Is that the question?
After almost five years of blockchain publishing, I ask myself.
To resume or not to resume.
That is a question, not per se one of my own. Yet the geek part of me got me here, when it had a different name that shall not be invoked, may 26th 2016. And it is starting to become more and more of a bore to that part of me. Just like I once sold my ZX81 / TIMEX1000 computer, because I lost interest in it. While I once was so eager to buy it, when I first saw it in a store window. It ment I needed to save money, a lot for me at that time in my life. And I managed to do so. There was a whole new realm opening up to me. First lines of code, not because I am some gifted programmer, but it was the geek part of me that got triggered with joy by doing so. Playing a flight-simulator, what a blast that was. New ways to explore. Reading about all kinds of new developments, exciting times. My brain was taking it all in like my body did with my favorite food. At some point I lost interest. Yet another processor, more cores, smaller scale, yeah, what ever.
One of the most fun things to me were soft- and hardware projects. Those were the times when I got electrical shocks and never saw any danger in leaving the plug in while experimenting. A mate of mine was building stuff using Valves, like he still does. Now, it you got 'bitten' by the voltages that were used for that, you might not have been able to tell. No safety measures what-so-ever, except the occasional "Do not touch there, nor there, or there and especially keep away from there." Yes, I know, it is the Amps that count. But as long as you did not get 'stuck' to the electric circuit, no real harm would be done when it bit you, a little. It where the times when we would broadcast Internationally on an AM frequency. In the middle of the night, in a freezing cold shed, because of good conditions.
Pirate radio, Arrr
It was around those days that I build my own first transistor based FM transmitter. My soldering technique was horrible. It looked just like a bunch of resistors and capacitors thrown together. Yet it worked, which made my life-long friend, 'the professor', frown and examine my piece of, cough cough, electronic 'art'... He works extremely precise, only with the best material available. Which is needed when one wants to make an A-class amplifier. "How did you wind the coil, what diameter did you use, how can that even function...!?" It did work, even with me using all the wrong materials, wrong wiring, wrong antenna, but I was able to broadcast on FM. Yes, illegally, which I came to understand that my parents did not really appreciate it at the time.
Once people in the village where I lived as a kid told my Dad that the heard me on the radio. It was a fun program and I even had got payed cash because I had done some advertising for a local business. The amount in the envelope blew my mind at the time. Media was the future. Yet, my Dad did not find it to be funny. My parents had been away for the weekend, so I used his music hardware. And I also had hooked our phone-landline to the amplifier. So my friends could phone in, live on air. What a blast it was. The transmitter I used at that time was a Valve {ECC-82?} based oscillator, made by my good friend. Later my Dad did explain that he understood the excitement of it all, but he would have to face the consequences if I got caught, me still being a minor and all. That did not mean I did quit, but I got more careful and later in life I worked for a legal radio station. Until that became a repetitive boring thing to me.
Amiga fun
One of the most great computer experiences I had was with my Amiga 500. With the audio-sampler and some tracker software I used it for a Friday evening radio show. Not the best of quality (just 8 bit AD), but the level of fun made up for that. A friend of mine had given me an A3 matrix printer, with a defect printing head. And I wanted an image scanner, which were too expensive for my wallet content at the time. Had tried some hand-scanner but I did find the result horrible. So, why not use the old printer to make something of my own. The printer-head I had removed from the carriage already, that was where I would put the scanning part. It was pretty simple, one photo-transistor, a small light and a cone made of black cardboard. That was put on the transistor, to focus the reflecting light.
What was great about the Amiga is that it had two Analogue ports build in. Meaning it would be able to be used as a digitizer. Now all I had to do was write the software to control the whole thing and convert the incoming data into an image. For this job I used a version of AMOS-BASIC, a fast compiler language. Sending a long enough print line command to the printer would move the head. And before that I would put the settings to the highest resolution. That way it would let the carriage move as slowly as possible and have the vertical step motor move in tiny steps. That did work as I thought it would. But... All that I got on my monitor was a repeating gray-scale pattern, not even lined up as it should. There was noise in the pattern though, so 'it' did detect something. No internet connection, so I had to dive into magazines and manuals. How does an Analogue - Digital convertor function, and how did the Amiga deal with that?
Vertical blank and capacitor unloading
Oh no, I almost lost you there, didn't I? It is just mentioning the solution that I managed to find. In short, it was all about timing! The grey pattern from dark to light I got was because of the way the conversion functioned. Now all I had to do was to start things at a certain trigger, known as a VLB {VerticaL Blank} (when a screen is cleared and gets redrawn). And now there was a real image appearing on the screen! Still it needed some focus changes and some fine tuning of the software. But after I also made a High Resolution version I was done with it. Did a couple of scans, my foster brother made the mess I had constructed look clean and tidy and that was it. The Amiga is still somewhere hidden away at the attic. But the old A3 'matrix' scanner got lost moving house. Wonder if those 3.5 inch disks still function and I would be able to fire up the oal' girl for some tripping Tetris game.
It is a pattern, I have this idea in my mind, or I am inspired by some new technology, triggering the geek part of me and I'm in deep. Until the moment arrives where I start to lose interest. Or something turns out to be more hype than really interesting stuff to keep me occupied. Something that I lately did notice when it comes to the realm of blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Or maybe it is just something to me like: "Yeah, but basically that is just more of the same, right?" Ah, yet another interface to the HIVE blockchain, with its own, even more expensive, Token. Let's flood the trending page with posts about it. Why not show the latest publications there instead? Or let me decide what I want to see on the front-page? Never mind, this is merely a personal thing I am experiencing right now. Like that Clash song.
While I was promoting Hive lately
Weird thing was that I actually had been promoting Hive last Saturday. Even was enthusiastically talking about NFTs {Non Fungible Tokens}, to be used by artists, for instance. Explained some other ideas I had using NFTs. And I do have one of my own, I remembered, but so far have not used it. Currently I merely have some 'faucet' thing running on an older model Smart Phone for the DUCAT Token. Also have some ideas for that left. But somehow I miss the trigger, the drive to sit behind the keyboard and just hack away. Again, I am not a coder, it is just the geek part of me having fun with geeky stuff. Something is missing, a spark and there is this question inside of me: "Is this all there is?" Guess I really am at a crossroad in life, where I need new challenges, who knows. Or it is this ongoing global madness that got to me more than I like to admit?
Anyway, I'd probably stick around here for a while longer. Maybe the geek part of me will find something new to get excited about. Or it could be that I really have to change my path completely. But no matter which way I choose, that is where I'll be.