Scoping out the neighborhood

I’m getting interested in some digital hardware projects. I’ve got plenty of supplies from over the years.

To really get into it, I need to repair my oscilloscope. I believe it will cost about $1000 to repair it and calibrate it. I used to work at a company that has calibration and repair as one of their core services, so since they’re close, they’d be a good place for it. I’ve also got a USB logic analyzer. The manufacturer doesn’t exist any more and it only runs on Windows XP. I can run the XP in a virtual machine, but I might be able to get a dinosaur laptop that could be more convenient.

I’ve looked around and a comparable scope is a lot more than $1k. There are some scopes less than $1000, but they aren’t nearly as capable as what I have.

I’ve got a few different things I can do. One of thing in my toolbox is a Xilinx FPGA starter kit. I haven’t really done more than open the box and play with the design language. I also have an Arduino that is idle, a temperature gauging chip and a few other Atmel AVR processors.

On an unrelated topic… I’ve been wanting to clean my house’s gutters. I was texting a friend and found out that he and his dad have started a gutter cleaning business. My friend said that they would come by soon to give a quote.

There’s more than enough ways to spend money….

Taking over and other notes

I went out and looked at my morning glory today. It’s taking over my dome. I just wish it would start blooming. It’s got gorgeous big leaves. I took some pictures but haven’t looked how they came out. The leaves were wet so that might help the images seem a little more interesting.

I’m thinking of buying a Moto X2. I have to decide whether the $300 is worth spending to get a better GPS. The specs say that the Moto has more GPS standards that it supports than my Galaxy S3. I need to look at more reviews, but one forum and people criticizing the S3 and praising the Motorola phones. Some of the people in the forum were confused and thought that the question was to find a more accurate GPS which doesn’t make much sense, but other people understood correctly that he was asking about reliability and not accuracy. I’m not able to trust the old phone for going on trips because it drops signal way too easily and takes forever to get it back. I’m hoping to keep my current phone in my car without a SIM for the purpose of its camera. Nobody has anything good to saw about the Moto X2’s camera.

I was trying to edit the previous Journal article on deviantArt to fix a few typos but Fella woouldn’t let me. I send a support request, so hope it gets solved soon. Here’s my main gallery: http://sesquicentennial.deviantart.com/gallery/

Tomorrow is the first day of me not taking any classes. (In other words, classes start tomorrow and I won’t be taking any.) I’m not sure how long the library access will stay live.

I was listening to a cooking program on NPR this afternoon. It was striking how much the show host was including wine as an ingredient or giving the type of wine that goes best with the dish. It was really enjoyable to see how enthusiastic she was and swift on her feet to answer questions and describe fairly intricate dishes from memory.

I’ve got 7 containers of crushed tomatoes in my freezer last night. I put up about 15 tomatoes yesterday. There are 7 or 8 on the vine that are close to being ripe, so I might harvest a couple more tomorrow. I haven’t made soup in forever and the tomatoes would be a good ingredient, or perhaps to make pasta sauce too. I was thinking today to go searching thru the local libraries’ catalogs to find some new cookbooks. The radio program inspired me to get creative. I have a PLAC card so that I can borrow books from any public library in the state.

I had an incident yesterday. I was leaving the gym and when I got out I had a tire that was completely flat. At first I didn’t think I could take off the lug nuts but I thought about a better way and took off the lug nuts. A guy that was exercising outside came out and helped a little. I had a problem getting the tire off the axle. I ended up calling the roadside assistance service from my insurance.

The service guy pulled up on a motorcycle and had an electric drill to quickly tighten the lug nuts. He showed me that I could have fixed the tire without his help… I just needed to bang the flat tire’s rim with the spare tire. It’s an example of me not thinking outside of the box to figure out how to use the tools I had to solve a problem. Today I had dad show me the right place to put the lift for the car. Yesterday I was too close to the wheel and broke a plastic clip on part of the fairing below the wheel. Now I know where to put the lift next time.

So, several good things happened yesterday that seemed to be God’s help. I parked the car facing north, which I usually don’t do. This meant that while I was waiting for the service call to come, I wasn’t baking in the sun. Also, because I was parked that way, the tire was immediately visible as flat and I didn’t have to start driving off to realize the tire was flat and possibly damage the wheel or tire worse. In addition, while changing the tire, I saw the screw that punctured it and it was in the middle of the tread which should be an easy place to repair.

Where is Trump going to send his immigrants

For some people, Donald Trump’s promise to deport all of the illegal aliens sounds like a great idea. Their thought is that these people are criminals (if only because they’re here illegally) so why not send them back to where they came from?

I’ve been thinking about that, the idea of deporting 11+ million illegal immigrants. It seems completely an un-fulfillable promise shot down by the simple question “Where will these people go?”

Suppose we determine (not sure how) that, say, 2.8 million of these people came from Mexico. Do you really think that Mexico would allow us to drop off that many people at the Juarez and Tijuana border crossing and welcome them home? Any country that could be the destination for the deportations would be foolish to allow them in. Mexico doesn’t have room for all of these people. Guatemala doesn’t have a place for all these people. Any other country that we would try to deport them to isn’t going to let them in either.

It seems to me that the realistic outcome of deporting all of the illegal immigrants is that they immediately transition from being immigrants to being refugees. Where will they go? I can imagine big internment camps. Instead of feeding themselves, they’ll be the responsibility of the state and federal governments to feed. Instead of being responsible for their own medical expenses, suddenly, they’re not responsible for anything.

The proposal doesn’t stand up to even the simplest attempt at logic.

Where are these people going to go?

Traveling to peace

This past week I decided to stop working on the library science degree.  A big reason was that I don’t have an answer to the “what do you want to do with the degree?” question. However what I want to do without the degree is also a good question.

Today I went with my family to Green Bay. My nephew is getting married tomorrow. Sunday we’ll drive back to Fort Wayne.

There was a horrible wreck on I-69 yesterday.  I was held up over an hour. It was fortunate in some sense that the car burned up where it did because it was possible to bypass the fire by taking an exit ramp and immediately re entering the interstate. Certainly it was a horrible day for the driver’s family so my complaints about not getting to give my speech at toastmasters seem a little petty.

I’m really negative on watching broadcast tv. I like the public tv station and occasionally 3abn but I’m more ok with watching videos from YouTube.  I guess I have more control on the phone. My Sony smart bluray player has interesting video content.  Thanks to Amazon prime there’s a lot to choose in addition to the big selection that the bluray player offers for free.   The bluray player plays Pandora without any ads even though I don’t pay the ad free subscription.

I found PRX remix on the local public radio app which is really cool but it can be just as engrossing as tv.  Also there is always something new starting so it’s always changing.

Cool thing I realized today is that using my phone as a radio doesn’t use up my data plan too quickly. PRX Remix is really appropriate for that. I can bring along my ECOXGEAR  bluetooth speakers and be able to not worry about traffic noise overwhelming the speaker in the phone.

Transcending tricksy reading

I was just glancing over this paragraph and my vision played a trick on me. It comes from IUPUI’s website.

The Office of the Vice President for Information Technology has steering committees in place to help develop strategies and establish priorities for shared administrative and academic systems. The Oncourse Priorities Committee has specific responsibilities for ensuring thoughtful and timely decisions regarding priorities for Oncourse, IU’s online collaboration and learning system, and for recommending policies to guide its effective use. In light of next.iu.edu, the OPC will also provide guidance to the Learning Technologies Steering Committee regarding any future selection of a new learning management system for Indiana University. Below is a list of current committee members:

After glancing at the document, I was certain that I saw the word “transcend” somewhere in it. When I looked it over repeatedly, I found that “transcend” was not there at all.

Perhaps this is along the same line as the mistakes that can be present in eye-witness testimony. One can remember an event that might have taken only a fraction of a second. Over time the event will gradually shift from being a movie to a short story. This short story can be adjusted by people asking questions or reinforcing story facets with feedback and positive reinforcement. Talking with another witness can confound ones memories with the other person’s memories so that both are wrong.

One specific example of this is in police investigations. The police (for the most part) don’t try to manipulate the witness, but they have an effect by asking some questions and not others. Also, they can give reinforcement to certain details with their comments by thanking the witness for their information. In some situations, such as with children, these adjustments are very hard to avoid.

The movie and short story feel equally true, but after a while they won’t match the actual events that happened. As the short story then turns into a sound bite, the eye witness can be wrong, sometimes in catastrophic ways for the plaintiff defendant.

Toastmasters

I’ve been looking for a new social group to belong to. I’ve thought of writing clubs and chess clubs but I haven’t got very far beyond that. I found some writing clubs in Auburn, but they meet on Tuesdays and I’d rather go to an event in Fort Wayne Tuesday evenings.

A friend suggested looking into toastmasters. I had heard of them several years ago, but never went searching for a group.

After the second prompting, I went online and learned a little bit about it. There’s a group that meets Thursdays in Fort Wayne that fits with my schedule really well. They practice public speaking and leadership skills.

The meeting was fun. People were a little bit more formal than I’m used to, but after a little bit it didn’t seem out of place.

We had three people speak as well as some table topics where people give impromptu one minute speeches. The person giving the topics asked if I wanted to answer a question which I did.

The topic I chose was about vanity and how often does one look at oneself in the mirror. I said that that has been a problem because sometimes I leave the house not composed well. I don’t look in the mirror as much as I should have. A couple of times that’s been embarrassing for example, by buttoning my shirt wrong for example. I then did a little non-sequitur and talked about how I look in the mirror a lot when I’m driving.

The one comment the evaluator made was that I said “um” a few times. I asked how to improve that and they suggested to just pause when I don’t know what to say. That sounds like something I can practice.

The toastmaster that evening was dressed really sharply in a white suit and black tie. He was really funny. One topic he shared through the evening was trivia about the movie Casablanca. Since I hadn’t watched it before, his suggestion was to rent it, so I’ve got it by my DVD player waiting to watch.

I’m planning to go back next week and bring an application form. Since they meet every week, I’ll be able to add it to my routine and learn some new skills.

No accident here

I had a little extra excitement driving up from a doctor’s office yesterday. It was getting toward rush hour and the interstate was pretty busy.

There was a large group of cars merging on the next on ramp so I got out of their way by going to the middle of three lanes, thinking I’d be safe. However, another driver merging in apparently decided they weren’t going fast enough so he went to pull into the center lane too!

I don’t think he saw me (or even looked) because he didn’t back down from going into my lane. We were almost aligned so I’m grateful I saw him moving in.

I popped over to the third lane where the really good thing happened: there wasn’t anyone near me in that lane for me to cause my own accident.

I wanted to do some road rage and chase the person, but when the green car drove off speeding, I didn’t chase him and just noticed that he had a special license plate. I have had some bad experiences with people having that plate, so it is hard not to use it as a confirmation that they are all rotten drivers.

Thinking about the incident in bed, it was challenging to not obsess on what almost happened. A little prayer and noticing that there wasn’t any accident when it could have been a really bad multi-car pileup, I was able to let it go.

So, the score is zero accidents, one negligent driver and a grateful accident-free driver.

Positives

I get really frustrated with myself when I notice the negative or put out a dark side of something. It’s not a quality that I want to keep.

It’s tempting to try to delve back into the past and figure out where it comes from. I can get all the insight I want, but insight isn’t going to change me or help me improve.

By FutUndBeidlIt’s more useful to see when it is popping up and try to change.

One of the fellowship’s principles is that ingrained traits like this aren’t going to go away on their own. I can be completely ready to do something different, try as best as I can, and still put out the negative words that I’m trying to move away from.

I’m trying another way and asking in prayer to act on the opposite principles. Perhaps I need hopefulness and optimism. Since I’m not making progress on my own, this seems like a good idea.

An opportunity to avoid putting out negative thoughts is to try to avoid chiming in on the two big U. S. Supreme Court decisions this week. It’s a very divisive subject and I don’t know how to say anything healing or unifying about it. It’s really tempting to point out this idea or reference some explanation that seems logical to me, but I’m still just another wind chime.

Original image: Arrows showing up. By FutUndBeidl [Image license]

Zometool

A few years ago I bought the toy zometool. I bought a lot of different pieces from different collections and now I have more than I’ll ever need. Zometool is really cool because it lets you build things without worrying about “forcing” things to fit. If a piece fits where you want it, then it fits exactly.

A shape

Put together without a plan

This construction was just put together by me picking a few struts and then extending them until they could close back on themselves. This is a hint at the wide variety of shapes zometool lets you create-the opportunity to be creative is endless.

A bunch of nodes

A bunch of nodes

The nodes that the struts are attached have 3 shapes of holes. Triangular that take yellow struts, rectangular that take blue struts and pentagonal that take red struts.

To me the math behind the design of the nodes and the lengths of the struts is very cool. Each color of strut comes in 3 lengths. The ratio between the lengths is the golden ratio (\phi).

One of the properties of the golden ratio is that \phi^ 2 = \phi + 1.

So, if I have one piece that is the golden ratio longer than the second, I have a strut with length 1 and \phi. The next longer strut would be \phi \cdot \phi = \phi + 1. That means if I want the equivalent of the next longer strut, I just need to add one of each of the two lower lengths.

Going Gluten-Free with Xanthan Gum

I cook gluten-free. My sister, some nephews and nieces and I all have negative reactions to gluten.

One thing that’s frustrating about gluten free cooking is trying to make dishes that need flour. Gluten glues flour-containing products together so that they have body and don’t collapse and are fluffy.

A gluten-free recipe doesn’t have that available.

The way I solve that problem is to add either xanthan gum or guar gum. They are sticky and help hold things together. I’m pretty generous with how much I use, so my recipes end up costing more if you’re counting such things.

bottle of xanthan gum

One of the brands of xanthan gum available.

Yesterday and today I had been making cupcakes with my Great Grandma Lake’s recipe. It is a very fragile recipe. It is not very forgiving of mistakes. Although it is totally not PC, when my grandma would make cakes with the recipe that failed in some way or another, we would call them cripples. A sign that it is a hard recipe is that even after years of making the recipe for holidays, she still often made cripples.

The first time I made cupcakes several years ago, everything was cool. It seemed to work like a regular cupcake recipe. Today and yesterday, not so much.

I made a bunch of mistakes. The first batch didn’t have any xanthan gum and the cupcakes collapsed before they were done cooking–it was awful — a few ended up in my stomach but most went in the trash.

Today’s batch went better. But here is where I learned something….

The first pan of cupcakes today fell pretty badly. The second pan was a little better and the third was pretty close to normal. As the batter aged and I waited for the first pans to cook, the batter got thicker and thicker which correlated with the cupcake’s falling less and less.

I have noticed the batter getting thicker when I used xanthan gum to make waffles, but I thought that was just what pancake batter does. Now, I believe that if I let a dish rest before cooking it, I might need less xanthan gum and also the recipe will act more like it was made with whole-wheat flour from the start.

So, in summary, my conclusion is that when I make a dish with xanthan gum, I should let the dish age for 20-30 minutes for the xanthan/guar gum to begin to be sticky and then start cooking.

Here’s the recipe for the brave and curious Grandma’s Cake. The recipe gets really dry if you overcook it at all. I use a lot toothpicks when I’m cooking this.