One year ago today: April 15, 2016, I play the Two& (“Two And”)
Five years ago today: April 15, 2012, $102,447.81 less.
Nine years ago today: April 15, 2008, gawdawful ugly.
Random years ago today: April 15, 2005, power-walking Dania Beach.
Right off, I’d immensely proud of my transformation of the front yard corner. The dead tree top was an instant hit. Any bird who perches there can see every approach to the feeder and bird bath. No feral cat surprises. If a larger bird swoops down, the trees with leaves are a split second away. Big birds can’t fly through tree leaves. I haven’t any pics yet, but the rate that birdseed disappears indicates the bully birds can’t get at it. I was amused to watch the bluebird.
How’s the gold operation? Has it been abandoned? Nope, there has been research but no progress. Extensive use of the library catalog systems show there is not a single note on gold refining in Polk County. I’ve got a certain amount of it figured out on my own. As to whether it is economical on a small scale or the playing with fire part, nothing is available. That goes to show you how little faith can be placed in the Internet. You’d think there is one intelligent person on the planet who would write about refining gold. All I found was dreary chemical formulas in equally dull sets of encyclopedias.
I’ll get Agt. R to schedule a meet-up with the old guy who fell in the creek. He might just say don’t bother, sell the stuff at the flea market. Balance that against my gut feeling that within my lifetime it may not be a bad idea to know something about producing gold, even in the tiniest quantities. I’m no survivalist but if it comes to that, maybe waiting around for your carrots to grow in toxic soil isn’t the best plan for munchies in the meanwhile.
Here’s an odd site, Gold Fever. There was even an ad for somebody looking to buy your black sand. That’s the leftovers from when the gold is panned out. Watch this video. You love this blog.
This upcoming Monday is slated to get the on-line sales ramped up to the next level. This involves Facebook, eBay, and the dreaded, disreputable PayPal. Also, we will decide on which of the other sales sites to use. I cannot for the life of me remember the one that puts up a picture and advertises in the geographic area of you computer. All the paperwork is done to keep myself in the background—remember you “paranoid accusers”, the time to protect your identity is starting twenty years ago, not after the divorce paper arrive.
I know of people so stupid they have never spotted the connection between not protecting their personal information and how much trouble they get into down the line. Ut-tut, I did not say keeping your identity a secret, I said protecting your personal information. Only idiots confuse privacy with secrecy, and do so because they know they’ve made such big mistakes they want everyone else on file, too.
[Author’s note: what I have against PayPal is documented elsewhere. Basically, they lied by leading people to believe they would be an on-line anonymous middleman. This was a golden opportunity for many people, to buy and sell on line the same as cash. America was already too full of assholes tracking how many condoms and tampons were bought and by whom. On-line anonymity would have forced the authorities to obey their own laws. The law that says a business need only record the transaction, there is no requirement to record the personal details of the purchaser and begin building a profile of his behavior against his wishes—and selling it to the highest bidder.
Got that? The law does not require a business to record personal details, only the nature and amount of the transaction. PayPal used that as a false promise to drive the other contenders out of business, then promptly changed their tune by requiring a bank account for direct deposit. Now they not only track who buys what, but they, a non-regulated entity, knows the location of where you bank and your account number. That’s not big deal, at least to people who don’t remember what happened in Greece last year.. It’s a huge argument for bitcoin, which when I come into big money, I will be using.]
Book carving.
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I don’t have a picture for you, but how about this scan of a “wheresgeorge” bill. This is my latest, but I never did get all that into the game. For those who don’t know, you can log on to wheresgeorge and see a diagram and stats of bill that people have entered into the system. I’ve got only around 30 bills total, since I don’t stamp my own. Others have thousands of bills. My tracking history shows that other than a few obvious tourist dollars, most bills tend to circulate in small areas. So small that the site has not held my interest. One oddity is, get this, most of my marked bills were found in my tip jar. Here’s an example of a stamped bill.
This being a fine spring day, I used my small town privilege to drive from where I was the twelve miles into town to catch up on the gossip. The place is buzzing with news of that hotel conversion mentioned last day. It serves the locals right, that building sat vacant at least the four years I was looking for a house in the area. Rumor is the building sold for $495,000. I would have thought it was worth twice that, but nor would I have paid even the lower price. Because unless it is a flying success that is a lot to hazard around here. The economy is mining and farming.
If I didn’t say, the local phosphate mine is twice as large as the rest of the entire world combined. That explains why Thursdays are a hopping time in that town. The ten-day back-to-back shift gets off work on a Thursday. That explains it, I’ll keep that in mind. While I don’t normally go out on payday, my music sure does. While I was downtown, I found a streetside flea market. I now have a contact for any estate sales, birdhouses, and I managed to pick up 29 DVD movies for $7.
“I needed a password eight characters long
so I picked Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”
Okay, what offbeat topic did I look into this day? Take a look at this print. You’ve seen them in older books and are often woodcuts. This one is a linoleum cut, a hobby that’s no longer [much] in fashion. For that matter, neither is linoleum. I looked into the process and I offer an explanation why these pictures tend to look so two-dimensional. They are generally a third-generation copy. Your lesson today is now these pictures are carved into the backs of linoleum tiles, you know, I used to wonder about that.
Then, using a series of tiny knives, scoops, and chisel points, you create a positive or negative into the linoleum. As you go along, you lay a paper over your work and do a pencil scribble to check your work. Thus, by the time you have a plate, it’s third generation. Ah, so that’s why these pictures always look so chunky. Now, here’s a million-dollar idea that will go nowhere. This got me to thinking, how these days that chipping away at the linoleum is labor-intensive. That’s not counting later where you ink the linoleum with a little roller called a “brayer”. You’ve seen those printers that cut out lettering at the sign-making store.
Well, put it together. The cutter, an Arduino controller, and a slightly modified printer. Presto, custom-made prints. Yes, I know you can already get a rubber stamp made up, but that’s the challenge. Think up something that would be particular difficult for the print shop, but easy for the Arduino. Subtractive 3D printing. I wonder if some cheap-ass old printer can be modified to fit a square of linoleum through there. The resulting print would be first generation and letter-quality. Next, Arduino programmers know it is one of the easier projects to get a robot to follow a dark line on a bright floor.
The booklet I read was written by Henry Frankenfield in 1956. It says here he’s got a B.S. and a M.Ed. Hmmm, that explains it, I only have an associate in education. Ah, but I’ll bet he was never involved with a robot club. The later chapters are discussions of how to make layered color prints and how to place these on fabric. It involves making a matching plate for each color and pressing them repeatedly. Conceptually, a printer would make short work of that. Now go make your million, the idea is free. I don’t fail to follow through on any of these ideas, because my plan never was to sell the product. Only the concept.
[Author's note: I looked up this idea of high precision lino cuts, only to find that dozens of people are miles ahead of me on that. Once again, my point is that I came up with the idea without help. It takes a lifetime to get original in this way, but it's still my only chance, you know . . . .]
I’ve got the birds trained to the sound of my sprinkler, the only one, by the way, on this street. They are still skittish so no pictures yet. They can easily spot any movement inside my window if I reach for the camera. The sunflowers are a disappointment. As soon as they grow tall enough to develop a flower, the weight of it causes them to keel over. Two pigeons have taken over the ground area, sharing only with the squirrels. I like my critter-friendly yard.
And yes, I have found a discrepancy on my bank statement from last September. That’s when I was moving here, so it slipped past my detection system. It is very difficult for a mistake to work its way through my system. The habit that caught this potential error is how I record the Euro exchange rate of the day next to each entry. The amount was $187.30 out, but this is such a tiny amount, my rate calculator didn’t flag it. But when I saw it by eye, I instantly recognized that figure, though I’m not saying why. I just know that number. Could this be the windfall that gets me the summer off? Really, I don’t need much, I can party all month for what other people waste on lottery tickets.
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