Author Topic: what I have learned today.  (Read 847278 times)

ian

Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5325 on: 05 July, 2021, 01:30:03 pm »
That's just irradiation. Pop them on a conveyor under a suitable gamma source.

Many of the foods we eat were created by gamma rays, just like The Hulk.

(Golden Promise malt, used in beers and whisk(e)ys, for instance.)

T42

  • Apprentice geezer
Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5326 on: 05 July, 2021, 01:35:01 pm »
Today I've taken delivery of a box of scalpel blades.
They are sterilised.
Sterilised by gamma radiation according to what it says n the side of the box.

Good thing too.  Gamma-sterilization doesn't leave any residual radiation. It's only bad publicity that stops it being used for everything perishable. You could sterilize fish in a sealed bag with it and leave it out of the fridge for months without it going off.
I've dusted off all those old bottles and set them up straight

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5327 on: 06 July, 2021, 12:08:28 am »
In other exciting radiation trivia, we all have a weak gamma source in our house, the americium-241 in smoke detectors (primarily an alpha emitter, but it spits out low energy gamma photons if you fancy giving your cat a case of the Hulk.)

Sadly these are going out of fashion now that people have worked out how to make cheap optical smoke detectors that are Not Shit, and combine them with a temperature sensor to detect the fast flaming fires that optical smoke detectors are a bit reticent about.  Which means fewer toast alarms, and no radioactive spiders.

(Ideally, you probably want a mixture of detector types, because reasons.)

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5328 on: 06 July, 2021, 12:15:40 am »
Today I've taken delivery of a box of scalpel blades.
They are sterilised.
Sterilised by gamma radiation according to what it says n the side of the box.

Good thing too.  Gamma-sterilization doesn't leave any residual radiation.

It's also one of the more practical ways to sterilise plastics that don't react well to heat or some of the usual chemicals (ozone, peroxide, gluteraldehyde, etc).

And unlike UV, gamma rays go straight through the packaging.


Quote
It's only bad publicity that stops it being used for everything perishable.

I remember the fuss about it in the 80s.  Vaguely disappointed it hasn't quietly and without a fuss become mainstream since, like microwave ovens.


Quote
You could sterilize fish in a sealed bag with it and leave it out of the fridge for months without it going off.

I'm sure there are Scandiwegians who would be doing this on principle...

Mr Larrington

  • A bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds
  • Custard Wallah
    • Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary
Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5329 on: 06 July, 2021, 01:33:46 am »
That “Lloyd” was a common 19th century word for a shipping company, hence HAPAG-Lloyd* which survives to this day.

* Known in these parts as “Haddock-Floyd”.
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

ian

Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5330 on: 06 July, 2021, 09:57:28 am »
In other exciting radiation trivia, we all have a weak gamma source in our house, the americium-241 in smoke detectors (primarily an alpha emitter, but it spits out low energy gamma photons if you fancy giving your cat a case of the Hulk.)

Sadly these are going out of fashion now that people have worked out how to make cheap optical smoke detectors that are Not Shit, and combine them with a temperature sensor to detect the fast flaming fires that optical smoke detectors are a bit reticent about.  Which means fewer toast alarms, and no radioactive spiders.

(Ideally, you probably want a mixture of detector types, because reasons.)

Americium-241 is quite complicated to make (needing a nuclear reactor, for instance, is the main complication) so I'm a bit surprised it's been used for so long.

They removed the nuclear from magnetic resonance imaging to stop scaring people.

I saw a big gamma-ray machine once, basically a hunk of cobalt-60 surrounded by a lot of lead and shielding and a hole in one end that you didn't want to stand in the same town as. They'd use it zap seeds, fruit flies, and poorly performing work-study lab technicians.

T42

  • Apprentice geezer
Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5331 on: 06 July, 2021, 10:28:50 am »
I did a system years ago for folk who built i.a. devices for measuring low-level radiation in petri-dish-size samples.  The sample dishes went into a hopper and were fed singly into a detector chamber that was shielded by a considerable weight of lead bricks.

The lead came in two varieties: bog-standard lead that was either mined recently or recycled, and the special stuff.  The bog-standard stuff was considered to be a secondary emitter in its own right and therefore not reliable as shielding for very low-level samples.  The special stuff was used to line the innermost detection chamber. It came from the cargo of a Roman galley that had sunk around 2000 years ago, and was reckoned to be emission-free.  My clients had bought the entire cargo, and charged a mint for it.

Nonetheless, the detectors were so sensitive that on days when the wind blew in their direction from over the Vosges mountains they couldn't be calibrated, igneous rock being slightly radioactive.
I've dusted off all those old bottles and set them up straight

ian

Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5332 on: 06 July, 2021, 11:16:05 am »
Recently refined lead contains a proportion of uranium-235 and its daughter nuclide lead-210. The uranium-235 keeps replenishing the lead-210 until refined away, but then the lead-210 sticks around for a while with a half-life of about 22 years, but that decays to radioactive polonium-210 and then relatively quickly to stable lead-206. This ejects a fair number of beta and alpha particles.

Very old lead contains essentially no remaining lead-210 or polonium-210, so is handy if you absolutely need no inherent radioactivity for very sensitive detectors and the like, and there's a premium market for it.

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5333 on: 06 July, 2021, 11:42:26 am »
My preferred view in the Finder window on Mac OS X is columns, but one thing I find deeply irritating is the way it makes the columns far wider than is needed, so I have to constantly resize them or do lots of annoying sideways scrolling.

I've just learned how to change the default width of columns. It's really easy - you just hold the Option key while dragging to resize, and it changes all other columns in the window at the same time, as well as setting the new width as the default.

Why didn't I look up how to do this years ago?  :facepalm:
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

ian

Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5334 on: 06 July, 2021, 09:48:11 pm »
You find all kinds of exciting things if you paw the option key when perusing menus or mostly clicking anything. Want to know your IP address, option-click the wireless icon. Need to get to the peskily secret /library folder, press option in the Finder 'go' menu. Want to cause your enemies to suddenly and messily deliquesce at your feet. Etc.

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5335 on: 07 July, 2021, 06:48:54 am »
I already knew how to find the secret /Library folder. That one is very handy.
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

Mr Larrington

  • A bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds
  • Custard Wallah
    • Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary
Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5336 on: 08 July, 2021, 10:03:07 am »
That the word “Occitan”, the language as she is spoke in Occitanie (formerly Languedoc-Rousillon & Midi-Pyrénées) derives from òc – meaning “yes” – rather than being a mangled version of “Aquitaine”.
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5337 on: 08 July, 2021, 10:32:34 am »
That the word “Occitan”, the language as she is spoke in Occitanie (formerly Languedoc-Rousillon & Midi-Pyrénées) derives from òc – meaning “yes” – rather than being a mangled version of “Aquitaine”.

Depending on who you like to believe, this may also be the origin of "OK", meaning "OK".
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

robgul

  • Cycle:End-to-End webmaster
  • cyclist, Cytech accredited mechanic & woodworker
    • Cycle:End-to-End
Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5338 on: 08 July, 2021, 12:18:56 pm »
That the word “Occitan”, the language as she is spoke in Occitanie (formerly Languedoc-Rousillon & Midi-Pyrénées) derives from òc – meaning “yes” – rather than being a mangled version of “Aquitaine”.

Depending on who you like to believe, this may also be the origin of "OK", meaning "OK".

Distant memories of the label on OK sauce bottles in the 1950s has it that the suggestion that OK was from "Orl Korrect" being illiterate spelling (I can't check as I think we finished the last bottle we had in the mid-1970s!)

Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5339 on: 08 July, 2021, 01:45:30 pm »
That the word “Occitan”, the language as she is spoke in Occitanie (formerly Languedoc-Rousillon & Midi-Pyrénées) derives from òc – meaning “yes” – rather than being a mangled version of “Aquitaine”.

Depending on who you like to believe, this may also be the origin of "OK", meaning "OK".

Distant memories of the label on OK sauce bottles in the 1950s has it that the suggestion that OK was from "Orl Korrect" being illiterate spelling (I can't check as I think we finished the last bottle we had in the mid-1970s!)
For a month in 2012 I worked in an art deco building in Merton which previously was the OK Sauce factory.
These days it is home to design gurus Seymour Powell.

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5340 on: 08 July, 2021, 01:58:38 pm »
That the word “Occitan”, the language as she is spoke in Occitanie (formerly Languedoc-Rousillon & Midi-Pyrénées) derives from òc – meaning “yes” – rather than being a mangled version of “Aquitaine”.

Depending on who you like to believe, this may also be the origin of "OK", meaning "OK".

Distant memories of the label on OK sauce bottles in the 1950s has it that the suggestion that OK was from "Orl Korrect" being illiterate spelling (I can't check as I think we finished the last bottle we had in the mid-1970s!)

Yes, that is another version.

I know of at least another couple of folk etymologies for OK, all equally plausible, all equally unlikely.
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

Zipperhead

  • The cyclist formerly known as Big Helga
Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5341 on: 08 July, 2021, 02:03:05 pm »
For a month in 2012 I worked in an art deco building in Merton which previously was the OK Sauce factory.
These days it is home to design gurus Seymour Powell.

Merton? Merton?

I'll have you know that's in Wandsworth - and just round the corner from me.
Won't somebody think of the hamsters!

Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5342 on: 08 July, 2021, 02:05:24 pm »
For a month in 2012 I worked in an art deco building in Merton which previously was the OK Sauce factory.
These days it is home to design gurus Seymour Powell.

Merton? Merton?

I'll have you know that's in Wandsworth - and just round the corner from me.

Ah! Elsewhere the internet tells lies.

Gattopardo

  • Lord of the sith
  • Overseaing the building of the death star
Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5343 on: 08 July, 2021, 02:55:22 pm »
Ok sauce is still for sale.

Is it the same as it was?

robgul

  • Cycle:End-to-End webmaster
  • cyclist, Cytech accredited mechanic & woodworker
    • Cycle:End-to-End
Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5344 on: 08 July, 2021, 09:29:49 pm »
Applying a thin coat of Proofide to a couple of Brooks saddles with a small paintbrush seems to work well - leaving it for a few days to sink into the leather before buffing up to reduce any slight stickiness.    One is a fairly well-used ordinary B17, the other with only about 150 miles on it, a B17 narrow, laced.

Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5345 on: 08 July, 2021, 11:30:30 pm »
Bizarrely, despite looking at them all my life (or maybe because of that), I'd not noticed that clocks using roman numerals often use IIII instead of IV. How can I not have seen that?

Also seems that no-one is quite sure why; symmetry of stroke weighting with the VIII, or having the first four digits using Is, the next four Vs, the last four Xs,  or avoiding IV as it's an abbreviation for IVPITTER (Jupiter), or that it gives even numbers of each character (X, V, I) so if you are casting the numerals out of metal to attach to the face the mould is symmetrical.

Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5346 on: 12 July, 2021, 03:52:06 pm »
Just someone's butler

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5347 on: 13 July, 2021, 10:41:09 am »
Today I have learned who Ignacy Jan Paderewski was.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignacy_Jan_Paderewski

As well as all those achievements mentioned, he was also a solution in today's Guardian cryptic crossword.
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5348 on: 14 July, 2021, 08:51:45 pm »
Standing in front of a mirror while I had my Osprey Talon backpack on, I noticed a funny protrusion on the clasp of the chest strap. Like a little drainage vent… except it’s pointing upwards.

Hmmmm what could it be for?

I wonder… maybe if I blow into it?

OH MY FREAKING GOD IT’S A WHISTLE!!!

Mind blown.

I’ve only had the backpack eight years.
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

Re: what I have learned today.
« Reply #5349 on: 14 July, 2021, 08:55:50 pm »
That's what comes from not reading the instructions.  :-)

I have a slight compulsion to always plough through instructions, however banal. (So I know that Osprey rucsacs have whistles.)
Rust never sleeps