One year ago today: May 14, 2015, hair—if I had any!
Five years ago today: May 14, 2011, payday loans minus 5 years.
Nine years ago today: May 14, 2007, a generic day.
Random years ago today: May 14, 2008, I lost the movie (8mm).
MORNING
Seriously, this is not a scene from a doomsday movie. It’s the town where my pal used to work after the big recent fire in the tar sands. The one where you have to go to the London Daily Mail to get any accurate news or pictures. Once again, I do not understand why all that firefighting equipment saves trees, but not people’s houses. What a scene of devastation.
Today is filler material, so if you just come here for the music gossip, skip May 14, 2016. It’s robotics today, with a little real estate griping and some trivia. I’ll talk some music prices, so you’ll know what we’re up against dollar-wise, but not music per se. And UFOs, some words on those. Otherwise, you do what I did all day—take it easy. It’s Saturday, for Christ’s sake.
Where is JZ? The world wants to know. He was supposed to be here at 6:30AM, it is now 1:00PM. The worst part about a no-show is it kills my plans for the rest of the day. I spent the morning making biscuits, mmm, with chopped onions, so I could have my biscuits and gravy. And talk on the phone for nearly two hours, such a rare occurrence that it gets top story. It looks like I can afford the house I wanted—if it was two years ago. However, since then, prices have been rising faster than I can keep up.
My people out west say one thing in unison. A place to go in the winter. Conveniently, that has also been my priority. The financing is totally in place, but I have yet to incorporate it into my new plan for house-hunting. It basically lets the gossip mill know that if anyone inherits a fully furnished house they want to go to a good buyer (pssst, that’s me) that we have a cash offer. It sounds iffy, but compared to what we’ve found via the Internet and crooked real estate agents, it’s worth a try. Some folks are really fussy about who they want moving into Grandpa’s old house, it makes sense that I let them know I fit that profile.
Let’s see, anything else of note? Nope, I’ll complete the day going over finances and houses. What isn’t apparent is that these house-hunting trips are not random. The average time spent investigating each prospect is close to a full work day, since these represent places that pass the various filters and criteria of my primary searches. All of this takes time. Three places can represent a week’s work, and that’s rather skilled labor on expensive equipment. So when my ride is a no-show, that’s all down the drain if the inspection does not take place. As said, prices are $20,000 higher than two years ago, and rising again.
Most-autographed player.
NOON
Here’s an article that drones are now arriving with a factory set no-fly zone. It is already illegal to fly over 400 fee or within 5 miles of an airport. These new models have a GPS system. Yep, I know what some are thinking. Just disable the GPS. Won’t work, they fixed it so the drone either won’t take off without GPS, or it automatically turns itself back on near an airport. And no, you can’t program waypoints that would take the flight path through the forbidden zone.
I’m ready to hit the road myself, without saying when. Tomorrow? Nothing like sun-up overlooking Lake Okeechobee from a northbound sidecar heading for brunch in Lake Placid. If possible, I need to get to Zephyrhills to find out why most of the town is for sale. I took some time to go budget shopping for emergency food and was lucky to find an entire case of good old SPAM for $25. Don’t laugh, if you’ve ever tasted the powdered food marketed as rations, SPAM is pure luxury. I probably should follow my own advice and include SPAM in my regular diet, but I don’t unless I’m rotating emergency best-before dates.
Midday found me at the Senor, spending ten bucks on a sandwich and coffee, doing what I do best. Study at the counter. This habit predates Florida by decades, going way back to my early university days as a teen, where the only place I could study was the Denny’s coffee shop two miles from campus. The staff knew me and generally took pity.
AFTERNOON
Today, I was reading reports on sensors. These are not unique to robots even if that is their major application around here. My goal was to determine the further viability of my “go fetch” navigation system. After finishing a dozen articles, I’ve concluded that once again, each “expert” is a blowhard with a fringe grasp on the big picture. Thus, you are lucky and about to get another of my semi-famous lectures on the easy way to get it done. This is buying advice for beginners. I’m essentially telling which sensors to buy and which to avoid, not getting into how they work. That’s your job.
The easiest sensor is digital, it is off or on. Like the door beam at 7/Eleven. But more useful are analog sensors and here is the lesson that every so-called Arduino expert has omitted from his book. Right, we are now talking analog sensors. It is analog, because instead of simple on-off, it is a sensor that outputs a voltage that varies between 0 and 5 volts. If it is out of that range, put it back on the shelf. The sensor measures something, say temperature, light, distance, time, etc. It then outputs a voltage between 0 and 5 volts depending on that measurement.
A properly designed sensor has three wires. Power (red), ground (black), and the output (yellow). There are some jerk-face engineers and factories that change this, so watch out. Some Arduino-specific sensors have a white wire instead of yellow. Other have three pins for direct connect to your breakboard or printed circuit board, but for prototyping those are inconvenient. Stick with three wires. If it has more wires or pins, leave those until later.
Once more, that sensor output is between 0 to 5 volts, and the Arduino “samples” it 16,000 times per second. (That’s fast enough that you think it is a nice smooth reading, although humans are much faster at processing multiple or complex signals at once. There are sensors that use higher voltage, which is what the AREF pin on your Arduino is for, but heed my counsel and don’t even go there. Unless you like the magic smell of your expensive Arduino being fried, don’t use voltages higher than 5.
Here’s the arithmetic. The Arduino “reads” the sensor voltage (between 0 and 5 volts) on a scale of 0 to 1024. There is a direct correspondence, that is, if the sensor is putting out 2.5 volts, the Arduino will read 512. In fact, 512 is a very common sensor reading, since it is halfway between minimum and maximum. (Note, however, your sensor usually has a confined range, read your datasheet.) You then program your Arduino to act on this reading. The clever reader can see how an analog sensor can always be programmed to behave digital, but not the other way around.
That’s it, just remember to stick with voltages. Certain other sensors will output a frequency (AM or FM), or PWM (Pulse Width Modulation), and I’ve seen a few that vary the current. But you just tell those outfits to and come back when they grow a brain. The world works on voltage. Um, there is a new standard that works between 0 and 3.3 volts, but until it gains precedent, ignore it. It has no advantages except the lower power and by the time you have to consider that about your robot, you are far beyond anything I can help with.
Just so you’ll know there is a difference, I’ve only discussed the reading of a single analog sensor voltage. There are digital sensors that send only two values, 0 and 1024. If you thoroughly learn how to interact with analog sensors, then data (intelligence) is not that big a leap, in fact it is most tempting. You already know binary computers read the signals in groups of 8.
End of lecture. Incidentally, I know the correct digital values are 0 to 1023, not 0 to 1024. But my purpose is explaining the workings, not preparing you for that useless MicroSoft A+ exam.
Ivette Bassa: chemistry, 1992. Inventor of blue Jello.
Music and money. I have to smile whenever I hear some imbecile say that music is about being cool, man. Back around 2007, I moaned at the $2,000 required to put on even an amateur show these days. The logistics of a gig cannot be ignored except by fat cats who have no concept of having to earn their own money. Alas, the middle ground of music is nearly totally populated by that stereotype. The bottom line is somebody has to shell out for the microphones, cables, PA, and speakers, plus a place to store it and a way to move it.
I’ve been soloing now for nine years, and I have three sets of speakers, four amps, two PA systems, four guitars, two basses, and a keyboard in my Florida room. Relax, one PA doubles as my home stereo so I don’t have to set up my road gear to practice at home, and another is the tiny Fishman I’m incorporating into my guitar act.
The money part is $707.95. That’s how much the guitar show has cost me out-of-pocket so far, and my only income has been $2.00 in tips. I have all my cables and mics from before, so what I’ve spent represents only differential costs. Still, even that is quite a barrier for anyone to get started. You gotta spend $700+ on faith before you make a dollar. And you can’t be sure you’ll make the grade, or if you do that somebody won’t come along an undercut you.
And that is why I so often play for tips only. I make more than the house would pay, and that’s the one category where I cannot be undercut.
ADDENDUM
I just found out most people have no idea about the meaning of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, the movie. It is one of the terms of the Hynek Classification System. Most reports of UFOs are all over the place, fact-wise, so Doc Hynek invented this method of ordering the events.
Close encounter of the first kind: UFO is witnessed within 500 feet distance.
Close encounter of the second kind: UFO leaves physical evidence of presence.
Close encounter of the third kind: UFO occupant(s) plainly visible to witness/es.
Close encounter of the fourth kind: human abduction by aliens.
Close encounter of the fifth kind: human-alien communication.
The system further classifies radar blips, daylight discs, and any radar blips corroborated by human sightings. The usual evidence of UFO presence is the items most published in the media. Burns to vegetation, loss of memory, electromagnetic interference. Question: do I believe in UFOs? My answer is, “Not exactly.”
So I do not directly believe in UFOs, but I do believe there would be every incentive for government cover-ups and conspiracy should anything of that nature be discovered and unexplained. Nor do I buy the theory that aliens want to steal Earth’s resources. For openers, by standards of the universe, Earth has a very limited supply of everything and we are a long ways from anything interesting. There is nothing on our planet that has not been detected in abundance all over the cosmos.
I do believe mysterious objects have crashed, but just because our supply of “experts”, which is rapidly decreasing in number and capacity, cannot identify the wreckage, does not make it alien. Remember, this is the generation who thinks tattoos are attractive and texting is faster than Morse code.
Last Laugh
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