Category: Uncategorized

As the map is traversed, blocks are built of the screen edge. Each block has a hierarchy of content squares with descriptors, like:
(Tall obstruction, tree, ash, live)
As the block is left further behind, the descriptors drop off, yielding a smaller save file and a dynamic world. Eventually given enough time, what we a tree is now a light post. Add in a transformative option, so as a tree becomes a bush and cascades to differing new.

I’m pretty sure the cider is played out. My official guess is that I didn’t use a hydrometer, resulting in me not realizing the sugar content was low. Dice the sugar content was low, it didn’t have enough sugar to be covered to alcohol, resulting in sour sore juice rather than cider.
So, I need more yeast, I need more juice, I need to use a hydrometer. If I’m on my shit, I’ll wait until next week to get going on it, so I can get my record player cabinet thing from the parents. I’m pretty sure the carboy, and maybe even the bucket will fit in there perfect, which will be doubly awesome when I get to climate controlling. Other items of the day include my needing to “finish” cleaning my room. It could definitely use the work, and it would be nice to get that done with before I add the smell of death down there again.

More of I think a lot about avoiding failure. I tell people where I work that I’m risk averse, sounds significantly better than I’m afraid of failure. Semantics make the rocking world go round.
The stupid thing is I know that I’m blah blah blah. I shouldn’t be worried. I’ve read books on the subject. I recently (within the last year, which is why I don’t have a link handy) read an article about the author’s challenge using their Arduino for the first time. I then recommended the article to others I know with that same particular challenge. I probably have even watched an episode of Donahue on the subject. I still can’t get past it on my personal life, which is laughable as at work I just do whatever needs doing.
Where I’m going with this, is I have an idea.
I’m afraid that I don’t know what I’m doing. This is out of my skill set.
I’ll plan and babystep in. I’ll start reading the literature, I’ll get parts. I’ll do some drawings.
I’ve got these parts, but I still don’t know enough.
I need more training, I should go back to school. If I start now I’ll just waste those parts, think about those three unfortunate transistors and two LEDs. Thankfully resistors are practically bullet proof.
If I don’t start, the parts are a waste. I bought stuff I’ll never use. If I don’t jump in, everything well be for naught.
Then I shouldn’t have bought them. To late to cry over that spilled milk. I should learn enough to not waste these parts, and then not dig myself this hole again. No parts unless I’m sure I know what I’m doing.
And that’s the crux, by instituting a policy of punishment for failure, it’s no wonder that my main failure is never starting. What if I change the discussion? I read about how people give themselves awards and recognition for a job well done. They share their successes in a group. They make a brag book. None of those, well maybe the certificates, sound appealing. I didn’t like elementary school enough to want to do it again.
This is where the idea comes in. Rather than stopping the cost analysis of all the bad choices I make, embrace it and add in the benefit. For reals, monetize my projects around the house. Let’s say I build the Wif a small printing press for $20, a project that is in progress, why shouldn’t I get to capitalize? If I can build something like This, which is $500+, than some percentage of savings is my profit.
This just means I need to better scope my projects, to do build lists and do spreadsheets. It’s not like I don’t do half of this anyway. The only exception I’ll allow is for my labour, which while horrible to do in the real business world, is fine for an unpaid internship with bonuses for success.

Real world example:
I’m making hard cider.

Rough cost to date:
one time
$50 bottles
$20 capper
$90 bucket, carboy, hydrometer, cane thing, siphon…
recurring
$1 sanitizer
$2 water
$25 apple juice
$3 yeast
$1
failed (ie fixed costs that will need to be redone later)
$15 worth of stuff that was supposed to become a cider press

Now then:
This means I have an equipment investment of roughly $160, a recurring cost of $32 and a loss of $15. A sixer of palatable cost being about $10(?) so for 5 gallons would be about $80. Overall them I’m rocking a loss on the first two batches and then a $50 profit per batch. Now all these numbers are quick and dirty, they don’t take into account bad batches, quality plus or minus, real estate, or opportunity costs.
But shouldn’t that be part of my cut? After I get into the black, I should get a percentage of the profit. Any failure is now just amortized over the life span of the project.
I like this.

I took the day off work today as the Wif starts school on Tuesday. We took a trial bus run up, figuring out her commute. We then got breakfast and then went here.
The important thing, and by important thing I mean why I’m writing, is a friend of ours recently posted about how she does her to do lists. I thought her method sounded good for her or many other people. See, when I have small things to do, I just do them. Unless it’s big, then I write it down, then I just wait til I egg something to do, and I grab the low hanging fruit. Otherwise the list is entirely there for the purpose of reminding myself of the smart ideas I had. I have a lot of them. Maybe not all smart, but at least ideas.
So there we were at a geekery bookstore, and it has kits. This is how I ended up getting an awesome alarm clock soldering kit.
This has been written over the course of seven hours and four cocktails three mini shots.

Cider is go! Slowly though. I think it’s probably the temperature as my den gets nowhere near the 75 Fahrenheit listed in literature, though I’ve read cool and slow can give some good smoothness our something. On the other hand the Den of Inequity currently smells of rhino farts. When I do my nighttime gaming, I have to open the window just to be able to breathe.
I was thinking of seeing up some computer fans to blow the gases out the window. This of course would require the window be cracked. As it’s a ground floor window, I ran this by the Wif, and even using the cut stick security bar method is a no go. So… it stinks but is livable. At someone I might look at using some other way to force out the gas or filter it from the air, but not right now. Maybe an expansion chamber, coupled with a bong system? Or if I remember right it might react with copper something something.

This is an incredibly gross oversimplification of the basic process as it stands now, to my knowledge, with no research, and little sleep.
I want to communicate with you.
My system and your system talk back and forth agreeing on two stupidly large prime numbers and their multiple or some other silliness.
Now if the number generator is compromised, without knowing anyone’s numbers it’s an open door.
As technology improves, brute forcing the numbers is easy.
If one of the two systems is compromised, the system is broken.

So here comes the (clever?). What if we only send a password once. Ever. Have it be one stupidly long password, and this password by rules associated with the password changes what hassles to each character. Like h moves up 5, and 3 is free. Once we have this password, we never use it. On each end of the communication, we individually choose whatever big number to mangle the password, we already know the rules and we know what the output looks like for the first block, which would be our stupid long password. So to decrypt, each party just brute forces. I’m sure someone already had done this, who knows, maybe that it’s the way it’s done.

Down with the record
Down with the record

Hahaha. But seriously.

There ain’t nothing but sweat
inside my hand

.
But, no. So I should learn to use Blender so I can model the den. Not for having a meaningless project, but because in running out of imaginary real estate in there. I have a closet, bookcases, computer, shredder, sewing machine, and I still need a proper work bench. I also want to get my vegetable factory going, brewing is going to happen, and I have no idea what else.
Now my faithful readers may be like Peter, you always write that you need to learn to blender, but you never do.  Totally true, my goals usually start in the stretch region which causes me to put it on my to do list and never jump in, mainly because it sounds like a lot of work to do what I’m planning and have to learn what I’m doing at the exact same time. My last learn Blender subject involved physics modeling, in this case I only need to make sure I’m not clipping. I might add detail and light to the scene as time progresses, so as to virtually be able to plan for the feng shui, or, assuming ambition kicks into overdrive, map the sun’s rough path across the sky through the year, varying it’s brightness as well, take the stunted horizon lines as the room is in a pit and then use multiple virtual light sensors to better strange plants. But that is a stretch. I mean seriously, that shit sounds hard.
It also sound dope. Plus one I get everything working right, it should be pretty well transferable to other locations knowing the original qualifications and taking some preliminary measurements.
Maybe a hide-a-workbench.

Every time the Wif’s family is living with us, I migrate my life around. This includes the great bathroom cleaning, work clothes facilitation for the work week, and sheltering in place for my gear. Today when I got home, after only a few short days of normality, I came home to my laundry of having migrated itself.
See, I have my own bathroom, partly to load balance, partly to enable dual showering, and partly to not interfere in her bathroom. As a red blooded American male, I leave my spoiled laundry to languish on the floor, facilitating my occasional need to double dip on a pair of pants or prioritize cleaning based on utility rather than some base characteristic like timeliness or filth level. On the other hand, my clothes, which are totally in a room she had no need to ever enter, and the way they are displayed for me to peruse in seconds, stress her it. I, in the name of peace, choose to acquiesce.
As it is, one of my numerous todos, has been to migrate things that aren’t mine further away from things that are. So I have a closet in the den. It has incredibly useful things like sleeping bags, an unused snowboard, a couple of helmets and a wedding dress. Now admittedly, my blood is probably forever stuck in those button loops on the dress, but that is the extent of possession.
Well that’s getting fixed. I took out some recycling and verified the closet is now accessible. So this stuff is getting taken care of. Soon, my clothes will be happily defended and in a place of my choosing.

The FCC’s decisions to, at a minimum, drag it’s feet on net neutrality is getting on my nerves. In my professional opinion there is no reason why someone should be able to build on the right-of-way without being tagged as a utility. In that note, I “intentionally” went over my phone’s bandwidth quota this month. With Virgin, I’m not getting charged more or shut off, instead I’m throttled. This throttling is kinda bs. Just saying.
I now remember the pain of an internet slowdown.

So the Wif I’d feeding the homeless tonight a delicious dinner… wherever she does that. I think it’s great what she’s doing, but strangers tweak the fuck out of me sometime. I am not the person you want to provide compassion and community.
So tonight I think I’ll get tossing out some recycling and garbage. Unpack my angel and start tearing it down. Once I know what I have, I’ll have to decide on the first augmentation. Guessing I’m going to be replacing the power supply, maybe even start looking at solar options coupled with a battery. I think I want too strap a microcontroller up in her, probably use get as the first protect to use my arduino, after I feel good on the results, get a teensy out gemma out something.