I'm sorry Dave, you must care about Oprah.....

The shortcomings of Facebook are not exactly breaking news.  It has basically become social media for the grand parent demographic (of which I am of course a proud member), but it has also become more intrusive, sneakier.  And at the same time it is showing me a lot fewer actual posts from people I know.

Lately, and without any changes made by yours truly, the news feed has switched from Most Recent to Top Stories.  There does not appear to be any obvious way to change it back.  You can toggle it over to the preferred option each time you go look at Facebook but even that action gives the New Wizards of Menlo Park information. They know for instance when I am on the internet and via all their other info tentacles also know where I am.

And....it has been putting up a peculiar notice.  After I look at the Most Popular items it decides to force feed me - all too often celeb fluff and/or political nonsense - it puts this up:

Do you want to see more posts?

Find Friends

The more friends you add, the more posts, photos and videos you'll see in News Feed.

The button takes you to "People you Might Know", encouraging me to add them to the web of data that Facebook is spinning around me.

It was easier when I posted as Badger Trowelsworthy, and with demographic information that read like the absurdist post modern fiction that it was intended to be.

We'll see what happens.  Facebook has a lot of hidden stuff going on "under the hood" and sometimes these glitches vanish with as little logic as they appear.  For some reason I got a whole bunch of "Friend Requests" a while back, all of which appeared to be from confused Spambots that thought they were lonely college aged ladies from Brazil.

But my patience has limits.  No, Facebook I am not going to go on a Friend Request binge to try and get my Facebook feed back to showing only recent posts, and keeping them around for more than 24 hours.  Don't make me bring back Lord Trowelsworthy. 

He's more than a bit of a rascal and he drags me into much mischief even though he is fictitious.

FIRST Robotics 2018 - Report One

(Note: an extra robotics post.  Because there is a lot going on.  Also I felt like it.)

How does one go about designing and building what is in effect a high speed, precise robotic forklift for moving boxes around?

Scenes from Week One of FIRST Build Season.

Inventory parts.

Ponder and discuss.

Sketch.  Lots of white boards in use...

And maybe just because we have one handy, fire up the real forklift and use it to heft a 3 pound box!  Version 1.0 of our competition machine?  Some serious weight trimming needed to get down to 120 pounds!

Building a robot has so many little tasks associated with it.  The week to date has been mostly focused on hashing out a design, and by end of session Monday the Great Bear Claw versus Belts debate was finally settled.  But there are also the straightforward, slightly boring things that have to be done.

With new gearboxes you are supposed to assemble them, then run them for a half hour without load and also without lubrication.  It smooths off any minor irregularities in the gear teeth.  It is really noisy.  Somebody really should sit there and watch, just to make sure that nothing over heats and that the power connection does not vibrate loose.

Here we have one of our rookie members patiently watching the screaming gearboxes. He has his headphones on and is listening to music.  I'd like to think the band he has on is also called The Screaming Gearboxes and sounds about the same!

Forgotten Brewery Caves - The Robber's Cave, Lincoln Nebraska

I've mentioned that my policy on describing Forgotten Brewery Caves from a long distance perspective is that they must be safe, well documented, and worth the while of a visitor.  This narrows the field quite a lot.  But occasionally a site comes through famously, providing one with history, legend, and in the case of The Robber's Cave in Lincoln Nebraska, an excellent glass of beer at the end of your visit.

Like other Western states Nebraska's development was slowed by the Civil War.  In the case of Lincoln, the fact that it was not on the Missouri River - the major transportation artery - also hindered its growth.  In fact until it was declared the state capital in 1867 it was not much of a community.

After that of course things changed.  And among many other things a brewery was needed.  Legislating is a thirsty business after all.

The Pioneer Brewery was established in 1869.  The principals were Michael Ulmer and Andrew Lindner.  Both have made fleeting appearances in Forgotten Brewery Caves before.  Ulmer had a brewery in Pepin Wisconsin, then in Hastings Minnesota.  When the latter burned in 1867 - forcing him to leap from a second story window - Ullmer went west.  Lindner was said to be from Waukesha Wisconsin. Interestingly  there was also an Andrew Lindner who was a 20th century proprietor of the Cassville Brewery, although whether this was his a son or a man staying in the business for an unusually long time is unclear.

The Pioneer Brewery took advantage of a pre-existing cave.  One in fact that had some evidence of use by Native American tribes.  They hired a man to extend the cave system and built their brewery such that they could take kegs straight in from the basement.

The venture was not a success.  It went out of business in 1873.  The building was later used for shady purposes...as a dance hall and house of at least dubious repute.  Eventually it burned down.

It was after the brewery went under the history of the cave has its most intriguing, if unconfirmed event.  Supposedly Jessie James hid out there on his retreat from the failed 1876 Northfield Raid.  As his mother Zerelda was living in Nebraska at the time this would seem to be a bit more plausible than many of the other places he was rumored to have been.

Caves like this tended to remain locally known. It was a tourist attraction for a while, then was abandoned. Graffiti and the stories of those who visited as teenagers are both abundant.  In 2000 the entrance was bulldozed shut, inconveniencing but not quite barring visitors.  It contains at least one alarmingly deep well so it is fortunate that no tragedies are recorded.

In 2011 the Robber's Cave story resumed, when three guys from the Lincoln Police Department founded The Blue Blood Brewing Company.  They built a new 12,000 square foot brewery near the site of the Pioneer Brewery and incorporating the cave. In fact, the historic entrance to it has been nicely preserved.

This worthy undertaking has not been without a few rough spots.  During construction vandals broke into the cave and stole equipment.  An endangered bat species was encountered.  Local ghost hunters felt the place was haunted, although a medium who spent Halloween there does not seem to have been overly stimulated.

The Blue Blood Brewery still ages some of their product at the opening of the cave, this being similar to what the folks at the Schell's Brewery in New Ulm have done.

A few pictures of Robber's Cave.  If you find yourself in the area I do suggest a pilgrimage. It should be easy to find....it is on Robber's Cave Road!

Note that much of this information is courtesy of Joel Green who is tour guide and official historian of Robber's Cave.  He has a book in the works on the subject so those looking for more information will find it later this spring with the publication of:

"Robber's Cave: Truths, Legends, and Reflections"

FIRST Robotics 2018 - Power Up!

OK, we've had the Big Reveal.  This year the FIRST team will have to build something really tricky.  Well, that's true every year.  The YouTube video of the game animation:

As of this writing we are at the stage where the video is being watched again and again. The rules book is being studied. Questions, some silly and some profound are being asked.  Sometimes the silly ones lead to the most profound observations.

The overall sense is that we are pretty much building a highly automated Amazon warehouse!  Moving boxes all over the place.

FIRST tries to teach skills that relate to the real world and this should be a good dose of same.  One of my first emails after getting the details was to a company that had expressed interest in the team.  And they make multi axis fork lifts!  Help!

In our third year we are obviously way behind the curve of real veteran teams with respect to having an accumulated pool of designs, experience, spare parts.  But we have been a pretty active team to date, and a number of the things we have done in the past are relevant to this undertaking.  Sometimes it is the previous failed projects that have the most potential to be dusted off and revisited.

I expect that for the next couple of months it will be Robot Mondays, History Wednesdays and Pot Luck Fridays here at Detritus of Empire.  Subject of course to whatever unexpected turns up.

Truth in Surplus Advertising

After a frustrating trip to The Big City, where assorted things did not go off as planned, I treated myself to Axman Surplus.

The Axman never disappoints, found some good "stuff".

Forgotten Brewery Caves - A Kansas Ghost Town.

The brewery cave series usually features places I can conveniently visit from my home base in Wisconsin.  Among other reasons I always want to have a personal look see so as to not put people onto the trail of a potentially dangerous site.  One cannot rely on common sense in such matters.

But I do run across tales of brewery caves from other places and sometimes I have to pass them along.  Kansas seems to have some especially interesting ones.

In the golden age of brewery caves, say 1850 to 1870, Kansas was simply a more interesting place than Wisconsin.  It was on the front lines of the Fugitive Slave controversy that led up to the Civil War.  It was the site before and during the war of an ongoing guerrilla conflict.  And then post war it was a booming part of the Western Frontier. Cowboys, Indians etc

Quindaro Kansas pretty much has all of that.

It lies on the Missouri river, right across from the then slave state of the same name. While it no doubt had earlier inhabitants the first organized settlement came in 1843 when Wyandot indians from Ohio were forced to relocate there.  It was not exclusively a native community, one major land owner was Abelard Guthrie.  The town was named after his Wyandot wife, Quindaro.

In pre-Civil war Kansas much of the local government was in sympathy with slavery, or at least not willing to fight over it.  In the 1850's Quindaro developed as a "Free Port" where escaped slaves would find friends and hiding places.  

It developed along the lines of most Western Boom Towns....exuberant, impractical growth.  It had a newspaper, stores, a hotel...and a brewery.  This was a little unusual since the area was officially "dry" and saloons were not allowed to operate openly.  Perhaps the ferry across to Missouri took slaves one way and kegs the other.

Quindaro did not flourish for long.  A financial panic hit in 1857, drying up investment. The violence between pro and anti-slavery forces resulted in pitched battles and massacres.  The 1850's closed out with a two year drought.

And then came the Civil War.  Of course most of the young men enlisted. And the westward tide of new settlers slowed.  With the Emancipation Proclamation slavery was clearly done for, although some fugitives still made it to Quindaro during the war.

By this point there was a healthy African American community on the bluffs above the dying river town.  Some were former fugitives, others just came to be in a supportive place. Old Quindaro slowly decayed into ruin.

In the 1980s there was a proposal to make the site into a landfill.  Archaeological excavations in advance of this showed the significance of the site and the plans were scrapped.  Ironically this led to considerable rancor on the part of the owners of much of the site, an African Methodist Church founded by the runaway slaves.

You can still visit Quindaro.  It is on the river in the northeast suburbs of Kansas City. The site is said to be quite overgrown but at least sufficient stabilization of the ruins has been done to prevent immanent collapse.

This is the brewery site.  The steel beams support the stone walls and give the rough outline of the structure.  Of course you can see the classic arched brewery cave exiting from the back of the brew house.

The site was excavated by students from Washburn University.  Below is an image of them at work....it seems the reconstruction was extensive.

For more information on the excavations at Quindaro, and the odyssey of the "orphan artifacts" found there, have a look at this edition of Kansas Preservation . The Quindaro section is pages 15 - 20.

Detritus of Empire - 2018

Much has changed since I started this three times a week project back in 2011.  I've retired.  Become a grandfather.  The kids have all gone off on their own.  I have near total command of my schedule.

Detritus of Empire evolved out of a daily email report I had previously sent out after each day of excavation back at Vindolanda.  Text only. The little rural pub had not only the Worst Quiz in England but the Slowest Internet connection.  I don't think posting pictures was even possible from there a decade ago.  Now you point a "device", tap a few keys and the whole world will see what you see.

Naturally with the Internet being the collective Wisdom of Humanity this makes for a  lot of cute cat pictures.

It looks as if 2018 will have no Roman archaeology trip.  Perhaps ten years scratching at the same spot is enough.  The reasons are various but among them is the realization that every time you go to an old familiar place you lose the chance to go somewhere new. After age 60 you don't know how many more years you can just shoulder a backpack and trek up and down hills.  Ten would be realistic.  In my former career I regularly saw exceptions to this scenario.

For the year ahead I think the "menu" here will not change that much.  Robotics, both FIRST and middle school projects has become a bigger feature in recent years, and that will probably continue.  The Americana category has always been substantial, and with overseas travel presently uncertain a longer summer road trip might be in order.

I don't much like the concept of a "bucket list".  Nobody does really, once they reach an age where you might on occasion look down and say..."huh, what is that galvanized metal water container doing so close to my left foot....?"  But there are places I would like to get to.  And a lengthening list of places that I am unlikely to see in person.

All the great Roman sites of North Africa and the Middle East.  I somehow doubt that the troubles of that region are going to settle down much in the next decade.  That round the world trip with a crossing of Russia on the Trans Siberian railway?  A ridiculous project that never got much beyond the basic research stage.

But I would like to see more of rural Italy.  Maybe Sicily and Sardinia.  I hear Croatia and Slovenia are nice and that all the left over land mines are well away from the main tourist sites.  Actually the Balkans in general would seem a good match for Detritus of Empire...it is where empires have been colliding for thousands of years.

With so much of 2018 still a blank page I can't say just what I will have to say about it...in roughly 180 installments.  So it will probably be as much a surprise to me as it will be to you.