Igor's Kuchamala

Альтернативное отмечание 4-ого июля и ламповый усилитель (Best 4th of July Ever!)

2008-07-05T20:34:00.002-06:00

Sorry for Russian, I will put the English translation a bit later. But the photos are still good :-).

Какое-то время назад я писал о дзэн-идее изготовления ламповых девайсов. Потихоньку я собирал нужные детали и материалы, и наконец, на прошлой неделе, все было готово к тому, чтобы отметить 4-ое июля альтернативным методом. Массовые мероприятия я не очень жалую, так что приглашениям был дан отбой. Последнее время я был весьма загружен, так что надо было как-нибудь расслабиться и отдохнуть, и сборка лампового усилителя для наушников подходила идеально. 3 июля ушло на подготовку шасси, пополам с обычной работой, а 4 июля я приступил к празднованию. К вечеру аппарт был собран и запущен (вид в полутьме, индикаторные светодиоды заклеены):

На свету:

Схему самого усилителя я воспроизвел без каких-либо изменений, используя 6922 и 6AS7G (обе RCA Radiotron, old stock, не б/у, подарок одного хорошего человека). Источник анодного напряжения хотелось собрать на кенотронах, что и было сделано (китайские EZ81, JJ Electronics). В качестве основы использовал схему от Ying Mingyao, внеся в нее небольшие изменения. Вместо дросселя на 8 генри стоит 12 генри. Поскольку один Hammond 269BX накал всех четырех ламп не потянул бы, пришлось поставить дополнительный накальный трансформатор Hammond 167R6. В отличие от оригинального исполнения, накал всех ламп осуществляется переменным током, а также блок питания и сам усилитель размещены в одном корпусе. Благодаря хорошим советам, наводок не слышно даже на максимальной громкости. Дроссель (находится впереди слева на шасси) смонтирован под углом для уменьшения наводок. Это положение нашел экспериментально, подключив к выводам дросселя осциллограф и держа силовые трансформаторы под напряжением (на пустом шасси).

Не мог не использовать еще один подарок, старое тепловое реле задержки:

этот элемент (Amperite, 300 секунд задержки) активирует обычное реле, которое отключает его нагревать, подает питание на свою собственную обмотку, подает высокое напряжение на кенотроны, и включает зеленый светодиод. Под ним (светодиодом) расположена кнопка которой можно включить анодное питание до сработывания реле задержки. Красный светодиод включается сразу же, работает индикатором питания (расположен над общим выключателем питания справа).

разъем для наушников (см. фото выше) и RCA входы пришлось смонтировать на текстолитовых пластинках, чтобы изолировать их от шасси:

устройство смонтировано на стальном шасси (Hammond, model 1441-29BK3, 12''x10''x2'', black finish). Вид на подвальное помещение:

Заработало сразу, без какой-либо настройки или доводки. Звучит очень хорошо, даже с 32-х омными наушниками. На слух басы воспроизводятся хорошо (больше всего о них беспокоился). Опять же, на максимальной громкости (без входного сигнала) не слышно ничего, ни сетевых наводок, ни шумов. В целом очень доволен, усилитель очень прост в изготовлении и замечательно звучит.

Masters of Deception: Rob Gonzalves.

2008-05-10T10:33:00.006-06:00

The last painting, which is the one used as the book's front cover art. "The Sun sets Sail", acrylic on canvas, 2001:
Here is a link to a big collection of his work, 37 paintings.

Masters of Deception: Sandre Del-Prete.

2008-05-10T10:23:00.004-06:00

Another couple of scans from "Masters of Deception" to convince people to check out this book. "A Secret between Leaves", 1991, colored pencil drawing:"Homage to Leonardo da Vinci", 1992, colored pencil drawing:

Maker of Patterns.

2008-05-08T09:35:00.004-06:00

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

G.H. Hardy

Masters of Deception: Rex Whistler.

2008-05-07T21:11:00.009-06:00

Today I returned "Masters of Deception" to the library, but before I made some promotional scans :-). Here are some works of Rex Whistler (1905-1944). It has such a vintage feel to it, and the work itself is very interesting. It's the same drawings, just flipped by 180 degrees.
"Change of Expression", undated pencil drawing:
"A King and his Queen":
"Surprise!":
Excerpt from the Wikipedia article (much the same, although a bit less detailed story is given in "Masters..."):

On the hot and stuffy 18th July his tank, after crossing a railway line, drove over some felled telegraph wires beside the railway, which became entangled in its tracks. He and the crew got out to free the tank from the wire when a German machine gunner opened fire on them, preventing them from getting back into their tank. Whistler dashed across an open space of 60 yards to another tank to instruct its commander, a Sergeant Lewis Sherlock, to return the fire. As he climbed down from Sherlock's tank a mortar bomb exploded beside him and killed him instantly, throwing him into the air. He was the first fatality suffered by the Battalion in the Normandy Campaign.

Agent Smith as Carl Sagan.

2008-05-07T07:24:00.004-06:00

it's absolutely hilarious:

In order to get the joke, we need to know about Carl Sagan's Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. Here is a good short clip to get acquainted with the show, and certainly enough to enjoy the joke above. It's also a very good explanation of the concept of 4th dimension, so no time will be wasted:

Чистая медь.

2008-04-24T19:29:00.000-06:00

В связи с завершением большой серии экспериментов сегодня решил сделать что-нибудь простенькое для души. Я уже давно хотел сделать себе несколько образцов меди с чистой поверхностью. У чистой меди очень красивый цвет, тепло-розовый, без всяких признаков желтизны. Но на воздухе она быстро покрывается оксидами и т.п., поэтому единственным выходом для длительного хранения было запаивание. Порошок электролитической меди и стружки меди неизвестного качества были промыты разбавленной соляной кислотой, потом водой, потом несколько раз спиртом, высушены в ваккуме водоструйного насоса, (для очистки совести) продуты азотом и запаяны в толстостенные пирексовые ампулы. Неплохо получилось, тут поверность уже не измениться! No matter what...

Порошок меди вблизи, уже чистый и в ампуле:

"Edward Lorenz, father of chaos theory, dies"

2008-04-17T19:43:00.003-06:00

Sad news. By way of homage to the great scientist, here is a very good Lorentz applet, demonstrating chaotic behavior (sensitivity to the initial conditions).

But the butterfly lives on.

Crepuscular Fox.

2008-04-17T19:20:00.007-06:00

Yesterday morning waking up early really paid up :-). At 6-20am I saw a fox strolling onto a lawn of own apartment complex. It stopped to eat something crunchy (I could here it from my balcony). Fortunately, I had my camera handy:Sorry for the poor quality, I took this photos with full zoom (and it was during twilight).

P.S. Crepuscular - becoming active at twilight or before sunrise.

Jug Dome.

2008-04-17T18:50:00.004-06:00

Another day sport climbing, this time at the Jug Dome. This place hosts several long sport climbs of good grades (5.7-5.11). People on mountainproject point to longish approach, but it takes only ~15 minutes. Pretty steep, though. First we did Law School in one pitch, which gave a great opportunity for some photos at the top. Here is a hero-shot of Shamil' at the beginning of the rappel. I love pine trees and snow on the background:Such an alpine photo! And to give you a feel for the length of the route here is a view from the top:and from the bottom:In that photo I'm rappelling a line of Dick Van Dike, which we climbed next. Then we decided to climb another route. Somehow instead of doing the Black Tube, a 10b route which I really wanted to do, I got myself on Backpaddle, a 5.11a climb. Fortunately, the bolts were really tightly spaced in the crux section, so after much fighting and resting I got to the top. Shamil' did a great job catching me, since the route took some figuring out. It would be interesting to come back sometime and try to redpoint it. Moreover, we got to climb the Black Tube :-)!

Climbing at the Palace, and the Route with a View.

2008-04-06T10:19:00.008-06:00

This Saturday (05-Apr-2008), thanks to good weather, we (Morgan, Shamil', and I), were able to open the sport climbing season. Here is Shamil' on Rappunzel, Rappunzel (10a):
and Morgan on Let down your Hair (10b):Then we jumped on the Route with a View (10b/c). Despite a considerable lure of shouting "take", I led it cleanly, which felt pretty awesome. The route is a real classic, pretty sustained, and more overhanging than it looks from the bottom. Upon making it to the anchors we decided to have a lunch at the top, so I brought guys up:Here is another shot from a different angle:Morgan did a great job of taking these photos, and then climbing with a camera and sandwiches. We spend quite a while at the top, chatting and enjoying the view. Here is a group photo:and a view:A great day in a great company!

High conquest.

2008-04-04T22:00:00.003-06:00

After reading a fourth part of Alpinist's Inspirations, I got the "High conquest" by J.R. Ullman from the library. The books doesn't disappoint. Here is an excerpt from chapter 2, about the beginning of mountaineering in Europe:

But, in its essence, it has been a struggle not of man against man, nor even of man against the obstacles of the physical world, but of man against his own ignorance and fear.

It's an excellent book, with the right kind of spirit!

Snow shape.

2008-03-30T20:00:00.001-06:00

Taken somewhere between Chasm Junction and a treeline:

Opening the season (Chasm Junction hike).

2008-03-30T08:20:00.009-06:00

As an opening hike for this season we (Shamil' and me) decided to go for Chasm Junction (elevation 9400 feet), having in mind Meeker as an ultimate goal if conditions allow. We left Longs Peak trailhead at 6-40 (03-29-2008), accompanied by continuous light snow. The trail was well-packed, and we were making good progress, coming to Goblins Forest (~10140 feet) at 7-25. At 7-56 we had a short break at the lightning hazard sing (~10594 feet) and moved above the treeline. The wind was getting stronger, with some pretty good gusts and blowing snow. Occasional postholing, scrambling and head wind slowed us down considerably, but as we got higher the snow was mostly blown off, which made our job much easier.
Blowing snow really made for a very fun hike. It definitely gave some extra appreciation of the place we were in:
At 9-36 we got to the Chasm Junction (~11480 feet) and immediately went further along the Chasm Lake trail to hide from the wind. Quickly we started sinking below knee in unconsolidated snow, and with some major effort reached a hiding place by a standing rock. Here we ate and "relaxed" a bit, although wind made it pretty challenging. Half of my face was frozen from the wind, so it felt I just got numbed up by a dentist. Wind was forcing us to keep moving, so after a brief rest and a couple photos we headed down.Longs and Meeker were completely obscured by clouds and snow:At 10-03 we headed back. Soon the wind started to calm down, and by the time we reached the treeline the weather was very good again. At 12-00 we came back to the trailhead after a great day out. It was a good way to start the season - nothing strenuous, but very fun. Thanks to the weather we got some pretty stern views.

Always look at the bright side of life!

2008-03-20T20:38:00.002-06:00

It's been long, too long in fact. I was busy, and moreover, I sort of lost the interest in keeping a blog. But I missed it, to be honest. It's fun. So I decided to start again :-).

Here is something provocative:

The lyrics:

Some things in life are bad
They can really make you mad
Other things just make you swear and curse
When you're chewing on life's gristle
Don't grumble, give a whistle
And this'll help things turn out for the best
And...

...always look on the bright side of life
{whistle}
Always look on the light side of life
{whistle}

If life seems jolly rotten
There's something you've forgotten
And that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing
When you're feeling in the dumps
Don't be silly chumps
Just purse your lips and whistle - that's the thing

And... always look on the bright side of life
{whistle}
Come on
Always look on the bright side of life
{whistle}

For life is quite absurd
And death's the final word
You must always face the curtain with a bow
Forget about your sin - give the audience a grin
Enjoy it - it's your last chance anyhow

So always look on the bright side of death
Just before you draw your terminal breath
Life's a piece of shit
When you look at it
Life's a laugh and death's a joke, it's true
You'll see it's all a show
Keep 'em laughing as you go
Just remember that the last laugh is on you

And always look on the bright side of life
{whistle}
Always look on the right side of life
{whistle}

Come on guys, cheer up

Always look on the bright side of life...

Always look on the bright side of life...

Worse things happen at sea, you know

Always look on the bright side of life...

I mean - what have you got to lose?
You know, you come from nothing
- you're going back to nothing
What have you lost? Nothing!

Always look on the bright side of life

The remains of the day (Corpse Bride).

2007-10-21T16:29:00.000-06:00

I just watched this cartoon, Tim Barton is great, as usual. Here is one great moment:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=M-mrpXNynYo

Sorry, the embedding was disabled.

P.S. Here is the lyrics:

BONEJANGLES
Hey! Give me a listen you corpses of cheer
Leastles of you who still got an ear
I'll tell you a story make a skeleton cry
Of our own jubiliciously lovely corpse bride
BONE BOYS
Die, die we all pass away
But don't wear a frown cuz it's really okay
And you might try 'n' hide
And you might try 'n' pray
But we all end up the remains of the day
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
Yeah yeah yeah
BONEJANGLES
Well our girl is a beauty known for miles around
When a mysterious stranger came into town
He's plenty good lookin', but down on his cash
And our poor little baby, she fell hard and fast
When her daddy said no, she just couldn't cope
So our lovers came up with a plan to elope
BONE BOYS
Die, die we all pass away
But don't wear a frown cuz it's really okay
And you might try 'n' hide
And you might try 'n' pray
But we all end up the remains of the day
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
Yeah yeah yeah
(instrumental)
BONEJANGLES
So they conjured up a plan to meet late at night
They told not a soul, kept the whole thing tight
Now her mother's wedding dress fit like a glove
You don't need much when you're really in love
Except for a few things, or so I'm told
Like the family jewls and a sachel of gold
Then next to the grave yard by the old oak tree
On a dark foggy night at a quarter to three
She was ready to go, but where was he
BONE BOYS
And then?
BONEJANGLES
She waited
BONE BOYS
And then?
BONEJANGLES
There in the shadows, was it the man?
BONE BOYS
And then?
BONEJANGLES
Het little heart beat so loud
BONEBOYS
And then?
BONEJANGLES
And then baby, everything went black

Now when she opened her eyes she was dead as dust
Her jewls were missin' and her heart was bust
So she made a vow lyin' under that tree
That she'd wait for her true love to come set her free
Always waiting for someone to ask for her hand
When out of the blue comes this groovy young man
Who vows forever to be by her side
And that's the story of our own corpse bride

The color of life (is lilac).

2007-10-13T09:40:00.000-06:00

I think in terms of defining what's possible for a human being it's a step up: http://www.climbing.com/exclusive/features/lifeislilac/

A short summary: Silvia Vidal is a renowned big-wall {very long routes on rock faces} climber, known for her extreme aid-solos of the new routes. She weights 95 pounds and is 5 feet 2'' tall (there is a photo of her if you scroll down the page that is given above). During her climb of the Shipton Spire she spent 21 days on the wall (alone, she did it solo), so she had hundreds of pounds of gear to carry and haul to the base and up the route. And the route itself is extremely difficult too (5.10 A4+ 2900 feet, grade VI).

It's as inspiring as it gets :-). Amazing!

Igor

Tutulemma.

2007-10-04T23:04:00.000-06:00

A description of this photo:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap071002.html

Postmodernism revealed.

2007-09-29T19:07:00.000-06:00

What I suspected for a long time, has been nicely demonstrated :-)

http://richarddawkins.net/article,824,Postmodernism-Disrobed,Richard-Dawkins-Nature

The Dymaxion Map.

2007-09-16T17:22:00.000-06:00

As far as I'm aware, this map projection scheme is the least distorting:

The Fuller Projection Map.

It's interesting to see the relative size of different continents and oceans. Neat!

The division of waters (1925). Woodcut.

2007-08-19T12:50:00.002-06:00

One of Escher's earlier works (part of the "Seven days of creation" series). I really like it for its stunning representation of volume, especially considering the technique used. It's a woodcut printed in black ink, so there are no shades, only black and white. It's pretty amazing...

Day and night (1938). Woodcut in black and grey (two blocks).

2007-08-19T12:48:00.001-06:00

Hydrodynamic effects in non-newtonian fluides.

2007-08-19T10:41:00.002-06:00

A non-Newtonian fluid is a fluid in which the viscosity changes with the applied strain rate.

This gives rise to several interesting effects. The Barus effect:

The Weissenberg effect:

And my personal favorite, Kaye effect. The video is really well made, and it even demonstrates a steady-state (continuous) version of Kaye effect:

Benzene as a dienofile.

2007-08-11T07:57:00.000-06:00

The only known example of benzene acting as a dienofile:"Perspective on Fluorocarbon Chemistry", D.M. Lemal, JOC 2004, 69(1), 1. It's a really good introductory article for anybody interested in fluoroorganic chemistry.

Reptiles, 1943 (lithograph). M. C. Escher.

2007-08-10T05:37:00.001-06:00

Andrew's Glacier Cirque, RMNP.

2007-08-10T04:16:00.000-06:00

I wonder if there is a route following this ridge line:And another one:

Spotting the fake smile.

2007-08-10T04:07:00.000-06:00

Here is a really interesting test by BBC. After you get through all the smiles, it gives some pretty interesting info on distinguishing genuine and fake smiles (with videos).

SF6 (Xe?) and Archimedes.

2007-08-10T03:59:00.000-06:00

A pretty cool twist on Archimedes:

I wonder what gas they use, it's too bad they don't say...

Unique (and very useful).

2007-07-29T08:01:00.000-06:00

Kiener's Route, Longs Peak (07-Aug-2007).

2007-07-25T22:36:00.000-06:00

I remember vividly my thoughts when I first saw Kiener's Route: you got to have a death wish and/or be just damn foolhardy to do that. It was about three years ago, I wasn't doing any climbing back then. The route just looked intimidating as hell, when doing Keyhole route seemed like a major adventure. But as time went by, the super-intimidating thing started to look pretty doable, so I decided to go for it.This photo was taken in May, it's not that snowy during summer time. But it's a long route, and escape from its upper part is problematic, in case weather turns sour. Storms usually come from over the mountain, so you don't see them until it's too late. Last year two climbers got caught up there in a storm like that, and one of them didn't make it. So you got to start early and go fast.

Here is a different photo of the route, taken a week before doing it:It's a lower portion of the route, Lamb's Slide couloir. One of the great things about this route is that it has it all: you start by 40-45 degrees snow/ice couloir, then traverse the Broadway (a horizontal system of ledges), then climb some easy fifth class rock (3 pitches of 5.4 when on route, the green line on the top photo), followed by quite a bit of fourth class scrambling to the top.

To be continued...

Long's Peak solo: Lamb's Slide, Loft, Clark's Arrow (2).

2007-07-15T09:34:00.000-06:00

Getting back to it. I got to the Loft and continued on the Clark's Arrow route. The routefinding was fun: at first I started cutting the Keyboard of the Winds too soon and ended up cliffed out. I scrambled lower and went along the Keyboard, finally (after some more interesting routefinding) getting to the top of Keplinger's Couloir. The connection between the top of the couloir and Homestretch was snow-covered and ended up being the crux of the route:The snow slope was ~45 degrees steep, with a dropoff at its bottom. As I put my crampons on and started traversing it, I found that this "snow" was mostly ice. Boy, was I glad to have borrowed a second ice-axe from Morgan! I would have to turn around otherwise, it just wasn't very safe with one ice tool and my soft boots. It took me about the same time to traverse this thing as to climb the whole Lamb's Slide, and it was exhilarating! A no-fall territory, on ice, it was fun! Very tiring though :-) . That section really took its toll on me.

After finishing the traverse I started on the Homestrech, the last section before the summit (green line on the photo above). It was pretty iced too:To keep up with the spirit of the climb, I followed the ice line (green) to the top, summiting at ~9-30am. I shared summit with only one more person, a guy from California. He told me that a day before a hiker doing Keyhole route fell on the Homestretch and broke his leg. He had to wait for six hours before being evacuated. Poor guy, six hours on the mountain with a broken leg!

After resting and snacking, I went down via the Keyhole route. On my way down I bypassed the ice on the right (pink line), I was just too tired for downclimbing ice.

The lack of sleep really caught up with me on the way down. I got only around two-and-a-half hours of intermittent sleep in my armchair, and I guess it was not quite enough :-). I was hiking to the parking lot in a strange state, with dreams getting mixed with reality. It was kind of fun though, a mild hallucinogenic experience. The best thing was a bolder that looked (just for a moment) like an intricate dark castle, with towers and everything. After 13 and a half hours of hiking, I got to the car, had some coffee and headed home. It was a great day, and I felt that the next thing on my tack list should be Kiener's.

Long's Peak solo: Lamb's Slide, Loft, Clark's Arrow.

2007-06-27T13:07:00.000-06:00

This weekend my climbing partner was out of town, so I decided to do something long and solitary. I decided to try Long's Peak via a reasonably technical route. Enough to make it fun, but not too dangerous to solo. And to make it as solo as possible I decided to start on Monday.

In May we tried to climb Long's via a variation of the Clark's Arrow (Loft) route, where you get to the Loft by climbing Lamb's Slide to its top and then traversing the top of Flying Dutchman Couloir to the saddle itself. Last time we made it only to the top of Lamb's, so this time I decided to start really early. After leaving Fort Collins at midnight, I drove to Estes and ended up starting hiking at 1-35am, from a deserted parking lot. The moon went down by the time I got above the treeline, and I saw Milky Way for the first time in my life. That thing alone was worth all the trouble. And there was more to come ;-). The night was really dark, so I could discern the silhouette of the mountains just by the line between a starry blackness and a tar-like blackness. It was surprisingly warm, and even with the wind picking up I felt comfy in a thin T-shirt.

At 3-35am I got to the Chasm Lake, which was invisible. I could only see what my LED headlamp was illuminating, an oval spot several meters ahead of me. I thought that I'm gonna get in trouble finding my way to the Mills Glacier, but it was surprisingly easy. At 4-25am, when the sky started to change color, I was looking up the Lamb's Slide. After taking a little 15min break I put on my crampons, took one of my ice axes and started to kick steps up the couloir. The snow was perfect, firm but not icy, which made for a very fun climb. As I was getting higher, so was the sun, first turning Diamond red, and then orange. After getting above the Broadway I took some photos:

That's looking down the Lamb's Slide. After 1 hour of climbing I got to the top, from where it was easy to traverse on to the Loft. Here is the top of Flying Dutchman:Another fun and easy patch of snow that brought me to the Loft at 5-40am, with a great view of Meeker with its Flying Buttress (the prow in the center):As it turned out, this was the easiest part of the ascent. The real fun part started higher up...

To be continued.

View of the Long's peak: panorama.

2007-06-27T04:54:00.000-06:00

Taken on May 25th, 2007:

Remix.

2007-06-23T11:31:00.000-06:00

Только что нашел в глубинах жесткого диска:

Захожу к операм в кабинет, а как правило в любом оперском кабинете висят на стенке листочки А-4 с каким нибудь умным изречением, типа: "если вас съели у вас есть два выхода" и т.д. и т.п., сегодня прочитал:

"Трудно собирать выбитые зубы сломанными руками, когда в глазах темно.." и подпись Конфуций.

И я понял что это ментовской ремикс на известное выражение китайского философа: "Трудно искать черную кошку в темной комнате особенно если ее там нет".

Plato's "Allegory of the Cave".

2007-06-23T09:09:00.000-06:00

что было -- то и будет, и что делалось -- то и будет делаться, и нет ничего нового под Солнцем!
Екклесиаст

It amazing what people come up with over 2000 years ago. Following an excellent tip from my climbing partner, Morgan (thanks! the advice is greatly appreciated!), I read Plato's "Allegory of the Cave". It's one piece of deserving reading!

P.S. It was a required reading for a political science class.

Wonderfully intangible: Memes.

2007-06-23T08:55:00.000-06:00

During a very cool discussion with my boss about Richard Dawkins, I was acquainted with a concept of memes, which is a unit of cultural information exhibiting a gene-like behavior. I found the concept to be a great example of a pure "informational entity". Wonderfully intangible.

A riddle.

2007-06-17T12:48:00.000-06:00

A man is being hanged. There is a man in the crowd of observers who is asked of his relation to the guy on the gallows. He doesn't want to admit it, so he answers in a riddle:

-Brothers and sisters I have none, but that man's father {pointing to the man about to be hanged} is my father's son.

What is the relation between the condemned and the man in the crowd?

Mono-monostatic body ("GÖMBÖC").

2007-06-14T21:06:00.000-06:00

Arnold's conjecture that convex, homogeneous bodies with less than 4 equilibria points (mono-monostatic bodies) exist was shown to be correct. In other words, it's possible to make a "come-back kid" {"ванька-встанька"} from a block of homogeneous material. So no matter how you drop it, it will straighten itself out and get on all four paws :-). Here is a page with a neat video demonstrating how "GÖMBÖC" rolls itself into equilibrium. And this Wikipedia article does a much better job of concisely explaining what this thing is (and what it does).

This picture is taken from a full paper: P. L. Varkonyi, G. Domokos Mathematical Intelligencer 2006, 28(4), 1.

P.S. Why less than four equilibria points, not just one? Because both stable and unstable equilibria count, hence gomboc has two equilibria points, not one.

Changing colors.

2007-06-13T20:24:00.000-06:00

Here are two identical solutions of CoCl2 in aqueous HCl, left one is at ~-20C, right one is at room temperature (~20C):As the cold solution warms up, it changes color:Until both solutions become identical close to room temperature:Pink color is due to O_h-Co(H₂O)₆²⁺ complex, deep-blue - to T_h-CoCl₄^2-.

{Yoshi found the experiment and made the solutions, and I sealed the stuff in the ampules.}

Sunset.

2007-06-12T20:45:00.000-06:00

As just taken from my balcony:

Just turn it upside down.

2007-06-09T10:40:00.000-06:00

Absolutely awesome! {Disclaimer: watch it all the way}

Larkhill (V for Vendetta).

2007-06-07T19:10:00.001-06:00

From Merriam-Webster Online:

Entry Word: lark
Function: noun
Text: a time or instance of carefree fun {the kids had a grand lark at the carnival}

A good choice of the name in the movie: Larkhill.

Long's Peak view.

2007-06-07T12:05:00.000-06:00

These photos were taken in Rocky Mountain National Park on 24th of May, 2007. It snowed during the night, so everything was covered with ~2 inches of snow. The views were outstanding. Here is a view across the road from Beaver Meadows Visitor Center:As we drove into the park, we saw Longs Peak, in winter-like snow cover:And here is a closeup. You can see the Diamond (triangular wall left off the peak) and the snow-covered north face to the right of it:More photos are coming!

1st Flatiron, Direct East Face 5.6R.

2007-06-06T21:30:00.000-06:00

On Saturday (3-May-2007), Morgan and I climbed the 1st Flatiron (the large rightmost formation): Here is an approximate line of Direct East Face route that we took (~300m). It is a gentle multi-pitch trad line, which we climbed swapping leads.The first pitch is definitely the crux. The climbing is easy (an easy slab 5.6), but very runout. The first belay station is at the tree (in the middle top of the photo), and it takes a 60m rope to get there. The climb is protected with two bolts in the bottom section, after that there is like 25-30m of unprotected climbing. I think there is a possibility of sticking something half-way, but I saw it when I already climbed above it, so I just went ahead. The climbing is easy, but you really don't want to fall, especially as you are getting close to the tree. Here is pitch 5 in process. The climbing is easy, but slabby, so runouts are ever-present.

Here is Morgan following this pitch. And the trees far below:The pitch 6 is my favorite, first bypassing a little overhang by going left followed by well-protected laybacks on a flake. This pitch gains the ridge. From here it took us 3 pitches of easy climbing/scrambling to get to the summit. From here it's a single 60m rope rappel to the ground. All in all it's a great route, well worth doing. You just need to be comfortable with runouts and slabs on easy terrain (5.4-5.6).

P.S. Protection: a set of nuts, a set of cams up to #4 Camalot (useful in one spot, but not necessary), and a bunch of shoulder length quickdraws.

Montezuma's Tower, North Ridge 5.7.

2007-06-05T22:13:00.000-06:00

The tall spire is Montezuma's Tower (Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs). The first time I saw a photo of it, I just fell in love :-). There is a 5.7 route that follows the ridge line (right ridge on the picture), North Ridge. This Sunday (03-May-2007) Morgan and I did it, and the thing is just absolutely incredible. The climbing itself can't be called outstanding, but the route makes up for it hundred-fold. It is such an aesthetic line - you are following the ridge of this skinny spire, with drop offs on both sides. As Morgan put it, it's the ultimate route for fighting fear of heights. For me it was all about trusting my feet. Leading the first pitch was not that easy, since I'm not used to climbing sandstone, and a recent rain gave the rock a very slippery feel. I always had that thought that the surface layer will just slide from under my foot, sending me into a fall. But after I got used to it, leading the second pitch was just so much easier. It's interesting how leading is different from following, although it's exactly the same route.

Here is another view of Montezuma's Tower (leftmost spire):

P.S. To whom it may concern ;-). The climb can be done in one pitch with a 60m rope, but we did it in two pitches, which I think is a way to go. I didn't want to deal with the rope drag, so we sacrificed the speed. Although the route can be climbed with quickdraws only, I also used a sling (hueco) and #1 and #2 Camalots (maybe #0.4 too). To be honest, I was happy to have this stuff with me. Double ropes for rappel!!! {we used 60m and 50m, but two 50m will do fine}

A Galaxy Far, Far Away...

2007-05-03T19:36:00.000-06:00

"Fail to have these characteristics and you could become like the soap-opera character who quickly gets written out of the show, taking a long vacation in Vladivostok, never to return."

The Infinite Book, J.D. Barrow

Harmonic Series and Infinite Book Stacking.

2007-04-28T09:29:00.000-06:00

There is an awesome illustration of the properties of infinite sets based on harmonic series:

S=1+1/2+1/3+1/4+... (the sum is infinite).

If you have one book of length L, the longest possible overhang is 1/2L (accounting for the gravity). Having two books (of equal size), the longest overhang is (1/2+1/4)L. If you have an infinite number of books, the overhang can be of infinite length. Very neat!

Here are clarifying drawings: http://mathforum.org/advanced/robertd/harmonic.html

Unclimbed peaks in Tibet.

2007-04-11T11:16:00.000-06:00

Some really good photos of unclimbed peaks in Tibet, from the Alpinist (scroll down).

Silver Turtle Expedition

History of climbing on Diamond (Longs Peak).

2007-04-10T19:50:00.000-06:00

An awesome article in the Alpinist about Diamond and the history of the routes hosted there. Very good photos, and great writing.

Мега-деликатес.

2007-04-09T11:22:00.000-06:00

Когда-то давно у нас на даче были огромные залежи журналов "Вокруг света", лет наверное за тридцать в общей сложности. В какой-то момент я их перебрал, рассортировал по датам и большуй часть прочитал. В одном из этих журналов я наткнулся на описание китайского деликатеса: куриное, утиное или перепелиное (сырое) яйцо обмазывается глиной и выдерживается при ~комнатной температуре где-то три (три, это не ошибка!) месяца. И все, продукт к употреблению готов. Мягко говоря, меня этот рецепт вверг в шок, было очень интересно, что-же получается, если яйцо три месяца вне холодильника продержать. Да даже и в холодильники, через три месяца все равно должно стухнуть.

Этим воскресеньем, в гостях, увидел следующюю штуку:На вопрос "Что такое?", ответили "century egg". Сказать по-правде, я подумал, что это какой-то десерт, какой-то мармелад со странной темной начинкой. Хотя мысль про мега-яйцо промелькнула, но была сразу же отметена. Где-то четвертинка была мной тут же засунута в рот. Блин, и тут я понял, что это действительно этот китайский деликатес, все без обмана. Но отступать было уже некуда, стараясь не думать о том, как эта штука сделана, я ее прожевал и проглотил. Блин, пишу сейчас об этом и ощущаю во рту этот привкус. Мощная вещь, что можно сказать. Самое интересное, что она практически безвкусная, и запах тоже очень слабый, так, чуть-чуть яйцами пахнет. Недаром ее рекомендуют с маринованным имбирем есть. Но есть такой четкий привкус тухлятины (на мой взгляд). Причем он как-то долго во рту держится. Хотя может это все у меня в голове, но все же, есть эту штуку я бы стал только где-то на 6-7 день голодовки. Да, что только китайские товарищи не едят, выдать не от хорошей жизни.

Flowers of Glass.

2007-03-26T17:24:00.000-06:00

Looking through some old archives, I found these photos of glass flowers I made some time ago.The black color is soot. It gives a very specific dull finish (which I really like), but it is also easy to wipe off. So in order to preserve it, I put a flower in a "bottle", so it can't be touched. Just observed ;-). The "shell" also serves as a stand. It takes a long time to make a flower like that, on the order of 3 hours for a piece.

Longs Peak attempt (part 2).

2007-03-18T15:50:00.000-06:00

Continuing with the Long's story...

After ~4 hours of hiking we got to Chasm Lake at about 7am. We took a break on the shore of the frozen lake and had some tea before starting on our main goal: Lamb's Slide. It's a long moderately steep (sustained ~40-45 degrees) couloir on the left of the Mills Glacier:This photo was taken from over Chasm Lake (Lamb's Slide is hidden by a rock buttress). A few interesting facts: Broadway is a system of sloping ledges, and Kiener's route is something that I would love to climb this summer. One needs to get to the top of Lamb's Slide, then traverse the Broadway to the base of the Notch couloir and follow further (green line). The climbing is not difficult, 5.4-5.5, but the elevation and exposure should make it a very fun undertaking. Especially considering the approach with all the gear. We'll see...

From Chasm Lake, we had to get to the base of the Lamb's Slide, and that wasn't easy. Crossing the lake was a blast, no postholing, just a walk on an ideally leveled ice powdered with a little snow. But once the lake was crossed, the angle picked up, and snow became deeper:Morgan was breaking the trail, and finally we got to the base on the couloir. Here is a photo of the Chasm Lake from the base of Lamb's Slide: Getting there wasn't particulary easy, and we had a long way to go:That's the Lamb's Slide, as viewed from its base, Mills Glacier. This couloir got his name after Reverend Elkanah J. Lamb's near-fatal tumble from it. During summer and early autumn the couloir is all iced, so it's practically impossible to self-arrest if you slip on it. One has to use running belays to safely climb it. On the other hand, there is no avalanche danger when it's one big solid piece of ice. You win some you loose some :-). In our case the snow wasn't very well consolidated making it very easy to self-arrest but difficult to climb. Before starting climbing the couloir, Morgan and I carved a ledge in snow and roped up. We hauled the rope all this way, we simply had to use it :-). If anything, it was mostly for glacier techniques practice. Once we got the rope figured out, I went ahead and started to kick steps up the Slide:I must say, that was a hard work. Especially in the lower section of the couloir, where snow was loose and I was sinking to my knees. Higher up snow got firmer, and climbing got a lot more pleasant. To give you an idea, it's like climbing a very steep staircase, but with no steps: you need to kick them in first. And the couloir just keeps going, and going, and going. Slowly, we were getting higher:The views were breathtaking. The Diamond was dominating on our side, like a huge sea of granite:Finally, we got to the top of Lamb's. At ~11-30am. It took us more than 4 hours to get there! Last 100 meters were fun, to say the least. A very good workout indeed. Here is a photo of Broadway taken from there. It looks like a really exciting traverse: We took a shot break and assessed the situation. It was almost noon, and very warm. In order to get to the Loft, we had to cross the top of the Flying Dutchman couloir:We've been hiking for about 9 hours at this point, and snow conditions were becoming unstable (we saw a really pretty loose snow avalanche going from the corner of Broadway and Chasm View Wall). We had at least 3 more hours to go to the summit, possibly even more. So the decision wasn't difficult: we had a great day, and there was no point in pushing our luck. We decided to turn around:

We glissaded down Lamb's Slide and hiked back to Chasm Lake. It took less then one hour to get down (and more than four hours to get up). We spent about an hour there resting and enjoying the scenery. Finally, it was time to go: we had to cross a snow field and hike back to the parking lot. The snow was turning into a slush, we were getting worried about wet slab avalanches, so we pushed ahead. It was interesting in spots:

Here is Longs Peak from Chasm Junction. We didn't summit this time, but it was well worth all our troubles nonetheless.It took us 13 and a half hours from car to car. Time well spent :-).

Headset modification (Altec Lansing AHS515).

2007-03-17T21:59:00.000-06:00

In the original headset (Altec Lansing AHS515) microphone just wasn't working very well, it was positioned too far from the mouth. But since the headphones themselves are pretty good, I decided to fix the problem rather then buy a new headset. I would also hate to waste money :-).
I extended the microphone lever with a piece of 1/4'' copper tubing. Here is a modified headset:Now it works great and looks kinda funny. I like the copper tube extension (shiny!) Here is an original device:

Longs Peak attempt.

2007-03-13T23:01:00.000-06:00

After our successful trip to Chasm Lake Morgan and I got pretty psyched about doing some more steep snow climbs. So this Monday (12th of March 2007) Morgan and I attempted to summit Longs Peak. In current near-winter conditions it was a very ambitious goal, but we decided to give it a shot. Our first priority was getting some steep snow climbing, so the route was chosen accordingly. We decided to start very early, get to the Chasm Lake, climb Lamb's Slide, get to the Loft, then turn around Longs Peak and get to the summit via Clark's Arrow route. Here is map showing the Chasm Lake Cirque with some of the names and the route we did:

We left Fort Collins at 1-10am and got to the Longs Peak trailhead around 2-30am. After gearing up we started hiking at 3-10am. The night was clear and warm, with no wind. The trail was glazed with ice and pretty slick, so after about 5 or 10 minutes of hiking we put on crampons and went on. We had a long way to go to Chasm Lake, and our most important objective lied further.

It's an eerie feeling, hiking in the middle of the night in the winter forest, with an LED headlamp as a main source of light. With LED's very white and not very powerful illumination, you have a spot of ghostly white trail in front of you surrounded with a bunch of black shadows. It is a pretty exquisite feeling (especially after having 1.5 hours of sleep ;-).

After we got above timberline, the wind picked up and it got pretty chilly. As we made our way up to the Chasm Junction, we were either postholing through the wind drifts or tripping over exposed rocks. It was still pitch black, with no indication of the sunrise, wind was blowing continuously, and I was slowly cooling down. I took off my fleece layer when we started hiking, so I had only a T-shirt and a windbreaker, which definitely wasn't enough. My hands were getting really cold without liner gloves, but there was no good place to stop and put these things on and we weren't cold enough to do it in the wind. Finally, after ~2 hours of hiking we got past the windy Chasm Junction (it's almost always windy there since it's on the ridge) and hid from the wind over a tall boulder on the shoulder of Mount Lady Washington.

There we put some additional clothes and had some food with a few sips of hot green jasmine tea. Despite the fact that thermos is heavy and caffeine is diuretic (not the best thing in the mountains, where the danger of dehydration is ever-present), it's one of the absolutely must-have items for me. Nothing lifts the spirit and shakes you up quite like it ;-). This time too, after our tea-break things were looking much better, and it wasn't that cold anymore. The east horizon was turning into a red band - it was time to move along. We put crampons on (we took them off negotiating a rocky path to the Chasm Junction), took out ice axes and went ahead.

Watching the sunrise in a place like that is amazing. The colors were quickly changing from deep-red to orange and then to gold:We were crossing snow slopes on our way to Chasm Lake, and the place could not be better for watching the whole succession of colors. It was well worth getting up in the midnight:

As you can probably tell, the sky on these last two photos is very deep-blue. This time instead of having a UV filter, I put a circular polarizer on my camera. I think it paid off :-).

When we got to the Chasm Lake the sun was pretty high up, illuminating the Diamond with golden light. Simply amazing, a Golden Diamond:To be continued...

A few icicles.

2007-03-04T21:50:00.000-07:00

A small one:Big ones:Both photos were taken today, on Chasm Lake trail.

Ptarmigans in winter.

2007-03-04T21:31:00.000-07:00

I first saw ptarmigans last autumn, when I was getting down from the summit of Longs Peak. These birds have great seasonal camouflage, which makes them difficult to spot. During our autumn encounter ptarmigan had light-brown color of dirt and dry grass. Here is their winter appearance:This picture was taken today, on Longs Peak trail, above timberline.

P.S. Оказывается, эта птичка - тундровая куропатка.

Plane's inversion trail.

2007-03-04T21:15:00.000-07:00

Today Morgan and I got to Chasm Lake. And back :-). It was a great hike, with some very fun steep snow climbing. The photos are great, but it might take some time before I can write a report. So, I decided to put up a few interesting photos which were taken on a hike but doesn't have much to do with mountaineering.

Inversion trail:
These photos were taken today from the shore of Chasm Lake.

Chasm Lake in winter.

2007-03-04T18:43:00.000-07:00

So the third time really is the charm. Today (3rd of March 2007) Morgan and I got to Chasm Lake. And, what's really important, we also got back.

Previously (January) I wrote about Serega's and my attempt on Chasm Lake this December. We didn't reach it, but today we had a better luck. The weather was picture-perfect, practically no wind, and very warm. Snow conditions were perfect, I just can't find a better adjective to describe them. The trail was very well packed both below and above timberline, so we simply hiked to Chasm Junction. Snow is really deep there. Here is a little bridge (just before the timberline):and a buried sign:It was also very clear, no haze at all. This picture was taken quite before Chasm Junction, but the Diamond of Longs is very clear:It still took a bit over 2 hours to get to Chasm Junction (for map see here), but it was much easier than during the December hike (when it took 4 hours of VERY strenuous hiking). Incomparably easier, in fact. Once we passed Chasm Junction, we saw the main obstacle, the steep snow field. In late summer and early autumn the trail goes lower, first to the rangers cabin and then up to the lake. The distances in mountains are confusing. Here is a photo that gives a better idea of the size of the snow slope:I can't say for sure, but I think during summertime the higher route turns into a system of narrow vegetated ledges separated by rock slabs, making it practically impassable. It's a whole different story with snow - you can easily walk on snow-covered slabs (if snow conditions allow). But still you really don't want to fall. We didn't have snow axes with us, so we used snowshoes for self-belay:After traversing these snow slopes, we got to the Chasm Lake. It's just an amazing place, surrounded by rock walls. Here is a view of the Diamond, probably the most famous alpine big wall in the US:Here is Morgan standing on the lake:After a brief rest we headed back. Here is a good shot of Morgan traversing the snow. It's pretty steep, as you can see. It's a very fun traverse:Here is the a close-up of the route we took:It took us 3 hours and 40 minutes to get to the lake and a bit less than 2 hours to get back to the parking lot. All in all, it was one of the best days out ever.

An awesome quote :-)

2007-03-01T18:16:00.000-07:00

"I just know that no one is better than anyone and everyone is best at everything" - Principal Skinner

Two great mottos :-)

2007-03-01T16:53:00.000-07:00

"The impossible we do every day. Miracles take a bit longer."

US Air Force 440th CSG/PERSCO Dhahran AB, Saudi Arabia

"In God we trust: All others we monitor."

US Air Force 5th Reconnaissance Squadron (RS)

Horse Latitudes.

2007-02-15T12:10:00.000-07:00

Just an absolutely brilliant poem:

Horse Latitudes

When the still sea conspires an armor
And her sullen and aborted
Currents breed tiny monsters
True sailing is dead
Awkward instant
And the first animal is jettisoned
Legs furiously pumping
Their stiff green gallop
And heads bob up
Poise
Delicate
Pause
Consent
In mute nostril agony
Carefully refined
And sealed over

Jim Morrison (The Doors, album Strange Days).

P.S. Horse latitudes are calm waters between 30° and 35° latitude. The story goes that stranded ships traveling to the New World would jettison horses overboard to save water.

The stangest flame (ozone-oxygen).

2007-02-14T21:11:00.000-07:00

Searching for the ozone flames information, I found the strangest flame ever: pure ozone-oxygen (Streng A.G.; Grosse A.V. The pure ozone to oxygen flame. JACS 1957, 79(6), 1517-1518). Quote:

By using pure ozone, containing less than a few parts per million of organic impurities, as described originally by C. E. Thorp we have been able to burn ozone-oxygen mixtures to oxygen in the entire range from 17-100 mole % 03. The all-Pyrex glass apparatus was extremely simple; it consisted of a narrow glass gasholder, from which any desired mixture of 03-02 or pure 03 could be delivered at any predetermined rate, by simple displacement with water. From the gasholder the gas mixture went to a Pyrex glass, quartz, or aluminum tip. Stopcocks greased with CnF2n+2 or Kel-F, were used. The burning velocities were determined by the standard schlieren method. In the range of 17 to about 50 mole % 03 , the flame cannot be observed visually, but can be seen very easily on the screen of the schlieren apparatus. The flame is visible above this range. Pure 100% ozone burns with a faint, non-luminous flame, blue in color, with a typical pink cast. The experimental burning velocities, at 298°K. and 1.0 atm. pressure, are shown in Fig. 1.

The ozone flame is of particular theoretical interest since it is the simplest flame imaginable. Outside of the “fuel” O3 and the “product of combustion” 02 , the only possible intermediates are oxygen atoms.

The hotter chemical flame (cyanogen-ozone).

2007-02-14T20:28:00.000-07:00

A quick search revealed an interesting paper dealing with premixed cyanogen-ozone flames (Streng A.G.; Grosse A.V. The premixed ozone-cyanogen flame. JACS 1957, 79(20), 5583-5583). They did some pretty extreme experiments establishing stability of cyanogen-ozone mixtures:

It was first established, in static experiments, that cyanogen and pure ozone can be mixed and stored for a considerable time without reaction. Thus the mixture 3(CN)2 + 403 was kept in a 100-cc. Pyrex vessel, at 1000 mm. at 0'C for 2.0 hours with no noticeable change in pressure; after this time cyanogen was frozen out at -78", the 03 pumped off and the volumes of the separated gases were found to be essentially equal to their original volumes. Identical results were obtained with the mixture 3(CN)2 + 203.

That is a brave chemistry, that's for sure. Both ozone and cyanogen are extremely toxic, and pure ozone is unstable and readily decomposes explosively. Mixing these things together and warming them up, monitoring the pressure, that is something.

And the description of the flames and temperatures (in Kelvin):

The hottest (?) chemical flame (cyanogen-oxygen).

2007-02-14T20:05:00.000-07:00

I just stumbled on an old paper (Conway J.B.; Grosse A.V. The Cyanogen-Oxygen Flame under Pressure. JACS 1958, 80(12), 2972-2976) where cyanogen-oxygen flames were studied. That seems like a pretty suicidal chemistry (cyanogen is extremely toxic). It's interesting that a lot of people studied different aspects of these flames (and mixtures). The paper calls cyanogen-oxygen flame "one of the hottest chemical flames", with its measured temperature being 4367C°. I wonder what is hotter, something like cyanogen-ozone or cyanogen-fluorine flame?

Welding copper.

2007-02-07T23:01:00.000-07:00

It's been on a busier side during the last few weeks, but I finally got some time to post something new. We had to do some autoclave-kind experiments, but in a much faster and simpler way. So, the ampules provided the solution, once again. Due to very harsh target conditions, my favorite material, glass, had to give way to copper. First, 1/4'' inch copper tube was flattened:Then came the welding itself. Welding torch was used, fed with natural gas/oxygen. You can see the inner cone very well on this photo. The hottest part of the flame is just over the tip of this inner blue cone, and that's what does the welding. It is interesting to note that the inside of the cone is pretty cold (the coldest part of the flame).In a few seconds, copper melts and even starts burning a little, giving the sparks and this green flame: And the seal is done:Here is an ampule after the experiment, you can definitely see the difference:
It's a lot simpler and faster than autoclave, that's for sure.

(Soon-to-be) current transformer.

2007-01-24T16:57:00.000-07:00

I just like the way it looks, with yellow and red colors:

Интересный факт о богеме.

2007-01-21T23:07:00.000-07:00

Переводя либретто арии Habanera ("L'amour est un oiseau rebelle") из оперы "Кармен", натолкнулся на интересную строчку:

L'amour est enfant de Bohême,
il n'a jamais, jamais connu de loi;

Перевод "Любовь - ребенок богемы" как-то не подходил, так что пришлось применить словарь. Оказалось, что Bohême (или Bohêmien) означает "цыган" или "цыганский". А также "человек, ведущий беспорядочную жизнь" и "богемный". Все логично, ничего не скажешь. Поэтому дословный перевод звучит так:

Любовь - цыганский ребенок,
Она никогда, никогда не знала закона;

Стало интересно, как слово "богема" стало означать то, что означает. Выяснилось следующее (ссылка):

Богема - не имеющие устойчивого материального обеспечения представители творческой интеллигенции (художники, литераторы, актеры, музыканты), ведущие беспорядочный и беспечный образ жизни, а также такой образ жизни, быт, среда этих людей.
[Фр. boheme -- цыганщина. Происхождение слова связано с произведением французского писателя А. Мюрже (Murger) "Сцены из жизни богемы" (Scenes de la vie de Boheme), в котором изображается быт студентов Латинского квартала в Париже (беззаботная жизнь студентов уподобляется жизни кочующих цыган). На сюжет этого произведения композитором Дж. Пуччини написана опера "Богема" (1896 г.). Появление во французском языке слова boheme, вероятно, связано с фактом прибытия во Францию в 1427 г. (по другим сведениям в 1417 г.) цыган из Богемии (Чехии).]

Storage tube, step by step (1).

2007-01-20T21:13:00.000-07:00

Sasha, thank you for all your help, lessons and friendship. Without you, it would not be possible.

Before I met Sasha, who taught me how to work with glass, I had no clue as to how various types of glassware are made. I'm pretty confident that most people can say the same thing. So I figured it might be fun to start photographing my glassblowing work and posting pictures with some short comments or explanations. And since I blow glass on the regular basis, the only thing necessary was a willing photographer.

This time I needed to make three special reaction vessels ASAP, so I fired up the torch and Natasha kindly accepted the role of the photographer. In fact, she was so good at it that I got some 200+ photos (Natash, you are the best!) After picking the best shots I have some 50 photos which do a great job demonstrating different stages of the project and techniques used. However, there is no way I can put them all in one post, so I decided to take it easy, start with an overview, and then go into details. This way, hopefully, you'll be able to get at least a flavor of glass work without too much scrolling.

OK, so I started with some glassblowing blanks (valve barrels, O-ring joints) and a tube. Here is all that stuff (calipers are included for the scale):After 1.5-2 hours of work, these things were transformed into something more useful for a chemist:How were they made? By sealing together top with the bottom (you can see three sets of them, ready for assembly, here):How these pieces were put together? By a straight seal ("простой спай"). First, the edges which would form the seal are heated:then two pieces are stuck together and heated again. I can't just heat them in one spot, the heat needs to go uniformly around the seal, so I rotate both parts with the same speed. The glass is pretty liquid at this point, so if I stop, or my rotation is not uniform, the glass will sag more to one side, making the whole thing unsymmetrical and ugly. It takes some practice to get the skill.When the glass is hot, I can blow it out a bit (to counter the sagging):When the seal is done, it has to be annealed in a "soft" (colder) flame (I use a different torch for that):As you see, it looks close to what we need, but the bottom has that thin handle (it's called a "point" или "держава"). As a last step, it needs to be turned into a spherical closed tip. First, it is heated again:when the point is pulled away it closes the tip, but it's far from being spherical. The closed tip needs to be heated again:When it's hot enough, some gentle blowing does the job and makes this near-perfect spherical shape:As always, after softening the glass, it must be annealed:After doing all these steps three times, the vessels were done. The question remaining is how I made the top and bottom parts. I guess I'll describe it in the next post (this one is getting pretty big already).

Toluene/liquid nitrogen slush bath

2007-01-17T17:49:00.000-07:00

Today I needed -95C temperature, so it was a good occasion to take some pictures of slush bath being made. As you pour liquid nitrogen in a "hot" (room temperature) solvent, it rapidly evaporates, producing very low temperatures in the gas phase and freezing bath solvent vapors, forming this white mist: I never seem to get tired of that. Here is a frozen surface of toluene:
And a final slush with an apparatus:

South Park

2007-01-15T20:55:00.000-07:00

Three intersecting cylinders

2007-01-15T10:52:00.000-07:00

Just for fun, using "union" instead of "intersect" on three orthogonal cylinders, following shape was generated (3D wireframe):And the rendered image (material set as blue marble):

Object of interest

2007-01-14T11:31:00.000-07:00

Some time ago my friend asked me an interesting question: what body (possessing internal volume) has three orthogonal projections being circles (of the same radii), but isn't a sphere. I could imagine a stationary view of such object, but couldn't really rotate it in my head. I guess, my rendering software needs some practice ;-). Sasha Parfenov (my friend) actually made it out of paper. At first I thought about making it out of Styrofoam using a cookie-cutter technique, but instead I decided to read AutoCAD manual a bit more. After ~1 hour of reading and tweaking the object was drawn and rendered from different angles:Orthogonal projections:It would be really cool to machine this body on lathe (from brass). Maybe in a very distant future it will happen. But for now here is the next best thing:I couldn't find description of this body in any of my math books nor on the Internet. A hypothesis that it is a "cylindroid" wasn't correct. One definition of cylindroid is:

cyl·in·droid
n.
1. A cylindrical surface or solid all of whose sections perpendicular to the elements are elliptical.
2. A mucous thread with pointed or split ends, observed microscopically in the urine, and resembling a urinary cast.
adj.
Resembling a cylinder.

Cylindroid is also a different name for Plücker's conoid. It would be interesting to find out the actual name of this body.

P.S. The object's name is a tricylinder. The general name for a body formed by an intersection of cylinders is Steinmetz Solid. Looking through some of the 3D objects on WolframMathWorld, I finally found it after searching for "intersecting cylinders". The 3D applet they use is very cool and many shapes are pretty interesting

Stale cucumbers' problem

2007-01-13T19:28:00.000-07:00

A vegetable-storage facility got 100 tonnes of cucumbers. The humidity analysis showed they contained 99% of water. After storing them for a month they were analyzed again, showing that water content dropped to 98%. What is the total weight of cucumbers after a month storage?

Courtesy OGP

Chasm Lake - winter attempt

2007-01-12T23:48:00.000-07:00

After a major snowstorm on 2oth of December (about ~25 inches of snow during ~24h), as soon the the roads were more or less cleared (23rd of December), Serega and I went to Longs Peak trailhead with an ambitious plan to get to Chasm Lake (taking the red dotted path). In my opinion it's the best hike around here, which combines high elevation (11,760 feet, 3584 meters), breath-taking scenery and good distance (4.2 miles one-way, elevation gain 2,360 feet). In August 2006 it took me about 1h 20min to get there from the ranger station. However, it can be very different during winter time, with high winds and especially deep snow.

We left Fort Collins at ~6am and drove to Estes Park. The weather was brilliantly clear and still, as it often happens after storms. Clouds were slowly rolling over the mountaintops from the west, filling the gullies. Beautiful view, well worth waking up at ~5. Driving through Estes Park, we also saw a bunch of dears, probably stealing food from horses. It's interesting how animals here are not afraid of people.
At ~8am we got to the Longs Peak trailhead, put snowshoes on and began the hike. The trail was pretty well broken, considering that it was only two days after a big snowstorm.As we went further, trail became less and less packed. Finally, right before the timberline (to be precise, right before the second little bridge), the trail ended. Whoever hiked there before us became too fed up with it :-). Trail breaking began. I was going second, after Serega, but still I was often sinking below knee. As Serega put it, "one step counted as ten". Especially going uphill on a steep gradient through fresh snow. But going became a little easier once we got above the timberline, mostly because our path wasn't as steep there. The snow was deeper then 2 meters in places (I couldn't reach the ground with a hiking pole). The little alpine tundra trees were completely buried sometimes.
Slowly we were getting closer to our destination:
After 4 hours of snowshoeing we finally got to the Chasm Junction. The weather was good, the wind was very mild, and the skies were crystal-clear. The view of the Diamond (the big triangle wall of Longs Peak), Ship's Prow and Meeker were absolutely spectacular. As you can see:Here is Google Earth map of the area with all the names. The above photo is taken from Chasm Junction, and it includes Mount Lady Washington on the right, Longs Peak in the middle and a part of Meeker on the left.
In order for us to get to Chasm Lake itself we would have to go further, negotiating 40-50 degrees snow slopes. 2 days after a major snowstorm that whole area would be very unstable (prone to avalanches), so Serega and I had no problem with not going any further. Besides, we were pretty tired after 4 hours ascend. After taking a few pictures and a brief rest we headed down. Here is what we saw on our way back:
On this photo you can distinguish the trail we made:The way back to the parking lot took us one and a half hours. Having a broken trail and going downhill makes a big difference, that's for sure. All in all, it was a really good day, even though we didn't get to Chasm Lake. It should make an awesome early spring snow hike/climb. We'll see.

...and so it begins...

2007-01-12T23:13:00.000-07:00

So finally I started it! I decided to start a blog a while ago, but since I was kinda busy (to be honest, it was mostly procrastination ;-)), I am doing it only now. Well, better late then never.

Friends: I was pretty terrible lately with communication, keeping silence and not answering emails very well. I'm offering my sincerest apologies and wish you all Merry Christmas (both Catholic and Orthodox), and a very, VERY Happy New Year. I haven't forgotten about you, and I'm not ignoring anybody. In fact, the major reason behind starting this blog is to get better at keeping in touch with close people far, far away. And maybe share some ideas along the way.

I'm not sure about the primary language, I guess I'll be using both English and Russian. Depending on the primary target group ;-).

Friends! I'm not sure how well my email was working during the last ~6 month, since I found some emails never reached me. If I haven't replied you, please, email me again, just to make sure that I got your messages in the first place. Thanks!

В дополнение к английскому варианту ;-). Итак, я наконец-то решил завести блог. Решение, довольно давно созревшее, в конце концов воплотилось в жизнь.

Друзья! В последнее, и, к сожалению, не очень короткое время, я плохо отвечал на мейлы и вообще куда-то исчез. Приношу свои искренние извинения! Я не зазнался, и ни о ком не забыл. Этот блог я начинаю в-основном для того, чтобы держать связь с близкими людьми, многие из которых находятся очень далеко. И блог для этого кажется наиболее подходящим средством.

Насчет языка: наверное, в основном я буду пользоваться английским, чтобы охват был больше. Но и русский я забывать не собираюсь. Ну а уж комментировать можно на любом языке который нравиться. В-общем, разберемся по ходу пьесы.

Важное сообщение: выяснилось, что в течении последних ~полугода некоторые мейлы до меня не дошли ;-). В смысле, я их не получил. Поэтому, если я вам не ответил, попробуйте послать их еще раз. Спасибо!