Silicon Valley Redneck

Barnes Wallis, call your office

Just randomly happened across a vid of some Euro-character demonstrating an obscure traditional type of arrow...

... that bounces across the water.  Apparently for shooting at a flock of ducks; if you miss the first duck, the arrow will skip and maybe hit one of those behind it.

It's always something.

Apart from contemplating that new workstation... my laser printer has been giving decidedly poor print quality lately.  Well, for maybe a year or something.

I figured it was probably the drum, which was an off-brand replacement, so I just replaced it with a different off brand (the OEM drum costing nearly as much as a whole new printer).  It looks like very nearly the same trouble.

So... could be, something inside the printer has gotten dirty?  I suppose I could have a go at disassembling the thing, but nowadays they seem to be built in a non-repairable fashion.

Or, I could be shopping for a replacement.  Doesn't need a lot of speed; does need a built-in duplexer.  And I don't want a doggone all-in-one; I want a printer, dagnabbit!  Oh, and it has to fit in the available space... unless I find one that can do 11x17 and handle dual trays, and I don't think that fits my budget.  (I remember those from the days in Corporateland; they were handy, though kind of big and not at all affordable for home-office use.)

Maybe I should just remove the drum unit, give everything accessible a blast of compressed air, and see what effect that has.

Correction:  The OEM drum unit costs more than a whole new printer.  This isn't like toner cartridges, where the one that comes with a new printer may contain only a token amount of toner; the new printer comes with a new standard drum, doesn't it?  It's like the manufacturers want you to buy a new printer every year or so.  OK, so maybe they do.

Update:  The window under the drum - which seems like it might be important! - had accumulated a considerable amount of toner.  I cleaned it pretty much the same way I clean my eyeglasses, which helped somewhat, but it's nowhere near back to new.  Fixing it properly presumably involves (if it's possible at all, which it ought to be) a significant amount of disassembly, which is not worth my time nowadays.  So, pondering something new.  Maybe one of those fancy (but not all that expensive) color laser printers - making sure to get one that takes a toner cartridge for each color, not one cartridge for everything; I expect to use mostly black toner.

Got the shop crane assembled.

The "instructions" were not especially helpful, including the diagram that was too small to be properly legible and also used the same part number for all six casters despite there being three types of casters, each with its own place (as well as various other ambiguities and inaccuracies).

But, I did get it put together.  Didn't try attaching a chain to the mower deck and lifting it yet, though.  Assembling the crane was quite sufficient work for the afternoon.

And, I mentioned that closing a door, with the sudden stop a the end, is hard on my elbow?  So is removing a cotter pin, with the sudden start at the end (pull, pull harder, then suddenly it lets go).  Ow.  Looks like that's another thing I need to be doing right-handed for now.

Meanwhile, I'm seeing why the neighbors have been mowing their lawns so often, and it's not just boredom.  The grass really does grow fast this time of year.  It's supposed to be sunny the next few days, after just a little rain tonight, so maybe I'd better deal with the main lawn areas tomorrow or Saturday.

"Denialism"

If you want to understand why some people aren't taking the Pestilence as seriously as they might, well...

Remember the story of The Boy Who Cried Godzilla?

Day in, day out, for fifty years and more, he'd cry "Godzilla!"  And yet, somehow, Godzilla never showed up.  Sometimes it was an iguana, sometimes a beetle, and often nothing at all.

Then, one day, a perfectly ordinary wolf showed up to menace the flock.  "Godzilla!" he cried.  "Pay no attention," pointing to the wolf, "to the chihuahua!  Godzilla is upon us!"

And when he could no longer ignore the chihuahua, excuse me, wolf, ravaging the flock, he finally cried "Wolf!  Real live wolf!  For real this time!  It's the biggest wolf in the history of ever!"

Strangely, no one believed him.  Because they were all deniers, you see.  After all those years of denying Godzilla, denying a wolf was nothing to them.

If only they'd listened!  Maybe now they'll take Godzilla seriously!

Tired.

Been testing my limits again, as long as there was this mostly-dry day.

Hauled all the pieces of the shop crane to the barn, along with various other things that were in the garage but belonged in the barn.

Got a little more organizing of stuff done in the barn.

Fired up the walk-behind mower for the second time, and set forth to vanquish the Front Danger Lawn, plus some odd spots where the ZTR either doesn't fit or just doesn't feel safe.  I did get most of that accomplished, but didn't feel inspired to take the mower down to the areas nearer the road where it's needed - and, more to the point, I didn't feel inspired to bring it back up (though I suppose with the power assist in action it wouldn't be that much of a pain).

And!  I managed to wedge that mower, too!  Hit a patch of really tall stuff too hard and clogged the discharge chute, so the next grass cut stayed inside the deck and clogged everything up right proper.  Fortunately, this mower is light enough that I could just tip it over on its side and scoop out the offending debris.

Arm status:  Left elbow really doesn't appreciate closing doors; the shock when the door stops is just the wrong kind of load.  Right wrist rapidly tires of pulling the starter cord on the mower.  But, nothing seems to have gotten really worse, and it looks like I won't be attempting any outdoors work tomorrow, on account of the weather.

Overall status:  Properly tuckered out.  That was a good bit of exercise.

Disconcerting news

A couple of days ago, in keeping with a background activity of getting back in touch with people, I sent a view out my office window to an old friend.  Not old-old, mind you; several years younger'n me; we worked together back in 19(mumble) when he was a young whippersnapper doing the high-tech-startup-at-home thing and I took a sabbatical from my regular job to join his circus.  We'd communicated occasionally over the years; last direct communication was (I think) from 2015, when I was at the Maker Faire but, as it turned out, he couldn't make it that year.

Got a reply back from his son: he died of a heart attack two years ago.  This was not expected.

... Now I'm trying to remember who else was in that particular startup crowd, and whether I have current contact information for any of them.  Been out of touch with a lot of people for quite some time,

(Someday I'll post the story of my sabbatical year.  Got plenty of other tech tales to tell, when I get around to them, and a bunch of memento hardware in boxes in the barn.)

Garden of victory; agony of de feet

Yeah, been out putting sprouts from the basement in the actual ground (first running the mini-tiller over the area and putting up the hoops for a frost shelter).

Got about halfway through the planting I'd set out to do; crouching to deal with stuff at ground level gets my feet and ankles tired in a hurry.  I expect I'll finish up after dinner, and maybe even get the fabric in place for the shelter.

Before that, I did take the mower deck off the tractor, and determined that I'm not going to be tipping it up for a look until after I get the shop crane put together - just ain't happening.  The farm jack kinda-sorta works, but not to the point I'm about to try working under it - and one of the problems with just recently having moved is that we haven't accumulated a supply of large chunks of wood for propping things up.  I did try turning the driveline by hand, and managed to get the blade well and truly wedged against the housing, so now getting access to the underbeneath looks even more important.

Data needed

Darth Noisome proclaims:

This virus doesn’t go home because it’s a beautiful, sunny day around our coasts.

Or, does it?  That's one of those great big unanswered questions.  I keep seeing fragmentary (and largely inconsistent) information about how long the virus can persist (in infectious form, or maybe otherwise) on various sorts of surfaces, never with links to actual research results.  The latest round of hey-looky-this Powerpointery was the first I'd seen to include anything about environmental conditions.

And... that latest thing (with, I repeat, no link to the research provided) did claim that full sunlight gives the virus a proper clobberin' in nothing flat.  Whether this is true or not would be a very useful thing to know.

So, O Powers That Be, how about some information?  The research on this ought to have started three months ago, in many places here and abroad; surely there are some results by now...?

Oh, and Your Imperiousness?  The beach ain't the subway.  Stop acting like the Supreme Guardian of Public Morals, stick to measures that are consistent with the stated purpose, and maybe people will be more inclined to cooperate.

Back to pondering a new workstation

Has to be scaled back a bit, owing to various disruptions to the family finances these past few months, but I definitely want to get something newer and at least modestly more capable than the existing one... and to operate in parallel with it until such time as the new one is fully configured.

I don't really need the Great Beast of Malvern as such, but a fair amount of computing power is required, as is a fair bit of RAM - I tend to have a lot of things running concurrently, including from time to time things that can put multiple CPU cores to full use (e.g., FPGA compilation and PCB autorouting).

Current setup has a Core i5-2500K, 16GB of RAM (DDR3, I guess), and some sort of NVIDIA-based graphics card (GeForce GT 430, according to KInfoCenter).  New laptop has a Core i7-6820HQ, looks like 16GB of RAM, and some sort of NVIDIA graphics.

I think more CPU cores would be a good thing; hyperthreading, maybe not so much.  I might be OK with a recent iteration of Intel's (or AMD's) built-in graphics, but I expect to be doing some 3D CAD work, so maybe a real graphics card (not a high-end gaming one, though) will be called for.  Need to make sure the option is there, at least - or, if the CPU/motherboard combo doesn't come with built-in graphics, I need to figure that in up front.

Looking at brand-new hardware, it seems that a current-generation Core i5 or maybe an entry-level i7, or perhaps a RYZEN 5 or entry-level 7, plus a decent motherboard, would fit the requirements without totally busting the budget - also need RAM, of course, probably 32GB right up front if I'm going that route, and a case and power supply, an optical drive or two, and an SSD - probably a terabyte of local storage and maybe more, and favoring NVMe over SATA.  Kinda adds up, but it adds up to a decently capable machine.  (I note that the price tag and specs on an entry-level Threadripper look tempting, but the price of a motherboard to go with it, plus the 180W TDP, kinda put me off.)

Used?  Plenty of refurbished business PCs out there, with decent specs.  A roughly-$300 Dell mini-tower with a 4^th-gen Core i7 and 16GB of RAM is a possibility, though the main thing that i7 brings is hyperthreading, which I don't think helps much.  Get up to 6^th-gen, and the memory bandwidth starts improving significantly.

So much to ponder.  I'm probably looking at a mini-tower form factor; I don't need a lot of expansion slots in the office machine, but having at least a couple of them seems a good idea.

Oh, well.  Probably making a decision in a week or two, taking finances into account.  Got to do some research on the current crop from Intel and AMD, and I think we're in for plenty of rainy days to do it.

Today and tomorrow, though, are for outdoors.  Probably planting (with anti-frost blankets) today, and (arm permitting) maybe I'll take on some of the tall grass in awkward places tomorrow.

Update:  Based on a little preliminary research, a mid-range Core i5 is looking like probably the best compromise in the all-new-system category (disclaimer: I have some Intel stock, from way-back-when).  Still a fair amount of digging and pondering to be done, though.  All-new does have some advantages over refurbished, especially for a system that's meant to be run 24/7 for the next few years.

Update 2:  Make that a top-of-the-line 9^th-gen Core i5.  Gets me a useful increase in clock speed, core count, and memory bandwidth compared to the current setup or a cheap refurbished box. Still looking at the AMD options, though.

Testing... testing...

So, for those insisting that we need to test everyone for the Pestilence before resuming any semblance of normal economic activity:

What's the false-positive rate on this test of yours?  Don't tell me it's zero, because it isn't.

Once you've hastily scaled up production to make and distribute something north of 330 million test kits (just for the U.S.!) all at once, plus the equipment and supplies for processing the samples expeditiously, what will the false-positive rate be?

When you deploy enough sample-collectors (of varying skill and fatigue levels) to get everyone tested (at collection points and labs of varying quality) in the space of a few days, what will the overall, sample-collection-to-result, false-positive rate be?

Multiply that by the number of uninfected people - we believe this to be at least 325 million, right?  What's that come out to, now?

Now what?  Do you round up all those who test positive and send them off to leper colonies for a month, thereby ensuring that all the false positives will become true positives?

We really need to stand the usual rule on its head.  The standard now appears to be: he who relinquishes power is obligated to have a detailed plan for everyone.  It should be: he who takes power is obligated to have a detailed plan for the consequences of the policies that he imposes.

Addendum:  And what's this about immunity passports?  I ain't no theologian, but this has a bit of a "that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark" quality to it, doesn't it?

So I ordered a shop crane

One of the ordinary 2-ton ones, nothing fancy.  Ordered it on Wednesday.

Amazon said it'd get here sometime between April 29 and May 4, maybe.  If memory serves, it was supposed to arrive in two boxes, because of weight limits.

The delivery service dropped off one box, today, the 25^th.  Looks like it's the whole thing, none of this two-boxes nonsense.

No, I didn't try to carry the box into the garage, all well-over-a-hundred pounds of it.  I opened it outdoors and carried the pieces in one by each.

Sometime when it's not raining, I'll carry the pieces back out, load them on the cart, drag it to the barn, and assemble the thing there.

I also ordered a set of four largish leg dollies, 3-caster type.  I'm hoping they can be securely placed under the anti-scalp rollers on the mower deck.  Supposed to arrive a week from tomorrow.  Well, I guess I'll have to take the deck off the tractor without them (off is easier than on).

Update:  Looks like there must in fact be a second box, not yet delivered.  The first one contained all the long parts, plus nuts'n'bolts and a bag o' casters, but not the main frame, which is more of a wide part.  Oh, well: I don't think trying to assemble it right now would be a good idea anyway.

Update 2:  Square box with main frame showed up Monday, still 2 days before Amazon's "earliest" delivery date.  Hmmm... probably Wednesday will be a good time to haul the pieces to the barn and start putting them together,

In which I resort to posting d*ck pics on this blog

If only to illustrate the Back Lawn Pair o' Ducks.

They may have been hanging around in the pond but decided to get out and enjoy the afternoon drizzle.  Had it not been for the drizzle, I might have tried to get closer.

... I used to hunt ducks with a 35mm Canon, but the Panasonic G2 is more convenient.  And it looks like the time on the camera ended up a year behind; maybe I should correct that while I'm thinking about it.  Can't have the metadata chronically, and chronologically, goofed up.

Social distancing, outdoors

Consider:

The half-life of SARS-CoV-2 in aerosol form is said to be roughly one hour at 70°F, 20% humidity, and little sunlight.

Aerosol transmission (as opposed to macroscopic airborne droplets, droplets on surfaces, etc.) is now thought to be a significant thing.

Given these, if an infected person emits a virus-laden aerosol cloud outdoors on a dry evening with a light breeze - say, 2 on the Beaufort scale - how soon is it safe to pass through the area where said cloud was emitted?

Ha!  The aerosol cloud is part of the air, not the ground.  Within a couple of seconds, it will no longer be where it was emitted.  In ten minutes, it'll be a mile away.  After one half-life, several miles.

And, thanks to turbulence, it'll be widely dispersed.  ZOMG THERE'S NO SAFE DISTANCE!  REMAIN INDOORS!  WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!

Or... basically everyone who doesn't live in a space suit is constantly being exposed to traces of the virus in aerosol form, right?  Which might explain the unexpected percentage of people with antibodies?  Maybe a tiny exposure is enough to get detectable levels of antibodies without overwhelming the exposed individual's immune system?  (How much immunity one acquires from such background-level exposure is another question entirely.)

Arm status

Left:  Elbow remains sore from shoulder to fingertips, but seems to be improving as long as I don't do anything stupid, like any 2-handed lifting.

Right:  Wrist remains sore, but maybe getting a little better.  Perhaps I should be wearing the wrist brace whenever practical.

Robot:  Responds to servo commands sent by a Ruby script I cobbled together based on what passes for documentation of the controller board's serial-interface protocol.  This is at the level of "Over the next 300 ms, change servo pulse widths on channels 2 and 4 to 1200 μs and 2300 μs respectively," not "Arm, pick up the ball."  Looks like the useful range of servo values is 500 to 2500 (wherefore I assume it's a target pulse width in μs), except for the claw, which is fully open at 1500 and fully closed at 2500.  Also, it looks like I didn't tighten some of the fasteners well enough... the bracket that holds the arm to the turntable seems a bit wibbly-wobbly.  Looks like I may need to do some disassembly and tightening, possibly with dollops of threadlocker.

Update:  With much fiddling of slider controls on the screen, I got the robot arm to hand me a Kleenex^® brand kleenex from the box on my desk.  A lot more trouble than grabbing one myself, and it's not like the same sequence of operations would grab the next one, but it does establish that all the moving parts are functioning, as is communication.

A curious lack of symmetry

Funny, this: a politician who boldly seizes power, or proposes to do so, is not expected to have a detailed plan for enabling everyone to cope with the consequences of  his (or her) restrictive edicts.

And yet... a politician who relinquishes power, or proposes to do so, is expected to have detailed plans for everyone, and will be held personally responsible for the consequences of not wielding absolute power.

Which, I guess, follows the same logic as the Precautionary Principle as applied: restrictive government action has no possible adverse consequences, while government inaction (let alone relaxation of existing restrictions!) is sure to have dire consequences; ergo, no one outside of government should be allowed to do anything, ever.

Update:  An observation from William Lehman:

Mind you she doesn’t have anything to replace it with… This seems to be a common theme for socialist revolutionaries, (especially ones whose formative years were in some place other than America) they’re big on “destroying the existing paradigm” but when you start looking at what they want to put in its place, things suddenly get really vague, and you get answers like “the government will provide.” It’s a form of religion, and the worship of the state has never led to anything except re-education camps, starvation, and death.

Basically the same thing.  Those who propose a vast expansion of government power are not expected to have the competence required to avoid catastrophe should such expansion come to pass, while, those who propose reductions of government power are expected to have answers to everything.

Counterintuitive. Or...?

When there's a respiratory illness making the rounds, you'd expect smokers to be most vulnerable, right?

Well... in the wonderful world of the Calvinballvirus, there's a rumor to the contrary out of France (by way of an English tabloid).  Looks like smokers are substantially underrepresented among Pestilence patients, in more than one country.

It comes after world-famous artist David Hockney last week said he believes smoking could protect people against the deadly coronavirus.

Well, artist, sure.  Definitely a reputable authority on such matters.  But, then, if you do all your inhaling through a lighted cigarette, you'll be pretty well protected against respiratory pathogens....

In addition, the authors theorize nicotine could abate the immune system's overreaction to the virus, which leads to serious complications in some patients.

Ah.  Now we're getting somewhere.  Tobacco is reputed to help with some autoimmune conditions - when my late boss stopped smoking, his ulcerative colitis returned, until he went on chemo for lymphoma, which cleared the UC (but, alas, not the lymphoma) right up.  Does it discourage cytokine storms?  Is it the nicotine, the carbon monoxide, or something else?

Yet another confusing piece of (possibly incorrect) information.

"Compatibility," the Troll remarked, "is for sissies."

So here I am with a drizzly day and sore arms and/or wrists.  Time to do something constructive that doesn't involve much in the way of exertion.  How about hooking up a serial cable to the controller board on that robot arm and seeing if I have the right documentation?

Rummage around in search of a USB-to-logic-level-UART dongle; find an assortment, both FTDI and otherwise, all known working before the move.

Plug one into the shiny USB 3.0 hub on my desk, leading to a USB 3.0 port on the back of the workstation.

Not enough bandwidth for new device state.

Say WHAT?

Try the others, one by each.  Same thing.

Try unplugging the flash-card reader from the hub, so the serial dongle will be the only thing on that port.  The same.

Plug one into a USB 2.0 port on the front of the workstation.  That works fine.  Unfortunately, it's under my desk instead of on top of it.

Well... I recall some USB 1.x devices not working on USB 2.0 ports.  What happens if I stick another hub between the desktop hub and the serial dongle?

USB 1.x hub:  Can't enumerate the hub.

USB 2.0 hub:  Hub enumerates, but on connecting the serial dongle I get not enough bandwidth, etc.

Growf!

Looks like maybe I need a second desktop hub, of the 2.0 persuasion, plugged into its own port on the workstation.  This means crawling around under the desk and pulling cables.  Funsies!

Maybe I'll take a nap now.  Or think about what to fix for dinner.  Survey possible interim locations for a gas grill.  Something that doesn't involve computers.

Meanwhile, at the Chocolate Factory

Google Finance is increasingly broken; not only does it have the horrid new user interface, but it's presenting clearly inconsistent data this morning.

On the other hand, it's good to know that the Censorship Division is operating at full capacity, so that, e.g., any YouTube vid that contradicts the wisdom of Tedros Tedros-Daltrey (lead singer for The WHO) will be summarily deleted.  Too bad they couldn't have done this back in January, when Mr. Tedros Bear was telling us that it wasn't a problem, there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission, and we needn't worry our pretty little heads over it.  Then nobody would have seen those alarming videos being leaked out of Wuhan, and we could all have been happy and oblivious until March.

Update:  Also, Google Chrome has gotten even more random about what sites it includes on the start page.  Hey, Google: how about letting users decide what's on the start page and where it goes, instead of changing things and moving them around all the time according to some secret formula?

Some questions just answer themselves

Althouse:

And let me argue with "you can’t argue with the need for masks." When did that become beyond argument?! Just a few weeks ago, the authorities were telling us we didn't need masks at all. Now, we're supposed to accept the necessity and not even talk about it?!

It's because we're playing Calvinball here.  Sorry, no one's allowed to question the masks.

Regarding the state of contemporary rhetoric

I'm actually seeing people assert, in all seriousness, that...

... wait for it...

... anyone who questions authority or suggests that civil liberties matter is a FASCIST STORMTROOPER!

Because, historically, fascist stormtroopers were best known for questioning authority and standing up for civil liberties, right?

Also, Bad Orange Man is now a fascist dictator because he isn't acting like one*, or something.

* You all did see that on the Lupercal I thrice presented him a kingly crown, Which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition?