Tambo, Queensland to Gold Coast, Queensland - 918 kms, 10:05 hours.
After an eventful day yesterday, I had a welcome quiet day of driving. A late start due to my disrupted schedule meant I set out at 11AM. At reception, I asked for directions to the nearest petrol station. I received ones for the only one in the place. I headed out of Tambo - it was a nice sunny day. Most towns on the way had no mobile reception. Fortunately, I had the satphone to fall back on.
Not having the internet is a bigger problem. I had to rely solely on the car GPS for navigation. When the tablet ran out of charge, I even had to resort to reading a paper magazine. One thing the car GPS was great for was for finding the nearest petrol station. If your car GPS does not have this information, life can get a bit complicated. The car is 7 years old and so will be the maps on the GPS. While new roads would often not appear on it, it rarely let me down when it came to petrol stations. Looks like petrol stations do not close down very often, especially in remote areas.
The usual red earth vista had given way to farmland over the last day or so. The speed limit would be 100 kmph occasionally rising to 110. Thankfully, there were no roos. They were replaced by cattle. This is a lot better - cattle move slowly, are easily visible and are a bit more predictable. So it was no biggie to see a few cattle by the side of the road.
Not even when they decided to slowly cross and recross the road.
I reached Toowoomba, about a little over two hours from Gold Coast, by nightfall.
Coming into the Gold Coast, it was getting a bit late I could almost feel kitchens closing for the night all over the Gold Coast. I was meeting my extended family after a long trip and they were already waiting at a restaurant. I was getting closer but it was getting late and they kindly ordered by dinner for me. It wasn't long before I could track down the restaurant and sit down to a great seafood dinner. Then it was on to my hotel room. In completely contrast to the previous motels, this was palatial. It should be, at more than twice the cost of every accommodation I had so far. I had chosen it to stay at the same place as my family - hence the splurge.
Over the last few days, podcasts on electronics from embedded.fm and the amp hour kept me company. I had discovered Dave's video blog (eevblog) a while back. That lead me to the the amp hour and then on to embedded.fm. It is hard to follow a video blog continuously but I can listen to podcasts while I drive. I don't drive much apart from these sudden long trips on a whim but the time I do is enough for the two podcasts. I usually download a few at a time and then listen to them. By the time I am finished with them, a new crop of 4 or 5 is available and I download that. Occasionally, I run out of episodes to listen to and then I go get some of the past ones I haven't heard.
The two podcasts vary a lot in style and content. I find embedded.fm a bit more infocentric while the amp hour is like listening to mates sitting around, drinking beer and shooting the breeze. Naturally, the amp hour, like eevblog, involves a fair amount of talking about the past. I guess it is OK if you have been in the profession for a while and you like hearing about the good old days. But other than a relatively brief period a long time ago, I spent most of my time outside the profession. I don't want to hear about the old times. This ain't steam trains with our glory days behind us. This is a modern field with advances happening every day. I want to know about the new times. Don't just dismiss the esp8266 as just like a triode but more of them packed in a smaller space. For me, the esp8266 was the best component of 2015 (that was when I came across it - for 2014 it must be the WS2812B).
OK, so old stuff can teach you stuff but surely new stuff can teach stuff just as well. I know what Dave would say - that is what people like to hear and if you don't like it, tough, make your own podcast. But the flaw in that plan is that I know bugger all. Still, one of these days, I will make a podcast on something I know quite well like... I got nothing.
Embedded.fm, on the other hand, is a bit different. Also when the guest sometimes launches on a long monolgue, E&CW let them run with it without interruption. It works great for many of the guests. There is not much conflict between the hosts, if there is, it is not on air. OK, the arty episodes make my mind wander a bit sometimes. But, hey, I have enough time for both podcasts but I guess embedded.fm comes first. I should find a few more electronics podcasts as I am fast running out of past episodes of these two. In fact, I have exhausted all the past ones for embedded.fm - they should really make a few more of those :-)
I guess I am a bit of an information snob. I know that some folk mix in entertainment, drama and conflict to make the knowledge medicine go down but I am not one of those. I get very impatient with programs like Mythbusters, for instance, and I hardly watch it for that reason. I don't care for explosions. How does it look when you shoot a bullet through a watermelon? Assuming they are 1 meter apart, the program should last 0.001 seconds. So why do I have to sit through building a table, polishing the watermelon, back after this break, etc. Give me 'How Things Work' any day. And give me more fundamental Fridays and less mailbag Mondays.
No comments:
Post a Comment