Sunday, September 04, 2005
a fine summer sunday
For me anyway. I've had all I can take from the LSM, totally topped out. Didn't turn on the talking heads this morning, ditto for the broadcast radio. A few nice old records (burned to CD!), some Radio Margaritaville, fiddling with a neat old project, and a bit of writing that has zero social or political content! Got up and made a nice pot of joe, read a few of my favorite bloggers, and then had a kick-back day. The writing went well, kinda long and isn't up to "I'm there", still at the "you had to be there" stage. With my writing skills, it probably won't get much better!
The neat old project is something I fiddle with every now and then when a minor brain fart occurs. It's an attempt to re-engineer a device that currently exists, costs about a half-mil, needs a humvvee to transport it, and doesn't work well at all. A couple of winters ago I spent about a month designing and building a proof-of-principle prototype and was pretty delighted with how it functioned, probably worth spending some more time and money building a manpack version for field testing. Oh, wait! Did a couple of you lapse into a coma? Sheesh, if I continue, some may start begging to have their feeding tubes pulled!
Anyway, when I was bench testing the doodad, it had an extra characteristic when used in free air. It followed me. Knew where I was in 2 dimensions. Be easy to add a bit and have it follow 3 dimensions. Got to thinkin' 'neat toy'! ...all kinds of other applications since it it's an active rather than passive system, whoa! Coma-time!
After feeding the girls and starting supper (chicken and dumplings MY way tonight), thought I'd go see what Rand had to say. He has a funny link to an article about Sean Penn that's worth a giggle. Check it out. Hadn't opened Little Green Footballs today, decided I could take a chance. Been wandering around all day with one of those "Michael, what did you get into now?" smiles on and I kinda like it. Scrolled through rather quickly until I hit this entry. Couldn't help myself. This would be funny if it wasn't so damn miserably true. I did a little editing of the original:
The neat old project is something I fiddle with every now and then when a minor brain fart occurs. It's an attempt to re-engineer a device that currently exists, costs about a half-mil, needs a humvvee to transport it, and doesn't work well at all. A couple of winters ago I spent about a month designing and building a proof-of-principle prototype and was pretty delighted with how it functioned, probably worth spending some more time and money building a manpack version for field testing. Oh, wait! Did a couple of you lapse into a coma? Sheesh, if I continue, some may start begging to have their feeding tubes pulled!
Anyway, when I was bench testing the doodad, it had an extra characteristic when used in free air. It followed me. Knew where I was in 2 dimensions. Be easy to add a bit and have it follow 3 dimensions. Got to thinkin' 'neat toy'! ...all kinds of other applications since it it's an active rather than passive system, whoa! Coma-time!
After feeding the girls and starting supper (chicken and dumplings MY way tonight), thought I'd go see what Rand had to say. He has a funny link to an article about Sean Penn that's worth a giggle. Check it out. Hadn't opened Little Green Footballs today, decided I could take a chance. Been wandering around all day with one of those "Michael, what did you get into now?" smiles on and I kinda like it. Scrolled through rather quickly until I hit this entry. Couldn't help myself. This would be funny if it wasn't so damn miserably true. I did a little editing of the original:
