Adrian Bowyer
@adrianbowyer
No worthwhile human achievement has ever been instigated on the basis of demonstrable cost effectiveness. 📍Europe
So. Modern plastic bog valves. This stopped working. Decrusted with dilute sulphuric acid. Still didn't work. Took it apart. It had so many side channels, little O rings and whatnots that it wasn't immediately obvious how it worked. Cleaned everything. Still didn't bloody work...
New telescope! Galaxy NGC 6946 (25 million light years away) last night.
Whatever happened to chaps making speeches while holding on to one lapel?
Made my wife a moth trap for her birthday. Last night it caught a twig...
Car keys. A bit of RF electronics, a small processor to do some encryption, and a battery. So why the fuck are they half the size of a phone?
To my almost swoon-inducing surprise, I have released a music album. Yes - it does have some AI content. But I wrote ALL OF IT using no more technology than a text editor and a Penguin Rhyming Dictionary. Hope you like it: helichron.com/music.html
Well. I guess we aren't using the tractor for a few weeks, then...
I'm told that this is a member of the Spanish football team, but I'm pretty sure it's a painting by Velasquez.
Vik Olliver's #RepRap Micron is now (just about) printing 4-micron pixels. Here's a slightly scruffy "Hello World" (Note this is starting to get to the limit of his microscope, which is the cause of some of the blurring). 4-microns is the resolution needed to make the Intel 4004 microprocessor.
I have just had the most incredible coincidence of my life. I was just emailed this offer of a flat. I hadn't asked for it. The people who sent it have no idea who I am (and was). This is my wife's and my actual London flat that we lived in in 1977 (when it was, admittedly, less luxurious...).
It's a dull Summer day with not much wind, but the UK is still 40% renewables. We're doing well AND we need to do better.
"Extra Sport". M8. It's a van. The only sport it'll get is if you leave tools in it overnight.
Time again to mention the Korean Haru Hana Banana pack, where they pack them one day apart in sequence so you have a just-right one every day.
If you keep boasting that you can identify drawings of giraffes and elephants, people may come to conclude that those are the limits of your abilities.
Sinister buggers. Disturb a bit of soil and you discover they've been lurking under there, biding their time, plotting...
I just found the best checkmate I've ever seen. Donisthorpe vs. Mundell, 1892 White has just Qxe5+ !!!!!! The white queen is toast and black is now doomed...
A computer that... ...fist inside a single connector to your computer...
MP to take leave of absence due to 'heart attack' See how silly that looks, @bbcnewsnight.bsky.social ?
Had to take someone to A&E (I hope for a minor reason). In the waiting room we are debating if this is laundry or a corpse.
OK. AI Boo. But ChatGPT solved it in 24 secs... It's always impressive when the bloody things do something you couldn't do yourself... I was being unwarrantedly conservative and trying a purely Euclidean approach. It's Cartesian solution is a lot better.
A friend and I once set up an arrangement with fishing line, elastic, one of these, and a trouser-leg each. Then we got on the tube apparently as strangers and sat opposite each other. Half way between stations it zipped down inside my leg, across the floor and up his. Neither of us reacted at all.
Dear Restaurant, charge prices that allow you to pay your staff properly then forbid tipping. Publicise the fact and shame your competition into doing the same. Dear Staff, unionise.