September 27, 2020

Yesteryear
One year ago today: September 27, 2019, what do I care?
Five years ago today: September 27, 2015, “us” & “we” before “I”.
Nine years ago today: September 27, 2011, mystery device.
Random years ago today: September 27, 2013, just 244 pounds.

           No progress today but plenty of momentum. I closely examined the planter for why all three species failed by not even germinating. Something in the soil? Yes, it seems to be ants. They’ve eaten all my seeds. I turned the soil which should have revealed them, but they were completely gone. I then inspected the entire area with a magnifying glass and spotted a series of tiny holes around the perimeter. I’m not sure, but let’s put two and two together. I’ll stop at the lawn & garden tomorrow, the forecast is a cool front is

           I’m going to pick up some potting soil and start some of the seeds indoors. These ant have to go asap. These ants are not entering from the perimeter, they are living in the soil. Odd, since these came from the loamy, damp soil in the northeast corner. I have Sevin concentrate, since where there are ants, there are likely many of the other pests listed on the label. Please cool down a bit, it’s autumn and no need for these blistering muggy days. While looking up solutions, I found a movie, “Pray For Rain” about a water scandal in the California central valley.

           New York reporter goes home to daddy’s funeral and discovers a plot to drive the farmers out and snap up the land. Of course, our lady decides to stay on afterward and shortly decides she loves a childhood friend, now a police dude. What do I think? If I grew up on a million-dollar spread in California, I’d fight to save it, too. It’s a strange name for a movie that has nothing to do with the actual weather. Let’s log on and see what our left-wing nutcase has to say, that’s JimmyR. One interesting link, that’s it. About how IoT will soon bring ransomware right into your very own home.
           There are two sides with no middle ground. Sure, it is nice to talk to you faucet and have it pour the exact amount for your favorite recipe, but there is also that e-mail of that video of your teenage daughter and the 29-year-old reject next door that goes on-line if you miss a payment. JimmyR is so naïve and trusting it makes you wonder. Or that brain-eating amoeba in the drinking water in Texas. My comment would be, “how can they tell”. Anyway, read the comments for a good laugh.

           This unusual photo is from north of Seattle a few days ago. It shows my friend’s balcony with no view of the mountains. It seems the forest fires set by the anarchists in California have polluted the entire coast region. It’s not the best photo, but I’ve told you how amongst my circle of closest friends, only one in fifty knows how to use a camera to take good photos. Normally you’d see a range of mountains around ten miles distant. I doubt if many people would object to using facial recognition and geofencing to round up these criminals—if there was some guarantee the technology would not be turned back on the people.
           The trouble has slowed down the mail service. My internal money system, except for certain local withdrawals, all works by the USPS due to security concerns. Apparently government services are slowed or suspended in some areas. Something is going to happen to these liberals because they are now just being ignorant bastards. Myself I avoid them socially, but I have not-so-fond memories of these people. When there is even one in the room, it’s like a damper on every other conversation. Everything slows down to their level. Hard to explain, but you know what I mean. When they leave it’s like whew, now we can be ourselves.

Picture of the day.
Rainbow corn.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
           During the yard tour I noticed there had been some leaf drop on the peach tree, mostly the lower branches. These were trimmed to give priority to the leaders. What do I see but healthy new leaves sprouting from the twigs. The others have buds so we may have another crop. Ye olde Almanac says the limbs should be trimmed to branch out at 30° and start capping the tree at six feet height. My tree is already twice that. The directions say to pluck all the flowers which grow into peaches for the first three years. I have four large ranches that could be leaders, they are dropping leaves which is trim time.

           The literature says train the tree to train the tree to be bowl-shaped by cutting away any branches that block sunlight from the center of the tree. The idea is to have the energy on a new tree go into growing solid branches instead of fruit. I was so glad just to have a tree grow so fast that I didn’t do much trimming. Now I have a bit too much tree. Another video says bend the branches where you want them to go.

           Lots of reading [for you] today, thank the heat wave. I found a couple of sites that had simulators for small robots to detect land mines. This was so similar to my independently derived idea for a robot project some years back that I went through the demos. They worked but the accompanying literature showed to build those units required gear and technology beyond anything we have, such as burning code and radio specs so complex I could not read them. Instead, what I had in mind was a simpler mobile metal detector system for beachcombing.
           Given the emergent national greed for treasure found by others under the guise of historical preservation (we need more preserved treasure), have polished the original concept. I’d like to describe it another time. This is a robot that slowly goes back and forth between markers set in the beach sand. Using GPS, it flags potential buried metals to a remote computer. While I have not thought of a good cover story, the operation would include concessions to stealth.

           For example, the machine would make no outward indication of locating anything. At first I’d thought of a dot of spray paint or dropping a small flag, but that’s inviting trouble. My concern with GPS is they are hardly as accurate as claimed--ten feet off is a real pain when you are digging a hole two feet deep. The unit should be able to work at night and ideally, there should be beaches that have fallen out of use which would provide the best hunting grounds. Once a map of potential artifacts is produced, it becomes a matter of waiting for or creating a distraction, then getting in and out of the selected area with a shovel and sieve. This is one of a hundred practical ideas from the old robot club that we finally realized were out of our league and price range. I could not find the pic of the "rose" tree I wanted, so here is another view of the new peach leaves.

           It was with some satisfaction that some of the ideas batted around in the early days of our Arduino brainstorming have now, in some form, become stock items with on-line literature. Again, I make no claim to be first, only that the idea here was independently derived. Nowadays, I regularly see projects that were the limits of my imagination, considering how little I knew of microcontrollers when I started. The oscillating fan that always points at you, the servo that keeps solar panels pointed at the Sun, drone jammer circuit, and Morse code from ASCII text. All now commonplace.
           Some of these ideas now exist. Remember the concept of the “Braille” book, whereby the dots could be transmitted to the fingertips at a speed chosen by the user? There are now cell phones that allow the blind to receive text messages this way. This may say more about the addiction rate to text messaging. The latest crop of so-called inventions seems determined to get tracking software embedded into everything on your person. And how come nobody has come up with a social-distancing alarm? Or a voting fingerprint system that does not record identity, only duplicates. It’s money in short supply around here, not ideas.

ADDENDUM
           As Sleepy Joe founders through another staged interview, the airwaves are alive with speculation on what the left is planning. They believe they are the rightful leaders of America since they basically bought and paid for so many of the key positions. When they lose, they not only face charges but will be letting down their big donors, many of them who are as shady as Democrats themselves. The Democrats cannot walk away from this defeat any more than they can walk away from that debt. No way can Hillary dribble her way out of this one.
           Trump will be a legend if he mops the floor with the lot of them. Treason is a high crime, Hillary and Obama planned a political assassination. The leftist journalists ran interference for them. Senior civil servants abused their jobs. Without any commitment, I am going to price out some protective gear which may or may not include firearms. I have not used a shotgun in over fifty years, but nor have I fired a crossbow in that time. The left is capable of vicious attacks. Trump has announced they will pay a substantial price, but that informs them to start going underground.

Last Laugh