Sunday  27 Dec 2015           2 comments

Some airlines fly a lot of old planes. They aren't as fuel efficient but they don't cost a lot to buy. A used MD-80 (there are no new ones) can be had for about 1/10 the price of a new 737. But that's nothing compared to how little a WaPo article suggests a Lockheed TriStar goes for:

On Flight 1080, jack McMahan was piloting a Lockheed £1011 wide‑body.

Yes, I am easily amused.

Saturday  26 Dec 2015           comment?

Like a lot of people, I've used compact fluorescent "bulbs" but never really liked them. The color of their light is mildly annoying, they can't be dimmed, and they contain mercury. I've used them only because they're more efficient than incandescents, not a high bar to clear.

LED lamps are another story. They're available in dimmable models and with color that I prefer to that of fluorescents. And they're more efficient and last longer. My thanks to the scientists and engineers whose work has made them available at what are now reasonable prices.

And if most LED lamps are like the one I tested this evening, their higher power factor makes them easier loads for electric companies to drive. Current waveforms and spectra for sample LED and fluorescent lamps:

Wednesday  23 Dec 2015           comment?

Germans (and others) have a New Year's tradition of pouring molten lead into cold water and using the chaotic shapes formed for divination. Of course there's a compound word for it: Bleigießen, lead-pouring.

I don't think divination works in the sense that I don't think there's correlation between personal fortunes and, say, shapes of poured lead. But there are things I like about the exercise of considering haphazard symbols. Sometimes a random stimulus is just the ticket for breaking a habit. And is molybdomancy a great word, or what.

Monday  14 Dec 2015           2 comments

Cold and windy here, a good day to stay inside and turn. This log is black locust, one of the hardest and densest woods native to North America. It was just crying out to be turned into heads for a couple of mallets, no? Truth is, I seldom encounter applications where a wood mallet works any better than a rubber one. But they look nice. I'm following the design of a mallet head my dad made.

Sunday  13 Dec 2015           2 comments

Electricity went out shortly after I put a loaf of date nut bread in the oven this afternoon. Yeah it's a gas oven but it needs electricity for the thermostat and ignitor, thus: today was my first experience plugging an oven into a UPS. Of two UPSes I have on hand, the smaller one only ran the oven for a short while before getting irritated and giving up. The bigger one did fine. The ignitor draws 380W, and not just for a moment to light the flame—it draws that much power whenever the oven is burning gas.

Electricity came back for a while at 100V, as if the power company were pretending this is Japan. But Japan holds a steady 100V, which was beyond DWP's reach. After about 10 minutes of burbling around between 95 and 110V power quit again altogether. Electricity in this valley makes service in most US cities seem kinda boring.

Power was in yoyo mode for a while, I guess because it was raining. The rain stopped and we have power again, at 120V even. Q.E.D.

I am pleased to report that the bread came out OK despite the power company's attempts to sabotage it.

Saturday  12 Dec 2015           comment?

Newspaper headline. Evidently beetles in randomly arranged marriages have genetically inferior progeny.

Thursday  10 Dec 2015           1 comment

A group of astronomers think they've found a big object orbiting the sun way far out. Others are skeptical. From a preliminary paper:

To simplify the further reference to this object and acknowledge its enigmatic swift nature, we name the object Gna in the rest of the paper.

Because, I guess, nothing says "enigmatic and swift" like Gna.

Friday  04 Dec 2015           comment?