The Death Star

So there has been a solar cooking thread going on in on the Austin Permaculture list, and one of the designs that's popular is to use a parabolic satellite dish. Most of the discussion mentions using smaller dishes, a meter in diameter or less, and several people have mentioned being able to boil water in 5-10 minutes using one. I'd love to be able to do solar cooking, and it would also be nice to use it to heat water.

Enter the Death Star:

I have one of those Old Skool satellite dishes, like 6 or 7 feet across, that's been uselessly attached to my shed since I moved in. If you can boil gallons of water with a 1 meter dish, imagine what you could do with a 2 meter dish! Solar power is proportional to surface area.

surface area of a 1 meter dish = 56 sq. ft.
surface arfe of a 2 meter dish = 266 sq. ft.

Vehicular Flambe, anyone?

Two Shades of Brown

I'm starting my Master Cleanse today, and will be posting periodic updates of my condition here.

In other news, I got 80% done cutting the baseboards for the floor today. Tomorrow I will finish cutting and do all of the staining. By tomorrow night or Sunday at the latest, the floor will be 100% done! I've already had several near-religious experiences seeing the new floor at flattering times, and I'm looking forward to weeks of spontaneous orgasms once it's completely finished.

Drawing Epiphany!

I used to draw quite a bit as a teenager, mainly:

1) Nude women
2) Robots
3) Weapons

...or some combination of the three.

Since doing artistic things isn't allowed at Texas A&M University, I quit pretty much all of my artistic pursuits while I was there, although I did sometimes doodle in my notes.

I've remained mentally focused on visual artwork and drawing for years, have studied various techniques and artists, and have generally done a lot of drawing-related things, without much actual *drawing*.

However, after once again being inspired by Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud and That Yellow Bastard by Frank Miller, I decided it was once again time.
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Master Cleanse Alpha

So I made my first batch of Master Cleanser a few minutes ago. It tastes pretty good. In a dream I was having this morning, I was anticipating getting back to my dorm room to get started on the cleanse, but was somehow distractingly tempted into violating it a few times before I even got the shit mixed. However, in real life, I've had nothing today except the Cleanser, and my goal is to continue until next Thursday when I will be heading up to my Mom's place in D/FW.
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