Your leaking thatched hut during the restoration of a pre-Enlightenment state.

 

Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



links

decay & ruin
Biosphere II
Chernobyl
dead malls
Detroit
Irving housing

got that wrong
Paleofuture.com

appropriate tech
Arduino μcontrollers
Backwoods Home
Fractal antenna

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Like my brownhouse:
   use for an incandescent bulb
Sunday, January 25 2015
This afternoon I set up a primitive stop-action animation studio using my dazzle-painted Hackintosh and a copy of the Hue Animation Studio. That program has a timelapse photography mode, so I pointed a webcam at a tiny cruciferous seedling I'd rescued from the floor of the greenhouse and set it to take a picture every 10 minutes or so. I soon found that illuminating this scene (and providing a grow light for the seedling) was something best not done with LED or CF bulbs; the generally invisible to our eyes, they produce a constant flicker that results in bands of brightness in photographed scenes, something that is really obvious in time-lapse or stop-motion photography. So I had to use an old 60 watt incandescent bulb, the first time I've had any use for such a bulb since 2005. It's surprising I still had one. Supposedly 60 watt light bulbs work okay as grow lights, at least according to this video by a marijuana farmer on YouTube.

After Gretchen got home from work in Woodstock, we drove down to Ray and Nancy's place in Old Hurley to attend a party they were throwing in celebration of Gretchen's recent birthday. The party ended up being attended by ten people and four dogs. As usual, Ray was the one who prepared the food, which consisted of several dishes all making use of his not-so-secret ingredient: lots of oil. Greasy food is good food! Our friend Kate had brought a big growler of some sort of Belgian-style beer that tasted like mead, and that was mostly what I drank tonight. But there was also prosecco and, later, aperitifs. Sarah the Vegan had baked a big three-layer cake, which I jokingly disparaged, saying it was nothing compared to the one cake I grudgingly baked in recent memory.
As always with this group, our conversation was a long, rollicking series of setups and punchlines interspersed with weird stories and revolting imagery. At some point people started listing all the words they find disgusting, and, after someone inevitably said "panties," I pantomimed the sniffing of a pair picked up from the floor, but in so doing I knocked over my thin-walled stemware glass of prosecco, which broke into three pieces on the table (causing Sarah the Vegan to need another slice of cake, as the slice in front of her was now soaked in prosecco and possibly studded with tiny shards of broken glass).
Meanwhile, the dogs were having a party of their own. Ramona was surprisingly on her best behavior, which was great because Gretchen had almost decided to leave her and Eleanor back at home. She had been sleeping all day in the upstairs bed, but didn't seem to be able to match the energy level of Ray and Nancy's dog Jack, who absolutely loves her. Ramona managed to go through the motions and even humped his head a few times like she usually does, but she was more content to lie around chewing on his toys.

We stayed until past midnight, and though I was fairly drunk, I managed to drive us home okay.


For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?150125

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