studiot

Two books I found very very useful in the past and still contain useful stuff. They are good because they both contain much practical info and examples eg breadboarding interface circuits and so on. I don't know where you are in the world, but if you can get hold of an old Open University Hektor trainer you would be laughing. I built one and learned machine code and assembler on one. Also you can get some pretty sophistic 'logic trainer breadboards' second hand these days. These can be adapted for use with micros.

#This is true, but after a while I think going down the chain gets a bit silly. Did the man who worked in the factory have a metal buckle in his belt ? Did he wear a ring in his ear or have nails in hios boots? Did the canteen chef who made his dinner use a metal saucepan? And did he stir it with a metal spoon or a wooden one ? When the company boss watched the main news of the day on TV does his TV use a metal antenna ? Where does it end ?

I agree but then lithium cells are not necessarily the way forward. A shortsighted view. Answer both : Look at this heavy excavator powered by a hydrogen fuel cell. Zero CO2 Test post Edit posting system appears to be working for me.

That might be a good measure for a single ageing process I remember seeing a Building Research project that had been going on for about 30 years where they were testing drainpipes by constantly trickling dilute vinegar over them. But it has already been noted here that there are multiple ageing processes in CDs. One of which is not susceptible to such a speed up technique. This is what partly killed a good friend of mine at University. That is all plastics are subject to creep.

Good question +1 I haven't seen these but I do have some original Philips gold archival recordable CDs going strong. I bought these in the early 1990s

One more, This is not a textbook but a penguin paperback sized book that is a good read, if you like, as I do, following how a theory was arrived at, as presented by an expert who actually knows and understands that theory. The Perfect Theory Pedro Ferreira

Yes I have electricity and gas records, both financial and supply units, going back to 1987 when we moved into this house. Years vary and it is easy to pick out the hard winters plotting annual figures year by year. Averages are also good for other purposes. Better for comparison with other situations (eg I don't think Area54 has access to mains gas and LPG offers different performance figures). Utilities like setting up 'deals' and 'packages' and 'policy' - which can help them avoid (some) obligations under the UK Gas and Electricity supply Acts. This is why I have never sought or agreed to a change of terms under the original supply orders with the original supply organisations. The Acts in force at the time were binding on the original suppliers and their successors in title. Yes one of the upgrades to the central heating radiatior system was to split the heating into 2 zones. In my case upstairs and downstairs. These zones can be programmed to come on at different times and different temperatures and fall back to different temperatures when not in use. This part of the system has worked very well indeed. Yes, many factors are involved. The efficiency of the boiler varies with the humidity (and slightly the temperature) of the air, its own calorific value (which varies from time to time and the gas company has to publish in the bill), its state of internal cleanliness and of course as you say some of the heat necessarily is taken carrying away the exhaust gases and water vapour. Some of this is recovered as heat storage in the masonry of the chimney stack.

I feel sure that we have discussed DVD radiation protection before in other threads. @gamer87 I hope you will not take this the wrong way since you are right to worry about your DVD's When someone's post count gets to a certain level here, they are often 'awarded' a special category. So I nominate you for the special category of 'superworrier'. I used to be associated with an avant garde video production company that lost whole boxes of recordable DVD archives due to ageing. It can and does happen, and as iI noted some brands of media are better/worse than others. The watchphrase in the digital world is, as always, "it's backup, backup, backup darling." Two weeks ago I did just that with a DVD data archive disk dated 2005. I could hear the drive reading and re-reading and struggling to read the disk so I made a copy. You can tell when a disk is beginning to fail as it takes longer and longer to access and you can hear the multiple attempts to read. Did you know that The system contains a subroutine to read the disk several times until it obtains consistent data? This is also true of hard drives

Well it does penetrate a bit every time you take the lid off so keep them in smaller boxes so each one gets exposured less often. I see you have some shoe boxes. Theya re good since some are double walled.

I was talking to a second hand bookshop owner a couple of days ago. She told me that there has been a sharp rise in sales of academic books lately, particularly mathematical ones. She has been sending these all round the world during the Covid outbreak. Second hand is often a good way to keep the ridiculous prices of books in the UK down.

Oh yeah, right ! 🤣

Mechanically produced CDs and DVDs are unaffected by normal levels of sunlight. Ones you 'write' yourself (recordable and re-recordable) work on a different (chemical) principle which is light sensitive. Some brands are worse than others. So for these yes light protection is necessary. Cardboard is better than paper - the thicker the better.

My memory is not that long. 🙂 But neither Lovelace, nor Babbage were blacksmiths. Did you not understand my parable ?

The UK economy has the front wheels bogged down in official bureaucracy, and the back wheels are mired in the sharp practices of the marketeers and bean counters. The change has simply been due to the deliberate change in pricing in that time. There is nothing free market about the UK utilities industries, despite claims by the politicians who made them the pigs ears they are today.

No I mean that you can make a blacksmith's hammer and tongs with a numerically controlled machine tool, but you can't make a numerically controlled machine tool with a blacksmith's hammer and tongs

If the existence of 'being' is in question, for how many of those fancy words you are using is the existence of their meaning in even greater question ? 🙂

I am happy to provide all the detail you like since there is a lot of twaddle still being promoted about these things. The costs in my first post are simply the payments to the gas and electric companies, including their dramatically increasing standing charges and the VAT that the EU forced a former Chancellor to levy. In 2016 my old boiler, which had been staggering on for quite a few years, conked out completely. So I had to replace it anyway. This would have cost around £3,000 I chose an air to hot water system since I already had a hot water radiator system. However I took the opportunity to upgrade the plumbing for a couple of reasons. The gas boiler, originally installed in 1988 was the then largest instaneous heater on the market. No heat pump can match that performance, so all require some form of buffer tank. I added two 500L tanks, one for the CH and on efor the DHW, and all the asscoiated pipework, pumps and automated valves and controls. Heat pump radiaters typically operate at lower water temperatures so some rads were also upgraded to larger ones. So I engaged out wonderful governments preferred 'installer of the year' to manufacture and install a British made one for £8,000. Sadly that is an accolade to avoid and they went bust in 2018. I also received one of the alternative energy installation grants of £5600, receivable over 7 years. So by the end of that I will have spent about the same in capital terms as if I had simply replaced the boiler. For the first 3 years the combined electricity and gas costs were lower with the heat pump. This year has been the first with the pump markedly more expensive. @Danijel Gorupec Up to 2016 the principal consumer in the house was the gas boiler, but we also have a gas hob. Now the heat pump is the principal energy consumer and I only need about 10 cubic feet of gas a year. It is actually rather galling to receive a gas bill bot £1.50 worth of gas plus £28.50 worth of standing charge.

You may be deaf (sorry to hear that) But you seem to have no trouble reading and writing. And you seem to have a genuine interest in sensible ideas rather than outlandish nonsense, even if your ideas are not yet developed. So I am not going to enter any discussion about the rules here. But I will offer discussion about your idea of Natural processes. Firstly you seem to have restriced natural process to living things. Non living things, of course don't die. Further they may or may not 'grow'. Would you for instance declare that the process of melting is not a natural one ? Or perhaps you might like to consider that your definition is unneccessarily restrictive and could be expanded. OK so what about processes caried out by (some) living things ? Would you say flying is a natural process ? I recently posted a thread here referring to the fact we have only just dicovered how and why butterflies can fly. I am going to offer two books that should be of interest. You also mention patterns so The Self Made Tapestry - pattern formation in nature Philip Ball (He has also written some other books on this subject but this is the best one) Here he ranges over animate to inaminate patterns (eg the zebra stripes evolved and how rivers evolve) to what is the best % filling of a cement mixer and even brushes lightly on some comments about entropy. https://www.abebooks.co.uk/Self-Made-Tapestry-Pattern-Formation-Nature-Ball/22872534828/bd?cm_mmc=ggl-_-UK_Shopp_Tradestandard-_-product_id=COUK9780198505068USED-_-keyword=&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIkuzUieaR7wIVENPtCh3M6QsbEAQYAyABEgL_w_D_BwE and Cats Paws and Catapaults by Steven Vogel. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/223609.Cats_Paws_and_Catapults Steven compares the way Nature and Man achieve the same objective by different methods (processes). Both can be obtained second hand quite cheaply and both are delightful reading that you do not have to readd chapters 1, 2,3 ..etc to follow what is going on as in a textbook. You can dip in and out of both. I hope this will pull this thread round for you to achieve something productive. 🙂

Just been comparing the net present cost (NPC) of my previous domestic combined gas and electricity costs. The last quarter - December 2020 to February 2021 Historically a fairly conventional gas boiler and hot water domestic heating. Electric lighting and sundry domestic power requuirements. 2016 Gas boiler replaced by an air source heat pump. Combined gas and electricity costs. Old system NPC cost (ie bills would have been at todays prices) ~ £560 Current system actual costs ~ £660

Let me start by saying that these subjects overlap my main interests and I don't know how much maths / physics you can tolerate. However judging by your first three posts here you seem to have you head well screwed on so here are some thoughtss Cambridge University publishes a series in the Earth and Cosmological Sciences. 1) Galaxies and Cosmology Jones and Lambourne (editors) This is an OU set book 2)Thermodynamics of the Earth and Planets. Alberto Douce 3) Planet Earth, Cosmology, Geology, and the evolution of Life and the Environment. Cesare Emiliane Fourthly a book by a gifted amateur who taught himself the subject when he was somewhat in your position A Most incomprehensible Thing - Notes towards a very general Introduction the mathematics of relativity. Peter Collier Incomprehensible Books ISBN 3rd Ed 2017 978-0-9573894-6-5 Let us know if you need any more 'overlap' areas We wish you well in whatever is to come.

How is any of this in any way connectd to Science ?

+1 Although we do know one thing. The apparatus is in Spain. 🙂

Isn't it time this one sank to the bottom of the SF ocean ?

Your analysis so clearly demonstrates the dangers of simply playing about with algebra and symbols without properly understanding what those symbols mean. +1

One of the oldest still working machines in the world is powered totally by gravity. Gravity is so reliable.