Lion ponderings

 Bangkok is still standing, but lions pondered why the high rises swayed as much as they did.  Normally, they don't sway enough to see it on camera.  There was a collapse of a high rise under construction by a chinese company.  That might have been a real tofu building, but it collapsed from the top down.  It might have been uncured concrete on the top floors combined with risky placement of workers below it.  Many smaller buildings in Myanmar collapsed.  The pixelated building King Power Mahanakhon was designed by a German company. The internet has nothing on who designed the 3 towers: Park Origin Thonglor.  Those were swaying the most. Noted they were swaying at the base, which makes lions ponder if the foundations went to bedrock.  They're obviously built on silt from the river.  Anything not built on bedrock is going to bob around like a boat. Surprised no elevated roads in Bangkok collapsed.   A bridge in Myanmar collapsed...

 The lion kingdom has started facing the problem of forward compatibility where legacy libraries are getting phased out, starting with libpng. For now, there is a makefile rule which copies that 1 library from the build system to the bin directory.  If it doesn't find the exact version in the build system, it ignores it.  That way, another user on another system can build it without encountering an error.  Past lion actually encountered this problem & manually kept a copy of libpng in the bin directory, but the reason was forgotten. In the long term, there could be a script which automatically copies over everything in the ldd output except for entries like ld-linux in an exclude list.  The biggest problem lions have been struggling with is the case of just wanting to build a program for local use instead of distribution.  It really needs a way to select between a distribution build & a local build.  The libpng rule might have to be inside...

The generation Z gootube continues to put out a lot more child prodigies & over achievers than the millennial gootube.  LaurieWired is another one joining the ranks of child prodigies with AlbertaTech.  The child prodigy category is the ones who are obviously gifted.  The over achiever category is Katherout, Taylor Bell, According to Nicole .  They're not gifted but obviously worked as hard as gen X.  After 2 generations who were complaining about how poor they were, gen Z is the 1st to brag about how much they have. They lived with their parents until their mid 20's.  They're not living above their means.  They really have a lot of money. Was intrigued that LaurieWired went from FL state undergrad straight to Goog & Microsoft instead of more traditional paths like MIT or a master's.  Getting into a top tier company just once was an impossible dream for lions, yet gootube prodigies did it multiple times, bouncing from 1 top tier compa...

  Stuck at 4:25+ for the last few 26.5 mile attempts, with a lot of cramping.  The weather is progressively getting warmer but the problem seems to be more cumulative fatigue.  The wall hit at 23.5 miles today. Recalibrated the motors at mile 14.  Burned 190/mile & 196/mile, about as efficient as this route ever was. Still subjectively getting slightly better results from Gu than Nuun electrolyte. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dentist convention. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Some sounds from long ago that lions completely forgot in the last 35 years.  It's the kind of sudden reappearance of past memories that happens when you're about to die, but sound has a bigger role in lion memories than other animals.

The industry seems to have begun a new push for the general purpose robot.  Lions are about as skeptical as natural languages for programming & full self driving ever being idiot proof.  The general purpose robot is pretty much what animals have striven for from the beginning, a single tool that does everything.  There have been more general purpose tools than others.  They win engagement until the next single purpose tool is invented & they start pondering how to replace the new single purpose tool with a general purpose tool.  Lion studies of legged robots showed wheels are far ahead in most applications.  Energy storage is the mane problem.  Legs are only advantageous in off road travel.  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Got 6 pullups in a row.  Next black toenail got started.  Every election. -------------------------------------------...

Made the unlikely move of burning $95 on a domane renewal.  Domane renewal for 5 years was now $95 or $19 per year.  When lions started long ago, it was $12. Rough spreadsheet calculations show 2% inflation per year.  The very 1st dot com domanes in the mid 90's were $100 for 1 year. As always, the purpose of the domane is doubtful.   Let it expire & it goes to a URL broker who will continue paying for it & charge a huge fee for it. Obviously, social networks have replaced personal domanes.  Previously, the sourceforget host only allowed relevant content on it.  They seem to have either never enforced that or don't anymore.  Lions previously had every project on it, but stripped it down to Cinelerra to make it more focused on heroine warriors.  Maybe it could be a museum. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The unpresuming lion fund didn't go anywhere d...

  Bald eagle cam showed what appeared to be the remanes of the youngest eagle, frozen in the snow, perpetually staring back at the nest.  Being a public cam, they couldn't zoom in to confirm the identity & risk shocking the masses.  The cam stayed wide from then on.  It must have wandered out during the snow storm & couldn't get back under the adult before the snow piled up.  It froze, staring back.  That was the last to hatch.  The gene for wanderlust was strong in that one.  Maybe wanderlust is a consequence of not being born simultaneously.  That's how a lot of them go. Kind of macabre for them to go about their routine like nothing ever happened, with their offspring's corpse staring at them.  Such is the necessity of survival in the wild.  The ravens would eventually take it away.     Another view showed a more likely corpse.  It was still under the adult.  #3 was still alive but looking a bit r...

Decided to revisit the 580EX-II repair after the vintage flash project.    https://growmane.blogspot.com/2023/08/after-1-tube-replacement-in-2020.html     The pink line continued to be 330V while the discharge pad continued to be 5V.  Past lion verified there was nothing awry in the capacitor enclosure, but the mane cap only gets power from the pink wire & the pink wire was hot.  It would probably still work if powered by the external battery.    Powered it up while disassembled.  Found 330V on the pink wire & the mane cap, as it should be.  At this point, it was pointing to another intermittently failing wire.    Also noted a nasty mechanism which is supposed to release the horizontal locking pin.  If it breaks or is fouled, there's no way to access the capacitor.  All the articulated joints have detents, so the locking pin is unnecessary. It uses the locking pin to know if the flash is pointing straight ahea...