I put some ceramic honeycomb material from an old infrared space heater on the rack where the lava rocks would go, makes for an awesome poor man's infrared grill.
One way to make vast amounts of hydrogen very quickly leaving carbon out of the equation would be to "burn" aluminum in the presence of steam, that is, to pass superheated steam over white hot aluminum powder, the steam disassociates into hydrogen and oxygen, and the oxygen reacts with the hot aluminum producing aluminum oxide and liberating hydrogen, some of which could be diverted as fuel to heat the aluminum powder and keep the process going, and the rest could be stored via the hydrogen storage method du jour for use as a fuel.
Or hydrogen could be produced as needed on a scaled-down version of the above process, eliminating the need for storage altogether. Imagine a car that is fueled by dumping in sack of aluminum powder into a hopper, filling up a water tank for the steam, and emptying another hopper containing spent aluminum oxide into a collection bin at the fueling depot.
Then you would take the aluminum oxide and recycle it, that is, re-smelt it back into aluminum in an electric arc reduction furnace, re-liberating the oxygen. This makes aluminum an energy storage medium, just like hydrogen.
Or you could leave the hydrogen out of the equation altogether, and use aluminum-air batteries, and recycling the spent aluminum oxide as above.
The problem is, smelting aluminum use vast amounts of electricity, which, if generated using fossil fuels, pours vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, as was stated in the previous post.
Which brings us back to the old adage that there are no non-nuclear methods for generating large amounts of hydrogen cleanly and efficiently. So you would basically need nuclear power supplied smelters to produce hydrogen and/or aluminum in the quantities needed to replace fossil fuels, but that would then realise the ultimate goal (somewhat indirectly) of having nuclear powered cars.
Well, maybe if it was inside a tiny thermos bottle, it wouldn't be so bad... Heck, if it was made to the same size and form factor as a vacuum tube, it would be more readily acceptable, since vacuum tubes have been with us for a long time. Think about it- The filament in a vacuum tube gets way, way hotter and nobody complains about that, because it's insulated by the vacuum inside. Besides that, people can show off the glowing innards of their micro-reactors the way they do with high end tube powered stereo amplifiers... "Oooh! Fire bottles!" And if installed in a laptop, heat removal would be through standard heatsink + fan, I suppose, because tubes don't get that hot on the outside surface. (I'm pretty sure some hack has grafted vacuum tubes into a laptop for that vintage tube warmth coming from the sound card, if not, anyone wanna try? Of course, it wouldn't run very long on batteries, you'd have to supply external power...)
I've always wished there was a way to recharge a battery simply by emptying the acid out and refilling it with fresh acid, then recycling the spent acid. But unfortunately, that's not the way batteries work, it's the metal plates that are chemically altered in the process of making electricity, not the acid.
If only someone were to devise a fuel cell that has a fresh liquid input and used liquid output, or even a Part A and a Part B mixing in the cell, and spent Part A+B coming out that could be reversed back into Part A and Part B.
Yeah, yeah, I know, hydrogen and oxygen are the Part A and Part B and water is the A+B that comes out of present day fuel cells, but what I'd like to see is something that stays liquid at room temperature and atmospheric pressure that can be replenished with the ease of self-serve, and can be recycled with the ease of pouring the spent juice in a big tank, and pipe it into a reformer that recharges it (or separates it back into the two components and fills up two smaller tanks) at the same rate that you can charge a typical battery. And of course, the reformer could be run off of anything from solar power to nuclear power and everything in between.
Nuclear power plants are the hardest to throttle back when the demand is lower. It takes days to ramp a nuke up to its rated output, therefore, once up, they are left running full blast year round as a baseline energy load. They are usually shut down during the spring or fall for maintenance and refueling because the electricity demand for heating or cooling is less. Fossil fired steam electric plants can be brought up and down quicker, but it still takes the better part of a day to bring one online. Gas turbines are the quickest to bring online, taking only minutes to spool up, and are often used for peak load times (i.e. the afternoons of hot sunny days).
A while back I remembered seeing proposals for storing excess electricity during off-peak hours in huge supercooled superconducting storage rings, but I haven't heard any more about it in years, and don't even know how such a scheme would work.
My brother-in-law works at an oil refinery in southern Louisiana. The plant where he works at has a weird shift schedule based on a 10 day "week". They work 12 hour shifts during the day for 3 days in a row then get 3 days off. Then they work another 2 days for 12 hours/day and then get 2 days off. Then they switch to nights and start the schedule over again. So that's 3-on, 3-off, 2-on, 2-off days, then 3-on, 3-off, 2-on, 2-off nights. Supposedly they did some study that showed this kept the workers more alert and better rested as they had longer recovery times, and rolling over to the night shift falls in line with theories that the body clock tends to run slower than 24 hours/day (hence the 28 hour theory, etc.)
Other refineries follow different schedules. One I worked at has a schedule of 7-on, 7-off days, then 7-on, 7-off nights. And another plant that I almost took a job at has 3 days at 12 hours, 1 day at 8 hours, then 3 days off, then they go for 3 days at 12 hours, followed by 4 days off. And then they start all over, for night shifts!
I'm currently working a plain ol' ordinary 8 hours a day, 5 days a week day job with weekends off, and frankly, I find it torture because I can't keep my sleeping habits on a schedule as rigid as my job. I have a tendency to nap in the evenings and then stay up until the wee hours of the morning, then "nap" a little longer before going to work. Then I stay up until sunrise and sleep until noon on the weekends (and no, it's not because I'm out drinking.) I'd love to work a schedule that's more flexible, but I can't work at night because my workplace is only open during the day (and besides that I wouldn't want the sun to set on me in the hood where I work, somebody might cap my ass), and I can't telecommute, because of the nature of my job. (I've done autocad drawings and worked on spreadsheets for work at home, but not on a regular basis as I still gotta go in for a full day the next day, and don't want to burn my candle at both ends.)
Sometimes, in difficult to treat cases, doctors will prescribe what my mom always called "Napalm" antibiotics, that is, antibiotics that are so strong that they kill everything, including the "good" bacteria lactobacillus acidophilus in the intestines, and the result? The worst imaginable liquid, dripping, "hershey squirts", "green apple two-step" diarrhea.
If the good bacteria aren't replenished soon enough, it allows the yeast candida albicans that is also present in the intestines to grow unchecked. Normally the good bacteria crowd out the yeast, but when the bacteria are killed off by antibiotics, there is an overgrowth of the yeast, since most antibiotics don't kill yeast. The overgrowth of yeast releases toxins that damage the intestinal lining, mimicking intestinal conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome, celiac sprue, Crohn's disease, and lactose intolerance, and causing a whole host of other problems such as vaginal yeast infections in women, prostatitis in men, athlete's foot, fingernail and toenail infections, etc. (Go do a web search on "candida overgrowth syndrome" or "candidiasis".)
The good bacteria acidophilus is the bacteria culture used to make yogurt, and can also be found in probiotic supplements (look in the vitamin and supplement aisle at health food stores). Contrary to the FUD in the article, some bacteria from soil is beneficial, as they are sometimes incorporated into the probiotic supplements to help kill off the yeast overgrowth.
I'm pretty sure that a plane's avionics and wiring is hardened against the multi-megawatt electromagnetic pulse of wide-spectrum rf energy from lightning in thunderstorms that planes occasionally have to fly in the vicinity of. I don't think the narrow band milliwatts level of rf energy from cell phones, laptop computers, etc. will cause any significant interference. I'll let someone else reply with why the avionics of cold-war era Russian planes have tube powered avionics...
it is concievable that it interferes with the 400MHz wiring in a plane
That's 400 Hz, not 400 MHz. All the electrical power in aircraft is at 400 Hz, instead of 60 Hz like in your house. The reason is that the fluorescent light ballasts, transformers inside power hungry avionics gear and other power rectifying equipment can be made smaller and lighter when run at 400 Hz. Ever noticed the slightly sour A flat note that comes from the intercom when the stewardess is giving the pre-flight "use your seat cushion for floatation" speech? That is caused by the same factors that cause the 60 Hz buzz in a guitar amplifier.
The ticking, warbling, or whatever sound you hear in your computer speakers when your cell phone connects or occasionally syncs with the nearest tower when on standby is caused by stray rf energy from your cellphone, and it can conceivably interfere with the avionics of the airplane, especially the fly-by-wire types, but rest assured, the avionics and signal cables connecting the various systems are well shielded, because they have to be hardened against the multi-megawatt electromagnetic pulse of rf energy that comes from lightning strikes in the thunderstorms planes sometimes have to fly in the vicinity of. I don't think the milliwatt or so of stray rf energy from cell phones will do anything, but somebody out there must have done a study to show otherwise...
I remember when I was working at a nuclear power plant, there were certain areas of the plant that were "radio exclusion zones", where the workers had to turn their walkie-talkies off. The reason is that the signals in the control systems could be disturbed by someone keying their mike, causing the reactor to scram (much like the disturbance from a neighbor big into CB radios who has illegal linear amplifiers and can be heard jaw-jacking through your TV, FM radio, washing machine, child's braces, etc.)
Actually, some regions of the world burn animal dung for fuel. All they have to do is go out and gather it, no more processing is needed. Think of a horse as an efficient grass gathering and pelletizing machine.
I've seen a guy do just this. He built a home-brew charging stand for a bunch of walkie-talkies. Each walkie talkie had its own charger to recharge it, and they were just big enough to where they couldn't be plugged into adjacent outlets on a single power strip. It would have taken two power strips, and those 12" wall wart extension cords wouldn't have made it any better, the whole mess would have to sit on the floor under a desk and the employees would have to fish the cords from behind the file cabinet where all the walkie-talkies were sitting, and you couldn't see the charging lights with the chargers sitting under the desk.
So what he did was mount them all side by side in a project box and wired the outlet prongs together, along with a power cord, fuse, and lighted rocker switch. A hole drilled in the box just above the charging light on each charger let you know which one was charging, and all the cords were neatly rolled up inside with approx. 12" of cord hanging out through holes in the side to plug into the battery pack of each walkie-talkie. The whole setup fit neatly on top of the file cabinet. When the employees of the company got back from running around all day, all they had to do was plug up the walkie-talkies and go home.
A software that will let you write images on a Lightscribe CD in an ordinary (one-sided) burner merely by flipping the disk over and inserting it. Or at least burn text into the unused portion (along the outer rim perhaps) of an ordinary CD-R or DVD±R.
Actually they do sell patterns on a per copy basis. And yes, you aren't allowed to copy them and share with your friends, because they are works of art and protected under copyright law.
Same thing goes with the clipart type patterns that is loaded into automatic embroidery sewing machines. My mom once paid $125 for a PCMCIA card that was pre-loaded with a dozen or so patterns such as flowers, animals, and other cutesy stuff for her embroidery machine. IIRC, the legalese for the patterns was that they were for personal use only, that she couldn't mass produce anything (say, shirts) with the designs on them and sell them for profit. On the technical side, the card couldn't be read by a computer with a PCMCIA slot because the data was in a proprietary, perhaps encrypted format, and it would work with only one brand of embroidery machine. And computer software to create your own custom clipart for embroidery machines is outrageously expensive, the program for her machine rivaled the cost of an enterprise edition of high-end CAD software.
Especially for the science nerd in all of us as we marvel at the totally clear liquid turning milky white as the water from melting ice mixes with the alcoholic beverage.
And then there's Suisse La Bleue absinthe, which also turns milky white when mixed with water (the milky effect is called louche). Absinthe remains banned in the U.S. due to the persistent myth that the wormwood in absinthe is poisonous and causes hallucinations. It doesn't, wormwood is not, nor ever was on any DEA controlled substance list. It's banned by the FDA, which prohibits the manufacture, import and resale of any foodstuffs that contain wormwood in the U.S. The FDA hangs on to the myth that one of the chemicals in wormwood, called thujone, is bad, nevermind there is thujone in spices such as sage and tarragon. At least the European Union is forward thinking, because as of this year, absinthe is once again legal all across the European Union, with Switzerland and it's much sought after clear absinthe called Suisse La Bleue (once produced in clandestine labs) being the most recent to re-legalize. For more info, go see La Fee Verte Absinthe House.
Here in the U.S., available anise based pastis such as Pernod, Ricard, Herbsaint and Absente all exhibit the same louche effect (albeit green, due to coloring in the liqueur)when mixed with water. The colder the water, the more pronounced the milkiness.
Tektronix once had an unusual color screen on some of their higher end color oscilloscopes. One of them made its way to the scope bench at the calibration lab I work for. We called Tek looking for repair and calibration info, and they said that model of scope (don't remember the model no.) was obsolete. I think it dated from the early to mid 90's. Anyway, I thought it was an ordinary color CRT tube until we took the case off... It was some sort of flat panel vacuum display. It was very crisp, high contrast, could be viewed from almost any angle and closer inspection revealed that there were no visible RGB clusters like on plasma or lcd screens, it looked as smooth as an analog scope screen- except in full color. And the way it made color was to scan the whole screen one color at a time very fast, R,G, and I swore I could see two shades of blue. How it accomplished this, I don't know. (Nowadays, all Tek scopes have LCD panels.) Anybody else seen a display like this?
Before the 1940's, most of the gas consumed in big cities was manufactured at the local town gas works by heating coal, coke or charcoal to 1000 degrees or more in an airtight chamber, then steam was passed through the coal to produce hydrogen and carbon monoxide. The basic reaction is
C(s) + H20 = H2 + CO
The process for making gas from coal dates back to the late 1700's and early 1800's, but was gradually abandoned by the 1940's and 1950's as more and more natural gas wells were being drilled and pipelines were constructed across the country.
If a method of removing the carbon monoxide from water gas could be devised, hydrogen could then be made in vast amounts the way it used to be in the 1800's, except this time for use in fuel cells rather than in street lamps.
Louisiana is a different place than the rest of the country. First off, the state uses Napoleanic Code (which is derived from Roman Law) while the rest of the nation is using English Common Law. Every governmental position in the state is elected, NONE are appointed.
And you're guilty until proven innocent. And common law marriages are not recognized in Louisiana, either. People in legal professions from other states who come to Louisiana for whatever reason say the legal system is a whole different ball game over here.
And Louisiana is the only state in the union that taxes soft drinks. Ever see a little "LTP" on your bottle or can? That stands for "Louisiana Tax Paid". Any soft drink company that does business in Louisiana has to display on the label or top somewhere that the tax has been paid.
During the mid 90's, I worked for a computer shop for a while, and we took all our broken monitors to a local TV repair shop, because even back then anyone who made a living repairing televisions, computer monitors, or anything else with a CRT had to have a license. A license is also required for satellite system installers. This doesn't mean you have to have a license to put up your own DirecTV dish, but you do have to have one if you do it for a living. But a license is no longer required for repairing CB radios.
My ISP provides the option of viewing my e-mail via the web. I usually use webmail to filter out the spam, then fire up OE to download the legit stuff.
The 15.7 kHz noise all us ADHD sufferers hear is, as previous posters noted, the scan line frequency. (For PAL, its a wee bit higher.) I have an early 1990's model RCA 25" TV and a 2000 model Sony 25" TV. Believe me, the newer Sony squeals much louder than the older RCA.
As stated previously, the sound is caused by minute vibrations in the horizontal sweep winding on the deflection coil. The flyback operates at the same frequency because it is powered off of the same horizontal output transistor as the sweep coil, so the two add up to one shrill whine.
My monitor is on 800 x 600 at a refresh rate of 72 Hz. High frequency hearing has often been associated with asthma, but I don't think any of us can hear the 57.6 kHz whine of that!
At work, we have an old monitor with a bad part that sometimes causes high frequency oscillations. If I beat on it, it'll go away, but it eventually returns. If I shake the monitor, the whistle seems to "bounce". I think it's a loose slug in an inductor in the IF circuit somewhere.
I've also had older power supplies where the switching frequency dropped to just within hearing range. Annoying.
ROFL... That brings to mind this little snippet from a favorite old book:
That same day, Markoff Chaney was hiding in a coffee urn at Orgasm Research, hatching further mischief.
The clock struck midnight, the cleaning women left; and out crept Chaney with an evil grin.
Alas, he was not the only intruder that night, for as he padded down the hall he suddenly heard a hoarse voice in one of the laboratories.
"Better than human, are you, you @*)@'&ing #$%&'er? Better than human, my %$#&! Take this, you $%#)*$#-eating #$%%$*er!"
The voice was near inarticulate with rage, but it was clearly that of a jealous male, as any ethologist would easily recognize. Markoff slowly opened the door and peeked around the corner.
There in the dim light, fully dressed and in his wrong mind, stood the idol of millions, the world's leading rock guitarist, Knorton ("Grassy") Knoll, feverishly working with a monkey wrench upon an object the likes of which Markoff Chaney had never seen- a Giacometti robot with a gigantic human phallus.
"I'll take you apart, you $%$#," the demented rock musician was muttering. "I'll tear your $%$@$ out by its roots, I will." And he continued his assault, gargling and panting like one obsessed- which he was. "Man against machine," he gasped. "First they out think us, now they out-fuck us. It's time for all out war, by $%*@$...."
Markoff watched, silent as a cat, until the hebephrenic cuckold was finished with his foul work, and the machine stood, a heap of scrap metal, with the phallus removed. Then, after the musician slouched off into the night, the midget crept into the room and carefully wrote on the wall in stark purple crayon:
THE PIGEONS IN B.F. SKINNER'S
LABORATORIES ARE POLITICAL PRISONERS.
RELEASE THEM OR FURTHER ACTIONS WILL
FOLLOW.
EZRA POUND, FOR THE DREADED NEUROLOGICAL ARMY (DNA)
-From Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy, by Robert Anton Wilson
Step into the way-back machine. Hearken back to the 80's when people had their Amigas and they wrote songs for MOD trackers in their free time, and distributed them via dial-up bulletin board services that were ubiquitous through the 80's to early 90's before web browsers were developed and the net became commercialized.
These MODs, containing a number of samples and a playback script similar in concept, but different in structure to MIDI files, were to music what Linux is to operating systems- an open sourced, freely downloadable form of music, for which the artist earned no royalties. The MOD format was originally created to make game sountrack music on early computers with limited resources (such as the Amiga with it's 512 KB of memory) but has grown into a format of its own, with many offshoots such as Screamtracker (.s3m), Impulse Tracker (.it), and Fast Tracker (.xm), just to name a few. The vast majority of module music is of the techno genre, although some rock, pop, and even classical has been produced by music coders.
In the late eighties, there was a group called the KLF (Kopyright Liberation Front). They used to call themselves the JAMs (Justified Ancients of Mummu- go read the Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson to learn more about the JAMs), and for a while, they called themselves the Timelords. The KLF had a knack for getting in trouble for unauthorized use of samples from other people's music. They were forced to destroy all copies of an album they released (the 1987 album, IIRC) to avoid lawsuits. Because of this, they came to view the entire music industry as agents of the Illuminati, a supersecret organization hell bent on controlling what the world sees and hears.
Later, an unrelated KLF emerged, called the Kosmic Loader Foundation. They used to make the music for "loaders", or short demo programs that came up when you launched cracked games. (Remember the wonderful world of demos and the demo scene?) Anyway, they changed their name to KFMF, or Kosmic Free Music Foundation. Whatever music they produced, you could download for free, no questions asked. Or you could purchase CDs with their music (in both tracked and MP3 format) for a nominal fee. Of course, the idea for their tracked music was the same as for open-source software: If you modify a song or "rip" the samples, at least give credit where it's due.
Sadly, the KFMF no longer exists, and pretty much the entire demo scene has fallen by the wayside, but is still alive with tracked music at places like the aforementioned Mod Archive and Nectarine Radio. Nowadays, programs such as Cakewalk, Reason, and Cubase VST have replaced trackers (but are very expensive, unlike trackers, which have always been free.) Like trackers, they have their legions of adherents who create and swap music files, plugins, and effects, but the idea remains the same: If music was open-sourced, free as in speech and free as in beer, nobody could control it, no RIAA, Illuminati, or whatever.
A rechargeable battery that puts out 1.5 volts instead of 1.2 like current NiCds and NiMH batteries. That way you can use them in devices that were designed for alkalines, e.g. boom boxes and portable TVs. Using currently available rechargeables sucks, because you have less useable time with the device because the voltage was low to begin with.
And like what was mentioned in another post, faster charge times. I would drive an electric vehicle everywhere if I could go 200 miles (with no slowing down towards the end) per charge, and a completely full charge only took 10 minutes.
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I put some ceramic honeycomb material from an old infrared space heater on the rack where the lava rocks would go, makes for an awesome poor man's infrared grill.
One way to make vast amounts of hydrogen very quickly leaving carbon out of the equation would be to "burn" aluminum in the presence of steam, that is, to pass superheated steam over white hot aluminum powder, the steam disassociates into hydrogen and oxygen, and the oxygen reacts with the hot aluminum producing aluminum oxide and liberating hydrogen, some of which could be diverted as fuel to heat the aluminum powder and keep the process going, and the rest could be stored via the hydrogen storage method du jour for use as a fuel.
Or hydrogen could be produced as needed on a scaled-down version of the above process, eliminating the need for storage altogether. Imagine a car that is fueled by dumping in sack of aluminum powder into a hopper, filling up a water tank for the steam, and emptying another hopper containing spent aluminum oxide into a collection bin at the fueling depot.
Then you would take the aluminum oxide and recycle it, that is, re-smelt it back into aluminum in an electric arc reduction furnace, re-liberating the oxygen. This makes aluminum an energy storage medium, just like hydrogen.
Or you could leave the hydrogen out of the equation altogether, and use aluminum-air batteries, and recycling the spent aluminum oxide as above.
The problem is, smelting aluminum use vast amounts of electricity, which, if generated using fossil fuels, pours vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, as was stated in the previous post.
Which brings us back to the old adage that there are no non-nuclear methods for generating large amounts of hydrogen cleanly and efficiently. So you would basically need nuclear power supplied smelters to produce hydrogen and/or aluminum in the quantities needed to replace fossil fuels, but that would then realise the ultimate goal (somewhat indirectly) of having nuclear powered cars.
Well, maybe if it was inside a tiny thermos bottle, it wouldn't be so bad... Heck, if it was made to the same size and form factor as a vacuum tube, it would be more readily acceptable, since vacuum tubes have been with us for a long time. Think about it- The filament in a vacuum tube gets way, way hotter and nobody complains about that, because it's insulated by the vacuum inside. Besides that, people can show off the glowing innards of their micro-reactors the way they do with high end tube powered stereo amplifiers... "Oooh! Fire bottles!" And if installed in a laptop, heat removal would be through standard heatsink + fan, I suppose, because tubes don't get that hot on the outside surface. (I'm pretty sure some hack has grafted vacuum tubes into a laptop for that vintage tube warmth coming from the sound card, if not, anyone wanna try? Of course, it wouldn't run very long on batteries, you'd have to supply external power...)
I've always wished there was a way to recharge a battery simply by emptying the acid out and refilling it with fresh acid, then recycling the spent acid. But unfortunately, that's not the way batteries work, it's the metal plates that are chemically altered in the process of making electricity, not the acid.
If only someone were to devise a fuel cell that has a fresh liquid input and used liquid output, or even a Part A and a Part B mixing in the cell, and spent Part A+B coming out that could be reversed back into Part A and Part B.
Yeah, yeah, I know, hydrogen and oxygen are the Part A and Part B and water is the A+B that comes out of present day fuel cells, but what I'd like to see is something that stays liquid at room temperature and atmospheric pressure that can be replenished with the ease of self-serve, and can be recycled with the ease of pouring the spent juice in a big tank, and pipe it into a reformer that recharges it (or separates it back into the two components and fills up two smaller tanks) at the same rate that you can charge a typical battery. And of course, the reformer could be run off of anything from solar power to nuclear power and everything in between.
Nuclear power plants are the hardest to throttle back when the demand is lower. It takes days to ramp a nuke up to its rated output, therefore, once up, they are left running full blast year round as a baseline energy load. They are usually shut down during the spring or fall for maintenance and refueling because the electricity demand for heating or cooling is less. Fossil fired steam electric plants can be brought up and down quicker, but it still takes the better part of a day to bring one online. Gas turbines are the quickest to bring online, taking only minutes to spool up, and are often used for peak load times (i.e. the afternoons of hot sunny days).
A while back I remembered seeing proposals for storing excess electricity during off-peak hours in huge supercooled superconducting storage rings, but I haven't heard any more about it in years, and don't even know how such a scheme would work.
Insulation is there to protect the metal walls of the tank from burning off due to high heat generated by air friction.
Didn't seem to burn off the paint that they used to put on the insulation back in the old days.
My brother-in-law works at an oil refinery in southern Louisiana. The plant where he works at has a weird shift schedule based on a 10 day "week". They work 12 hour shifts during the day for 3 days in a row then get 3 days off. Then they work another 2 days for 12 hours/day and then get 2 days off. Then they switch to nights and start the schedule over again. So that's 3-on, 3-off, 2-on, 2-off days, then 3-on, 3-off, 2-on, 2-off nights. Supposedly they did some study that showed this kept the workers more alert and better rested as they had longer recovery times, and rolling over to the night shift falls in line with theories that the body clock tends to run slower than 24 hours/day (hence the 28 hour theory, etc.)
Other refineries follow different schedules. One I worked at has a schedule of 7-on, 7-off days, then 7-on, 7-off nights. And another plant that I almost took a job at has 3 days at 12 hours, 1 day at 8 hours, then 3 days off, then they go for 3 days at 12 hours, followed by 4 days off. And then they start all over, for night shifts!
I'm currently working a plain ol' ordinary 8 hours a day, 5 days a week day job with weekends off, and frankly, I find it torture because I can't keep my sleeping habits on a schedule as rigid as my job. I have a tendency to nap in the evenings and then stay up until the wee hours of the morning, then "nap" a little longer before going to work. Then I stay up until sunrise and sleep until noon on the weekends (and no, it's not because I'm out drinking.) I'd love to work a schedule that's more flexible, but I can't work at night because my workplace is only open during the day (and besides that I wouldn't want the sun to set on me in the hood where I work, somebody might cap my ass), and I can't telecommute, because of the nature of my job. (I've done autocad drawings and worked on spreadsheets for work at home, but not on a regular basis as I still gotta go in for a full day the next day, and don't want to burn my candle at both ends.)
Sometimes, in difficult to treat cases, doctors will prescribe what my mom always called "Napalm" antibiotics, that is, antibiotics that are so strong that they kill everything, including the "good" bacteria lactobacillus acidophilus in the intestines, and the result? The worst imaginable liquid, dripping, "hershey squirts", "green apple two-step" diarrhea.
If the good bacteria aren't replenished soon enough, it allows the yeast candida albicans that is also present in the intestines to grow unchecked. Normally the good bacteria crowd out the yeast, but when the bacteria are killed off by antibiotics, there is an overgrowth of the yeast, since most antibiotics don't kill yeast. The overgrowth of yeast releases toxins that damage the intestinal lining, mimicking intestinal conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome, celiac sprue, Crohn's disease, and lactose intolerance, and causing a whole host of other problems such as vaginal yeast infections in women, prostatitis in men, athlete's foot, fingernail and toenail infections, etc. (Go do a web search on "candida overgrowth syndrome" or "candidiasis".)
The good bacteria acidophilus is the bacteria culture used to make yogurt, and can also be found in probiotic supplements (look in the vitamin and supplement aisle at health food stores). Contrary to the FUD in the article, some bacteria from soil is beneficial, as they are sometimes incorporated into the probiotic supplements to help kill off the yeast overgrowth.
I'm pretty sure that a plane's avionics and wiring is hardened against the multi-megawatt electromagnetic pulse of wide-spectrum rf energy from lightning in thunderstorms that planes occasionally have to fly in the vicinity of. I don't think the narrow band milliwatts level of rf energy from cell phones, laptop computers, etc. will cause any significant interference. I'll let someone else reply with why the avionics of cold-war era Russian planes have tube powered avionics...
it is concievable that it interferes with the 400MHz wiring in a plane
That's 400 Hz, not 400 MHz. All the electrical power in aircraft is at 400 Hz, instead of 60 Hz like in your house. The reason is that the fluorescent light ballasts, transformers inside power hungry avionics gear and other power rectifying equipment can be made smaller and lighter when run at 400 Hz. Ever noticed the slightly sour A flat note that comes from the intercom when the stewardess is giving the pre-flight "use your seat cushion for floatation" speech? That is caused by the same factors that cause the 60 Hz buzz in a guitar amplifier.
The ticking, warbling, or whatever sound you hear in your computer speakers when your cell phone connects or occasionally syncs with the nearest tower when on standby is caused by stray rf energy from your cellphone, and it can conceivably interfere with the avionics of the airplane, especially the fly-by-wire types, but rest assured, the avionics and signal cables connecting the various systems are well shielded, because they have to be hardened against the multi-megawatt electromagnetic pulse of rf energy that comes from lightning strikes in the thunderstorms planes sometimes have to fly in the vicinity of. I don't think the milliwatt or so of stray rf energy from cell phones will do anything, but somebody out there must have done a study to show otherwise...
I remember when I was working at a nuclear power plant, there were certain areas of the plant that were "radio exclusion zones", where the workers had to turn their walkie-talkies off. The reason is that the signals in the control systems could be disturbed by someone keying their mike, causing the reactor to scram (much like the disturbance from a neighbor big into CB radios who has illegal linear amplifiers and can be heard jaw-jacking through your TV, FM radio, washing machine, child's braces, etc.)
Actually, some regions of the world burn animal dung for fuel. All they have to do is go out and gather it, no more processing is needed. Think of a horse as an efficient grass gathering and pelletizing machine.
I've seen a guy do just this. He built a home-brew charging stand for a bunch of walkie-talkies. Each walkie talkie had its own charger to recharge it, and they were just big enough to where they couldn't be plugged into adjacent outlets on a single power strip. It would have taken two power strips, and those 12" wall wart extension cords wouldn't have made it any better, the whole mess would have to sit on the floor under a desk and the employees would have to fish the cords from behind the file cabinet where all the walkie-talkies were sitting, and you couldn't see the charging lights with the chargers sitting under the desk.
So what he did was mount them all side by side in a project box and wired the outlet prongs together, along with a power cord, fuse, and lighted rocker switch. A hole drilled in the box just above the charging light on each charger let you know which one was charging, and all the cords were neatly rolled up inside with approx. 12" of cord hanging out through holes in the side to plug into the battery pack of each walkie-talkie. The whole setup fit neatly on top of the file cabinet. When the employees of the company got back from running around all day, all they had to do was plug up the walkie-talkies and go home.
A software that will let you write images on a Lightscribe CD in an ordinary (one-sided) burner merely by flipping the disk over and inserting it. Or at least burn text into the unused portion (along the outer rim perhaps) of an ordinary CD-R or DVD±R.
Actually they do sell patterns on a per copy basis. And yes, you aren't allowed to copy them and share with your friends, because they are works of art and protected under copyright law.
Same thing goes with the clipart type patterns that is loaded into automatic embroidery sewing machines. My mom once paid $125 for a PCMCIA card that was pre-loaded with a dozen or so patterns such as flowers, animals, and other cutesy stuff for her embroidery machine. IIRC, the legalese for the patterns was that they were for personal use only, that she couldn't mass produce anything (say, shirts) with the designs on them and sell them for profit. On the technical side, the card couldn't be read by a computer with a PCMCIA slot because the data was in a proprietary, perhaps encrypted format, and it would work with only one brand of embroidery machine. And computer software to create your own custom clipart for embroidery machines is outrageously expensive, the program for her machine rivaled the cost of an enterprise edition of high-end CAD software.
Especially for the science nerd in all of us as we marvel at the totally clear liquid turning milky white as the water from melting ice mixes with the alcoholic beverage.
And then there's Suisse La Bleue absinthe, which also turns milky white when mixed with water (the milky effect is called louche). Absinthe remains banned in the U.S. due to the persistent myth that the wormwood in absinthe is poisonous and causes hallucinations. It doesn't, wormwood is not, nor ever was on any DEA controlled substance list. It's banned by the FDA, which prohibits the manufacture, import and resale of any foodstuffs that contain wormwood in the U.S. The FDA hangs on to the myth that one of the chemicals in wormwood, called thujone, is bad, nevermind there is thujone in spices such as sage and tarragon. At least the European Union is forward thinking, because as of this year, absinthe is once again legal all across the European Union, with Switzerland and it's much sought after clear absinthe called Suisse La Bleue (once produced in clandestine labs) being the most recent to re-legalize. For more info, go see La Fee Verte Absinthe House.
Here in the U.S., available anise based pastis such as Pernod, Ricard, Herbsaint and Absente all exhibit the same louche effect (albeit green, due to coloring in the liqueur)when mixed with water. The colder the water, the more pronounced the milkiness.
Tektronix once had an unusual color screen on some of their higher end color oscilloscopes. One of them made its way to the scope bench at the calibration lab I work for. We called Tek looking for repair and calibration info, and they said that model of scope (don't remember the model no.) was obsolete. I think it dated from the early to mid 90's. Anyway, I thought it was an ordinary color CRT tube until we took the case off... It was some sort of flat panel vacuum display. It was very crisp, high contrast, could be viewed from almost any angle and closer inspection revealed that there were no visible RGB clusters like on plasma or lcd screens, it looked as smooth as an analog scope screen- except in full color. And the way it made color was to scan the whole screen one color at a time very fast, R,G, and I swore I could see two shades of blue. How it accomplished this, I don't know. (Nowadays, all Tek scopes have LCD panels.) Anybody else seen a display like this?
Before the 1940's, most of the gas consumed in big cities was manufactured at the local town gas works by heating coal, coke or charcoal to 1000 degrees or more in an airtight chamber, then steam was passed through the coal to produce hydrogen and carbon monoxide. The basic reaction is
C(s) + H20 = H2 + CO
The process for making gas from coal dates back to the late 1700's and early 1800's, but was gradually abandoned by the 1940's and 1950's as more and more natural gas wells were being drilled and pipelines were constructed across the country.
If a method of removing the carbon monoxide from water gas could be devised, hydrogen could then be made in vast amounts the way it used to be in the 1800's, except this time for use in fuel cells rather than in street lamps.
Louisiana is a different place than the rest of the country. First off, the state uses Napoleanic Code (which is derived from Roman Law) while the rest of the nation is using English Common Law. Every governmental position in the state is elected, NONE are appointed.
And you're guilty until proven innocent. And common law marriages are not recognized in Louisiana, either. People in legal professions from other states who come to Louisiana for whatever reason say the legal system is a whole different ball game over here.
And Louisiana is the only state in the union that taxes soft drinks. Ever see a little "LTP" on your bottle or can? That stands for "Louisiana Tax Paid". Any soft drink company that does business in Louisiana has to display on the label or top somewhere that the tax has been paid.
During the mid 90's, I worked for a computer shop for a while, and we took all our broken monitors to a local TV repair shop, because even back then anyone who made a living repairing televisions, computer monitors, or anything else with a CRT had to have a license. A license is also required for satellite system installers. This doesn't mean you have to have a license to put up your own DirecTV dish, but you do have to have one if you do it for a living. But a license is no longer required for repairing CB radios.
My ISP provides the option of viewing my e-mail via the web. I usually use webmail to filter out the spam, then fire up OE to download the legit stuff.
Ok, now how do you view RSS feeds? Looks like html viewed in notepad when I click on any RSS links.
The 15.7 kHz noise all us ADHD sufferers hear is, as previous posters noted, the scan line frequency. (For PAL, its a wee bit higher.) I have an early 1990's model RCA 25" TV and a 2000 model Sony 25" TV. Believe me, the newer Sony squeals much louder than the older RCA.
As stated previously, the sound is caused by minute vibrations in the horizontal sweep winding on the deflection coil. The flyback operates at the same frequency because it is powered off of the same horizontal output transistor as the sweep coil, so the two add up to one shrill whine.
My monitor is on 800 x 600 at a refresh rate of 72 Hz. High frequency hearing has often been associated with asthma, but I don't think any of us can hear the 57.6 kHz whine of that!
At work, we have an old monitor with a bad part that sometimes causes high frequency oscillations. If I beat on it, it'll go away, but it eventually returns. If I shake the monitor, the whistle seems to "bounce". I think it's a loose slug in an inductor in the IF circuit somewhere.
I've also had older power supplies where the switching frequency dropped to just within hearing range. Annoying.
BTW, 1 dB = 10^-12 watts per square meter.
WTF was that? A cross between an Escort and a Mustang with leprosy?
ROFL... That brings to mind this little snippet from a favorite old book:
That same day, Markoff Chaney was hiding in a coffee urn at Orgasm Research, hatching further mischief.
The clock struck midnight, the cleaning women left; and out crept Chaney with an evil grin.
Alas, he was not the only intruder that night, for as he padded down the hall he suddenly heard a hoarse voice in one of the laboratories.
"Better than human, are you, you @*)@'&ing #$%&'er? Better than human, my %$#&! Take this, you $%#)*$#-eating #$%%$*er!"
The voice was near inarticulate with rage, but it was clearly that of a jealous male, as any ethologist would easily recognize. Markoff slowly opened the door and peeked around the corner.
There in the dim light, fully dressed and in his wrong mind, stood the idol of millions, the world's leading rock guitarist, Knorton ("Grassy") Knoll, feverishly working with a monkey wrench upon an object the likes of which Markoff Chaney had never seen- a Giacometti robot with a gigantic human phallus.
"I'll take you apart, you $%$#," the demented rock musician was muttering. "I'll tear your $%$@$ out by its roots, I will." And he continued his assault, gargling and panting like one obsessed- which he was. "Man against machine," he gasped. "First they out think us, now they out-fuck us. It's time for all out war, by $%*@$...."
Markoff watched, silent as a cat, until the hebephrenic cuckold was finished with his foul work, and the machine stood, a heap of scrap metal, with the phallus removed. Then, after the musician slouched off into the night, the midget crept into the room and carefully wrote on the wall in stark purple crayon:
THE PIGEONS IN B.F. SKINNER'S
LABORATORIES ARE POLITICAL PRISONERS.
RELEASE THEM OR FURTHER ACTIONS WILL
FOLLOW.
EZRA POUND, FOR
THE DREADED NEUROLOGICAL ARMY (DNA)
-From Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy, by Robert Anton Wilson
Step into the way-back machine. Hearken back to the 80's when people had their Amigas and they wrote songs for MOD trackers in their free time, and distributed them via dial-up bulletin board services that were ubiquitous through the 80's to early 90's before web browsers were developed and the net became commercialized.
These MODs, containing a number of samples and a playback script similar in concept, but different in structure to MIDI files, were to music what Linux is to operating systems- an open sourced, freely downloadable form of music, for which the artist earned no royalties. The MOD format was originally created to make game sountrack music on early computers with limited resources (such as the Amiga with it's 512 KB of memory) but has grown into a format of its own, with many offshoots such as Screamtracker (.s3m), Impulse Tracker (.it), and Fast Tracker (.xm), just to name a few. The vast majority of module music is of the techno genre, although some rock, pop, and even classical has been produced by music coders.
In the late eighties, there was a group called the KLF (Kopyright Liberation Front). They used to call themselves the JAMs (Justified Ancients of Mummu- go read the Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson to learn more about the JAMs), and for a while, they called themselves the Timelords. The KLF had a knack for getting in trouble for unauthorized use of samples from other people's music. They were forced to destroy all copies of an album they released (the 1987 album, IIRC) to avoid lawsuits. Because of this, they came to view the entire music industry as agents of the Illuminati, a supersecret organization hell bent on controlling what the world sees and hears.
Later, an unrelated KLF emerged, called the Kosmic Loader Foundation. They used to make the music for "loaders", or short demo programs that came up when you launched cracked games. (Remember the wonderful world of demos and the demo scene?) Anyway, they changed their name to KFMF, or Kosmic Free Music Foundation. Whatever music they produced, you could download for free, no questions asked. Or you could purchase CDs with their music (in both tracked and MP3 format) for a nominal fee. Of course, the idea for their tracked music was the same as for open-source software: If you modify a song or "rip" the samples, at least give credit where it's due.
Sadly, the KFMF no longer exists, and pretty much the entire demo scene has fallen by the wayside, but is still alive with tracked music at places like the aforementioned Mod Archive and Nectarine Radio. Nowadays, programs such as Cakewalk, Reason, and Cubase VST have replaced trackers (but are very expensive, unlike trackers, which have always been free.) Like trackers, they have their legions of adherents who create and swap music files, plugins, and effects, but the idea remains the same: If music was open-sourced, free as in speech and free as in beer, nobody could control it, no RIAA, Illuminati, or whatever.
A rechargeable battery that puts out 1.5 volts instead of 1.2 like current NiCds and NiMH batteries. That way you can use them in devices that were designed for alkalines, e.g. boom boxes and portable TVs. Using currently available rechargeables sucks, because you have less useable time with the device because the voltage was low to begin with.
And like what was mentioned in another post, faster charge times. I would drive an electric vehicle everywhere if I could go 200 miles (with no slowing down towards the end) per charge, and a completely full charge only took 10 minutes.