Back to Java

So I’m back to Java again.  This time, I think I’ve got a plan and a purpose though.  A few weeks back, I grew very interested in Arduino.  I like the idea of making my own electronics and what not.  What I also like is the things have an Ethernet connection to them, so I can give each device an IP address and communicate with it.  In theory.  All that is based off something I listened to (iTunesU University of Southern Maine COS 460/540 Computer Networks Spring 2012 lecture 1) and formulated an idea about.  I’ve just got a bit of a ways to go before my Java programming skills are up to what the class is talking about in lecture 1. 

In the lecture, the teacher talks about writing a program that connects via telnet and sends information two ways.  At this point, I’m only interested in one way communication, as the idea right now is for impact sensors.  So I’ve started back on Java to try and get myself caught up to where I can make that happen.

I could probably do the same thing in other programming languages, but Java seems to be the dominant one right now and true platform independence is quite awesome.  Because really, the language you program in guarantees your end platform.  It doesn’t take long for the code to get very operating system specific.  Plus if you want to write on one platform for another platform you have all sorts of things to deal with, and I don’t want to.  So I’ll write the thing in Java. 

At this point, I’m kind of glad I structure my finances the way I do.  If I didn’t, I probably would have already purchased an Arduino starter kit without any idea as to what I wanted to do with it, and I simply would have played until the parts ran out.  And that would be that.  I might have produced something that was mildly interesting, but that’s about it.  It might even have produced something with the shiny factor.  And everyone said, “Oooh…  shiny.”   But in the end, there would be no form to what was created, and no real purpose to it. 

We’ve done gas pump conversions at two stores in the last three or four months.  One store got shiny new cash registers, the other didn’t.  It all narrowed down to purposeful use of the technology.  The first store runs a short order restaurant with 22 menus and more than 100 items.  The big shiny was put in there simply to handle the massive explosion in menus required to keep track of what is being sold.  The other store doesn’t even use the capabilities of the old system to its fullest extent, so there was no need to put the shiny registers in.   The only factor would have been “oooh… shiny”.   And that’s not a good reason to spend $10,000.   And that’s about the price differential between “ooh… shiny” and using what you already have. 

As a short note, the first conversion was Sapphire/Ruby with Gilbarco pumps to Sapphire Topaz with SFC, Wayne Connect, and Wayne pumps.  The second conversion was Sappire Ruby with Gilbarco pumps to Sapphire/Ruby with SFC, Wayne Connect, and Wayne pumps.  Both were one day startups.  

Getting back to the point I was making through that side story, doing something just because of the shiny factor isn't a good reason.  There needs to be a noticeable and good end in mind.  Holding back the purchasing gives your brain the space and separation to think about things and formulate things you couldn't think about before.  So be slow to purchase.  It'll save your bucks.

The Questions I'd Ask

I heard of the Bill Nye and Ken Hamm debate, but I didn’t watch it.  For some reason, people think science and religion are incompatible.  And they consider those of us who believe in Christ to be somehow inadequate.  So there’s no point in debating people who don’t even believe you are human. 

But I do have questions of my own…

1)      What happened 20 minutes before the big bang?  

2)      FACT: The universe is not infinitely old.   FACT: Einstein’s theory states that matter can never be created nor destroyed, only reorganized.  Essentially, we’re dealing with all the matter we’ve ever dealt with before, just in different forms.   Given these two facts, where did matter come from?

See, to me you have to understand there are limitations to what you believe.  After a while, you push to a hard edge, the answer is “I don’t know, my system does not explain that”.  At that point, faith kicks in.  Whether it be faith in God or faith in science. 

Seems to me that both sides have people that don’t tell the truth and stick to old arguments.  Christianity really threw the world on its head, and provided a completely different way of looking at things.  It still does, though what most people teach is not what the Bible teaches.  What most teach is a disturbing combination of Old Testament and New Testament, with no real separation between the two. 

Science is much the same way.  Except there’s a lot of mystery and excitement, and many unknowns.  It’s a magical world where the rules start to make sense, except the ones that matter.  Because in the end, the answers to certain questions just don’t matter.

All over the place

On top of studying learning, I’m also studying money.  The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson is quite an interesting look at money.  It looks at the history of money and finance.  But why would I want to study money? 

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.  – George Santayana

How can we understand anything without first examining the history of a thing?  Stock market bubbles come and go, and always will.  Understanding the process of bubbles helps to understand where money can be made and lost.  Do you get into the hot new stock right after you hear about it on TV, or do you hunt things down on your own and try to come up with some sort of formulation on how you believe things will occur? 

I don’t have the answers to those questions, but I still know what I intend to do with my finances, and as such I haven’t invalidated my theories.  So that’s a good thing. 

I got rid of the last book I had, and found the library is rather lacking in books on memory.  So I decided to trek into motivation.  I probably need to look at another branch in order to find what I want, but that’s another story.  The book I’m currently reading is Drive by Daniel H. Pink.  So far, I’m agreeing with most of what Pink has said in the book, and it all makes a weird sort of sense.  So I like the book and would recommend others read it. 

I’m also once again examining Arduino, but my brain is still spinning on the same thoughts and ideas I had before.  The real question is what am I going to do with such a thing?  But then, I was listening to something on iTunes U about Computer Networks.  I was really looking for a CCNA style class, but this one is a programming class.  But the end result of the first lecture in the class was to talk about building a client/server model and connecting to the server using telnet. 

Well that makes me wonder…  Combine a lot of small but specialized Arduino devices together and have them send resultant data (but not process it) to a central server level computer.  So take a piezo element to act as a feeling sensor.  Put one in the front of a foot, and another in the back of the foot to let the foot know that it has touched ground.  Combine that with an accelerometer and you have have a way to tell if the foot you have created is level.  It’s a thought…