One year ago today: January 21, 2022, 7AM Saturdays.
Five years ago today: January 21, 2018, new joists.
Nine years ago today: January 21, 2014, missing “avoid ghetto” button.
Random years ago today: January 21, 2010, a rambling post.
Today should be a real winter day in these parts. High of 65°F, 94% cloud cover at 7100 feet, 72% humidity with 7mph light wind gusts. That works out to around 50% humidity indoors which is considered perfect. Good morning, I’m making more banana nut muffins. It’s from a mix, but you know how they say these things always taste better when made by somebody else? Especially if that somebody uses half & half instead of milk and adds more nuts, an egg, and a quarter cup of melted butter. Increase baking time 3 minutes. During that stretch, watch Alex Jones from back in 2001.
Hmmm, seems a few people think I may be exaggerating about the number of robins in my yard. So I set the camcorder up for five minutes and see there is also a nervy squirrel. Unable to find any experts who agree, at 9:30AM I’m investing in a 20-lb bag of wild bird seed to see if I can even begin to feed the flock. I may have underestimated by scores, the racket at feeding time makes me guess at more than a hundred.
This was at first temporary, but this picture has drawn so many hits that it stays. Here it is in “blog” size, marching toward Internet immortality. The squirrel appears around frame 400.
Here’s that demo of killer drones that spells out a possible solution to big problems. You see, one bad aspect of social difficulties is that up to now it has been impossible to wipe you enemy out completely. There was always enough of him left over to slink away and develop new tactics. What if you could send in these drones and kill the entire enemy population in a wink? It is only a matter of time before this technology is in the hands of civilians. The commentator says there is no defense, but that is a European concept. Like the Maxim gun, it only works until the other side gets their own.
Of the 160 million man-made objects in orbit, less than a quarter are large enough to be tracked from the ground. ClearSpace is one of many satellite clean-up proposals. It is the first that can be refueled. There is little data on how the projects work, but my guess is they mostly involved slowing the debris enough to de-orbit into the ocean somewhere. Or with any luck, over Puerto Rico.
Peak of Great Pyramid, by drone.
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I got the steps finished, except for where I ran out of screws. This incorporates digging up and leveling the ground all around the base. Over the years, the pathway became uneven and higher than the landing. That did not help with water able to accumulate there, so it was an hour of shovel work, then breaking up the turf with a hoe, then raking. It’s done and I’m thinking tomorrow might be a good bonfire day. It’s a pity some of the best garden soil in the yard is where I can’t plant anything. It’s black loam-like down a foot [deep].
Birds. A new colony of penguins, the worst bird if you ask me, by spotting their poo from outser space. What, you didn’t know penguins live in their own poo? That brings the number of known colonies to 66.
The daylight is staying past 6:00PM again, the best working stretch for me. I’m getting the parts assembled for the shop vacuum but that is not a priority. I so much want a separate clean work desk out in one of the sheds but can’t seem to find the time in the past three months. I’ve been using my computer desk, which is thus perpetually covered with small bolts, screws, clips wires, and general paraphernalia for fixing small objects. But if I need a quarter-inch screw, I have to go out to the shed. So why not set up out there? I’ve been trying that seems like years now.
Remind me to locate the thermal switch on that dryer. I should be able to sell that easy but it’s finding the part and the time, same old story. And, of course, I do not know anybody who has a clue about these things. In yet another recycling of an old idea, TechSpot has brought up the old gravity battery concept. When solar and wind produce more electricity than needed, it is stored by hoisting heavy buckets of sand up abandoned mine shafts. The buckets are then pulled by gravity in off hours, turning turbines which generate electricity. This is one of the first ideas I recall reading about in Popular Science back when I was a kid and it was a real science magazine. Not the comic book it is today.
And these “new” miniature or sodium nuclear plants that have been approved? They already exist in China, they say. It did not take long for the US “nuclear mafia” to get involved and raise the price of each plant from $5 billion to $9 billion, just like they did the large plants. If not for this corruption, most of America would have nuclear power by now. The firm union grip on these projects means more than 75% of the increase is from construction costs. This price tag does not include up to $4 billion more in government “subsidies”.
