Ice Twisters
I’m watching this scientific train wreck of a movie called Ice Twisters, about a government-funded cloud-seeding experiment gone wrong. The EPG gives it three out of four stars, a rating clearly not awarded, in any part, based on scientific accuracy.
Here’s the worst bit of science so far. The research team developed a Predator-like drone that flies a swarm formation, creating rain clouds (the drones are called SERIFs, but I don’t remember the exact acronym). The first test run of the swarm of 2000 drones is initially successful, causing the expected rain. But soon, violent, brief storms begin to form in the surrounding areas, accompanied by dramatic drops in temperature, and icy tornadoes. Anyone caught a tornado is instantly frozen. And that’s not the bad science. Read on.
The team brings in Charlie, a former scientist (now a science calamity fiction author) to “think outside the box”. The principal investigator is Joanne. Other scientists include Damon, Gary, and Phil. Here’s the dialogue from the scene, with the worst parts in italics.
Damon: “You, uh, heard thunder.”
Charlie: “No, no, it wasn’t thunder, it was something else. These SERIFs, you say they make the clouds, then seed them with silver iodide? How, exactly, are they doing this?”
(Cut to CG shot of the drones doing their thing in the sky.)
Joanne: “They use tiny wind turbines to supply power to their propulsion systems, so there’s no limit to how long they can stay airborne.
Once up, each one has a revolutionary moisture evaporator designed to condense liquid nitrogen out of the upper atmosphere.”
Charlie: “Upper atmosphere? I thought these were in the troposphere.”
Joanne: “They are, right at the ceiling, just below the tropopause.”
(Charlie walks over to a large diagram of the atmosphere, gestures toward it.)
Charlie: “Your SERIFs are here, taking any moisture in the atmosphere, and processing it into liquid nitrogen, right? Making this area extremely dry at first, right? Correct me if I’m wrong.”
Joanne: “No, you’re right.”
Charlie: “All right. There’s a subatomic reaction happening. It’s drawing moisture from the upper atmosphere. The effect of this process is creating…vertical weather.”
What kills me is that it’s not necessary to create such bullshit. Movies are better when they’re more believable, and “science” movies like this have to be on their best behavior when creating their disasters.
Anyway, enough procrastinating. Project time!
Red Light Streaming Into My Office
I’m sitting at my desk in my home office, and I noticed strange red light coming in through the slats of the Venetian blind on the window. It looked fairly intense, as if coming from a good sunset. But it was not even 4 pm, and the sun sets on the other side of the building, so there’s now way that’s what it was.
So, I looked along the rays of light to see the source. Turns out, the afternoon sun was reflecting off a stop sign in the street below. I’m still not sure how the reflection occurred, since the sign is roughly perpendicular to the ground, and both the Sun and I are well above the sign, and both on the same side of it (left-to-right and front-to-back). Perhaps it’s the nature of the reflective paint used.
Shooting the sign challenged my otherwise fairly capable digicam, a Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3. Interesting vertical lines appear prominent in the sign, as does a double image. The image was taken through a somewhat dirty window and screen, but the effect is barely noticeable (if at all) on other elements in the image.
Anyway, I thought it was pretty cool.
New Garage Workbench
Not sure if I’m just procrastinating, but as I was working on the eBike’s carbs this week, I realized I really needed a workbench in the garage. I’d been planning to put one in, something that went along part of the back wall, around the corner, and down the side a bit. Tired of hunching over the carbs on the floor, I finally decided I should build something this weekend.
The vision is something like this (although I may not bother with the upper cabinets; we’ll see):
I realize what you’ll see below doesn’t look anything like that, but it will. Someday.
I spent a good five hours (and $280) at Sawdust Shop cutting the pieces for the carcasses of 1.5 workbench-cabinets. I’ve partially assembled one of them tonight, but I’m done for the day. I’ll finish it in the morning, and hopefully make some real progress on the carbs.
Here’s a wide shot of the left half of my garage. You can see the beginning of the pedestal near the back wall.
The completed pedestal. I was originally going to just hang the cabinet-workbench from the wall, but the expert at Sawdust Shop convinced me to build a pedestal. This will support much more weight more effectively:
Here the three walls have been screwed in:
A closer view of the pocket screws:
The rear nail strip is fasten to the carcass with pocket screws:
Here’s more detail on how the pedestal sits under the cabinet. The floor is pretty heavily sloped, so I will have to shim things up. The wall seems to be plumb, though, which is good.
I rested the top nail strips and work surface on top. Tomorrow I’ll glue and fasten them down properly, but this gives you an idea of how it’ll look.
