All five of my former domains since 1999 are now placeholders by squatters.
379 karma · joined August 5, 2017
But I was too busy discovering/exploring/mapping caves in California to ever make it to Ellison's Cave.
In fact, I was working in a cave I discovered in Sequoia National Park that was 900 feet directly about another cave some friends had discovered several years before, Hurricane Crawl Cave.
The small group of NSS cavers I was working with had an M.O.U. with the Natl Park Service to explore and map any caves we discovered, and we gated Hurricane at their request after we finished our survey and drafted a map of the cave.
As it's a hazardous cave with a stream and deep vertical drops, it is now a locked closed gated cave, and only vetted cave explorers and scientists are allowed in.
I was hoping to make a vertical connection between the two caves via a pit I hoped would be deep enough to shatter the depth record of Fantastic Pit, but my health ran out before I could make that connection.
Perhaps some day a determined caver will continue the work I was doing and find that connection pit.
"Caving... it's like Fun, only different."
And solar panels have drastically come down in price since then too, so solar is certainly the most economical way to go for off grid power these days.
First, one has to complete a wind survey, so installing an anemometer for a full season to get an idea of the annual wind resource, in order to properly size the turbine.
Of course, one can use weather service annual wind velocities for your local area as a general guide, but every place has it's own micro climate, so a site local wind survey is essential.
And one also needs a Tall Tower to get the turbine well above any close by hills, trees, or structures, otherwise quite a bit of efficiency is lost.
Towers are expensive, and usually require specialists to safely install them.
And smaller scale wind turbines also need to be maintained at least yearly, which requires climbing the tall tower to do so.
And wind turbine systems were very expensive back then (12-20K US$), but costs may have come down since then, not sure.
They also can be a bit noisy when wind speeds are higher.
I also can't really speak about the micro wind turbines I see for sale, other then to remark they are not as efficient as larger turbines mounted on tall towers, and I don't see them as viable, reliable sources of power.
I also would like to hear from someone who's been installing wind turbines in recent years, to see if things have changed in a positive way.
In the early 90's I was installing/servicing micro hydro systems here in rural Northern California, on properties off the grid where there was no sun due to all the redwood trees.
We were using tiny Pelton style turbine wheels, and our systems produced about 500 watts 24/7 (10-12 Kilowatt Hours) on the small streams in our coastal mountainous area.
Once the infrastructure was built (dam, penstock, base for the turbine, wiring, control system, etc), the systems were rock solid reliable, and required minimal yearly maintenance.
The one major problem was that they were VERY LOUD, so couldn't be near the living quarters because it was so annoying.
Eventually, it became nearly impossible to legally install them in our County due to Fish & Wildlife Regulations concerning the damming of waterways, no matter how small ("Won't someone think of the salmon";-).
Not sure how loud this new turbine is, but due to County and State regulations it seems to me that this so called "fish friendly" turbine will still have very limited locations where it can be installed, at least here in California.
I've driven that section of Highway One South of Pacifica many times and it's narrow, so it could have been an accident, because lots of folks have gone over the cliff there and died over the years.
I hope the survivors of this family will be able to recover, and if the driver really did attempt to murder them, they should never get out of prison.
And the Hart family murder/suicide happened just about 20 miles North of my current town at my favorite turnout, which I now can't hang out at and enjoy the view anymore, too brutal of a memory.
I walked by the Hart family the day before the tragic event, they had just come out of our local ice cream shop, and couldn't help but notice them due to their mixed race.
As far as I recall, it was determined that it was only the driver who did it, as the rest of them had been heavily dosed with Benadryl.
The body of one child was never found.
Also, several years before that and about 10 miles further South, a mother drove her van off the cliff in a similar murder/suicide at Blues Beach.
I believe they all survived but the baby had permanent brain damage due to being upside down for hours before a local discovered them.
So damn sad... RIP.
Hmmm, what's your use case for the Armed home mode?
I'd likely forget it, and open a window or door triggering the alarm.
Water sensor support is a great idea, as I've had a couple of old water heaters fail in the past, nice addition.
I have a Raspberry Pi 3+ sitting around doing nothing, so maybe this is a project for next winter.
edit: Just saw your Kids traffic light, what a fun project to teach children about traffic signals.
Jameco Electronics https://www.jameco.com/
The Electronic Goldmine https://theelectronicgoldmine.com/
All Electronics https://www.allelectronics.com/
Back in the 60's through the 90's we also had Haltech and Halted Specialties, electronics supplies and surplus in Sunnyvale/Santa Clara, each about a mile from each other.
Many folks confused the names.
As I recall, both of them had resident cats as well.
My High School electronics teacher turned me onto them in 1969.
It appears Haltech is defunct, and not surprising since the owner was OLD when I was shopping/browsing there in the 70's - 80's.
Oh, looks like Halted changed their name to HSC and may still be in business.
https://www.scrapmonster.com/company/hsc-electronic-supply/3...
Aside from many parts, I also bought my first of several surplus HeNe LASERS there in 1974.
In 1980 I got one of these kits for my auto repair shop, and yes, it was quite a challenge to build, but it saved me hours of automotive diagnostic time.
A comparable automotive ignition analyzer scope at the time was thousands of dollars.
Heathkit CO-1015 Oscilloscope Engine Ignition Analyzer Tool
https://www.ebay.com/itm/144853683301?epid=1323946549&hash=i...
And I have a beard, but not a neck beard.
This place is more like the "old" /. and I like it here.
BTW, I've been hanging out at /. since it was "Chips and Dips".
Then (tragically) after they set the last anchor, one of them broke out from the passage wall, and that's when he slipped back down further than before, it was so damn SAD!
It's mostly hard core cavers who do the majority of cave exploration, surveying/mapping and biological/archeological inventory in caves around the world.
Almost all of us are volunteers, and arrange our lives around caving, not our jobs, it's a passion that consumes us.
Before retiring from caving due to health issues, I caved with the best of the best for years, and none of us were/are "adventure seekers", not even close, we are pragmatic, calm, and seriously experienced in cave exploration, as opposed to those who are untrained casual cave explorers (what we call "spelunkers", i.e. flashlight cavers).
About 30 years ago I became trapped in an alpine cave in a way very similar to Floyd Collins, when a football sized piece of marble fell from the ceiling about 30 feet into a virgin body sized phreatic tube I was exploring.
It landed on my ankle, pinning it so I couldn't move forward or back, and the passage was so tight that I couldn't move my free leg to dislodge it, and yes, Floyd Collins entrapment was the first thing I thought of.
Thankfully, I had two things in my favor, one was I had a caving partner on the surface who knew where I was, and I could communicate with, so if I couldn't self rescue she could hike the 5 miles back to a road end and get help (no cell phone service back then).
And two, I was an experienced caver, so I remained very calm, and kept working my free foot in order to attempt to dislodge the rock pinning my ankle, and after about 10 minutes I was able to somehow with great effort, shift the rock enough that I could move deeper into the cave.
I crawled forward another 15 feet to a pit about 20 feet deep that I was able to free climb into so I could turn around and head back out, and was able to push the rock ahead of me and I got out just fine.
It didn't phase me one bit, as I'd had much more serious life threatening events in caves previously (almost "flat rocked" in Lechuguilla Cave, NM), but I was well aware that it could have been a serious situation as it got down into the 20's at night in that location, so hypothermia was a real possibility.
The lesson here for non cavers is, don't explore caves alone, especially if nobody knows where you are, and get proper training before doing so, from a local "grotto" (chapter) of the National Speleological Society https://caves.org/ .
ASCAP = American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Society_of_Composers%...
I used to game the system by playing little known/independent artists I had a personal connection with during each reporting window.
I used to drive him to and from the Redwood City shipyard as there wasn't a lot of parking there.
He also gave me 9 or 10 manganese nodules from the "test" mining run, which was the CIA cover story.
They look like fist sized black to gray cauliflower heads.
After the project was declassified he got a Presidential Commendation, which he framed and hung over the kitchen table.
So using a specialty site like Kayak Dating, or some such, owned by this dating site group would still get you some non kayaker profiles.
I discovered this because I like round women and I'd have profiles on a few specialty sites, and I'd still get thin women profiles occasionally because other qualifiers I'd listed were close to theirs.
But I hope you can find someone to collaberate with and expand upon your ideas, and let us know back here if you all come up with something.
I'm older and I've tried multiple ways to meet a partner, and haven't dated in nearly 10 years, but finally am building a primitive website for myself, it still needs more work but I'm getting there.
Now all I have to do is figure out how to spread the word, since I don't participate in "normal" social networks.
It's kind of daunting to be putting myself out there like this.
It's the 100 mile per gallon carburetor "cover up" all over again, priceless!
I see no prototype, no torque output predictions for a prototype, and no documentation that it's even been built.
It reminds me of when I was part of a hydrogen PEM fuel cell start up in Cupertino 30 years ago, we had one guy who put together two pressure cookers with a coil of copper pipe between them and he was always trying to get us to forget our "worthless" quest and go with his sure thing free energy "engine".
At best this magnetic anomaly "device" might rotate like a radiometer, but wholly unable to provide sufficient torque to do any useful work.
If it even works, perhaps the "inventor" could make them to sell as curiosity pieces like a radiometer that can't do anything but rotate, and their ignorant friends could observe and exclaim, "Ohhh, free energy"!
Don't waste your time attempting to build this obvious hoax.
Do you really believe "they" have the time and money to do that with that much data, considering 99.999% of it is dross?
I sure don't.
I'm an early adopter of technology that I see as viable for my lifestyle, so I'm no old fogy wishing for an idealistic past.
I started with vinyl when singles cost US .79 cents, LP's 1.99, because other than the radio, music was only available that way unless you had the money to buy expensive reel-to-reel tapes and the exorbitantly priced tape recorder/player.
Vinyl was fragile and a bit of a hassle to deal with if one wanted to keep them in near pristine condition, but the process of removing the LP from the protective sleeves and without touching the groove sides, flip it over between my open palms and place it on the turntable then lowering the tonearm into the entry groove was an exquisite tactile experience to be sure, like a smooth dance move.
And the album artwork and bonus gate-fold sleeves with additional information about the record and band made the minor hassles worth the efforts.
When cassettes were introduced I didn't like the loss of audio quality, but due to their size and robustness as a storage medium they truly made music "portable" like in no other time in history, and with the advent of consumer affordable in-car cassette players in the mid 70's the sales exploded and they became ubiquitous.
Despite the drawback of having tiny nearly unreadable "album" artwork, they were so much easier to manage and store, plus opening the polystyrene cases and slotting them into the player had it's own subtle tactile appeal.
But one had to de-Gauss the playback head occasionally, and regularly clean the head and capstans on the player with isopropyl alcohol as early tape formulations shed the iron oxide coating, degrading the tape and playback experience, muddy, muffled highs anyone?
The CD changed everything yet again with slightly larger "album" artwork and a case that initially took awhile to figure out how to open until one got the hang of it, and with proper handling the poly-carbonate CD disc's were much more damage resistant than vinyl.
Again, the process of opening the CD case, extracting the disc with two fingers on the edges and placing it into the tray and later on, slot, also made for an enjoyable haptic ritual of sorts.
The Mini Disc was a failure from the start, media was expensive, players were expensive and the benefits were not worth the effort to pursue.
I still have a sealed copy of Midnight Oil's Diesel and Dust that I bought in 1987 and I never played because the player prices never dropped to a level I found acceptable.
Digitally available music ruined it for me, and aside from the total loss of "album" artwork and such, the mp3 CODEC delivered garbage sound quality on a well thought out sound system.
Thankfully, I quickly discovered .flac so the audio quality issue was resolved, but finding the music in my extensive multi genera library was/is a hassle.
I've never found a music manager that I like, and of course, digital music has zero tactile feeling unless you count mouse clicking and keystrokes, which I don't.
So I hope I live long enough to see the next big change in media and hopefully I'll like it better than the what I see in the clunky present.
When I got here 30 years ago it was my first experience "interacting" with Finns and I always thought it was a problem with me (3rd gen Californian).
Thankfully, a long time local Norwegian friend told me a joke that cleared it all up.
Q: "How can you tell when a Finn is an extrovert?"
A: "They stare at your shoes instead of their own."
I asked my 3rd gen Finnish acquaintances about that, and they heartily agreed.