Simplifier
simplifier.neocities.org
simplifier.neocities.org
Actually have some light PVC plumbing work on the agenda this afternoon. And the research, as per most projects, involves an amalgam of downloaded product manuals, improvisation and youtube tutorials. And yes, a myriad of specialty products, fittings, tools and treatments.
I see tremendous need for a resource like this. "How To Make Anything". Using what you have at hand. Readable on a phone with cellular internet. Great work and will surely inspire some wonderful projects!
You used it correctly. The term minimal has been hijacked to mean something entirely different these days. It often means “I’ve thrown away important bits so the design looks sexy, I can list it on SiteInspire and get kudos from my friends for following too much white space and anti-functionalism trends”.
> HN-friendly design
We need to own this. When newcomers, youngsters and uninformed people want to be inspired, they’ll instead see this as “Old fashioned, grumpy, nerdy HN-friendly design”. There, we killed it already.
That said - This web design has some short comings. For me the legibility is compromised by using a fixed width typeface, line-spacing is too tight and paragraph column width is too large.
"Important bits" is just about as subjective as "looks sexy", is it not?
I used to have that item on my agenda all the time ... and then I just started buying sharkbites and putting things together like Legos.
It's not a solution for every plumbing and irrigation task I have - I still do find myself using PVC solvent from time to time ... but long gone are the days when I had to connect two pipes that were sort of off axis from each other and out of plane and how in the world will I put together 3 45s and 2 22.5 elbows to somehow make that connection.
Get yourself a roll of PEX (Uponor is the nice stuff) and some sharkbites and these jobs get really easy ...
E.g., https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00431...
Although the sharkbites are also really, really handy to have in your copper water system - if only to have a handful of caps in case of line breaks ...
PVC, CPVC, and PEX are all commonly used in drinking water plumbing.
I can't offer a qualified view on irrigation or utility plumbing; not sure if PEX leachates are worse than PVC, etc.
Manufactured (AKA mobile) homes are typically plumbed with PVC or PEX[0], and PEX is pretty popular for traditional (AKA site-built) houses as well[1].
[0] https://mobilehomeliving.org/plumbing-in-manufactured-homes-...
I wouldn't trust sharkbite fittings for anything really permanent (inside a wall, etc) but they are super handy for quick repairs.
Both of those results mentioned in the abstract are really fascinating. I'm really curious why UV absorbance increased as leachates were released, and the chlorine consumption kind of makes me think that if I ever have a house with PEX, I will want to install a whole-house purification system to remove chlorine, or run copper to at least all drinking locations.
> No matter what skill I intended to learn, I found that its permanence had been eroded by the chaos of technology. Materials were replaced by brands, techniques replaced by accessories, and craftsmanship replaced by consumerism. Clearly, this was something that needed to be fixed. Clearly, this is what I had to do.
I find this particularly correct. There are some technologies and/or things which are very simple, yet very hard to improve upon. Incidentally, these items are very durable too. Double edge razors and fountain pens come to my mind.
Yet, these technologies and items are thrown away or forced to obsolescence just because they don't produce the profits today's corporations seek. I think it's a very sad outcome. One can say that modern razors or writing implements doesn't have similar disadvantages of vintage counterparts, but the contrary is also true. Not all modern technologies supersede older ones flawlessly, and older ones still had distinct advantages. Same is also valid for computing technologies, both in hardware and software side.
Because of this reality, I find this kind of documentation projects very valuable and important. We need to address permanence of knowledge as soon as possible. It's a very hard problem, but we can start somewhere.
IIRC, Ford has a simulator just for testing these controls in the cockpit. They design and implement a cockpit, mount it to the simulator and run some scenarios like animals crossing roads or someone braking hard in front of you.
I drive a 2001 focus, and all controls can be operated so-called blindly. I can do anything (HVAC, hazards, lights, etc.) without moving my eyes from the road. I think it's very important.
E.g. my dad had a series of books from his childhood setting out "experiments for boys" from the 1950s and 1960s, that because they were targeting low cost and ability for children to reproduce them (though by the time I got them in the early 1980s some materials were already tricky to obtain because they were considered too dangerous - the books contained plenty of experiments including fireworks and e.g. acids for example).
It was how I learned both to make carbon microphones like the one he described, and other fun things like electroplating (unfortunately I learned how to do that by toying with electrolysis with lead electrodes and accidentally covering one of my mum's silver spoons in lead - it was not popular)
Combine those kind of books with a good guide for how to safely extract the chemicals etc. that are now a hassle to come by, and you'd bootstrap a very substantial amount of processes and skills.
coincidentally, i'd been thinking about the construction of buildings in terms of timeless (and less toxic) materials, where it would be wonderful to remove as much plastic and concrete from modern buildings as possible, and design them with only wood, metal, ceramics (clay), stone, and glass. the hard part is elements like paint, wiring, and insulation, but this person is actually tackling those kinds of issues head on!
Go to /lists to see all the options or /pool directly to see the pool.
Greetings from a fellow enthusiastic HN'er :)
This is an interesting subject. If you're building something very critical, you need to track precisely where your components come from, where the material for those comes from, where the raw materials came from etc. This is also one of the reasons why nuclear power or medical technology are so expensive. We have gotten used to having extremely low cost hardware, but that is because it's produced by obscure long subcontractor chains spreading all over the world, intense competition, constant optimization and churn.
I believe it wasn't exactly styrofoam, but was rigid and low density. This suggests probably an aerogel: https://www.lanl.gov/science/weapons_journal/wj_pubs/17nwj2_...
But I'm not sure I agree that using more generic components should make the technology so expensive.Especially if there was a demand for that.
So using a versatile mcu, with lots of ram/flash, dual-core(big/little) for low power, and a rich set of peripherials, together with some affordable fpga, and some greenPak programmable gellybean logic, and some voltage conversion parts could be good building blocks for digital electronics.
As for Analog, programmability exists too, in the form of via-programmable analog chips(laser programmable at the factory, I think for volumes of few thousands). That still doesn't cover high-performance parts but that would fit many projects.
As for power electronics, I don't know much about that, but I do wonder.
> Fundamentally, my work here is about creating a stable foundation of technology that is reliable, understandable, and practical for an individual to build for themselves. As of writing this, I believe I have done this on a conceptual level, but I intend to continue this work to the highest level of technology that I can achieve on my own. I encourage readers to utilize anything here which they find practical for whatever purpose they see fit, and to consider adopting a mindset of simplification in projects of their own.
I think it's ironic that other commenters praise this as "HN-friendly", when HN itself uses a sans-serif proportional font at a reasonable size, limited width and margins for legibility, and background color to reduce contrast.
Monospace is legible, and 12px is a great size for web content.
[1] https://blog.codinghorror.com/comparing-font-legibility/
It's been done by wrapping everything in <tt> elements, adding an extra layer of indentation and more code. If that was simply left out, the browser would use its default stylesheets - and the preferences of the reader - to display the text.