Arc welding (by alaric)

As a treat, I've bought myself a manual metal arc welder!

Manual metal arc welding, however, is quite tricky to learn. Basically, the stages are:

1. Being able to make the thing go at all. You need to create an arc, then maintain it, which needs a fair amount of practice and dexterity.
2. Being able to then move the arc at the desired rate, in the desired direction, to leave a weld behind.
3. Being able to do this well enough to produce a strong weld, rather than a rough blobby one that's only attached here and there
4. Being able to do this well enough to produce a neat weld, which is the same as the previous hurdle, but now keeping the weld the same thickness all along, and nice and smooth
5. All of the above again, but under trying circumstances such as when the objects being welded aren't nice and conveniently placed in front of you

I've just managed 1 today, and am part way through 2!

My medium-term goal is to make new crucible tongs - the previous ones are OK, but a little hair-raising to use since they don't grip the crucible perfectly. They were made by bending single lengths of steel, which constrained them a little. With welding mastered, I should be able to make crucible tongs that fit around the crucible much more snugly, so requiring less wiggling to get them in the clearance between crucible and furnace wall, and then a tighter grip of the crucible itself rather than just squeezing it at a few points...

Arc welding is fun!

The association between flourescent green materials and radioactivity isn’t just the domain of comics and movies (by alaric)

Uranium can be added to give glass a fluorescent yellow or green color

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass#Overview

...it's official! Glass containing uranium is actually coloured flourescent green/yellow!

After all my irritation at radioactive wastes always being portrayed as a glowing yellow/green liquid, that little point has made my day. Thankyou.

Log structured file systems revisited (by alaric)

I've been thinking about log structured transactional filesystems again, and I think I've come up with something potentially useful for making POSIX-style file systems as well as for the TUNGSTEN object store. Read more »

Driving theory test – passed! (by alaric)

Woo hoo! I've passed my driving theory test.

I scored 35 out of 35 on the easy multiple choice questions ("A burning child staggers into the road in front of you. Do you (a) accelerate and run into the child so the flames are put out as it flies through the air, (b) pretend not to notice and drive past, (c) stop and help, (d) sit and watch"), and 46 out of 75 on the dreaded Hazard Perception - when the pass mark is 44!

Phew. Close. TOO close.

But anyway, onto the next step: the practical test. If I am lucky, I will get one booked before Christmas. The waiting lists around here are a bit mad.

Havering show (by alaric)

We've spent today and yesterday running a stall in the craft tent of the annual Havering Show.

We had for sale some of my cast aluminium paperweights, and lots of things Sarah makes - Wigglypets, Fimo jewellery, bead bracelets, bookmarks, and so on.

Sadly, we made a loss! The crowd was conspicuously lacking our main target customer group - teenagers. This may have something to do with the fact that there was a fairground OUTSIDE the show, and the show itself cost four pounds to get in; unlike previous years, when the fairground had opened after the show had closed... it seemed like the fairground was in competition to the show.

We had lots of middle aged people and above, and young families with tiny children. The children loved the Wigglypets, and a few of them were dragged away crying by their parents - because few of the parents seemed willing to buy them for their children; perhaps due to the craft tent being quite deep into the show ground, so most of the children already had candy floss, painted faces, and balloons... and my theory is that the fact that most of the children ran up to the stall and picked up a wigglypet, only to have the parent yell "Don't TOUCH! PUT THAT DOWN!" at them, meant the parents couldn't possible "reward" the child for showing such enthusiasm by actually buying them something! We may have had more sales if we'd put them behind glass or something so the children aren't so tempted to disobey parental dictates :-/

Oh well. You live and learn. We picked up some details of other shows from neighbouring stallholders, so we'll try them and see if we get any better luck elsewhere. Ideally somewhere where all the teenagers aren't lured away.