Category: self-observation

Musings on Quo Vadis

I’ve been thinking a lot lately. With the current state of my bank account, thinking is a very inexpensive pastime. I’ve reached a point where I know quite a lot about myself, my profession and living in general. What I’m still trying to come to terms with is translating what I know into action. I’ve also had problems reconciling what I know with what I feel. My psychologist tells me that is because the limbic system takes much longer to achieve stability than the frontal cortex does. This means when you’re angry, you stay angry long after you’ve resolved the issues that made you angry in the first place. I suppose there was probably some kind of survival benefit of this at one time but it doesn’t seem to be nearly as useful in the modern world.

I am approaching a time when I can take early retirement from my job and draw a pension large enough to pay most of my bills. I’m too young, IMHO, to consider really retiring, as in quitting work and living the life of Riley. I don’t think I’ll ever really want to retire in that sense. Instead, I am considering what I want to do now that salary is not a major consideration. I have been thinking about what I enjoy doing most as well as what I can contribute to the world. I still haven’t achieved my initial goal of financial independence. I really don’t want to be rich. I just want to have enough money so that money is not hampering me from doing whatever it is I want to do. Perhaps that is at the core of why I am not financially independent yet :-).

Whatever I decide to do, I have this gut feeling that blogging is going to be part of it. Blogging is a way of getting your thoughts out where you can see them and doing it in a public forum helps keep you honest with yourself. I need to get in the habit of writing something here every day. It doesn’t have to be big, just regular.

Web Development is Just Plain Fun!

I’ve been reading a good book lately. It’s called RESTful Web Services and it’s by Leonard Richardson and Sam Ruby, O’Reilly Media, Inc, May 8, 2007, ISBN 0-596-52926-0. It got me past an old obstacle that I basically ignored when I initially encountered it, which is how to access the web through a proxy from Ruby. I updated my Rails homepage, a private affair intended to give me quick access to a number of links that I access frequently. While I was at it, I figured out how to display the RSS feed of this blog in the center column of the homepage.

So, how does this make me feel? Totally empowered and back on my game. I haven’t done any web development in so long that I was beginning to think I wouldn’t be able to catch up with all the new developments. I guess I knew better deep down but it was still exhilarating to finally update my homepage after literally years of not changing anything on it but the content.

I also started looking in to Amazon Web Services but that’s a topic for another post.

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Adventures in Robot Building

It’s all about learning, right? I’ve been building a robot from scratch, as you may know if you’ve read some of my previous posts. I started out with only a vague idea of what I wanted to do. I started by saving the miniature balsa crates that the grocery store sells tangerines in. That is a good size for a robot, I thought to myself.

Then I discovered the Arduino. I knew immediately that I wanted the robot to have an Arduino for a brain. Next, I bought a dual gear motor kit and some wheels. I assembled the kit and discovered that it wasn’t going to mount very easily on my tangerine crate. So, I thought about it a while and discovered that if I took the crate entirely apart (it was only stapled together), the side panel was exactly the right size to mount my wheel assembly on.

Originally, I wanted to build a robot with wheels front and back. My BOEbot uses a rear roller for stability instead of having two sets of wheels so I wanted to try something different. After some more thought, I decided to compromise and buy an omni-directional caster for the stability point of my robot. By this point, I had mounted the wheels on one end of the side panel and the caster on the other. I had also purchased an H-bridge motor driver shield to control the wheels (shields are the daughter boards that plug on top of the Arduino so conveniently).

The motor shield came as a kit and I assembled it per the instructions. Try as I might, I never got it to spin my motors. I spent several afternoons troubleshooting the problem and decided that I probably burned out one of the chips on the motor shield. I decided that I should have installed a socket instead of soldering the chip directly to the board as the kit instructed. So, I ordered some replacement chips for the board and proceeded to try to desolder the chip in question. That was harder than it sounded. I haven’t yet managed to desolder the chip in question.

While I was ordering the replacement chips, I discovered an already assembled H-bridge controller that cost less than half what I paid for the motor shield kit. The mini-controller wasn’t as capable as my motor shield but it was adequate for driving the two motors on my robot. All it required was that you solder two, eight pin headers to either side of the board. I was sold. If I could repair the motor shield, I could use the little controller board for another project. If I didn’t get the motor shield fixed, I would still be able to get my robot rolling on it’s own power with the new controller. That was the plan anyway.

When the parts came in, I soldered the headers to the board and plugged it in to the solderless bread board to give it a try. I wired it up and checked my wiring several times. I wrote the code for the Arduino to control the new board. I plugged it all in and uploaded the code and nothing happened.

I spent most of the evening troubleshooting. I still haven’t figured out what is wrong. I will give it another try this weekend. I still have several things I can try. I suppose it wouldn’t be nearly as much fun if it wasn’t so challenging. And like I said at the beginning of this post, it’s all about learning, right?

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I’m Using ScribeFire to Write This Post

ScribeFire is a Firefox plugin that allows you to edit a blog post in your browser. When I installed it, I thought it would encourage me to post more. Well, so far, it hasn’t. I was thinking about why that is and it occurred to me that it is analogous to why it took me so long to get back in the habit of walking. I spent the better part of a year intending to walk daily but not doing it. That is the key to solving the problem. I have to take the time to do it. Now I understand that there is going to be a certain amount of blank page syndrome at first. It is going to take discipline to decide that I am going to write at least one blog post every (day? week day? week?). I’ll have to give it some thought. It is more important to do it regularly than how frequently you do it.

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A Pause to Reflect

So now I’ve got this really nice blank piece of paper in front of me. I’ve gotten myself into the habit of writing on it frequently. Where have all my ideas gone. I wrote them down somewhere. I guess I need to find that file or notebook or whatever.

I know what I’m interested in. Programming, video making – both vlogs and actual video production with scripts and editing and such, playing music, composing music, writing, building robots, ham radio, creating web sites, the list goes on and on.

I suppose I should write about those things and see what happens. I act so ADHD though. I flit from one thing to the next. I can’t do them all at once so I have a hard time sticking with anything for long enough at a stretch to accomplish anything to speak of.

Change is Good

I realized today that I had been getting really tired of the theme that I was using. This may have had some influence on how often I blogged. Now don’t get me wrong. The main reason that I go so long between posts is that I get distracted by other priorities. But I think I’ll use the fact that a new look and feel every now and then helps rekindle excitement about how your words look when you post them.

I’m still trying to get a clear vision of how I want to transform my life. I am not happy with the way things are. I have trouble getting inspired to go to work. Work has reverted to something I do to pay the bills. I want more than that. I want to be engaged by my work. I guess I’m spoiled that way. I have several ideas that I’d love to explore. I think any one of them are potentially very profitable. I just need to figure out how to see one of them through to profitability. I believe that if you can imagine something clearly enough, you can make it happen. It’s never failed for me in the past.

I’ll allocate some time to fool with the theme some more soon, maybe this weekend. In the mean time, I’m getting back on that horse and aiming at blogging daily again. Dave Winer makes it look so easy. I think it’s just a matter of getting into the habit of writing at least once a day at a conventional time. Like right after you check your email in the morning maybe.

Ramble on Writing and a Rant

I find myself in one of two situations a lot. Either I’m sitting here in front of an empty page trying to think of something that I want to write about or I just start typing about what ever comes to mind. In the first case nothing gets written. In the second, I get practice writing at the expense of rambling on about nothing in particular and boring myself and any reader that happens to stumble across my blog to death.

One of the things I like about YouTube is that when I watch a video, especially a vlog, and it inspires a comment, I can start a discussion with the vlogger. One of the things I don’t like about YouTube is the limit on the length of comments. I understand that it’s a free service and all those comments cost money to store. But videos cost money to store and comments take so much less storage. Maybe it’s the fact that it is so much easier to make a comment than it is to make a video which results in the volume of comments far exceeding the volume of video responses. Anyway, the point is I like the dialog.

I have yet to have a comment on this blog that wasn’t spam. I don’t think anybody reads it. I don’t know why I bother posting at all. I could just as easily write this stuff and store it on my computer. I guess it is a combination of hope that someone will read it and a kind of romanticism about contributing to the vast corpora of data available over the internet. Who knows, maybe someday I’ll write something that someone wants to read. That’s the idea behind writing here regularly.

I sure like my MacBook. It has changed my life. I can sit in any room in the house and read my email, write in my blog, watch YouTube or surf the web. I actually do many of the things that I couldn’t find time in front of the computer to do now that I don’t have to sit at my desk to do them. I can sit in front of the TV with Pam or take it to the bathroom with me in the morning. I can take it to bed with me. Let’s face it, I’m a computer junky.

Back on the musing about writing topic, I’m reminded of the essay that Paul Graham wrote that explained that essay writing is exploring ideas. Blogging is a kind of essay writing. If you have the discipline and take the time to edit a blog post it is an essay. If you’re lazy, like me, it is whatever flies off of your fingertips while you are thinking. It is more like the notebook that you use to capture the thoughts that you edit into an essay than it is the final essay itself. But I think it has value. It lets people see your train of thought as it evolves. This could be useful, especially if the train ever goes anywhere.

I’m doing better with the frequency of my posts. I haven’t found the place in my daily schedule that will turn this into a habit but I’m working on it. I am about sick of this theme. I’m either going to make up a theme of my own or more likely find another one on the WordPress site and change over to it. I might just hack on this one a bit. I like the colors, its the photograph that needs to change periodically. I need a new camera.

I need to be independently wealthy. I have so many expensive hobbies. Most of them aren’t that expensive once you get set up. I’ve got most of what I need to make videos now. I could use a microphone here and a mixer there and lights and a green screen and software upgrades. But the point is, I can make videos with what I have already. Those accessories would be nice but they aren’t necessary.

I recently upgraded my Amateur Radio license so that I have operating privileges in a bunch of new segments of the radio spectrum. I could build radios to operate in those segments from kits or from scratch. And, I intend to do that. Part of ham radio that I enjoy is homebrewing (building your own hardware). Currently though, I don’t have any working radios. Now radios aren’t that expensive but they are expensive enough that I can’t afford to just go out and buy one. Even a little general coverage receiver is going to cost somewhere around $100.

Right now, I’m struggling to pay my bills. Actually, I’m struggling to pay my bills because I’m helping my daughter get set up in business. So, I’m paying my bills and part of hers. I know this is a temporary situation but it is frustrating. And then there are the other things that come up like house maintenance, car maintenance, we need new furniture, we need newer cars as the ones we have get older and stay broken more frequently.

I know this has turned into a bitch session but it helps to get these things down where you can look at them. Then you can start working on ways to deal with them. Also, when you list all your problems like this, you get a feeling about their scope. In all fairness though, I need to do a blog about all my blessings to balance out this one a little.

Balance, Goals, and a List

I am struggling for balance. There is so much that I want to do and I’m realizing that I only have a short time to do everything that I’m going to do. It really brings home the importance of prioritization. I started writing this entry in an attempt to follow through on my resolve to make blogging a regular part of my life. But as I write I am thinking and what I’m learning from this introspection is that blogging is a tool for refining my thinking on various subjects. Paul Graham pointed out that the word essay means to explore. That captures a lot of the value of blogging to me.

So, I’ll talk a little bit about some of the things that I want to accomplish. In this first pass, I’ll focus on listing them without assigning priorities or time frames. I think it is important to do this in order to keep from getting bogged down in details and missing the big picture. I also want to go ahead and post what I write in this session, even though it probably won’t be comprehensive, in order to keep the flow going. Then, when I’ve listed most of the things that I want to do, I’ll start elaborating on them, prioritizing them, and trying to establish the time frame that I plan to accomplish them in. I think a bullet list will be appropriate for this first pass.

  • Write an episode of The Gentry.
  • Write and produce a short video for entry into film festivals.
  • Play and record music.
  • Write fiction.
  • Write software.
  • Experiment with my robot.
  • Build a bigger robot from scratch.
  • Put a ham station on the air.
  • Build ham gear.
  • Go for daily walks.
  • Swim occasionally.
  • Live in Great Britain for a year or two.
  • See Europe.
  • Write something every day.
  • Meet some of my You Tube friends face to face.
  • Pay attention to Pam.
  • See America.
  • Post more videos to You Tube.

That’s a start anyway. I captured a lot of my aspirations. This will give me something to think about for a while. I just need to overcome inertia. As the Nike motto says, just do it!

Getting Things Done

I’m listening to Dave Slusher’s Evil Genius Chronicles for July 30, 2006. He’s talking about Getting Things Done today. He is giving the hipster PDA a chance to organize his GTD implementation (check out pocketmod for some cool blank form magic). I resonate with many of his comments about GTD. I have to get a copy of the book and read it. I have looked at the tools and I agree that you should start with the simplest thing that could possibly work (with a tip of the hat to the XP folks).

I am getting to the point that I have too many things that I want to do that I’m not getting done. Life is too short. I owe it to myself to be more organized. If you don’t learn from your mistakes, you are stagnating (and stupid).

I think I’m making progress on the psychological front with the realizations that I have had about anxiety being orthogonal to happiness. You can be both anxious and happy at the same time. Sometimes you can’t eliminate anxiety but you can manage it.

Enough rambling for today. I think I’ll work on making each day a little bit better than the previous day. I’ll try to record at least one improvement per day for a while to get in the habit. We’ll see how it goes.