September 20, 2015

Yesteryear
One year ago today: September 20, 2014, the hacker motto.
Five years ago today: September 20, 2010, remember PeopleString? I don’t.
Six years ago today: September 20, 2009, strange bands from Boynton.

MORNING
           Woo-hoo, what a score! A Dremel, two C-clamps, a hacksaw, a heavy duty raincoat set and a VOX tape deck in perfect working order. There’s also what I already call my “Korea clamp” which I’ll get you a closeup of soon. I was on my way to get a Mechanics Illustrated and found a sale. Not a garage sale, but one of those storage cubicles full of stuff seized for non-payment. You know, like Theresa’s after she quit her job. Or was maybe fired for ogling the teenage boys, “hotties” she used to call them.

           And this is quality stuff. The C-clamps were made in Illinois and that rain gear alone retails for $20 at Wal*Mart. The only thing really used is the Dremel, which is destined for my stepper motor drill table, the one that will crank out my toothpick holders. Remember, when I get old, that display nets $10,000 per show. Let the other guy plan on a losing bicycle shop, I already have something that’s pulled in real money.
           My cost for this excellent haul? A whole six dollars. I’m happy. In case you are wondering, tape decks record better live sound tracks than all but the very best digital hand-held recorders. A lot of the native sound heard on my videos is recorded separately with equipment like this, but larger and heavier. This model is completely portable and light enough use on a belt clip and unlike lapel mics, never fade out of range.
           But the real prize was the Dremel. Don’t bother with the battery models if you plan on building robots, or really anything substantial. You’ll be sorry. Get a unit with a power cord and get some work done, goddammit.
           And we have another loser journalist commentator or whatever you call them. Bear in mind I did not know these people, seriously never heard of them, before they started making asses of themselves in front of Trump. Jake Trapper. What a phony.
           I know there is a lot of peer pressure for these media types to paint on a public face of extreme racial tolerance, but they are really bad actors. He treats the interviews as a forum to demonstrate what a wonderful person he is. Yet you just know at home he cusses the blacks and Muslims as much as anybody else. Like Pakman, this Trapper has trouble with the concept that people want to hear the opinion of the guest, not the host.
           Anyway, this Trapper jerk does not fool me in the least. No sir, not in the least.

NOON
           Here’s the faceplate for the memory circuit, shown next to the pilot model. Part of the re-design was from the need to install more rugged switches. The small metal units are not intended for much use and two of them are already jammed. I’ve been using it as a training module for writing the instruction booklet. It is more like a mini-training manual already. Sixteen pages of in-depth theory and directions with plenty of attention to the order in which things must be done. This is a feature left out of most data-sheets, which are written by real slope-heads.

           Further incorporations in the new version include the less-used control switches now operated by the left hand. The right side now makes it intentionally difficult to use both hands, which turned out to be the source of most errors. The integrated circuit works best when one switch at a time is operated—although those could be millions of times per second.
           The cutouts are not perfect and do not need to be. This is a non-finalized prototype. The original idea stems from the days of the NOVA U robotics meetings, a misnomer since they never got this far with anything, much less a robot. Think of it this way: words are dwarfs, full size working models are giants.
           And this is the way to spend a Sunday morning, not sitting around listening to sermons. Face it, for some people, getting more done by noon than most people do in a lifetime is a form of “day of rest”. I got a feeling JZ is going to show up later and we’ll head out, besides, I went out late last evening to the Karaoke show. And completely floored the house with “Here’s A Quarter”. I do not stand there like a stump reading lyrics off the monitor, I give them a show.

           For a change, there were several good-looking gals in the crowd, but invariably with their boyfriends or whatever. Lady, make eyes at me all you want, but as long as you are here with your truck-driver home boy, I am not paying any attention to you. I have a different and narrower set of rules about women I meet in a club. Sure, I’ll tell you what they are, especially the brunette who thinks I didn’t notice her. I saw you, lady, but I also noticed the tattoos on your date. And that tells me, somehow, that you are just not the same old fun gal you used to be.
           My guidelines for women I meet in my audience? My original guidelines since I was 14 or 15 still apply. It must be an “immediate, positive, and exclusive” reaction or she’s not going to fly. I’ll be more specific. Trust me, I noticed when I walked in which of you gave me the “Meh” look. That, “it’s just another old guy cheating on his wife trying to pick up the barmaid blah-blah” attitude. Immediate means no, it cannot wait until after you notice it is the barmaids hitting on me.
           It cannot wait until after you see the guys asking me what I’m building now, it can’t wait until after you see everybody loves my notebook. And “ immediate” certainly means it cannot wait until after you hear me get a standing ovation. I’m first to admit I can be a real gearbox when it comes to women slow on the take-up. I’ve had enough women glom onto me instantly to bother with the rest. Mind you, all is not lost, but I don’t need any relationships I have to work at. Nope, those don’t last for me and I want something that lasts.

AFTERNOON
           My stance on drone skeet shooting? Take aim. While anyone can fly a drone that does not extend the right to fly it over personal property or conduct surveillance of normally private activities. There is no conceivable good or moral purpose for anyone to use a drone for shadowing ordinary people who are not the subject of a signed search warrant.

           There is a reason the laws provide for a warrant and it is specifically to protect the privacy of the average citizen. One place in Colorado has placed a bounty on drone carcasses. No doubt the bureaucrats will try to argue the drones are government property, but it would be, ahem, tough to prove the person presenting the remains was the one who pulled the trigger.
           Having said that, here is your million dollar idea of the week, but only if you move fast. While discharging a gun always has some possible consequences, there is no such public feeling about collisions. All you need do is design a short range disposable “homing drone” of your own. A range of about 1,000 yards is plenty, that’s around as close a spy camera belongs to private property. And sell a million of these before they are outlawed.
           Even better would be stealth drones, along the line of tree spikes. They remain inactive for years in hidden locations until activated by the sound of drone motors and so on. It does not shoot the drone, rather homes in on it and causes an “accident”. Failing that, could not birds be trained to attack the drones. We have a starling problem. Train starlings to kamikaze the drones.
           How about these newest polls? The ones that show Fiorina (what kind of name is that) as “second” and “gaining”. What, did she break 5%? Still, the wording that she is second and gaining, what kind of propaganda is that. Have you noticed when anyone “gains” on Trump, the points are shaved off the other candidates instead of the Donald. Bwaaaaaaa-ha-ha-ha!

EVENING
           For the challenge, I rigged up one of the PNP transistors and it works. Like a PNP, there is a way to connect it up so that power is present where you don’t need it when the circuit is idle or off. I also did a far more comprehensible search to make sure nobody has done the segment display the same way as I have. And as far as I can tell, everybody either hooked up a chintzy single digit display, wired up a block of displays that all show the same number, or resorted to the shortcut of shift registers. I saw a number of variations but nobody has knuckled down and programmed the Arduino to make a counting display using only direct (Arduino pin to display pin) connections.

           The spin-off of my code is that I could now, given enough Arduinos, completely program just about any LED display, including scoreboards, road signs, cubes, or maybe design something actually new. Later I’ll use a spreadsheet to price out such a direct-connect display, since I know a huge chunk of the existing displays comes from having to wire in so many controller chips. If I could do it entirely by code, that would represent a massive cost savings—not that I would pass it on to the consumer. History may repeat itself, but each time it does, the price goes up.
           This search raised a question that I believe has no pleasant answer, but Dear Internet: where on Earth do you find so damn many fat-focks who make electronics videos? They are obscene tubs of lard who have no business positioning themselves in front of a camera. It offends decent folk and scares the horses. These Oprah-sized mouth-breathers probably switched to Arduino because they got too fat and lazy to lift a soldering iron. They’d feel right at home with the blimps over at NOVA.
           If I detest it when clone hipsters and Millennials post their “Hi-guyzzzzz” crap, you can bet I downright abhor these beached whales, I mean what do they do, stuff pizza down their pie-holes 18 hours a day? I mean, when you get so fat that sex is a physical impossibility, isn’t it time to head over to the pool for a few laps a day? Or maybe the hippo pond at the zoo, except you’d probably tap their food supply, too.


Last Laugh

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