One year ago today: March 23, 2021, the junkyard on Griffin.
Five years ago today: March 23, 2017, stablization, then recovery.
Nine years ago today: March 23, 2013, ♫ Ridin’ On The City ♪
Random years ago today: March 23, 2011, a hobby club video.
Since I know I’ll bee on the road several hours this morning, here’s a quick study on integrated circuits. I did not understand them until I had a grasp on their predecessors, called discrete circuits. Before integrated, each component had to be wired up from basic (discrete) components and this quickly got very repetitious. Take a peek at this comparison photo. The left side shows a discrete circuit, which by looking is some sort of amplification circuit that switches off and on quickly. The right had side has three integrated circuits, two small, one large. The only similarity is they are around the same size. But the integrated circuit might contain hundreds or thousands of copies of the other.
The third large group are registers. They take input and either group it together or ungroup in apart. Sounds messy, but it isn’t. A popular register is digital to analog. And incoming digital signal of eight bits in a stream is then grouped and sent to a display that shows, say the digital number 7 instead of the binary 110. I never dealt much with registers but they were a fascinating read. They are great for slowing down a signal. For example if you had a rapid set of incoming pulses, you could get a register to accumulate ten of them, then emit a single output, clear itself, and start over. I once built a circuit that did this enough times to slow down to a one-second on off LED. Par for the course, once I knew I could do it, I never did again.
Before continuing, I must report the event of the day. The Dade County Fair, downhill as it has gone, is still a tradition around here, and a big part of the tradition is the pig races.
Here’s something. Remember Stormy Daniels, the prostitute who claimed she had a fling with Trump just before the 2016 election? Her real name is Stephanie Clifford and she lost the case, meaning it was basically a political stunt by the Democrats. However, to follow up, since she lost, the Democrats quit funding her and she missed a series of legal deadlines when Trump filed a countersuit. Now, Trump has been awarded $300,000 in legal fees, which she says she will go to jail before paying. Hmmm, she really is that broke, but that kind of thing happens when you sell out cheap.
I was up late reading what I though would be a geography book of the Great Australian Bight and the SW area of the island. It was mostly boring stuff about how ill-done by the aboriginals were, which I fully agree, but not what I wanted to read. This was a major part of the trip I had planned for 1997 or 1998 that never came to fruition. I barely recall the hundreds of hour planning that went into it. Starting in Sydney (tentative), rent or buy a motorcycle and take the nearest thing to a coast road around the entire country.
The plan was at least 90 days of easy travel with up to a week in Perth. Too bad I didn’t go, nobody could have guessed it was one of the last chances to see what used to be a free and decent country, so sad what happened there. Other than advertising it is not so easy to find information about the Nullabor Plain. It is so barren people take pictures of the road signs. I could not locate detailed information of the weather and camping conditions, so I had a backup plan to stay in hotels. Most of the available travel logs were by people with Landrovers and to trailers turning it into a major expedition. This photo shows the plain, pancake flat because it used to me the bottom of a calm sea a few million years back. In fact, if you can find a contour map, the old shoreline is visible in the same contour a few hundred miles to the north.
The hotels such as are available seen to run around $200 per night, and they advise $50 per person per day for food. The Nullarbor Plain is probably not worth that kind of money so be careful. I’ve been in places in America where you had to travel 30 miles out of town to find a place where it was even legal to park overnight and jurisdictions where the entire town council consisted of hotel owners. I correctly guessed in 1980 to get all your overseas traveling done because the world was becoming a dangerous place. Australia was to be my big finale trip but the cost (around $22,500 not including the motorcycle) made me hesitate until it was no longer possible.
Now your passport tracks you and I’ve heard horror stories from people who innocently visited the “wrong” places and will regret it for life. You don’t need me to tell you that planet Earth has become a bureaucratic hell with every worthwhile activity, occupation, amusement, or distraction subject to surveillance and scrutiny. And paying for anything in cash raises a flag. It’s a world where the sign stating the prices has been replaced by a video loop of a mixed race couple smilingly swiping their phones without even asking. Where you get to divvy up extra because somebody else is “special needs”.
Cell sorting laboratory.
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Team Biden has launched a deliberate attack on Gab.com. Every dirty trick in the book, for which the Democrats have an unlimited budget. I’ve taken to reading Gab just for the news of how this is happening. Ha, recall we noted how Gab owns their own equipment, top to bottom? That seems to be the telling feature of their current success, which includes people flocking to their platform by the millions. In the processs, Gab is incensing the woketards who show up looking to pull their old tricks. They can’t, because nobody listens when they complain their feelings are hurt. And whenever they try to post rather than comment, they get blocked or blasted out of the water. If this continues, expect some fur to fly.
I made it into Miami with time to spare, meaning I was only a couple hours late. Great driving weather, mind you. In the first 100 miles, I passed 1,009 vehicles in the on-coming lanes. Anything towing a trailer still only counts as one. In Okeechobee, I stopped for a tomato juice and was informed despite a bumper tomato crop this year, end of this month all drinks containing tomato juice go up in price $1.50.
The Fair has become so expensive it may be dropped, the more so because they have removed the science exhibits. There were far fewer displays except cell phone plans and beauty products. I’ll maybe wait until tomorrow to write about the sights. We go to the Fair to look around, not to shop. This photo shows the only really new thing to see. It is a massive Ferris wheel with gondola cars. I’d guess twice the size of anything I’ve seen before.
The downside is the price. Twenty bucks each. I volunteered to pay but JZ on principle would pay that much for any ride. It was not lost to him our first visit to this Fair around 2005 oour entire budget for the both of us was $40.including admission. I had my new thumb counter with me, so of the rough 3,000 people we say, guess the number of pretty gals. Statistically and historically, that should have been around 300. Nope, an even 20. In that massive crowd, only 20 babes. What’s the world come to. And, for the record, except for a few older couples who looked like the just came from Wal*Mart, I was the only white person to be seen. I don’t mean nothing, I’m just saying.
Last, the millennial “valet parking” squad has been at work. The ones that can’t look at an empty parking lot without drooling how they could put up some rope barriers and take money of people. In this instance, when you attended any of the free shows, such as the figure skating the exits were blocked except the ones that forced to walk way around the entire perimeter to get back, in case you haven’t spent enough money, I suppose.
