Not a bad move. Here in Perth, W. Australia where it gets damn hot (as much as 46 deg. Celsius) in summer - and yes, I do know it's winter now:-) it has been getting muggier every year.
about 10 years ago we did OK with just a free-standing evaporative airconditioner, but now all they do is just make the heat less tolerable.
The answer: reverse-cycle split-system airconditioning. It doesn't need expensive ducting, and it is really efficient as a heater in winter months, too.
Interesting: so the only literature that remains of the 20th and 21st centuries is D&D books... It would be interesting to see what future historians or archaeologists make of that:-)
my assumption is that the way to go about it is to find a blacksmith and ask to be his apprentice. Is that about right?
Right. When I got given the heave in 1990 from my systems programming job, and there was no sign of any employment on the horizon, I figured that then was as good a time as any to learn.
I discovered that there was no longer any formal blacksmith's apprenticeship system here (Western Australia, though I have been told otherwise in Victoria) so I simply did some asking around, and found an old smith who was happy to take me on and teach me. This man had done his apprenticeship in the '40s with the railways and subsequently taught in apprenticeship courses. As it turned out, I got one-to-one tuition, and although I didn't realise it at the time, I was able to do things after a few months that many fully-fledged "master" blacksmiths never learn to do.
If you're interested in it as a hobby, there are associations and clubs in many places - Google will help. You might even get useful info from your local SCA, though that depends. Some of them are very much in the mickey-mouse category when it comes to craftsmanship.
I should have said earlier, check out the libraries, there's lots of good literature on the subject. I was taught the way my teacher was taught, etc, but as you go on you learn and refine new techniques for yourself and discard things that don't suit you so well. Any master blacksmith is constantly learning new things about his craft.
I considered spindles for a while, and agree they can be convenient and cheap. I've seen quite a few CDs stored thus with nice circular scratches, though, resulting presumably from small particles of dust or whatever becoming trapped between them. Probably not good if integrity of data is important to you.
Maybe it's temporary to you, but it's still a hell of a lot better than floppies. However, I've never once had a bad disk from TDK, Imation or Kodak.
I sometimes wonder, when people ask about reliability, how much is due to the media and how much to the CD burner. I have a Sony CD-RW drive which has been burning over the same 3 multi-volume CD sets every few days for over two years without any kind of error. (And yes, I do test my backups from time to time.) I keep wondering when the media will fail, but so far they've been OK.
but in a few hundred years the history books will.describe it that way
In a few hundred years, few books from this century or the last will exist. Since about 1850, when paper made from wood-pulp was first produced, many books have simply disintegrated as a result of the acid content. I have a number of books from as recently as 1987 which are already disintegrating.
Then you or your friends are simply not trying. If you make beer from the tins of malt-extract gunk you get from the supermarket, then yes, you will get sewer water.
This has nothing, however, to do with the craft of making beer. It is perfectly possible to produce an excellent beer using malted barley and hops in your kitchen. There are plenty of good recipes freely available, so it's no great secret.
Agreed. The internet, while useful as a source of information, is not a complete solution. I have a few thousand books in my home (not sure as to the exact number), and one thing I've learned from all my hours spent in bookshops is that there is not a chance in the world of the Net catching up with already-published information.
Even the stuff that is there tends to lack detail, though I admit that it's a great way of publishing things like scientific journals.
Hm, I wonder how medieval style chain mail would look like?
Uncomfortable.
It was typically made by riveting individual rings of wrought-iron. Fantasy literature describing the stuff as having fire-welded (forge-welded) links is just that: fantasy, as it it very challenging to fire-weld all those small pieces of iron without burning the rest of the work. Most of the less pedantic SCAs do it by cutting springs and arc-welding them.
Needless to say, this gear is uncomfortable, and needs lots of padding.
I spent some ten years working as a blacksmith, and believe me, it's a lot more fun making those swords than fighting with them.
And yes, a blacksmith can, too, be a geek. Just check out some of the literature and mailing lists on archaeometallurgy. There are much too many to list here, but Google will find some of them.
Re:That censorship thing.
on
I, Spammer
·
· Score: 1
Fair comment. I fail to see why your comment was modded as a troll, however.
Maybe what we really need is to do something about all the false-negatives we seem to be getting from some of the Slashdot moderators. Seems to me that meta-moderation can't keep up:-)
Sadly, this is true. However, consider the relative impact of the miscreants upon society. A few people ripping the odd CD does not greatly (if at all) affect the income of the original artist. It may affect (though this is arguable) the income accruing to a few organisations whose position in the food-chain is somewhere on the level of a parasite.
A number of people deliberately engaging in spamming activities, in full knowledge of the fact that it annoys a large number of people personally is a different matter.
Re:Dang it, there goes my stomach lining...
on
I, Spammer
·
· Score: 1
"This is censorship," he said...
Well, it is. I hereby formally reserve the right to censor my own email. Anybody who violates that right had better not get too close to me, or I'll nail his hide to a fence.
If those CDs were shipped to you postage due, then you can call it spam.
Not quite. Spam is simply unsolicited bulk email. I don't think junk snail-mail falls under the usual definition. And I'm sure I'm not alone in never having paid to receive snail-mail.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought the poor old Wumpus had already been hunted to death by now... :-)
In this country (.au), a liberal is a conservative. Or so they would have us believe...
Not a bad move. Here in Perth, W. Australia where it gets damn hot (as much as 46 deg. Celsius) in summer - and yes, I do know it's winter now :-) it has been getting muggier every year.
about 10 years ago we did OK with just a free-standing evaporative airconditioner, but now all they do is just make the heat less tolerable.
The answer: reverse-cycle split-system airconditioning. It doesn't need expensive ducting, and it is really efficient as a heater in winter months, too.
Interesting: so the only literature that remains of the 20th and 21st centuries is D&D books... It would be interesting to see what future historians or archaeologists make of that :-)
Good thinking, GnarlyNome, I'll remember that... :-)
Right. When I got given the heave in 1990 from my systems programming job, and there was no sign of any employment on the horizon, I figured that then was as good a time as any to learn.
I discovered that there was no longer any formal blacksmith's apprenticeship system here (Western Australia, though I have been told otherwise in Victoria) so I simply did some asking around, and found an old smith who was happy to take me on and teach me. This man had done his apprenticeship in the '40s with the railways and subsequently taught in apprenticeship courses. As it turned out, I got one-to-one tuition, and although I didn't realise it at the time, I was able to do things after a few months that many fully-fledged "master" blacksmiths never learn to do.
If you're interested in it as a hobby, there are associations and clubs in many places - Google will help. You might even get useful info from your local SCA, though that depends. Some of them are very much in the mickey-mouse category when it comes to craftsmanship.
I should have said earlier, check out the libraries, there's lots of good literature on the subject. I was taught the way my teacher was taught, etc, but as you go on you learn and refine new techniques for yourself and discard things that don't suit you so well. Any master blacksmith is constantly learning new things about his craft.
I considered spindles for a while, and agree they can be convenient and cheap. I've seen quite a few CDs stored thus with nice circular scratches, though, resulting presumably from small particles of dust or whatever becoming trapped between them. Probably not good if integrity of data is important to you.
I do something similar, except I put all the pages into a big Lever Arch ring-binder so it can fit on a bookshelf.
I sometimes wonder, when people ask about reliability, how much is due to the media and how much to the CD burner. I have a Sony CD-RW drive which has been burning over the same 3 multi-volume CD sets every few days for over two years without any kind of error. (And yes, I do test my backups from time to time.) I keep wondering when the media will fail, but so far they've been OK.
This might seem radical, but try your local bookshop.
Oh dear. And I thought I was just chewing the crud by reading Slashdot. :-)
Unfortunately, it is illegal here (Australia). Bummer.
Where do I find a laptop gade by the Good Lord? I had to settle for one from Hewlett-Packard :-)
Hadn't thought of that. Sharp edges, though... :-)
In a few hundred years, few books from this century or the last will exist. Since about 1850, when paper made from wood-pulp was first produced, many books have simply disintegrated as a result of the acid content. I have a number of books from as recently as 1987 which are already disintegrating.
That is what's going to make this a Dark Age.
Then you or your friends are simply not trying. If you make beer from the tins of malt-extract gunk you get from the supermarket, then yes, you will get sewer water.
This has nothing, however, to do with the craft of making beer. It is perfectly possible to produce an excellent beer using malted barley and hops in your kitchen. There are plenty of good recipes freely available, so it's no great secret.
Even the stuff that is there tends to lack detail, though I admit that it's a great way of publishing things like scientific journals.
Well, I'm very sorry to hear that. That's sad. What do you do when the power fails?
I distilled some of it hast year, and it makes an incredibly rich and complex hooch. And yes, I know it's illegal, but who cares?
Uncomfortable.
It was typically made by riveting individual rings of wrought-iron. Fantasy literature describing the stuff as having fire-welded (forge-welded) links is just that: fantasy, as it it very challenging to fire-weld all those small pieces of iron without burning the rest of the work. Most of the less pedantic SCAs do it by cutting springs and arc-welding them.
Needless to say, this gear is uncomfortable, and needs lots of padding.
I spent some ten years working as a blacksmith, and believe me, it's a lot more fun making those swords than fighting with them.
And yes, a blacksmith can, too, be a geek. Just check out some of the literature and mailing lists on archaeometallurgy. There are much too many to list here, but Google will find some of them.
Maybe what we really need is to do something about all the false-negatives we seem to be getting from some of the Slashdot moderators. Seems to me that meta-moderation can't keep up :-)
A number of people deliberately engaging in spamming activities, in full knowledge of the fact that it annoys a large number of people personally is a different matter.
Well, it is. I hereby formally reserve the right to censor my own email. Anybody who violates that right had better not get too close to me, or I'll nail his hide to a fence.
Not quite. Spam is simply unsolicited bulk email. I don't think junk snail-mail falls under the usual definition. And I'm sure I'm not alone in never having paid to receive snail-mail.