One year ago today: August 14, 2021, a checkered work shirt.
Five years ago today: August 14, 2017, candied yam.
Nine years ago today: August 14, 2013, crates vs. boxes.
Random years ago today: August 14, 2012, 635 miles from Denver.
Sunrise plus six hours and I just finished playing through my song list. Why should this time be any different? No reason, but there is progress. Habits get in the way, I like a song and want to reach for the bass. I’m fighting hard to not strum the same in every tune. This is a big challenge, plus my bass sense of timing isn’t automatic for guitar work. I’ll have to console myself that at least I can play twice the number of songs the rest of them around here ever manage. I had to fall back on a few that were already stale when I was in my teens. They recycle well enough.
I’ve no exciting photos this morning. Somehow, I know you appreciate the pictures, mostly same day and relevant enough. That was not part of the original formula and for this purpose one must learn to carry a camera with you at all times. This is a pistachio leaf showing some kind of blight. They get sprayed with the same fog and timing as other yard plants but this species seems prone to spotting.
America is not letting go of the Trump raid. No matter what the Deep State says, they are not being let off the hook easily on this one. Money is pouring into the Trump coffers, which he does not have to limit because he is not running. I’m kind of worried, for the opposition to even have a showing, they must do something drastic now. It’s only 90 more days. It is highly unlikely the usual round of cheating will work this time. In 2020, they pulled 17 million more votes out of thin air than people that voted. Old school election officials are quitting their jobs as if that will save them.
I mentioned distraction. Here is my plan for a heat-seeking device. No doubt it has been done, but to me this approach is original. I’ve been reading about the defenses against these seekers and it centers on airplanes. The pilot can drop flares, head into the Sun, or just dodge if he’s got nerve. The concept of giving the seeker a hotter target to distract is the feature I’m contending. Here is my plan, first take a look at this Harbor Freight infrared thermometer. It has a laser pointing beam that does not work so I may dismantle it later.
At first I thought to connect the input to a stepper motor and scan for the hottest spot. Then I thought this would have the same vulnerability as what was just pointed out. Instead, my seeker is meant for ground targets anyway (if I didn’t say) and they generally move a lot slower. We make some assumption here—but knowing what those assumptions are make my idea quite adaptable. One is that the target, say an errant vehicle making an illegal raid, does not have any way to detect an infrared beam. This handheld scanner is accurate to the tenth of a degree.
So point it at what you want it to seek and read the temperature. Accept the odds that nothing nearby has exactly the same heat signature, but use common sense. Pulling the trigger locks that spot and ignores anything cooler, and this is important, anything hotter. By aiming the device at various objects, including other thermometers, the results are not accurate but they are consistent. The bathroom thermometer read 80ºF and the device read 78.8ºF. The readings take less than one second each. I don’t know the range but that is all hardware and there are plenty of follow-the-leader types in that field.
What if the target moves? Let the scanner do a quick spin that gets progressively larger until it picks up the heat signature again. I’ve thought of many variations on this them to prevent spoofing but no sense telling the whole story. Design and testing of the software is estimated at 15 hours. The advantage of this system is only exposed for a moment. Once the seeker is locked-on, there are a number of options, the best of which is to hightail it out of there. Another plan if the target learns to watch for the laser is to scatter fake lasers around in advance. To keep them on their toes. I have not tried aiming the thermometer at cell phones yet.
Canadian College, Lanciano, Italy.
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Five hours in the yard and shed, that earns me the evening off with coffee and a good book. If I can find one I’ve not read, ah, here’s a Tom Clancey. The title doesn’t matter, they are all the same. Similar to the Hornblower series, I’m now catching bits of Sharpe’s Rifles. It’s another TV production so I don’t know how many episodes or what. His wife is prettier but the only accuracy so far is the terrible conditions of the regular soldiers and their pititful worth. I canceled the coffee for an ice-cold diet Coke and discovered my left leg is somewhat swollen. Noticed it while I took the grass whip to the back yard.
There’s less consolation to yard work because it never ends, so an hour today just made me tired. I capped the open pipes on the new water heater, since that has to wait until the pipes are done. It has larger ports than the existing unit, but those feed pipes are already run in. Exhausted by dark, I watched this video on treasure hunting. This guy’s cool about it but as always, these people never reveal the source of their support while they got into these careers. (If you are even going to remotely imply that others do what you do, it is common decency to mention how much it costs.) That dude never worked a day in his life.
Don’t bother calling me jealous because I’m only pointing out what I call the “Jimmy Buffet Syndrome”. We know they got help, there’s no beef with that. The syndrome is the way they never mention it or the setup cost of what they do—and for most people, that is misleading. Myself at age 25, I could not have stopped work one day without suffering consequences, much less diving around some tropical beach where one may or may not find anything for months. Mainly, this guy uses a magnet which I never saw much in action before. I can’t figure out why he finds so many safes and lock boxes.
ADDENDUM
Here’s a quote I endorse from RadioFreeNorthwest: “Forget finding ‘the girl’. Become a man and most girls will become whatever makes you happy.”
