One year ago today: December 4, 2024, parsley for JeePee.
Five years ago today: December 4, 2020, invaded by MicroSoft.
Nine years ago today: December 4, 2016, a successful failed audition.
Random years ago today: December 4, 2021, the Reb sat me down.
Dr. Phil has the cure for Type 2 diabetes, but it is a limited time offer. But I don’t like honey, so I’ll have to suffer. She’s a cool morning, perfect for French toast, and so should you. Arduino coding has followed my usual pattern of getting left behind once I know I can do it. This means my code is not all in one spot, meaning I can’t find it easily. I spent the early morning flitting about on-line to see what had changed with Arduino. The on-line tutorials, mainly, have become much better, likely due to competition. Years ago the instructions were so bad it took an hour to set up the IDE. But I did it, every painstaking step of the way. Could be maybe why that’s how I find the tutorials so easy.
Here’s a clip I made for you to demo the process. There are now cameras on the market that claim to be made for vlogging. I’m in the market, as the old Polaroid used here is on it’s last legs, the internal battery won’t hold a charge more than 30 seconds. The camera records video in .AVI format (audio-video interlaced) which is not compatible with Movie Maker and cannot be converted. I take the video, play it with VLC (which you should be using) and take snapshots to use with Photoscape to title and make into the many GIFs you see here. This process takes just a new minutes.
And that is an important trade-off. Fancier cameras, unless you have excellent enough talent, require more post-editing. So I could get such a camera (camcorder), but you would see fewer videos which are more out of date. You’ve seen this effect if you view other blogs. They have one good production every few days. There is also the challenge most bloggers cannot meet—original material interesting enough to keep readership. My source of material is me, which must meet that standard to get as many daily hits as I do.
There are other considerations that affect production. These new cameras lack a viewfinder. Many are too bulky to get into a shirt pocket. Avoid specialty cables or batteries. When you add up the flaws, you’ll see why I’ll opt for shorter, less clear videos, that can be rattled off in time for my second coffee of the morning. This home-made gadget is simply to scribe a line down the center of any wood that fits between the pegs, which is likely obvious if you’ve done any of this woodworking. The purpose is I’m experimenting making a wider model.
I am checking out these "vlog" cameras this week, as the Polaroid is about done. It won’t focus right, but I will dismantle it to see if the battery can be replaced first. Will I get a special camera? Hmmm, not an easy question now that you know there is such a fine balance between the cameras that get used and those that gather dust. Here’s another factoid not found in the manual, if your substrate on the laser etcher is light enough, the heat from a nearby cut is enough to cause convection currents strong enough to move stuff around on you.
This is a quick look at the house with the crews working round the clock. I cannot imagine the amount of work they’ve put into that place.
Reykjavic Maritime Museum.
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I made another coffee run and scored two pallets, both junkers of the sort some city folks seem to like. Throw in some gasoline and I’m out $83 in one hour. These are saw-thru pallets, I call them, there is no attempt to maximize the pieces. Just cut them away with the saber saw. That will have to wait, I told you how resting up never quite works like it used to. December is also backup copy time, which takes a day. This year I’m sending the really important files, like this blog, away for safekeeping. It’s admitting that every year could be my last.
The only pics I have to show for this excursion are the pallets. I know, life has come to this, just you don’t go blaming it on me. If there was a lady fun to be with over a 50-mile radius of here, I can assure you we’d be having all the fun in the world. Instead, it looks more like pallets have taken over many of my afternoons. There is much to be said for pallets. They don’t sass, they don’t cost much, and they have (at least) a latent understanding of the role they are expected to fulfill. And don’t hand me that crap about not knowing where to look unless you can provide a list of places I have not looked, pal.
Looking for pallets is easier. You can skip over the bad ones without social repercussions; the newer ones have an average of eleven fresh, workable pieces, many of which have only been nailed once. There are two pallets today, one new, one middle-aged. I’m feeling a bit better, let’s see if these puppies can make something of themselves.
eBay is acting up, detect Firefox as a bot. And, being eBay, there are no instructions or chats to provide a fix. I learned from this that Javascript can be disabled selectively and I’m now attempting that—but good luck trying to get any straight answers on-line. I warned the world they were heading here thirty years ago. A system where a single glitch by some half-tard can crash a global operation. The funny part is these techs believe they are the cutting edge and if you spot it as the noise it is, why you are out-of-date. I first encountered this attitude with IBM people back in the early 1980s, when I used Apple gear exclusively.
Now all these years gone by and their crapulence has become the standard. IBM seemed to lack any standards or guidelines and not that lack has become the standard. They would defend themselves by saying others were the problem, that they had not learned “first principles”. Funny, to use Apple, none of those so-called principles were needed.
My conclusion is that eBay let another GenXer mess with their system. Let them fix it, since they are losing money, which should get their attention. While it could be a problem over at FireFox, my warning still stands. FireFox has no incentive to fix it, so it remains an eBay problem. Exactly the scenario that will bring so much grief to these people when there is nobody left who knows how to do the work manually.
ADDENDUM
Today I have a tale from the trailer court, this happened the summer before I turned 14, and it is time for the world to know. At this moment, I am having a heart problem, so why not tell? The story is known, that one summer in scout camp, Brock and I got caught in a tent with two older French girls. The Scout buddy system was in effect so we always worked in pairs, and the troop was sent to the beach for the afternoon. This meant crossing through the “tourist” part of the park, where I spotted the gals, who were 14 and 15. One was shy, the other a bit bolder, the important thing here was they were camping alone—this was quite possible in the old “nice” America.
A bit of perspective here. My assigned buddy was Brock. But unlike Brock, I had been playing in a band for two years and was far more opportunistic about females in my age group. I got us into the tent, but unbeknownst to us, an afternoon storm came up and the troop was recalled. Two buddies missing set off a massive search and before long a scoutmaster head came through the tent flap, ordering us back to camp. We were giving a choice of being expelled back home or running the gauntlet. (As this episode made us heroes, we chose the gauntlet.)
The question remains, what actually happened in that tent? The girls were Cajun and spoke no English but it was not necessary. Brock was no help, to this day he does not fully accept that women love sex—but only if it is on their terms. I, of course, took the prettier one, they were both wearing pajama tops and panties. Mine kept reaching to take hers down but the shy one was not quite ready and kept stopping her. Trust me, they had perfect bodies.
So I talked them into getting into their sleeping bags and taking off their panties underneath, which they clearly thought a delightful idea. Mine motioned me to crawl in beside her, lifting the corner so I could see everything but Brock stood transfixed. He was chickening out. I had my swim trunks off by now and got in beside her, examining everything with an attention only possible at that age. The French girl was by now just wild with excitement and had a grip on me, about to show me what to do. What could go wrong?
Brock panicked. He ran outside the tent and was instantly spotted. I barely had time to get my trunks back on before Sarge had me by the throat, hauling me outside. He saw both French girls mostly naked and never bought my story that we had ducked inside for shelter from the storm. I was a moment away from paradise, only to be confined to camp for the duration.
Years later, Brock explained. Back then it was well-known in small towns that if you were “caught” with a girl, you were forced to marry her. The one Brock had, who I mentioned was undefiled, was just not quite that pretty. He thought if I “did” mine, he would be tagged guilty anyway and it would be shotgun time. Trust me, there were a lot of people back then who believed that and probably still do. That also explains why he didn’t just wait a couple minutes (that’s all) until I was finished. Thanks to him, we both got nothing.
