Author Archives: Peter

Video, Photos, Links, Reading

Video and Photography:

I posted a new video last Monday about Air batteries. I had planned on exploring them more but left my lab in Idaho before I could get into it. It’s an interesting concept, even though it’s clearly very hard to make it work well. I’m very grateful to Dipak Koirala (co-author on several papers) who previewed it and caught a few mistakes.

This week I put one up about silicone earbuds. I’m starting to get back into the swing of it. I put it in my Beeminder, so I’m committed.

I’ve been taking more photos lately. The top photo was a strange thing. I was working in the lab when I looked out the window and saw this guy floating by in his balloon. It was a totally random rainy Thursday. Maybe he was trying out an unconventional commute.

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Cephalopod Week and a wonderful artwork

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A few years ago, I wanted to make this artwork for #CephalopodWeek on twitter. Since I’m not an artist, I went to a freelancer website. Thanks to Charlie Lee, I got exactly what I wanted. Two cuttlefish cuddling. The little cuttlebones even make a heart shape. D’aww.

I regret how I went about commissioning this. I started a “contest” to see if I could get an artist to render the idea in my head. I will never do that again. It feels really exploitative to get people to put in their free work in the hopes of a payout. It’s basically spec work. Gross. I ran the whole thing poorly, and I apologize to the folks who entered. I closed it early and paid about 5 people who delivered. Without question, Charlie Lee did a perfect job. Next time, I’ll find an artist directly. But despite feeling bad about the process, I was very happy with the art.

P.S.: It all started with my wife. We had a conversation about cephalopods when I found out it was cephalopod week. I told her my favorite cephalopods were cuttlefish, and she said something like “They sound adorable!” and I realized that she heard “cuddlefish.” And so the comic was born.

Modernity and youtube production values

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We sometimes think (in our age of progress) that if we look back, we must see very primitive creatures.

But even if we go back ten thousand years, we don’t find primitive humans. We find modern humans. Genetically, we have not changed very much in 10,000 years. What has changed? We have learned a huge amount of chemistry, biology, etc. Of course we didn’t know which bits were useful. It took a hundred years to figure out. That’s how science works.

The discoveries of past centuries created some rapid changes. Example of progress: within a few hundred years we went from knowing what gunpowder was, to seizing guano Islands, to synthesizing ammonium nitrate to nuclear weapons.

Ancient impulses with modern weapons are weird. I have this picture in my head of an angry person saying “I’m going to get that guy. I’m going to go lay claim to a guano Island, refine potassium nitrate, make black powder, and use an explosion to propel a small metal ball through his body.” Then the pre-modern human says “I’d just hit him with this rock. Simpler.”

Anyway.

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The strange taste of memories; lichen comics; Week 13 of 2021

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Funny stuff:

A strange thing happened. I ate a Walmart fudge brownie, then some peanuts and drank some coffee. It tasted exactly like a memory of waiting for a table at Smitty’s with my grandparents. The yellow wavy glass, the vinyl bench, the smell of my grandmother’s perfume, the sound of silverware, the juice glasses with the distinctive bulgy profile… it all came back. It was clear in my mind to a crazy degree. It only worked once, though. No matter how many brownies I ate.

Unrelated: I’ve been doing some macro photography. I saw this weird moss and lichen on the top of a post. The vibrant red color is very interesting. I would love to know what the pigment is. The red nodules were about 2 mm in diameter. What a fun lens. It made me think of an old comic, A Softer World. So, I tried to make some things inspired by their style.

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Week 8 2021: Pilgrimage to the Temple of Power

My wife and I took a drive up to the Temple of Power. It was pretty cool, and pretty much deserted. It’s a sculpture made from salvaged electrical equipment at the Gorge powerhouse. We saw an eagle fly over us while we were wandering around. It was pretty cold, but very pretty. In retrospect, I wish I’d captured video so I could do a vlog.

I saw that Netflix is Adapting the ‘Redwall’ Books Into Movies, TV Series. I liked those books as a kid. They got repetitive after a while, but I still remember parts of Mossflower very fondly. I read them at a point in my life when I didn’t want to like anything the other kids liked (I was a hipster before it was cool, bruh), but Redwall won me over. Wholesome good fun. I hope the new series takes the material seriously.

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