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These wheeled structures are carrying 3 solar panels connected to 4 seriously sturdy batteries, an inverter, and some other stuff to create power for 40 people, nonstop, for 10 days. It could go longer, no problem, but eventually you want a shower. Bravo to Sam, Lohr, and that friendly red truck, Tuff Cherry, for making it all possible.

Rust is the sworn enemy of all things metal. Horrible oxygen intrusion will destroy even the most carefully laid sheet metal. This is particularly problematic with older cars. My ‘82 Mercedes 300TD is a good example. It has 250,000 miles on it, and is in wonderful shape. However, the body is beginning to deteriorate. Eventually rust will attack and destroy critical structural elements and no rebuilt transmission or flawless engine will prevent it from being junked. However, if rust is caught early it can be slowed or stopped, adding many years to the car, and preventing the purchase of yet another new automobile.

POR-15 is a product designed specifically to help fix rusting metal. Unlike most paints, POR-15 is a moisture curing epoxy that, when painted directly onto rust, will suck the moisture out of the rust and seal it up, preventing further growth. Traditional paints just trap the moisture, letting the rust continue unhindered and out of sight.

Continue reading for a picture-heavy description of the process. Continue Reading »

It has been said that deep within the forest lies a creature. A creature so well camouflaged that you may never detect its presence. So well adapted that it can consume nearly anything (or anyone) as its food. So hardy that it can survive in nearly any climate.

This creature does not sleep, and is not bound by the rising and setting of the sun. All day and all night it sends its tentacles forth, seeking food.

What would you do if such a terrible freak of evolution were to lay its slimy tentacles on your own home? How would you react to such a thing??? Why, you would eat it. Because our freakish friend is no foe, but fungus. Specifically Pleurotus pulmonarius AKA, the Oyster Mushroom.

Despite being tasty and nutritious, this particular fungus is well known for its virulent behaviors. It will colonize nearly anything, and consume a surprising range of foods, including used motor oil and diesel fuel. Paul Stamets and friends at Fungi Perfecti have been working on using mycoremediation to cleanse areas affected by oil spills and other toxic contamination.

The particular oyster mushrooms that are growing in my house began their life as a jar of spawn (mycelium, the true body of the fungus, growing on birdseed or other grains) given to me by Will. A suitable substrate was found (dry, tall, ornamental grasses from our garden), which I pasteurized in the microwave. The grain spawn was broken up, and used to colonize two bags of moist straw. In less than two weeks the straw was completely colonized.

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One bag of colonized straw was placed in the fridge to ‘rest’ for a while, while the other bag was immediately fruited. I stabbed a bunch of slits in the surface of the bag, and began to illuminate the fruiting chamber for a few hours a day. The fresh air combined with the light indicated to the fungus that it was time to fruit. Pins (tiny immature mushrooms) are beginning to reach out of the bag and develop.

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This first bag will be fruited normally, and the fruits enjoyed as food. However, the second bag will be part of an experiment. The glycerol byproducts from biodiesel production are technically fermentable by fungus. However, what concentration will they accept, and will the methanol or catalyst be a problem for the fungus? I’ll be ‘feeding’ the mycelium some byproduct soon to see how it reacts. I may or may not eat those mushrooms.

Next on the list is a jar of Reishi mushroom spawn, a woody mushroom commonly grown for medicinal use. What wonders lie beneath its wispy white surface?

I just recently bought myself a nice little X-mas present that I’m quite proud of. A DVD burner! Oh yes, a whole new realm of optical data storage is now at my fingertips. I’ve felt for years that the paltry 700Mb available on a CD-R was paltry and ineffective. 4.3Gb, or better yet 8.5Gb. That sounds more like it.

The drive I purchased is an “I/O Magic” from Office Depot. Normally I would never recommend that one purchase and I/O Magic, because that company just buys other random stuff, re-badges it, and sells it in office supply houses. However, sometimes they buy from a good company and re-badge a good product. In this case, the drive I purchased is actually a BenQ 1620A, which is a high quality and respectable drive.

It burns DVD-R and DVD+R at 16X, DVD-RW and DVD+RW at 4X, CD-R at 40X, and, get this, Double Layer DVD-R at 2.4X. Double layer DVD-Rs are the newest type, which hold a full 8.5Gb, allowing a direct copy of any commercial DVD Video. Excellent.

The best part about this BenQ drive is that they offer firmware upgrades on their website. The latest firmware update raised the Double Layer DVD-R write speed from 2.4X to 4X. Excellent!

If you are looking for one of these drives, check your local Office Depot. The drive is an I/O Magic, and the model number is IDVD16DD. Make sure that it mentions a 2.4X DL DVD-R speed somewhere on the box. I bought mine for $89.99 w/ a $30.00 rebate.

If you want a drive like this, they are available for around 70$ from various online retailers (search Pricewatch for DW1620 to get current prices). If you buy the drive in anything except a BenQ labeled retail box, you have an ‘OEM’ drive, which needs OEM firmware, and if you have a regular BenQ retail box, you need regular firmware.

Both types of firmware can be had at the BenQ firmware page. Drives like mine need the firmware for the DW1620A Generic, and BenQ retail drives need the DW1620 firmware. They are the same firmwares, except that the retail edition gets updated first, and then they move that update to the OEM version. If you want the highest possible firmware, it is possible to use a hacked firmware to downgrade a 1620 OEM to a 1600, and then re-upgrade it to a retail 1620. However, that advanced technique will take some research on your part. Don’t be saddened though, the major updates, giving us the 4X DL DVD-R speed, for instance, are common to both drive types. You don’t really need to be on the bleeding edge.

My mother recently told me that Mercury was in retrograde, and that the astrological phenomenon was largely targeted toward vehicular abnormalities. As soon as she detected the cosmic vibrations of a retrograde Mercury, she ran outside to find a spurting gas leak from the fuel line on one of her old VW Beetles. Her friend Sage’s alternator stopped charging as well, heralded by the vicious machinations of a wayward planet.

She told me this shortly before Madalene and I drove from Missouri to Colorado, as a warning to keep an eye on my vehicle’s condition. I was unconcerned, because the car was in tip-top shape, and had just recieved a complete tune-up. However, upon arriving in Colorado, I realized there was a problem. Normally I ignore my mother’s crack-pot ravings, since they are usually the shameful result of a diseased mind, worthy more of pity than consideration. However, this time I looked up to the sky and felt Mercury’s baleful gaze upon my engine. With the car in Colorado and half our trip completed, I began to have trouble starting the car. With each crank of the engine, and each failed start, I got very uneasy.

I applied to my skin a tincture of essential oils, and marked myself with ashes. Clutching a dream-catcher in one hand and my trusty digital multimeter in the other, I attempted to open the hood of the car. As I pulled the hood latch, I heard laughter in my ears as the latch snapped off in my hand.

20 minutes later I had utilized a bless’d charm and some zip-ties to repair the hood latch, and was finally able to reveal the engine compartment. With a zealous fervor, I began troubleshooting the electrical system. The engine would crank fine, but the pre-glow lights were not lighting up, meaning there was a problem in the glow plug system. I disconnected the relay and began checking the glow plugs one by one. Lo and behold, plugs #1 and #3 were open-circuit. A diesel engine will start when one glowplug is out, but with two out, the engine could not preheat enough to overcome the chilly weather and malevolent planets.

That evening I eventually was able to start the car by boiling a few gallons of water, and slowly pouring the hot water over the cylinder head. As the temperature of the head rises, so to does my chance of starting on only 3 plugs. A few solid cranks later, and my brother and father who had come out to help me cried out in victory as the engine sprung to life. It misfired horribly, and the smoke of unburned fuel belched from the rear, but it ran. After several minutes, all 5 cylinders were firing, and the engine smoothed down. I allowed it to idle until it reached operating temperature, and drove it to Madalene’s.

Our prognosis was clear, keep the engine warm until replacement glowplugs could be aquired. Fortunately, Autozone carries a Bosch plug, P/N 80006 that is a good fit. Checker also carries a suitable plug, of the Autolite brand.

The car got us to and from Boulder and Denver, starting just fine as long as the engine was not allowed to return to ambient temperature. Upon arriving home, my dad and I ripped out the offending plugs and replaced them. I’ll be replacing the other three soon, since once one plug goes, the rest usually follow close behind. With new plugs, the car started like it was brand new, and has continued to do so ever since, safely returning us to Missouri. Even this morning when the weather was a bitter 18 degrees F, it started on the first try.

Clearly Mercury’s vile retrograde is no match for a little perseverance, and a holy multimeter.

I’ve got to say, “Wow.” Speakeasy, the service provider I’ve been using for the past few years for my ADSL service, is now offering a combination of packages that is incredibly attractive.

I’ve always been happy with their service, and especially their very forgiving use policies and support for technical individuals like myself, like fully endorsing connection sharing and multiple computers (services most DSL providers charge extra for, or prohibit entirely). They even offer technical support for Linux users!

Recently they released a service called OneLink that lets you have DSL without a voice phone line! Until now, you needed a regular phone line in order to have DSL, but with people using cell phones more often, they often wish they could do without the 30$ a month it costs to maintain a regular local line. OneLink lets you have DSL without phone service, through some incredible technical trickery and a clever installation technique. Gotta love it!

Plus, and perhaps more exciting, they just today released a service called Speakeasy Voice which is a VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) service. Instead of using an analog phone line to carry a digital signal, as is the current method, your digital line (installed as part of the OneLink service), can now carry a phone signal. Why is this different from your regular phone? Well, instead of going through the regular phone switches, your call is routed through Speakeasy’s networks until it reaches its destination, and then the call is transferred into the regular phone dispatch system, meaning every call is a local call!

Speakeasy’s voice system includes a telephone adapter that connects to your existing DSL modem, and plugs into your current analog phone. Because of number portability laws, you keep your existing phone number. Your phone dials in and out the same way that it did before, but because the voice information is now digitized and routed through the Speakeasy network, you get unlimited long distance anywhere in the country, and low rates on international long distance (because the call can be internet routed to the part of the country with the cheapest international rates before being connected to the regular phone system). How about that? Thats the beauty of digital. The bits are already there, so it doesn’t cost any more to leave them all zeros than it does to make them carry voice data. Use it once or use it every day, and the load on the system is the same.

Their system claims to give high packet priority to voice data, which theoretically means your voice calls will be as instantaneous and clear as regular telephone calls (or clearer). Downloading or browsing on the internet connection also shouldn’t affect quality of calling, because the voice data will take the higher priority.

OneLink services are 5$ a month more than regular DSL, but free you from the need to have a regular phone line. Speakeasy Voice services are 40$ for installation, and the first three months are free, with a 29.95$ charge per month after that. That is the same price as residential phone service from SBC, and it includes unlimited long distance (US and Canada), voice mail, call waiting, caller ID, three way calling and more. Plus, it interfaces with local 911 dispatch systems, so emergency calls are still routed as normal (and in some cases, better than normal, because name, address and phone number information is guaranteed to be transferred to the dispatcher via Speakeasy, which not all phone companies can guarantee).

If you sign up, do not cancel your regular phone service yet. You will be assigned a new number to start with, and then very soon, when they get the local number portability finished, you can transfer your existing number to Speakeasy. Then you can either switch to Speakeasy’s OneLink service which does not require a regular phone line, and then cancel your existing line, or switch your existing line to a ‘metered line’ service, which usually costs something like 6$ a month, and is a completely stripped down local service, enough to keep your DSL. The wait before porting your existing number will make for a good trial period, to make sure the service works the way you want before being stuck with it.

Anyway, not to sound like a goddamn commercial, I’ve just been really pleased with Speakeasy’s services and support over the years, and I’m excited that they are offering these two very hip services. If I’m going to be paying one company for my phone and internet, its sure as hell not going to be one of the bastard Bells, who’ve screwed more friends of mine than I can count, but rather a company I trust, like Speakeasy.

P.S. If for some reason you actually sign up for one of these, use us as a reference (username: ley). Thanks.

The other day I took a bike ride with Madalene and Barb. The ride was fun, but it served to alert me to the poor mechanical condition of my bike. Its a nice bike, a GT aluminum frame mountain bike with a Shimano STX drive train, hard tail, and hard fork. However, the bike had been purchased used and the previous owner had unceremoniously sanded the paint off. This uglified the bike quite a bit, serving to protect it from theft, thankfully.

The bike has been given some hard use, including single track downhill, urban curb assault, hard trail riding, and even some river fording and surf riding. All of these things add up to a great amount of wear on a bike. My derailleurs are sadly out of alignment, and in great need of overhaul. The brakes were shredded, and also in need of overhaul. The cables are rusted and the housings are coming apart. My front hub was dry as a bone, having been thoroughly infiltrated with water and grit from the river fording. The whole bike creaked and ground as I rode it, and if you know anything about the mechanical world, you know that noise = friction, and friction = wear. I replaced the chain a while back because the original one broke. You are supposed to replace all your cogs and chainrings at the same time as the chain, but I couldn’t do this for cost reasons, so the new chain is having its way with the old cogs, shredding them at a furious rate.

I’ve also noticed a grinding sound coming from the crank, indicating that the bottom bracket has probably been infiltrated in the same way as the hubs. Unfortunately, that will require the purchase of some tools for me to properly overhaul. Also, I’ve noticed that the cogs on the rear cassette wobble back and forth now. Not cool. Oh well, that cassette was probably due for replacement anyway. I just hope that the hub is OK.

One thing about working on a bike, or any mechanical thing, really, is that if you fix one thing, it results in a cascade of stuff you have to do to complete the repair. For instance, my bike works at the moment, but if I investigate the rear hub, I may find that the cogs are shot, and that I need to replace the cassette. Then, as I’m opening the cassette, I may find that the freehub is damaged. If the freehub is damaged I’ll need a new hub, but if I replace the hub I’ll need to use new spokes and buy a new rim, since its not a good idea to reuse rims of this age. Of course, I won’t know for sure until I actually dismantle it. Risky business. The same is true with nearly all of the bike. If I replace the cables and housings (which should be pretty easy) I may find that the derailleur is too far gone and needs to be replaced too.

I’m going slowly, overhauling bit by bit as I move over the bike, hoping to get it all working with a minimal cost outlay (so far, 5$ for hub cones, 1.50$ for bearings and a few dollars for tools, not too bad).

Tonight I overhauled the front hub (easier than I expected, though touchy to adjust), and overhauled the front brake calipers, fully readjusting the brakes on the way. Unfortunately, my front rim is out of true, meaning I couldn’t perfectly adjust the brakes, having to live with some extra slack to make up for the wobbling wheel. Thats another thing I have to learn how to do, true up wheels… That was my goal for tonight. The next step is overhauling the rear brakes, and doing a full adjustment of the derailleurs. Then I replace the cables and housings. Then cassettes and rear wheels, then chain rings and the bottom bracket. Then headset, stem and shift/brake levers. Then, uh, I hope that will be it!

I’ve found that working on my bike is fairly enjoyable. It requires several specialized tools, which annoys me, but the fact that the entire workings are visible to me makes it enjoyable to work it over, just getting greasy, and feeling worn, gritty parts turn to smoothly operating machines with your gentle touch. I recommend it! Its actually quite easy to get into bike maintenance on your own. Nearly anyone can do basic things like adjusting brakes, replacing tires and chains, lubricating and cleaning parts, and so on. The basic tune up offered by your local bike shop is something that nearly anyone can do if they try. Then, its just a quick jump to doing more advanced work, like rebuilding hubs and overhauling brake systems. You may find yourself doing nearly all the work on your bike short of things like wheel truing that require specialized tools. And maybe you’ll even find yourself doing those things! Its certainly addictive.

For an excellent shop manual, I recommend this Barnett’s manual that is available online in PDF form. The entire manual is over 300 double sided pages, and is incredibly detailed. You can find it at the BikeForums.net Mechanics forum. The entire forum is actually a great resource, with loads of information discussed in the past and available through the ‘search’ function, and lots of helpful people who will try to answer your questions for you. You can also check out books from your local library that will get you started on basic bike mechanic’in. Enjoy!

The other day I took my newest PC and set it up as a media computer. The computer is not amazing, spec wise, since its a 1.7GHz Celeron w/ 512MB of RAM, but the microATX Intel mobo has onboard USB 2.0 and 100BT ethernet, which is nice. The video card is an ATI All-In-Wonder 8500DV I bought from a fellow through eBay. The video card is great, because in addition to providing good 3D, it also has nice 2D abilities, a DVI output, an MPEG decoder for DVD playback, S-Video input and outputs, SPDIF output and two IEEE1394 (Firewire) ports, and it comes with an RF remote control.

The computer has been nice so far for playing music in the living room on my nice speakers, watching videos over the network, and best of all, playing game emulators. I picked up a couple of gamepads that look very much like Playstation controllers at Best Buy that use USB (and are supported by XP’s native joystick controller drivers). These combined with emulators like zSNES for emulating the Super Nintendo, and ePSXe for emulating the Playstation.

Emulation involves replicating in code the hardware environment of a game system. Then, the data on the game cartridge, called the ROM, is downloaded onto a computer, and loaded into the emulator. The game ROM is fully tricked by the emulator software into thinking its running on a real game console, and runs happily. So with one computer, the Nintendo and Super Nintendo game worlds are open to me, as well as Playstation, N64 and literally thousands of arcade games.

Last night, armed with two controllers and an emulator equipped PC in the living room, Dennis and I played quite a rousing game of Super Mario Bros. 3. Good times… Good times… Nostalgia has never been so much fun.

Tonight Dann and I got some serious work done on a project we’ve undertaken to make a set of LED poi that are cooler than any made before. Or at least, cooler than most made before.

Poi is a Maori word for a type of food, but we aren’t making food. The way poi is made is by taking a tuber, placing it in a sock-like bag, and then swinging it around in circles, banging it against a rock to soften it. This process of swinging and object around that is on the end of a flexible chain or rope, is now an art form/dance, and the apparatus used is still called ‘poi’. If you’ve been following along, you’ll notice that I use poi for fire spinning, lengths of chain with a wick on the end.

Anyway, these poi are to be LED powered, so that they can be used in places where fire is less kosher, like the living room, or small rooms, or a dry forest floor.

The basic premise for these poi is that they will have red, green and blue LEDs, and will be capable of mixing them in different brightnesses so as to make the full spectrum of colors.

The poi will also be equipped with an accelerometer so that it can detect how fast it is spinning, and change color accordingly. The current implentation uses an Analog Devices ADXL150 accelerometer which is micromachined into a 14 pin SOIC chip. It measures accelerations of +/- 50 gees along one axis. This is very convenient, because as you’ll recall from your high school physics class, a spinning object is always experiencing an acceleration perpendicular to the direction of rotation. My back of the envelope calculations suggested that poi at full tilt whirl experience about 35 gees.

Dann has some experience with AVR microcontrollers, which are to be the brain of this project. A microcontroller is basically a computer on a single chip, that can be programmed to perform whatever actions your little brain can dream up. In this case, the accelerometer outputs a voltage proportional to the acceleration it is experiencing. This voltage is sampled by the ADC (Analog to Digital Converter), and read into memory. Then, based on this value, the red, green and blue LEDs are flashed at different rates to mimic a color. If you take an LED light, and flash it on and off at a frequency too fast for your eyes to see, but vary the ratio of time it is on to the time it is off, you can change the apparent brightness. That process is called PWM (Pulse Width Modulation). In our case, a timer counts out 256 steps, and the LEDs all turn themselves on at the beginning and then turn themselves off again at their preset time, the longer they stay on, the brighter they appear.

For right now, we have basic functionality on a test board. The accelerometer works beautifully, and the chip programming is coming along at a decent pace. After several hours of work, Dann and I had a working prototype, that when spun, changed the PWM for the three LEDs, producing a shift in color from blue to red as the poi sped up. Not bad!

Further design issues involve speeding up the PWM, optimizing the code, and tweaking the values to produce the smoothest shift in color from slow to fast. Further design ideas involve changing things other than color in relation to speed, and even doing image display.

Imagine if there were a row of LEDs all the way up the chain. As the poi spin, the row of LEDs shows a different set of pixels in an image, so as the poi makes a full circle, it draws a picture in the air. Of course, the pixels would be in a polar arrangement, meaning conversion from regular images would be odd. Then there is the issue of synchronizing frame rate with spinning speed, but we think we know how that could be done. At the bottom of a poi’s circle, it is experiencing the acceleration of the spin, plus 1g due to gravity. At the top of the circle, the poi is experiencing the acceleration of the spin, minus 1g due to gravity. This results in a 2g difference between the top and bottom of the circle. This would oscillate in a neat sinusoidal pattern, and comparing high and low values could yield a frequency value, from which a frame rate could be derived. Complex, but with very cool possibilities.

I recently found a 20 gallon fish tank by the side of the road, and it has been needing a stand strong enough to hold it. I decided that the best solution would be to build one myself, both for the fun of it, as well as to save money. This is the design I ultimately came up with in Autocad. The whole thing is built out of pine 2×4s, and 3/4 inch plywood. Lumber has recently gone up a lot in price, so it cost more than I was hoping. The plywood was 30$ for one sheet, which is quite high. But that is the price we pay when we cut down all the trees.

The design includes an open front, though I will be covering that with a fabric drapery, instead of traditional cabinet doors. The whole thing is ludicrously strong, and slightly oversized for the 20 gallon aquarium. The top space is 37” by 19”, when the tank is only 30” by 12”. The reason for this is the fact that a large number of tanks come in the 36” by 18” footprint, and a stand of this size leaves me a lot of flexibility for upgrading tanks. Say I want to move to a 30 gallon, or a 30 gallon breeder, or a 37 gallon, or a 38 gallon, or a 40 gallon, or a 55 gallon, or a 65 gallon. All of these standard sized tanks will fit quite nicely on the 36” by 18” footprint. I like flexibility. I’m also fairly certain that the stand is strong enough to hold as much as a 65 gallon tank, despite the fact that such a setup would weigh around 700 pounds.

I’ve built the main frame of the stand already, and all that remains is a final sanding and leveling, staining and varnishing, and the drapery. Then I need to figure out the filtration system for the new tank, and then move things over. How fun that will be!

Today I got to try out something I’ve been wanting to try. A Segway. For those of you who have been living in a mayonnaise jar for the last few years, the Segway is a ‘personal transporter’ that has two wheels, and lets you drive around at walking/jogging speeds. It looks much like a two wheeled push-style lawn mower, except futuristic. You stand on top of it, with a wheel next to each foot, and a handle that comes up and branches into a handlebar for you to hold on to. In order to maintain balance, the Segway uses a sophisticated set of sensors and computers to control the wheels. As you begin to tip forward, the motors adjust the wheel positions, keeping you upright. As you continue to lean forward, the motors in the wheels compensate by moving you forward. To stop, you lean backward. Continue leaning backward, and the Segway drives backwards. There is a twist grip on the handle that controls steering. As you turn the grip, one wheel drives faster than the other, and you turn gracefully. If you are stationary, one wheel will move backward, allowing you to rotate in place. The system requires only one control, the single twist grip for steering, to allow you a full range of motion. The system is very agile as well, and one feels quite stable atop it.

For some reason, the museum I work at has one. I don’t know why. No one does. It has been in a box sitting in a back cabinet for quite a while. The other day Drew got permission to unpack it and give it a whirl. After charging overnight, he found me today and said, “Sam, you have to come try this with me.” We read the manual, wheeled it outside, and gave it a go. The first thing you do is turn it on with a little electronic ‘key’. The key is basically just a button that you push against a little pad. It comes with three keys, a beginner key, a sidewalk key, and an open range key. Each key increases the speed and agility just a bit. Naturally, you start your practice on the beginner key, which limits top speed to about 6mph.

When you turn the Segway on, a little orange face appears on the tiny screen. You press the mode button, and the Segway goes into balance mode. In balance mode, it holds itself up, but you should not let go of it, or it will begin to drift away, and will turn itself off. The hardest part at first is getting on. You just step up, keeping the platform level. The first thing is that you will have a tendency to rock back and forth. If you aren’t perfectly upright, the Segway will begin to drive forward or backward, which causes your body to rock, making the Segway change direction. You just rock wildly back and forth, which is quite scary. Once you’ve gotten the hang of getting on, things go fast. You just lean forward to drive, and lean backward to stop. The sensors are incredibly sensitive, and the motors very precise. The vehicle behaves very intuitively, and before long, you can drive it like it’s connected to your brain. I suppose this is the biggest attraction of the Segway.

The Segway is also a kick in the pants, and quite hilariously fun. After upgrading the keys, we moved into a full power mode, which brings the top speed up to about 12mph. You can really whip the thing around, and make some amazingly sharp turns and maneuvers. People also love to watch. As we were driving around outside, visitors walking by stopped to watch, and kids shouted encouragement. We had a great time taking advantage of the fairly nice weather.

The Segway, for all its coolness, is not going to revolutionize transportation. Its limited range (8 to 10 miles), and limited speed make it little more effective than walking. Of course, if you need to be fit enough to stand up straight while using it, and you have to have good balance, meaning people with disabilities or who are elderly will get no use from the Segway. Hence, the only people who need it are people who just don’t feel like walking. You can’t go farther than a walk, and it can’t take you much faster than walking can. I could easily outrange and outrun it on a simple bicycle. $4,000 is a little pricey for something that does nothing that I can’t already do with my own body.

The biggest killer for the Segway is going to be its cost. Sure it is expensive now because it is new, but I don’t think it will get too much cheaper, because of the sheer complexity of the system. Despite the simple and easy to use exterior, you can’t get away from the fact that you need expensive batteries, sensitive sensors, complex control systems, precision servos and flawless gearboxes in order to make the Segway work. I think that even if you gave the patents and blueprints to some Taiwanese engineering company, they wouldn’t be able to manufacture it for sale at less than $1000. And that is just too expensive to be useful. At that price, it will never be anything but a luxury. If it cost less than $200, I could see that being different. I’d buy one at that price, and I think a lot of people would. But until then, it’s just a fun little geek-mobile. I’m glad I got to try one.

Two tiny updates:

On the About page, there is now a tiny bit of additional info, namely, the total number of posts, total number of comments, and overall comments per entry (currently 1.9), in addition to the month-to-month data. You don’t care, but I do! It is like a running log of how interesting I am.

Second, there is a little Towers of Hanoi solver running. Thanks to Amit Singh’s Hanoimania I have been tweaking some PHP code to solve the classic puzzle. His code is great, and deserves all the credit, however, I’ve made a few tweaks to improve the interface, and add additional information such as the number of moves required to solve the puzzle.

For anyone who isn’t familiar, the Towers of Hanoi is a classic puzzle consisting of three posts with a tower of disks placed on one of the posts. The disks are stacked according to size, with the smallest disk on top, descending to the largest disk on the bottom. To solve the puzzle you must move the entire tower from the starting post to a different post. You can only move one disk at a time, and no disk may be placed upon a disk smaller than itself, IE, disks can only move to empty posts, or on top of larger disks. It turns out that the puzzle has a very simple algorithmic solution, which Amit implements in 108 different programming languages, a truly heroic effort. I’m playing with the PHP one for the heck of it.

There is a little legend associated with the puzzle, whereupon a monastery deep under the mountains contains a version of this puzzle with diamond posts and golden disks. There are monks there who are solving the puzzle. The puzzle began with 64 disks, and they started solving the puzzle, one movement per second, at the beginning of the universe. When they finish the puzzle, the universe will end. Solving a 5 disk puzzle is fairly easy, and once you figure out the system, the movements come quickly. However, with a little calculation you can see that the number of moves needed to solve the puzzle goes up very quickly. It turns out that it will take the monks somewhere around 580 billion years to finish the puzzle with only 64 disks.

Bonus points to anyone who can figure out the equation to calculate the optimal number of moves required to solve the puzzle with a given number of disks (N). Hint, check out the solution for 1 disk, 2 disks, 3 disks, and 4 disks. Seeing a pattern yet? Try to predict the number of moves required for 5 disks, and see if you can formulate an equation based on that pattern.

Fortunately, it wasn’t mine this time. Dennis called earlier this evening with a problem, his computer wouldn’t boot! It was tossing out all sorts of disk read errors and giving him lots of guff. So he brought the computer over to my place to be cleaned up. We rescued some of his data thankfully, and then began the process of wiping the drive clean and reinstalling the OS. Unfortunately, his bios didn’t want to accept the drive, and it took reflashing the bios and a low level format on the hard drive to get the two to play nice. Dennis stayed for several hours, but ended up needing to go home. He left the computer here, and I’ve been tinkering with it, and making general progress, in between drinking wine and watching Sealab 2021. Not too bad a way to spend an evening.

Hopefully I’ll get it purring nicely tonight, and then I’ll finish it up tomorrow so that Dennis can finish his papers up.

Update: Finally, at 5:20am, the computer lives again! Now I’ll just leave it to install the gadzillion security fixes that Microsoft has queued up for it, and tomorrow it shall receive a hot program injection as I reinstall all of Dennis’s crapola. He sure owes me for this one… I’m thinking sensual massage.

Today, the day is saved by: Aluminum Oxide! Aluminum oxide is one of the hardest materials out there, only slightly softer than diamond. It is produced naturally when aluminum is exposed to air. If you have anything aluminum, it is actually coated with a thin layer of Aluminum oxide. This thin layer, being very strong and chemical resistant, prevents the layers beneath it from becoming oxidized, which is why aluminum doesn’t deteriorate from oxidation like steel or iron does.

If you have anything that is aluminum, but seems to have a transparent coloring over it, such as a flashlight, paintball gun, or something of that nature, then you probably have anodized aluminum. Anodizing is a process by which aluminum is put in a bath of acid, and then a current is passed through the aluminum, and into the bath. This current flow causes rapid oxidation of the surface of the aluminum, and produces a very thick and strong layer of aluminum oxide, similar to the coating that forms in open air, but much thicker and stronger. This coating is porous at first, meaning the material can be placed in a bath of dye immediately after being anodized. The dye soaks into the pores, and then with the application of heat, the pores close up, sealing the color in. Anodizing is a very cool process, and is a great way to put a durable and attractive coating onto aluminum.

Aluminum oxide is also used in sandpaper and other abrasive substances. Small particles of Aluminum oxide retain their sharp edges (due to its extreme hardness), and is an excellent abrasive. I’m using sheets of sandpaper to sand the exhaust pipe on my scooter. St. Louis weather has caused much corrosion of the pipe, and a deterioration of its protective clear coat. Basically, it was looking like crap. I’ve been attacking the pipe all day with various grades of sandpaper, and using various tools, including my dremel, an abrasive disk sander attachment for my cordless drill, and a drum sander attachment for the drill. The pipe has lots of curves and small parts that are difficult to sand, so this has been slow going. All I can say is, thank goodness its only a 50cc! If this pipe were much bigger, I’d be pretty frustrated. However, I’m nearing completion. Once I’ve given it a final sanding, I’ll be applying a high temperature coating to the pipe, to protect it from the heat of the engine, as well as the destructive effects of road grime. It should look pretty snazzy when its done.

The reason I’m here writing this instead of finishing up, is because I’m waiting for the battery on my cordless drill to charge up. This is one downside of a cordless drill. 90% of all my drilling needs are over with in just a few minutes. Maybe I need to punch a hole in a piece of plastic, or put a few screws into a doorknob or something. Cordless is perfect for that, because it is easy to move around, quick to bust out, and the duration of the project means charging isn’t an issue. However, sanding is a continuous drain. The drill must run at full speed constantly while sanding, instead of just running intermittently. This has caused the battery to die, putting my project on hold for the moment. The dremel is corded of course, but it is only useful for the small areas and tight curves, which are already done. What is left is an overall sanding with 120 grit, then a polish with 400 grit on a few more visible areas. Then it is painting time.

On the topic of abrasion, I’m going to leave you with this bit of helpful information. If you are in the Kent or London areas of the UK, then there is a new hero in town to help you out. He is known only as Angle Grinder Man. His mission is to help people who’s cars have been wheel clamped (AKA, the boot). He appears on the scene in the dead of night wearing a blue unitard, gold underpants, gold boots, gold gloves, and a gold mask. In his hands he carries his only weapon, a shiny, gold, gas powered, full sized, abrasive disk cutter, AKA, an Angle Grinder. With this great tool, he quickly and efficiently cuts the wheel clamp off, setting the driver free. Then he nods his head, and disappears into the night. The police have been tracking him, but have not yet been able to catch this Robin Hood to the down-trodden motorist. Bless you, Angle Grinder Man, champion of the petroleum chariots, and of abrasives in general!

After Monday’s debacle concerning the untimely consumption of an insect and Tuesday’s unceasing rain, I spent most of Tuesday playing Playstation games on my PC. The emulator project ePSXe has come along very well, and now plays most games very well. I’ve been enjoying Legend of Mana, which is a continuation of a game called Secret of Mana that I have fond memories playing with Dustin back when we were rotten little youths. I’m not usually into games much, but sometimes, when the weather is bad, I like to just kick back and do something unproductive for a little while.

However, the real reason I’m making this post is to bring forth more information about the amount of insect parts found in common foods. Through Madalene, I got some good links, and some good information.

First, the amount of insect material in food products is governed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN). They regulate all sorts of things related to food safety, but the documents we are interested in concern the Food Defect Action Levels program. This regulates the amount of insect parts, foreign plant matter, rodent filth and rotten parts that food can contain.

If you want to read a nice little article about the process, check out this Salon article called Bug heads, rat hairs—bon appetit. It is a pretty funny little read.

If you want some more detailed information, the main document, for your reading pleasure, is called the FDA/CFSAN Defect Action Level Handbook and it is quite an interesting read. For instance, here are the tolerances for peanut butter:

• Insect filth: No more than 30 insect fragments per 100 grams.
• Rodent filth: No more than 1 rodent hair per 100 grams.

• Grit: Gritty taste and water insoluble inorganic residue may not exceed 25mg per 100 grams.

  However, this last line is what I find most interesting (emphasis mine):

  DEFECT SOURCE: Insect fragments – preharvest and/or post harvest and/or processing insect infestation, Rodent hair – post harvest and/or processing contamination with animal hair or excreta, Grit – harvest contamination
  SIGNIFICANCE: Aesthetic

  Aesthetic? Well, I suppose its true, despite what some may choose to believe, a few rat hairs and insect legs isn’t going to hurt anybody! You might find it a bit bizarre to be eating insect crap, but really, its a small thing to our bodies. In fact, I’m willing to bet that decreased usage of pesticides and an increase in ‘organic’ farming techniques will only mean skyrocketing insect part levels in food. I’m not bothered by that prospect overly much. I don’t fancy eating bugs, seeing as how I am a vegetarian, but at the same time, a realization has to be made that bugs are everywhere, and invariably will end up in whatever you are eating. It isn’t cruel, its just the nature of being an insect who can crawl into anything, has 300 babies at a time and lives for two weeks. Plus, caterpillars have as much protein by weight as beef, but with much less fat, 10 times as much iron, and many other vitamins as well. I suppose accidentally eating a few isn’t really that bad of an idea.

  However, this still doesn’t address the question of how the insect parts are counted. For that, we need to look to another document, called the Macroanalytical Procedures Manual. This document contains procedures for doing all sorts of filth-tests. For the most part, it seems simple filtration serves to identify insect matter and excrement in the food products. Also, various methods of digesting the food product in acids, and then separating any undigested material (such as the insect heads). Happy reading.