Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Beef 101

Beef Infographic

Source: FrugalDad

Monday, April 16, 2012

Diesel Generator Engine

This is a video of me hand-crank starting my generator engine, before I connected the generator head to it. This Changfa S195 is so easy to hand start, there is little reason to use the electric starter. My S1100 (larger version of the same engine) is the same way. My air-cooled 10 hp diesel on the other hand wears me out even if I use the glow plug, so battery start is almost mandatory on it. The "2 by 4 brake horsepower" test is not a recommended way to load the engine, by the way, because it could theoretically cause the flywheel to shatter due to rapid heat buildup. I think that would only happen if there were already a flaw in the flywheel, but I still don't recommend it. It is a good idea to put some kind of load on any diesel engine though, especially a new one that is not yet broken in, to help seat the rings. If you run a new diesel too long without a load, it can create a glaze on the cylinder walls and start using oil. In Alaska where many people rely on diesel generators for their home power, a generator will occasionally lose power and start using a lot of oil. So the owner has to haul it to the shop for service. "Service" typically means running it into a load bank that is near 100% of its capacity, for about a week. That usually solves the problem. BTW, the revolver is a stainless Ruger Single Six with the .22 Magnum cylinder in place. We have copperheads and timber rattlers around here. Besides that, small engines and guns go hand in hand. They're both about freedom and self-sufficiency, and the government wants to ban both of them. You can see more of this engine here, here and here.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

How DC Generators And Motors Work



This is a US Department of Defense film about the design, theory and operation of DC generators and motors.

Saturday, April 7, 2012

How To Remain Silent (Open Carry)

This is how it's done. You can tell the cops didn't like it, and really wanted to push the encounter and make it a lot bigger deal than it needed to be. After all, what else do they have to do? It's not a hassle at all, to them. I think some cops sometimes forget (or don't care) that private citizens have better things to do than hang around and play twenty questions with them. Whenever anyone posts a video like this, there are always people (cops and cop "groupies," mostly) who comment about people being "rude and obnoxious" to cops while standing for their rights. The problem is that in a huge percentage of cases, cops have pushed the issue well beyond what is even legal. Those "obnoxious" people have brought the issue to the attention of the general public, with the result that police departments must address the issue with their officers to ward off lawsuits. As noted above, you can tell these cops don't like it, especially the contacting officer. You can see it in his somewhat condescending attitude. But you can also tell that the issue has been addressed with their department, which is why they didn't force the issue. The guy with the camera did just right. If he had answered even one simple question, that would have made it a consensual contact. That makes it an official contact, and he would then have to follow the rules of the jurisdiction for official contacts: show ID, etc. A lot of people don't realize this, hence you hear questions like "what can it hurt to answer a couple of simple questions to allay the cop's concerns?" Notice: I am not a lawyer, and this does not constitute legal advice. Jurisdictions vary; check the laws in your own area. Maybe even print them out and carry them with you.




Friday, April 6, 2012

Cyberpunk Manifesto

This is something interesting I found on the web. Cyberpunk Manifesto By Christian As. Kirtchev We are the ELECTRONIC MINDS, a group of free-minded rebels. Cyberpunks. We live in Cyberspace, we are everywhere, we know no boundaries. This is our manifest. The Cyberpunks' manifest. I. Cyberpunk 1/ We are those, the Different. Technological rats, swimming in the ocean of information. 2/ We are the retiring, little kid at school, sitting at the last desk, in the corner of the class room. 3/ We are the teenager everybody considers strange 4/ We are the student hacking computer systems, exploring the depth of his reach. 5/ We are the grown-up in the park, sitting on a bench, laptop on his knees, programming the last virtual reality. 6/ Ours is the garage, stuffed with electronics. The soldering iron in the corner of the desk and the nearby disassembled radio- they are also ours. Ours is the cellar with computers, buzzing printers and beeping modems. 7/ We are those that see reality in a different way. Our point of view shows more than ordinary people can see. They see only what is outside, but we see what is inside. That's what we are - realists with the glasses of dreamers. 8/ We are those strange people, almost unknown to the neighborhood. People, indulged in their own thoughts, sitting day after day before the computer, ransacking the net for something. We are not often out of home, just from time to time, only to go to the nearby radio shack, or to the usual bar to meet some of the few friends we have, or to meet a client, or to the backstreet druggist... or just for a little walk. 9/ We do not have many friends, only a few with whom we go to parties. Everybody else we know we know on the net. Our real friends are there, on the other side of the line. We know them from our favorite IRC channel, from the News-Groups, from the systems we hang-around: 10/ We are those who don't care about what people think about us, we don't care what we look like or what people talk about us in our absence. 11/ The majority of us like to live in hiding, being unknown to everybody except those few we must inevitably contact with. 12/ Others love publicity, they love fame. They are all known in the underground world. Their names are often heard there. But we are all united by one thing - we are Cyberpunks. 13/ Society does not understand us, we are "weird" and "crazy" people in the eyes of the ordinary people who live far from information and free ideas. Society denies our way of thinking - a society, living, thinking and breathing in one and only one way - a cliche. 14/ They deny us for we think like free people, and free thinking is forbidden. 15/ The Cyberpunk has outer appearance, he is no motion. Cyberpunks are people, starting from the ordinary and known to nobody person, to the artist-technomaniac, to the musician, playing electronic music, to the superficial scholar. 16/ The Cyberpunk is no literature genre anymore, not even an ordinary subculture. The Cyberpunk is a stand-alone new culture, offspring of the new age. A culture that unites our common interests and views. We are a unit. We are Cyberpunks. II. Society 1/ The Society which surrounds us is clogged with concervacy pulling everything and everybody to itself, while it sinks slowly in the quicksands of time. 2/ However doggedly some refuse to believe it, it is obvious that we live in a sick society. The so called reforms which our governments so adeptly use to boast, are nothing else but a little step forward, when a whole jump can be done. 3/ People fear the new and unknown. They prefer the old, the known and checked truths. They are afraid of what the new can bring to them. They are afraid that they can lose what they have. 4/ Their fear is so strong that it has proclaimed the revolutionary a foe and a the free idea - its weapon. That's their fault. 5/ People must leave this fear behind and go ahead. What's the sense to stick to the little you have now when you can have more tomorrow. Everything they must do is stretch their hands and feel for the new; give freedom to thoughts, ideas, to words: 6/ For centuries each generation has been brought up is a same pattern. Ideals is what everybody follows. Individuality is forgotten. People think in a same way, following the cliche drilled in them in childhood, the cliche-education for all children: And, when someone dares defy authority, he is punished and given as a bad example. "Here is what happens to you when you express your own opinion and deny your teacher's one". 7/ Our society is sick and need to be healed. The cure is a change in the system... III. The System 1/ The System. Centuries-old, existing on principles that hang no more today. A System that has not changed much since the day of its birth. 2/ The System is wrong. 3/ The System must impose its truth upon us so that it can rule. The government needs us follow it blindly. For this reason we live in an informational eclipse. When people acquire information other that that from the government, they cannot distinguish the right from the wrong. So the lie becomes a truth - a truth, fundamental to everything else. Thus the leaders control with lies and the ordinary people have no notion of what is true and follow the government blindly, trusting it. 4/ We fight for freedom of information. We fight for freedom of speech and press. For the freedom to express our thoughts freely, without being persecuted by the system. 5/ Even in the most-developed and 'democratic' countries, the system imposes misinformation. Even in the countries that pretend to be the cradle of free speech. Misinformation is one of the system's main weapon. A weapon, they use very well. 6/ It is the Net that helps us spread the information freely. The Net, with no boundaries and information limit 7/ Ours is yours, yours is ours. 8/ Everyone can share information, no restrictions. 9/ Encrypting of information is our weapon. Thus the words of revolution can spread uninterrupted, and the government can only guess. 10/ The Net is our realm, in the Net we are Kings.11/ Laws. The world is changing, but the laws remain the same. The System is not changing, only a few details get redressed for the new time, but everything in the concept remains the same. 12/ We need new laws. Laws, fitting the times we live in, with the world that surrounds us. Not laws build on the basis of the past. Laws, build for today, laws, that will fit tomorrow. 13/ The laws that only refrain us. Laws that badly need revision. IV. The vision 1/ Some people do not care much about what happens globally. They care about what happens around them, in their micro-universe. 2/ These people can only see a dark future, for they can only see the life they live now. 3/ Others show some concern about the global affairs. They are interested in everything,in the future in perspective, in what is going to happen globally. 4/ They have a more optimistic view. To them the future is cleaner and more beautiful, for they can see into it and they see a more mature man, a wiser world. 5/ We are in the middle. We are interested in what happens now, but what in what's gonna happen tomorrow as well. 6/ We look in the net, and the net is growing wide and wider. 7/ Soon everything in this world will be swallowed by the net: from the military systems to the PC at home. 8/ But the net is a house of anarchy. 9/ It cannot be controlled and in this is its power. 10/ Every man will be dependent on the net. 11/ The whole information will be there, locked in the abysses of zeros and ones. 12/ Who controls the net, controls the information. 13/ We will live in a mixture of past and present. 14/ The bad come from the man, and the good comes from technology. 15/ The net will control the little man, and we will control the net. 16/ For is you do not control, you will be controlled. 17/ The Information is POWER! V. Where are we? 1/ Where are we? 2/ We all live in a sick world, where hatred is a weapon, and freedom - a dream. 3/ The world grows so slowly. It is hard for a Cyberpunk to live in an underdeveloped world, looking the people around him, seeing how wrongly they develop. 4/ We go ahead, they pull us back again. Society suppresses us. Yes, it suppresses the freedom of thought. With its cruel education programs in schools and universities. They drill in the children their view of things and every attempt to express a different opinion is denied and punished. 5/ Our kids grow educated in this old and still unchanged system. A system that tolerates no freedom of thought and demands a strict obedience to the rules... 6/ In what a worlds, how different from this, could we live now, if people were making jumps and not creeps. 7/ It is so hard to live in this world, Cyberpunk. 8/ It is as if time has stopped. 9/ We live on the right spot, but not in the right time. 10/ Everything is so ordinary, people are all the same, their deeds too. As if society feels an urgent need to live back in time. 11/ Some, trying to find their own world, the world of a Cyberpunk, and finding it, build their own world. Build in their thoughts, it changes reality, lays over it and thus they live in a virtual world. The thought-up, build upon reality: 12/ Others simply get accustomed to the world as it is. They continue to live in it, although they dislike it. They have no other choice but the bare hope that the world will go out of its hollow and will go ahead.13/ What we are trying to do is change the situation. We are trying to adjust the present world to our needs and views. To use maximally what is fit and to ignore the trash. Where we can't, we just live in this world, like Cyberpunks, no matter how hard, when society fights us we fight back.14/ We build our worlds in Cyberspace. 15/ Among the zeros and ones, among the bits of information. 16/ We build our community. The community of Cyberpunks. Unite! Fight for your rights! We are the ELECTRONIC MINDS, a group of free-minded rebels. Cyberpunks. We live in Cyberspace, we are everywhere, we know no boundaries. This is our manifest. The Cyberpunks' Manifest. February 14, 1997 Christian As. Kirtchev Public Domain Dedication This work is dedicated to the Public Domain. Brought to you by The Cyberpunk Project

Thursday, April 5, 2012

How To Set Rivets

Rivets are useful for joining metal, leather and other materials to make all kinds of useful stuff. I have used copper rivets to make belts and harnesses, and it is a simple matter to make any knife or tool sheath or holster you need. I found an article on Instructables that details how to peen a rivet, and discusses the use of common nails as rivets. Read more here.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Free Culture Manifesto

The mission of the Free Culture movement is to build a bottom-up, participatory structure to society and culture, rather than a top-down, closed, proprietary structure. Through the democratizing power of digital technology and the Internet, we can place the tools of creation and distribution, communication and collaboration, teaching and learning into the hands of the common person — and with a truly active, connected, informed citizenry, injustice and oppression will slowly but surely vanish from the earth. We believe that culture should be a two-way affair, about participation, not merely consumption. We will not be content to sit passively at the end of a one-way media tube. With the Internet and other advances, the technology exists for a new paradigm of creation, one where anyone can be an artist, and anyone can succeed, based not on their industry connections, but on their merit. We refuse to accept a future of digital feudalism where we do not actually own the products we buy, but we are merely granted limited uses of them as long as we pay the rent. We must halt and reverse the recent radical expansion of intellectual property rights, which threaten to reach the point where they trump any and all other rights of the individual and society. The freedom to build upon the past is necessary for creativity and innovation to thrive. We will use and promote our cultural heritage in the public domain. We will make, share, adapt, and promote open content. We will listen to free music, look at free art, watch free film, and read free books. All the while, we will contribute, discuss, annotate, critique, improve, improvise, remix, mutate, and add yet more ingredients into the free culture soup. We will help everyone understand the value of our cultural wealth, promoting free software and the open-source model. We will resist repressive legislation which threatens our civil liberties and stifles innovation. We will oppose hardware-level monitoring devices that will prevent users from having control of their own machines and their own data. We won’t allow the content industry to cling to obsolete modes of distribution through bad legislation. We will be active participants in a free culture of connectivity and production, made possible as it never was before by the Internet and digital technology, and we will fight to prevent this new potential from being locked down by corporate and legislative control. If we allow the bottom-up, participatory structure of the Internet to be twisted into a glorified cable TV service — if we allow the established paradigm of creation and distribution to reassert itself — then the window of opportunity opened by the Internet will have been closed, and we will have lost something beautiful, revolutionary, and irretrievable. The future is in our hands; we must build a technological and cultural movement to defend the digital commons. From freeculture.org

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Selling Online

Just a little rant, and a warning for those who are considering selling some items on a certain large, unnamed auction site. The site I am talking about is a household word, and it has a subsidiary that is an online bank used by millions of people to transfer funds online. You all know what I am talking about; I am not naming it because I am not interested in being sued. My complaint is that the auction site leaves almost no option but to use their online bank to receive payment for what you sell; and if a buyer decides to steal your item and demand a refund without returning the item, the auction site and its bank assumes that whatever the buyer says is the truth. There are thieves trolling the auction site whose m.o. is to buy an item and then upon receipt immediately institute a chargeback, claiming that the item was not as described (but of course they want to keep it, for their trouble). In my case (this time) it was an alternator. I specifically stated that there was no warranty and no return, even though I personally tested the alternator and it worked fine. The thief buyer received the item, instituted a chargeback, and checked the "not as described" box. Since I checked the "no returns" box when I listed the item, "not received" and "not as described" were the only options. The auction site's online bank seized the money from my account and sided with the "buyer" with no proof whatsoever. My only options were a full refund with or without return of the item, or a refund of most of the money (not even enough left to cover my shipping cost) with no return. Given those choices, I offered a full refund with return of the item. In the fine print, the auction site states that they will refund the money to the thief buyer upon receipt of proof that a package was shipped to me. Here is what I expect to happen: I will receive a package containing the bad alternator that my alternator replaced. I don't know; maybe he will just ship an empty box. Either way, the auction site (which does business very similarly to the Mafia) will be satisfied. What set me off so much was the email I received from the online bank after I agreed to a full refund after return of the alternator. In this email they stated that their "investigation" determined that the "buyer is entitled" to a refund. I am fully aware that this was just a form letter, but it truly added insult to injury. By the way, this auction site instituted a new rule awhile back that the seller can no longer even post negative feedback against a buyer. On that site, it is not "buyer beware;" it is "seller beware." I have disliked this particular auction site for years, because of the control-freak way they do business and also because they are overtly anti-gun. I have also done business with Amazon.com and with Google for years, and I heartily recommend them as alternatives to the big name auction site. Amazon is just as established, and it is now easier than ever to sell on Amazon. Google has Checkout, which is an alternative to that online banking service, especially if you have your own website.