Author: Peter Jones

We went to Archie McPhee’s today, and I totes found some solenoid valves. It looks like one of my next projects is going to be automagic plant watering. Mainly because the Wif and I are terrible at plant care. I’m figuring a reservoir system, so I know exactly how much water I’m liable to dump on the floor. Galvanized nail moisture sensors. Maybe add some LEDs for better lighting.
Now I just need to decide what to grow for foray one.

I dog ear my books to keep my place. It’s one of the reasons I buy my books. I’ve now started doing permanent tagging where good quotes are. The eventual goal being a quote of the day situation.

Clean
Do stuff with the Den
Finish the essay that’s currently in draft form
Cut hair
Trim beard
…adult stuff

Genius. If put him in a list, I’d put him with Gibson or Gaiman. I might be drunk, bit on five romantic notion I identify with Crreedmoor. Hell, I had a (my only) male character in the Secret World named after him.
If only I could get the Wif to read some of these stories.

When life gets me stressed, I think about something important. In this case, it’s brewing.
The gas alcohol sensor can pull down 750mA at 5v, so not even an Arduino can power that sucker directly. I think I’ll get my atmospheric sensor running on the Thing, and fight with the alcohol sensor another day. The power won’t be too hard, basically I just need to make a power supply for both, ideally running off the same wall wart. Then it’s just a matter of chopping down the output from the sensor, probably using a voltage divider. Hell, I don’t even know if I’ll get meaningful data. I’m looking at alcohol, as a gas, in minor concentrations. Do I need this?
Now I’m at a bar. I feel good. I’ve had three cocktails and I’m working on a black lager.
My current thought is about variations on brewing. What can I do to make beer better?
My current thought is about how to add a certain magic. What about adding apple caramel (and yeast) to make the perfect hybrid.

Almost got to doing my brew science joking up this weekend, but…
So the gas sensor is 5v, but the Thing is 3.3v. I wonder if I can just do some really dirty stepping up and down of the voltages. I’m pretty sure this is a bad idea. But… science.
Next. I can’t get the phant server running, and I want more data updates than other people’s data processing wants to handle, for good reason. Like they have a good reason, I don’t. The thing is I don’t know enough about of the tools I’m using to know why it’s failing. I just know it hangs at SSH. Do I want to write my own? I don’t think it should be too hard. Especially as I can claim a lot of security through obscurity.
Back go decision times.

I totes hate trying to enter secure passports on my phone…

It probably doesn’t help that I’m back to working eleven hour days, plus some Saturday hours too. It’s starting to wear me out. Not the work, the thought. I really should get moving on ideas. I think this week I’ll get my sensor package built for the beer and have a way to post the data. I should probably start with just sending it to Sparkfun’s data service. I’ll grab an average temperature, atmospheric alcohol, average pressure and pulse. Post that once an hour based on five minutes of measurements. That’ll work.

I usually do. I’m looking at setting up a phant server so I can get my extreme data logging on for a project or two. The only thing is I’ve been getting some odd errors. Honestly, I’ve been getting lots (relatively only to my prior Linux experience, nothing compared to Windows or OSX) of little odd errors. So I locked my computer up and and had to reboot. When I look up again I’m no longer getting boot up goodness, but whiny swap errors that killed booting. Weird.

It turns out that I managed to encrypt the home drive (good!) but not the swap. Further reading and I find that the encrypted home drive is probably why I’m having these problems. Which might be why I’ve been having all these other stupid problems. Of course that got me thinking of the rabbit hole again. I have no love of package managers. I think they can be good in a pinch, but overall, the pinch they inflict is more pain than good.

Maybe I should look at depackaging my system. Or, (with a visible shudder) going and trying a full LFS build again. Especially if I automated new builds it would be the ideal. A lot more work to build tool chains, but it means I would have a better understanding of whats doing what. It turns out I had a daemon going at all times that was just polling the network for new services. Why? Why is this the default?

If you want something done right, pay a professional. If you want something to meet your exacting and inexperienced needs, do it yourself.

Today nothing morbid though. It’s more of thinking about what I’m doing next. What my goal is. A lot of time, I seem to do the next thing put in front of me. It’s how I went to college. It’s how I got making copies. Hell, it’s how I got every job ever. It’s how I ended up doing what I do for work. In done ways it’s the games I buy, and the hobbies I have.
I think at this point, I’m kind of looking for an end game. When do I declare winning.
Kickboxing, it’s the sorry of the future.