ab in den urlaub

 
PfRC will be on hiatus shortly for an over-due vacation through Switzerland on to the borderlands of Italy and Lake Como, plus where ever the road takes us. Please stay tuned for on-going adventures.

alchemie oder mayence

An international team of alchemists have proven their metal and have explained in a repeatable and applicable way how liquid cement (Beton) can be magicked into a liquid glass-like conductive material.

The substance, refined at laboratories in Japan, is being called mayenite, after the English exonym for the city of Mainz where the potential was accidentally first discovered. It's in the cooling and compression that determines how the cement congeals and compounds crystallize that makes a spot of pavement a hot-wire. This is pretty interesting news in material engineering, making ideas like electrifying roads to charge hybrid vehicles or harness kinetic energy or turning passive surfaces into dynamic ones seem not so far-fetched or ambitious.

cock-eyed optimist or oil can

Though I had given up hope, more or less dismissing stories of friends of friends' computers spontaneously reviving themselves after an accidental spill as the stuff of urban legend, I tried again earlier today, absently and without expectation. But lo and behold, after the sixth day, which seemed to be a common experience and I had tried repeatedly in the interim, it came on.

It was like the Tin Man muttering “oil can” from seized up jaws. I know that this probably a rather spacey thing to believe and not very subjective, but I think that these are the moments when inanimate objects earn their souls. I'm inclined to think that animate objects earn their keep too—by virtue that is, and at much excelerated rate. I am not posting this update on that laptop, of course, since the keyboard and mousepad was done for (and the cooling-fan which always seemed to run in overdrive never came on and I was afraid that it might overheat), reacting in weird ways, but that was nonetheless a relief as I was able to copy some files locally onto the new computer and mirror some tried and tested settings. As for the old laptop, maybe I can turn it into art or find some fitting honour—not that I haven't used a handicapped set-up before and wouldn't object to the right crutches again.

seaquest 2013

More statutory notifications of intent to furlough (beurlaubt) US federal works are being distributed within hard and fast guidelines, though some agencies have chosen to be proactive instead of reactive in meeting this mandate.

I wonder if those exempt from this act are a bit stare-offishly curious about what those unpaid holidays might entail. In order to gird my personal budget in preparation, I had designated quite a few small luxuries as noble martyrs—like furlough cashews, etc. I wonder what those forced to stay away from work have planned for the meantime—be it numbing worry or an excuse for adventure. Especially for fence-sitters, the grass is always greener. Sequestration in itself, the codex that triggers all these savings-measures, sounds pretty enticing at first consideration, like that global-warming feel-good television series from the early 1990s. This option atrophied, however from years of crying wolf, has very real and immediate repercussions, markedly for those realizing less income in the face of something other than Snow Day high-jinx or those with waning patience to navigate the rivets of bureaucracy.

the pump don't work because vandals broke the handle

Despite unresolved tensions with the contentious deployment of the Euro Hawks, huge and marauding things, along with the whole idea turning sour for the programme's once strongest proponents over privacy and safety concerns, as the BBC reports, the German national railway system (die Deutschebahn) is floating the idea of having miniature drones patrolling the switch-yards for graffiti vandals. While without the range and appetite for snooping of their side-lined bigger brothers, allowing such surveillance does seem to be a slippery slope towards commercial interests pushing the decisions that make government policy wilt. What do you think? Is it any different from a company using curmudgeonly security guards to keep away meddling kids or over-stepping their beats?

hard-currency

When my mother and I were together for the first time in Germany, we were bemused by the profileration of what we called cheese-banks, Sparkasse—saving cheese (Käse, we thought). It turns out, via Oddity Central with a bonus report from the BBC, there are such institutions in the Parmesian producing region of Italian, at least, which will larger wheels of cheese as collateral for loans to local businesses at a nominal interest-rate, including a fee for storing their assets in conditions where they will mature properly.