Non Political Fun

 You get bored, you start cleaning out the garage, and you find a couple of parts, and next thing you know, you got a(nother) hare-brained project started:

It's intended to replace the sign twirlers you see on the sidewalks announcing sales or tax services. Powered by a windshield wiper motor it featured eyes made from motorcycle turn signals, and a skull made from a dog dish. eventually it should include arms to raise and lower a sign. I envision this as a terminator-like assembly, outside a Victorias Secret with a sign warning women not to let their men be seduced away by a robot.

Sorry for the cluttered background. Next update I'll have a cleaner one.

Technology Report

 Getting humanoid robots through the "uncanny valley". Here's an article about a company building companion robots. They look very realistic, although they lack human level strength and mobility, they're getting closer, and it looks like newer developments in high power electric motors will go a long way toward getting those 'bots up and running, so to speak.

“They had hired an actress to pretend to be a mannequin — and she was really good at it,” McMullen recalls. “For some reason that stuck with me, I was like, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to have a mannequin that looks so real, that people would think that it was?’ Kind of like an inverse of that experience. I started coming up with this, like, crazy idea of a hyper-realistic, pose-able mannequin.”

To this end, McMullen founded his own company, Abyss Creations in 1996, which is perhaps best known for developing the RealDoll adult companion mannequin, the most deluxe versions of which can fetch over $10,000.

He’s sold thousands of them.

McMullen then founded Realbotix in 2014 to bring a similar realism to robots.

 

What If The Virus WAS The Vaccine?

 Found this on Bijou who found it elsewhere so it's now 3rd hand, but it's an interesting bit of medical technology, creating a virus that leaves behind proteins that trigger an immune response to another virus.

What could go wrong?

TEOTWAWKI -Weather

O.K. I've sussed it! Those prison camps in XinKiang full of Uhigers don't just make iPhones and sneakers. All the prisoners, on a second shift, are given a box of butterflies which they are forced to shake to get them to flap their wings. Since it is established science* that all our weather is caused by the flapping of butterfly wings in China, this must be the cause of all our weather catastrophes. The joke will be on the Chinese when their weather modification project causes China to be crushed by the glaciers along with everyone else, and the next ice age is named "the Chinese Winter".

*Of course it's established. I read it on the internet somewhere.

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Fun With Headlines - Armaments

 Here's one that's going around: From WND:

China rocks the world with missile that circled globe before dropping on target.

OK kiddies, here's a clue. Go on Wickipedia, and look up "Silbervogel" which the Nazis looked into back in 1942 as a method to bomb the U.S. by traveling at hypersonic speeds, bouncing off the stratosphere several times, and landing in Japan.

Terrifying new superweapon, indeed. Here's a bit more on that. Seems the thing still needs a bit of work:

The test went like this: China launched a rocket carrying what is known as a hypersonic glide vehicle. The missile circled the earth in a low orbit toward its target, which it missed by roughly 25 miles.

Notwithstanding that close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and nuclear weapons, 25 miles is generally considered a miss in the nuclear weapons department.

Science Marches Onward! - Alcohol!

 For a change, here's some news about alcohol that doesn't involve burning it. Seems this fellow has come up with a way to turn alcoholic beverages into something resembling ice cream, or at least soft serve.

Yeah, I know, the purists among us will denounce this as alcohol abuse, especially as it seems to work about as well with single malt Scotch as it does with beer of any sort. The extremes though probably are alcohol abuse on the one end of that spectrum, and reportedly abuse of the consumer on the other, so if you but one of his machines (about $6000-$7000) don't pour in either Glenfiddich or Coors Lite.

Fun With Headlines - Medical

 Israeli doctors may have figured out how to make animal organs transplantable into humans:

Israeli doctors develop ‘pig-human’ hybrid organ for transplant

OK fine. but I've got to ask; Is this kosher?

Joe Biden 2.0 - New And Improved!

The above picture is the new Joe Biden 20, currently in the final assembly stages at Boston Dynamics, the world famous maker of robots. In the final version, the head will be replaced with a silicone copy of Biden 1.0 made by Real Dolls, maker of realistic humanoid robots. He will be dressed in a blue suit, and the crystal ball will be replaced with a stack of executive orders. The $1 slot will be replaced by a card/phone reader and will accept donations in increments of $1M. Nancy Pelosi and Susan Rice, highly placed members of the Democrat Party Central committee, say the new version should be quite a bit more reliable than the old one.

The right arm will be fully automated and capable of dashing off a credible signature as long as the document is placed within the alignment markers on the desk top and will even be able to replace the pen in the holder as long as the holder doesn't get bumped out of place. The voice function will be able to change the voice of whomever is speaking from behind the curtains to a perfect replica of the presidents voice with the substitution noticeable only by the lack of gaffes and wandering of the topics.

The Central committee assures us that replacing the president with the vice president, Kamala Harris, will not be necessary with these improvements installed, and in fact, Mr Biden is expected to easily win a second term in 2024 by a 54.65/45.35 margin. People who were worried that the drone of “C'mon man” might be replaced with endless cackling are universally relieved.

Worthy of note, perhaps, is that requests for a complete membership list of the Central Committee, have been met with reactions ranging from mumbling obfuscation to complete silence. 

Latest Windows Update

 I have it from a strictly unconfirmed source that if you get the Gates-approved vaccination for the WuHan Flu, about 2 weeks after the second shot, if you have a Win10 computer, you no longer need either the mouse or keyboard. Your interface is a direct to-the-brain connection and is several orders of magnitude faster than typing or pushing a mouse around.

Possible side effects include automatic storage of all your data to Gates' cloud. If you query Microsoft about this, they will vehemently deny the whole story. I mean, what better proof can you get?

Medical Advances - The Human Condition

 Seems the whole human race is going to hell in a handbag:

Zombie nation: Third of adults walking around in concussion-like daze due to stress, lack of sleep

The stress of the daily grind plus the stress of the Chinky Pox plus the economic uncertainty... It's just too much. But wait! Help is on the way!

Hi-tech brain implants the size of a salt grain could let people choose their own mood.

What used to be done with a couple of drinks is now done with a small chip that drives LED lights implanted into the brain. The lights stimulate the right parts of the brain, and out comes a better attitude. So in the future, when you see someone with a glint in their eyes, it may be artificially induced. 

Who knows, it may even help with night vision. 

 

Science Marches Onward

 While China fiddles with trying to genetically improve their soldiers, we will build ours from scratch with NO human failings.

Pandemic Fun - With headlines!

 N.Y.Post has an article by a Yale prof speculating that once we get past the Chinky-Pox plague, the world can look forward to sex-crazed orgies and a period of wretched excesses. Sounds like fun.

At the same time, the President of Brazil. a medical authority in his own mind at least, is suggesting that the vaccines may have side effects including the feminization of men, women growing beards, and people generally mutating into Crocodiles. Kind of paints the upcoming orgies in a new light, no?

Keep your social contacts up, and keep the batteries in your phones charged as video of the above might become the next hot product. I'm visualizing a fancy house with my own lagoon where I can mate with/drag under and eat the supply of bearded bikini babes this will attract.

The Next Plague?

 O.K. who had this?

Escaped self-cloning mutant crayfish created in experimental breeding programmes have invaded a Belgian cemetery.

The good news is that they're tasty. I can't seem to get a decent link to the story but I found it on Yahoo news.

Link to story here.

Reloading Press

 A friend of mine had 2 of these things in his shop when he moved but had never seen them used, nor any idea what they were for. He figured they had to be good for something and guessed that I might think of something so he gave me one. 

It's all pneumatic and came with no tooling at all. It indexes through 8 stations and can be made to stop accurately so I thought I might try automating my reloading press. So far I've made 8 shell holders, the ring which will hold the tooling, and a frame to hold it all together. Shells are loaded at the 5 o'clock position, decapped at 6 o'clock where the tall tower is mounted, primed at 7, inspected for primer at 9, etc. 

This is proving to be a non-trivial project so don't hold your breath waiting for video of shells falling like rain at the 3 O'clock position. The primer inspection will be just a poke with a wire which will trigger a light if it goes too far up so that should be easy. All else is done from the top and might be done by mounting the tools on ball screws. I'm thinking it will be run from an Arduino controller so I can include emergency stops if one of the inspections fails or whatever

As I've warned you before, prepare for retirement by starting an unending project so you'll have a reason to get out of bed in the morning, and your immortality is virtually assured. If you don't, you'll be dead in 6 months.

Gun Stuff - Clearing Squibs

I have been changing the specs on my reloads recently, and as someone else once said "Nothing is more difficult than introducing a new order of things." For the 3rd time in 30 years of reloading, I got a squib in a match. We caught it when it happened so I didn't wind up like that fellow who found he had 17 slugs jammed in his barrel, but getting the one slug in my barrel out turned out to be more difficult than anyone imagined. Gun in question is a Hi Point 4095. Brand new. .40 cal.

I had been getting failures to extract occasionally at the end of a string, and so had added a dowel to my kit to push the recalcitrant last round out of the chamber. Works fine. 

NOTE DON'T try this on a stuck bullet. All it does is jam wood down around the bullet and further wedge the slug into the barrel.

When you find a cleaning rod, which is typically aluminum, DON'T BOTHER. I first tried a 3/8" Brass rod and hammer and got nowhere. I dismantled the gun and put the barrel and the rod into a hydraulic press. Bent the rod without moving the slug. I am willing to believe that without the wood, this trick might have worked but with both feet well down the rabbit hole...

Step 2: Made a 20" long drill bit. Used some of that brass rod, and drilled it to .312" (5/16) pressed the bit in and pinned it. Put some tape around the bit near the end just to be sure. Don't want the bit wandering. Peck drilled down the barrel, and first removed about 1-1/2" of crushed wood. Eventually started removing lead. Eventually the bit dropped through. Had to pry the remains of the bullet off the bit before retracting the bit. Success! Clean the remaining debris and back to shooting.

I straightened the brass pusher rod and added a steel weight so as to have a workable tool if this happens again. 

Here's the drill bit. This one is using an aluminum tube, 3/8" OD, 1/4" ID and a .281 drill bit. This is because I lost the brass original. Don't ask. The pin is 1/8" brass so no scratches.

Here it is with the hammer rod. My first squib happened in a Model 10 S&W revolver at a gun store range. I asked the folks there if they could help me and they tried the hammer and rod trick with no success at all and believe me they were really pounding on it. I eventually cleared that one by drilling the bullet and now am convinced that the "just push it out" approach is just wishful thinking.

So how long did it take me to clear that squib? About 2 days, including the time required to make the tools.

Lockdown - Day 737

So it's time to crush and bag the cans. Fortunately I'm ready:

The key to really getting good output is finding tires with a square profile.

This flattens them better. I suppose if it were up on casters, it would be easier to deploy and I could put a small waste basket underneath to catch the flattened cans. Oh well, the snow shovel also works well.

Anti-Virus Protection - Humor

The panic with which some people are taking the Kung Flu is creating both great hardship and at times great amusement. Here's some amusement.
Made from stuff I had lying around, starting with a space helmet made from an old Coors Party Ball with an air hose attached to the pump attachment. Anybody remember the Party Ball? I bought this one solely for the ball  itself. Took forever to drink about 2/3 of the beer, even with help from my friends. Eventually the last of the beer went flat and got tossed. The air hose was a necessity. Inside that helmet, the air gets stuffy fairly quickly.

 The small black square is a foam air filter from a small gas motor. Never used. At the bottom of the hose, there's a muffin fan from a computer to drive the air into the helmet

 The switch is to turn the fan on and off. I'm using 2 7.2V battery packs from RC toys to power the fan. Not very powerful, but good enough to keep the air in the helmet fresh.

Wouldn't be complete without the NASA worm on it. In this case that would stand for National Association of Squash Artillery. Yes, we've built pumpkin launching cannons as well.

Behind that imposing Imperial logo, are some holes to allow speaking in a threatening, echo-y tone.

A rig like this is becoming de rigeur at Wall Mart these days.

Is it for real? Well the helmet will keep my sneezes off of you, and the filter and long convoluted path will keep your cooties off of me so I guess it works.

One other thing: Don't wear hearing aids with this rig. The helmet induces really wretched feedback.

Soy Boys?

It seems there's more to Burger Kings Impossible Burger than meets the eye. The amount of gene splicing/mixing involved results in some characteristics you might want to think about.

It seems there's enough estrogen in an Impossible Burger to begin stimulating boob development in men. Of course they also mention

Just six glasses of soy milk per day has enough estrogen to grow boobs on a male. That’s the equivalent of eating four impossible whoppers per day.

That alone sounds like enough to keep the men away from the things, but I could see a sudden influx of women adding an Impossible burger and a glass of soy milk to their diet in hopes of a figure enhancement.

The link above also serves as a great example of Bills law of election year* statistics.

....and that it has a whopping 18 million times more estrogen than a standard Whopper.

 The red flag that immediately pops up is weather this number is, in fact, statistically significant. The amount of estrogen in a standard Whopper is as close to zero as not to matter. 18 million times a number that small is still pretty small.

*When you are given a number in a conversation, the real story is frequently in the percentage, and vice versa. This is true pretty much at all times although more so in an election year. Hearing about a 100% increase in the crime rate sounds awful until you find out that this means the cops issued 2 parking tickets this year as opposed to only one last year.

Helping The Handicapped?

Well, maybe. I saw a video of an attachment to a wheelchair that snapped on an electric front wheel which made the basic chair quick and agile. Looked like a swell idea. Priced at about $700 or about what you would pay for one of those kits to electrify your bicycle. Sounded about right as it included all the same parts.

Later I was visiting downtown and got to see myriad people using the Lyme electric scooters, tearing up and down the sometimes steep hills there. Get on, wave your credit card, and take off. Quick transport and no long term investment.

Put the two together and suddenly a person in a conventional wheelchair can get to the 16th st food court and back on a corporate lunch hour. I happened to have a couple of Razor scooters, and with a bit of scavenger hunting, I rustled up a chair:

The attachment includes a spring since you want some down force on the scooter. With a driver, the chairs front wheels barely touch the ground and there's enough travel to avoid getting high centered.

Scoot up to a scooter, wheelie over it, and use the clamps to get attached. This scooter has lawnmower batteries installed and sits about 1-1/2" higher than normal.

And off you go. Top speed depends on the scooter, but mine top out at 15 mph. I understand that the Lymes will make 20 and the city is trying to get them off the sidewalks as a menace to pedestrians. Maybe the scooters should have horns. Like the kind Texans like to put on the hoods of their Cadillacs.

The rig is fairly agile with a 4 or 5 ft turn radius. Since the chair is attached as a 5th wheel, backing is tricky but not impossible. OTOH scooters don't come with a reverse setting so be careful about taking one of these indoors. Not impossible, but really intended for outdoor use.

Having built this and tried it out, I notice that no 2 chair makers use a common frame layout which means that the adapter needs to be peculiar to your chair. Again, I don't know enough about the wheelchair market to say, but I would guess that 2 or 3 makers account for most of the market so maybe modest mass production is possible.

Clinton Considers Presidential Bid

With a brand new all graphite form fitting exoskeleton that can support a corpse and make it wave its arms and walk from Boston Robotics, this thing fits under a pantsuit with hardly any embarrassing lumps or bulges. Easily guided by 2 "bodyguards" and powered by small, flat, battery packs from otherwise unserviceable Blackberrys supplemented by discreet power connections in the soles of the shoes to hot spots behind the podium.