waffles
breakfast food
No bio...
User ID: 3250
waffles
breakfast food
25d ago
I do have one of the gradual brightening wake lights. I purchased it probably 6+ years ago now, but I believe it's the Philips HF3520.
Dumb idea, but you might be able to try a fluorescent light in the fixture. Those usually take a few minutes to get up to full brightness, especially if it's cold in the room. The wake light I have can be programmed to brighten over about half an hour.
waffles
breakfast food
25d ago
I read the Matthew Walker book when it first came out. At the time I was sleeping maybe about 6-ish hours on weeknights, maybe 8-9 on weekends, sleeping in or whatever after staying up late or going out, dreading the alarm clock on a Monday morning, all-around normal stuff for someone in their mid 20s. In retrospect, there were hints that I wasn't getting enough rest to function well (e.g. tiredness during mid-afternoon, inability to focus on highly technical work, waking up groggy on weekday mornings) but guess I didn't pay much attention to that until I finished the book.
(Obviously our bodies are all different, some of us need more sleep than others, and I feel like I'm sightly on the right side of the bell curve for quantity of sleep required to function optimally)
I made some lifestyle changes, some major, some minor. The most significant was consistently sleeping and waking up at the same time. I got myself a wake light, and started using that instead of an alarm clock. After a while, I realized that I could wake up without an audible alarm, and the feeling of waking up refreshed, every morning, instead of to a blaring alarm clock, beat the pants off my former lifestyle.
Minor ones included avoiding blue lights or bright lights before going to bed (to the best of my ability) which makes it easier to fall asleep. I also cut out alcohol near bedtime, which appears to give the sense of deep sleep but studies (?) and personal experience suggests otherwise.
It wasn't until a couple months of this that I realized how truly sleep deprived I was before. Consistent quality sleep is truly mind-altering and I can't imagine going back.
waffles
breakfast food
26d ago
Weekly, I probably do about 2x45 minutes cardio and 2x30 minutes weights. Not a huge amount of time, but I've been consistent throughout most of my adult life. My schedule makes it such that I generally work out in the afternoons, but if it were my choice, I'd be working out first thing in the morning. My understanding, and this is more going off of vibes than a particular scientific study, is that it isn't so good to work out before bedtime, it gets your body all worked up rather than winding down for sleep.
Good to hear the progress. I am a huge fan of pullups, and having a doorway pullup bar really lets you squeeze them in anytime. I only read through your last couple posts so I'm not sure how much of a fitness background you have, but it sounds like you're getting back into shape.
I will say from personal experience, after about fifteen years of consistently working out, that nothing will mess you up more than an injury. It seems like you've got a good habit going on - make sure that you don't pull, strain, or twist something that can cause you to lose the ability to exercise. That's almost an inevitability if you push yourself too hard, and sometimes it isn't worth that last rep - especially if you're exercising for general fitness, not competition.
If you're looking for other compact and versatile equipment for the home, I would highly recommend an ab roller, kettlebells, and/or resistance bands. For $50 worth of equipment you can greatly increase the number of muscle groups you target.
Good luck
waffles
breakfast food
1mo ago
I understand your design now, after you posted your drawing. And it also makes sense that the cooling/utilities system is going to be a small part of the overall project, so no need to waste time scrutinizing that part.
Have you considered what happens if there's a leak of coolant into the dielectric fluid? Or do you expect the piping to outlast the life of the installation?
waffles
breakfast food
1mo ago
This is quite an undertaking for a solo venture. I'm assuming that you've got some other folks on the side working with you but it sounds like you're doing most of the heavy lifting yourself. I wish you good luck on your travels this upcoming weekend.
I don't think I follow the schematic of your cooling system entirely. So it's hard to follow your calculations if I don't quite get the whole picture, even if the equations by themselves make sense. Maybe drawing a P&ID would assist the audience? I know, asking a lot from an internet stranger.
A couple of thoughts that came to me as I was reading through your post - wondering if there is any benefit in sizing down the cooling system to better deploy the capital elsewhere? Obviously it is important to have engineering margin, and it sounds like you're building the cooling system to accommodate the hottest of days. The other option would be to size it down slightly, and decrease the number of miners you run on the hottest days of the year. In other words, instead of 99.9% uptime for the cooling system, might it be worth evaluating what 99% uptime can get you? You can always upsize the cooling system on the next build. Or you could add provisions in the piping so that you can connect additional cooling in the future, in case the design doesn't perform the way you expected.
Will be glad to talk about electrical when you get there.
waffles
breakfast food
1mo ago
This is pretty similar to my sentiments as well. The version of LA you may think of from the movies no longer exists and the city has been coasting on its reputation for a while. That being said, LA is an agglomeration of cities of varying sizes, some doing better than others, and many of them are still fantastic places to visit.
If you're looking for a place to stay with family, I'd suggest the area around Marina Del Rey - Playa Vista - Culver City. It's just a short drive from all the interesting bits of Westside LA but also relatively quiet. There are also a lot of small boutique hotels up West Hollywood/Beverly Hills/Sunset Strip which are quite nice and walking distance to a lot of restaurants and nightlife if that's on the agenda. I wouldn't stay in DTLA unless it's a high-end hotel. Pasadena is also just a short drive from DTLA, and may be a destination on its own. It has very "classic California" vibes. There isn't a lot for tourists immediately South or East of DTLA.
LA during the holiday season is very pleasant, you will find that many people in the city have "gone home" for the holidays. Traffic will be a lot lighter than usual around the time you're visiting. Hopefully you don't encounter gloomy weather during your travels here.
waffles
breakfast food
1mo ago
I've been a fan of Scott Sumner's movie reviews, and he recently created a website compiling all of the movies he has covered: https://www.sumnerscores.com/
I don't recall seeing any Coen brothers movies, but I feel like I should. I plan to watch The Ballad of Buster Scruggs this weekend.
I recently saw Apollo 11, which was perhaps one of the best documentary films I've ever seen. Be sure to watch it in 4k, they cleaned up historical footage and it feels like you're watching it live. Everyone knows about the moon landings in general, but this documentary drives home the incredible difficulties they faced while trying to execute the mission.
waffles
breakfast food
1mo ago
I saw some of your posts from the past week or two, that you're doing a lot of this from scratch. I'm interested in what you're doing on the utilities side (heat exchanger, PLCs, power). I have about a decade of experience as an engineer in the heavy industrial space, mostly on power distribution (which I can speak to quite well), but I have some basic experience with industrial controls as well (which I have enough knowledge to be dangerous). My day job is a very scaled-up version of what you intend to do, but the principles are the same.
If you're running into technical challenges, I'd be glad to bounce some ideas back and forth.
An unsolicited open-source reference that you might find useful, mostly applicable to North American practices, but might be a good jumping-off point: https://ibiblio.org/kuphaldt/socratic/sinst/doc/liii.html (Lessons in Industrial Instrumentation)
waffles
breakfast food
2mo ago
I've made it a habit to put everything worth memorizing into an Anki card on my phone. Names of acquaintances I have met, dates of historical events I am interested in, vocabulary, formulas and constants that I use in my line of work or hobbies, phone numbers, just to name a few common ones. Spaced repetition is the only method that has worked for me. Memorizing the major system also helps for memorizing numbers. I review the cards once a day on my phone, it takes me less than 5 minutes.
waffles
breakfast food
2mo ago
It's not difficult at all to get a board connected to your phone (via bluetooth) or home wifi network. About an hour or two of tinkering should get you up and running. If your home is located at a good vantage point and in a populated area, you should be able to connect to other folks quite easily, otherwise you might have to try going up a hill, or mounting the device outside. I use a portable USB battery pack to power it up on the go.
This was a month or two already, but when I was searching around online it seemed like the Heltec v3 was the cheapest and most popular product available that came with a case and antenna, so I figured to jump on the bandwagon. Worst case you'd be $20 in the hole. Make sure you get the one with the correct frequency for your country.
Not sure how many guerilla Meshtastic installations there are out there! If you ever run into any issues you might have to take it down so it needs to be at least somewhat accessible.
waffles
breakfast food
2mo ago
I recently bought a Meshtastic board, a Heltec v3. For those who aren't familiar, this is a license-free low-bandwidth LoRA (long range-radio) device that can reach out very long distances on minimal power. The Meshtastic platform is a peer-to-peer network that supports text and data communication, the most notable part being that each device on the network is a node that receives and re-transmits messages to other nodes around them. In areas with good coverage, it means that you can potentially send messages to someone several hundred miles away from a board the size of a pack of gum.
I'm in a metropolitan area but at the base of a hill and don't have a very good connection to the rest of the nodes in my area. If I had the space, I would make a solar node (enclosure, solar panel, charge controller, battery, Meshtastic board, and antenna) and mount it on the roof, but unfortunately I live in an apartment and can't quite do that. However, if I find a good spot in the future, I might perform a guerilla installation somewhere nearby. Ideally it would be somewhere I frequent, since I would need Wifi or Bluetooth to connect to the node with my phone.
You can find a Meshtastic kit on Aliexpress for maybe $35 shipped, I would highly encourage anyone with even a passing interest in radio to pick one up and play around with it for a weekend.
waffles
breakfast food
2mo ago
I also got into bicycling around 3 years ago, it was the middle of Covid and I was looking for a versatile outdoor hobby and bicycling fit the bill very well. I was occasionally riding an old steel-frame road bike I had since college, but the bicycles you can get these days with some disposable income blew it completely out of the water. I ended up getting a gravel bike (aluminum frame, carbon fork) and it feels like going from your parents' old hatchback to a sports car. It makes a lot of sense for those of us who only have the space for one or two bikes and aren't that interested in going on rougher terrain. I carry around a compact hand pump, so I can ride on pavement to the trailhead, drop the pressure, ride on the trails, and pump back up when I want to ride home. I also have a set of Crankbrothers doubleshot pedals, which has clips on one side and flat on the other, so I can wear whichever pair of shoes makes sense for where I'm going.
At some point, I would like to own and use a proper mountain bike with suspension, but that will have to be a future endeavor.
waffles
breakfast food
3mo ago
I'm about halfway through "Legal Systems Very Different from Ours". I don't remember where I came across this book, but I put it on my to-read list a year or two ago and recently picked it up. I don't know too much about the author, but it seems like he became interested in this topic and went through a bunch of secondary-source material and compiled this book with his findings. The author put the book on his website: http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Legal%20Systems/LegalSystemsContents.htm
Most chapters are self-contained. Some particularly interesting ones that stuck with me were "Prisoners' Law" which puts prison gangs in a new perspective (might it actually be in prisoners' best interests to have an informal law-and-order system within the prison?) and "Pirate Law" which shows how a bunch of outlaws paradoxically create a new set of laws.
I picked up a used microscope a few weeks back. Got it off a former veterinary student on Craigslist who no longer needed it. It has 4x-10x-40x-100x objectives with a 10x eyepiece and it came with a bunch of accessories (slides, slide covers, dyes, tools), enough to keep an amateur microscope user occupied for a while. I just bought some slide mounting media (for making permanent slides) and immersion oil (for the 100x eyepiece, I learned that some high-magnification objectives are designed for a drop of oil between itself and the specimen being observed).
I have scraped off various samples from around the house to look at. They include:
I found a dead bee on my patio outside and brought it in with the intention of making a permanent slide, but while waiting for the mounting media to be delivered, my cat found it and ate it, so there goes that.
Next time I am out and about, I will try to gather some interesting samples (pond scum? tide pools? decaying plant matter?)
At some point I intend to get an eyepiece camera so I can connect it to my computer and take photos and video, which would be cool.
Anyone have any suggestions on other things I can do with this thing?
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