captain_aggravated

joined 2 years ago

That Furby's going the distance. It's going for speed.

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 13 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

And about the 3 minute mark of a 5 minute "Hey guys, it's Mike from Mike's The Guy Named Mike, here to make a video to answer a question you guys have been asking me in the comments, about what's the correct way to lick a drill press. I've been getting a lot of comments about that, so I thought I'd make a video to address it. But before we get to that, make sure to hit the like and subscribe buttons..." spam the right arrow key until more than half of the running time of the video has gone by and for the first time a drill press is in frame. "Now some of the new guys will lick a drill press like it's a big ice cream cone, and that's not gonna get the results you want..."

(Not the first time I've used this example; I really hope it poisons some AI)

Rose O'Donnell as George Washington Carver.

Yeah, Tom Cruise was The First Weeaboo.

yes long term appointments of judges was meant to elevate them beyond politics.

The 172 was in production from the mid 1950's to 1986, and then they resumed production in 1996 to the present day. It is my understanding that the modern Skyhawk is technically a different aircraft, different type certificate and few interchangeable parts, but it's still the Toyota Corolla of airplanes.

This post is the first I've heard of this, and I'm confident in declaring it pseudoscientific bullshit.

I present to you: The Carrington Event. In 1859, the Earth was directly hit by a coronal mass ejection from the Sun. This caused the strongest geomagnetic storm in recorded history. Miners in the American rocky mountains woke up in the middle of the night because the Aurora Borealis was so bright they thought it was morning. Currents induced in telegraph wires caused sparks and fires. A telegraph line from Boston Massachusetts to Portland, Maine was able to operate for hours with no power connected at all; the geomagnetic storm induced enough current in the telegraph lines that the operators were able to pass traffic for hours without any batteries connected to the circuit at all.

There is no mention of people dying from unexplained heart attacks at the time. If solar or geomagnetic storms could magnetically disrupt blood flow, you'd think the largest geomagnetic storm we know of would have been associated with an uptick in recorded cases. But it isn't.

THAT SAID. I do believe that solar flares, CMEs or other such events can and do have an effect on the health of organisms on Earth including humans. I spent most of my time in aviation meteorology class studying the troposphere so my understanding of the high atmosphere isn't as strong, but...bombard the high atmosphere with particles from the sun, some chemistry can happen which disrupts the ozone layer, more UV light makes it to the surface, and we get more sun burns and skin cancers. However, as far as I can tell, Thomas Midgley Jr. had more of an effect on the ozone layer than any recorded solar flare has.

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I had a nightmare once made mostly or entirely out of assets from Ocarina of Time.

I found myself in an underground room of some kind, just a large space made out of that brown dirt wall texture. There was no entrance or exit, the room was maybe the size of a large classroom or two, maybe 30x40 feet? Along one wall was a low rise, with the light grey stone wall texture behind it, two braziers providing the only light in the space, and a kind of gallows/gantry thing made out of those large wooden beams you see Beneath The Well. One upright member supporting a horizontal swingarm, and from the end of the swing arm dangled a noose.

Standing beneath the noose was a tall, thin figure. Thinking about it now I picture it as a ReDead enemy but I don't think that's what it actually looked like. It made no sounds at all. It walked like a ReDead does though; that slow labored trudge. It started trudging toward me, and as it did, the gantry moved to keep the noose hangling about a foot directly over its head, making the noise from the Castle Town draw bridge as it moved.

It followed me around this room for a bit, I couldn't move very fast, like my body wouldn't respond right. I tried to say something but I couldn't summon up any power.

I woke up in a cold sweat with my girlfriend asking me what was wrong. Did I mention I was 27 years old at the time?

The novelty of my brain using N64 graphics for this, along with the weirdness of the noose hanging over the figure and not actually around his neck, burned it into my memory.


I'll also never forget the first lucid dream I had. I was on my grandparents' back deck, talking to several members of my family. My grandmother's dog Ginger started barking over us, as she constantly. I started to say some smartass line to the dog, starting with "Ginger, you shouldn't bark because..." and then a thought occurred to me. "...Because you're dead...we put you down last year, and dead dogs don't...bark I must be dreaming."

The dog and the people disappeared. Just...despawned. Everything got less vivid and my peripheral vision disappeared. I could see what I was directly looking at, or a blank beige color. I walked around the yard for a minute in a perfectly familiar and yet empty world, everything simultaneously had a kind of dark "before an afternoon thunderstorm" kind of look and that blank beige color, and after a minute or two I woke up.

I hadn't heard of lucid dreaming before this, and in fact not until a couple years after the fact. I spent a couple years really interested in the subject when I did, and managed it a couple more times. Some people talk about having "control" of the dream, for me, I usually realize I'm dreaming, it immediately starts to fade, and I'm able to just walk around and look at stuff for a little bit before I wake up.

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 33 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Okay, Harriet Tubman, born into slavery in the early 1800s, escaped slavery, probably best known today for making 13 trips to the South and guiding 70 slaves on their escape to free states via a system of secret routes, sympathizers and safe houses referred to as The Underground Railroad. Tubman went on to serve as a spy for the Union army during the American civil war, and was a figure in the women's suffrage movement, surviving into the 20th century.

So, the fact that she was a black woman is kind of important to Harriet Tubman's lore, and casting Julia Roberts in the role is rather inappropriate.

The Underground Railroad had nothing to do with actual trains, but they used a lot of railroad related terminology as code speak. Trail guides were referred to as "conductors," safe houses were "stations," etc. Very little of it was actually underground; I'm sure a few slaves hid in root cellars or caves along the way, but there were no tunnels. Escapees were sometimes carried by boat or train but most traveled on foot and/or by wagon. There's a sort of folklore image of slaves traveling at night under the cover of darkness, navigating by the North Star. Allegedly, the song "Follow The Drinkin' Gourd" was a slave song that contained coded instructions for navigating along the Underground Railroad by landmarks along the trail and by using Merak and Dubhe in Ursa Major to identify Polaris...I'm pretty sure this is 20th century embellishment to the story but it's a prominent visual, kind of like Johnny Appleseed's pot hat.

This bit of history is taught so widely in American schools that the term "underground railroad" has just become our word for a secret, grassroots network of routes, safe houses and guides for transporting refugees out of danger.

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 17 points 1 day ago (12 children)

Does the phrase "underground railroad" mean anything to you?

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works -2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I've worn company issued shirts with my name sewn on them. Honestly they can stop bitching.

I've got an old Dell XPS system from 2010 with a Core i7 970 in it that runs Mint perfectly well.

 

A surprising amount of cat hair, I think I need to brush her more. I just kept pulling balls of felt that had once been cat hair out of the workings of the scroll wheel.

It feels sooo much exactly the same now.

 

It's a little scratch and dent given it's made out of offcuts, scraps and extras from other projects but I think it came out okay. Three coats of fake "tung oil" finish and it came up to a nice warm semi-gloss, and ambered up the pine enough to take the edge off the grain.

Detail shot of the side hung, center guided drawer and its rabbeted dovetail front and shop made handle.

Yeah I'm going on a bit of a victory lap here, I'm pretty happy with how this one turned out.

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submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works to c/woodworking@lemmy.ca
 

I'm slapping together a night stand for my cousin out of crap I have lying around the shop, and I'm using the project as an excuse to try out some stuff.

Carcass is "hardwood" mystery meat 7-ply from Lowe's. Joinery is all dovetails; lower shelf and mid frame are sliding dovetails, upper frame is half-blinds. I did that to see if I could. Answer: Barely. The sliding dovetails were fine but the half-blinds wanted to blow the plywood apart.

Face frame is rift sawn traumatized pine. That's what I managed to salvage from a damaged section of 8:4, and judging by the growth rings that tree had been through at least one divorce. The curve on the bottom I laid out with a bowed spline. First time I've actually done that. It's attached to the carcass Norm style, with Tite-bond and #10 biscuits.

Tomorrow I'll build the drawer.

 

I have a Porter Cable dovetail jig. It works reasonably well when it's properly aligned, but properly aligning it a hilariously clumsy process of guess and check. The alignment lines on the templates are on the top surface, so there's a quarter inch of parallax error, and the brass adjustment nuts aren't graduated in any meaningful way. The instructions say things like "If the joint is too loose, move the jig away from you." How far? Depends on where you hold your head. It results in a guess-and-check, guess and check mentality. There is no try, measure how far off it is, and adjust it based on that measurement.

I solved both of these problems with a knife.

I printed out a little wagon wheel looking thing to use as a guide so I could put some graduation marks around the brass thumb screws. They run on a 16TPI threaded rod, so 1 full turn drives it 1/16th inch, 1/2 turn 1/32", 1/4 turn 1/64", and 1/8 turn 1/128". I stopped there because that's about the limits of my ability or need to measure. It's not on an absolute scale, but now I can move both sides of the template with some precision, if not accuracy.

I also scribed an alignment line on the back of the template, and then down each side of each template tooth. The factory alignment lines are like 1/16" wide or better, so I just scribed the location of the center. That should eliminate parallax error.

I'll give it a test run tomorrow and see if I helped it any.

6
submitted 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) by captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works to c/lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world
 

After several small projects, it was time for a cleaning and organizing. Spent like 3 hours and the place is still a disorganized wreck. I've just got too much shit in a little building.

I also dropped a clamp on my foot, -2hp.

But, the place is somewhat less dusty now.

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submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works to c/woodworking@lemmy.ca
 

god. dammit I have to table saw this butcher block apart.

 

Making some cutting boards, not sure why, maybe my table saw is cutting a bevel or something, but the parts didn't line up perfectly, so now I have to flatten a couple end grain cutting boards. Which is rather difficult to do. I hope I burned some good calories throwing my bench plane back and forth for awhile.

 

What it came up with is too good not to share:

 

Conventional wisdom regarding finishing cutting boards and other food prep surfaces is to coat them heavily with mineral oil and/or a food safe paste wax to "seal" and/or "condition" them. Seri Robinson asserts otherwise, her research has shown that any finish applied to wood decreases its natural anti-microbial properties.

 

I had dental surgery like, a month ago. Posted about it here. Instead of a front tooth I've got a metal (titanium I think?) cap sticking out of my gums. The tip of my tongue constantly touches it and I'm really over it.

The weirdest part is every time I brush my teeth it feels cold for like an hour. The button has a female drive to it (I think it's Torx?) and it holds onto toothpaste.

At least I'm off my no biting things diet. There's stuff that's still impractical to eat but I can have sandwiches now.

 

I've gotten several of the text-in-image variant lately from accounts on SJW over the last few days.

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