The Thingy

I don’t know what else to call it.

So the story goes, this object – well, six of them supposedly – were found buried under a USAF base.

Maybe it was some secret device that didn’t work out.

Here are the two pictures of it supplied:

 

This is one of them dug up, showing its huge size.

It also has some stubby cylinders coming out of odd places.

The comb- like protrusions are also mysterious.

This picture seems to show one of these objects in a frame suitable to move it – and it actually does not seem to be solid as the frame would need to be much stronger if it were.

 

. . . . . . or am I wrong on that count?

This thingy puzzled me because it does not seem to have a logical purpose.

Regardless of that, I made a rough simulation of it in Blender to see how it went together.

Next up is two pics of my Blender model minus the comb bits as they don’t seem to have any function other than maybe strengthening. 

 

It looks like two double saddle shapes connected by four supports.

The model shows the supports in blue for clarity.

At first it did not look symmetrical: It seemed untidy . . . . . .. but then when carefully observed, the two large diameter semicircles seem to centre up. I made some axial cylinders to show that in the second image of my re- creation.

There are two basic possibilities for the structure of the object:

1. A solid metal casting – but then why make it so huge and on top of that, what are the large tubular fittings on it? Unless . . . . it was cast and not ever finished, and those are the risers, the tubes in the mould where the molten metal flows into the mould.

That could suggest it was something like the mounting for a big satellite dish . . . . . except that it does not make sense as to why it would be buried and not simply melted down to reuse the metal.

And this has other problems: where the axes should be is not solid, and you would need solid fixings for the axles if it was made for that, with bearing seats too.

Yes, it might just be two cast saddles but then why cast two at once? These things are huge and casting one alone would be a very big job. Two at once would double your problems and increase the chance of failure.

2. A hollow object – this looks more likely to me – perhaps a cooling chamber with coils or other tubing inside that needed to be cooled, which would explain the large tube fittings – for the coolant pipes. Still mysterious and weird. A superconducting double coil of some sort?

It seems to have two main axes but not a third.

It may actually not be as centred as my model either – but it is hard to tell.

This is very strange. Even if it was radioactive you still would not bury it under an Airforce base.

If it does not have a use, why bury it? Does it have strange effects on people? Even more reason not to bury it under anything you want to use . . . . well, that’s what I thought. I guess under an Airforce base it should not get dug up any time soon . . . . . . . except when it does. Weird.

If I imagine it is some sort of Lorentz/MHD device then the three red axes could be tubes and the coils would then create . . . . . ummmm. Two pairs of them have flat coils passing them in parallel axes but the third pair (left- right in the picture) are at 90 degrees to each other.

Well, there it is.

According to some, it was some sort of helium-3 device . . . . . . . but I have serious doubts about helium-3 being anything useful at all.

Have you heard tales of “mining helium-3 on the moon”?

All of the talk of using it in fusion reactors is so far nothing but talk: nobody has ever managed to get nuclear fusion power to work in the sense of generating as much power as it consumes or more - and that is despite billions of dollars and many attempts. 

Will He-3 make a difference here? I suspect not since I think the whole idea of bottled fusion on Earth is not going to work: our science is just not good enough and we are somehow missing a big part of what makes solar fusion happen – but that’s just my opinion, and I don’t need funding for my research.

So this idea is . . . . . go to the moon, mine it for Helium-3, then bring the helium3 back to earth and then use it to generate fusion power in a reactor that may or may not work.

Just the idea of mining the moon alone is going to be sooo expensive in terms of energy and money (assuming of course that it can be mined there), the helium-3 that we got from this operation would be worth a lot more than gold per gram . . . . . . and it’s helium so a gram is going to be in a gas bottle . . . . and then you want to try it in a fusion reactor that has yet to be proven as viable for power generation on Earth . . .

Yeah right.

SO YOU WANNA BE A 3D ARTIST?

 

First, I am not and have never been a paid 3D artist or animator. I do it because I like it.

I have done Architecture and designed things all of my life and even made some of my designs in the real world. I still do this today.

I think I was almost born a 3D artist. I have used Blender, the free 3D computer design and animation program since version 2.4 - I think it was in the nineties – before that I fooled around with more primitive software since there was nothing better at the time.  Before that I learned to design with very sharp pencils, pens and rulers and compasses. Yup. I go back that far.

Now we are up to Blender version 4.4. It is mind-bogglingly complex. 

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When I was younger I looked into doing animation and design as a job but there were serious things to consider:

First, unless you lived in California there are not a whole lot of employers.

Then you needed to have the tech savvy to run the computers that the work is done on.

Then there were the working conditions: you are contracted by a company and the real hours start at about sixty a week and go up from there. No, that is not an exaggeration.

CGI companies are the whipping boy of the Studios and that means that if the Director needs reshoots, you and your company do them pretty much for free as part of the contract. ASAP.

You won’t be using Blender for any of this, of course: it’s 3DSMAX, Maya, Houdini, Shake and various other full-priced software packages being used in these companies.

You will probably need to learn these programs before any company will let you in the door and for that you need to go to one of the approved training courses - or if you are very lucky, get training in- house. Six months training in an expensive US University or College: not cheap. Maybe you could learn all that yourself but there is still the cost of all those programs too, although some of them have free "student" versions.

All this to get a job that will most likely entail pumping out VFX clips as fast as possible because everyone has deadlines to meet - you won’t be making any masterworks here.

More likely you will be making advertisements for food products you would not eat or gadgets you can’t afford on your pay rate. Oh - and of course, you are living in LA or somewhere near it in California so the rents are going to be astronomical. Get used to eating Instant Noodles my friend.

Can’t say I was enamoured of the idea.

All that was before (a) The Coof ruined a lot of things and (b) the fires torched large ares of the hills – oh, and of course, (c) the current Cali government seems to be trying to kill off a lot of Californians in various ways – well, that’s how it looks from way over here.

Most of that is probably gone now anyway: Big Movie Companies will probably call on teams of workers from places like India, Vietnam or Indonesia to do the same work they once paid locals for at a tenth of the cost or less. That’s international economics. You know where the Simpsons animation is done, right? 

Will AI take away jobs in the CGI and FX business? You can bet on it - to some degree, but really they still need people to run the software, no “AI” software is going to be smart enough to do much on its own for a very long time if ever. It’s just the latest buzzword being used to push up corporate share prices and threaten workers to not ask for more money “or we will replace you with AI”.

Go ahead, big corporations who think you have billions to burn: throw them at more server farms and power plants, but you are more likely to get a nuclear fusion plant to work than you are to get any kind of true AI consciousness in software: there is a kind of technological hubris at work here. (No, I don’t think nuclear fusion will ever work either. Look at the history of this if you doubt me.)

To imagine that consciousness is just an algorithm that you can run on a sufficiently complex computer system is greatly underestimating the situation. It amazes me every time I see some would-be expert trying to tell us all that AI is just around the corner and that it will be smarter than us, and that consciousness is just a bit of sofware running on a "wet computer".  

But hey, the shareholders will believe it, right? Give us more money to make sure the AI monster will be controlled by US, not the evil foreigners.  You can trust us.

 

Hollywood is mostly dead. But don’t take my word for it, look for yourself.

So is most of the big “NEWS” media. They sold their asses to the wrong side and now the new boss will clean house and they are gone. Lie all you like - if nobody is watching you, the advertising money will dry up real fast.

The streaming services are eating each other trying to stay alive. Thanks to Woke DEIsease they are still pouring money down the drain wondering why people are not watching them.  

Smaller independent news people and channels are now more popular and respected than the big old dynosaurs of Teevee Nooz.

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Okay, so you want to tell stories onscreen and you would like to do it on the net. GREAT!

Get a decent PC with a good video card, learn Blender and Unreal Engine and Metahuman and a host of other bits and pieces (ALL FREE!) and MAKE YOUR OWN STUDIO.

Get online with other crazies like yourself and get a team together, make a GOOD movie or series (or even a game?) and sell it online. This is what the internet is great for.

You will have a lot more fun, easier working hours and you can keep your day job until it starts paying off well enough. If it ever does. Sure, you will fail - Learn from your mistakes, just get back up and try again. And again. And again.

If you want to see an example of how it can be done have a search for DYNAMO DREAM. 

Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsGZ_2RuJ2A

This started off as one man’s work and is still growing .

I am sure there are others too that I have not seen yet.

Put your own work out there, do the hard work - you never know what could come of it.

Mowing with electricity

I'll bet you hate mowing lawns - but you can't avoid it. Want to live in a block of flats? no, me neither. Too many down sides for me, so mowing is the only other option.

For the last few years I have been mowing the lawn with a cable trailing behind the mower.  Yes, I can already hear the guffaws from the back.  

Well let me just provide some history. 

When I was a boy I got the job of mowing the lawn while dad watched sport on teevee and drank beer.

I used a gas powered mower that was at best "unreliable". Sometimes it just would not start and my shoulder got sore pulling that bleeping handle. It made a racket and it stank. 

When I needed a new one much later on I got electric. No noise, no complex problems with fuel, carbys and starting - just hit the switch and it goes. A great day for me.  Okay, so you need to get long cables and a safety junction box to join them and spend a certain amount of time just moving the cables all over the place - but it was much better than the previous situation. 

It always worked.

Well now I have got rid of the cable. I have been riding a battery bike for two years now so a battery mower seemed a great idea.  

No, Lithium batteries do NOT catch fire unless you do stupid things with them like use the wrong charger. Every mophone on the planet has Lithium batteries but they don't catch fire either.   Hey, stupid people can set a gasoline mower on fire too.  :D

No, I am not a "fan" of electric vehicles: at best they are suited to short city trips but for anything longer distance or carrying heavy loads I strongly suggest petrol or diesel fuel - the energy density of these fuels make any and every battery look silly. They also take a very short time to "recharge" unlike battery vehicles.

Hybrids are a good idea since a lot of braking energy can be recycled and an electric motor has more torque and efficiency than a basic combustion engine but that makes everything more complex too and more parts means more parts to fail.

I bought a battery mower and assembled it out of the box following the instructions and took it on its first mow and it looked great. 

Bigger mowing circle thus more mown in each swath, a metal frame and 36 volt power - pretty good I thought. I folded the handle and put it away for use next day .  . . .

 . . . .  but there was a small catch. The switch cable that runs from the body to the switch box on the handle got stretched when I folded the handle and when I got it back out it just didn't go. 

This was a new mower so I took it back and got a refund, then bought a replacement. 

 

This time I carefully assemble it so the cable goes OVER the crossbar and not under as shown in the assembly instructions.  All good. I did call the support line and told the makers of this problem and I suspect that this is not the fist time it has happenned . . but what do I know? I'm just one end user. 

The cable running over the bar, the right way to do it

 

So yes, I am happy with it and think it is a good deal but make sure that you don't make the same mistake I did. I have a fairly big lawn so I also got two more batteries (it uses two 18V batteries at a time) so I can always have two on charge if the lawn turns out to be that big of a job.  It's quiet, even more so that the cable one, and it has a wide range of height adjustment. It also has a catcher but I didn't show it here.