One year ago today: March 26, 2014, on-line dating, my eye!
Five years ago today: March 26, 2010, how-to posting, my eye!
Ten years ago today: March 26, 2005, old movies never die.
MORNING
Circumstances are I had to wait around all morning for a phone call, so allow me to do some reviewing. What happened to the Arduino? Where is the billion-dollar breakthrough? My opinion is that the terrible operating code discouraged too many inventors. The smarter you are, the less you like C+ code. The idea was out there, but they finally said, “Screw this.” Twenty-one lines of code to add two numbers, or is that an instance of a class of two numbers?
It was a year ago I cancelled my membership in the “intellectual” dating club. Naw, folks, for all you hear, on-line dating is a “pump ‘em & dump ‘em” operation. It’s like trying to find a dance studio or car lot that is different than the rest. Only in the advertising, my friend, only in the advertising.
How about the cPod? No sense of urgency, but it will be happening shortly. The only trip planned isn’t until high summer and I can build the shell in a day by myself now that I have experience. I’m more concerned with the problematic Honda electronics. And I’m still on the lookout for a 1985 with low mileage. And I’m still counting items bought from Radio Shack y’day. I have chips and couplers picked up for 12¢. It has been ages since you could buy anything from Radio Shack for twelve cents.
Ah, there’s my call. Good news. I’m gone for the day.
NOON
“Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn’t have to do it himself.” –Anonymous (although I suspect he must have known my immediate family).
I got back early and finished the spring cleaning. I took this photo of my own back yard and experimented with the “stitching” software to see if I could get a panorama. Here’s the results, my backyard as it has never been seen before. How can I say that? Easy.
Because the picture is stitched and two of the component photos were taken from a vantage point that cannot be seen by standing in one position. The corner of the building (top right) would be in the way. There’s those golden flowers that I cannot identify. I always think marigolds but I’ll never make a botanist. You can see Pete, the cactus to the left and the wild tree to the right. I put a fertilizer stick in the ground near Pete and now he is ten feet tall. The wild tree just grows a foot a year without any help. I cut 22 branches off it this time, many to quit banging on my roof during windstorms.
As shown here, it is unobtrusive and could pass for an MP3player. It does not record, but you can bet I instantly connected it to my digital recorder (voice activated) and it works with astonishing quality if you listen through a pair of Sony noise-cancelling earphones.
I would be on the alert for these devices in any public place. I got mine for 90% off. It has been 100% fun so far. Define fun. I know how to edit sounds to near “Mission: Impossible” quality. So don't even think too loud.
EVENING
My first Sony laptop. It’s an older but functional XP intended to reduce my reliance on libraries when traveling. It’s a beast, one of the 17” models, originally in the $2,500 range. And like many Sony products, designed for dumb-bastards. For example, the keyboard is placed at the back by the monitor so your wrists have to rest on the front. Nobody who has taken typing lessons likes that, it forces speed typists to keep their elbows at practically chest level.
While it is light to carry, it is cumbersome as there is no carry-handle. And, being a dated model, the battery is shot and it must be plugged in with a special 19.5V wall wart, another idiocy from Sony, Them and I never did get along since they refused to accept responsibility for ruining my trip to Angel Falls. I never told you about that? I rented one of the first portable, or more like transportable, camcorders and got some irreplaceable footage of Angel Falls.
Back then, it was a major upriver trek, no electricity, living on ham sandwiches for two days, but thanks to my parents, I was used to that. It must be covered elsewhere in this journal, so all I’ll say is I stood near the base of the falls at the closest approach deemed safe by Venezuelan standards. Today, it would terrify people. But then, it has become just another tourist trap. Hang gliding lessons from the top. Folks, I’m glad I saw the world when I did because it isn’t there any more.
Finally, two mini-mysteries. One is that, as part of my no-chem diet, I have a lot of prepared sauces. The curried ones from India somehow keep me wide awake. Not perky or stoned, but unable to close the old eyelids and drop off to sleep. I have not found this to be a recorded effect, so just you watch, now that I’ve mentioned it, somebody else will discover it and get famous.
The second is I found a small box of extremely nice wood screws, some kind of fancy chromium steel. My guess is I took something apart years ago and kept them. But what? Nothing I ever owned would require near jewelry quality screws. I see why I kept them, and that’s why they made the blog as a most unusual event.
Author’s note: since I have now definitely pinned sleeplessness down to my diet, I’ll supply the details. It’s Indian curry sauce, a preservative-free vegetarian condiment that I first tasted in Delhi, India, in 1983. At Connaught. If my memory still works, it is called something like “bhadji”. Memphis was still alive back then, so it quickly became “budgie sauce”. I consume only the imported brands which contain no artificial molecules.
I don’t patronize Indian restaurants and the only other place I’ve seen it served is at Hare Krishna temples. Yes, I’ve been to their services, which are more like open, friendly, prayer meetings and they often have food, very spicy food. So don’t show up hungry. Don’t worry, they never try to convert you and besides, although my own religion is tolerant of most others, I’m naturally skittish of those beliefs which, as part of their appeal, tend toward chanting and ritual. But the rest of you, go on right ahead. I’ve been told intonation has a calming effect. I know it puts me right to sleep. Say!
ADDENDUM
It appears some people still do not understand the significance of the computer byte. Why is it eight bits long? The choice was not arbitrary. Here is the quick explanation. In the early days, you needed enough bits in a chunk to represent all the letters of the alphabet, the numbers, and the punctuation marks. There are 53 letters (count them, and remember to include the blank space) and at least 30 common punctuation marks.
Where this becomes important in robotics is you often don’t need a full 8 bits to send a simple on-off command to a switch. The temptation is to split the byte back into 8 bits to control 8 switches at once. There are several ways to do this, but one of them is to use a chip called a shift register. If you only study one integrated circuit, the shift register would be a good choice. It’s overwhelming at first. Then you realize it embodies the majority of features that every other chip must use. Things are easy after that.
In robotics, there is a real premium on output pins from your microcontroller (Arduino). If you are curious, watch this video. The guy actually knows what he is talking about, so if you follow him, you can grasp the concept. Otherwise, it appears the guy is talking in circles. Use it to test your robot IQ—but don’t quit. I would not have understood him a few years ago either.
On the other hand, the guy does entirely cover the topic and mentions every important point. The most common shift register is the “595” shown in the top photo. I own dozens of these. Part of the trick is to remember that once the robot "uses" a byte, the byte is not lost or used up. It is there to be used over again if need be. Shift registers work only with copies of the bytes, not the bytes themselves. A fascinating study.
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