Rob the Fiddler

I gotta admit, this was not the best growing year for me. From what I can tell, its not just my yard. The Richardson wildflowers that grow all over were pitiful. Im usually overrun with sunflowers and now I just have one.  Worst of all, I was hit with some kind of mosaic virus that infected the squash and morning glories.  The tomatoes were ok, but none of the the big ones came out.

I did edit up with plenty of cherry and small tomatoes though…so its not a big loss.

Onions were small too….but I picked enough of them along with a few peppers to make some chili.

Pitiful compared to 2005

Good weekend.  On Friday a friend too me to see my first Rough Riders game. She had season tickets too, pretty much behind the plate. A lot more fun than a Rangers game.  I might have to try minor league hockey next.

Other than that, it was a relaxed weekend. The O’s and Romp Almighty did a block party in Richardson. I tagged along. Richardson is pretty cool.

See real front porches…old ladies enjoying lemonade (or Whiskey?)

So I came across the circuit for the Joule Thief on Evil Mad Scientist. Such a fun website. Its amazing how much a YouTube video and a little hand waving can get you excited over an academic topic. Bill Nye, your the guy. SCIENCE!

The name is a fun play on words an another example that a catchy name will sell just about anything. The purpose of the circuit is that you can drive an LED on a 1.5 AA battery to the point where the battery is incredibly dead. (Jewel - Joule).

This is pretty cool because already takes more than 1.5 volts to make just about any color of  LED light up.  You cant light a blue LED with a AA because LEDs are diodes and require a minimum voltage to light it up.  1.5 volts will not do it.  Just break open any blinky shamrock or pumpkin you get with a Coors or Bud logo on it and you will see it takes TWO button batterys to operate. (most all button batterys are 1.5 volts.)  Ok thats a strange example, but not for me considering that I smash every blinky alcohol-ad related widget I come across just…well..because…..umm…..SCIENCE!

So it takes more than what a AA can provide to to see an LED light up. How does it work and what kinda science can I walk away from this post with?

Its all about inductors.  Ever wonder how a “converter” can plug into the wall and drop 120 volts AC to the 9 volts that you can charge your ipod works?  Inductors!  You take  a piece of metal (or metal like substance) and wrap wire around it.  Bill Nye would show that this makes an electromagnet..but it also can be used to bring up or drop down a voltage swing.

Take a ring of metal and wrap a pair of wires around it. If the number of loops of the “primary” outnumber the “secondary” you will drop down the voltage swing. Likewise, if the secondary loops outnumber the primary, you will step up the voltage.

This works well with Sine waves which are the “Steady Eddys” of nature. Its a nice ebb and flow. It ramps up and ramps down and all is good. Its the delta in the voltage that translates to higher voltages.

With the Joule Thief, the oscillations are a bit more spikey.  With fast spikes (fast deltas) come wider voltage swings and the ability to step up voltages to the point where you can light up the LEDS.

Anyways, this little circuit was the focus of my amusement over Christmas vacation.

I found it interesting because I have never really dealt with inductors outside of power supply applications.  In the old days, capacitors and inductors were kinda the Yin and Yang of electronics. Transformers are still around, but most filters are constructed as active filters. Capacitors are cheaper to make and op amps have eliminated the need for inductors. I never dealt with them in College and I graduated with a EE degree!

I had a blast rooting around the garage with my dad over Christmas looking for torrids to play with this circuit.  Pretty educational.

Back to the circuit.

This guy seems to claim to have coined the term, but the circuit is nothing new.   Here is a  guy has a blog that deals with the circuit at an obsessive level.  Another website here does a pretty good job of explaining the whole thing as well.

Of course…its not any fun without pictures.  Here are my completed circuits.

OK, its been forever since I updated my site. I suppose Ive been kinda busy with work and work. Its been nice to have projects that keep my mind running in overdrive.

I’m currently working at a company called Interlegis doing Java programming. I hope to post examples of things I have learned, but I’ll do that soon after our next release. (Strategic information for now…hush hush).

What I can share is my new found study of visualizations. There are tons of neat projects that focus on Data_visualizations. Basically, I was already fascinated with blinky lights, buttons, colors, charts and the like. This just formalizes into a paying job.  Nice.

In short, data visualization takes a LOT of information and puts it into a graphic from which you can derive useful conclusions. Neat stuff. The nickle tour is Jeffs website.  And by nickle I mean you can take his entire course (Stanford) online by just browsing his site.

Here are some sweet platforms that do this.

Prefuse

Axiis

So Ive sold you on pretty charts…but your asking, how can I use this in my day to day life?

Here is a great example of data visualization. Check out these Wurdle visualizations of my site and JDs and ask yourself….which blogger studied more Math versus English.
(hint…my word cloud is big on “one” and “good”.  Wait..I meant to call it an excellent example)

ME

versus JD

I have the fall garden pretty much all planted.  Its still too hot for lettuce and radishes so those go in next month.  Texas has two growing seasons. The summer is so hot that the window to get a good crop smaller than you think. Your fighting between the heat and the impending frost.

This is my first real fall garden.  Usually I have a good start in the spring with a  focus on tomatoes, peppers and basil.   Come around mid July, its just too hot for anything to grow.  I generally leave it alone and if Im lucky, anything that survived yields a little bit in the fall. Mostly its weeds and bermuda though.

JD had a good run last year using the square foot method. Unfortunately, the only real good piece of yard that gets full sun is unsuitable to put even a raised bed on.  Ive tried containers (15 gal totes) but they crack after one season in Texas.

I figured that planters were the way to go. I figured the best way to do this was to just
build one and see how it turned out.  From there, I could adapt the plans to boxes that
I found more suitable. The first one I built was this.

Seemed simple enough.  Just 2×4s and some 2×2.   After getting started I realized it was going to be heavy. Each square is 16.5 inches and its 6 layers deep.  Thats 33 feet of 2×4. Its easily 40 to 50 lbs without the dirt!

But it does look nice.

Next I built a much bigger 3×3 foot planter. I still used 2×4s but only for the framing.
The siding is old fence wood and the bottom was some scrap I found.

I built one more for good measure.  The one in the back is the nice one (heavy).  The one in the front was put together a bit more…um…hastily. They should last several years. I did cut a few corners on the growing medium as far as square foot gardening is concerned. I have TONS of compost. That was free. Instead of spending $12 for 2CU of potting soil, I cut it down with cedar and pine mulch.  it might be too acid..we will see. The beauty of mulch is that its $3 for 2cu.   Il see if that was a good idea.  The vermiculite seemed like a waste.

So the fall crops will be between the new containers…some old pots and the usual beds.

Fall will be

• Green Beans (Contender and pole)
• Tomatoes (natch)
• Beets!  Gonna try it.
• Chard
• Lettuce
• Squash(Patty Pan, Hubbard, Cream of the Crop)
• Cantaloupe (watch out for cantalopracabras!)
• Cucumbers.

This is my first year for  squash and cukes.  I did plant one in the spring but it never grew until July.  Kinda a runt! After I ripped out the radishes and weeds, the poor guy took off!! It actually has a small fruit growing now. I had to perform a little veggie husbandry with a q-tip to get it started.

I hope its a little more productive this time around.

Here are some pics from the Spring.

They look better than they were. Avoid the white ones….too bitter.

Sunflowers were a bit crazy

Kinda surprised the city didn’t call me up on this growth.

The fun suprise was a potato that I just put in a pot. It had sprouted in the kitchen and it
was obvious that it wanted to grow up more than I wanted to eat it.  I just put it in a pot
and in july I had a bunch of baby potatoes Yum.

Best pic of the spring

So its come to my attention that I have not updated things on this site in like…forever.

Good news is that I have a job. I recently was hired with a company called Interlegis.  We do eDiscovery. I was hired on to work on the next generation User Interface.  Its been extremely interesting for me. I really do like GUI work, and the challenges that they have put me against have been keeping  my brain running at 110% since I started. Speed is always a factor in any application, but its even more in this case since it is used by lawyers….who do not come cheap!  These are the things I’ve been working on.

This is my first time working downtown too. That has been interesting.  Im not a big fan of the commute, but at least half of the folks in the company seem to live within a few miles of me (in Plano). We are all in the same boat.  The Dart drops me off right in front of the building.

Its been fun exploring downtown during lunch too.  Im in th West End, so its easy to walk to
the tunnels under the bank building or pop in to House of Blues to say hi to Snakebite.

Finally, it is nice to be part of a team.  During my years at Nortel, I rarely felt like I  was on a “mission critical” team.  My last project at Nortel had a good team feeling. My manager felt it
was important and he was right…still, when Nortel was going wheels off, there was a sense that there was nothing I could about it.

With this new job, the whole company is in one office, and I feel not only that I can make a difference, but that things are hinging as much on my performance as the rest of the team. Sounds cool to me. I can deliver.

So that’s that. If anybody reading this is in the downtown area, let me know. I hope to chronicle my observations on downtown a bit.  So far, its been mostly wandering around the tunnels.  There are plenty of unique food experiences to be had (Treebirds was a neat find).

More to come.

I’m still looking for a job.  I was extremely lucky to have a severance or funemployment as my friend Kirk called it. I am waiting on the results of a few interviews, but at this point I’m not holding my breath.

Its a strange time. The economy is in the toilet and my job prospects look bleaker and bleaker. At the same time, we are at the cusp of an incredible change. Obama swears in tomorrow. I believe!

So, I play fiddle…and find myself in fairly rednecky parts of Texas from time to time.  In late November I was in the middle of Texas during the peak of deer season at a bar where EVERYBODY was wearing khaki or camo or some kind of combo of the two. While waiting to play my set, I overheard a group talking about our President elect.  It was about 10 minutes of jokes really.  Most were rehashes of jokes that had been floating around forever involving watermelons and food stamps and whatever. The interesting thing was when they ran out of jokes to tell…the redneckiest, whitest (except for his teeth) and hickiest of the lot said “You know…to be honest….I voted for the guy and I think he really can do something about this fucked up shit.”  Several of them all nodded in agreement and acknowledged that they had voted for Obama as well.  Maybe some of them did vote for him, maybe they didn’t. Who knows, but I feel that there was a bit of solidarity and hope for our nation at that point. Pretty amazing considering the proximity to Crawford, Tx! I Believe.

I So I’m pretty positive for the most part. Unfortunately, Nortel has declared bankruptcy so those severance. In my case, its was pretty close to being up anyway.  Not a big deal except for the rather abrupt stopping of medical benefits. I don’t have any medical issues that are a problem…I’m just kinda accident prone. Thank God that’s not a pre-existing condition.

What sucks are the poor folks still at Nortel who will NOT see a severance at all. If your really interested, a pretty good discussion can be found at www.allaboutnortel.com. I know a few people that were just laid off before Christmas and they will not see a severance at all. Considering all that, my timing was optimal. The prospect of a severance was the only thing keeping folks on board.  Now that there is zero incentive to stick around, you can bet the best and brightest of the bunch will be jumping ship. I seriously lucked out.

I feel that I used my time off wisely. I gained two Java certifications.  SCJP and SCWCD.  I had hoped that this would give me an edge in my search. I’ve been happy with my progress so far. It has helped keep me on  my toes and I have tons of info at my fingertips. Im a quick study. I’ve never been modest about that, and I feel like I’m at the top of my game right now in respect to my coding/designer skills.  I got SCWCD in 6 weeks. And all that over the holidays. It is kinda addictive really. Its just a matter of learning stuff…something I’m good at.

I feel like I could write a whole blog on the interviews I’ve had. But…ya know…that’s one of those things that you cant really blog about these days without it coming back to bite you.  Remember kids, the Internet is forever.  That picture of you and the donkey lady CAN and WILL resurface twenty years from now. Emails get forwarded, pictures get reposted and google caching lasts longer than you think.  My only tips are to use Google extensively.  If your going to interview for a job that requires Swing, Google: “Swing interview Questions”.  Don’t be surprised when you hear the exact same questions in an interview. OK, at least ACT surprised.

Concerning the job market, the pool of jobs gets smaller and smaller. Thousands of folks are getting laid off and there are maybe dozens of jobs on the market.  So I’m at a crossroads at figuring what kind of tech I should acquire next and that’s where I’m at.

What next?  The two obvious J2EE paths are Web services and EJB.  I’m leaning towards EJB. I hear the web services is a lot of work and to be honest, the cert is a little out of date. Other areas are Struts, Spring and Hibernate. In order to learn those, my best bet would be to pretty much make my own site from scratch. This is a Wordpress site with a few PHP customizations that I did because I could.  Not enough to base a resume on.

Maybe I should start giving Violin lessons.