Solar Watch Charging

A few years ago I bought a Solar watch that wasn't holding a charge.  Being the kind of guy I am I built a solar watch charger, stuck the watch in it and let it charge for a week.  Works great now, holds a charge for a week or so.  That was back in 2012 and I have talked about it a few times on the Internet since.  I tried to drum up some funding for producing a short run of a few thousand Solar Watch Charging boxes, but, short sighted dorks couldn't see the value.

My first Solar Watch Charger (SWC) was a cheap, plastic, watch box that I stuck a 12v LED in the top of.  I wired it to a 12v adapter.

Later I built a few others, timers, batteries so I could travel with them, etc.  I worked with a timer on You Tube and in the post I discussed using it for an SWC. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0eLz5n58lo) Don't watch the video if you are looking for a solar watch charger, I don't show it being used for that, although, I am currently using it for that purpose.

I actually hooked it up to an aquarium light I bought off of eBay.  I used to have the light plugged into a regular timer, the "geek" timer is just because I like messing with stuff.  I used those double sided tapes they use for those hooks that can be removed from walls to attach the light to the side of the jewelery box.

I broke the aquarium light clamp because the clamp was designed to fit on a wall thinner than the wooden toolbox I use as a jewelery box.  I leave the top open, but, I could wire lights into the lid so I could close it, I just haven't done that yet.  (comma splice) The light comes on for about an hour a day to keep my solar watches charged.

There is a guy who took my idea, ran with it and built a really hokey device.  He used to sell it for $10 bucks, then more, now it runs almost $30 on Amazon.  People have built lights in watch boxes.  All pretty simple stuff anyone can do really cheap.

The easiest way to charge a watch is to just set it somewhere and put an LED flashlight on top of it.  Just buy a cheap, short, LED flashlight, turn it on and put it on top of the dial.  Leave it for a while.  Yeah, sometimes the flashlight falls over, but, anyone can prop it up.  This is the main reason I couldn't get funding, everyone wanted to know why anyone would buy something they could do with a $1 flashlight.

There are these LED puck lights, buy one at a dollar store, put it under a shelf and shove your solar watch under the light.  Easy Peasy.  Costco sells LED Puck lights that have a timer built in and a very cool remote.  I had to wire a wireless remote into my timer to turn the lights on and off.

There are hundreds of ways to solve this solar watch charging problem.  I've shown a few here and discussed another.  I like building stuff.

Still, I imagine people will be producing SWC systems into the future.  Any of us who own more than one watch needs a way to keep our watches charged.  I like the aquarium light best, so far.  I can keep 8 watches fully charged in my jewelry box pretty easily. 

Elon Musk, idiot at large

Since the industrial revolution began "robots", automated machines, have been doing work that people used to do.

At one time people wove cloth on simple looms. As looms became more complicated and more automated fewer people were needed to weave the same amount of cloth.

At one time paper was hand made. It was incredibly expensive and labor intensive. Today machines make paper and we literally sh*t on it, of course, far fewer people are employed per any amount of paper.

Think about how many galley slaves lost their rowing jobs...

Now, I could write reams about the jobs lost to automation. From weavers to bullard operators. Truthfully, no one would care.

But, Elon Musk starts running his mouth about jobs being lost to robots and suddenly people are freaking out. Yes, people are going to lose jobs to automated machinery, "robots", just like they have been for hundreds, even thousands of years. That is never going to change. Unemployment will grow, and fall.

Truthfully, over population is a far greater danger than automated production systems.  Elon Musk isn't really an idiot, but, he has failed to understand the history of economics and manufacturing and that is pretty idiotic.

And, yes, people are going to become "cyborgs".  I have a "machine" inside of me already, a heart stent.  Medicine is going to use nanobots and people will have communication devices medically implanted in the future, just like they do today with cochlear implants.

Change is inevitable and hanging on to the past always fails.

We need to reduce the global population, especially in places where there isn't enough arable land to support the local population.  We really need a planet with less than 2 billion, preferably around 500,000,000, yes, 500 million.  That is a heck of a population reduction, but, it is better than us burying ourselves in our own garbage.

Christianity and marriage, once again

I'm Christian, see if this logic makes sense.

If marriage is of people, a creation of people and which people have authority over, then God has no authority over marriage and marriage begins when people say marriage begins.

If marriage is of God, created by God and which God has authority over, then people have no authority over marriage and God has sole authority over marriage.  Marriage begins and ends only when God decides it does.

Now, some people will claim that God gave the church authority over marriage, but, there are no scriptures that tell us this.  That's just something people who want control tell other people.

Luke 16:13 KJV
No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon."

Now, many people translate "mammon" into "money", but, if we look at the Greek translation it actually translates as "personified riches", as in "rich personality", what we might think of as "charismatic people" or leaders.

"Origin: of Aramaic origin (confidence, i.e. wealth, personified)

TDNT entry: 10:28,6

Part(s) of speech: Noun Masculine

Strong's Definition: Of Chaldee origin (confidence, that is, figuratively wealth, personified); mammonas, that is, avarice (deified): - mammon."

Okay, so we choose between two masters, people and God.  Which has authority over your marriage?

Me, I'm a Christian so I believe God has authority over marriage.  In my case, the Holy Ghost explained it to me and because I'm a person of reason the Holy Ghost used logic.  It flew in the face of my personal beliefs, but, there was no denying the logic or the Holy Ghost.

Nothing wrong with ceremonies and traditions, as long as we remember who is in charge of marriage.  I'm glad you honored your children's wishes.  Your marriage didn't begin when people said it did though, it began when God decided.  If you want to know when that is, pray and ask God.  Believe you will receive and God will give you the answer.

Disgusted with politics and annoyed at fear mongering

I have self identified as Republican since about 1990.  I voted for Reagan and when he pussyed out with Iran in 1981 I was pretty pissed off.  It took me a long time to get over that.

Not that I would ever identify as a Democrat, slave mongering genocidal scum bags.  Andrew Jackson is a national disgrace and should be removed from the $20.  The United States first Democrat President was the most genocidal president in history and his "I'm too stubborn for abolitionists to change my mind" mule symbol is still the Democrats symbol.  FDR and his concentration camps, I could go on with Democrats genocidal behaviors from their support of slavery to their support of segregation and the hate/fear mongering they do today.

When Trump won the Republican nomination I began self identifying as Disgusted.

Back in the 1980s-90s Trump was going to build the worlds tallest building.  He totally failed, which made the World Trade Center Osama bin Laden's phallic target rather than some mythical Trump erection.  During the attempt to grow his massive mythical erection Donnie managed to alienate the entire New York city pseudo intellectual elitist power base.  Truthfully something I envy since I enjoy nothing better than pissing off a bunch of elitist pseudo intellectual morons, however, Donnie had to expand his business outside of New York since he had effectively eliminated himself from the New York real estate development market.  Donnie went international.

Any of you old couch potatoes who watched Dallas Reruns might remember when JR did the same thing and had to do the same thing.  So far Donnie has continued being somewhat successful in the international market, but, I figure it is only a matter of time before he alienates enough people in the international market that his business is finished.

So I didn't give a rats ass about all the B.S. people were spouting, Trump this, Trump that.  I couldn't verify any of that bullshit, except for his being a misogynist like Billy Clinton and his famous desk hole.  I didn't like Clinton even before that, after his lying about Monica I really had no use for him.  I already didn't have any use for Trump so the misogynist crap didn't sway me.  I already had no use for Trump, or Billy Clinton.

The lying propaganda and fear mongering annoyed me more than Trump's locker room banter.  At least he wasn't shoving cigars up inside some woman when she wasn't tucked into his knee space.

The United States can't expand onto other worlds when Donnie Trump alienates the rest of the world the way he alienated the New York pseudo intellectual elitists.  Now, yes, I kind of admire that in a way, but, to do business Trump needed those assholes working with him.  Alienating that bunch of scumbags was in direct opposition to Trump's own best interest, and the idiot did it anyway.

Regardless of the unverified hate speak I've seen published about Trump I think he will make a poor president, specifically because the idiot fucked himself up.  That is some self destructive, mommie didn't love me enough, bullshit right there.

Personally, I think all the lying bullshit just made Trump more electable.  Really, telling unverifiable lies just made Trump more attractive to a lot of people, and undermined the reality of the few truths that were told about him.  Sheeple are easily made afraid and all the people encouraging people to question their safety are just fear mongering.  First comes the fear, then the ridicule, then the hatred and finally people work themselves up to become violent, trying to protect themselves against an imaginary fear.

Pretty fucking sad.

Projecting probability of lithic artifact distribution across time in the Americas.

I would suggest that, by using proved statistical theory regarding atypical distribution of data it may be possible to determine a rough understanding of the minimum time frame of human occupation of the Americas.

Lithic artifact distribution in the Americas is probably related to population density.

To do this, we must ignore the arbitrary classifications of historic and prehistoric so that we can understand the distribution of population, and therefore artifact, density.

The density of artifact distribution is probably going to be a left skewed distribution where the distribution falls off suddenly when lithic technology is replaced with newer iron age technologies brought over from Europe, or when population density is decimated by European diseases.

We can assume that the modality of the distribution of lithic artifacts will be around the period of highest population density. When did Native Americans first encounter Europeans and European diseases? Vikings? Columbus? When did the population of the Americas begin to drop?

We can further assume that the farther left of the modality the less probable the discovery of artifacts is.

The farther we move from the mean, or the modality, the less probable it will be that we will find an artifact.

This implies that, if we find an artifact, the artifact is within the higher probabilities of the distribution of artifacts. In the case of a skewed distribution a discovered prehistoric artifact is probably between the mean, which will be on the left of the data point which the artifact represents, and the modality, which will be to the right of the data point the artifact represents.

This has some interesting implications. Some data points have been discovered as far back as 30-35 thousand years before present. Do we assume that these data points are to the right or the left of the mean? Chebychev’s Theorum describes the minimum probabilities of finding a data point in non-Gaussian distributions, however, it is not as easy to determine the probability of discovering a specific data point within the distribution without understanding the shape of the distribution.

Chebychev’s Theorum allows us to say, for example, that the highest possible probability of finding a data point between 2 and 3 standard deviations on either side of the mean is about 14%. However, with a left skewed distribution the probability of finding a data point to the right of the mean is higher than the probability of finding an artifact to the left of the mean.