I get to play with a set of 12 inch to the foot scale steam and diesel trains:) Sometimes when I come home from working on my 1:1 scale trains, I play with my 1:160 scale trains. Here's some pictures and some more. The organization I belong to.
There are two different things being talked about here:
One (what this story started as) is a diesel conversion kit that you install on your car - you still have a diesel tank that you must fill (much less often), and you add another tank with fry grease. You start the car/truck on reg. diesel (or biodiesel if you're so inclined). Once the engine is warm, you flip a valve, and you will be them pumping SVO as they call it - Straight Vegetable Oil - to your injectors. The SVO must be warmed to flow properly through your fuel system and into the injectors. Running vegetable oil into a diesel engine was designed before running petro-oil into a diesel engine. Not a very new concept, although the people doing this have been on the fringe.
The other, Thermal Depolymerization, is a relatively new process (more precisely, an old process that has recently been improved to make it closer to cost-effective) that takes anything with hydrocarbons, and breaks the molecules down into components, including water, whatever non-hydrocarbon stuff was in the input, and an oil that can be re-distilled into whatever product you want (gasoline, diesel, etc).
There is a third process not directly mentioned here, but the process of making biodiesel. This is accomplished with a vat of fry oil, some lye, some methanol, a mixing apparatus, and time. You mix the stuff up, and get some glycerin, and regular diesel that you can put in your fuel tank for your car, truck, farm tractor, diesel generator, etc. The article I linked says the guy gets about 85% diesel and 15% glycerin from his fry oil, and if he gets the oil for free, the other ingredients work out to 54 cents a gallon, plus his time.
Of course, the majority of us with our gasoline engines, are still stuck with petroleum coming out of the ground, or maybe in the future from the Thermal Depolymerization process.
This sounds like a god idea. I'll wait until Billy Mays tells (rather, yells at) me that this will work on my car, I won't buy it. As long as he has some hot woman that nods her head with him. Or, if he has a mechanic-looking guy interviewed in front of a toolbox that is larger than my car. Or, it the guy that invented it has an English accent. Because we all know all good inventions come from England. (just kidding, it's just that all infomercials a few years back had british people in them, like it was exotic or something)
Call me skeptical, but seriously. Until I start seeing conversion kits for sale in the NAPA dealer, this will be relegated in my mind to the realm of infomercials.
Further offtopic-
My (probably wrong) take on this is to have a duplicate of the experiment setup that is out in space, in the same room with the controls on the ground.
The remote control operator can see (immediately with his own eyes) the results of his controls, and only pause maybe every 30 seconds to verify that the experiment out in space has performed similarly.
For experiments where zero-G is important, perhaps a ride on the "vomit comet" is in order. Maybe not, since this article tells me that the plane was retired in '95, and was donated to the city of Houston in May 2000. I'm sure there's a replacement though.
Is there something fundamentally flawed with my idea?
This concept seems similar to an injector on a steam locomotive boiler. It uses steam to pump cold, unpressurized water from the tender into a hot, pressurized (150 to 250 or more) PSI boiler through a check valve, with the added benefit that the feedwater is heated.
Compare this image of an injector to this image of this steam propulsion system, I don't think they're that far apart.
I'm definitely not belittling these folks' creation, I think it's interesting that an old (mid-nineteenth century) invention is related to this new propulsion system, using the condensation of steam in cone-shaped orifices to draw in water and shoot it out the end.
I'm a little unclear on this. How much water does it take to clean the wastewater to use as snow? I've never run a 7500-bed ski resort, so I don't know exactly how much sewage we're talking about, but I thought it generally takes several gallons of water to treat a gallon of sewage. It sounds like they're taking the discharge from their "recycling plant for initial treatment" and then treating it some more. Are they using more water to treat the sewage to be able to have their marketing dept say they are "friends to the environment" than they would have used if they pumped out of the creek to make snow?
My other thought is, I'd imaging there must be some sort of minimum standard for the cleanliness of the water to make snow (no, there probably isn't a national standard like there is for drinking water), but there's probably some maximum amount of crud allowed in the water to not clog up the snowmaker machines. I've never been skiing, but don't you generally have several layers of clothing on, and nearly every part of your body covered? I don't think too many people are getting sick from the quality of the water used in snowmaking. Plus, are you eating it? Maybe the guy in the footage from ABC's Wide World of Sports (".. and the agony of defeat... ") ate some snow, but most skiers probably don't ingest the snow.
I'm glad to see that they're purifying their sewage that much, but wouldn't it have been treated properly before this system was put in palce, and then discharged into a creek for other users (human, plant, and animal alike) downstream to use?
just thoughts from a non-skier, non sewage plant operater..
Until some 'Consumer Protection' group such as the Center for Science in the Public Interest does some expose (looking at their home page, I see: "Death on the Half Shell", "America: Drowining in Sugar", "Liquid Candy Report", "Tax Junk Foods!").
Someone will come out with some half-assed story that you can catch herpes from using these APs just like you can get the germs from the public phone handset. You will have to spray your laptop down with lysol before using, so you don't get viruses from the box that looks like a public phone.
I just downloaded Cathy from http://rvas.webzdarma.cz/, the developer's page. The latest version is only a few days old. Looks like a nice simple program (Windows only). It's a 53 KB exe file, no installer, no frills. I've been looking intermittently for this type of program for a while.
A true geek would pull out his HP48 calculator and get to work:)
I have had my HP 48G set up as a remote for my TV for probably 8 years now. It works, although a little clumsy (in the program I use, you can only use 6 buttons at a time, and scroll up and down using the up and down arrows to switch the definitions of the six keys). You can download IR 'profiles' for many devices, and you can teach your calculator on your own if the profile isn't available for your TV... I understand it's pretty hard on the calculator's batteries though. I've only done it for fun, never as the primary remote for the TV. hpcalc.org is a great source.
I don't believe the HP48 is IRDA compatible, and I don't know what LIRC stands for, but given the forum we're in, I'll guess Linux IR C_____. (Consortium? Community?)
Granted, if you don't have a HP calc on hand, it probably won't be worth the bucks to buy one for this, since it probably won't work anyhow. I was looking on Ebay and bids were between $60 and $100.
I was just on the HPCalc site yesterday, and I was reunited with the goodness of minesweeper on the HP48. There went an hour of work!
Good luck with your project. Stay away from my county when you're trying to type in MP3/OGG names while driving, especially if you try to do it using a HP48!
Newspapers and magazines run advertisements that look like real stories/articles often. The ad is typed up to look like a press release or a real newspaper story, and at first glance, they do. Until you realize the typeface is a little different, and (obviously) its text is simply marketingspeak. When they do this, they must have a small disclaimer at the top or bottom.
Come to think of it, it may not be some sort of requirement to add the "Paid Advertisement" disclaimer, it may be some thinking by the newspaper editor to avoid complaints from stoopid people who might buy the advertised product and be disappointed.
I don't know if TV stations are required to post their "The following is a paid commercial advertisement for "Girls Gone Wild Snoop Doggy Style", or if this is something the TV channels choose to do no their own...
Does anyone know if any type of consumer protection agency requires such a disclaimer, or is it done by the media outlet?
I work on a similar project, only in Pennsylvania (just outside Harrisburg), and on a 101-year old steam locomotive. As of 2 years ago, it was the only remaining operable PRR steam locomotive.
Our locomotive will be out of service for probably 2 years or more for boiler work, but once it returns to service, we hold a week-long steam show in August, and people can take a half-hour engineer's class and operate our engine for $50 (it might be $100, I just started working with this group and haven't been around when the locomotive was in service).
Our organization's web page seems to be AFU at the moment, but here's a picture on my personal (free hosting) web page. Please be gentle.
Sitting at a desk all day (with CRT/LCD/Sheet of paper) can make your ass fat.
Standing all day at work makes your feet hurt and causes circulation problems in your legs.
Lying in bed 24 hours a day gives you bed sores.
Drinking a quart^H^H^H^H^Hlitre (Oh, I forgot, we're being scientific here) of water every 30 minutes makes you urinate a lot.
How is this news? I think everybody knows that looking at a monitor for long periods of time hurts your eyes. As for melting them out of their sockets, well I guess that's the part that is news to me.
I know many of us live in states where there is a statewide "Do Not Call" list. However, there is a simple solution that (usually) works, and this is probably not the first time you've heard about it. Ask to be put on the telemarketer's own Do Not Call list. From what I remember hearing, you have to specifically say something close to "Put me on your do not call list". If you just say "take me off your list", that doesn't work the same way (because the next time the telemarketer gets a new phone list, you are on it again)
I used to worry about getting "slammed" (when a long distance company takes over your service illegally) every time Sprint, MCI, etc. called me, but as soon as I asked to be put on their DNC list, it really did stop me from getting those calls. I was particularly worried because I somehow fell through the cracks when getting phone service when we bought our house. Nobody is billing us for long distance service. I get a monthly bill for local service on both our phone lines, but in 2 years, not a single LD bill!
On another topic, I'm often tempted to put a phone on my modem-only line (yes, I still use dialup) to see how many calls we get on that line, even though we've never given out that number (it would take me a good bit of digging through paperwork to find out even what the number is, I don't know it).
My experience with Target has been disappointing. Once, I went in for two simple things, things that Wal*Mart or K-Mart would always have - sweat pants and an oil filter for my car. Target has neither. It seems that the type of people that shop at Target have need for neither. Well, I had to check the housewares dept to see if they had Air Freshener... Maybe the people who shop at Target - their shit doesn't stink?
Seriously, I don't consider myself white trash. I'm well employed, but sometimes want to be comfortable and warm at home (I can count on one hand the number of times I've worn sweatpants outside the house), and I like to change the oil on my own car (it's one of the few things I'm capable of doing on my own, other than washing it!)
I guess Target is too good for me. Their stores sure are bright and 'red' though, and their TV commercials mildly interesting.
Another rant- my sister's boyfriend insists on calling it "tar-ghay" as if it were French or something. It's Target, like something you shoot at. But they probably don't sell them at Target either. Maybe I should call the NRA on those pink commie bastards. It's UnAmerican to not sell guns, ammunition, and targets!
Taking a deep breath and resuming my normal life...
From the title, I started thinking about the short story The Most Dangerous Game, by Richard Connell. I now have visions of servers chasing me around a jungle island, trying to kill me. Great thought for the weekend...
http://mbhs.bergtraum.k12.ny.us/cybereng/shorts/da nger.html Condensed version - a world-class big game hunter has gotten tired of hunting game, because animals do not think. It is much more interesting to him to hunt humans, because they can reason (all right, well most of us can...)
Maybe this is a little more on my mind because of the DC sniper, my wife and I were just talking about this short story a few days ago, bringing back memories of elementary school.
And who says that these things are going to be desirable for theives? Perhaps if only one of these technologies survives (say XM survives), will you have to put a sticker on your antenna saying it's a Sirius system, to make your stereo less desirable?
If both systems fail, it would be the equivalent of having an 8-track player in your dash.
Of course, the moral of the story is that if you've sunk the money into satellite radio, you might have other gadgets in the car that *might* be more interesting to theives...
Slashdot Mirror
I get to play with a set of 12 inch to the foot scale steam and diesel trains :) Sometimes when I come home from working on my 1:1 scale trains, I play with my 1:160 scale trains. Here's some pictures and some more. The organization I belong to.
One (what this story started as) is a diesel conversion kit that you install on your car - you still have a diesel tank that you must fill (much less often), and you add another tank with fry grease. You start the car/truck on reg. diesel (or biodiesel if you're so inclined). Once the engine is warm, you flip a valve, and you will be them pumping SVO as they call it - Straight Vegetable Oil - to your injectors. The SVO must be warmed to flow properly through your fuel system and into the injectors. Running vegetable oil into a diesel engine was designed before running petro-oil into a diesel engine. Not a very new concept, although the people doing this have been on the fringe.
The other, Thermal Depolymerization, is a relatively new process (more precisely, an old process that has recently been improved to make it closer to cost-effective) that takes anything with hydrocarbons, and breaks the molecules down into components, including water, whatever non-hydrocarbon stuff was in the input, and an oil that can be re-distilled into whatever product you want (gasoline, diesel, etc).
There is a third process not directly mentioned here, but the process of making biodiesel. This is accomplished with a vat of fry oil, some lye, some methanol, a mixing apparatus, and time. You mix the stuff up, and get some glycerin, and regular diesel that you can put in your fuel tank for your car, truck, farm tractor, diesel generator, etc. The article I linked says the guy gets about 85% diesel and 15% glycerin from his fry oil, and if he gets the oil for free, the other ingredients work out to 54 cents a gallon, plus his time.
Of course, the majority of us with our gasoline engines, are still stuck with petroleum coming out of the ground, or maybe in the future from the Thermal Depolymerization process.
Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a Pentium-90 system I have to install windows 95 on....
Call me skeptical, but seriously. Until I start seeing conversion kits for sale in the NAPA dealer, this will be relegated in my mind to the realm of infomercials.
huh huh.... yeah that was cool.
The remote control operator can see (immediately with his own eyes) the results of his controls, and only pause maybe every 30 seconds to verify that the experiment out in space has performed similarly.
For experiments where zero-G is important, perhaps a ride on the "vomit comet" is in order. Maybe not, since this article tells me that the plane was retired in '95, and was donated to the city of Houston in May 2000. I'm sure there's a replacement though.
Is there something fundamentally flawed with my idea?
Compare this image of an injector to this image of this steam propulsion system, I don't think they're that far apart.
I'm definitely not belittling these folks' creation, I think it's interesting that an old (mid-nineteenth century) invention is related to this new propulsion system, using the condensation of steam in cone-shaped orifices to draw in water and shoot it out the end.
My other thought is, I'd imaging there must be some sort of minimum standard for the cleanliness of the water to make snow (no, there probably isn't a national standard like there is for drinking water), but there's probably some maximum amount of crud allowed in the water to not clog up the snowmaker machines. I've never been skiing, but don't you generally have several layers of clothing on, and nearly every part of your body covered? I don't think too many people are getting sick from the quality of the water used in snowmaking. Plus, are you eating it? Maybe the guy in the footage from ABC's Wide World of Sports (" .. and the agony of defeat... ") ate some snow, but most skiers probably don't ingest the snow.
I'm glad to see that they're purifying their sewage that much, but wouldn't it have been treated properly before this system was put in palce, and then discharged into a creek for other users (human, plant, and animal alike) downstream to use?
just thoughts from a non-skier, non sewage plant operater..
Drilling 1 1/2" holes in friends' walls isn't a very good idea.
Space Invaders game play footage. To see the game in action here is a 21MB Windows Media File. Or an 89MB MPEG File.
Seriously, this is pretty cool, even if the resolution is only 64x30 with 2 bit color. Better than I can do.
And no I won't provide you with a link to these ungodly sized mpegs!
For the love of God, what does he think he's doing?
Someone will come out with some half-assed story that you can catch herpes from using these APs just like you can get the germs from the public phone handset. You will have to spray your laptop down with lysol before using, so you don't get viruses from the box that looks like a public phone.
I just downloaded Cathy from http://rvas.webzdarma.cz/, the developer's page. The latest version is only a few days old. Looks like a nice simple program (Windows only). It's a 53 KB exe file, no installer, no frills. I've been looking intermittently for this type of program for a while.
The heat went out at BlockStackers, so they had to increase the load on their servers for some heat, or
Someone wants this to happen (hopefully not!)
At any rate, congratulations!
**Disclaimer - I am a model railroad guy. Heck, I'm a real railroad guy too (12 inch to the foot scale) Photos here (Go easy please, it's a free site)
I have had my HP 48G set up as a remote for my TV for probably 8 years now. It works, although a little clumsy (in the program I use, you can only use 6 buttons at a time, and scroll up and down using the up and down arrows to switch the definitions of the six keys). You can download IR 'profiles' for many devices, and you can teach your calculator on your own if the profile isn't available for your TV... I understand it's pretty hard on the calculator's batteries though. I've only done it for fun, never as the primary remote for the TV. hpcalc.org is a great source.
I don't believe the HP48 is IRDA compatible, and I don't know what LIRC stands for, but given the forum we're in, I'll guess Linux IR C_____. (Consortium? Community?)
Granted, if you don't have a HP calc on hand, it probably won't be worth the bucks to buy one for this, since it probably won't work anyhow. I was looking on Ebay and bids were between $60 and $100.
I was just on the HPCalc site yesterday, and I was reunited with the goodness of minesweeper on the HP48. There went an hour of work!
Good luck with your project. Stay away from my county when you're trying to type in MP3/OGG names while driving, especially if you try to do it using a HP48!
Come to think of it, it may not be some sort of requirement to add the "Paid Advertisement" disclaimer, it may be some thinking by the newspaper editor to avoid complaints from stoopid people who might buy the advertised product and be disappointed.
I don't know if TV stations are required to post their "The following is a paid commercial advertisement for "Girls Gone Wild Snoop Doggy Style", or if this is something the TV channels choose to do no their own...
Does anyone know if any type of consumer protection agency requires such a disclaimer, or is it done by the media outlet?
Why not require Bonzi to do the same?
Our locomotive will be out of service for probably 2 years or more for boiler work, but once it returns to service, we hold a week-long steam show in August, and people can take a half-hour engineer's class and operate our engine for $50 (it might be $100, I just started working with this group and haven't been around when the locomotive was in service).
Our organization's web page seems to be AFU at the moment, but here's a picture on my personal (free hosting) web page. Please be gentle.
(I'm just jealous...)
Hmm. I wonder if you can nominate someone else? There's a few people I wouldn't mind not being on this earth....
Standing all day at work makes your feet hurt and causes circulation problems in your legs.
Lying in bed 24 hours a day gives you bed sores.
Drinking a quart^H^H^H^H^Hlitre (Oh, I forgot, we're being scientific here) of water every 30 minutes makes you urinate a lot.
How is this news? I think everybody knows that looking at a monitor for long periods of time hurts your eyes. As for melting them out of their sockets, well I guess that's the part that is news to me.
I used to worry about getting "slammed" (when a long distance company takes over your service illegally) every time Sprint, MCI, etc. called me, but as soon as I asked to be put on their DNC list, it really did stop me from getting those calls. I was particularly worried because I somehow fell through the cracks when getting phone service when we bought our house. Nobody is billing us for long distance service. I get a monthly bill for local service on both our phone lines, but in 2 years, not a single LD bill!
On another topic, I'm often tempted to put a phone on my modem-only line (yes, I still use dialup) to see how many calls we get on that line, even though we've never given out that number (it would take me a good bit of digging through paperwork to find out even what the number is, I don't know it).
Seriously, I don't consider myself white trash. I'm well employed, but sometimes want to be comfortable and warm at home (I can count on one hand the number of times I've worn sweatpants outside the house), and I like to change the oil on my own car (it's one of the few things I'm capable of doing on my own, other than washing it!)
I guess Target is too good for me. Their stores sure are bright and 'red' though, and their TV commercials mildly interesting.
Another rant- my sister's boyfriend insists on calling it "tar-ghay" as if it were French or something. It's Target, like something you shoot at. But they probably don't sell them at Target either. Maybe I should call the NRA on those pink commie bastards. It's UnAmerican to not sell guns, ammunition, and targets!
Taking a deep breath and resuming my normal life...
Offtopic enough?
http://mbhs.bergtraum.k12.ny.us/cybereng/shorts/d
Condensed version - a world-class big game hunter has gotten tired of hunting game, because animals do not think. It is much more interesting to him to hunt humans, because they can reason (all right, well most of us can...)
Maybe this is a little more on my mind because of the DC sniper, my wife and I were just talking about this short story a few days ago, bringing back memories of elementary school.
And who says that these things are going to be desirable for theives? Perhaps if only one of these technologies survives (say XM survives), will you have to put a sticker on your antenna saying it's a Sirius system, to make your stereo less desirable?
If both systems fail, it would be the equivalent of having an 8-track player in your dash.
Of course, the moral of the story is that if you've sunk the money into satellite radio, you might have other gadgets in the car that *might* be more interesting to theives...