Category: Uncategorized

Time will start to seem weird when I blog. This is because I’ve started to not post things right off, but waiting for a day or so, so I can proof read. This isn’t a hard time but more of an internal guidance memo.

I really need to add a certificate and all that. It’s not hard, just bit something I’ve done yet. I feel guilty I haven’t. I need to get on that.

Amazon and people tracking. While I’m not impassioned about this, it does have me slightly annoyed. They’re a business doing what businesses do, but I disagree with their fairly boilerplate “as long as it doesn’t break or TOS” response. The issue is that every instance of enhanced surveillance has been abused by law enforcement officers before. Allowing them to build their own systems and then turning a blind eye is one thing, but this is a bit more direct. This made think of a fun idea though. Mount a camera that recognized faces, generically that is, and wear it everywhere. Identify each new face a serial number, and then start a spaghetti map of generic people tracking. Where do I see people I’ve seen before? Double down and go walk outside of Amazon buildings during periods of high employee ingress and egress, and you have an interesting, I assume non-TOS breaking, artful counter-narrative. Who watches the (robotic overlord) watchers, indeed.

(forgot to actually publish something like a month ago)

Distributed actuator control and diagnostic sensor network thereof

DACADSNT for short. That’s down right Dickens.

But really, setup an actuator to fiction like a muscle group. Common per rails for all actuators in the limb. Networked daisy chain for communication. Motor drivers world be located at the motor themselves. Limited fault handling at the actuator, think like when you touch something hot that your arm pulls away. Continuous low bit density feedback to the main system. If the cyborgism got large enough, have a way for the same unit to switch from a local controller to an intermediate junction. A promotion mechanic would be good. That or a granularity gradient that changes with usage.

Sensors:

• Current (stall or freewheel)
• Bend on associated levers (is the bone broken or breaking)
• Temperature (an I on fire)
• Loss of signal
• Loss of power (caps to provide one last blip of pain)
• Connection to it’s fellows (did the arm fall off)

This one would be a big project. Literally. Or at least big by my standard.

Imagine a relatively small work table. The work table would only have enough room to solder, or sew, or use a microscope, wire jewellery, 3d print, disassemble something, etc. Now make a work table for each of these things. The work tables would be setup in a loop. At any point, only two tables wild be at the optimum work height, and the rest would be either above or below. By rotating the loop, other tables would become primary.

Major constraints:

• Power rails
• Lighting (work boxes rather than tables?)
• Everything must stay flat. No inverting or tilting.
• As this would be for space saving, it can’t take up too much for space.
• In the home shop, so it has to look cool.

An ellipse would get me more height for my buck. Garage door rails might make for a workable load bearing track. Linkage between the boxes might be a good way to share positioning, support, and power.

I should draw something out and start looking at that linkage.

That’s a little steep for the number of flex sensors I’d want. Other options I’m thinking of, one after another, commission of making the thing I’m concerned about flexing, hollow. That might not be the best idea. Conductive paint under varnish might give a good way to identify a fracture though.

How about an external cable, kept trait with springs, that holds a magnet in the middle of the arm. In the arm itself wild be a hall effect sensor?

If the arm flexes too much, the magnet changes position. Of course, this places more strain on the whole assembly.

Two data files per letter, one with a matrix of data, one for the mailing itself. Right now I’m dumping the matrix into the”repository” and then pulling the individual lines back out and using a couple of character replacements to table them. 2300 records ran fine, though slow, but 4100 a week later choked. Hard. Something like 20gb of dead temp files…

Now then, right now, I’m making each record separately, and concatenating then as they come out, then mapping that file, and then imposing them. This isn’t working.

Then again, when I first found out I needed this solution, it was the afternoon before the first live order. So I’m not too sad.

How to fix this?

1. Get a data file
2. Branch out to grab the matrix
3. Map the matrix into XML
4. Map the data file to XML
5. Trim the head and foot, respectively
6. Combine them
7. Transform them with an XSLT sorted by the key
8. Sort by the sequence number
9. Map the XML
10. Sort the mapped data with what was a matrix as a detail table

This might have it’s own down sides, but nothing as bad as what I have right now.

Today, my fellow peoples, I blog about blogging. Or micro-blogging. Or whatever the kids call digital media today. I call it late. Late, where was it supposed to be and when? No, like the late micro-blogging.

I’m not exactly the hippest cat. I used a series of platforms along the way, and each of them had issues. While this is almost definitely a terrible rehash of most others’ experiences, it’s better that I put them in a list and why I dislike them, though usually I’ll only be taking about the straw that broke the camel’s back.

• Myspace – scrolling text, annoying bands, audio enabled stuff. There are probably more things, but it’s been a while.
• Livejournal – I know, I totally used to lj. I had a couple real life friends, filed a couple other people, realized it was kind of a cathartic mess at times, saw something that made me any about me (I don’t know way it was anymore, so I probably deserved it) on a friend’s journal. I think I scrubbed it on the way out the door.

Oh yeah, none of this is necessarily chronological, or possibly accurate.

• Facebook, how I despitheth the – it was Myspace without unicorns, marquees, or music. As someone who regularly dances with negativity, I was already put off by it. In the aughts. Then, when ever I went to use a service anywhere the fuck else, they wanted me to sign in with Facebook. The Facebook icons on other pages being used for tracking. I didn’t care for any of that. Ooh – we’re going to harvest phone numbers from your phone, we’ll push everyone to use messenger, we’ll get phone manufacturer contacts to make Facebook ununinstallable unless you got your phone. But really, when they got rid of chronological order. When they started prioritizing. When they started activating my agoraphobia. Now the whole big data, Russian thing, not super surprised. I’d recommend anyone that wants to see what’s going to happen someday read more science fiction. And be paranoid.
• Twitter – I actually miss. It’s, currently, a doomed platform. To fix the hemorrhaging of cash, they started prioritizing and loosing chronological order.
• Reddit – but that interface.
• Instagram – the Facebook of food, beer, and selfies. With picture filters even. Chronological order looks like it just slipped it’s digital coil. Not cool bro. Not cool. Which is why I started writing all this down.
• Snapchat – never used it. The things I see from the side of it are annoying.
• Google+ – lolz. First do no matter analysis for why people should use it.
• Periscope – I think that a thing. I’m putting it on the list. I assume it’ll make me sad.
• YouTube? – video blogging I suppose? Weird policies, annoying upload features. I’ll voyeur the daylights out of it, but it has its challenges.

This will be continued, maybe even with a why once I start digging into it a bit more.

I started drawing something up while waiting for a meeting to start. Out was rough, not to scale, and not very enlightening. After that I started thinking more seriously about how to do this. So, as in all things, let’s scope it out.

• Cover stock. Max thickness I can run is 130#, though that’s be a special order. We do have either 100# or 120# on hand.
• Max sheet size of 20.8125×29.5 and an image of 20.1×29.1. Inches of course. We’re not commumeterists here.
• I don’t want to use glue. Glue is droll and so last season. I also suck at gluing things. I also like to feel clever. This is why I’m scoping a beer carrier for my own personal edification, on my vanity blog that’s primarily read by me. I’m kinda conceited that way. And I like it. Hey hey… Am I running short on beer?
• This means tabs. This referring to the above.
• Beer bottles breaking, when full make me sad. To another glue this means there has to be a better of support for every bottle. And waterproofing.
• Six beers would be cool, but I’m totally down for four.

I should start modelling this Friday (Wif’s next Monday).

Rather than wheels, what about clever uses of vibration motors?

Four legs, each with the base position just going below the chassis. Spring load them, and add the motors. By adjusting the vibration frequency and (the vibration equivalent of position, um, the.. dammit) of the motors in relation to each other, the bot, I think, would move in a different direction. It’d have to be on a fairly flat surface. I wonder how it would work with no openings, just vibrations though the chassis itself.

I tore down a Dos Equis carrier. I wasn’t impressed by the build quality or design. Obviously, I’ll long at it from an artisanal view. I think I should design my own from scratch.

replantable