We just had a 30 second power cut at home.
New UPS worked perfectly, the wife just messaged me with act of contrition for doubting the money I "wasted" buying it π
Discussion
There you go. Worth every penny. The only downside are the loud beeps you get from it when you have power cuts at night.
QAPLA π
sweet
yeah, i personally plan to have a small battery bank and UPS and backup diesel generator on standby and to every few months flip the mains to run on diesel until the engine burns all the tank and refill it
We have a small petrol generator, even had it wired into the house electrics, buts itβs heavy to move and so we only bother bring up to the house if we know power is going to be off for a long time. Itβs also VERY noisy π
if you use it more often down there, ok, otherwise maybe move it so it's ready to plug in or even plug it in and have the start button wired to your UPS system?
Keeping it outside when not in use would not be wise, it is a very basic one.
yeah, i had minimum thoughts of it being under a tarp but that sounds like a little kennel thing would be better... it's not hard to send out a wire to signal to start a generator from a computer attached to a UPS
reminds me i have a UPS now with a USB-a socket on it and i got one to connect the printer a prior tenant left behind but it made me think abotu how it would be cool to have it attached to the mini-pc it is plugged into so it could send out signals to do things
i'm just too poor and don't really plan on staying here long
I just canβt be bothered π
honestly i wouldn't either for a gas powered thing
about the only thoughts i have about it is that i'd like to have a big stash of methanol, that burns nice in those engines clean, and is very stable and durable, i forgot about methanol
toxic but stable. very good for a long lasting petrol engine fuel
the only thing is that it is more corrosive to plastics and rubbers than normal gasoline, but it IS more stable so it can be stored a lot longer
thanks for reminding me, i was wondering if there was a good liquid fuel internal combustion engine fuel that actually can be used even if it's stored for decades, yes, methanol, methanol
you have to replace many of the parts of the engine to make sure the fuel won't eat it if you use it with the fuel and let it sat for a while but yes, methanol is very stable, nasty stuff, but very stable, probably the best long term high energy liquid fuel there is
A salutary lesson from a few years ago.
We were getting lots of power cuts in the village, so I bought the afore mentioned generator in the middle aisle of a famous German supermarket.
I then contacted our electrician who installed a mains switching circuit to it.
It was the summer, so I left it out and sure enough a few weeks later, we had a power cut. I smugly went out, fired it up, switched from mains to generator and went back in to continue watching a mindless TV program (I was still into TV back then).
A couple of days later, I met a neighbour and explained my success with great glee. After listening to me for a few minutes, I asked what he had done, to which he replied;
We joined everybody else in the village in the pub, where we ate and drunk the place dry and had a party.
I didnβt like my generator very much after thatπ
hah, rural germany eh?
well, aldi (aldi right?) and having a backup generator are both cool things but gonig to the local pub is also, as is attending the church
i'm not going to surprise you by saying that these are part of the reason why for a long time where these were convention the world was at peace and happy
Yes Aldi (or Lidl, we have both, I canβt tell the difference), but no this was rural UK.
We live in a nice village, so this is normal to spend the evening in the pub.
But during power cuts, there are no other options, so everybody ends up in the pub π
haha, yeah, i also can't tell the difference, they are like chinese shitty supermarkets
village culture on the island is awesome though, always enjoyed it, i couldn't stay put in cambridge when i was there most recently, needed to fan out and see the surroundings, the dense/university districts are toxic tho, just have to say
Weβre in Oxfordshire, canβt say I notice any toxic University culture, but then generally Oxbridge grads mostly end up doing very little in life.
I know about 6 Oxbridge graduates and they havenβt really done much with their lives.
An analogy is a friend of mine, when we were in our 20βs he was incredibly good looking, so much so that gorgeous women would come over and chat him up. He took his looks for granted, shagged around, but never got serious.
Heβs now in his 40βs, unmarried and struggling, meanwhile average looking me, had to work a little harder to pull women, appreciated the effort, so didnβt take it for granted.
I have a very enjoyable, successful life because I have no natural gifts.
We built nostr though, and html, http, web browser, web server, the shell, first stored program computer, bcpl, ARM, BBC Micro, Elite, Runescape, Zeroconf networking (aka wifi), and Bolo!
When you say "we", you don't mean me right? π
Apologies if you're an Oxbridge graduate and I have offended you.
Intelligence comes in all forms and academic intelligence is very well respected, but perhaps to the exclusion of most other forms.
For me, I assumed I wasn't intelligent because I essentially failed at school. I got to A level, then did an HNC at college.
It turns out, I just lost interest when somebody tried to explain things by script without explaining why.
As soon as I was able to think for myself and started asking why, it turned out my highly intelligent academic friends didn't know.
To use the YouTube influencer parlance. I was shocked π
It turns out that most forms of intelligence that I have been able to identify during my professional life remained undetected by traditional institutions and so we became very successful finding intelligence in the wilderness.
I have a neighbour who is a former Oxford Mathematics professor who I am teaching Bitcoin to.
I have an Oxbridge friend who is a genius in traditional financial systems, who I keep on explaining how those systems work
and
I have another neighbour who was one of the worlds top bankers, I spent 13.5 hours explaining how the banking system works.
I taught my retired GP father in law about viruses during the pandemic and I have disrupted two industries because I don't accept anything just "because".
Being stupid is the most clever thing you can possibly be, it prevents you from not taking anything for granted.
On the other side, academics do know a lot of stuff I don't, I just wish they knew enough to be able to explain it to me π
Interestingly I have two friends with PHD's from Oxford.
Dr "A" is a botanist, who currently sells patented orthopaedic socks.
Dr. "B" is a oceanographer who raises money for an MND charity.
I never understood why they didn't do the thing they had become expert in.
I've never asked them!
this notion that science is some kind of bowling alley with separate rails is ridiculous, literally fascist philosophy behind that
i don't know what MND is though
but people have many talents, and they tend to not necessarily be those that the socialist minded education system gave them the right to join in the 20th century
like me... i'm a problem solver, and i managed to eke out something of a living in the early 00s as a troubleshooter
but my true love was software engineering and specifically related to encoding and architecture
i'm now doing what i love, and was good at, and probably these guys also, are doing the same, and it just reinforces the point that top down systems don't get the optimal result out of humans, because they are categorically incapable of processing enough data
it's Hayek's information problem and the less obvious root, Mises calculation problem
I like finding people that can solve the problems I have.
Perhaps that's the secret to my success π
yin and yang... these things are a pattern
i'm kinda upbeat about finding someone who is saying such a thing since this is my central talent
Unless you can fix a conservatory roof, I don't have a need for you right now. But I'll keep you in mind π
I think the direction I'm heading is what ever Bitcoin banking is going to look like.
I'm talking to hybrids like Xapo and Revolut, but like hybrid cars, they are not the future, only an interim.
But everybody I talk to says they don't want to be a bank.
I do.
Decentralizing banking is probably the most powerful idea in the world, right now.
Yes, I'm watching carefully.
Did you ever watch Bill Still?
If I tell you I've just googled it, that probably answers the question.
Interesting, should I?
That's 2 hours. I'll try and watch it at the weekend.
Cheers π
well, i'm a big fan of xapo, my life is so much simpler thanks to their services
i probably could fix a conservatory roof, if it's your typical aluminium frame with rubber seals and glass panels deal, but i probably would not have the tools i need, and i'm a bit wonky with this kind of fiddly work these days with my mineral deficiencies, both my vision and my ability to hold things firmly for extended period are retarted at the moment
Comon man, I googled stuff you wrote π
MND is what Hal Finney died of.
Motor Neurone Disease.
If you understand how plants work, then at least do something related, don't sell socks, invent a new plant or something π
oh, i didn't catch the context of disease at all in what you said
back in the early 00s i was friends with a dude who lived in a divided house of apartments (another was a recovering heroin addict who was fond of possums and had a whore friend who hung out) and at the time i was learning how to cook meth
the MND guy said that meth helped him with his condition, he was like, idk, 27 at the time, this is partly why he let me do some operations in his place, and of course i was glad to share a little with him
i'm not in usual company with people talking about this issue but it was part of my life, back when i was just discovering the social internet (i was elfspice on dmt world and the hive at the time)
You said some things I don't understand and I'm pretty certain are un-google-able, but I get you drift.
i was cooking meth in an apartment of a neighbour at one time (2002) who was into meth because it helped his problem
the whore gf of the other dude who was a recovering heroin addict was also a heroin addict, and i have a vivid memory of watching her one time shoot and then nod out immediately while the needle remained in her arm, in the apartment of the dude who had MND
at this time also, internet access was absurdly expensive, and i found a way to scam it and had a shitty pc and discovered DMT world and then The Hive and started going to a nearby gothic industrial nightclub
it was a high point in my life, idk what to say
Totally agree most oxbridge grads are utterly useless. Taleb summed it up quite well in one of his better articles, The Intellectual Yet Idiot (IYI). See below.
Just saying actually alot of good tech did come from oxbridge grads, well, mainly actually cambridge. Some good work can happen when there is some focus. I spent quite a bit of time trying to explain bitcoin to john conway, but he was only interested in string thoery. π
Of course, almost no one is able to focus these days. Likely, by design.
https://medium.com/incerto/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211e2d0577
My impression is Cambridge is more silicon technology, Oxford is more carbon technology.
i.e. Cambridge computing, Oxford biotech.
At least that's the impression I get.
Yes, my two PHD friends are making a decent living, but never amounted to anything, yet little ol me, with his HNC built much of the early Internet.
But to be fair, the old adage is, "How do you become a millionaire", you start with a billion and buy a football club.
So my Dad's global public company might have given me an unfair advantage.
His Dad was a gunner in the royal navy at the turn of the last century and was very poor, so my Dad probably kick started me.
hey, not saying the middle of england didn't do great things, i mean, really, really great things
but i think also that what nostr has achieved was something that was in thousands of people's minds after they grasped what bitcoin was, i cite as evidence the sheer volume of efforts to create decentralised social networks and the many models that were proposed that finally some crazy brazillian used to devise a client and a relay and the rest was history
it took a LONG time for this to happen
partly, i think, because the people with the brains to do it were driven outside of the education system by marxist ideology, btw.
i can confirm this as i stand here with no lady or mini-mes crazily running about at this late, middle, stage of my life
but on the other hand i suspect you were not gifted with the ability to write software or do architecture or some other equally "unsexy" form of employment circa 1985
or cursed with an aversion to following along with unreasonable retarded mainstream rhetoric
i didn't even get my CS degree because i was so pissed off at being told to conform at my highschool, spent all of my 20s and half of my 30s rebelling until i realised
I did know who to find the right people to employ that created much of the technology of the early Internet.
Also LCD displays, which my Father's company built and we helped evolve the technology, along with solenoids, stepper motors, Japanese HMI (human machine interfaces) or keyboards as you and I would call it. We also created data centres, and the part of the technology that spies on us today. HELLO NSA, how yer doing?
We also created electromagnetic displays, which had a short, successful life before the blue LED was invented, which we were not involved with.
yeah, i've bumped into enough smart guys in my life (one was an optoelectronic engineer developing optical networking tech back circa 2001) and been around the scene long enough to know
the harder problem is how to get wise people to be the ones the less brainy listen to... it's a really hard problem, probably a pedagogical problem relaly
You'll be pleased to hear I had to Google pedagogical π
haha, nice... yes, teaching...
related word "demagogue"
Yeh, I knew that word π
a popular slur in the MSM...
like there is something wrong with educating people, PEOPLE! DEMOS=PEOPLE ffs
Diesel (w/o FAME) + Pesticide additive is probably the most stable due to low volatility and reactivity (very stable, unpolar). Should be good for 2 years at least if stored dry in a polymer tank (iron tanks can catalyze reactions). Alse simple (generator) diesel engines are pretty robust and run even with shitty fuel.
Methanol is probably less stable against oxidation to acid or esters due to the polarity. Also way more volatile. But there are cool Methanol "generators" (fuel cells) marketed for camping. See https://www.efoy.com
