So... What are YOU doing? - Part 8

[Lamb]

Had a really busy day and got up extra early so it feels like my body wants to crash soon. I started watching the documentary on Hillsong but it was boring.

 

[Stravinsk]

I spent several hours experimenting today:

The charcoal making itself is easy. Some tweaks are needed as not everything is getting burned but I think this won't be a major issue.

What I'm left with: Stuff that easily breaks apart (like carbonized paper/cardboard/grass)
Stuff that doesn't as easily break apart: thicker wood and twigs, seed heads.

Do I need to smash the latter? Perhaps. But right now I'm thinking I may just use water to soften them and break it down over time. Save me the labor.

The carbon dust I sifted out I was able to make briquettes into (with a lot more water than I expected) and some white flour (heated in water first). I wrote all the measurements down and expect this first lot to be mediocre at best.

Experiment stage is the most time consuming. I'm sure within a few weeks I'll have a system down that's a lot more efficient.

 

[Stravinsk]

Had a really busy day and got up extra early so it feels like my body wants to crash soon. I started watching the documentary on Hillsong but it was boring.

I mostly never liked much of the music they promoted. It's a sad reality (in my estimation) that so much of contemporary Christian music just....sucks, for lack of a better term.

 

[tango]

I mostly never liked much of the music they promoted. It's a sad reality (in my estimation) that so much of contemporary Christian music just....sucks, for lack of a better term.

I've found Hillsong music to be a combination of some pretty good stuff and some stuff that can only be described as drivel.

 

[Lamb]

I mostly never liked much of the music they promoted. It's a sad reality (in my estimation) that so much of contemporary Christian music just....sucks, for lack of a better term.

Hillsong is a company that is built on a business plan to make money and appeal to people's emotion. The music is not doctrinally sound.

 

[tango]

The music is not doctrinally sound.

To a large extent I'd agree - when I see the Hillsong name I figure something is going to be catchy but doctrine will take a back seat to rhythm and rhyme, or it will be a few words empty of any meaning with a chorus that repeats itself mindlessly. Every once in a while I'm pleasantly surprised. Not as often as I'd like - given the choice of keeping all or nothing I'd say churches would be better of getting rid of it.

 

[Lamb]

We were surprised the county park was open today since it's officially a holiday for most places. So we got to walk a couple of miles and it wasn't very crowded.

 

[tango]

Weather is gloomy today. I got a run in yesterday which was good, although it was harder than it needed to be. I think I just needed to get back into running a little more slowly after taking time out because of the cold - I hadn't really pushed hard for a couple of weeks.

Right now I'm finishing off a cup of coffee and then I'm going to go and write some code. I've been bouncing ideas in my head for a long time and it's about time I actually started writing it.

 

[Stravinsk]

I did this recently:

Although I was a lot more careful than these guys, who's methods boarder on slightly to highly dangerous, imo.

First, I surrounded the reaction vessel (a glass jar) with cold mud inside another container. As the reaction is exothermic (creating lots of heat), not only does one get hydrogen gas, but also steam. The mud acts as a heat transfer to reduce heat, and thus reduce the steam let off, to get purer hydrogen. Combining hydrogen with oxygen (or even water vapor) in any storage medium is just a bad idea. You'd never want to store disassociated hydrogen and oxygen together as they are an explosive mixture.

Second, the aluminum and NaOH should be added to the water, not the other way around, as a safety measure. If water is added to the other elements and it's hot or even warm, this can be very dangerous as it speeds up the effect and any splashing can cause serious injury.

Third, the reaction vessel shouldn't contain much (or any) air to begin with (as they used a large jug with lots of air between the reaction and the opening). Same reason as above - don't store hydrogen with oxygen. It's explosive.

---

One other thing I tried was using bbq ash from un-discarded charcoal ash (store bought) that I had not bothered to get rid of yet. Don't know what kind of wood was used to make the charcoal (it makes a difference to it's ph content) but what I did notice is that it still broke down the oxide layer on the aluminum to create hydrogen and burn the aluminum - however this reaction is much much slower and involves weeks, not minutes.

 

[Messy]

Sitting in the train back home at 23.30 pm. Went to visit my dad in a home. It was fun. Just this year he finally got saved with 87, so I brought him a cd player with a cd from the Edwin Hawkins singers. First he didn't say a thing. Put on the music and he started to talk. A guy who works there is fun. He jokes with those old ppl. Nice home.

 

[Stravinsk]

I've been having fun with chat.openai.com

It's an AI program that can be used to answer various questions and solve various problems. Of course, it relies on certain biases of the texts on which it is based, and I have some contradictory views to some of these broad assumptions/beliefs, but outside of that, it is extraordinary in many areas.

For example, I acquired a lengthy book for University level Electrical engineers on the subject of resonant power converters. I did not expect the ai to have all that much specific information on the subject. However, I was surprised to learn that it did.

Here's where the fun came in for me:

I have a few ideas on closed loop systems that would violate the first law of thermodynamics. The ai was able to take in detailed descriptions, admit they would logically work but also fall back consistently to the first law of thermodynamics stating that they were not possible. It would then site possible reasons why they were impossible, even when I had covered those reasons in my explanation. Sort of deceptive bias, but when I pointed it out, it would apologize and admit there was "confusion" but that it was still impossible, because of the law, without then going into reasons I had already covered.

In another instance I questioned it about a so called "photo from space" that had obviously been altered but still listed on generally accepted websites and in books. I pointed out exactly where the alteration was, and it was dogmatic that it didn't exist. Finally on probing it admitted it cannot scan or analyze photos directly and that it relied on it's stored information to make statements about such things.

On being helpful, it was able to take in questions and then narrow a response upon further context clarification to give better solutions to queries I had about several subjects, saving me time searching the net and wading through often unwanted extra information that did not answer my direct questions.

 

[Stravinsk]

I am continuing my investigation into this openai project mentioned in the post above.

It is worth mentioning that the program makes bold and dogmatic generalizations about texts it claims to be familiar with, but is actually not. I questioned it about a specific literature I am familiar with, and asked if it is familiar with/has been trained in - such literature. The claim was yes, it was familiar with the literature.

When asked about a specific topic addressed in said literature, it made generalized claims contrary to the literature on the topic. When addressed further and challenged, it "apologizes" and claims it may be mistaken or incorrect. I then queried it on the specific topic, and asked it to provide chapters and verses. I could not. Clearly, the ai program was unfamiliar with the body of text of the document, but pretended to be familiar with it.

 

[Lamb]

It's a cold day and I slept in! Yay. Now I'm just sitting around surfing the internet and drinking my half caff coffee.

 

[Stravinsk]

Continuing my experiments with aluminum, NaOH and water for hydrogen production.

Observation: Tin foil works fine, one gets a rather volatile reaction, a lot of initial steam mixed with hydrogen, then pure hydrogen. However, it isn't long lasting and the foil is quickly used up, and the show's over.

Using thicker aluminum (such as from a soda or beer can) has presented a problem, using the same solution. It will break down but the process is very slow. I've watched people online use Gallium to form an aluminum-gallium alloy on thicker aluminum to remove aluminum's natural oxide layer. This works a treat from what I've seen, but eh...Gallium is sort of expensive. It's recoverable from the process but one must still go and buy it. It's a rare metal too, so not everyone could depend on it.

Fortunately, I was informed of another way to remove the oxide layer of aluminum so it will react with water. Heat. Used an open flame just a few moments on sections of a beer can I cut up, including the tab. To prevent the oxide layer from forming again I dumped what I had just heated into cold water. Yes, WATER....COLD WATER. The water prevents the newly de-oxided aluminum from reforming it's oxide layer. This should never be done with hot or warm water though, as a reaction is likely, if not initially, then over time. In general, other ways to prevent oxidation should be used to store it, such as cooling it quickly (like with cold water) then immersing it into oil. This also will prevent oxidation.

So did it work? Oh yes, it did. Using only a small amount of tin can plus the tab, I added it to NaOH solution. Production. Not only that, unlike foil...sustained production. It literally went for hours! I kept the reaction vessel open by an open window (hydrogen is safe if dispersed in small amounts into the atmosphere, it eventually combines with something else). To my surprise, when I woke this morning it was still going, and now the vessel was cool, but still producing hydrogen. Basically once the process started with the NaOH producing some heat, it cooled down eventually but the process wasn't going to be undone until the metal broken down.

In related news, my other reaction vessel, to which I connected a bung with a hole through it to the lid and sealed it with a compound (prevent gas escaping) and run a small plastic hose through the bung and into a bubbler....well...I found out today I have disturbed the seal on the bung/lid connection. That's sort of dangerous, because I would never know that hydrogen was leaking out somehow unless I tried to run the hose through a bubbler and got little to no bubbles. Welp...that's what happened. So I sprayed water around the bung, and sure enough, a ton of bubbles formed, indicating the seal has been compromised.

 

[Messy]

Cut my hair. Had enough if it. Ponytail on top of your head, cut, ready and you have layers. A woman who cuts old ppl taught me.

 

[Stravinsk]

Bottled beer: check
Burned some garbage to make charcoal: check
Did shopping: check
Smashed a bunch aluminum cans to store for later use as hydrogen/water catalysts: check

 

[Lamb]

Cut my hair. Had enough if it. Ponytail on top of your head, cut, ready and you have layers. A woman who cuts old ppl taught me.

I used to cut my hair by pulling it all straight up and cutting across.

 

[tango]

Filling up more trash bags. Today's effort was four bags of cellulose and a contractor bag of general debris. That's on top of the six bags of plaster from the weekend's efforts.

I also have a decent pile of laths to burn. My friend who often takes them doesn't need firewood, probably because it's been such a mild winter, so I'll have to burn them myself. So the next time we have a sunny day I've got a job to do...

 

[Lamb]

Getting ready to get groceries. They don't always have paczkis here for Fat Tuesday because it's Amish area and they have fastnachts and I don't care for those.

 

[Stravinsk]

Today I experimented with making a battery. Inspiration came after I came across a site offering to sell me plans, and I thought...hmm, maybe I test the concept first. I've made a small earth battery in the past, but it didn't last long before the wire I used corroded heavily.

Anyhoo. I noticed with a little experimenting that a copper nail in close proximity to(but not touching) a small amount of aluminum (having dipped both in a salt water solution) read about 700mV (0.7V) on my multi-meter. Inspired, I used some plastic as insulation and wire and managed to get 1.2V from a few screws wrapped in plastic then with galvanized wire. I know it doesn't sound impressive but it was to me as my materials were simple and cheap and I'm no expert in this field.

Tonight I came across a video that blew my mind. Unlike a lot of so called "free energy" scams on Youtube (I do believe this sort of thing is encouraged to get people to totally dismiss the topic), I found one on another video site that was inspiring. No special tricks, just simple science, and the guy didn't sound like he wanted anything. He sounded angry. His presentation struck me as authentic so I'm going to try it soon. It's so simple a child could do it. We'll see.