you can play it with an ensemble of random instruments.
you can play a single voicing all by itself.
all of it screams "musical". which, if you do play say, Tuba, or one of the larger instruments, is a godsend, as most of your lines in other pieces will bore you to death.
From a brief stint in Seoul, I ran into a beverage called Makgeolli. A rice-wine, sake-adjacency that clocks in at beer ABV levels (maybe someone started a batch and couldn't wait for it to fully ferment).
Cloudy. Raw. Fragrant. Sweet. Funky.
Absolutely delicious.
It also has almost no shelf-life (no acidity to protect, and sterilization destroys all the charm), so no one imports/exports it, but if it caught on in America I would not be upset.
If the goal is the building. Balsa kits (an xacto knife, 2 bottles of super glue [thick/thin], CA-accelorator) are the way to go. Discuss gliders are easy to manage the risk of learning how to fly, and are light, so crashes will only be mildly catastrophic. I have this one, and it was easy-ish to build (~20 hours?)
If the goal is the flying. You can't go wrong with an easy star. I've crashed mine a million times. You just patch it back together humpty dumpty style with thick CA + accelerant. Bonus points for the prop being in the back, so if you run into stuff you (probably) won't draw blood.
Note that the hobby does require some skill w/ flying and need some level of risk management. There are cords that let you plug your transmitter into a computer/fly over a simulation that can help with the former.
Fiscal policy was used to ensure we didn't all starve during the pandemic, and that 2024 didn't do it's best 1928 impersonation. Was inflation worse? Of course. The conditions and context of either presidency aren't even close.
If an idea doesn't work on the back of a napkin, it's done. Think about other approaches to the problem and get another napkin. I think that's what he's getting at. Analysis from first principles is hardly gatekeeping.
It's already being observed. Bird migrations have been happening earlier/later, and ranges of birds have increased. I'm sure the same thing is happening for whales / ocean animals.
According to this one[1], they're adapting by leaving later, and flying faster/taking less breaks to make up for the lost time. The result being that less of them make it to the breeding grounds (6% decrease in survival rate).
Ironically the only reason the lake still exists is the runoff that's poisoning it. As agricultural practices tighten up, the lake will dry/concentrate even more.
The back pain was instigated by moving, driving across the country, helping someone out with yard work slinging rock, and then going for a post-thanksgiving run, which broke this camel's back. Lumbar shaping is very, very important for the lower spine. You can do it with muscles, or you can do it with things. I used a 10 dollar IKEA chair + grippy bottom + a rolled towel. You roll the towel until it's the right size to create a slight arch. No rulers or drill sergeants necessary. It's also important to note that the drive to/from work is doing just as much damage as being at work, so using the towel in the driver's seat is a godsend.
The wrist pain was instigated by working on a laptop during a 1+hr train commute. I kind of looked like Groot (Despicable Me) prancing around, minus the prancing. I tried pretty much everything, but what stuck was the Evoluent mouse. It allows you to use the mouse without arm pronation (pronation forces the carpal region into a binding/constricted position). It's ~100 bucks but a single doctors visit costs more than that.
Bluetooth is an absolute nightmare if you don't understand the majority of what's going on (which in and of itself takes... a lot of time). There's a bunch of logic going on and most of it is handled in callbacks that you will never see, except the dreaded timeout/failure to handle print at the end of the main loop. Zephyr will ease a lot of those painpoints, with the understanding that you're ignoring a lot of the machinery humming under your feet.
Things that stood out to me:
0. If this is your first embedded project / you're actually new to all of this, get ready to take a beating. "Abandon all hope, ble who enter here."
1. Do yourself a huge favor and get two* dev kits. Nordic provides walkthroughs on getting setup with two flavors of code (zephyr, or low-level drivers). Each has a tutorial for uart forwarding/handling. Expanding on that tutorial will take a lot of futzing around, or actually learning what the machinery is doing under the hood. Learning the stack did not come naturally / I found it very difficult. Why two? Two lets the bluetooth abstraction handle itself / you don't have to deal with it right away when you're getting started.
2. If / when you want to attach your bluetooth device to something more useful (e.g. a computer or mobile device), do yourself a second huge favor and develop using linux + a laptop. I tried to do development on windows + WSL and there were many, many hangups with the hardware handoffs from PyBlues to the local bluetooth drivers. Maybe it's gotten better, but I doubt it. My other alternatives were driving direct from Windows bluetooth libraries (behemoths that would take time to setup / understand), or develop for mobile (which also will take time to setup / understand). Neither was an enjoyable experience.
so in summary:
Is Zephyr overkill? - Absolutely. But the path is well trodden.
I think it just requires a reframing of what to expect. Films from Tarkovsky or other capital D Directors "of Director's Directors fame" are less plot driven. Films from older eras are less plot driven / hadn't developed the tempo of modernity (I'd summarize the tempo change as needing to lead the viewer into what's next). Combine them both and you get something that feels like watching paint dry, the catch being the paint dries on 120ft of canvas. You're in the museum and the tapestry moves. Rather than trying to constantly figure out what's next / where this is going (you don't notice this in modern films as the tempo has already fed it to you / shuttled you along to the next plot point), just sit there and enjoy the view. In Stalker the shots are (op/im)pressively long. And I love them.
[1] is an exceptional book for a bright teen, especially so if you suspect the teen leans into their intelligence/abilities to gauge their self worth (I don't know a single person, let alone teen who doesn't do this). The book's main theme states that being a good player has nothing to do with skill, but rather with the ability to create playful environments that encourage growth, humility, and most importantly, more play.
I was taught never to trust eye contact either. They could be looking past you and motorcycle profiles are very low. I'm looking for a stationary front wheel hub. Any movement merits a reaction.
Having an indicator that the car "sees" you would be very interesting.
Don't underestimate the context in which you worked e.g. showing up to the job having your ace-in-the-hole: the Knowledge (capitol K-Knowing in your bones) that you could do better socio-fiscally speaking. A lot of who we are and how we represent ourselves to society is bound up in work for some damnable reason. Feeling trapped in employment (and therefore trapped in your self-worth) is a major vector for anxiety/negative feedback loops.
Put on a good set of headphones and go sit in the corner.
Also obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah392lnFHxM&list=RDAh392lnFH...
The thing I appericiate most about bach is:
you can play it fast.
you can play it slow.
you can play it with an ensemble of random instruments.
you can play a single voicing all by itself.
all of it screams "musical". which, if you do play say, Tuba, or one of the larger instruments, is a godsend, as most of your lines in other pieces will bore you to death.