This is brining back memories of playing with my older siblings. For the long jump, I would smash the buttons as quick as possible and then my sibling would time (triangle?) to jump before the line....looking back at it they probably just wanted me to do the most tiring task.
Thanks for the rec. I'm going to check out "Human Smoke". Now I want to recommend "Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son"[1] which is a collection of letters that a man, who made his wealth through the Chicago meat industry, to his son who went to college. It gave a warming perspective of a parent who would express his love in one letter, and frustration towards his son for showing up to work late in another. It beautifully illustrates a "modern" parent-child relationship in a time period I often imagine as cold and distant.
You could try a battery powered phone charger since it's a "relatively simple" first project. The big hurdle for learning these types of tools is usually "What buttons do I press to create the output that I want.
For the electrical side, there are plenty of schematics online that you can try to copy or use as a starting point. And the CAD side can be a simple box with snap fits. I'd recommend OnShape if you're just starting out since it's the lowest barrier of entry, but Fusion 360 is also good. All in, it should be <$150 for the PCBs + Components + 3D Prints.
After you get the satisfaction of seeing your device charge from something you made, then you'll start getting the itch and find more excuses to make things.
I'll follow your recommendation and try the simple stuff. Looks like OnShape is right up my alley. All very exciting feels like I'm "programming hardware" !
If you don’t want ti deal with doing the testing yourself, the EPA has a list of certified labs that can test your water for you. If you follow the link, you’ll find Michigan’s cert program and a list of contact info for those labs.
I’ve never done it myself, so I don’t have a sense of how expensive it would be.
That EPA site more than obtuse. It's impossible to find a company that has a service that will mail you a container, have you add the water to it, then send it back to them to have them test it.
The closest I found was: https://www.meritlabs.com/sample-bottle-order but there are not even prices and it appears that you have to be more or less an industry expert to even fill out the order form.
Someone should make a startup like 23andMe but for water. Lots of us would pay $500 to have water accurately tested. Especially if the data could be aggregated and made pubic.
https://gosimplelab.com/ZM7S1O
is my report. I found their UI/UX quite good, and very comparable to a 23andMe experience. Pleasantly surprised to say there were zero attempts at ongoing subscription upsells, reengagement, virality etc.
Since my collection was based on a plastic bottle, I doubt microplastics would be part of the report. However the same lab offers other tests with different collection containers and different assays.
since the back end testing and reporting is done through gosimplelab you might wish to look at their offerings more directly
https://gosimplelab.com/solutions/pfas
Doesnt seem to have pfas in any of the standard city water test batteries. I'd also like to see microplastics and medicines (hormones, antibiotics etc) in a test.
I think PFAS is actually hard to test for because you'd have to remove any added fluoride salts etc, and then use spectrometry. And microplastics is expensive to test for because it requires human evaluation through a microscope
The school I went to had a common Dynamics exam. It was considered the first “real” engineering course you took, and was the foundation for a lot of upper div classes. Regardless of your teacher or class time; all students took the same exam at the same time. Professors would grade other professors students.
It was also normal for a double digit % of the students to fail the exam and retake the course (me included).
Its not exactly what people think of as a standardized test, but it ensured all students in the school had the same acceptable level of comprehension on the subject.
Sort of. UL and CE are certifications that declare a a product confirms to the standards defined by those groups. The main difference is that UL only focuses on product safety (i.e. Shock and mechanical hazards), while CE covers product safety plus environmental and health requirements.
UL is technically a global standard, but mostly used in USA/Canada. That's only two countries which already have laws governing what can and cannot be put in a consumer device.
I'm not as familiar with the history of CE, so I don't know why CE decided to cover environmental standards. But my speculation is that it's because CE covers ~30 countries with a larger range of laws.
I appreciate seeing a hint at the history of the design changes, but now I'm left wanting more. Seeing a cross-section view (CT scan or CAD) that shows how the connectors are mating or secured would probably help me visualize how these are being used.
Are you saying that what's happening is the permeability of the cell membrane changes with their physical states (from a scale of "more liquid" to "more solid")and that change impacts the transmission rate of the neurons? And an example of this would be an anesthesiologist putting you under is them making your cell membrane more solid to increase the resistance those neuron transmissions experience, just like adding more resistance to a circuit to reduce the voltage?
Disclaimer that biological sciences aren't my strength so I'm just trying to understand what you're saying.
No, it's not about ions going through the membrane or membrane pemeability. It is not about resistance to ions flow across the 10nm they travel perpendicular to the membrane. Transport of ions across through ion channels are required for the effect but the membrane itself (usually) is not leaking and I'm not talking about changes in leakage.
It is about how the various ions like Na+ and Ca+2 associated with the membrane itself to change the membrane's physical properties. When there's lots of light gas anesthetic dissolved in the lipid membrane keeping the heat capacity low (disordered) it is thermodynamically harder (requires more energy) to form the organized 'solid' (actually more like a gel) state that propagates as the action potential.
For Stellaris, one of Paradox’s space 4x games, they have a team dedicated to maintenance and a separate team for DLCs. The result are large free updates that improve/rework on the mechanics which compliment the DLCs keeping the games fresh for years.
Usually the base paradox games feel like they’re “missing” major features which makes some DLCs necessary for a more full experience, but by the time that happens the base game is heavily discounted so base+dlc=full price of a new game.
Just felt like I have to add onto the paradox comment since I enjoy their major updates + dlc approach. Whenever I buy one of their games, I know I’ll probably come back to the game for at least 5 years.
> but by the time that happens the base game is heavily discounted so base+dlc=full price of a new game.
That is in no way true. Even now, there isn't any way for you to get EU4 (a much older game than Stellaris) and all of it's DLC for less than 60usd. Even in some super sale. At least, I've never seen it.
For your own example, the lowest the Stellaris ultimate bundle has ever been is ~117usd, which was when there was far fewer DLC in it:
It's a common meme that a Paradox game will cost you 300-400usd, for a reason. I'm not knocking their economic model, people pay for it without much complaint. However, it is objectively more expensive for the consumer than a single full game.
>Usually the base paradox games feel like they’re “missing” major features which makes some DLCs necessary for a more full experience, but by the time that happens the base game is heavily discounted so base+dlc=full price of a new game.
As someone who recently played a bunch of HOI4, this is not true. Even during a summer sale, game plus DLCs that fix the "new" ways they changed the game is often multiple hundred dollars.
They don't do this out of the goodness of their heart, they do this because it's insanely profitable to make a single game and then charge $12 for every adjustment and additional mechanic over the next ten years.
It's somewhat defensible for them, because I don't need the Japan DLC for HOI4 if I don't give a shit about playing as japan, but it's still the equivalent when Civ 5 charged ten dollars to add religion back to the game and fix the dumb health mechanic that allowed you to kill any unit with ten spearmen.
Still had this tab open today (in typical tab hoarding fashion), and saw no one else commented. So just wanted to say thanks for sharing this fun fact. I learned something new, and started going down a rabbit hole yesterday because of you!
