Monday 18 March 2024

eternal ascent (11. 434)

Via the Awesomer, we are directed to the latest 3D rendering challenge from computer-graphics designer Clinton Jones (see previously) soliciting from artists around the world to create a background and protagonist facing a seemingly endless climb. Working from the same template, it is amazing how each seconds-long clip in the montage, selected from the hundred best submissions, can do the heavy-lifting of world-building and stimulates the imagination to learn the character’s backstory and join this quest.

insatiable birdie (11. 433)

Via Miss Cellania, we not only learn the rather elegant physics and chemistry behind those sippy bird toys but also that researchers have given it an upgrade as a device to generate energy.

Sometimes mislabeled as a perpetual motion machine, the thirsty mechanism is a heat engine, two evacuated glass bulbs linked by a tube pivot on a crosspiece and turns the temperature gradient along the body into a pressure difference that translates to the mechanism. Water evaporates from the head (usually adorned with something absorbent like felt) and lowers the temperature and pressure and causes some of the vapour in the chamber to condense (usually ether, alcohol or chloroform) and the liquid is forced up the neck, causing it to tip forward. The ambient air temperature warms the bottom bulb and causes the cycle to repeat. The toy, originally called a Pulshammer was a German invention improved by Benjamin Franklin, after seeing one in action around 1768 and illustrates the principles of capillary action, wet-bulb temperature, heat of condensation as well as several laws of thermodynamics and idea gases and with the latest modifications also demonstrates the triboelectric effect (static electricity), harnessing it to power small appliances and seems overall like a pretty good educational apparatus, provoking thought while charging.  Who knew? More technical details and a video demonstration of the prototype at the link above.
 
synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit, Yugoslavian fashion plus climbing Everest (1923)

two years ago: more links to enjoy, two probes passing in the night, more shibboleths plus Arnold Schwarzenegger makes an appeal to the people of Russia

three years ago: RIP Yaphet Kotto, more links worth the revisit, Motown on tour (1965), mourning rings, fear of covering up plus the fashions of Birgitta Bjerke

four years ago: an iconic photograph from the battlefield (1942)

five years ago: Transit Driver Appreciation Day

Sunday 17 March 2024

wรผstungsperioden (11. 432)


Travelling a few villages over towards the former border, driving past some abandoned settlements, vacated owing to they’re being a liability too close to the boundary, we took another nice hike with the dog up to the ruins of Hutsburg on the summit of the Hutsberg, which also was a victim of its formerly strategic location and shifting allegiances.



On the way back, we stopped in Filke to revisit the so called Mauerschรคdel, another ruined remains, this time of early abandonment and then rendered inaccessible, like the above stronghold, during DDR times and its nave acting as the line of demarcation. 

 

you sad pocketbook of polluted purulence (11. 431)

Via Nag on the Lake’s always excellent Sunday Links, we are directed to a handy password generator created and coded by Ron Hardin that generates randomised phrases in the form of rather arch insults, which satisfies the hallmarks behind this top layer of security by being hard to guess, not readily susceptible to a brute-force attack and deliciously memorable, mostly alliterative, adhering to the techniques of champion memorisers. Especially if it’s work-related, it’s cathartic to hurl such aspersions into the void even if it is only for one’s benefit, aghast and empowerment—and are probably as secure as any alternative. See what scornful phrases you can come up with, you dear old harrowing can of cantankerous claptrap.

format cells (11. 430)

Though once deemed too dangerous to release to the public—though the verdict is still out—GPT-2 has been crammed into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, as an AI heuristic tool offline and running locally to teach developers how large language models work and hopefully inspiring the next phase of improvement. Still working off the autocomplete, next token prediction principle that underpins all present chat applications, users input prompts in adjacent fields and the algorithm tries to triangulate a response, and interesting in a way that’s constrained and self-contained so that those experimenting might be able to debug themselves or understand how the sentence building went awry. The other uses that people have shoehorned into the accounting software are always pretty fascinating and the binary file is free to download. More technical details and a tutorial are at the file’s link and at Ars Technica at the link above.

riding the rails (11. 429)

Via Damn Interesting, the start-up Ironlev demonstrates that it is possible to achieve magnetic levitation on existing train routes, successfully testing a prototype vehicle on the Adria-Mestre line near Venice whose speed topped out at seventy kilometres per hour. No modifications were made to the track to accommodate the maglev test carriage, and given the network of underutilised and in some cases abandoned rail infrastructure linking all parts of the continent, the potential applications, despite technical challenges, are significant for efficient and quick transportation of people and goods. Aside from a levitating service run briefly in Germany (die M-Bahn) to supplement gaps left in public transit following the fall of the Berlin Wall until reunification and a few other proof-of-concept trials, there are only six operational lines in China, South Korea and Japan presently with the biggest expensive and barrier to expansion being the high cost laying new dedicated tracks.

 synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit, a Gloria Gaynor classic plus “All You Tories”

two years ago: Leipzig After-Hours

three years ago: Joseph of Arimathea, Lost Horizon (1973) plus vaccination campaigns as portrayed in movies and television

four years ago: a homecoming staged for the cameras (1973) plus the art of Edward Hopper speaks to pandemic isolation

five years ago: St Patrick in the Russian Orthodox Church plus The Fourth Dimension and the Bible (1922)

Saturday 16 March 2024

heimatblick (11. 428)


 Before the weather turned, we took the dog on a hike up above Stockheim for a panoramic view of the village below. The diversion in the trail up the Tanzberg was a bequest from a local landowner stipulated in his will after an unfortunate farming accident. A bit further along the main path, we encountered a Blitzstein, a memorial for an anonymous resident and likely not the above donor struck and killed by lightning though now an unlikely occurrence given tree height in the vicinity though yet memorable and cautionary. 

I’ve noticed such small headstones before and wondered if they memorialised similar Acts of God—and wondered whether if this was all the individual received for funerary rites since it did sort of seem like divine punishment. When I first came to Germany and began noticing makeshift cenotaphs the just off the shoulder of the road, commemorating the victims of a traffic accident, I remember first thinking, there sure are a lot of people walking on the side of the road and getting killed by cars and thought that the country must have a problem with pedestrian deaths. 

Of course, during our walkies, I wasn’t preoccupied with such morbid thoughts, just wanted to know more about the practise and customs but was not able to find anything else out. Both spots were equipped with a nice picnic area and a wooden sun lounger for warmer weather.  It was a beautiful early spring day and we went on down the valley with a glimpse of the next town of Mellrichstadt off in the distance.

 

featherstonehaugh (11. 427)

Thanks to raft of gossip and speculation from 2019 revived in part due the obsession over the whereabouts of the Princess of Wales, we’ve been educated that the Marchioness of Cholmondeley of interest holds the peerage style of the Most Honourable Lady CHUM-lee, and so we appreciated these further lessons in pronunciation of historic British and Irish titles and surnames (respecting the fact that one’s name is pronounced how they tell you to pronounce it and subject to variation). There are some really non-intuitive examples like the title—usually said like Fernshaw—and while we would have liked more detailed explanations like with family name Menzies with its archaic letter ศ (yogh), it was nonetheless interesting to contemplate how those estranging shifts might have occurred, like with Geoghegan (GAY-gษ™n) or Wriothesley as RIZZ-lee.