Does Your Truck Run Linux?

Independent operator truck owners used to customize their own dashboards with various after market instruments.  Create your own GUI.  In hardware.

This capability has not gone away, but today's fleets tend to feature controls in a large display of some kind, per Tesla and others.  Behind those displays are the sensors and controllers, a small "internet of things" perhaps glued together using TCP / IP.

As a result, the truck's cab, the personal workspace (PWS) is starting to double as a kind of devops space.  In addition we get the navigation and business accounting apps, what it takes to keep up with the truck's businesses.

Not every PWS is running Linux, nor is every (any?) jet airplane (avionics is its own thing) -- when it comes to the in-flight movie service some do.

However, the fact remains we need to give students "cockpit" experience (in the driver's seat) with whatever operating systems.

Even if your truck does not run Linux, Linux may run your truck, in the sense that remote platforms may be tasked with scheduling you're contracted to carry out, as a driver.  You meet Ubuntu in the cloud a lot.

Time for Blender?

I woke up this morning to Youtubes about Blender Beta 2.8, perhaps to be out of beta by June, 2019?  Blender is a large open undertaking aiming at the 3D sculpting and animations market and has a large loyal following.

For many, it provides a training pen, sophisticated enough, for the less free commercial products they'll end up using, such as products by Autodesk or maybe ESRI.

I remember when Kenneth Snelson, a star developer of CGI, was expressing some distress over the prospect of tackling Maya. No matter how many peaks one has ascended, there's always another, and peaks are difficult by definition, and one is only getting older.  So should I learn Blender 2.8 in 2019 and work at getting really good at it?

The motivations would be many here: (1) I'm a curriculum developer around the Bucky stuff (2) hypertoons were my invention and I should make more of them (3) for Coffee Shops Network (4) which is about pumping funding to the field.

According to this workflow, the bottleneck between getting funding to the field, and the status quo, is my not knowing Blender nor having made those synergetics hypertoons yet.

This is probably where I start to rebel against myself (my own science fiction) as (a) I have done some simple synergetics hypertoons and had them on Youtube years ago (b) lots of folks are way better at that animation stuff than I am right now and (c) the field needs its funding now, yesterday, not in some fond future when Kirby has had time to reinvent himself yet again.

I'd rather jump on the advisory team doing the 4K IMAX type movies for science museums, that will pump out the Bucky stuff in super high def, and have those coffee shop reveries downloading right away.  So I keep looking around looking for who else is in the business and doing the work?

"When you can't be the best, buy the best" is a slogan close to what I'm getting at.  Let's not wait for Kirby, is the main idea.

That being said, Kirby has signed up for a Maker Space lesson, presumably in 3D printing.

I have the STL files from Jeff and I'm looking at Koski identities using phi-scaled S-modules as my opening topic, with a UVT (unit volume tetrahedron) used to scale everything else in this Sculpture Garden (SG).

Wanderers 2019.1.8

This was our first evening Wanderers (alternate weeks) in 2019. We're named Wanderers because we sometimes practice Open Forum, which means the conversation is allowed to wander, in a kind of Bohmian dialog, and takes on Ouija-board like qualities.

Especially if we have a critical mass, which I won't call  quorum as we're not following Robert's Rules or anything like that.  The Quaker practice of consensus is just beneath the surface.  We're not doing business, usually, so it's closer to Meeting for Worship.

However, tonight some business came up, as the estate / campus is under some pressure to do its nonprofit business of memorializing Linus Pauling and his contribution to humankind.  He received a Nobel Peace Prize among other prizes.

His wife Ava Helen was active in WILPF (Womens International League for Peace and Freedom).

Speaking of WILPF, my mother has been a long time WILPF activist, even went to the The Hague for its centennial.  Today she got some copies of Western Friend, January - February 2019, the On Weapons issue.  She has an interview published in this issue.  She's what we call a weighty Friend.

Speaking of weighty Friends, I'm back on beer as it's 2019.  Glenn just phoned to say Wanderers was finished and I could join the after party at his place.

Anyway, very public talks about ISEPP and the Pauling House, with "strangers" (members of the public) present, is very much in accordance with the spirit of nonprofit management.  We're servants of the public, not shareholders.  As a socially responsible form of capitalism, we compete with the non-profits who set up around cost plus military contracts.

Speaking of government, Don came by early from the hospital to watch the president's speech on the telly.  We went through CBS.  President Trump was about done when Don arrived.  Then we heard the rebuttle from the other party.  Don visited with Carol a bit and then gave me a lift to the venue.  I took some time over at Fred Meyer's to tweet, on @4DsolutionsPDX, one of my channels.