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.

picture-picture or long, lost weekend

Over the past several weeks, there have been a series of ninnying events though while far from spoiling our time together away from work, that grey immanence not having undue influence after hours, have presented challenges or bluffs that we not the choicest. First, I thought I had lost all my keys entirely—though I later found after a lot of bother that I had in fact had them with me the entire time, packed away in advance. Now, I've ruined a perfectly good computer (read: on its last legs, although functional and ironically lamented nearly on a delay basis that it was due for an upgrade) by sloshing a glass of wine over it and most of the entire dining table.

Searching for solutions afterwards and having made a triage of staunching the stains from setting in on the placemats first and foremost with a lot of salt, which turned out to be an ingenious investment, made of a spot-resistant material and already sort of the shade of wine-stain and came out perfectly clean, I learned that I did not react perhaps with the requisite urgency of doom and gloom. The laptop was powered down and I sopped up what I could see—although reading more, and with a paucity of domestic animals or clumsy children to blame for my own bad table-manners, I see I ought to have panicked over this most unpredictable of accidents, and I should have immediately disassembled the entire computer, buried it in a bag of rice and still hope for the best but prepare for the worst. The computer did thankfully, under the auspices of those guardian gremlins that manage such things, come on once and gave me a chance to back-up all the photos that I had neglected for months but then never again. At least, not for now: apparently there are a lot of testimonials too about computers eventually recovering after days of drying—propping them open in the shape of a lambda in a warm and dry spot is recommended rather than a hair-dryer. The separation anxiety is much more than I expected.  This accident gave the excuse to get a new computer but possibly not with the research I wanting to ply to it. I know it will take sometime to get used to the new environment and I think I got something also good and functional, logically, but it now feels like a boombox, huge and unwieldy compared to the Walkman that I had before, and though I am confronted with newish innovations and navigation at work, it has been a few years and I was not expecting to be keep so safe or have my intuitive sense called to the carpet. One has to purposefully run applications as an administrator in order for them to work and the hacks I was used to have been replaced with apps, all touchy-feely and visual. Since unboxing the new laptop, I have spent this whole time trying to put a sepia-tone on the entire platform in order to restore some degree of familiarity.