the Tascam is 5 VDC, and the Zoom is 9 VDC center negative. Only madmen and boneheads come up with these systems. All have wall warts which tend to block adjacent outlets on your power bar and other signs of blithering incompetence. I blame the wall warts, not the power bars, by the way.
By dark (actually it is already 7:00PM), intentions aside, I am too pooped to begin a recording session. The only good news is I have a couple of $60 microphones that produce virtually identical quality sound to $1500 models I’ve tried. It was like a work day and I’m supposed to be retired. So forget motivation, I’m heading to the club for a few. If anyone noticed the lack of monitor speakers, there aren’t any. Recording pretty much has to be done by headphones to prevent feedback. Yet I know of no recorder that comes with a set.
The output of my work is all wav [format] files, which are later converted to other formats, generally MP3s. Since that is all done on computers, the PA system is stationed 15 feet way. In all, it was a long day and I’m really dragging my tush.
EVENING
Changed my mind and stayed in. Watching documentaries, one of my favorite cold weather activities. It has nothing to do with age or motivation, I have never liked chilly weather. I watched some weapons trials, you know, until they get hand-held lasers, there is really nothing entirely new in the armory. But there are plenty of old things, for instance the goof who inside every armored personnel carrier. You know the guy, when the door swings open, he’s the one who keeps shouting, “Go! Go! Go!.
The blue things in the picture are also aluminum. They are robot beams and I saw this set at Radio Shack. At $39 for ten pieces, it makes me long for a good old mecanno set. These are very good quality pieces but you would probably need ten times as many to build anything useful. It’s just not a hobby the people probably most interested can afford—total beginners. I saw this same philosophy in operation when computers were still new. Their attitude was is you can’t afford whatever price they charge, then why are you even looking.
These beams are made by Makeblock and shows the trend of robots is toward making money off others who want to build robots. I warned you that robots cost a lot of money. And you can double that if you buy all the parts retail. A basic robot that’s worth building these days will probably run you around $20,000. Not counting what you have to learn.
When this stage has been reached, where there are more people selling expensive parts than there are actually making robots, it makes for a long slow lull interval. Worst known example of these “techno-doldrums”: MicroSoft. As a reminder, my goal was only ever to take a closer look at the field of robots. And I’ve certainly come that far.
Last Laugh
Two billion five hundred million twenty dollar bills printed up since y’day.
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