An Urgent Brainwave Research Project
Having a pet at home, the most troublesome thing is the issue of its poop and pee.
Although the baby now has a toilet, it's impossible to let Kitty poop and pee anywhere in the house. Teaching her to use the toilet in a designated spot is giving Henry a bit of a headache.
After all, Kitty is a Tiger, albeit a Tiger, and it seems impossible to train her using the methods for training cats or dogs. Henry paused for a moment after setting up the litter box, seriously considering whether it was even necessary, and then held the box in his hands.
The library doesn't have any books on how to tame wild animals. For something like this, you might be able to ask a circus animal trainer. But Henry isn't expecting Kitty to perform stunts, so why bother with an animal trainer?
As for communication-·
Regardless of the type of animal being tamed, those who can skillfully handle it are those who are familiar with its habits. Only they can discern the animal's current emotions from its actions and cries.
But What If...? we could know what animals are thinking, wouldn't we be able to save ourselves the trouble of learning to interpret their behavior and calls?
Henry's previous experience of having his brain violently invaded by Professor X gave him some ideas about the topic of brainwaves. Although he hasn't yet designed a Psychic Defense Helmet based on the principles of the Faraday Cage, as he originally speculated.
But it wouldn't be very practical to design a helmet that would then run up to Professor X and say, "Hey, bald guy, want to try reading my mind?"
If it succeeds, there's nothing to say; if it fails, it's like exposing your true colors. And if you're actually invaded, it's not easy to use your fists to refuse, since you were the one who invited it.
Secondly, who is Professor X? Why would he cooperate with me? Is I particularly arrogant, or is the other person just bored? However, since I can't afford Psychic Defense Helmet, trying to interpret brainwaves is still a very good research topic. Interpreting the human brain right away might be too difficult. So, practicing on Tiger's brain wouldn't be a bad start.
At least Tiger don't have such complicated thoughts, right?
Men and women are like different species; how could Henry possibly understand Tiger's thoughts with a human mind? He could only try and see.
And if we don't figure out how to communicate with Kitty quickly, this well-fed little one will be chasing the baby around all day with boundless energy. She often chases the baby until the baby is completely exhausted, and then she'll just hug and nibble on him.
Finally, the consequences of taking the easy way out and using plastic for the outer shell have become apparent.
The poor core robot, used as a teething tool, is constantly being gnawed and scarred by Kitty, and even when it rolls around, it gets stuck in its outer shell. Henry has to repair it from time to time, otherwise the little thing will be ruined.
Needless to say, just do it. Brainwave devices aren't that difficult; just treat them like another language to interpret.
The most important thing is how to collect the data correctly and how to find homogeneity from a large dataset to determine whether a certain brainwave pattern represents a certain word or a certain emotion.
Perhaps we can use scent, which is the hormones that the body produces in response to emotions, to determine what kind of emotion a person is in.
Collecting these subtle odors is extremely difficult, comparable to collecting brainwaves, as both are easily affected by environmental interference.
If the sensor's sensitivity is reduced, it may not be able to collect accurate information. However, if it is relatively increased, it will be more susceptible to external interference.
All of this relies on using computers to process large amounts of data. To speed up the research, Henry had to turn to computer equipment again, improving and upgrading it.
The goal, however, is not computing power as commonly believed, but rather data storage devices, transmission methods, and capacity, namely hard drives.
The mainstream hard drives of this era were 5400 RPM IDE hard drives, also known as ATA drives, with capacities ranging from tens of MB to hundreds of MB. What If...? one wanted a durable, large-capacity, and high-speed hard drive, they would purchase a SCSI hard drive.
Furthermore, thanks to the support of the SCSI interface, the use of multiple hard drives has led to the development of various fault-tolerant disk array configurations.
This is what is known as RAID.
The SCSI interface is not only used for hard drives, but can also be used for peripheral devices other than the CPU, motherboard, and memory. It mainly has an independent processor to share the functions of the CPU, thereby improving the overall processing efficiency of the computer.
As CPU frequencies continue to increase and performance continues to improve, the additional need for SCSI devices will eventually be eliminated. There may even be situations where the speed of other computer peripherals cannot keep up with the CPU's full-speed operation.
That's why, after CPU frequency reaches a certain stage, it stops developing in the direction of "faster" and instead moves towards multi-core multitasking, allowing computers to handle more tasks at the same time.
However, the advancement of hard drives was merely an upgrade from the IDE interface to the SATA interface. It wasn't until the advent of solid-state drives (SSDs) that computer performance saw a significant improvement in the user's perception.
Previously, when Henry was developing various computer devices, he mainly focused on the three major components: CPU, motherboard, and memory, aiming to develop server-level expandability.
Everything else was purchased ready-made. Especially hard drives, floppy disks, and CD-ROM drives—these peripherals are relatively mature and haven't seen much leapfrog development.
Previously, the main project was to assist a group of like-minded people on the internet in building the ecosystem of Linu. Henry was like a worker adding bricks and tiles, while the engineer in charge of planning and directing was someone else.
One of the key features of Linux is its ability to enable older computers to run smoothly and extend their lifespan.
So pursuing computer performance is merely a way for Kryptonian to satisfy a sense of accomplishment. Things they created themselves...
It's superior to commercially available products, and even to other people's laboratory products.
In reality, the Linux system doesn't perform very well.
However, when it came to actually applying it in real combat, Henry discovered that there were still some weaknesses that held him back. Therefore, it was imperative to address these shortcomings.
Henry, who was at his workbench, disassembling and modifying existing hard drives, was pondering the NAND flash technology that could be used in SSDs in the future, and wondering if he should make some solid-state drives.
BB, which had just been upgraded to a metal casing, was chased and played with by Kitty until it ran out of battery and lay sprawled at Henry's feet. Henry had to replace the battery; getting BB to stay still on the charging dock to charge was now practically impossible.
Although there hasn't been much progress in reading Tiger' brainwaves, it's good news that this little guy already knows to relieve himself in a designated spot. But with his boundless energy, he doesn't seem content with just running and jumping around inside the house.
The house we rented from old Gary was big enough to meet the needs of a small family, but it also had a lot of stuff: audio equipment, computer equipment, sofa, TV, and kitchenware.
To prevent the equipment from being damaged by the Tiger cub, Henry took some non-invasive protective measures. Basically, he created an insulating layer to protect it; if it got chewed or torn, it would only be the insulating layer, which could then be replaced.
But doing so also limited Kitty's space to move around. This made Henry seriously consider whether to make something like a cat tree to give Kitty more room to move around.
While he was distracted by many things, the call bell rang at Black Clinic in South Los Angeles.
Business had come knocking again. Without a word, Henry changed into his Tinkerer's clothes and set off once more.