10 Short Videos #6277

10 Short Videos #6277

1. 🫡 Hole in one baby! Never said stop. 🔩🕳️ - Attaching wind turbine blade
2. The Seaplane That Broke the Sound Barrier!
3. Title: Genius DIY document camera for teachers
4. Steadicam vs Gimbal: The Secret Behind Cinematic Tracking Shots
5. A 14-ton steel block dropped from 30 meters: How does this net even catch it?
6. smooth movement🔥
7. This Curtain Protects Your Privacy Automatically 😳🪟 - No it doesn't
8. How Restaurants Make You Order Wine Without Realizing
9. How Finland saved car modding
10. Why Assistants Avoid Booking A Better Flight

Funnies

Long Range Artillery

Sceptre ramjet-powered 155 mm artillery shell - Tiberius Aerospace

Defence Blog reports on Sceptre ramjet-powered 155 mm artillery shell:

Sceptre is designed to give standard artillery much longer reach. Most extended-range shells use a short rocket burn after leaving the barrel. Sceptre instead carries liquid fuel for a ramjet, an air-breathing engine with no moving parts that keeps pushing the shell for much of its flight. According to Tiberius, the round can strike targets up to 150 km (93 miles) away at speeds of about Mach 3.5, flies above 19,800 meters (65,000 feet), and fires from existing NATO-standard 155 mm howitzers without modification.

In April 2026, Tiberius fired Sceptre from a NATO-standard 155 mm howitzer in New Mexico and achieved ramjet ignition in flight, which the company said was the first time a liquid-fueled ramjet projectile had been launched this way.

Modern Life

A Quantum Mythology by Gavin Smith

I'm reading A Quantum Mythology by Gavin Smith, a book I picked up when we went to Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago. We spent a day wandering around outside the hotel / casino. We stopped in a couple shops along the way but ended up at Fashion Show Las Vegas, a massive shopping complex about a mile south of the hotel. Sweetie went off to go shopping at Nordstrom's or some such while I looked around for a bookstore and, lo and behold, I found one - R. D. Talley. A small storefront, one woman at a desk, some freestanding bookshelves and some against the wall. I don't think there were more than a thousand books on display, or maybe two thousand. This was a little suspect, could this be one of those religious bookstores? Or worse yet, a front for a cult? No, it was none of that. Somebody had put together quite a selection of books. In ten minutes I had seen half a dozen books that might interest me. I go to Powell's now and again, but I can spend hours in there and come out with one book that might be worth reading. Anyway, the person who selected the books was the woman at the desk, and no, she is not R. D. Talley.

almost monday - can't slow down (official video)
almost monday

Anyway, I'm sitting outside in the sun, trying to make headway in the book and listening to an album by Almost Monday (seems they are going to be at the Crystal Ballroom this December, but the only seats available are 'obscured'. Or standing on the floor.) and I have to engage my Bluetooth speaker. 

I have the speaker sitting next to my computer display and facing the window, looking out into the backyard. When I am inside, the speaker gets the audio signal from the computer via an old fashioned stereo cable. When I want to listen to music outside, I switch the speaker to Bluetooth, open up the window and dial up YouTube Music on my Samsung (Android) smartphone.

Normally it works very well, but today for some reason, probably because I was already irritated with the toaster, I ham handed it and it got confused which necessitated cycling the power, which means I had to remember where the switch was and that one needs to hold the button down for like three seconds in order to turn it off. And now we are heading off down the 'how much worse everything is now' and 'why can't they put real switches on things anymore?' and goddamn commies.

Since we remodeled the house two years ago, half the light switches are now fancy. I've experimented with dimmers before, but I never found a situation where I was using one on a regular basis. Either the light is on or off. If it's too much, or too little, get a different light. Now it's a crap shoot what's going to happen when I hit a switch.

So now I'm thinking about electronic switches versus old time mechanical switches with real metal contacts. I went looking for a video mechanical contacts. I didn't find anything great, but I found these three short videos.

The Hidden Flaws of Relays | Contact Bounce & Arcing Explained
Engineeringness

Relay Contact Bounce — You Won’t Believe the Rattle! 😲📈
Uncle Duncan's Electronics Shack

Circuit breaker arcing in slow-mo! - shorts - slowmotion
Kishlay Patel

Like I said: So now I'm thinking about electronic switches versus old time mechanical switches with real metal contacts. When you open a mechanical switch, there is liable to be some arcing between the contacts, and amount of arcing depends on the voltage. Household voltages don't need much air to insulate them, only a fraction of a millimeter if it's clean air. When you close the switch, the contacts are liable to bounce. It may not be much, maybe a ten-thousandth of an inch, but they will separate and there will be some arcing. This is were you get the electromagnetic noise that interferes with the radio - you turn off a light or switch on the A/C compressor and you are going to hear it, like a pop on you AM radio, no matter what station you are tuned to. What I want to see is a high speed video of contacts bouncing and the corresponding noise in the electromagnetic spectrum, all in one video.

The Brave Little Toaster (1987) - VHS
Brian Emerick

The Brave Little Toaster

Evil screws and my solution

Meanwhile, the toaster. I bought it a three years ago from Amazon for $25 and it's been a great little toaster until the latch quit working. It's an electromagnetic latch, not a mechanical one, so no mechanical components to wear out. I rattled it around in case there were some crumbs blocking the magnet, but no luck. I found that I could keep it down by wedging a sharpening steel between the lever and the microwave shelf just above it. Set the microwave timer for two minutes thirty seconds and I have toast. Not the most elegant solution, so I put it on the workbench with intention of opening it up and seeing if I could remedy the problem. I look at the bottom and I see ten little screws apparently holding the plastic base to the sheet metal shell. Cool, it's put together with screws, they didn't weld it shut or use some invisbile snap fasteners. Screws I can deal with, until I look at the heads and realize I need a screwdriver with triangular bit to turn them. 

34pcs Security Bit Set

I ain't got one of those, but wait! Iowa Man gave me a pack-of-bits for dealing with security screws, surely there is a triangular bit in there. Unfortunately, that pack-of-bits is with my new Makita Drill and the drill is at older son's place. So I had to wait a week until he and I could get together and I could get the drill. That happened Saturday. Today got the notion to look at the toaster and what do you know? No triangular bit in the pack of security screw bits. Bah, double bah and humbug. What else have we got? I ended up using a small plastic screwdriver that likely came with some household do-dad and a small jeweler's screwdriver. The two together would just fit in the slot and I could turn the screw. I had to use a pair of pliers to turn them, some were very tight. Righteous pain in the tush. Got it open, didn't find anything that might be causing the problem, put it back together using Phillips head screws I found in my bin of sheet metal / wood screws. At first I found a nice set of black Torx screws that looked to be perfect for the job, they would not tighten up. I had to go up at least one full size, maybe two to get screws that would tighten up. And now it seems to be working.

P. S. When I started writing this I thought I bought the toaster a year ago for $7. Me memory is getting sloppy.

P. P. S. The book has at least three plot lines, some out of this world science fiction, some extreme magic and il y a beaucoup de violence. Probably going to take me a while.

Funnies

10 Short Videos #6276

10 Short Videos #6276

1. I USED to judge this stuff🤣
2. Which Battery is the Best?
3. This Machine Fires 90%-Light-Speed Protons Into 20 Tons of Mercury
4. China's Solar Panels Created a Sheep Paradise
5. Ninguna IA sabe hacer escobas artesanas - No AI knows how to make handmade brooms
6. 4000hp Nitromethane Camaro vs Joe Zolper Superbird
7. 3D Printed Ceramics That Survive Blowtorch Heat!
8. Красота какая 😍 сегодня снова выхожу в работу 🤞🏼 пожелайте удачи 🍀 - How beautiful    I'm back to work today      wish me luck   - Circus acrobats
9. Wow They’re Flexible - Trivia quiz
10. If history's biggest rises & falls had sound

Iowa Army Ammunition Plant

Iowa Army Ammunition Plant

I'm looking for the site of the new steel mill on Google Maps. I find the Koch brothers fertilizer plant and a big gray block with absolutely nothing inside it, not even any identification. Then I look at OpenRailwayMap and I see all these intricate railway lines.

Iowa Army Ammunition Plant

Look at Google's satellite view and you can kind of see the rail lines. It's a big place - 19,000 acres. As you might expect it was established in 1940.

Iowa Army Ammunition Plant

Iowa Army Ammunition Plant links:

• Wikipedia
• Army Sustainment Command