Thinking - Abstract power projection in modern youth

When baking bread I started with a disclaimer, and it felt kind of good. I thought I'd drop in another one to see how it felt to insulate myself the second time around.

Sometimes when writing, life presents an easy way out whereby one can hint at a story that doesn't exist in order to create a sense of mystique where really there is none. I didn't want to do anything too controversial on my first attempt, so I choose to imply that there was something secretly more interesting than a mango to use as a rubber band yo-yo. I warn the reader in advance to ensure there is no offence at my deceit.

But...

When I was a kid, we used to get a green mango, and the endless rubber band from inside a golf ball. (I'm not sure if golf balls (or kids for that matter) are still made that way)

You took perhaps 15 feet of rubber "string" and threaded it through a green mango. Then you could do some crazy yo-yo style action, and [insert your own preferred adjective here]  it around by 50* feet from side to side.

It was a good thing.

I think boys like torches and things that fire darts and bullets around, because it allows us to project power and general influence to places beyond our immediate reach. ie a mango based yo-yo/intercontinental ballistic missile.

Perhaps young girls do as well, but I've never been one, so I cant claim to know.

Those among you who are alert may note that generally speaking, I've also not been other young boys, so really cant speak for them either.

But I still recommend a good torch as a present for any young man who doesn't have one.

We love them, and no age is too young or too old for a decent torch.

Turn to the nearest man and ask them if their life would be slightly better if they owned a better torch than the one(s) they currently own.

Having read my exciting exposé, I feel confident you will remain unsurprised. 

Those of you in the know, will also be aware of the fact that the amazing yo-yo like devices in question weren't really made with green mangoes.

That just wouldn't make any sense.

Thinking abstract power projection in modern youth? 

Think 120 Things in 20 years - What was the subject again? 

*Numbers depicted may not reflect reality

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Fraudster - Over unity- free energy - seeks investment

There's gravity induced heat in my lunchbox, and it didn't cost me a cent
_________________________________________________________________________

This post is for someone named SuperVeg, and involves a challenge I made to invent the impossible a few days ago. Due to using all my money on better things, but mostly due to not really being into bets I cant win, the bet is for bragging rights only, and is open to all. The reality is, after I issued the challenge...


I'm going to run "over unity" through the invention engine and see what it comes up with.

As it's ultimate and final test, I bet (bragging rights only ) that it can come up with a device that you cant fault 

 



I thought it might actually prove to be useful as a test of a fail condition.

For some years now I've been working on a formalised problem solving technique. It involves instructions, and processes to attempt to find a solution to a given problem. I call it "The Invention Engine". So far it's largely responsible for most of the inventions in this blog. You can see the difference between the ideas I have and the problems I pose and run through the invention engine. The invention engine ones seem to work.

But it wont this time.

The Invention Engine works like a flow chart or computer program. I put a problem in one end, and a solution falls out the other. So far the process is all in my head, but at some stage I'll publish it. Much of the invention engine itself was created by posing problems and running them through the unfinished engine. That's my favourite bit about the entire endeavour.

One problem with a system designed to find solutions to problems, is that there is no way of arriving at a position where the engine should report that something simply cant be done. I understand this will be an impossible hurdle to overcome, but thought I should put the question through the engine itself anyway.

How can I create a system that can test for "must fail" conditions?

The results of that inquiry required me to put a few different ideas through a test to see how they faired. The best test I could come up with was one that I knew would fail.

I ran a few known impossibilities like tuning water into beer and perpetual motion. I also ran free energy through the engine. Free energy and perpetual motion tend to go hand in hand, but they are not the same thing.

Perpetual motion is impossible because someone named Newton made a law against it. All the good things are illegal. There is an aspect to the universe that tends toward refusing a free lunch. But there are some ways to dodge around the system.

For instance, a hydro electric power plant uses the potential energy of a stack of water sitting high up in some mountains to generate electricity. If you had to pump the water back up the mountain after you generated some electricity from it, you would end up with an electricity bill. Electricity generating companies hate it when they get a bill at the end of the month because it makes them look incompetent. Luckily there is a convenient natural system to get all that water back up the hill for free so you can do it all again. It's kind of free energy, and its also kind of perpetual motion. If you stuck the entire system in a glass dome, it would keep working. But it uses the sun to power it. It's the sun that sticks all that water back up into the tops of the mountains. Evaporation looks free, but it comes at great expense. If I had to pay the power bill for the sun, it would really put a dent in my lifestyle.

Dents aren't free. And sometimes you just don't have a handy river sitting high up in a mountain.

So this entire free lunch electricity generating thing looks like a winner in the "things that are bound to fail if I run them through the engine" competition. I can ask the question and test the system in a hope that the methods I have identified really will let me know when something simply cant be done. I haven't actually identified a method of identifying that a given thing is impossible, but I have to start somewhere.

What I do have is some half baked ideas to test.

So I ran "I want some genuinely free renewable energy that doesn't require the sun to be there at all". That should at least give me a proven "no can do" to test my ideas against.

But...

I got this instead.

please stay with me on this if you are someone who can string together a thought that can hold up to scientific scrutiny. I'm happy to have this fall over, but cant see where it does.

All good perpetual motion engines need a decent name so I'll call this one Bob. Or Bob 3000.

Find a 200 metre high hill.
Build a cable car system on it.
Stick five liquid refrigerant filled gas tankers on the down cable at regular intervals, and five empty gas tankers on the up cable.
Attach a few generators from the turnstile at the top of the system.
Run a gas line from the bottom of the hill to the top.
Plug a compressor into the gas line at the top of the hill.

Generally speaking, the plan is to generate electricity from the potential energy stored because some liquefied gas is sitting at the top of a hill. In this respect, Bob 3000 is a lot like a hydro electric power plant. The generators are placed on either the top or bottom pulley that carry the cable, or both as is convenient.

To get the gas back to the top of the hill, we release it into a large diameter gas line at the bottom that is already filled with gas. When it turns from a liquid into a gas, it fills the gas line. The gas line is a sealed system that allows the liquefied refrigerant barely enough freedom to only just turn gaseous. ie it remains under a great deal of pressure even when in the pipe.

As the full gas tanker moves down the hill it weighs say 100 tons.
The empty ones weigh, for the sake of mathematical ease, 20 tones.
So we have 500 tons coming down the hill and 100 going up.
Now lets call 400 tones falling from 200 metres approximately one shi?load of energy (where one shi?load is a unit of measurement known only to me)

Compressors use a stack of energy to compress gas, and tend to be not very efficient. But the plan here is to start with gas that's already almost a liquid, so we have a bit of a head start.

But there's no such thing as a free lunch, so lets say it takes two shi?loads of energy to compress the gas back into a liquid at the top of the hill to make the system keep moving, and it produces only one shi?load of power.

1S - 2S = (grumpy shareholders)

But here's the bit that the invention engine spat out on the third pass...

Just triple the height of the hill.

Normally if you were, say, pumping water back up hill to use for hydroelectricity, if you double the height of the hill, you double the energy costs to the system, but in this system the additional costs almost amount to not very much at all. A bit of friction at each end of the cables, and some in the pipes is about all. The gas in the pipes almost finds its own way to the top of the hill. The compressor still uses almost the same amount of energy. The only real difference is the weight of the cable. And the additional weight on the upside is counteracted by the additional weight on the downside. The result is thrice the power generated, but with only a tiny additional energy cost.

Our shareholders now see 3S - 2S = (happy shareholders + that Nobel prize I've always wanted, and some serious karmic credit for giving away a multi-trillion dollar invention and saving the world)

Now as I said, I'm happy for this impossible invention to be knocked over, and fully expect it to be. To this end I have invited a few people to do so. But I personally cant figure out where the problem is. I'm actually really keen to learn where it lies.

Even the invention engine cant find a problem.

It will be the invention engine's first failure, but as stated the final solution was supposed to be impossible, so please, I invite everyone to find where it falls over. Even if all you have is a vague feeling, drop in  comment or send me an email so I can explore it a bit.

You'll have to guess my gmail account as your first test.



120 things in 20 years - taking fraud into the realm of honesty with "Fraudster - Over unity- free energy - seeks investment" posts.

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Bread - Hope Loaf

Just a word of warning for anyone new to this blog (and me in general). I have no idea if this is going to work or not. I'm making it up as I go along, and as many of the things I do fail as succeed. So if you're doing a fundraiser, thought you'd make sixteen hundred rolls to sell for a dollar each, and feel it might be important for it to work the first time, this may not be the place for you.

I started watching some videos, and reading up on bread, but got to that inevitable stage where I just have to have a go and see what happens.

Sometimes you just cant really tell what everyone is on about until you at least discover which bits are important, and which might just be decoration.

So I thought I'd make a small white bread loaf.

Actually this is unfolding in real time. Just like that old hit TV show 24.

But with more bread.

So if you get bored at any stage, try opening four different windows and read four different pages of my blog simultaneously.

So far this has happened...

I started with some bread making flour.

I thought all flour was for making bread, but some must be for cake or for mixing with egg and throwing at politicians.

I secretly suspect it's all the same but I know a politician, so I'll find out later and let you know  the truth of it all.

It seems like a pretty rational thing to do to place the ingredients into a bowl, but I saw a video where someone just mixed on a slab of wood.

I thought they looked slightly more like they knew some kind of secret, as compared to the others, so I went with the slab of wood method.

[Note from the future - It turned out to work just fine. (the mixing that is. I have no idea yet about the loaf) ]

I made a bit of a well in the centre and added some yeast.

See the way I worked "well" in casually, just like someone who knows stuff!

That's about a cup of flour and I'm hoping, exactly the correct amount of yeast.

And a pinch of salt.

You cant really see it, and you cant really tell how much I added, but I kind of liked the textural quality of the photo.









I've read a few bread recipes over the last 24* hours and I am amazed at how much salt everyone is adding.

My little loaf has a pinch, but I've seen recipes that call for a tablespoon for a dough to make two loaves. Unless there are radically different sized table spoons in some parts of the world that I don't know about, it seems a little too much.

The next step, or at least my next step, is to hold the camera in one hand, and slowly add water with the other, whilst squishing it all together with the last, in the hope that it turns into dough.

Which surprisingly it did a bit.

Then a bit more.

I kept adding a splash of water as the hand full of dough picked up more and more of the flour.

After a minute or two of adding water and poking the dough around, it seemed to be taking shape.

From this point, I just worked it around a bit and picked up the remaining loose flour from the slab, until it looked like this.

Its a bit like dough, but a bit crumbly in texture and seems to be something made of flour and water. That is you can still see the flour.







So I started kneading.

Unfortunately I started kneading like my school art teacher told me to knead clay, so I'm not sure how that's going to work. [Note from the future - The bread is currently rising, and I'm researching the next step and find that I should be kneading slightly differently. From what I can gather I should be kneading, then rotating, then kneading then rotating. But who knows.]

After a while it looked like this.

It's seems to be starting to take on a different texture, and seems to be much more unified and less floury.

I figure I'll knead until it stops changing.

I got bored (tired) and felt that this was as good a time as any to stop.

I think it's worked so far, although it seems a little stiff.

Perhaps more water should have been added, but I don't think I can add it now so I'll just stick with what I have.

I shaped it as lovingly as I could and made it nice and smooth on the top by gathering the dough and pulling it under itself.

It's a cold day here today, so I turned Mrs 120 Things in 20 years's coffee machine on.

For some crazy reason it has a cup warmer on the top, but as it turns out, this might be just the place for making my dough do the rising thing.

I put cling wrap over the top because the internet told me to.

Those of you who read this blog regularly, will know that I think that if a job's worth doing, it's worth taking it's temperature, so I stuck a digital temperature probe in with the dough to see what I could see.

I'm not sure 22c is warm enough.








So I thought I'd put my latest theory to the test - That being that the house wouldn't burn down if I stuck a stack of tea towels over the coffee machine's cup warmer.

Only time will tell, but at least I'll have an ongoing record of the temperature thanks to the digital probe.

That should at least help with forensics.

Having covered the apparatus, I thought I'd do some quick research and see what temperature I should really be doing this rising thing at, and have decided that 25c or so is about right, so I wasn't so far off after all.

Also it seems that covering it with towels hasn't done anything. I'm guessing that's just because there must be a thermostat in the coffee maker that holds the temperature at 22c.

We live and fail and learn. But the house didn't burn down.

Which is nice.

It's later, and I've returned to my bread to see the temperature is now sitting at 28c, which I think is still within the good range for the yeast.











But...

Having unwrapped it, I don't think it's really done a lot as far as doubling in size.

Perhaps it did something else while I was away instead.

I followed my shallow research's advice (my research was shallow, I don't have a shallow researcher**) and knocked the non-existent air out of it, and then shaped it into something slightly longer, thinner, and more numerous.









And now I wait.

And peek.

And wait.

*

It's later still - I just had another peek and it appears to be working. The only (and obvious in hindsight (but I wasn't really expecting success)) problem, is that if they rise much more they will turn into a single loaf. For this reason I've decided a "Hope Loaf" is now a thing, and will always be made out of four equal lengths, formed together into a single square loaf representing something important.

And square.

I've been doing yet more research in the waiting time, and it seems that the last thing you want to have happen is for a skin to form on your dough as it tries to rise. Apparently it restricts it's ability to move freely in four dimensions. I think perhaps my loaf was just too firm and didn't have the required give, but during the second kneading and shaping, it seemed a bit softer and a little looser. I've heard the word "rest" tossed around in recipes and online, so perhaps it's one of those things that  should be listened to.

As usual I'll let you know if it turns out to be important.

I changed my mind. Not about letting you know, but about the bread,

I got a bit worried that I wouldn't be able to get the final mono-loaf out of the bowl, so I removed them individually while I still could, and laid them out on top of the coffee machine on some baking paper. That way I can transfer them to the oven without having to pick them up.

As you can see they got a bit distorted, but I think they will bounce back.

They seem softer again. Perhaps as their structure is broken up by the air bubbles, it's weakening it, but it really seems wetter.

But remember, I have no idea what I'm doing.

For those of you who are temperature interested, the temperature of the stainless steel cup warmer is 32c when tested directly on the surface.

! > I'm baking



Drum roll please......



I made this...

It tastes almost exactly like glue!





120 Things in 20 years - Bread - Hope Loaf. You have to start somewhere, and visuals are as good a place as any right? Right?



*Now might be a good time to divide the screen into 4
**Yet

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Bread

I think I'm going to learn how to make bread.

Bread seems to be one of those technologies that are important because they changed the world, and at least these days, bread is delicious.

I thought I might start by making some from scratch.

To do that I thought I might grow some wheat. But then I though, "I know. I'll just buy some wheat!".

The plan is already coming off the rails.

Either way, there's going to be some bread.  I love the stuff, and eat it all the time, but don't really know anything about it. I even have a bread maker that makes perfect bread every time. It's a bit like a baker in that respect, but it also keeps it's secrets.

I've made a few attempts over the years, and made some damper as a kid. Damper is made by putting an Australian who either worked on the land 50 years ago, or more often than not someone going camping, and mixing said Australian with some flour, baking soda, and water. You separate the Australian from the dough, and place the dough in the coals of a camp fire then cover it all with ash and bits of grit until it sounds hollow when you tap it.

That means it's as ready as it ever will be, and will be a bit like bread. Basically it's a useful thing to fill all the space in your stomach when it really should be filled with yummy stuff.

In reality damper can actually taste quite nice, but the chances of cooking it just right are pretty slim if the damper I've tasted are anything to go by. Sometimes a small section that isn't either raw, or burnt can give a hint of the potential.

I seem to recall that adding a bit of salt, sugar, and some sultanas helped a bit when we went camping as kids.

Dampers currently sold in restaurants and bakeries in Australia are probably faked a little to make them a little better tasting, and a little lighter.

But it's yeast that in my opinion is one of the great technologies of the world, and the one I intend to explore and get to know a bit better.



120 Things in 20 years - I'm out of bread.

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Aquaponics - Suckfish

I found my cold water algae eating suckfish that I hadn't seen in a while*.

They are tiny and like to hide a lot, but they seem to be doing ok, and there are definitely signs the sump is getting a bit cleaner.

They look like this...

Sorry about the photo quality. My camera thinks I want really sharp images of the surface of the water, so to take a photo I have to fake it a little.

The worm looking thing is a millipede. I choose to use unknown lengthed millipedes for scale when taking pictures of algae eating fish.

The real reason I took this pic, is because it's so infrequently that I see one, and even more infrequently that I see both together.

It's nice to know that I still have two, and it's not just one, pretending to be two.



*120 Things in 20 years world first. To the best of my knowledge, nobody in the world has ever written that before. Even google agrees 

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Aquaponics - Growing sweet potato in water

The good thing about growing things like potatoes in aquaponics is they grow like crazy.

The problem with growing things like potatoes in aquaponics is they like to make babies in your plumbing, and block the water flow.

Following the seemingly happy tomato in a bucket I seem to have created, I figured I give something else a try along the same lines.

I thought I'd suspend a sweet potato over the fish tank and see what happened.

It looks like this...

If you look carefully, you can just make out the roots entering the water diagonally back from the section of sweet potato, and meeting the water just at the waterline of the IBC.

And that's obviously a leaf starting to grow at least it has a chance.





If it grows properly I'll rig a better hanging system for it, but I'm not even sure what time of year they should be planted, so there is a fair chance this wont work. At least the first time.

I tested the fish to see if they would attack the roots and/or  potatoes, and other than for the first few hours, they seemed content to share their world with the plants.

I originally added a sweet potato that had gone crazy with roots, and I suspect the fish simply thought they were worms, but soon gave up when they ended up tasting funny, not behaving sufficiently worm-like, or whatever else fish decide are important traits of their food.

If it works, the lid will be closed to keep the light out, and the plant will be encouraged to grow through a hole in the lid or something. I'll work it out. The result will be some interesting cover for the fish, extra surface area for the nitrifying bacteria to live on, and very visible sweet potatoes that I can watch grow. I should also be able to keep them from getting into the plumbing just because I'll be able to cut them back if it looks like they are getting too close.

One additional advantage will be that I will be able to harvest them one at a time without pulling the plant and disturbing all the small ones before they are ready to be harvested.

But it's early days.



120 Things in 20 years - Aquaponics - Growing sweet potato in water - Maybe.

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Aquaponics - Constant supply

Diseases are getting clever.

Mine makes me throw up my medicine, rendering the windows and the medication  becomes ineffective*.

I don't really have a big enough area of grow bed to be very disciplined about maintaining a constant supply of things like lettuce. To do so really requires leaving a bit of space for the seeds I should be adding next week, but I find myself wondering how carrots might do in my system, and use all the reserved real estate to find out.

It's not always carrots. I don't suffer from whatever habitually planting carrots in any free garden space might be called, although I'm guessing someone does, and I'm guessing it is a condition.

The Internet, after all, is a very big place.

But, if I ever found some self discipline, or more grow bed real estate, I'd more thoroughly deploy my system for making sure you plant stuff when you should.

And its this...

If you get little jars with each kind of seed you grow on an ongoing basis, you can label the jars with the days of the month you plant on to ensure a constant supply. In my case, Cos lettuce needs to be planted every 5 days, so my jar would be labelled 1 - 5 - 10 - 15 - 20 - 25. And my baby spinach, 1 - 10 - 20, chives  1 - 15 for every two weeks, and basil has a 1 for once a month.

The result, is all you need to know is the date, and you know what to plant. If you had enough jars that keeping track of such things became necessary, you could also add how many seeds to plant.

Remembering to plant stuff was never really the problem. The main problem was remembering when I planted stuff last. This way you just look at the date and know.

Unless you are lazy.



120 Things in 20 years has taught me that in spite of my seed management system enabling my ongoing dedication to laziness, I still have to remember what season it is and pull out the suitable jars from long term storage. Who would have thought knowing what season it was might be useful.


*I think I just found a linguistic need for a quantum word requiring that rather than being fixed, it's location and or existence is dependant on the observer.

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