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an unexpected abundance of wires
Friday, September 6 2019
I could relax a little at work today, since all the imports of the week were done and shipped, and I could actually spend some time adding some features to overcome annoyances I'd encountered during the crunch of deadlines (flexible though they turned out to be!). One of the most important was the ability was a drop down in the user interface allowing me to switch between local and remote file systems. Since there are other elements of the user interface that imply changes to this setting, I had to make it so that they changed it as well, though with the understanding that I could override it, similar to how our body forces us to breathe while also allowing a lot of control over the process.
[REDACTED] On the way home, I made a couple good purchases at my Friday afternoon visit to the Tibetan Center thrift store. I found a remote-controlled truck (with no remote of course, so the price was $3) with an unusually feature: all four of its mechanical wheels (even the two steerable ones) were mechanically linked. When I later took it apart, I discovered that its steering was controlled by an actual rack-and-pinion system with apparent sensors (indicated by an unexpected abundance of wires) to detect which direction the steering was pointing. All these things suggested it had been a fairly high-end remote-controlled vehicle. The other purchase was an inexpensive refracting telescope, one without a tripod, which cost me $3. It was very similar (if not identical) to the design of the telescope I'd used to successfully monitor the pileated woodpecker nest, though instead of carrying the Tasco brand, it was a Meade. I figured I could never have too many of those (for interchangeable optical parts if nothing else). At some point I'd like to build a rig allowing me to remotely steer a high-magnification telescope to zoom in on anything in the landscape around it. (I probably have everything I need to build such a system already.)
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