One year ago today: November 12, 2015, echolalia & hebephrenia.
Five years ago today: November 12, 2011, I invented this chart.
Nine years ago today: November 12, 2007, all over the place.
Random years ago today: November 12, 2008, rated PG-13.
MORNING
It says here Robert Redford retired from acting. Didn’t he do that twenty years ago? And how about that British study that shows boy and girl scouts grow up to be better balanced adults and are 15% less likely to have mental disorders by age 50. What, after that they all go bonkers? The main thing I learned being a scout was how willing most people are to be told what to do. Just you watch, mind you, the Brits are not likely report any study that doesn’t do their image some good.
That won’t stop me from planning. The other Friday in Zephyrhills, I picked up this gadget for 50¢, an Archer electromechanical counting module. With reset button. Archer was Radio Shack before they changed to LG which stands for Lucky Goldstar. The lion’s share of robotics literature around microprocessors is about the input sensors. This device is strictly output, so what should I make with it?
I’ve thought of a motion and infrared sensor to count the visits to the birdfeeder. Or a magnetic sensor on the motorcycle to count distance. The counter only goes to 99.999. But that gives me another idea to make a speedometer. I’ve had none on the batbike for two years. The correct replacement cable is unavailable. That would be a challenge, programming the Arduino as both a speedometer and odometer. The counter is 12VDC, so it can be controlled by a microprocessor, but not operated by one. That would require relays, which I happen to have and know a lot about. See addendum.
Face it, I need that hobby shed out back more than the porch. Give me another hour and I’ll have some real ideas about how to use these electronic components. Keep reading, I intend to drive all the way out to that pub on Hwy 17 tonight. And why not? I’ve calculated I can afford that new Honda motorcycle to replace the scooter. Or maybe the better word is to substitute, since the scooter actually works just fine.
Ball’s Pyramid.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
NOON
Listen to the asinine media. They don’t just report riots, but riots “continuing with no end in sight”. This election proved they are losing their grip. Trump, arrest the head agitators and wait it out. Had they been Trump support riots, the media would be calling them thugs. I’ve lived in Portland and nobody gives a damn about the White House, so any such protests there are certainly staged. Snag the ringleaders and let the rest continue to make fools of themselves. They’ll go home by suppertime. Libtards have an embarrassingly low tolerance for suffering they cannot pawn over to others.
Nothing like some hard work to bring out the sense of fair play in me. Here’s the next batch of log in the back yard. This is around a sixth of what remains from the 62-footer. You can just make out some of the bigger logs in the background. This is where they feel as they toppled from the tree. If you examine the pile, you’ll see I have so far only dragged out and sawn the smaller branches and limbs up to a foot in diameter. The chain saw blade is 14” so the majority of work remains to be done.
Yes, I notice my outlook on these logs is different than my work attitude in general. I keep mentioning how much more remains, but this is a chore that has an end in sight. And I have had few such tasks on a daily basis until I bought this place. Maybe it is a period of adjustment. Later this month there is a sale of those temporary portable garages. Parking my vehicles outside where there is colder winter weather is a different proposition than back in Broward. Agt. R has offered to help get the package here for assembly.
NIGHT
The Almanac has proven right on. It has been colder than usual according to the locals. My focus here is the Almanac, not the weather, but as a matter of fact, I do have an ulterior motive. And here it is. A Honda 250 Rebel with an asking price of $1,700. It’s only got 4600 miles on the clock, but that can indicate it has been rolled. If you look very closely, you can see a dent in the gas tank just above the logo and the black streaks along the battery hatch seem a little too sharp to be just reflections on the chrome. I’ll phone this guy and ask questions.
Anyway, the weather. The Almanac says gusty winds, a blustery winter, and gusts up to 40 mph this week. That’s why I’m not buying the portable garage just yet. It has plastic sides and all that has to be anchored. Here’s a quip from the Almanac: “Whenever history repeats itself, the price goes up.”
I’m gradually reading “The Case of the Rose”, now on page 161. William, our main character, is no closer to solving the two murders but in the meanwhile, you’ll learn more about monasteries than you’ll ever need to know. I suppose I had the usual notion about these as places where chanting monks file around in hoodies and get funny haircuts. Wrong, they are a seething hotbed of internal strife, factions, and vendettas. Now that I read the accounts, I should probably have guessed that when you put 150 men together. With each one thinking he is better than the rest.
Before I forget, here is a picture of the book, “The Name of the Rose”. How this ever became a bestseller amazes me. It is too difficult to read and has the typical downfalling of all religiously-correct publications. It cannot help but trying to convert you or some such “just in case” nonsense.
From what I gather, and it’s a fact I don’t know much about Church rituals, if someone confesses to a priest, the priest can never reveal the sin. So William has to keep refusing to hear confessions from people who want to shut him up. One priest appears to have fallen from a tower, another was found with his head stuffed in a barrel of pig’s blood. It’s becoming evident the “evil” that is going on was some kind of homosexual encounters with the “fresh-faced” younger monks. Ha, and you thought it was just going on in Newfoundland.
The book is discouraging to readers, such as myself, who don’t give a twit about the differences between orders of monks and actually consider such behavior quite childish. In this book, the monks hate each other and are only too willing to burn the other alive. The pent-in living fosters a sick system where each monk is constantly watching the others for any departure from the norm, ready to run to the Abbot and report the slightest anomaly to gain favor and diminish others. Where have we seen this before?
Do not bother reading this book. It is ten times longer than necessary. Wait for me to read it and tell you the ending.
ADDENDUM
I'll pick up where I left off this morning. So you won’t conclude I’m all politics lately, let’s have a peek at the plans for the Arduino and the mechanical counting device above. It seems a waste to count birds, so here is what I’ve come up with. Reminder: the better I design something, the less chance it will be built. Pay attention anyway, and learn something.
Pondering the counting device, it has an attractive feature that non-robot types might neglect. Analog memory. That’s correct, once it counts a number of events, there is no need to devise an electronic storage scheme. Is that clear? I’m suggesting the fact the count merely stops where it is when the power goes off. That can be viewed as non-volatile memory. Laugh if you want, but I never quite considered that before. And it would be, with the right programming, good for 99,999 miles, keep reading.
Who recalls the hopeless task of finding the correct cable for the batbike speedometer? I have not given up, but this got me to thinking about the possibilities of a digital replacement that comes in far cheaper than that cable. This ground was covered before, since we know a mile is something like 63,630 inches. I also know the outside diameter of my front batbike tire is 64.380 inches. I still have the magnetic sensors [from the Jamis bicycle] that pulse each time a spoke passes. Radius and diameter make no difference to the programming, only circumference.
Essentially I determined the number of revolutions needed for the tire ‘size’ to travel one mile. That’s the easy part, just divide the two numbers and tell the Arduino to pulse the relay once per mile by the calculated ratio. Then I got to thinking about the speedometer. This is a much more complicated situation. I wrote down several approaches and decided to defer it until I read up or find out how other’s dealt with the code.
It is not as simple as reading a sensor, for the Arduino does not count constant time. We talked about this with PWM. Where did I place that article about accessing the PWM clocks? The moment I tell the microprocessor to sense the wheel counter, it resets any timers I had checking for speed. It’s the kind of challenge I like to think through before I ask for help. Let’s see how far I get.
Last Laugh
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