One year ago today: March 22, 2018, what volume knob?
Five years ago today: March 22, 2014, I was the poorest.
Nine years ago today: March 22, 2010, I walk 3.1 mph.
Random years ago today: March 22, 2009, Ford uses spring clips . . .
After a frigid early start, the day was nice enough to spend a couple hours at Percy Priest, the now-familiar lake at the dam. The dogs have learned to give me a workout, so I return the favor. I’ve learned enough of the footpaths to know which ones go over logs and under branches. They got the obstacle course this morning. That means I could leave them at home for a leisurely two hours at a new spot up on Mt. Juliet Road. It’s semi-yuppie, a coffee café (their words), and the prices beat the franchises. Check the site Billy Goat Coffee Café.
Same reason you didn’t. The initial startup period can last for years and you have to stay alive during that time. You don’t see many young real estate agents unless they either live at home or have the ready cash to survive until the first sale that clears them enough to carry on. Also, there is a mental attitude toward suddenly getting a lump of cash when you are young that doesn’t pan out for most. The group that was sitting there today I doubt between them had ever put in a full month’s work in their lives. Their attitude was the type you only get by losing touch with the working class a lot of years back.
There were single ladies in there, but don’t waste your time. They were those roving trios of husband-hunting types and there is something about older women in stretch pants that turns me completely off. Their stance reminds me of that Tasmanian devil cartoon character when he stops spinning. Evidently few of them had seen a man working a crossword puzzle before. Which doesn’t surprise me. I needed to find the local library and post office, but rather than start a conversation, I waited until I got back home. Most Americans in a coffee shop could only guess where such buildings exist, which is hardly the information you seek.
It’s a replica.
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Notice today’s gif. This technique works well enough that it has become a part of my e-mails. Alas, word processors don’t animate. Coincidentally, a year ago I decided to stop including gifs in my posts here. That referred to the works of others. I did not know quite how the files worked, but now I recognize it as a form of rapid slide show. I remind you I have no crowd of computer-savvy people to ask about such things. Even now, I do not know if the gifs I placed were files or links to files. I’m still trying to find out what I’m uploading when I use my own.
Here’s the two methods I’ve developed that have so far given the best results. First is easy, when you record your event, pre-plan if possible a number of similar shots during the run. Then you will have a variety of points where you can splice the gif loop without an obvious break in the action. It’s a no-brainer that seems to have escaped the majority of what’s out there. Same with inserting multiple instances of the same frame when you want the action to seem like it’s pausing. (The accompanying example pauses on the doggie’s face at the end. This is a deliberate illusion created by a series of 12 identical photos. But, aw, wouldn't you do the same?)
The second takes definite pre-planning. It’s creating a multi-scene gif. By now I’ve discovered the most natural looking gifs are frames taken five to the second and displayed back at .14 second intervals. Shorten the time for the “Benny Hill” effect, but lengthening the time is mainly good for editing. If you watch most gifs, they are single event. I’ve already strung together as many as five scenes. Correction, make that three scenes. I got over-ambitious for a stretch there. Pre-planning is a definite must and it might be good advice to read up on video technique. I hope to find the limit to gif length, as in whether it is software- or hardware-imposed.
I’ve found the gifs are actually superior to producing a short video for most e-mail attachments. Gifs are a breeze, but you go without audio or titles and pretty much any embellishments. Yet, for e-mail that is what most people are expecting. They are further a charm at getting ideas and messages across. I’ve generated over a hundred gifs so far, most have between 65 and 80 frames. I’m wondering what to choose for, say, a full minute’s production.
After I wrote the above, I discovered that Windows Movie Maker will import gifs. I feel the best way to see if one can produce a gif movie is to give it a try. And I just discovered LibreOffice Writer will display embedded gifs, and you don't have to put your files on their computer to do it. Are you listening, MicroSoft? Well, one day you will.
ADDENDUM
The web page phys.org (no link) reports a company called Paragraf is offering commercial size sheets of graphene for sale. This substance has been lightly reviewed here, including my speculation on building a space skyscraper to house the space elevator or whatever I was thinking at the time. I consider graphene a primary nano building block because it is a sheet one single atom thick. It will likely first be used to make transistors much faster and just maybe we’ll finally have an optical sensor that really can “see”. I have an opinion on that. I say it is a waste of time trying to build a duplicate eye, that the industry should instead try to focus (ha-ha) on a sensor that can recognize a few shapes at a time. Then the bad guys could fly a drone around and find all the armored cars or whatever.
While Nashville may be a tourist town, the same doesn’t extend even a few miles in the suburbs. I looked on-line and there appear to be no lounges in the Hermitage area. I like to play music in the working class pubs, but if I go out for a few of my own, I have the same preferences as others who prefer lounges. The extra dollar per round keeps out the riff-raff. Three of the four loves of my life were met through music, but the other I met at “Paradise Gardens”. That was when I was 19, so since then, when I’m on the prowl, I’d go to the best places I could afford. I had some success with this until my mid-20s. After that, the women change,the good ones seem to die off or disappear. But lounges, or whatever they label themselves nowadays, at least have better looking female clientele, though the margin is far narrower than in 1979. Did I just say that?
So, I stayed home, but with a plan to see if there are any updates on mysteries that were considered unsolvable back in the day. Yes, I found something on all three that I searched. First, the Voynich manuscript (no link). Turns out it is an ordinary text written in an ordinary ancient Turkish language. It’s full of recipes and how to make money selling them. Ha, so much for the alien presence. Next, that famous hieroglyphic that shows the helicopter and the tank. Turns out one of the ways the scribes formed compound words was to combine one shape one on top of the other. Both the helicopter and tank were the result. Scratch another alien theory.
The Antikythera mechanism remains unexplained. Using x-rays, they’ve built duplicate devices with the same gears. When cranked (assuming gears are meant to be turned), it gives the celestial positions, but also a large number of other locations that don’t match anything we know of. That one I can only hope gets explained before I’m gone. I wasn’t looking when I saw something new on the statue of Ramses in Egypt. The features are not only exactly symmetrical, they are arc portions of circles. The cheekbones, eyelids, eyes, lips, all the prominent features are perfect arcs. It is when viewed from the side that astounded me. The jaw line, nose, and so on are also arcs, but the ones from the side view all have the same radius. Hmmmm.
Don’t get me wrong, there are still mysteries on these objects, like the Voynich manuscript was perfectly written, not one mistake or erasure. But my opinion is they are just awaiting the next round of simple explanations. I have a blanket theory that is related to all the ancient mysteries in a way many would find offensive. But the world since Donald Trump is a lot more aware of the psychosis of easily offended people. My theory is that the inhabitants of the places where we find ancient wonders are not the true descendants of the builders. That is to say the Peruvians and Italians of today are not the direct issue of the great ancients. Not by any benchmark.
I understand there must have been some intermingling and the DNA of today would reflect that admixture. But to suggest that the present-day occupants of China or Egypt are what built the empires is absurd. Some element has been introduced or taken away, and I instinctively feel it will ultimately be detectable at the genetic level. Yet there is a trait that is no longer present that every known empire eventually suffers. It is okay to study that it might have been political, or economic, or because of immigration (which at least has potential DNA effects) but my theory stops at stating they are not the same people as the great ones. Absolutely no way.
There is a growing school of thought that since the materials used to construct pyramids, be it Egypt, China, Peru, Mexico, etc. cannot itself be dated, that they pre-date the civilizations. It says for instance that the Egyptians found the pyramids already there and merely covered them with quartz. Want to be rich? Discover some way to date when rock as carved. The real mystery is why I didn’t go out tonight. Maybe I’m saving up to go to Santa’s again tomorrow. I’m such a creature of habit.
