Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

I Wood
May 30, 2017
birthday tools wood arduino

With my exploration of things in the small microcontroller space - like Arduino, NodeMCU, ESP8266, Teensy, etc. - I've been considering a handful of projects that really need some kind of casing.  I've always been enthusiastic about natural cases for technology devices, and my latest project idea includes an opportunity to produce a case in natural wood.

What I am intending to build is a small alarm clock for Riley.  It will have a small white-pixel screen, with a resolution of 15x7.  The pixels can be dimmed and animate, and should be able to display a time reasonably well, along with some animations for alarms and different events.

Success with Phoenix
May 25, 2017
Elixir Brewfest website Phoenix

I've rewritten this year's Brewfest website using an old design I liked on top of Phoenix.  Phoenix is an MVC framework, like Rails, but for Elixir.  The rewrite has been interesting.

The design requirements include displaying a single-page website that describes the Brewfest, while capturing information from brewers about themselves and the beer they plan to bring to the fest to share.  I wanted the "login" to be extremely simple so that brewers didn't need to go through a whole enrollment process.  The information they enter should also go through an editorial process before anyof it is published to the site.  Some nice-to-have features include displaying ticket sales information/graphs, and the ability to edit the single-page site content from an administrative area on the site (protected by a preset http-authenticated login).

Belief Systems
May 24, 2017
science

There is some notion that one can believe in science.  Science is not a belief.  Science is science.  If you don’t believe in science, you are a denier.  You deny that evidence that is examined and evaluated can predict future results.  It’s that simple.

You can certainly believe that facts are not true.  You can believe that experimentation will not produce repeatable results when the conditions are controlled.  This doesn’t make you correct or thoughtful. It makes you ignorant.

Making Friends As an Adult
May 17, 2017
friends

I am reminded again how making friends as an adult is hard.  Maybe it was hard as a kid, too - I can't remember having friends as a kid, really.  It's strange that it's so difficult.  One must assume that this is because other people must not want to make new friends, or because people are are very particular about the kinds of people they want to be friends with, even though with how hard it is to make friends, you'd think people would be more open to less ideal friendships.

I may have mentioned before about how even when it's possible to find an adult couple with kids our kid's ages, there may be weird things that make it difficult to relate.  Some differences in religious belief, food tastes, politics, or economic status.  Usually, we're the ones that don't go to church, eat weird food, and are - between the two of us - mostly liberal (even though I registered as a Republian after the 2016 election, which is a whole different topic), and that ends up being part of what turns people off somehow.