Blackcap Blog

Published at 21:00 on 12 January 2014

Braiding 10 gauge copper wire is something that sounds simple but is in practice very difficult. It’s not possible to easily get a nice, tight braid, because by the time you’ve bent it enough to braid it loosely, it’s become work hardened to the point where it needs to be annealed yet again if you want to bend it tighter. While possible, doing dozens to hundreds of mini-annealings as one braids would be such a pain that one is best off forgetting about using the braiding technique (at least if one is focused on tight braids).

It may not be classic fire scale, but heating copper to the point of annealing it makes it significantly more reactive than it is at room temperature. Reactive enough, in fact, that it instantly forms a lovely black layer of oxides. The classic boric-acid-in-denatured-alcohol barrier flux that silversmiths use does an excellent job of preventing most of that oxidation. And it’s not necessary to purchase insane quantities* of boric acid from a jewelry supply house; any drug store should have it in their first-aid section.

The barrier flux won’t prevent all oxidation. What it doesn’t prevent can be removed using what’s called a “pickle”. You don’t have to buy special “pickle compound” from a jewelry supply house; just dissolve 2 tablespoons of salt in 1 cup of vinegar. Keep it on the warm side (at least 100 °F) for best results. Since it’s winter, I just kept the jar on top of a baseboard heater today. Salt-and-vinegar was apparently the standard pickle compound before jewelery supply houses started convincing people to buy sodium bisulphate from them.† (Hence the name “pickle”, because it’s essentially a stonger, saltier version of what’s used for the food-preserving technique that goes by the same name.)

Do not under any circumstances pickle anything with dissimilar metals, unless you want to see the more reactive of the metals become electroplated with the less reactive metal. It was something of a surprise to see the brass design highlights on a bracelet turned to the same copper as the rest of the piece. Thankfully, it was a very thin layer of copper which was easily removed with some aggressive polishing.

* For some reason, they are fond of selling the stuff in minimum 5 pound lots, which would be enough to last me several lifetimes, most likely.

† In defense of the bisulphate, it does apparently last longer than the salt/vinegar mixture. For me, that’s no big problem, as I’m occasionally making jewelry as a hobby. Another plus of the salt/vinegar pickle is that commercial pickle is yet another thing that jewelry supply houses insist on selling in insanely-large (for a mere hobbyist) lots.

Published at 16:23 on 9 August 2013

As I  just mentioned, there was a big security brouhaha on the ferry this morning, which delayed it for at least 30 minutes: some bicycle passenger forgot how he boarded on the other end and left his bike behind.

Apparently that triggered worries that the bike might literally be a pipe bomb (cue a punk band), and one set to blow up if anyone attempted to move the bike at that. At the last minute, I decided to grab my ham radio HT on the way out the door, so I was able to listen to some of the chatter about it (they never ‘fessed up to all the fuss being over a forgotten bicycle on the PA system’s announcements, of course).

Published at 09:11 on 9 August 2013

One of the things I’ve grown to expect in the Puget Sound region is how, starting sometime in mid- to late- September, the mornings start getting foggy. Even though it’s not consistently rainy yet, those colder, foggy mornings are a sign the seasons are turning.

Since moving to Bainbridge Island, I’ve learned that the fogs actually start in late July over the Sound (at least, they did this year), and gradually build in intensity as the nights lengthen. It’s apparently only until September that they’re widespread enough (and expanded enough in scope from their origin over the Sound) that they become apparent to those on land.

It was another morning of waking to ship horns today. Tendrils of mist were wafting through the apartment courtyard. The island beaches were completely socked-in. A security brouhaha delayed the ferry today, so I’m still in Eagle Harbor at the moment. The fog dissipated over the past half-hour here, but you can see it’s still completely socked-in further out over the Sound.

Published at 23:32 on 2 August 2013

I don’t normally link to real-estate listings, but what was done to this property was so awful that I simply must. Some flippers took what must have been a classic 1960s A-frame and basically ruined it, aesthetic-wise.

It’s pretty much a textbook case of everything evil about flippers. They tend to be investors bereft of any sort of artistic, historical, or aesthetic sense save for pandering to the most banal of whatever design fads are presently prevailing. They renovate properties which indeed are often worn and neglected, but without any consideration for the design elements that make them unique and give them character.

The result, as with this property, is all too often something which can never again easily possess the many of the design characteristics which once gave it defining character. Take that A-frame for example; it once had natural wood finishes as its defining element. Now every such surface has been painted over in a faddish color scheme. It would take a lot of money and effort to remove all that off-white awfulness. So it will probably never be done. What was a major defining design element of an A-frame is now gone, forever.

It’s so sad. That house could have been just as easily been cleaned up and restored into a really great “back to the sixties” vintage home (with a few tasteful modern updates thrown in here and there, of course; nobody’s saying a cheap, unreliable 1960s range in the kitchen must stay). That would have created something truly unique and full of character that simply cannot be purchased in a new home.

Instead, we have a house trying to be something other than what it really is, and failing miserably.

Despite that, it will probably sell just fine. Part of the problem with remodeling is that such tasteless hatchet jobs tend to look just fine to all-too-many eyes… when they’re first done. The widespread regret only starts kicking in a decade or two later. Witness all the owners of classic Victorian homes who eagerly paid good money to have them “modernized” by covering their clapboards with (link) T1-11 siding and removing so-called “excessive” ornamentation back in the 1970s.

Here’s one example of what can be done with a vintage A-frame. (No, I don’t think it’s perfect, but then again I’d expect to have some design quibbles with someone else’s vision. No two people can ever be expected to agree 100% on matters of aesthetics.) The contrast between this LA artist’s vision and the local one of a 1-dimensional person whose vision is limited to turning a quick buck is, shall we say, fairly striking.

Update: Here’s what it looked like before the flippers vandalized it. It wasn’t completely intact by the time they got it (not a surprise, it is 50 years old), but it did still have all the basic fundamentals a home of that style should have. It would have made a great starting point for a tasteful renovation, and it sold for 164 grand less than the current asking price.

Published at 15:19 on 12 June 2013

I spend most of Saturday on the other side of the Sound and had two such moments.

The first was when I saw what I thought were two new duplexes (or maybe triplexes or quads, depending on the size of the units therein) had been built, and there was a “for sale” sign in front. Given that circumstances might still make it impossible for me to live on Bainbridge long-term,* it’s in my interest to keep an eye on the housing market.

Huh? What? One unit per building? Four bedrooms? 3000+ square feet? Oh, yeah — it’s Seattle. Restrictive zoning makes it impossible to build multifamily housing in most of the city. So even though the neighborhood in question has one of the smallest average household sizes in a city with the second-smallest average household size in the country, two 4-bedroom single-family monstrosities more suited to a large Mormon family from Salt Lake City were built. If you want an apartment or condo, you’re not worthy of the peace and quiet of a residential neighborhood. Go live on an arterial or next to the freeway were Seattle says you belong.

The second was near the end of the day when I wanted to catch a bus downtown.

Huh? What? No bus for 25 minutes? In a dense urban neighborhood like this? Oh, yeah — it’s Seattle. The city that’s never found it worthwhile to rationalize its bus service by doing a modest amount of route consolidation. If you want prompt service, either drive and shell out for parking or shell out for cab fare. If you can’t or don’t want to pay that much, get used to waiting because Seattle says your kind doesn’t deserve any better.

That’s just the way it is, take it or leave it (it’s been like that for decades, after all)? Fine, glad I chose to leave it.

* Losing my job downtown and not being able to find another one there, basically. Bainbridge works if you’re commuting to downtown Seattle, but commutes get unacceptably long for pretty much any other destination.

Published at 12:21 on 14 April 2013

Pretty much all communications-grade digital voice protocols sound awful, for the same reason that DMR sounds awful. Probably the least awful-sounding one, from the samples I’ve heard, is NXDN. Even that can’t hold a candle to plain old analog FM, however.

It all leaves me wondering if digital is just plain the wrong answer to cramming a voice signal into a smaller bandwidth. I’m inclined to thing using something like SSB plus an intelligent, software-defined receiver (with sophisticated noise filtering and precise, automatic carrier insertion) might be better.

Noise tends to be not a super-big issue at VHF and above, anyhow, so losing a degree of immunity to it might not be such a big deal, particularly if one uses digital signal processing techniques to remove as much of it as possible. SSB can sound as good as AM (which, unless noise gets in the way, blows digital out of the water when it comes to audio fidelity and overall intelligibility), provided you insert the carrier at just the right spot when receiving.

As a further plus, a voice-quality SSB signal uses half or less the bandwidth per channel of any of the digital protocols currently out there.

Sometimes the right answer to a question about employing a new technology is not to employ it at all (or, in this case, to employ it, but in a significantly different way than originally proposed).

Published at 09:33 on 21 March 2013

Unfortunately, the move was complicated (and somewhat compromised) by a curve ball from my present landlord, who is unwilling to let my tenancy go month-to-month after my lease expires.

Faced with the choice of committing to stay in a place I had already decided to leave this year, or conducting a hurried move, I chose the latter. I did manage to negotiate a 1-month extension to my lease, which made the whole move far more possible (and significantly less costly, because I’m not going to be paying for moving things into and out of storage, not paying for significantly more costly short-term housing).

So starting in about a month, I will see how well the island actually suits me. As I’ve written before, it’s hardly a perfect place. It merely appears to be the most practical alternative, given all the constraints which can be expected to be in place for the foreseeable future.

I’m hoping it will work out well enough that stability becomes justifiable and I can start looking to buy a home for myself in six months or so. The whole mess with this most recent lease, and the recurring hassle of moving, has really created a desire for both stability and not having to deal with landlords any more.

Published at 20:38 on 1 January 2013

We went over the so-called “fiscal cliff” (the deadline passed at midnight last night)… and Congress passed a law retroactively undoing the “cliff.” As predicted. Not that it was terribly hard to foresee.

Published at 22:17 on 21 December 2012

Exhibit A (scroll down to see the actual text of the address).

Yet another example of how religions tend to fret far more about the  customs written in their scriptures rather than actual examples of people treating each other evilly or acting in counterproductive ways.

Really, now, the nuclear family found in most of the developed world, including Germany and Italy, is radically different from what families were like in either the Roman Empire’s Province of Judea or tribal Israel in the times of the Old Testament. One could just as easily attack it for being contrary to what Scripture’s authors envisioned as one might attack a family based around a same-sex couple.

And really now, nothing about actual evils which are actually demonstrably doing great harm to people, such as that particularly nasty conflict in the heart of Africa which has been going on for well over a decade now, complete with forced conscription of child soldiers and atrocity after atrocity committed against civilians?

No, of course not. The Apostle Paul did not write anything about wars in the Congo Basin being particularly abominable, so obviously that’s not anywhere near as big a deal as two men openly loving each other.

Published at 22:47 on 30 October 2012

It’s going to be weeks before the subway fully reopens again. Weeks. If not months.

This was obvious the moment I heard about the flooding being worse than expected, and the media and the authorities are now starting to drop hints about it.

The biggest problem is the electrical and electronic components of the signal and control system. Salt water is absolutely the worst thing to expose such equipment to. Anything that’s been flooded by salt water will either have to be removed from service, washed several times with distilled water, baked for at least half a day in a drying oven, allowed to cool, and be thoroughly tested before reinstallation; or it will have to be discarded and replaced with new equipment.

Anything less will sacrifice reliability, and doing so is absolutely unacceptable on a passenger railroad. You don’t want malfunctioning signal and control equipment to send two trains in opposite directions on the same track, giving both a full-speed-ahead signal.

The reconditioning option will take much time and labor, and the replacement option will be (a) very costly, and (b) in the near term, impossible, because such equipment is fairly specialized and there’s not enough currently on hand to replace everything.

So the MTA is doubtless going to decide to give up on some lines of the subway system for the time being. Once you get away from lower Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn, there wasn’t much flooding. That means the unflooded parts of the lines being sacrificed can be salvaged for spare parts to restore service on the priority lines. Then, in the coming weeks and months, the damaged equipment can be either reconditioned or replaced and used to put the sacrificed lines back in service.

The problem is, there really is no substitute for the subway in Manhattan. It’s so densely developed that the only practical way to deliver the number of commuters who are employed there is an extensive rail system which is completely separate from the surface streets.

Sure, they will try to make do as much as possible with buses, probably bringing in rented ones from other cities and banning or severely restricting the use of private vehicles in Manhattan, so as to make room for the expanded bus service. But that will only go so far.

To some degree, it’s a moot issue anyhow, since the subway tunnels and building sub-basements are interconnected, meaning that there’s a huge chunk of office buildings which are now unfit for occupancy until the HVAC and mechanical systems in their flooded basements and sub-basements are reconditioned or replaced.

It is, in other words, a real mess. More later, including something about the relationship between Sandy and human-caused global warming.