May 16, 2015

Yesteryear
One year ago today: May 16, 2014, crybaby casinos.
Five years ago today: May 16, 2010, nothing’s changed.
Six years ago today: May 16, 2009, early Dunning-Kruger inference.

MORNING
           So I hear an announcement that AT&T is hiring technicians. That was my job, let’s check this out. Ew, they mean outside workers. Pre-wire and pole jockeys, the lowest position on the food chain. Please, don’t call those people technicians in my presence, I just had breakfast. We had lots of other terms for the grunts back in my day. It is the worst. Shift work, heavy lifting, artificial deadlines, and outdoors—but some people actually like that.
           Here’s a photo from that site, black male, white female, substantiating once again that the phone company would like nothing more than for the 1970s to come around again.

           The morning paper, always putting me in a great mood. The Marathon bomber gets the needle, though the law profession is not near done squeezing money out of this one. BB King died before I saw him again, last time was 35 years ago. Penn State admitted its military technology computers have been hacked for years. Duh, what did I say in 1985 about putting sensitive information on a computer?
           How about the airline that stopped the lady from making a phone call? No, we don’t want to hear the rest about how her husband committed suicide. You don’t endanger innocent bystanders with your personal problems, particularly other airplane passengers. Period. Quit blaming the airline.
           Poland is selling out to terrorists who were “tortured”, which presumably means at least they were not killed like their victims. Poland probably thinks this will protect them in the future, which is one of the major reasons it is called "Poland". You can only blame so much on having rowdy neighbors.
           At the risk of sounding like a parent, the mornings at this time of year are the best part of the day. And the time is better due to daylight savings, regardless of Chief Dan George and his blanket analogy. I reviewed some aspects of power transistors. I may incorporate an Arduino into the new iPod camper. That should commence shortly after I get the batbike back from the shop.
           We learned plenty that isn’t in the books. Like why the power transistors are mounted on a separate circuit board and why they are connected directly to the power supply. To me, it’s all quite fascinating. That is why today, you may find me up at the library, maybe even Ft. Lauderdale if I feel like paying for parking. Usually I don’t, on principle alone. But I will get out today, even if just to the local branch. Where I’ve already read all the good books.
           Let me reflect on that. What is the equivalent time I’ve spent reading in my life? An easy guess is 78,894 hours, or non-stop for just past 9 years. And that’s a minimum. And Sparky, I don’t exactly read Harlequin romances.

NOON

           “What some consider genius is often nothing more than good luck.” --Farm wisdom. And may I add that because of this, many people don’t recognize genius when they finally see it.

           Ah, the perpetual question, if I don’t believe in horoscopes, why do I read them almost every day? Answer: Because I take pretty women who believe in horoscopes very, very seriously indeed. Then again, I still to this day sporadically meet people who consider me uneducated, but then, I didn't focus all my energy on one career, did I? So it’s best to think what you want. And thinking I was doing—about a modest problem that should not trouble my poor little head.

           Pulse Width Modulation, or PWM, is familiar to all robot buffs. It is the best method of controlling DC motor speed. You basically “pulse” the power supply. Any method that uses constant power generates lost heat. Let me run the problem past you, see if you get it. For PWM to work, the control device must “time” the pulses with a counter. So far so good. But the controlling device, if it is a microcontroller, is expensive, so you want to get the maximum out of each unit.
           Thus, if you have the controller doing anything else, it tends to lose count of the time. The solution, they say, is software interrupts. I don’t seem to follow the way this works. So I took apart my hair clippers and oiled the fancy parts. And drank tea. Very therapeutic sometimes. Tea and watching oil soak. That, and discovering that brake fluid spray solvent will take spots out your ties just as great as sending them to the dry cleaners at $6 a pop.
           I finally decided I needed a reward for this brainwork. So, off to the foreign cinema, where I watched “Tangerine”. Bravo! Excellent film, the more so if you are into novelty plots which work, in my opinion, just as effectively as big budget special effects. Subtitles don’t bother me in the least. The story involves an orchard owner who helps two wounded soldiers of opposite sides recover in his house. The problem is, if either side finds them, they will shoot the orange grower for aiding the other.
           And of course, the two soldier are sworn enemies. An excellent movie that gets a recommend do go see from my desk. Excellent scenery, although it seems too gloomy for oranges to grow. The gate seems to open by itself between scenes and why is there a wood heater in a shed with nearly open walls?

EVENING
           In addition, I also find peeling potatoes to be relaxing. What’s this to do with robots? First, you learn that working with small parts requires sharp tools. Then, after a while, you realize the economy of sharpening your own tools. Tertiarily, you get super at sharpening every tool to a razor edge and sometimes more. See that bandage on my finger? That’s what I’m talking about.

           Listening to the radio, a commentator listed the assets a nation would need to win a war. Strange that he didn’t talk about weapons until I got it. Winning the war, not fighting it. I missed his name before I had to go out, but according to him, we are very well-outfitted over here should anything like that go wrong. The emphasis was on not recovering from the initial heavy punches, but the ability to wear down any enemy who is not as self-reliant. I’ll go along with that.
           One thing that will always intrigue me is the way some people will disturb a man who is reading as if he isn’t doing anything of importance. Next, I run across this program that emulates a heliograph. That’s those flashing mirrors used to transmit code and kin to those blinker light things on ships at night. It’s a dot on my computer screen. It’s kind of tricky but I can almost follow it at around 5 wpm.
           That sounds slow, but read on. The maximum Morse code speed for these devices is 14 wpm. Ships still use them for secure transmissions at night, although these are now infrared. The handheld model seen in the movies is called the Aldis Light, which retails for $1,500. Check eBay before you buy. Yep, my social life takes a plunge when I’m not playing in a band. Why, tonight I even spent a little more time still carving that wooden propeller. Still, there were no guarantees it all would ever have turned out any different. All the women who would have married me were only after, not my money, but my ability to work hard for it. Romance, my eye. Jaded is more like it, but mildly so. I've never panicked.
           And peanuts. I find shelling peanuts (and eating them) also relaxing. Potatoes and peanuts, galore. To each his own.

ADDENDUM
           Gears. Everybody should have a set. Why this is blogworthy is the amount of thinking that has gone into this pile of wood. I have to admire people who can conduct experiments without handling physical objects like these. I suppose we all can to a degree. Yet I find for me nothing produces results like the right hands-on gear. Or in this case, the tools to make them. These particular gears are a matching set.

           There is no alternative for me to actually touching the material. It was not that long ago around here that manufacturing a gear was considered impossible. Forget the horrid color scheme, the paint is to cut down on dust when the gears are spun. It has to be applied in two layers and allowed to dry thoroughly. Common sense? Well, t’was not all that common over at Nova.
           The gears also show the evolution of my learning. I have combed the Internet for fancy or challenging projects to undertake, and except for a few complicated and impractical contraptions, there is nothing. Most of the how-to articles are patently intended to show off the maker’s woodworking skills. My gears, by contrast, are as rough as they look. Only the meshing points are finely finished. And the reason for three spokes is not utility.
           It’s because that is the minimum number for anybody who doesn’t like constantly changing the blades on the scroll saw. That’s a given.


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