May 30, 2019

Yesteryear
One year ago today: May 30, 2018, people call him . . .
Five years ago today: May 30, 2014, hotdogs & club meetings.
Nine years ago today: May 30, 2010, the original trailer.
Random years ago today: May 30, 2012, mildly outgoing.

           You get various photos of Bowling Green, since nothing happened today. I mean so far. It was deathly still and muggy all morning, with sprinkles by noon, fine, if you want to go out there. None of the pets do, and they usually bolt for the door. The photos should be self-explanatory. If not, too bad. It’s been that kind of day.

           Uber is finally going to de-activate drivers who been up to more than giving rides. Too bad they can’t extend that to regular cabbies. What’s that you say? Well, I could care less what happens to New York City. I’ve always said that place represents what happens when bad politics and greed get the upper hand. And I’ve never met a guitar player from up there who was worth a dime. To me, New York City is a microcosm of what America will become if the entitlement generations take over thinking they can base an economy of fake free offers and bogus cell phone plans.
           I’m using that piece of shit Sony camcorder. The camera part takes great pictures,but that’s likely because it’s the part that Sony doesn’t build. The model I have is the HDR CX240 and I’ll tell you what is wrong with it. First, in video mode, it like to turn itself off randomly. If you are filming an event more than a minute or two long, you have to keep checking to see if the camera is working. There is no pilot light or button visible from the front of the unit and the viewscreen is impossible to see from more than a few feet away in bright sunlight. Today, JeePee was cavorting all over the crossword puzzle and all I got was the first few seconds. Screw you, Sony.

           Other problems are a long delay to place the camcorder in photo mode. You miss many a shot over this. Another is the self-timer is ten seconds and one shot. You have to run and pose in that ten seconds, then completely reset the camera for every timed shot. There is no time lapse feature, which should be standard. It’s not bad enough the battery won’t charge when connected in viewing mode, but it actually discharges the battery. You can’t just leave it plugged in or it dies.
           This is in addition to other problems I’ve pointed at. Like the zoom button is right where you pick the camera up by the strap, so you have to continually zoom it back out, which is always fun. The menus are also inconvenient, some scroll screen after screen, others have a single option. On the multi-screens, it will not scroll past the bottom, you have to navigate to a sidebar--sometimes. If an option is selectable, you cannot just select it, you have to backtrack out of the menu. Definitely millennial-grade, the most primitive coding that works for the coder, not the customer. Like my Alcatel cell phone that requires 11 button presses to activate the speed dial.

Picture of the day.
Lava stone walls, Azores.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           The sign about panhandling is on the road toward downtown Bowling Green. It stumped me, because I don’t know of anybody who considered it to be safe in the first place. It’s not a surprise some people have to be told. I f the city was really concerned, they’d try to make it safe, usually by inconveniencing the drivers. Somebody start a safe panhandling movement. I know, why not send them all off to the square dances. What? Oh no, I meant to see if anybody missed them. Whaddaya mean that’s “just as bad”? Actually, I’m okay with panhandling, but not for people who do it for a living.

           I had to panhandle when I was 17 and 18 because I didn’t even have enough to last to get a job and wait for the first payday. It was customary to hold back a week’s pay in those days. That usually meant it was three weeks until you got that first paycheck and many a time I went hungry. I did not have the resources to last that long. There was no such thing as food stamps, so I went without. People on welfare were a distinct and noticeable class that was shunned for the most part. Some say things have gotten better, and I ask, have they now? I think panhandling, if they outlaw it on the street, they should also outlaw it from the cashier checkout.
           It’s the old “would you like to round up to the nearest dollar” ploy. America is full of people who ae charitable in public and curse the welfare state at home. The checkout counter scam works for people who are too chicken to say no in front of strangers. Goodwill trains the cashiers to say to the few who decline, in a snarky voice, “Have a nice rest of your day.” Why not just call them a scrooge—after all, it’s not like people don’t know Goodwill does most of their hiring at insane asylums, Wal*mart dumpsters, and Ohio. Wherever people need the most help, I mean.

           It turns out the neighbor guy, the one who is “72” was one of the founders of the Corvette society. You know, in a way, that makes sense., just don’t tell him I said so. Anyway, I heard that the original museum had the floor collapse and most of the exhibits wound up in a sinkhole. Talk about irony.
           Two news stories have my attention. The first is the new atomic material claimed to be a breakthrough in gate technology, meaning computer gates. Back in the days when I had time, I studied these logic gates, which led to my independent discovery of why the gates needed to be powered to have memory. I may dig out the single gate I built, it was around a half-foot square and wieghed four pounds. The point is, it required a minimum of two transistors to make a single gate. This new material can do it with one.
           It somehow allows two inputs to a single transistor, although it may be wrong to still refer to it as a transistor. It may sound trivial, but with CPUs these days containing transistors by the millions, it might be a deelopment to watch. This could upset the entire programming model, which I would like since real programmers could adapt easily, while the C+ crowd would have their asses laughed out of town. Plus, if it works, somebody finally found a use for molybdenum.

           Second, that Japanese probe that blasted into an asteroid will be returning samples to Earth in around 18 months. I doubt they’ll find any fundamentally new materials, as asteroid formed by much the same technology that forms large planets. However, long-term exposure to the environment in outer space could produce compounds or alloys nothing like what is possible on Earth or subject to gravity. I used to ponder this as a young student, as I still believe molecules and not atoms are the key to radical new capabilities.
It was with pleasure I heard the news that Google just shot itself in the foot by announcing its ad-blocker will soon work only for customer who pay a fee to use their browser. Is that the terminal event I’ve been waiting for? Google has no sustainable business model. It cannot shut off the motors and glide. The company must continue to grow or die. You can guess which option I’m rooting for. This is the blog that began questioning Google search algorithms back in 1997 when I notice a large number of the “temp” files generated by searches were persistent?
           People around me seemed to accept these as normal, or the price paid for usage. Ha, who was right in the long run

ADDENDUM
           Mesh networking, continued from last day. The current interest in this technology is robot swarms. But there is nothing complicated about the theory. You get a bunch of radio-controlled gadgets that work in concert. The challenges are well-known. Do you have each robot self-controlled, or have one designated as a leader? Do the individual units communicate back and forth, or just follow orders as a group? The trade-off is always expense and/or complication. For me, that narrows down to the expense. I read the code for a small mesh network used to make hacked radio-controlled cars “dance” together. I can’t spare the $150 per car.

           So we reach that now-familiar stage where I stop pursuing a project because I know I could do it if I had to. And that means it will likely never get done.Here’s the bare minimum of the knowledge and hardware required. Contemporary mesh networks use WiFi signals. There is nothing conceptually difficult here. In the simplest configuration, all the units follow the same commands. Sometimes you’ll hear this referred to as a robot swarm, but I reserve that term for when there is some feedback from the followers to allow the command center to adapt to changed circumstances. The weakness of this system is some guy like me, but with an evil streak, would quickly learn to identify the mothership, the power supply, the programmer, or where his family lives.
           The picture is a building at the Corvette Museum. If anybody wants to find out what it is, send me a comment. I’m too busy. No matter what I do, living in this town seems to cost $35 a day, close to $7 of it in gasoline. I saved money going to Bowling Green.

           As the technology matures, expect to see the usual chain of improvements. From predictable orbit and sentry modes, the endpoints will get smarter. First they’ll act as relays to extend range but gradually become able to take over command. In a true swarm, they could detect each other and adapt. You can find examples of this on-line and it is interesting to watch how certain behaviors seem to emulate Mother Nature. One eerie effect is using minimal interfacing, even the dumbest off-on units like to clump together in a central mass.
           Myself, I’d go for simple hardware and make the programming supply the capabilities. Where off-on tech can make RC toy cars turn left and right, I liked what I learned about PWM. That’s our old friend, pulse-code modulation. It makes digital components think they are analog again.

           If you are interested, please view some of the videos on Critical Past. The Fritz X was thirty years ahead of its time. You can view the radio receiver, which looks better than anything that came out of Japan in the 1960s. And the gyroscop control system that kept the bomb from rolling was beyond science fiction at the time. This bomb could do serious damage in this day and age, and historians are telling me Germany just walked away from it?
           Pay attention to where the technician rocks the guidance system and the vanes automatically compensate. I may be more amazed than most because I’m aware what the electronics have to do, but you can see what a sophisticated system it was. Will we ever know the true story?

Last Laugh