Beautiful instrument and it does have a distinctic sound. I lacks "openness" with those f-holes (hehee, not f-bomb you dirties..), it sounds a little damp or closed. I think it would actually be good for accompanies and fast picking. Not a solo instrument IMO.

Fun stuff!

I started Moby Dick about two years ago; I'm still reading it (halfway done).

"...whenever it's a damp November in my soul...." (one of my favorite lines ever).

In reply to this comment by EndAll:
http://www.videosift.com/video/Orson-Whales

;}

"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitue for pistol and ball."

Moby Dick, Melville

I'll be with you in spirit.

>> ^savethecirclepit:
I have actually had this happen to me except on a much larger scale. I used to melt scrap aluminum car parts in a large smelter. One morning I poured the ingot and it exploded in this fashion, hit the roof and rained molten metal down on me. Luckily, very luckily, I only got a couple of minor burns. Two things, the mold was cold and damp. Now I don't know which or both factors caused the reaction but I started preheating the molds with a torch and it never happened again.


They don't teach you that in ingot forming school?!

I have actually had this happen to me except on a much larger scale. I used to melt scrap aluminum car parts in a large smelter. One morning I poured the ingot and it exploded in this fashion, hit the roof and rained molten metal down on me. Luckily, very luckily, I only got a couple of minor burns. Two things, the mold was cold and damp. Now I don't know which or both factors caused the reaction but I started preheating the molds with a torch and it never happened again.

Luckily I wrote this out for somebody a few days ago:

When I was still fairly new in the air and about 22 years old, I was flying from Montreal to Winnipeg by myself in a rented Cessna as part of my pilot training. Because a Cessna 172 goes about 200 KPH and has enough fuel for four hours maximum, and the total distance was over 2,000 km, this meant many hours of flight and a lot of fuel stops.

Nearing the Quebec-Ontario border, I landed in Val d'Or to refuel and get a new weather briefing for my route. I called the weather service and they said I could probably expect to get to Timmins, ON, an hour away, without the three thousand foot ceiling coming down on me. I took off and flew west, and after about half an hour, it sure as hell did.

A hard rain drummed so intensely on my wings that it drowned out the loud drone of the engine and the cloudbase fell rapidly so that I couldn't see far at all. I had just passed Rouyn-Noranda with its airport and I turned back towards it, but by the time I was over downtown the weather made it so I couldn't see the airport anymore even though it was only four miles away. At the time I wasn't qualified to fly by instruments only and I was already in a pickle, and if the weather lowered much more then I would be basically blind and with diminishing hopes of getting to terra firma since only helicopters can land without at least a bit of forward visibility.

I was on the radio with the unicom operator at the airport, but as with most medium-small airports, he was no air-traffic controller, basically just a guy with a radio and a couple other gizmos but no radar and no real training when it came to helping a pilot in trouble -- which I was on the verge of becoming.

I was beginning to fly a sort of ersatz search pattern looking for the airport and I was starting to just head for whatever lights I could see through the darkening fog but they kept turning out to be this farm or that one and the weather seemed to be getting worse, with its attendant visibility loss and my odds slowly but steadily falling off more yet. It was a bit like going 100 on the freeway in fog when you can only see one second in front of you but no way to really slow down or otherwise make things safer. The rainclouds were creeping into the cockpit, damp and cold, and I couldn't help thinking it was the kind of air you find in a tomb.

Then all at once the next cluster of lights turned out to be the Noranda airport and I shouted my glee and relief over the radio. The landing itself was utterly simple and I taxiied to the apron and got out and got wet in the steady rain as I tied the airplane down. As I was finishing up, the rain came down much harder and the sky fell much more and I thanked God I wasn't still up there because getting down without a crash would've been twice as hard. I visited the stubby aerie where the unicom guy sat alone -- we were about the same age -- and I thanked him for his help and hung out for a little while, unwinding, before I called a cab to take me to a hotel in town.

I disagree sweetlime. Technology is the Answer. Everything we value about life, human life that is, is made possible by technology. With out it we would be shivering in a cold damp cave eating raw food and dying by the time we reached 30.

So yea, go ahead, give me the answer then if it isn't technology.

Utterly unrelated but pleasing new word. Froglet (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/7490521.stm)

Adding small cute addition to this pleasing thread.

(The froglets are said to be about the size of the top of a little finger.

Experts say the recent mild weather, with damp and rainy conditions, were ideal for the creatures to appear.

Lost tails

Martin Gray, Royal Parks visitor service manager, said: "This is usually the time of year that the toads migrate.

"They are what we call 'toadlets' in that they are at the stage where they are no longer tadpoles, have lost their tails and cannot breathe under water. )

I (preusmably like the artical writer) prefer froglet to the experts toadlet. Perhaps critttter can adjudicate for the world

Like a fluid, but insanely high damping and non-existent surface tension.

Pedestrian traffic is too erratic to cause resonance on a bridge.

You have to also consider those that are not inputting energy on the same harmonic frequency as the bridge, are actually creating a damping effect.

Mythbusters (and I cant beleive im citing that show as evidence here) tried the myth and failed. The only reason they failed however, was because they did not take into consideration the harmonic frequency. In order for resonance to occur, their needs to be an input of energy into the system as it reaches the min/max of the swing, any energy input outside of that ideal, very short range, acts as a damper.

*requeue -- Come on Canada, show love!

You'll have to excuse me, I'm not at my best
I've been gone for a month, I've been drunk since I left
These so-called vacations will soon be my death
I'm so sick from the drink I need home for a rest.

We arrived in December and London was cold
We stayed in the bars along Charing Cross Road
We never saw nothin' but brass taps and oak
Kept a shine on the bar with the sleeves of our coats

CHORUS:
You'll have to excuse me, I'm not at my best
I've been gone for a week
I've been drunk since I left
And these so-called vacations
Will soon be my death
I'm so sick from the drink
I need home for a rest
Take me home....

Euston Station the train journey North
In the buffet car we lurched back and forth
Past old crooked dykes through Yorkshire's green fields
We were flung into dance as the train jigged and reeled

- CHORUS -

By the light of the moon, she'd drift through the streets
A rare old perfume, so seductive and sweet
She'd tease us and flirt, as the pubs all closed down
Then walk us on home and deny us a round

You'll have to excuse me, I'm not at my best
I've been gone for a month
I've been drunk since I left
And these so-called vacations
Will soon be my death
I'm so sick from the drink
I need home for a rest
Take me home....

The gas heater's empty, it's damp as a tomb
The spirits we drank are now ghosts in the room
I'm knackered again, come on sleep take me soon
And don't lift up my head 'till the the twelve bells of noon

You'll have to excuse me, I'm not at my best
I've been gone for a month
I've been drunk since I left
And these so-called vacations
Will soon be my death
I'm so sick from the drink
I need home for a rest
Take me home

Lots more like this at www.ocremix.org, if y'all haven't been there, done that yet. They've got remixes from a host of games both new and old. Lots and lots of Sonic 1, 2 and 3 remixes...

Some of my favorite Sonic mixes from the site:
== Lots of sweet tasty bass on these tracks ==
Chemical Juice
Particle Brain
Dub Island
rAAw Battery
Power Puppet
Deep Damp Sandcastle

== Yay guitarwork ==
LightningStar

== Somewhat cheesy lyrics? But I don't care, I like them ==
Knuckleduster
Lover Reef

Also, there is a Sonic 2 album, Hedgehog Heaven, along the same lines as Project Chaos.

holy crap, that comment was awesome. thank you for such a quality contribution. I wish i could give you more than just a comment upvote

In reply to this comment by Thylan:
I'll try and rack my addled brain for an analysis of this in terms of amateur physics.

Heat is a physical property, and relates directly to energy. Fire is not, its a chemical process, called combustion. Combustions requires Oxygen.

There are many methods of extinguishing fire, and which is appropriate depends on the properties of the material that is combusting, inorder to be effective. There are 2 primary mechanisms of extinguishing a fire of which I am aware, and they rely on either:

1. removing the heat energy form the situation.
2. removing oxygen from the situation.

Chemical processes (e.g. combustion) require an activation energy level to be achieved in the system before they will occur. Cooling/removing heat lowers the energy in the system and can prevent the reaction. Differnt materials have a different activation energy before combustion will start, so this method is very material dependent.

They also, as noted, require oxygen. Oxygen can be prevented from access to a body/clothes, by coating them in water. the water then acts as a barrier to the oxygen. It can also cool a material (by extracting some of the heat energy, and being changed from cool water to warm/hot/boiling/steam/super heated steam...

Oil well fires can be put out by explosions, because this process rapidly exhausts the available oxygen in the region of the fire. The oil on fire is "put out" because oxygen is starved form the chemical process. What you are left with is "Hot oil", which dose not spontaneously reignite as it takes a flame for oil to begin to combust. That flame, adds a very localized area of very high energy (oil burning releases a LOT of energy) and that is enough to archive the activation energy of the combustion of oil, making it a self sustaining reaction (oil on fire stays on fire). But simply being Hot is not enough.

CO2 fire extinguishers work on electrical fires, where putting water would be bad for the material. The CO2 floods the area, pushing the oxygen out. Once the oxygen is deprived, the fire goes out. Because they shoot out gas, they could blow a lite particulate material all over the place, and so might not be advisable to use in all fires.

Back to Chip pan Fires:

Water and oil don't mix. Throwing water on burning oil, does not "coat the oil", separating it from air, and thus water will fail to prevent oxygen from fueling the combustion process. However, the water will get hot. Very hot, and very fast. The water will become agitated steam, having sunk into the oil (it doesnt get that hot instantly, it has to become so after contact whit the hot oil has been sustained, and as it wont float on the oil or mix well with the oil, it will be sinking into it).

So, you have oil, a very hot and combusting liquid. Inside this combusting liquid, you add another liquid that is transitioning from liquid to gas (water -> steam) and when water changes state into steam, it has a volume change. the same volume of H20 as a liquid takes up a LOT more volume when its a gas at the same pressure. This gas, flows up through the oil at high speeds, as it expands. Invariably, this force of up rushing gas takes the burning oil with it, distributing upwards and into the room and smearing burning oil all over the room, and possibly you. BAD.

The solution:

Place a fire retardant material (one that needs a VERY high activation energy for it to ever combust, a lot higher than the heat of a standard kitchen fire), over the chip pan. This acts as a barrier to oxygen. Oxygen will not pass through this material into the pan, and so, the remaining oxygen trapped between the surface of the oil, and the material covering the top of the pan, will soon be exhausted. The fire will go out (combustion end) as soon as the oxygen has all been used.

Although professional kitchens are likely to have a special cloth somewhere on the wall for this very purpose, you can improvise at home. Take a cloth, wet it, and wring it out, as directed. The purpose, is that you need to make the cloth a barrier to oxygen (air). Making it damp, will mean that water molecules are trapped in the holes/weave of the material, and so its much better at preventing air to travel through it. Also, the water itself wont combust (water doesn't burn) and, because it is coating the cloth, the water is also a barrier to the oxygen touching the cloth. This means that the cloth cant burn. The heat of the fire would dry the cloth out, if the stove is not turned down, and this would be bad. IF the cloth is not "wrung out" it will be dripping. Water dripping form the cloth, into the chip pan fire would be bad, especially if it was dripping as you laid it over pan. Not moving the pan when tis heavy, and filed with burning oil, and likely to be so hot you drop it, is also self explanatory.


I hope that makes sense, explains what happened, and why the correct method works.

I'll try and rack my addled brain for an analysis of this in terms of amateur physics.

Heat is a physical property, and relates directly to energy. Fire is not, its a chemical process, called combustion. Combustions requires Oxygen.

There are many methods of extinguishing fire, and which is appropriate depends on the properties of the material that is combusting, inorder to be effective. There are 2 primary mechanisms of extinguishing a fire of which I am aware, and they rely on either:

1. removing the heat energy form the situation.
2. removing oxygen from the situation.

Chemical processes (e.g. combustion) require an activation energy level to be achieved in the system before they will occur. Cooling/removing heat lowers the energy in the system and can prevent the reaction. Differnt materials have a different activation energy before combustion will start, so this method is very material dependent.

They also, as noted, require oxygen. Oxygen can be prevented from access to a body/clothes, by coating them in water. the water then acts as a barrier to the oxygen. It can also cool a material (by extracting some of the heat energy, and being changed from cool water to warm/hot/boiling/steam/super heated steam...

Oil well fires can be put out by explosions, because this process rapidly exhausts the available oxygen in the region of the fire. The oil on fire is "put out" because oxygen is starved form the chemical process. What you are left with is "Hot oil", which dose not spontaneously reignite as it takes a flame for oil to begin to combust. That flame, adds a very localized area of very high energy (oil burning releases a LOT of energy) and that is enough to archive the activation energy of the combustion of oil, making it a self sustaining reaction (oil on fire stays on fire). But simply being Hot is not enough.

CO2 fire extinguishers work on electrical fires, where putting water would be bad for the material. The CO2 floods the area, pushing the oxygen out. Once the oxygen is deprived, the fire goes out. Because they shoot out gas, they could blow a lite particulate material all over the place, and so might not be advisable to use in all fires.

Back to Chip pan Fires:

Water and oil don't mix. Throwing water on burning oil, does not "coat the oil", separating it from air, and thus water will fail to prevent oxygen from fueling the combustion process. However, the water will get hot. Very hot, and very fast. The water will become agitated steam, having sunk into the oil (it doesnt get that hot instantly, it has to become so after contact whit the hot oil has been sustained, and as it wont float on the oil or mix well with the oil, it will be sinking into it).

So, you have oil, a very hot and combusting liquid. Inside this combusting liquid, you add another liquid that is transitioning from liquid to gas (water -> steam) and when water changes state into steam, it has a volume change. the same volume of H20 as a liquid takes up a LOT more volume when its a gas at the same pressure. This gas, flows up through the oil at high speeds, as it expands. Invariably, this force of up rushing gas takes the burning oil with it, distributing upwards and into the room and smearing burning oil all over the room, and possibly you. BAD.

The solution:

Place a fire retardant material (one that needs a VERY high activation energy for it to ever combust, a lot higher than the heat of a standard kitchen fire), over the chip pan. This acts as a barrier to oxygen. Oxygen will not pass through this material into the pan, and so, the remaining oxygen trapped between the surface of the oil, and the material covering the top of the pan, will soon be exhausted. The fire will go out (combustion end) as soon as the oxygen has all been used.

Although professional kitchens are likely to have a special cloth somewhere on the wall for this very purpose, you can improvise at home. Take a cloth, wet it, and wring it out, as directed. The purpose, is that you need to make the cloth a barrier to oxygen (air). Making it damp, will mean that water molecules are trapped in the holes/weave of the material, and so its much better at preventing air to travel through it. Also, the water itself wont combust (water doesn't burn) and, because it is coating the cloth, the water is also a barrier to the oxygen touching the cloth. This means that the cloth cant burn. The heat of the fire would dry the cloth out, if the stove is not turned down, and this would be bad. IF the cloth is not "wrung out" it will be dripping. Water dripping form the cloth, into the chip pan fire would be bad, especially if it was dripping as you laid it over pan. Not moving the pan when tis heavy, and filed with burning oil, and likely to be so hot you drop it, is also self explanatory.


I hope that makes sense, explains what happened, and why the correct method works.

so basically, there's people who have the wrong idea about bugs, damp, maintenance etc.

there's 100 year old strawbale houses still standing.

heat insulation is phenomenal, i built one on a very cold day and as soon as the walls were up our body heat was enough to keep us warm inside, without a roof!

sound insulation is phenomenal, they built a single bale width wall around the generator and filmed a tv program 10 meters away.

a properly built plastered straw bale wall is a 2 hour firewall. there's not much air in there to fuel the fire if the bales are compressed. a straw bale house in the uk burnt down recently and the only thing left standing was the straw bale wall. that is not "very flammable".

the problem in the UK is getting a standard certified so that you can get a mortgage, and convincing local corrupt planners that you are not insane.

http://www.strawbale-building.co.uk/index.php?page=faq

it's not like there are zero drawbacks with bricks and mortar.

one of the things i liked best about building that straw house was that a whole big team of unqualified people can learn the skills in about five minutes under an experienced foreman. then you all get together and have fun building, instead of just calling a big ass truck to come and pour tons of concrete into the ground.

also don't forget the fact that if you build your own natural home, it's BEAUTIFUL to live in, these things are really damn nice compared to identikit "american dream" new houses.