Posts by BenWilson
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Up Front: Ups and Downs. And Side-to-Sides., in reply to Emma Hart,
Who needs the crowd mind when you've got common sense, eh?
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Hard News: Again: Is everyone okay?, in reply to Andi,
Wrting frm Lyttelton. Big ups to:
+1 Sometimes it's good to have armed forces! Sounds like they were bloody legends.
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Up Front: Ups and Downs. And Side-to-Sides., in reply to recordari,
It's not what I'm usually called upon for. I expect on day one I'd be cooking up whatever meat we had first because it won't keep. But frittata on day two sounds like an awesome way to use what you've got.
On the fridge note, question for Emma. How long did it stay cold for? I was thinking it might be a good idea to move the perishables to the freezer at some point, which would probably stay cold longer.
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An alternative if you don't have any alcohol gel is methylated spirits.
Waaay cheaper too - the local gas station has it for $8 a liter. Meths is handy stuff, it can be stored in ordinary plastic bottles. Good for cleaning and cooking (making a meths stove is really, really simple). But I'd rather be cooking on the BBQ, that's for sure.
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Up Front: Ups and Downs. And Side-to-Sides., in reply to Megan Wegan,
I've "tested" my toilet this way inadvertently before (didn't know the pipes were blocked), and the mess was shocking. Wouldn't wish it on anyone who doesn't have a decent functioning hose*.
*ETA: Speaking of lowering the tone, this is not an intentional innuendo.
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Up Front: Ups and Downs. And Side-to-Sides., in reply to Paul Campbell,
I've heard them say you should be careful flushing your toilet - do it once then wait a while and go and look for leakage between you and the street
Yes, preferably without a big poo in it the first time.
ETA: I'd almost think putting some coloring into the water on the first flush is a good idea, so you can find it outside if it is leaking. Or perhaps something with a noticeable smell (other than a poo) - like <draws blank> um shredded onions?
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Hard News: Again: Is everyone okay?, in reply to Greg Dawson,
I hadn't seen this one before. It is quite nice.
It had me in tears, Tina Turner lyrics sprang to mind: "You're one of the living".
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Up Front: Ups and Downs. And Side-to-Sides., in reply to Bart Janssen,
SO please if you do this, give the damn thing a really good clean first and then you probably still want to boil the resulting water.
I was thinking this, then I thought "with what shall I clean it?". Surely not all that lovely potable water I've got lying around?
You could, however, distill the product that came out. Uses a huge amount of electricity, but you don't get it much safer than that.
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Up Front: Ups and Downs. And Side-to-Sides., in reply to Deborah,
As you were then. Back to phones.
Aye. Silly anecdote here, but bear with me. An old guy I once lived with once described how during WW2 he was working in a control tower at an airbase, when he saw his best friend stuff up his landing, crashed and burned. He turned to the female officer next to him, and said "We better call the kitchen and tell them to cancel one of the lunches". She never spoke to him again, clearly thinking him incredibly cold.
I've thought about that many times since, and I don't think it was him being cold. He was coping the way a lot of people who have been in battle do, focusing on practical minutiae. He laughed about it when he was telling me, but there was a tear in his eye, he was laughing at himself, and how odd the war had made him. I expect the people digging up corpses right now are doing the same, following their drills and their instruments, taking care not to get too emotional about people they know are in there that they can't get to.
In some ways, it's what Emma is doing, blogging is normal for her, something she can do, like the gardening she mentioned. David's the same, I doubt he was writing on Tuesday night because he's going for a Pulitzer. It's a way of coping, a way of feeling normal when everything's gone to shit around you.
It's also how the wider PAS community is coping. We're feeling traumatized, to a much lesser extent, but still. Get on with it, help in ways that are practical. Keep the arguments to a minimum. That's abnormal, though, and actually hard to cope with, I feel a little stink for giving Deborah Coddington shit on Pundit. Maybe being an insensitive pedant was her way of coping. It was her excuse anyway.
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Up Front: Ups and Downs. And Side-to-Sides., in reply to SteveH,
That's how the airlines are justifying microcells in planes: if the phones can connect to a station in the plane then they can transmit at low enough power to not risk interference with the nav equipment.
Yes. Further to Bart's query, I'm fairly sure that the power required is not linear on the distance, but more like a square law. At least electromagnetic signals typically attenuate on an inverse square law, so it's plausible. In other words, double your distance from the cell, quadruple your power consumption from the signal. But there's a lot more going on to chew power than that. Contention was probably the biggest factor on Tuesday. I don't know much about the maths of that
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