YET *EVEN* MORE things that made you happy today!

[J. Wilhelm]

Just in time for labor day, wet weather has arrived and the oppressing summer temperatures abated. What a contrast! It's still horribly humid outside due to the storms, which means that even moderate heat turns the environs into a sauna, but it's passable so far.

FINALLY after so many years of promising myself to review my college notes in compressible fluid dynamics (supersonic flows l, I get a chance to do so. I have a scanned set of copies of my notes, and my text book is buried in storage, but I got a copy online. My current project in Brassgoggles is forcing me to review all that material after 20 years! I'm correctly reading the textbook from start to finish. It's an incredible experience to be able to read your book and notes straight from your phone 

[Caledonian]

So excited for my new subjects!!
My year will look like this

Semester 1:

• Gaelic for advanced beginners 2A
• Gaelic folklore
• Theory of translation and interpretation
• Doric and Scots language- an intro to NE scots (capped course, alternative: love loss and revival: Gaelic Ireland 1700 to now)

Semester 2

• Gaelic for advanced beginners 2B
• introduction to gaelic literature
• vikings: an introduction
• Scottish folklore and oral traditions (capped course, alternative: working with texts)

[Sorontar]

Caledonian, those do sound like great subjects. Is the translation/interpretation subject language independent, or specific about Gaelic?

Is your teaching happening on-campus or online this semester? I am still teaching online here in Australia. Saves me having to pay for up to 4 hours on public transport each day, but everything is very reliant on Zoom now.

Sorontar

[Banfili]

Lovely to see you back, Caledonian!
Good choice of subjects - I did 'Vikings' some years ago here at my Uni. Interesting subject, with lots of information you wouldn't necessarily expect unless you were already a Vikings fan! I did Vikings in tandem with 'The Origins of Ireland, England and France', concentrating on Ireland, of course!!

[rovingjack]

I've not let work consume every ounce of me and instead allowed myself to get back into tinkering with things lately. I've made egg Glair (while making eggs benadict, a meal and art supplies in one go) and then, we dug up and repaired the end of the driveway... and extracted about 15-20 pounds of clay. I spent my afternoon elbo deep in a large plastic tote bin stirring it all into a slip which I then used a large bucket to transfer the liquid to another plastic tote. where it is sitting now settling to the bottom. an hour after doing this there was already a 3-4 inch layer of settled clay slab that's about 3 feet by a foot and a half. I'm leaving it for a couple days and will take off the water and have some massive chunks of clay with which to play.

I'm sure I can bisque them via a simple kiln build. and I'm trying to figure out if maybe I could try my hand at salt glazing too. but for today I got to play in the mud for a couple hours.

[Prof Marvel]

I've not let work consume every ounce of me and instead allowed myself to get back into tinkering with things lately. I've made egg Glair (while making eggs benadict, a meal and art supplies in one go) and then, we dug up and repaired the end of the driveway... and extracted about 15-20 pounds of clay. I spent my afternoon elbo deep in a large plastic tote bin stirring it all into a slip which I then used a large bucket to transfer the liquid to another plastic tote. where it is sitting now settling to the bottom. an hour after doing this there was already a 3-4 inch layer of settled clay slab that's about 3 feet by a foot and a half. I'm leaving it for a couple days and will take off the water and have some massive chunks of clay with which to play.

I'm sure I can bisque them via a simple kiln build. and I'm trying to figure out if maybe I could try my hand at salt glazing too. but for today I got to play in the mud for a couple hours.

Great Work RJ!

you have done far more with raw dug clay than I have been able to do!
one step at a time.

yhs
prof marvel

[rovingjack]

well it's a tub half filled with non-newtonian dirt that I don't have the strength to lift right now lol. I'm stirring it and filtering it one last time through some nylons.   I'll see if I can get the rest of it sorted by tomorrow, drain it and let it firm up before I bag it.

I'm going to try making a plaster mold and do some slip casting for some cups, and then see if I can burnish them before bisque firing them. I was going to try and see if I could salt or ash glaze them, but that really requires heats and setups I don't have. I also debated if I might be able to use a little trick to get glass dust from beer/soda bottles and mix it with some slip to make a glaze that I could fire, but people say that it'll craze and be unsafe for eating from.

Ultimately I'd like to make a few glasses that I could serve family some of my soon to be started home made mead this holiday season. I ordered the stoppers, airlocks, hydrometer, and a couple of gallon jugs to start my mead adventure last night and they shipped today (it'll be a week or so before all the parts arrive). I'd like to make an acerglyn (a mead with maple syrup in it as well as honey) with some vanilla, and one with cinnamon, clove and allspice for around yule.

I suppose I could just etch some glasses to serve the mead in but that feels like giving up.

[Prof Marvel]

THIS:

https://www.popsci.com/article/science/pure-genius-how-dean-kamens-invention-could-bring-clean-water-millions/

snip-----------
At first glance, the bright red shipping container that sits by the side of the road in a slum outside Johannesburg doesn’t look like something that could transform hundreds of lives. Two sliding doors open to reveal a small shop counter, behind which sit rows of canned food, toilet paper, cooking oil, and first-aid supplies. Solar panels on the roof power wireless Internet and a television, for the occasional soccer game. And two faucets dispense free purified drinking water to anyone who wants it.

Created primarily by Coca-Cola and Deka Research and Development, the New Hampshire company founded by inventor Dean Kamen, the container is meant to be a kind of "downtown in a box": a web-connected bodega-cum-community center that can be dropped into underdeveloped villages all over the world. Coke calls it an Ekocenter. It's a pithy name, but it masks the transformative technology hidden within the container.

Inside the big red box sits a smaller one, about the size of a dorm fridge, called a Slingshot. It was developed by Kamen, the mastermind behind dozens of medical-equipment inventions and, most famously, the Segway personal transportation device. Kamen is the closest thing to a modern-day Thomas Edison. He holds hundreds of patents, and his creations have improved countless lives. His current projects include a robotic prosthetic arm for DARPA and a Stirling engine that generates affordable electricity by using “anything that burns” for fuel. The Slingshot, more than 10 years in the making, could have a bigger impact than all of his other inventions combined.
Kamen’s company, Deka, inhabits three refurbished 19th-century textile-mill buildings in Manchester, New Hampshire.Photograph by JJ Sulin

Using a process called vapor compression distillation, a single Slingshot can purify more than 250,000 liters of water per year, enough to satisfy the needs of about 300 people. And it can do so with any water source—sewage, seawater, chemical waste—no matter how dirty.
endsnip----------------------

[The Bullet]

This:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vqbk9cDX0l0

was in a bad mood and a colleague sent me this.

[Caledonian]

This:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vqbk9cDX0l0

was in a bad mood and a colleague sent me this.

thats amazing, thank you for sharing it

[Madasasteamfish]

This:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vqbk9cDX0l0

was in a bad mood and a colleague sent me this.

How to sum up this year in a song.....

[J. Wilhelm]

This:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vqbk9cDX0l0

was in a bad mood and a colleague sent me this.

Just like the coins in my register's drawer. I have no more to give and I don't know where they went... No one can find any either.

[rovingjack]

THIS:

https://www.popsci.com/article/science/pure-genius-how-dean-kamens-invention-could-bring-clean-water-millions/

snip-----------
At first glance, the bright red shipping container that sits by the side of the road in a slum outside Johannesburg doesn’t look like something that could transform hundreds of lives. Two sliding doors open to reveal a small shop counter, behind which sit rows of canned food, toilet paper, cooking oil, and first-aid supplies. Solar panels on the roof power wireless Internet and a television, for the occasional soccer game. And two faucets dispense free purified drinking water to anyone who wants it.

Created primarily by Coca-Cola and Deka Research and Development, the New Hampshire company founded by inventor Dean Kamen, the container is meant to be a kind of "downtown in a box": a web-connected bodega-cum-community center that can be dropped into underdeveloped villages all over the world. Coke calls it an Ekocenter. It's a pithy name, but it masks the transformative technology hidden within the container.

Inside the big red box sits a smaller one, about the size of a dorm fridge, called a Slingshot. It was developed by Kamen, the mastermind behind dozens of medical-equipment inventions and, most famously, the Segway personal transportation device. Kamen is the closest thing to a modern-day Thomas Edison. He holds hundreds of patents, and his creations have improved countless lives. His current projects include a robotic prosthetic arm for DARPA and a Stirling engine that generates affordable electricity by using “anything that burns” for fuel. The Slingshot, more than 10 years in the making, could have a bigger impact than all of his other inventions combined.
Kamen’s company, Deka, inhabits three refurbished 19th-century textile-mill buildings in Manchester, New Hampshire.Photograph by JJ Sulin

Using a process called vapor compression distillation, a single Slingshot can purify more than 250,000 liters of water per year, enough to satisfy the needs of about 300 people. And it can do so with any water source—sewage, seawater, chemical waste—no matter how dirty.
endsnip----------------------

As a native of New Hampshire and a member of the maker community I know a lot of people who work for and with Deka and been to parties during holidays with Kamen, so he's a bit of a local hero. I know a guy who worked on the Luke prosthetic arm.

I've been patiently waiting to hear more about the slingshot for years. I find myself worried that it will end up going the way of the the Thermal Depolymerization for turning waste streams into fuel supplies. Something demonstrably possible but obstructed and shelved through bureaucratic nonsense.

[Rockula]

Guess.

[Madasasteamfish]

Guess.

A bit of slap and tickle? The Vincent motor-sickle?

[James Harrison]

I had a bonfire to finally get rid of three tree stumps that have been hanging around in the back garden since Spring.  Within two hours said bonfire also consumed all of the firewood I had originally saved for Winter.  Good job my central heating works now, eh?

[Deimos]

I had a bonfire to finally get rid of three tree stumps that have been hanging around in the back garden since Spring.  Within two hours said bonfire also consumed all of the firewood I had originally saved for Winter.  Good job my central heating works now, eh?

Uhhh.... I don't get it. If you are burning tree stumps which, to my knowledge, are still wood, why did you have to burn your firewood, too?
If said tree stumps have been around since spring,  I would think that they are dried out enough to burn on their own. 

[J. Wilhelm]

I had no clue it would take that long...

How to burn a large tree stump the easy way (burning stumps) Stump burning

[James Harrison]

I had a bonfire to finally get rid of three tree stumps that have been hanging around in the back garden since Spring.  Within two hours said bonfire also consumed all of the firewood I had originally saved for Winter.  Good job my central heating works now, eh?

Uhhh.... I don't get it. If you are burning tree stumps which, to my knowledge, are still wood, why did you have to burn your firewood, too?
If said tree stumps have been around since spring,  I would think that they are dried out enough to burn on their own. 

Enthusiasm got out of hand, also the stuff burnt away a lot quicker than anticipated.

[SeVeNeVeS]

I had a bonfire to finally get rid of three tree stumps that have been hanging around in the back garden since Spring.  Within two hours said bonfire also consumed all of the firewood I had originally saved for Winter.  Good job my central heating works now, eh?

Uhhh.... I don't get it. If you are burning tree stumps which, to my knowledge, are still wood, why did you have to burn your firewood, too?
If said tree stumps have been around since spring,  I would think that they are dried out enough to burn on their own. 

Enthusiasm got out of hand, also the stuff burnt away a lot quicker than anticipated.

I have not met a man yet who doesn't love a darn good burn up, I used to get it to embers then get the sausages on, burn up and BBQ...............basic primordial heaven..............

[rovingjack]

I had a bonfire to finally get rid of three tree stumps that have been hanging around in the back garden since Spring.  Within two hours said bonfire also consumed all of the firewood I had originally saved for Winter.  Good job my central heating works now, eh?

Uhhh.... I don't get it. If you are burning tree stumps which, to my knowledge, are still wood, why did you have to burn your firewood, too?
If said tree stumps have been around since spring,  I would think that they are dried out enough to burn on their own. 

Enthusiasm got out of hand, also the stuff burnt away a lot quicker than anticipated.

I have not met a man yet who doesn't love a darn good burn up, I used to get it to embers then get the sausages on, burn up and BBQ...............basic primordial heaven..............

I think the lst time we burned the brush pile I set a large empty steel can in the middle, and fed aluminum beer cans picked up from the side oof the road outside the property into it for a few hours. so somewhere outside is a old looking steel can with melted aluminum set up in the bottom.

good times, good times. Next time might be some clay objects dug up from the ground.

[rovingjack]

i'm sure to no ones surprise a spiced apple cider reduction is quite good on french toast.

[von Corax]

i'm sure to no ones surprise a spiced apple cider reduction is quite good on french toast.

I'm just surprised I hadn't heard of it before.

[J. Wilhelm]

Bagpipe Swing

Bagpipe swing with Gunhild Carling in Central Park NY

[rovingjack]

doing some thinking of making all sorts of projects this coming year, I was remembering discussions I've had in the past about making music albums: in a way like the game of 'that would be a great band name', only not just band names, but songs and album names.

I recalled a bit of a dream I had years ago about Icelandic death metal music try outs and the name of a song. I'd posted it to my facebook to the amusment of some folks who appeared in it. So I searched my timeline with the word Dream...

I am clearly insane, going off of the things my unconscious creates while I sleep. reading multiple posts about my dreams left me laughing and happy today.

Have a sample:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I noticed a dimple in the side my thumb tip, and as time passed it grew and grew until it was a all the way through to the other side. Gradually it seemed to get bigger and bigger so that I wondered if I put lenses in either end if I could use it like a built in telescope, but when I started putting in the first lens it magnified a microscopic little man making a workshop inside the tunnel in my thumb (little person and everything in the workshop were all completely pale butter yellow in color) and didn't seem to realize that I exis

and

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

had a dream that the oldest cat my mum ever had was still alive and that she had come into the house where she had continued to get smarter as she got older until she was reading books to another cat when everybody left. I caught her doing it and was about to take out my phone to record it when my alarm woke me up.