One year ago today: August 4, 2025, 800 at Costco.
Five years ago today: August 4, 2021, shed-fixing experience.
Nine years ago today: August 4, 2017, Trump okays snooping.
Random years ago today: August 4, 2011, 8 hrs of Arduino, coincidence.
Yep, I am up against truly professional beggars at goFund. I just discovered my first and only donation was from RofR’s brother. I take it my readership is not that charitable the lot, but hey, one of the most redeeming qualities of this blog is that it is free. It was a slow morning, I made key lime pie at 5:30AM. I was busy y’day and it caught up. So, I put on the coffee and set to some Arduino coding. Please read the addendum for what I tested. I am re-learning serial communication.
Guess who texted? Steve, the guitar player that dropped out of the picture last year. He’s moved again and now lives around six miles away. He is aware of my slow recovery, but also that we are an instant band—except I’m a bit rusty on his material. If he’s got gigs, I’ll be back to speed in 48 hours. He added that his new place has space to practice. We have a rehearsal set for Friday, I see now that I’m stuck learning his song list because he will never learn mine to any degree of proficiency. I will the Prez would move back. Maybe next year when house prices collapse?
Right now, I need a day’s rest, which is why I devoted time to that tricky mess called Arduino print commands. These were created by the C+ bunch, and folks, it takes a special kind of stupid to use punctuation marks as control characters when those are an integral part of what normal people are usually trying to print. But, in a sick, sad way, it kind of makes sense. Who hasn’t noticed that geeks, nerds, misfits, and goofs don’t really need that much punctuation to express their thoughts, nomsayn?
We have a rehearsal slated for Friday. Good, I’m a little rusty. I lied down and slept all day, actually a good, refreshing sleep, the kind you want. I composed a demand letter to Caltier, who have not responded. It is in the Reb’s in-basket awaiting approval. Other than that, I hauled out the bass and ran over Steve’s song list. I flunked my word puzzles, meaning I beat fewer than ten champions. Hey, I always beat the champs, the challenge if by how many. Today I lost over the phrase “trail balloon”. Never heard it, never used it. Sounds too middle-management for me.
Tampa reports the Justice Department is stripping citizenship away from people who obtained it fraudulently or behave in a manner contrary to the intent program. Most usually, it is concealing criminal backgrounds. That’s good news but the numbers are pitifully small. Tractor Supply lost millions backing queers and are in trouble again for banning Trump supporters from their parking lots. Some people never learn.
Brit anti-zoo protest.
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Just before turning in last night, I got an e-mail from Canada. I do get them, but always on my private account, so this one stood out. Three or four years ago, I e-mailed my first guitar player, the guy who talked me into standing on stage and holding down a chord while he played guitar. He was already in high school when I met the guy, so I had no idea if he was still around. Yes, and he remembers me. Yes, I once played with the Karroll Brothers band. I even once published their song list as I remembered it.
Today made me old. That was almost 60 years ago. The band was called “Western Union” and one gig we made $44 each. Three times more money than I had ever held at once. I replied, asking for his current song list. I’ll publish it if he responds. It should make an interesting comparison. The bassist and drummer are his brothers. What is it like to have brothers like that? And I think I just found out why we have so many raccoons in this neighborhood.
Felling I had to get something done today, I took down some old boxes that I experimented with scenting the wood inside. No luck but one aroma showed promise. Cloves. But, I do not have a year to wait for results. I know there are oils for scenting aroma balls and products like cedarwood and lemongrass, but I was seeking a shortcut. Patience, m’boy. I cannot kick today’s tired spell and yawning attack, so I ran through Steve’s song list a second time. See, I got it already, and this time I will video the methods.
The [bass] notes are easy, what I forget is presentation, which is a good chunk of my show. If I don’t play on stage, I slowly forget my showmanship extends to individual tunes. You already know about my quasi-famous 4-octave walkdowns and playing backwards. It’s quiet over here, so I’ll mention what it looks like, but no way I give it all away with a video. The walkdown is an illusion and few people know the bass is only 3-octaves. In two of the keys, A and D, there is a spot on the upper neck where the octave matches a lower open string.
The walkdown is an illusion, whereby my left hand continues to move down the neck on one string while I’ve switched to an octave on a higher string. I can execute this flawlessly and it is part of why I tell guitarists not to follow me. The other favorite is also an illusion, playing backwards. I fret one note for the world to see, but my ring and pinky are curled and playing another, or in the same vein, I will fret three strings at once so the onlooker cannot see which one I’m plucking and fretting at the same time. Works fantastic on kids in the audience.
Later, it was Festus time and at least we got a train robbery. And a bad guy that was going to kiss the victim’s wife, gawd no! Great acting by a guy named Holliman who just passed away a couple years ago (age 98). There was a bit of sunlight left so I hauled tools into place and dug part of the post hole to straighten the fence. It moved, to my surprise, so we got 15 minutes of work done today.
Later, I learned there is no hyperterminal in Win11, another telling sign of the dumbing down of computer-users. Redmond doesn’t drop anything until well after its users have become too imbecilic to use it. I know I have it on XP but my last 486 unit needs shop repairs Rather than waste a good evening, I studied some generic serial commands. It is, I think, a lot like learning how to code a basic word processor. Line feeds and carriage returns, nulls, and markers. To think I almost went into this for a living.
ADDENDUM
This won’t mean much to the uncurious, but that’s fine. Such people don’t hang around this blog for long. This is a short printout of something rarely seen, a reading of nothing. If you like learning, stick around and I can explain. I’ve lately been looking at serial data on computers, an old topic where I passed the exam long ago but (surprise) lack the hands-on. The closest thing I have is the Arduino and that is what you see here. It has a feature called “serial monitor” that every expert out there idiotically presumes you understand and know how to use.
If it is data, the bits arrive in single file, so the receiver has to know at least the speed, where to start, and the number of bits per segment. The communication along this single wire is “half-duplex”, that is, one way at a time. Most textbooks, and particularly worse for the Arduno, tend to list and define rather than specify what you need to know—which commands work in both directions without instructions on how to tell the difference. Some would argue this point, but I’m from the camp that says computer commands should be explicit, not depend on invisibles.
COM ports have always been problematical, the computer often chooses the one it likes, some are real, some are virtual. There are only two physical ports, but what you see is connected to port 12. Enter the lasesr etcher, which sometimes likes port 11. You cannot assign the ports or the software becomes non-transportable. There are methods, but in the end the fastest has always been the guessing game. The laser has become a shop essential, mainly for labels, but everytime I switch to the Arduino, I have to find another port.
I usually connect a small sketch (program) that reads one of the Arduino’s “empty” analog pins. These are special pins that can read the “value” of an incoming signal rather than just digital on or off. They are called analog pins, but the reading is still digital. On the Arduino, the reading can vary from 0 to 1024 (which is 2 to the 10th power). The higher the power, the greater your resolution and your cost.
If there is nothing connected to the pin I chose, it “reads” the random static electricity in the air. And that is what you are seeing here, slowed down 500% so you can see it. I don’t know what the numbers mean, probably millivolts or something. I’m only interested in if the port is receiving an intelligible signal. One more quirk, I used the Arduino “delay” command to slow down the display. It is the evil command that not one textbook I know has ever mentioned. You’d think it uses the chip clock to count off a time, then resume.
Nope, it stops the timing pulse entirely. Everything else your chip, or computer, is doing comes to a halt. Most coders never notice because they are only doing one thing at a time, as is the case here. But if you are playing a game and every so often notice the controls get sluggish, that’s likely the cause.
Speaking of games, I saw a video of virtual slot car racing. Model cars equipped with cameras racing around a model track—by remote control. Each car had an operator sitting in a cubicle that resembled a full-size dashboard and windshield. He was driving through what the toy car actually saw, including trees, other cars, crashes, and sound. It was eerily realistic.
