wobble wobble wobble
Oct. 27th, 2019 11:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psipsy-Otakon's hotel room block opened up and I intentionally did nothing. When quotes and phrases from The Hunger Games are accurately used to describe getting a hotel room for Otakon, then I don't feel bad about stepping back a bit. Anime cons should never be a source of stress. I'll still pre-register for it, and that's fine because they mail the badge ahead of time.
-AnimeUSA is next week. This year it's on the same weekend as Nekocon and AWA. I'll probably go to AUSA, as I have since it ever started (and it's much less effort to get to). I figure if I end up skipping that, then I'm definitely not going to the others.
-A friend of mine offered me a dealers badge for Anime Expo. While I feel honored by this offer, and the value and power such a badge has is not lost on me, I had to decline. I like conventions that don't look like humanitarian disasters waiting to happen. Going to cons that size requires a lot of energy and resources anyway. I mean, I still have that energy and resources, I would just prefer to use it on other things. Such as going to Japan again.
-I do price out flights to Japan every now and then, and found that Harrisburg (MDT) seems to consistently have the lower fares. It's also easy to get to, and as airports go, it's a lot more mellow.
-The next trip, whenever that is, will involve Akihabara again. I may also venture out away from Tokyo, to visit the Honda museum. The idea of driving a couple hours in Japan is daunting but I also drove in Ireland with no issues.
-According to doujinshi.org I have about 800 books. It's slightly more than that, because not all of the ones I have are in their database. That said, almost 200 of them were acquired during my trips to Japan, so about 100 per trip. Were I to really focus on doujinshi in my next trip to Japan, I could get a lot more than that, especially if I raid the 100-yen bins. Tempting! But that's not a priority right now.
-Navigating windows in applications is a lot easier on a 4K display. Nice big canvas to work with, lets me have a lot of windows of stuff open, and they can be stretched out. Great for shuffling data around, or organizing large playlists.
-4K displays are not so great when trying to watch old .avi files. They may have looked ok back in 2003 on a 1024x768 display, but on a 3840x2160 it makes for an upscaled grainy blocky mess. It's like trying to write a 20-page report with only a cardful of notes, and it will show. I can't imagine what that stuff will look like when displays with even higher resolution come out.
-Confusion reigns on the microcontrollers (MCUs). Then again there's a lot to get into and a lot of ways of getting into it. This is the sort of thing that only really went big after I was done with tech school, otherwise I'm sure we would have spent a good amount of class time on them. As for programming them, some folks are saying to learn C++. Some say beginners should be ok with BASIC. Some are saying that going directly to learning assembly is better since many of the devices have only about 50 different commands.
-In the past, when I'd look up datasheets on various components, most of them would be in the range of 10 pages or so, less for simpler components, more for complex devices. For MCUs, I picked one at random and it's over 700 pages. That's for a group of 4 similar devices, and there are thousands of different MCUs to choose from.
-I ordered a new soldering iron pencil to replace the one I burned out. Then I get a notification that it wasn't going to ship until December. So I order one from a different place, leaving the original order active (I figured if I broke one, I could break another). That arrives, gets put to use. Then the first one I ordered shows up at my door? At least I have a spare now.
-Work had me on dayshift for a couple weeks due to training on some new equipment. More like sort of a split dayshift, with a start time of about 10AM. I don't know if I could go back to dayshift permanently. Well, if I had to, I could, but I wouldn't like it much.
-There was a model train show this weekend. Finds include a super-detailed locomotive, a set of ore cars, old kits, and the real kicker was an old Tyco model of a Union 76 gas station. What made that notable was that at the time of the model's production, Union 76 gas stations were much more prevalent than they are today, so there's quite a bit of nostalgia there.
-These days, there are still "76" branded gas stations, just nowhere near as many as there used to be. The truck stops of the same brand were mostly bought out by TravelAmerica a long time ago. Many of them still have their unique three-pointed structure. Or at least two of them.
-In the garage, I have a couple LED light strips mounted on the ceiling; now it's just a matter of running the wires. Then I can pull out the old single-bulb fixtures. Those were ok for simple entry/exit, or at least not stumbling around in the dark, but not very good for any kind of involved work.
-The light strips are also going to be positioned in such a way that they'll throw down a lot of light in the center of the garage, without being in the (potential) path of the engine hoist, if/when it comes time to use it. Funny thing is, I ended up using the hoist to assist with installing a support board for one of the light strips, to hold it in place while fastening.
-AnimeUSA is next week. This year it's on the same weekend as Nekocon and AWA. I'll probably go to AUSA, as I have since it ever started (and it's much less effort to get to). I figure if I end up skipping that, then I'm definitely not going to the others.
-A friend of mine offered me a dealers badge for Anime Expo. While I feel honored by this offer, and the value and power such a badge has is not lost on me, I had to decline. I like conventions that don't look like humanitarian disasters waiting to happen. Going to cons that size requires a lot of energy and resources anyway. I mean, I still have that energy and resources, I would just prefer to use it on other things. Such as going to Japan again.
-I do price out flights to Japan every now and then, and found that Harrisburg (MDT) seems to consistently have the lower fares. It's also easy to get to, and as airports go, it's a lot more mellow.
-The next trip, whenever that is, will involve Akihabara again. I may also venture out away from Tokyo, to visit the Honda museum. The idea of driving a couple hours in Japan is daunting but I also drove in Ireland with no issues.
-According to doujinshi.org I have about 800 books. It's slightly more than that, because not all of the ones I have are in their database. That said, almost 200 of them were acquired during my trips to Japan, so about 100 per trip. Were I to really focus on doujinshi in my next trip to Japan, I could get a lot more than that, especially if I raid the 100-yen bins. Tempting! But that's not a priority right now.
-Navigating windows in applications is a lot easier on a 4K display. Nice big canvas to work with, lets me have a lot of windows of stuff open, and they can be stretched out. Great for shuffling data around, or organizing large playlists.
-4K displays are not so great when trying to watch old .avi files. They may have looked ok back in 2003 on a 1024x768 display, but on a 3840x2160 it makes for an upscaled grainy blocky mess. It's like trying to write a 20-page report with only a cardful of notes, and it will show. I can't imagine what that stuff will look like when displays with even higher resolution come out.
-Confusion reigns on the microcontrollers (MCUs). Then again there's a lot to get into and a lot of ways of getting into it. This is the sort of thing that only really went big after I was done with tech school, otherwise I'm sure we would have spent a good amount of class time on them. As for programming them, some folks are saying to learn C++. Some say beginners should be ok with BASIC. Some are saying that going directly to learning assembly is better since many of the devices have only about 50 different commands.
-In the past, when I'd look up datasheets on various components, most of them would be in the range of 10 pages or so, less for simpler components, more for complex devices. For MCUs, I picked one at random and it's over 700 pages. That's for a group of 4 similar devices, and there are thousands of different MCUs to choose from.
-I ordered a new soldering iron pencil to replace the one I burned out. Then I get a notification that it wasn't going to ship until December. So I order one from a different place, leaving the original order active (I figured if I broke one, I could break another). That arrives, gets put to use. Then the first one I ordered shows up at my door? At least I have a spare now.
-Work had me on dayshift for a couple weeks due to training on some new equipment. More like sort of a split dayshift, with a start time of about 10AM. I don't know if I could go back to dayshift permanently. Well, if I had to, I could, but I wouldn't like it much.
-There was a model train show this weekend. Finds include a super-detailed locomotive, a set of ore cars, old kits, and the real kicker was an old Tyco model of a Union 76 gas station. What made that notable was that at the time of the model's production, Union 76 gas stations were much more prevalent than they are today, so there's quite a bit of nostalgia there.
-These days, there are still "76" branded gas stations, just nowhere near as many as there used to be. The truck stops of the same brand were mostly bought out by TravelAmerica a long time ago. Many of them still have their unique three-pointed structure. Or at least two of them.
-In the garage, I have a couple LED light strips mounted on the ceiling; now it's just a matter of running the wires. Then I can pull out the old single-bulb fixtures. Those were ok for simple entry/exit, or at least not stumbling around in the dark, but not very good for any kind of involved work.
-The light strips are also going to be positioned in such a way that they'll throw down a lot of light in the center of the garage, without being in the (potential) path of the engine hoist, if/when it comes time to use it. Funny thing is, I ended up using the hoist to assist with installing a support board for one of the light strips, to hold it in place while fastening.
no subject
Date: 2019-10-30 09:18 am (UTC)