One year ago today: October 16, 2024, not really free . . .
Five years ago today: October 16, 2020, says he’ll fire everybody.
Nine years ago today: October 16, 2016, I play every note.
Random years ago today: October 16, 2011, I encounter Calibri.
Noticing a new bunch of computer documentaries, I looked at the ones that had display lights (computers that had light bulbs as output). That includes filament lights from the 1940. The computers were wired series of relays. So there I am in the kitchen making pancakes at dawn and wow, what is that racket? I had left the narration on just loud enough to listen down the hallway when they activated a bank of relays. What a noise, almost landed me on my backside. And that computer was using just one bank of relays. It drowned out the narrator.
Then for no good reason, I watched another of those documentaries about airships and how they are always making a comeback. Until somebody remembers there are storms. I used the time productively to solder the circuit board together, with a feeling it is not going to work. But I’ve decided this circuit is the one that gets built until it does.
My compressor gets far more use than planned and it is noisy. I’ve got good neighbors, but I still plan to make something sound-dampening. This creates a trio of problems to start, not counting how I was very disappointed with the “rock wool” material on the front bedroom which performed pitifully. The new challenges are:
1. The box is semi-permanent and can cause overheating.I considered a design that boxes in just the compressor (and not the tank) but I know my boxes and that is both underkill and overkill. I’ve decided to try for a base that baffles the noise and line the box with thrift store blankets. I’m looking for some reduction, not the wild claims I see on-line. Reading other tech material says the noise is largely due to air flow disruption. So I in fact, need a silencer. I read about mass loaded vinyl. If you call a rubberoid material by that name, you can charge $400 a roll for the stuff.
2. Most boxes block access to the fittings and the all important drain cock.
3. The blueprints lie, the boxes are complicated to build right.
BWAAAA-ha-ha, the axe has fallen over at DEI headquarters—NBC has canned 150 of its “race-based” reporting staff. That makes for a cultural shift over there. It’s less than a tenth of the news team, but it cans the entire pro-Asian/Black/Latino/Queer departments. And is another stage in the entire failure of that movement. It’s a shift back to merit-based promotions.
I did not notice the dead silence and fell asleep in my new leather office chair until 2:20PM. To find silver at $54.10. As for money, you heard about the sale of Dominion voting machines last week? The machines are still used by over half the States—and the company is now owned by a Republican. The other side is apparently quite worried the machines will be used for the fraud they said was impossible when they owned the company
Then, there is MicroSoft, deliberately making a few hundred million computers obsolete by trashing Win 10. I still wish to live long enough to see that company in the dirt, I cannot imagine where computers would be today if MicroSoft had been reigned in early.
Since I awoke off balance, I grabbed the bass and played some guitar riffs. There are a few dozen sites that claim to teach the best or most popular or most impressive bass lines of all time—and they follow a pattern. All are really guitar riffs played on a bass. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but in my opinion they emphasize the wrong aspects. Bass is, to me, not fancy high-speed riffs. Yet it should be played with a different attitude depending on the tune. I don’t play Jimmy Buffet the same as Charlie Daniels.
But there are riffs fun to play and today’s choice is the middle part of Lauper’s “Time After Time”. The ends drag along, so for duo arrangement, ace that middle part full of guitar arpeggios and it can be a crowd pleaser. I do the slow parts with double-stops. But the other stuff, boring but it can be spiced up. Like Jackson’s “Beat It”, the guitar riff can be faked throughout the song and actually sounds better (to me) without the disco-feel.
If I had one blanket criticism of the way these non-bassists play the riffs “wrong” it is the guitar techniques of hammer-ons and pull-offs. Except on the open to 2nd or 3rd frets, I find slides work better. Here’s a good time to remind you of my definition of a superior bass player. It is a man who can play 32nd notes—but doesn’t.
Drone-watched blueberries.
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I’ve got that cereal dispenser from Agt. R (who has disappeared to Brookesville) and it has a large plastic tube I’ve been eyeing for my often put-off DIY seismometer. It has to be so sensitive that a casing is needed to prevent air currents. I could not think of any way to make the apparatus stay put inside the tube, I won’t get into it, but this is one of those projects I’ve thought about for unbelievable hours. And I may have blundered into a solution.
I was in the shed until after dark, you get to share the event, vicariously. I built a cedar box from that last pallet. It was a disappointment, for the wood was so dry and brittle, all I can use it for is a utility box. Sure did smell great being sawn and drilled. Part of the stalling problem with the planer is solved. It cannot be used at the same time as the compressor kicks in. I have the wire for a dedicated circuit. The shed is 30A so I may be getting near the limit.
Measuring out the box for that compressor says I need a trip into town for heavier duty lumber. The grey saw has already settled into the soft floor of the scooter shed, remind me to shore that up now that we know it is going to work well enough. I could hear the squirrels chattering in the dusk, they have not yet found a way, but the birds seem to know that and will feed away a few feet away knowing the score. It was a pleasant evening to be out there, hot showers always feel better taking off a layer of work dust or grime.
It appears the government in Illinois is deputizing illegals. Please, let one of those fire the first shot. Wierdly, the Democrat party, who backed Fetterman thinking they could easily control him, is now seeking ways to get rid of him. This Bolton who spearheaded lawfare against Trump could be facing 180 years in prison. The largest Tokyo metal dealer has halted trading of small gold bars for a month. (Line-ups of five hours were normal.)
You got a potential feeding frenzy over the physical metal. Silver bars have been difficult to find for some time now. Remember how the stock markets have halted trading before to protect their insiders. Some 175,000 Americans have now applied for those 10,000 ICE jobs.
ADDENDUM
The computer documentaries, though containing no new info, were a blast. I first programmed a computer (on paper) when I was 17. This is not a lapse in my past, I was the first of anyone in my home town to touch a computer. And nine years later, when I joined the phone company, I was the only person on staff (of 15,000) that had ever even seen a computer. (Of course, four years later, everybody was the experts they remain to this day—and all their kids are whizzes, and chess champions, too.)
After studying logic gates and building working circuits a little, my opinion has become that all programmers would benefit from knowing how the system works. Trivia, the longest that ENIAC, the first computer, ever ran without a breakdown was 116 hours. I have many triode tubes in my silo, these are the type used on computers, and they soak up a lot of power even when idle. They are amplifier tubes, mostly, but are used as switches because you can switch them to full power and off again very rapidly.
I toyed with idea of building a small computer with some of the tubes—until I found out a one-byte unit would use almost 200 tubes and require a 200W power supply. I read those stats, I did not calculate them. But that was enough to scotch that idea.
