February 2, 2016

Yesteryear
One year ago today: February 2, 2015, unfit for habitation.
Five years ago today: February 2, 2011, Stockton, CA beats Miami, FL.
Nine years ago today: February 2, 2007, does this shirt make me . . .
Random years ago today: February 2, 2008, and constantly dropping things.

MORNING
           Finally, I published a critique on the Florida practice of misleading real estate listings. It will likely amount to nothing, but then, that’s what they said when I posted the student loan rip-off, the closing costs scam, and the inkjet cartridge conspiracy. It may not pay much to be first, but it doesn’t cost as much as being last, either.

           Let’s start with our Green stats. It says the best way to lower your heating and cooling bills is to plant trees. I agree, it makes sense to be in the shade in the summer and have a windbreak in the winter. Except trees take time to grow and that doesn’t sit well with America’s instant gratification crowd. Trees? They want an app for that.
           The trees in this picture don’t represent a thing, they were just there when I snapped a photo of the storm off the coast. The coast is just behind that row of buildings on the horizon, you can make out the Diplomat. The four layers of clouds are your omen to take an umbrella and stock up on chicken soup.
           Anyway, the stats say the trees lower your summer interior and raise your winter interior temperature by “as much as” twenty degrees. I dislike claims like that, you know, “up to” something. Like a battery that lasts “up to” twenty hours when the norm is less than two. But if I get a place, I’m planting trees if there aren’t any already.
           Most sources to save money go on about how you can lower your thermostat 1 degree and save $40 per year in heating costs. They’re talking to the wrong guy. I had family like that, turn down the heat and put on a sweater. Totally asinine thinking, but it works if you actually do nothing but sit around and shiver all winter. I’m the opposite thinking, spend the lousy forty bucks and live like a civilized human.
           There is more than coincidence to this attention to Green living. February is also austerity month for me. See, I picked the shortest one, no surprise. It is my test case every two years to see how well I’ve adjusted to retirement. So fewer things take me by surprise. You can get some excellent tree information from ArborDay, and for that matter, you can even get the trees. Ten of them are “free” if you pay $10 for a membership.

           [Author’s note: I caution anyone from creating these type of memberships, but that is because I can agree with the intentions but disagree with the policy. It’s like, if you want to plant a tree, they want a record of that, too. They further allow people to “sign up” their neighbors, whereas I would strongly advise that you ask your neighbor about that first. Again, collecting and keeping all this information costs money and you can bet they are not doing it for your good. That has never happened yet.]

Wiki picture of the day.
How to fold a map?
NOON
           A warm enough evening to work on the cPod, my motorcycle camper. It’s been a month, but you just try to work out in the rain or cold. One non-obvious aspect of the new camper is that it is not built to anything like the same specs as the old. In this instance, the camper must be attached to the motorcycle trailer hitch to be of any use.

           Without that hitch, it rolls forward by itself, or the slightest weight on the back tips it right up the other way. It gains a certain stability when the new “feet” are down. You can see the prototype here, but these are not the final configuration. I’m just testing how best to proceed. This is not the solid camper I went to Seattle with. It is a third of the weight and is not very useful unless connected to the motorcycle.
           In this photo, the camper is extended with the leveling jacks down and the lid up. You can make out the drawer glides and my bubble levels. Not shown are the triangular “blinds” that are fitted to the lid so the space can be enclosed while the lid is up. I can’t decide between flexible or rigid material for that. Not visible are the back doors, which now swing outward instead of upward, to give some privacy while dressing in the morning.

           Shkreli is back in the news. This is the Gen X dude who didn’t pay enough attention to the entrenched power structure, and they had him arrested. He’s the guy that raised the price of an “AIDS” drug 50 times—but only to insurance companies. Hence, to me Shkreli represents the ultimate hipster stereotype. He was born into a world where all the avenues to get rich legitimately were basically taken—unless you had extreme luck on your side.
           He will make a mockery of the courts if he does what he says he intends to do. Again, he was probably wrong to try to gouge the insurance companies, but I find no evidence that he did anything illegal. The insurance companies corrupted the health care system decades ago and if you ask me, Shkreli is merely the first next-generation taker. And they’ll attack him for what he is: a most dangerous precedent. How Shkreli behaves could define a generation.

NIGHT
           This segment should be read along with the addendum below. Anyone who thinks Morse code is binary or that it is easy to implement in binary has either not thinking or has not tried it. After some deep thought, I’m having doubts about the suitability of such a system. I presumed other codes, like ASCII, were more advanced because they were machine readable. That turns out to be correct, but wrong in practice. They are only advanced because they are machine-readable.

           This picture is the most basic of Arduino configurations. One grounded LED on pin 13. This is where all beginners begin, at least if they know what is good for them. To be picky, the 220Ω resistor isn’t needed, but newbies who don’t know why pin 13 is unique had best leave it in.
           While you are here, peek at the AREF pin just to the left of the LED ground. That is one of the most misunderstood features on the Arduino. What? You want the easy explanation? As only I can do it? Sure. Most sensors you would attach to the Arduino read between 0 and 5 volts.
           The Arduino can "take a reading" of between 0 and 1024. If your sensor puts out 2.5 volts, the Arduino reading is 512. It is up to you to program that into something useful. But what if you got some sensor from Sears or Beijing that read 8 or 10 volts? The AREF will “translate” it. My advice is don’t even go near this pin.

           I examined two potential schemes to blink a light in Morse. One was a matrix, the other a computer construction called a Case statement. The matrix cannot be both simple and workable, but either is independently achievable. Part of the barrier is that Morse letters have between one and four dash-dot combinations each. Hence, the smallest matrix has to be rectangular at 26x4 (25x0 in tard counting). There is no binary symbol for an empty matrix address. The binary 0 and 1 are used up for the dash and dot. With me here?
           Matrix definition means the letter “E” would be a dot and four empty positions, all of which must be read whether used or not. A direct Morse translator would have to pause while reading taking just as long to send short letter as long letters, like Q or Y. Numbers and punctuation are even worse.

           How about the Case statement? It is code intensive. Each letter, number, or symbol would need its own subroutine. Just to transmit the entire alphabet requires 81 separate dot-dash actions. (Anyone who cannot tell you that tidbit is not even a contender at this level.) I’m now leaning more toward a simple flashing code that could then be used to go on-line, say to one of my other unused blogs, and cross-reference the details of what is on the microcontroller—and possibly the actual code listing.
           This makes more sense, since the blog structure means the latest coded items will always be near top of the list. As a concession toward that, I’ve developed a six-digit numbering scheme that I’ll test soon. A sequence like 160005 would mean the 5th program written by me in the year 2016. If it was written by somebody else, that’s tough, although they might be mentioned in the credits. This idea has more promise because I can receive Morse numbers significantly faster than letters.
           For the technically minded, the Wiki article on prosigns is one of their more well-written passages.

Total at time of posting: $18,951,816,903,215.02
national debt

ADDENDUM
           I’m writing the code to test my concept of pressing the reset key on an Arduino to have a single LED on pin 13 (which has a built-in resistor) to spell out what is loaded in memory. To this day, words like “limit” (in Morse code) still throw me for a loop, but maybe I’ll just avoid such words. Or maybe use numbers. Morse numbers are unmistakably the easiest. Note, this is in addition to a readout which would appear on the serial monitor if the Arduino is connected to a computer. Serial monitors require no pins.

           I would have to learn to read Morse as well as listen to it. Did I not see a site that did that a few years ago? Seems I did, but they wanted a membership or something. To put this thing into perspective, I am not claiming to have created anything here except a concept that I am unaware of if it has been done. You can go to many sites for how to blink an LED in code, and sites that even do it for you. The trick is to find the ones that don’t want money, which is the true spirit of the Internet.
           Nor am I claiming any new circuitry, in fact one of the basic Arduino exercises is to get an LED to blink on pin 13. What’s new is my idea to use an interrupt request to have the Arduino signal what is in memory. This data would be typed “longhand” into the code and call a subroutine to extract it as Morse.

           This picture is camphorweed. In Texas you will hear it called “telegraph weed” because it grows best along the telegraph lines where people have walked. It also grows up right after any maintenance work is done around the poles or anywhere the dirt has been churned up a bit. Trivia, the US Army J-38 keys which were surplus by the hundred thousand at war’s end now sell for up to $150 each.
           To view on of the worst of Morse code sites in existence, see DXZone. They sell stuff, I think. And have software downloads, I think. They seem to have links to other sites but none of the good ones seem to be working. But I am certain whoever created and maintains that site is a spastic.


Last Laugh
If this is a repeat, good.


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