Down and out on a Sunday.

My Arduino Uno is sitting on my desktop in the Secret Underground Lair. It mocks me, sitting there connected to the PC with a 1M USB cable, it's onboard LCD flashing amber every second per its programming. And I am responsible for the programming. Tomorrow, though, all of that changes. Tomorrow is the scheduled arrival of "official" Arduino bases, and another Arduino. Jennifer will be getting my current Arduino, and I will be getting the new Arduino. Why, one might wonder... why indeed?

Because, Mr. T's Arduino has an Atmel 328 chip in a DIP configuration, whilst my current one is in an SMT package. I'm hoping to be 100% compatible with his board as we journey through the programming adventure together.

So, Sunday....

The weekend officially began for me around 0600 on Saturday morning, as it usually does. I got a decent amount of sleep before Jennifer, Mr. T and I headed off to The Bridge Community Church later that afternoon.We came home and Jennifer made tamales. They were incredible- and they are gone.

Sunday rolled around. When I woke up, my head felt like a balloon. Sinuses were off the scale in mucus output. I felt (*bleh*). I felt so (*bleh*) that I drank copious amounts of water for around eight hours. Kenji, our black and white tuxedo snowshoe cat, hung out with me for the better part of the day (he likes TV and he likes human presence while watching or listening to TV). I watched three complete football games. Not only is this unheard of- it is unprecedented. I was a couch potato- this is also unheard of.

That's how crummy and run down I felt.

The good news is that most of that seems to have passed. The bad news is that the weekend turned out to pretty much be a complete wash. That is, all of my plans were for naught. I had planned on a good walk, cutting the grass, fixing Jennifer's computer, and some quality "alone" time with my spouse.

None of these things happened.

It's now almost 0200, and I'm feeling much better, but my weekend is essentially over. Monday promises to be an adventure- Kenji and Kaley have their first visit with the veterinarian. Joy. 

The Monday recap- almost time to get ready for work. The cats survived their visit to the vet. It turns out that Dr. Chris is also a huge Lego fan, so much Lego discussion occurred while the cats were being poked and prodded. The new Arduino arrived along with the bases. I mounted the base to my old board first, and gave it to Jennifer. Then, Mr. T and I mounted the other two. I tested my new board out, and the amber LED started blinking immediately... I guess Arduino tests boards out with the blink program. So, for me to test it, I would need another program. The serial monitor program is the perfect sketch (program) for testing the Arduino for a couple of reasons. First, it's short- only two lines. Secondly, it tests two way communication with the board: write the program, compile, and upload. Then, open the serial monitor, and you should have a short message... this is the Arduino equivalent of "Hello, world."

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.

Regarding memories

I don't know about anyone else, but my my memory of events tends to be faulty. That is, the date may be wrong, or the place might be wrong. Or, any number of other related details may be wrong.

On the other hand, I have an excellent memory of scents and textures. I'm not certain that this is important or peculiar, but judging by my own observation, it may be both.

For those who might be skeptical, I'd like to ask: which of you has taken in the aroma of an infant child? If you have, I think you'd agree it's unique. There are a lot of other olifactory triggers out there-  a powerful one for me is diesel exhaust.

Eh?

Sometimes, even things which are not exactly pure and wholesome can trigger pleasurable responses. Earlier this past week, I had pulled in to a parking spot at my workplace, when I was accosted by a fairly heavy scent of diesel exhaust in the air. To most folks, this would be the exhaust of an overloaded, dirty truck rumbling by.

To me, though- the aroma of diesel exhaust takes me back to younger days. It reminds me of high school and college. Of days when my Dad and I (or sometimes just me) would get on a Greyhound bus and travel to Minneapolis... or sometimes beyond. It reminds me of my 1st taste of Jack Daniels (and I still don't like Jack Daniels). It is (apart from the Jack Daniels) a happy scent memory. Likewise, burning leaves. When I was growing up in Chicago, everyone seemed to gather their leaves in the gutters of the streets and burn them. It was such a happy aroma. Nowadays, it's illegal- something might get burned down. Funny... I never heard of anything getting burned down back then.

But, we're so much smarter now- and the leaves are so much more nefarious. I jest, I jest.

In any event- probably for the better- folks don't burn their leaves in the street anymore. When they do, though- it takes me back to grade school days. With a smile.

Data and "stuff" update- our third Arduino is scheduled to arrive from the Arduino, USA store on Monday. Mr. T and I have gotten back into working with the Arduino, and are currently using Jack Purdum's most excellent book Beginning C for Arduino Second Edition.  We're only starting the second chapter, and have already learned quite a bit about this cool little board.

A curious problem has arisen with Jennifer's computer: the case fans have stopped working. I'm not happy about this on a few levels. First, because this is the SECOND ASUS motherboard we've put in this computer in two years. Second, because it's the second ASUS motherboard we've put in this computer in two years. What's the problem, ASUS?

One other "interesting" problem developed this past week relating to both the Arduino and Secret Undreground Lair. I had installed the latest version of the Arduino IDE (1.6.5) on one of my PCs and tested it with a simple two line program. Much to my dismay, the program "bombed out". Being a person of legendary patience, I tried a few more times with identically dismal results. After looking at the log, I realized that this particular PC has a problem with its front USB ports. I ran the program from my laptop; the board is fine- the PC has issues.

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.

Happy #Talklikeapirate Day 2015

My apologies (belatedly or in advance) in regard to the title. As I repost blogs to Twitter, sometimes a hashtag (#) is appropriate in the title. This is one of those occasions.

Visit the official TLAPD  (Talk Like A Pirate Day) site for the latest news and information; for the history of TLAPD, please check out the excellent Wikipedia entry. In the FWIW category, this is the 20th anniversary of TLAPD, or as it is officially know these days, International Talk Like A Pirate Day.

In honor of TLAPD, and in recognition of the underlying theme of this blog (data analysis and management) and my Twitter interests (big data, data analysis, IoT and related topics and languages), I'd like to offer up some TLAPD data humor.

Q: What is a pirate's favorite mathematical formula?
A: Circle == Pi Rrrrrrrr squared.

Q: What is a pirate's favorite data analysis tool?
A: ARrrrrrrrrrrr.

Q: Why do pirates have parrots on their shoulders?
A: Because Pythons won't stay put.

Q: Why don't pirates use Hadoop?
A: A yellow elephant weighs as much as a grey elephant, and does not like ships.

Q: Why do pirates have trouble navigating raw big data?
A: They navigate by the stars; big data is usually found in clouds, lakes or silos.

I suppose those were pretty lame, but I hope I got at least a chuckle from one of them!

Just to be clear, TLAPD and I do not condone modern IRL piracy; the "holiday" is more a tongue-and-cheek homage to 1950's Hollywood's take on old school Caribbean pirates.

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.

Buying I.T.-themed books

I've recently been in the market for a couple I.T. themed books. Specifically, I'm  looking for Raspberry Pi and Arduino books.

I have a home-brewed approach to book selections which has worked pretty well for me. In the past 10 years (I figure), I've first searched out my subject matter on Amazon.com, and then looked at the available titles. From these, I generally like to look at the one-star reviews first, as these often have to do with either shipping or the format (physical vs Kindle). I've read that there is a lot of trolling and inflation of reviews on Amazon (especially in fiction), so I try to keep a "weather eye" on reviews.

I've found that, as good as a book may be, it may never get 5 stars... and even a "bad" book may may manage 3 stars. So, I look at the 1 star reviews first. Typically, at least 10% of these have to do with the format or shipping issues; as I typically purchase books in a physical, paper format, these critiques (while valid) do not concern me. Another 10% are books purchased by the folks who are best described as clueless: "I bought "Intro To Quantuum Physics" for my four year old great-great grand niece...."

Whatever- this 20% is rubbish and can be discounted, as far as I am concerned.

The rest of it...,  well, I've heard a lot of late about rating inflation on Amazon. I'm not sure how this affects nonfiction, but  it surely affects fiction. Still...reviews of nonfiction works are plagued by well-meaning reviewers, to the point of making reviews problematic.

Here's a "typical" review (with the positive and the negative presented simultaneously)-

"/* I recently purchased "The B#+ Language for the Completely Clueless". This book is (useless) wonderful. What an incredible (waste of) time! The author starts with (overly simple) code and (slowly) builds from there (you need the 3rd party errata to wade through the defective code). Developers of all levels will admire (gag at) the flexibility (complexity and ridiculous syntax) of the language and (sleep through) the seventeen ways to print "Hello World". And that's just the first chapter! */

The "positive" reviewer- A. Niceguy. Goal: learn enough of B#+ for the Arduino and Raspberry Pi so his 4th and 2nd grade daughters can learn programming. Background: the office PowerPoint expert.

The "(negative(" reviewer- A. Sysadmin Ph.D. in Computer Science.  Goal: evaluate B#+ before rolling out to an internal network of ~1K devs. Was the 1st Banyan Vines network admin of his company; later led the Banyan>> Novell migration, and currently is the network admin of a 10K+ Linux network. Lead developer for all internally created software. On a first name basis with Linus Torvalds and Larry Ellison."

And this is why computer books are so bloody difficult to purchase. My backstory is as complicated as anyone's when it comes to this stuff. I'm self-taught in many areas of tech, with interests ranging from Big Data to relational DBs to IoT and its myriad of applications to photography to single board computing devices.

My "thing", though, when it comes to learning something that is completely new, is a book. I mean, I understand that much of what I want to learn is freely available on the internet- or someone might even have taken some *ahem* liberties with copyrights and published some titles without the author's permission. My bottom line is that I prefer to legally acquire copyrighted works, and as I don't always find a video presentation useful or readily accessible, I like to have the physical book at hand.

And so, I purchase physical copies of books. One I'd like to recommend today is from Jack Purdum, Ph.D. Dr. Purdum is a longtime college-level programming instructor, and his book is "Beginning C for Arduino, Second Edition.

I was attracted to this book because Mr. T and I both have Arduinos, and C is a language you can't go wrong with. What I found interesting about this book was its cover, which shows an Arduino Uno with the SMD version of the ATmel328 rather than the DIP version (yes, I know what both of those are- even thought this may be amateur writing, the content is totally pro: for those who might be wondering, SMD is surface mount [package] device, and DIP is Dual Inline Package; that is, the device is inserted into a socket rather than being soldered on to the board.)


I think that's all for now. I need to visit the Arduino site and update the software on my laptop. Mr. T needs to do the same for his computer, and then we will delve into the wonderful world of microprocessors, microcontrollers and programming.

Until then, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.

So, what do you do for a living?

I want to give a shout out to everyone who works for a living. Not that being independently wealthy is a bad thing.. I wish more of us could claim that as our occupation. It's just that, this weekend, in the United States, we have a holiday that commemorates the value of work and workers.

To be honest, most holidays in the United States end up being "just" a day off. Labor Day, for example, is generally recognized as the "official" end of summer. It has little, if anything (in the "popular consciousness") to do with the labor reforms that inspired the holiday. Likewise, it's bookend Memorial Day, is generally considered to be the "official" beginning of summer. It has been so sanitized it does not cause us to reflect on the horrors of war, or those who made the ultimate sacrifice.

Memorial Day started out as a day to remember just that: the ultimate sacrifice that Union soldiers made in the U.S. Civil War, and eventually evolved into a day to commemorate all of our military's fallen. Today, it is a sham.

It  ****ing **sses me off. We are now the land of the needy, and the home of the knave. America is damned.

Blogs tend to write themselves. Although I work very hard at producing a quality piece of text, the actual subject matter is often outside of my control. I have a theme I've been wanting to write on for a few blogs, for example, but other more important topics keep on popping up. So, the blog I really want to write keeps on getting pushed back.

But... to be real: holidays. In the grand scheme of things, most of them have nothing to do with what they were intended to be. And some of them, ... I just don't get.

For those who are unaware of the holidays celebrated in the United States, here's my rundown-

January 1 is New Year's Day. This one is a bit odd as it actually spans two years. In any event, for those who celebrate it, it is generally a "party" holiday, with much noise, drinking, dancing and occasional debauchery.

MLK Day (Martin Luther King Day) is officially observed on the third Monday of January. How many of us know that King was a Reverend? A Christian? Listen to his most famous speech, and share his dream. I Have A Dream  LISTEN TO IT.


February 14th is Valentine's Day. This is supposed to be a romantic holiday- it's origins go back to the guy who was supposedly was the 1st Christian martyr. Not exactly romantic.

March and April- not big for holidays in the U.S.

Nothing else happens until the 4th of July.  Independence Day- a grand old time. Probably the only time the holiday gets its true due.

Easter, Halloween Thanksgiving and Christmas:  religious holidays that have lost their meaning.

I think I've covered most everything. Happy holidays. 

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.