The Continuing Saga of the Explire Scientific Mount

I do not have the latest firmware. This explains the problems with using the latest control software. I will update it tomorrow  

U. S. "Dark Fleet"

Not to avoid sanctions but to circumvent the Irsnian blockade. 6/10/26 CNBC:

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that the U.S. military has secretly helped 200 commercial ships and more than 100 million barrels of oil through the Strait of Hormuz.

I have found the relatively low price of oil globally with the Strait of Hormuz closed.  The amount moved (at night without lights) is a fraction of thr normal transport so oil is still tight but at least our allies (Australia, Japan, South Korea) should get some benefit.  Our erstwhile allies even benefit. If only they were helping! Of course, the Royal Navy is now not even a shadow of its former self, more like a shadow of a ghost so expecting their help is unrealistic.  Besides, they have emerging impolite opposition forming. 

ICYMI

The party that drew brush mustaches on Bush Jt. and/made every wave of the hand by Trump or Musk into a Nazi salute just picked a World War II buff with a SS tattoo their nominee for U. S. Senate.

Why? 6/5/26 OpenSecrets reports billionaires are funding his campaign that claims rich people have too much influence. 

If billionaires are upset about their wealth enough to back one of their opponents would it not be simpler to do this wholesale (give away your billions) rather than retail (putting in office intent on taking that wealth). This suggests that he has no intention of doing so.

The New Mount Needed a Protective Carry Case

I am not sure invented this customizable cube foam for making custom cases but I hope they got rich.

This is an SKB, a little more expensive than the Chinese cases but I feel better about buying American 

Everything fits in here but the telescope which has its own case, and the tripod 

The IEXOS-100 Mount Problem Seemingly Solved

The problem with getting the ExploreStars app to reconnect to the mount seems to be solved. The app connects to the mount through TCP which is a connectful protocol unlike UDP. (Stuff i learned last century.)

It seems that leaving the app to do anything else or depowering the mount leaves the app in a state where it still has a connection open. Solution: stop the app. Force Stop (clumsy) or drag the app off the home screen which stops it.  Restart opens a new connection. The app has no stop or quit command. 

I was able to reconnect multiple times this way. I can do two star alignment after reconnecting.  I wish the Envision version which runs on Android cellphones would successfully connect.  A phone is more connection than a tablet for this. 

Do You Have a 1970s 800 BPI Tape Drive?

When I wasx n high school I wrote a veey nice text editor in assembly language for the Interdata 7/16 series of minicomputers. (Interdata's text editor was awful, limited to what would fit into its 64K of RAM, and slow). I found the tape while going through my random collection of stuff. I would dearly love took get access to it again. Any Suggestions?

This is EBCDIC not ASCII. 9 track tape.

Boomer Greed

 6/7/26 Fortune article title:

‘The golden years are not golden’: Boomers are hoarding most of America’s wealth and power because they’re terrified of outliving their money

The arrogance of that title really steams me even the article quotes a number of Boomers refuting that title in part.

1. "Hoarding": like we are never going to spend it. For the most part, Boomers are not overwhelmingly rich. There are homeless Boomers and many barely making their rent or mortgage payments.  I am not one of them, but I know such. 

2. Power: does he mean we elected Trump? Or that we reliably show up to vote? Zoomers can fix this easily enough.

3 Where is our "hoarded wealth" going after we die? We are not taking it with us. We are going to leave it to our GenX children who Zoomers will again claim are hoarding. Much of my wealth is already spent on meals out and services overwhelmingly provided by younger people. 

4. Houses? Yes we bought houses for $106,000 in the 1980s on wages commensurate with those prices ($45,000 was my salary at the time). We paid interest rates that seem horrifying today. I refinanced a mortgage at 10.5% in 1989. We had a 18.5% car loan. (We had pretty good credit at the time.) Life was not easy back then.

5. We had limited capabilities because of technology. A few years ago, my son asked, "Hiw did you buy houses before the Internet." Slowly and carefully  .

BZoomers need to stop whining or Boomers might buy billion dollar yachts and sink them at sea to deny that wealth to the Zoomers.