rainwater catchment v3, Tangles, solar yield in the rain

Rainwater – some good news Finally had a successful run of rainwater catchment, though it was rough at start. I rejiggered the tarp when the clouds gathered again: This method has more surface area but is less likely to funnel rain where i want it.   More experimentation needed.   It rained medium-heavy for a short while

southerly walk, and a failed experiment

Muffin and I walked south today to see that part of the canyon: There’s a dam down there in the lower left, and a line-of-sight comms install for it on the canyon rim in the upper right. As we came back on a different part of the trail we saw a small group of people

Experiment: electric immersion cup heater

I picked up one of of these immersion heaters from Amazon.  I find myself needing to heat small amounts of water for tea, for bathing, etc.    It’s part of the larger experiment to see how I might conserve cooking fuel.  This one is 300w;  I looked for a less powerful one (say 150-200w) but

cooking with Pareto

The Pareto Principle is famously interpreted to mean that 20% of the people do 80% of the work.  More formally, it says that “roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes”. I’ve been experimenting and I think it also applies to cooking:  80% of the cooking is done by 20% of the fuel.   

winter experiments: contact heating

Last winter I used a Mr. Heater Buddy to good effect.  Since I know that works I decided to play with some other options. electric heating Space heating with electricity is impractical off-grid.  Contact heating, however, might have a fighting chance. I had prior experience with these forms of contact heating: electric blankets (200-300w), which

tablets –> chromebook

I had two android tablets and traded them in for a used chromebook.   It’s worked out well. I had been both interested in and skeptical of the chromebook concept. I like things that are simple, but I worried what would happen when offline.

duolingo for learning Spanish

I’ve been using Duolingo, a free app, to learn survival Spanish.  I think it’s pretty good.  Luckily I am immersed in Spanish here in ELP, where folks routinely switch languages mid-sentence. I also looked at Drops recently;  it’s really weird.  It’s got an almost-hieroglyphic approach, highly visual and abstracted to the point of inscrutability sometimes. 

DNA

Recently Amazon had a sale on 23andMe genetic ancestry kits.  I’d been kicking around the idea for a while and bit at the sale. They have two sets, ancestry and ancestry+health.  The latter is much more expensive.  Apparently the DNA sample is stable for a few years so you can wait it out and have

experiment: low end tuner/PVR

I knew the Myth setup would work, but right before I went FT I ordered a barebones tuner/PVR. $30 used off Amazon.  It’s pretty terrible but actually does work.  It’s intended to be used with a usb hard drive, but I stuck a 128GB stick in the USB slot and that worked fine. Pro: very

Side effect of solar + alternator charging

A few months I noticed something odd about my isolator charging system.    Then started to see a pattern.  Finally figured it out and wanted to share since this issue could affect others.