One year ago today: August 7, 2024, nuclear sub department.
Five years ago today: August 7, 2020, radish test day.
Nine years ago today: August 7, 2016, moving in.
Random years ago today: August 7, 2019, Cordele sucks.
It’s just physio this morning, so here are more scenes from Tarpon Springs y’day. A full third of the railway museum concerned sponge fishing. Here is a device with a wringer to squeeze water out of the sponges for drying and shipping. You can see the wringer (hand cranked) along the bottom and the bin full of raw sponges on the top. I drove through Oldsmar, which I know mostly from hearing on the radio. It’s seems a nothing town, but is a good demo of how big the Tampa city area really is. This jaunt was 73 miles each way. I did not really see anything new. The memorable part was leaning back in my seat and getting bitten by a wasp. Still hurts this morning.
The beach area of Tarpon Springs is a small harbor along a river, where apparently there is still a business operation for the natural sponges. Here’s website featuring much of what I looked at. I’m also a fan of touring older houses. I saw a few that looked open but I’d walked enough by early afternoon—and the rainshowers hit that area earlier in the day with more intensity.
Too bad it was so far behind the glass but here is the oldest sextant I’ve seen yet. The card said it was made of brass and wood, if so it needs a lot of polishing. It looks in complete working order but the tarmish made the scale very hard to read. It looked quite heavy for the job it does and I can make a better box than that, ha-ha. For those who don’t know, this instrument might seem inaccurate since it is used on the deck of a boat at sea, whereas the reality is mankind can measure angles very precisely. And this instrument, even if you muck up, can probably place you within three or four miles in the middle of an ocean. Yet, it is mechanical and is unlikely ever to find your spot exactly.
When I say harbor, thing more the sheltered mouth of a river, it looked like a typical Everglades marsh. There is a small lake a few miles inland and I was tempted
The sign indicates the river is named “Anclote” and everywhere there’s a bank higher than a foot seems to be marinas, clubs, and restaurants. Nothing on my diet but I know I should have stopped. Hey, around here that just means more for later. Let’s read the morning news.
Spanish town have begun banning Muslim festivals, which will lead to violence. But we have that in Los Angeles, with organized attacks on ICE facilities. These illegals will only bring more hell down on their heads. Another Alcatraz is planned out on the prairies and nobody is denying the nearly incredible improvements in public safety and cleanliness it entails, you’d really have to see it. Nothing much else except the paid anti-Trump material.
California reaper.
(2nd hottest known pepper.)
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This is the telegraph sounder, now attached to a hollow box to enhance the volume. At this time I’m determining the minimum voltages to keep the relay working. I could not find any markings on it, but most are 12 volts. This one will require at least 9 volts and solenoids are notorious for chewing up power. There are no wires attached, it is meant to be a portable demo to attract attention. I just know there is an Arduino sketch that can operate this thing. None will be quite what I want.
One of the challenges is to avoid the use of libraries. These are code packets writing by others that most current Arduino sketches (their word for small programs) now must “include”. The problem is, they are invisible and all too often written by the unqualified. They are definitely not reuseable code as claimed.
The sounding box will not use the relay to conduct a larger current, rather its clicking sound is the goal. This means just two connedtions are needed, but we need to go a couple steps further. One involves my tendency to add LEDs to any leg of a demo circuit that may or may not have power. This box is planned to have three. One when power is connected, whose true purpose is to help ensure power is not left on. Batteries cost money. The second is switched to allow a silent mode, and a third to indicate there is incoming in either mode.
This led to an oddball discovery. The standard red LEDs are, I think, 5mm or something, the point is they fit snugly through a cleanly drilled 3/16th mounting hole. I reached for my spare drill bits to find I have no 3/16ths left. Instead, I have almost a dozen 11/64ths which don’t work for this. Some mistake has been made. (No sweat, they are good for pilot holes.) This lighting arrangement is experimental, since I have read there is a limit that small DC voltages had travel down thin wires, and this sounder is powered from the sending key. I may need to amp the signal, which is good because I’ve been needing an excuse to build that kind of power circuit.
Later, I read through several Arduino “telegraph” sketches and as thought, none of them use proper programming techniques. Hell no, that would make the code adaptable to what you want. Most of the coding was stilted to do one thing only, such as consider a key press less than a certain timing to be a dit. This, folks, is where your idiot class comes from. None of the code had the alphabet where it belongs, in an array. Some had strange layers of constants I even found one that could read text but not the spaces between words.
A rare storm from the east confirms my shingle wall is weatherproof. It was a blasting wind from a direction normally associated with hurricanes. Closer examination of the feed tray on the brad nailer shows there is a slot for nails up to two inches long. At that length, it’s wishful to hope the nails won’t twist and warp into the wood. So I got to thinking maybe that is what is supposed to happen when attaching things just like these shingles.
I noticed that gap along the wall so I’ll invest in a tray of the longer brads to see if they do poke through. In this instance, the crookeder the better. That’s slang for more crooked, but in this age of politicians, crookeder is more connotative. The nails are 18 gauge, so they are more like long wires. The ones holding the telegraph box here are only 7/8ths but the box is glued tight.
The good news is ai scored this handful of drill bits for $7, including the two half-inch nut drivers shown here. These are the the star bits that usually come as stubbies that fall out of your drill every time. Aha, half are the rare Roberson’s that are favorites for electrical work because they will hold a screw on the bit for one-handed situations.
Early afternoon at the dog pound to drop off my food donation, the whole staff was different. That’s odd, and the old staff were just getting used to me. This time it was some gourmet dry food with chicken “as the main ingredient”. While at the store, I looked at the most expensive brands of dry dog food. It was brands like “Wilderness” at around $3 per pound. Some pets eat better than we do. This morning I had a bowl of chopped veggies, fried in butter and cream, because that’s what suited my appetite.
Two small health issues I am bound to report. One, you bet some insect bit me good behind the shoulder, right where I cannot reach. How do they know? And this mornings physio shows there is a rather narrow range in which I get any benefit. Home exercise follows the same poor pattern for me, that is, too little is subtheraputic, too much causes fatigue. They have me stretching my whole back over these huge “beach balls” I call them. They pull everything taut, not just the problem lower muscles.
And, they put me on the bicycle. As always, I find this effortless. Even at my worst times since 2003, I could always ride my bike. I still have the unit I bought last August, maybe time to dig it out again. I should have remembered that when I drove to Tarpon y’day.
In the news, it seems the CIA hired the British in 2017 to tap Trump’s phone so if caught, they would not be prosecuted. But the day after Trump was elected, the head Brit quit and now he’s talking. Five States join Tennessee in calling out the National Guard to enforce immigration law. The Democrats scream foul, but as long as the soldiers remain under State and not Federal command, let them bellow. I suspect in a few weeks Trump will offer another voluntary deportation for those who didn’t listen the first time. Mind you, Trump has also blocked some funds to Universities for anti-semitism, and here I thought the schools were bastions of Free Speech.
ADDENDUM
In the entirely predictable feminist backlash to the Sweeney ads, social media is bombarded with photos of ugly fatsos, most in impossible poses. The pictures are revolting and I will not post any here, but my favorite comments are not problem. Here goes, just imagine an immensely fat over-30 female-like jabba, and read these.
The crane to hoist her up is just off camera.
To have great jeans, you have to be able to fit into them.
When she went to take a dump, the toilet ran away.
One edge of her passport photo, it says continued on next page.
That poor innocent yoga mat.
What they're doing to this wildebeest is horrible. Where's PETA?
Let's see her get back up.
