Life, The Universe, and Everything

[Donovan Ready]

I always used a dust mask when milling walnut and teak. Maybe some other woods, but nothing commonly used in woodworking. Off topic, I guess, but canarywood smells like horses, oddly.

Save that walnut! There are woodworkers who'll bring you a load of cut and split hardwood for burning, just for a crack at that beautiful wood. While you're at it, save me a good length, too. My son wants me to make him a chessboard.

I ought to teach him how to use a tablesaw, jointer and router. Then he'd be more appreciative...

[Doug Coulter]

I have two more trees to cut down as shown in the video. The heartwood isn't huge, but with care, yeah, you could resaw and make some stuff with it, I'm guessing it would be pretty nice, almost like the sides of my now repaired main guitar, if you treated it right. If not, it's gonna check pretty fast.

It'd be green and kinda heavy to ship, let me know some details PM and we'll figure something out - maybe I can get a neighbor to bandsaw some into small planks that won't check while in the mail (I don't have a big bandsaw).. There's little trade value around here for it, we all have a lot of stuff like this that would make city boys weep - for us it's just part of the scenery. In this case kinda poisonous and in the way.

[Donovan Ready]

I was kidding, mostly. If you did ship me a chunk, I feel obligated to do something with it.

Getting to my shop tools is a PITA, and I ain't working outside in the Texas summer.

Maybe I can get the kid to move a half-ton of crap out of the way in the shed?

[Donovan Ready]

Just checking in. I feel a little better than hammered shit today, so I thought I'd holler.

I had a younger friend show up yesterday, and he was kind enough to set up some sodas across the creek at 50 yards. That was fun!

[Doug Coulter]

I'm kinda hammered today after being up most of last night commisioning this thing:

reverse osmosis rig

Took a lot of flushing and waiting, and I haven't yet run the line for bypass water back to the cistern, so had to carry buckets.
Perhaps not super significant on its own, but for the first time since '79, I have "normal person" infrastructure working, all at the same time.
And without using credit (ties you to a job), without any building permits (so, almost no taxes) and whatever that guy said, yup, I DID build that.
Mostly. I have zero monthly bills now, other than internet.
Running water, hot and cold, check - water from rain collection and treatment on site, so no permit needed for a well.
Purified by that setup so I have drinking water too (the other stuff ain't bad, but some parts of the year has pollen and the algae that grow in that).
Power for hot water - finally enough solar panels. I couldn't easily put the shower where the sun can shine close enough to use a more direct system.
Drainfield...which doesn't have to be huge as I never had enough water to be an issue anyway, used explosives for the hard part of the digging - fun!
A refrigerator bigger than a dorm room one that has a real freezer - that just this month.
Oh, and as far as we can tell, the cancer surgery worked.

Did you know that in nearly all places, it's the power company that effectively enforces code? The state/county delegated that to them long ago. If they don't like it, you can't get power, or you have to pay industrial rates and pay for the poles - which is an extremely bad deal due to the fee schedule for industrial power - it's a buck a kilowatt hour or more unless you use a LOT....they are the power company in more than one sense.

I've been the last few decades without this stuff. Even now it's freaky that water just comes out of the faucet without the loud buzzing of the spot sprayer pump I used to use for that - now I have a "normal" type pump, since I have the AC power on tap to start and run a big motor "whenever" without breaking other things.
I can bathe and poop without needing a bucket for each now! And anytime I want! Ditto washing clothes. It might not seem like a big deal, but do without for a few decades and it's pretty amazing.

Sounds crazy, I know, but for me it's pretty real, and for a freedom-freak, it's redemptive - I never had to kiss butt in a job I didn't like to get setup like this, and this is for life...

So, it's a good day to be me...it's been a pretty long slog. I don't think it'll spoil me, I still have to keep it fixed, and habits are habits, but I also don't feel the least bit guilty either - I'm still walking so lightly on the earth the local gov thinks I'm a great citizen (if only for the "Keep Floyd Weird" program) even though I don't pay them squat in taxes.

And there's been progress on sub-projects for the fusor, mostly the RF related stuff, but for the moment it's just the pieces, so I'll report on that stuff when I've run it some. I still have reason to believe the ion trap equations are the right ones, suitabily modified, and from what I see now, it doesn't look anywhere near as bad as I'd feared at first. Our plasma is not a gnarley uncontrollable soup at all, like what the tokomak boys have, and which you have to fudge hydrodynamic equations for that only say things like "here be turbulence" with no detail or solution. It's pretty well behaved. Part of that is that it's only at the densities those guys need at specific (short) times and spots, and we spend the rest of each cycle in a low density, low energy, easy to handle set of conditions.

You couldn't run a welding torch inside a gasoline engine either - but you can go bang now and then profitably. Same kind of idea. Our bangs are very gentle by comparison, too.

[Doug Coulter]

I should add, I'm chasing down why phpbb won't run on updated Debian Stretch, which I'm running on some HardKernel ordriod HC2 devices. I'd been using it here as kind of a personal github that is easier to use and holds comments better as well as being more searchable (without google, that is).
PHP 7.2 is a problem, not with any other php app, and the fix appears to be to run multiple versions (yuck) and make wierd changes in the NGINX configuration...
What a PITA. This is getting to be like microsoft - we're the free alpha testers.

What's really daunting is when I fix this one (and this isn't unique where to make something go, you have to diddle other things that worked fine already...) is how in hell to document this? Do I put it in a PHPBB directory/readme? I didn't touch that - I hit up on the system and on NGINX to fix it.

So do I put it under NGINX, under general sysadmin, what? We have the same problem here - logical as it is, sci/tech just doesn't pigeonhole cleanly. It's a variable many to many mapping, for widely diverse values of "many".

TheHC2 is a pretty nifty toy:
https://www.hardkernel.com/main/product ... 1505170472

I'm fitting these with 4 tb drives out of a synology nas that makes me ill. I have some odroid xu4's to use so I don't need to go headless till I'm ready.
These draw 3W at idle! And aroud 12 at full crank, saturating a 1GbE link.

[Doug Coulter]

Been awhile since I checked in. I've been pretty busy, mostly in good ways.
For the first time in a few decades...I have all the "normal person stuff" going and all at once. Instead of a little dorm room fridge - which itself was a new thing a couple years ago - I have a "real" fridge with a freezer now. And all that other stuff most take for granted - water at the tap, drinking water at another tap, a real gas oven/range...I can haz food! And at the other end, a warm place to...shower, wash clothes and so on.
Propane heat on top of the wood - no more getting up at 3 am freezing...

And on and on. My life for the last few decades would put most ascetic monastic orders completely to shame. I'm not living on champagne and caviar or anything, but that's by choice now. I guess it was before too, but kinda differently. Retiring young, as I did, from the rat race, and going off-rid, is a choice, but one that has consequences in standard of living (at least how most define that). Having developed all those good habits I've not missed the hooker and blow...and this seems pretty amazing.

So, I wanted to requalify a couple neutron detectors, since I've been doing preliminary RF drive stuff at the fusor in person, and those are my warning canaries. And it's a good thing I did - the sensitive He3 one had quit due to insect faff and a poor fix (compressed air blowout moved a pot adjustment).

I managed to put the fusor back the old way (DC everything) and have all that coincide with a dog and pony show for the neighbors who wanted one, so all good.
The results of those test runs were gratifying - everything replicated the past records or better, I was able to go 4 million n/s solidly and at a little lower power/higher Q than before (but believable), and the activation samples agreed with the electronic detectors, so that's all a confidence builder.

I note that with my small ultrasonic (42 khz) ion grid driver, that I can go substantially lower in tank pressure for otherwise the same results than with DC drive, and that the I/V curve on the main grid is "harder" even so. It seems the "RF" in this case gets a much higher percentage of the gas ionized. However, it is harder to get the ion grid "lit", taking more pressure initially than with the DC drive there, and it goes out easier if there's a hitch in something, requiring me to add a lot of gas and go through the tuning all over again. This is probably because it seems I only have a couple kV worth of AC there, it being a lot trickier to make a lot more than that and contain it. For this, I tried it with both a 1k resistor in the ground lead of the RF transformer - and the 10w one got warm - and with a 690pf one there instead, which is what I measured the DC volts across to estimate the AC volts, since the fusor as ever is a pretty good diode to ground when ions are present.

Mainly, I notice that with DC ion source drive, I see a big negative voltage on all the faraday probes, with the main supply making that bigger usually.
With "RF" (in quotes because, well, 42khz) there - I see a net positive on all the probes, and the mains being on doesn't really change that(!).

This is more pronounced when the ion drive is just that transformer secondary - it's warming that resistor drawing current through that "diode" which I assume means the ion grid is doing its best to collect all the electrons. Now whether that's just plasma polarization or it's really gotten most of them is in some question,
but when I look at the probes, while there is AC content, it's all way the heck biased off ground and never goes near it even on the negative half cycles.

What is interesting is that I can now see transit times between the ion grid and two faraday probes - one near and one further away, easily. I have not yet, but plan to, stick some series inductance in the main grid with this lashup and see what if any disturbances the main grid voltage undergoes in that setting. As is, the Spellman is a pretty stiff source and I didn't see anything of note with it directly connected. I'll have to shout out to those guys (Hey Cliff!) - those things have been utterly rock solid through what you'd have to call some abuse.

The skin cancers that have been cut off me have stayed gone...

On the downside, it's been super wet for months here, and I'm still fighting with that mold in the new crawl space. I discovered I can't get in there to spread anti-mold borax solution without inbibing enough spores to get sick, and am blowing air through that space 24/7, putting some strain on the electrical power system.
A torrential rain and lightning storm last night even took down a neighbor's off grid system long enough to crash all his servers! (Get well soon, Dave).
Now that's some EMI.

Nasty stuff eating my man-cave.

This actually on treated wood and has caused a piece of plywood that separates the old and new (used to be the outdoor skirting) to disintegrate into pebble sized chunks on the ground...nasty. Most of it is in places down there I can't go into - only a couple inches clearance off the ground. I'm mulling what to do...

I guess it's always something. But hey, I'm alive to whine about it, and actually things are pretty good otherwise. Now if that girl I'm sweet on will just notice me...

[Doug Coulter]

As if I needed more water in the basement. One reason I've not finished my other postings is getting ready for this - yesterday we cut down an enormous tree that was poised to come down on my house....and are now making it into firewood and cleaning up the usual resulting mess.

Attempt to drown me spotted - you have to click this to get the animation of Florence

I needed the wood anyway. If this winter is as relatively cool as this summer was (and wet!), the propane bill would otherwise kill me dead.

We've already skidded the first 20' or so of the trunk up to the log splitter. The top goes out of sight on the left. Better on the ground than on my couch!

I guess the exercise will help my health once the aches and bruises go away.

[Doug Coulter]

Well, my furry pals thought it was a good idea - they're eating the leaves....A few minutes after I came back inside after taking the previous picture.

Just outside my window

Got a few hungry friends

[Bob Reite]

I take it that wood is for next year? It can't be ready to burn this season. Or was some of it standing deadwood?