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Danger Glasses

I always liked the idea from (So Long and Thanks For All the Fish? Definitely from the late Douglas Adams, just not sure which book). There were sunglasses that would go from stylish to absolutely opaque when danger was sensed. They wouldn’t save you, but at least you didn’t have to see your own demise. I think they were from Mostly Harmless. I should find the exact quote.

Back to the serious. The Wif’s dog, bring a naughty create like he is, triggers into the fight of fight-or-flight whenever there is another dog. This would make digital blinders a potential miracle, assuming the blinders didn’t freak him out. LCDs could do the trick, see Naomi Wu’s LCD outfit. This then made me start thinking, kinda like a smart mirror build why not…

Build my own digital sunglasses. Just blackout would be easy, that’s just a change of voltage, but what if I did one better. Get some monochrome LCDs, the reflective type, remove the mirror back, and mount each one as eyepieces in a pair of sunglasses. I could have unique, shade shifting, polarized “smart” glasses.

I’ve been having a hard time looking for a decent size, until I found this which looks like it would fit the bill. Add in some biometric checks, and they could respond to my responses. I’ll have to keep looking though. I might also look into what a custom build would cost.

Other items to consider would be what to drive it with, power source, up time, what to display. I should start thinking about that all as well. I could go with the burley sides method, and I’m totally not against it, but something more elegant would be nice. Researching batteries is making me think I’ll want to power it with whatever I can find, and then custom order. I’ll probably need to start by determining the power needs, and go from there. The pain is the more exotic the shape, the more expensive.

I might think about doing a heads up difficult after gutting an OLED or two.

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Three things

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.

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Brew Day

This should be my last extract kit, assuming I don’t screw it up anywhere near as bad as the last one. I don’t like skunking beer enough to set myself up for that big of a fail, as to switch to all grain if I can’t do extracts isn’t going to work.

Right. The Gigawort is assembled, I need to get more bigger wrenches, with a minimum of drips, see wrenches. We’re plugged in and heating the water for a 20 minute steep of some specialty grains. I have my airlock, carboy, and hosing ready. The yeast has been located. Coffee is brewing. We’re doing this.

Water had been heating for about 15 minutes for 2.5 gallons from 65 to 125 so far. Not terrible. And it doesn’t turn the house into a sweltering day in the savannah.

11:12 hit 160. Grains steeping.

I’ve checked the temperature with a candy and a meat thermometer. The candy thermometer is the one that doesn’t match, which is kinda making me angry. What the hell is the point of a candy thermometer if it isn’t accurate. Accurate temperature is the only reason to buy a candy thermometer. TruTemp, I’m giving a very nasty look your way.

11:32 removed the grains and cranked the temperature to 218 per instructions for the Gigawort. Double checked the hopping instructions and realized something I never saw or thought of before. The instructions are calling for .25, .5 and .5 ounces of bravo, cascade and glacier hops respectively. They gave me 1oz packets. I’ve separated out these masses, roughly as I still need to get myself a drug scale, but I’ve never done that before. Another thing that probably caused every beer I’ve ever made to be a little funky.

11:50 its to 2:12 and water’s boiling. Adding malt and first hops.

Got Er3 and Er4 codes. These are dry running and thermostat codes. I’m making the assumption that some of the malt dropped directly on the thermostat, making it think it was running dry or had a thermostat error. This is a good thing it has these checks. It’s a bad thing I have it on my kitchen counter, I’m 5’6″, and I had to stir until dissolved and I could get it heating again. Still preferring it to a gas stove top. I should mark where the thermostat is, and make sure to add stuff a whee slower. Assuming all my assumptions are correct of course.

Back to 200 as of 12:06.

12:11, vigorous boil at 214. Using the lid at a jaunty tilt to contain splashing.

Note to self: get more length and sizes of tubing.

12:35 still a righteous boil with a beautiful smell. I love the smell of beer in the making.

Right on track, I added the dry pilsner malt.

Lid wasn’t jaunty enough. Had a baby boil over. Not too bad though. Caught it early and that’s why I had a damp towel on standby.

Added the last hops and gave em a quick stir at 1:10.

1:14 turned off the heater as I still don’t have a wort chiller, so dropping heat a touch early seemed like a good idea.

Heat dropping fast (ish). Leaving the unit plugged in so I can use it’s internal thermostat. I’ll check the temp every five minutes, or so, to get an idea going for how long it’ll take. I’ll use the weather report temperature for ambient, knowing it’s not right but close. I should think about adding some external monitors as well.

1:18 201

1:26 191

1:39 181

Hmm… This isn’t writing as hoped. Plan two, Go!

Transferred wort to my old kettle, and have gone through two sink fulls of tap water. Once more and I should be cool enough. While I’m waiting for that to happen, I’ve been cleaning up. 2:20 I’ll do the transfer to the carboy and pitch my yeast.

Done, clean and 3:00.

Need more hosing and a wort chiller.

Oh. OG 1.046

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Friday

I finally got the last piece of a puzzle that’s been causing me issues the last few days. The SFTP connection was periodically choking on one project and loosing a file when it did so. This made no sense as everything ran through the same SFTP. Friday it happened to a similar project. This means it’s not the project but the way it connects. I did the last bit of a research and what it was doing was trying to write to the same log file with two different processes at the same time. When this happened, it died a little bit.

Monday was mitigation day. Simplest solution, due to a lack of ability to control the log file, was to write a batch file I call with an External Program step. The batch runs off some WinSCP commands, and Bob’s your uncle.

Now to turn everything back on that I turned off for troubleshooting.

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Change of pace

I got really tired of working on the same project everyday at work. I’ve been taking distractions as they come, but I mixed it up today. I focused on one project to get a done. I’ve now got a workflow for Ricoh Process Director. It’s ugly, but it works. Now to get it extending to other things. It was kind of a double whammy for me though, as this is over of those things I’ve been hesitant to work on as I’m not 100% sure what I’m doing. It’s the good ol imposter syndrome kicking in. Today it was the imposter syndrome getting kicked in the teeth instead.

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Word salad / brain storm

(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)
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Further thoughts

  • Multiple depths?
  • Any particular pattern of row heights?
  • Screw row heights and go with a box method?
  • Haphazard boxes, purpose built or aesthetic built?
  • Painted, stained, or raw wood?
  • Facing, or whatever it’s called when you have with trim for to the edge of plywood, as in I’m not sure if facing is the word I want and I don’t want to look it up?
  • Power integral to the shelves or not?
  • Have an area for the computer? A spare file server?
  • Shelves on door hinges to double up paperbacks?
  • Get back into building the book train idea for the paperbacks? (I had a coworker remind me about that)
  • How much load is this going to as to the wall?
  • Oh yeah… What bling? Lights, integrated speakers, bronze inlays, relief carvings, motorized rails? You know, bling.
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Progress was made

I got far enough into the den to find my carboy, so later this week is Brew Day. It also made be think though, “I need to get rid of this crap”. So a bit of a plan.

  • Desolder all the things. There’s a lot of them, and most of them aren’t needed.
  • Take the closet doors off. They’re not helping, and they take space to open. At a later point they might be replaced with a book shelf secret door. Of course, it should be obvious to anyone, but whatever.
  • Shelves in the garage. This will take a Home Despot run. Probably cheap 1×8 and brackets. I might be able to start with just brackets and use up more of my pallet junk.
  • Start getting rid of the stupid wire racks that I hate so much. Or put them in the crawlspace for deeper storage?
  • Centrally move my worktable. I want to be able to work on multiple sides. Also, putty the living daylights out of it. Come on Peter, rough cut is neat, but a pain to work on. Either putty or some other flattening option.
  • More shelves on the far wall. I think these ones will need to be custom though as I want them to house all sorts of goodness. Beer brewing. Sewing machine. Kegerator? Soldering station. Etc. Cabinet doors wouldn’t be a bad idea either. Another run or three to the Despot. I should relook at Becky Stearns’ video about they plywood shelving.
  • Window box for plants. Inside.
  • Start trimming the bulk metal from my desk. Or incorporate my desk into the sleeves and recycle the hunk of junk.
  • What’s under the carpet? Can I talk the carpet and get to work, or do I need to do a lot before it could be functional?