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Chill with Me at the Up in the Aether Steampunk Convention!

Hey All,
Just a quick note that I’ll be a panelist/guest at the Up in the Aether steampunk convention: May 24–26 at the Detroit/Dearborn Double Tree hotel (5801 Southfield Expressway, Detroit, MI, 48228). Super fun last year, with some great panels/demos/classes and vendors. Promises to be even bigger this year, with even more panels and workshops (including a full-bore lit track, plus lots of DIY of all sorts), *and* the location is right by the Henry Ford Museum (whose collection is bound to thrill any folks with steampunkish leanings).

Anyway, I’ll be at Up in the Aether all three days, sitting on a variety of panels talking about steampunk, history, writing, horror, and the nitty-gritty of publication. I’ll also be running a couple DIY workshops, one on building old-school kites, and the other on flash-boilers and building a simple flash-boiler powered steam putt-putt boat.
See you there! If you wanna connect and hi-five (or whatever) please feel free to ping me via email or twitter @SquiDaveo. Thanks!

Steam-Powered Aeroplane Footage!

On page 251 of Snip, Burn, Solder, Shred I make brief mention of flash boilers used in steam-powered airplanes, basically just to poo-poo them as dangerously whack–which, as it turns out, was pretty closed-minded of me. Here’s one in action:

I don’t usually advise clicking through to the pit of vitriol and distraction that is YouTube, but the original poster’s comments are pretty informative. A snippet:

A Travel Air 2000 biplane made the world’s first piloted flight under steam power over Oakland, California, on 12 April 1933.
The strangest feature of the flight was its relative silence; spectators on the ground could hear the pilot when he called to them from mid-air.

It goes on with some neat technical details; as it turns out, the flash-boiler design Besler used was arguably an optimal solution at the time for small planes like his. There’s a pretty fascinating contemporary article on Besler’s steam-powered flight in the June 1934 issue of Steam Car Developments and Steam Aviation. Besler’s steam engine was reversible at the flip of a switch, making it possible to slow the plane after landing without risk of doing an endo and flipping the bird. I.e., In a slightly different timeline, steam-powered planes would have been a perfect fit for aircraft carriers.

All Hail THE OCTOPOD!!!


Created by Sean Charlesworth and totally *{squeeeeee!}*worthy:
It has working suckers on the tentacles! Opposable arms! LED lights! An operational iris access hatch! It was 3D-printed in basically a single pass and required *no painting*! (Tons more pics and vids here, including some footage of the printing process and a time-lapse of the final build.)

There’s also this nifty interview with Charlesworth:

Of all the mechanical bits to work out, the tentacles were by far the hardest and required the most test prints. I knew the tentacles had to really come alive or the model would be a flop. I rejected traditional joints for various reasons and ended up printing a flexible core with Objet’s rubber-like Tango material and fusing Objet Vero rigid knuckles to it for detail. I modeled a small shaft down the center and inserted brass armature wires afterward so the tentacles could be posed dramatically. It took about four versions to get it right. . . . I found the Objet Connex [3D printer] to be great for this project due to the multiple materials. While the ABS-like Digital Material would have ultimately been the best choice structurally, I didn’t want to deal with painting the model. I chose to do most of it with the Black and White Vero materials since I could digitally mix them and have something that looked great right out of the printer. I was also really happy with the resolution and precision of the parts.

Nifty Things Happen When You Co-ordinate Frame Rates and Wavelengths

This is *so* beautiful!
This is What Happens When You Run Water Through a 24hz Sine Wave | Colossal

Just to clarify what I’m 99.999% certain is happening here: The photographer is buzzing the water with a 24hz sound wave–thus creating a wave in the falling water that oscillates 24 times each second. He then shoots video of it at 24 frames per second. Provided that the video is interlaced (which is the norm with modern digital video), then FPS rate and Hz are equal, and so his camera is always catching the wave at the same position in its oscillation–thus the illusion of a frozen wave of water. When he bumps the sound wave up a notch, to 25 Hz, you see a slowly progressing water-wave, because now each subsequent image capture is catching the wave at a *slightly* different position further along its oscillation (same with the water-flowing-backward effect he gets when he dumps the oscillation down to 23 Hz). You can get the same effect in a dark room by exciting a stream of water with a sound wave coordinated with a strobe light.
In real life, if you were standing there in the garden, the hose would just look like it was pouring a plain old sloppy stream of water; it’s the magic of shooting at a frame rate that matches the oscillation rate of the wave that makes this magic. So *rad!*

Thrill to the sight of the mighty OREO Separator Machine!

This is worth the 4 minutes, ’cause this machine gets increasingly excessive. I.e., even if you accept “robot for dismantling OREOs” as a basically rational project, you’re going to get to the self-flossing hatchet and ask yourself: “Hunh; that maybe seems sorta over the top?”–but then there’s a homebrew CNC router made from scrap metal and a Dremel, and the conclusion is obvious: This is the greatest cookie-cleansing machine ever concocted. Watch; learn:

Does Safety Dictate Making Quiet Cars Loud?

NHTSA proposes sound standards to make quiet cars safer – Welcome to the FastLane: The Official Blog of the U.S. Secretary of Transportation
I was initially moderately annoyed by this; we have a Prius, really *like* that it adds so much less noise to our environs, and are frustrated that chronic headphone users and texters seemed to be driving public policy (we live in a college town). Now that I’ve both read the actual rationale and heard some if the sounds, I’m coming around. I actually sorta dig the eerie Jetson’s-hover-car sound of sample three. I’d like my future to start sounding a little more futuristic.
One lingering concern: I regularly get my bike going 18 to 20 mph; why isn’t that a concern? My chain and tires are quieter than our Prius going 10mph, and I can’t stop my bike nearly as quickly (or, at least I don’t think I can. Guess I’ll go do some trials once it thaws.)

Because hybrid and electric vehicles operate so quietly, particularly at low speeds, they are more difficult for pedestrians and cyclists to detect when a vehicle is coming. This problem is even bigger for the visually impaired who rely on sounds for guidance.
The Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act sought to fix that, and yesterday’s proposal is the result of NHTSA enthusiastically taking up the challenge. The proposal is now open to public comment for the next 60 days, so stay tuned for an update later this year.
Under the new standards, vehicle sounds would need to be detectable under a wide range of street noises and other background sounds when a vehicle is traveling slower than 18 miles per hour. At that speed and above, vehicles make sufficient noise to allow pedestrians and bicyclists to detect them without added sound.

Guess what’s got two thumbs and a Critter & Guitari Pocket Piano?

This guy!
My departed grandfather (long story) gave me a Critter & Guitari Pocket Piano GR for Non-Denominational Gift-Giving Holiday (honest; it’s sort of involved. Just roll with it). Here’s a little early fiddling with it (listening with headphones will make it easier to catch the low octaves in the second half). This is a simply *delightful* instrument, the synth equivalent to the ukulele. Expect a more complete review in the New Year.

O Vibro-Tannenbaum!

I’m not such the Christmas Tree guy, but many of you are (statistically speaking), so I submitted for your consideration: The Christmas Tree Vibrator (a phrase that I otherwise *DO NOT* suggest googling without SafeSearch firmly in place).

Christmas Tree Vibrator: Odd invention aimed to shake up your holiday tree

This 1947 patent for a “Christmas Tree Vibrator” turns out to be more confusing than risque.
The inventor, Leo R. Smith, argued that a vibrating tree was a way to make ornaments look prettier. The vibratory unit “for attachment to decorated trees” would “transmit a highly pleasing two-dimensional vibration thereto without interference with the decorations.”