Schodack Island State Park
Scraggly Trees Above
Schodack Creek
Typical winter 2016 afternoon
So darn gray this afternoon.
Taken on Saturday February 6, 2016 at Schodack Island State Park.Enjoy Working with Data
I enjoy working with data and trying to find meaning it using maps, graphing, and tables. Weather data is particularly easy and accessible, and itโs regularly updated, but there are many sources of data put out by the government and other agencies. Text-based data is particularly easy to manipulate with common tools and programs in Linux and the PHP environment, and itโs fun to turn it into useful things.
A book I was reading suggested that the neutral pin in your electric plug in your home is connected back to the power plant, as a “return path”. ๐ My reaction, is if that is the case, your electrician who wired your house made a rather dangerous mistake, swapping the live and the neutral wires.
A book I was reading suggested that the neutral pin in your electric plug in your home is connected back to the power plant, as a “return path”. ๐ My reaction, is if that is the case, your electrician who wired your house made a rather dangerous mistake, swapping the live and the neutral wires. ๐ฎ Neutral should be wired to a grounding stake, assuming your power source is referenced to the earth ground like most electrical grids are wired.โก
Open Source Software with Limitations
I use 100% open source software on my hardware and electronics projects I build. Not only because Iโm cheap and donโt have a lot of extra money to waste on software, I like the idea of software that is generally future compatible, and is easily adjustable to my needs. If I have a problem with the open source software I am using, solutions are usually only a short internet search away.
At this point, open source software is generally as good as commercial software, at least for my needs. It also is free of advertising, and doesnโt sell my personal data to other vendors. If only such things existed for my Android Smartphone. Software is easily obtained using an internet connection the apt-get system, no anti-virus software is required, updates are free and automatic for the life of your hardware. The Unix-based system is well designed, robust and sensible โ it lacks many of the idiosyncrasies of other person-computing operating systems built on DOS. Terminal scripts and applications make quick work for basic tasks, once you learn the commands.
The only downside of Linux is hardware support. While Windows and Mac OS are never plug-and-play as they claim to be, Linux hardware support much more mixed. Many things are plug-and-play with Linux, especially common hardware that has straightforward industry-based interfaced or a vendor willing to let their hardware secrets out there. Many generic China-made hardware works really good with Linux.
But somethings donโt work well or at all, and Iโve noticed that to be a real problem with my laptopโs built-in wifi and Bluetooth. Iโve long gotten the the wi-fi to work permissably well, although lately it broke at the public wi-fi at the library. Eventually I got it fixed, but it was a pain. Bluetooth not so much, but I was able to fix that with an external $1.12 dongle I got from AliExpress, and I may look at getting a similar low-cost wi-fi dongle. Kind of a pain though carrying around all those extra dongles. Now to figure out the bluetooth serial โ thatโs not a hardware problem, but a permissions problem.
Linux and open source software is a lot of fun to use, even with itโs problems. And I am enjoying using the simple interfaces and working with microcontroller, sensors, and electronic components with the Arduino IDE, especially now that Iโve obtained one and will get more ESP32 based microcontrollers which have much more memory and capacity.