Member postings for Gerard O'Toole

In mammals, milk is a food produced for baby animals . Usually, the ability to digest milk, in particular to break down lactose, is lost as a baby animal is weaned.

Some humans have a mutation which allows them to continue to produce lactase, and therefore digest lactose , into adulthood. It is not normal in most mammals and it is not the norm in most humans either, only about 35% of people have this mutation and are lactose tolerant. It really is not a food designed for any mammal after weaning.

Chris, a good explanation of pH buffering of the body is here

Carbonic acid, respiration and renal function all work to maintain correct pH ( about 7.4 )

COuld it be an Elephant Hawk moth?

I found a caterpillar a number of years ago

There is no reason to believe that , in general, those took the same cavalier attitude to risk that Rush did. What I do find interesting is that he could circumvent all the regulations in place to ensure the safety of vessels . There are question as to whether he should have been allowed set out from St. John with an uncertified vessel . I expect they might be some tightening of regulations. But in context, how much check is made in North Africa of vessels used to transport refugees across the Mediterranean ?

Another aspect is that a senior inspector of the coast Guard was one of those who signed al letter to Rush about their concerns about the craft. A question is could the Coast Guard have been more proactive ?

I was never a programmer, rather a scientist. But in the seventies(and eighties) there was little available application software suitable for our calculation and dabbling at BASIC to get an error free result was common. Every laboratory seemed to have at least one person who would manage to create a simple program to do the tedious calculations. And at that level BASIC was a reasonably useful programming language.

But i went on to attempt to create a program to record requests, accept results and print reports for an analytical medical laboratory. BASIC was chosen because that was all available on the HP computer available. Is was complemented by a very good Assembler but everything depended on the BASIC program. And , did that program, which was essentially a specialised data base management application, highlight the severe deficiencies of BASIC. It really is totally unsuitable for any sort of structured development. Even with the exclusion, where possible , of GOTO and only using labelled GOSUB routines it was still a nightmare. I have no way of knowing , but I suspect it was one of the largest BASIC program ever written and used continuously. It was always under development. Any real programmer would have know not to attempt such a large project using BASIC.

Thankfully I have left that drama well behind. But if I need to code a small , or large, program I tend to go to either C# (windows) or Java(only for Android) never BASIC. While my preference is for C# I much taken with the ubiquity of the mobile phone. and find anything coded for Android is usually more useful. Of course Google have decided that the preferred language is now Kotlin instead of Java but i am not too sure i could bother learning something knew. I can accept Dave and David's assurance that Python is marvellous but its' benefits and delights will probably remain a mystery to me.

An Article in the NewYorker magazine summaries some of the concerns raised about this. Including the empolyee who, in the end, was sued by Rush and had to withdraw his complaint.

(Hopefully it is still available. )

I have done the reverse, printed raised lettering in a different colour. Cura will allow you to stop the print at a certain level and change the filament.

Could you try printing a layer in a contrasting colour at the depth of the embossing? I haven't tried this but it might work

I came across a useful video on AI in the aviation industry. As modern aircraft make considerable use of automated systems already it would seem AI is a natural next step

AI in Aviation

But this video would suggest that current AI is nothing more than a rebranding of "data science" as popularised a few years ago by the same tech companies. The video is worth a view , at least to put Ai into context. And it does suggest that there is nothing 'intelligent' about it.

You don't say what size thread.

I am no expert but my chart gives #37 drill for BA5 . #39 drill is not mentioned anywhere on the chart.

See this link for BA sizes and tapping drills

I bought a garden sundial about thirty years ago at a hardware store. It was clearly a modern reproduction but I thought it would be be a nice feature in the garden..

Some assembly was needed and it was unclear which way the gnomon attached. However it all went together and I waited until noon, local time, and set in the garden aligned to north to give 12 noon on the dial. I returned a couple of hours later to check it and found it was indicating ten o clock. It was working backwards.

Of course without thinking the matter out properly, I assumed the error was mine and that I had attached the gnomon upside down. Needless to say that didn't fix it. The problem, probably obvious to you all, was that it was made for the Southern hemisphere .and was then copied and then mass produced for a garden decoration.

I returned it to the hardware store. The manager told me they had sold about a hundred of them and that mine was the only one returned..

I still don't have one in my garden.

Edited By Gerard O'Toole on 26/03/2023 16:07:51

Thanks, excellent tutorial on a complex shape. I found it very educational

If the threads in the hot-end, (the body the nozzle screws into) , are damaged it can be easily replaced.

You can get a couple of new hot-ends, and a set of replacement nozzles for about €6 on one of the well known auction/selling sites. I don't think i can post a link here.

You shouldn't fit a washer. Journeyman above, has almost certainly identified the problem. The tubing can be cut back a little to give a cleaner better fit in the hotend.

I cannot an swer the first question but, as I understand it, the new metre was 'defined' against the length of the meridian from north pole to equator running through Paris, The radius of the earth, was a measure already in use for astronomical measurements at the time. It was calculated, as, you said, by measuring the meridian arc, or part of it.

It is well worth restoring. It dates from the short period when Sunbeam were owned by AMC ( Matchless) . They only bought Sunbeam from ICI a couple of years earlier. And, because of the war and the demand for the G3L for the Army production ended soon afterwards, in 1940 or 41.

Sunbeam was alferwards sold to BSA but don't think they ever revives these early bikes.

Edited By Gerard O'Toole on 15/01/2023 19:01:30

A measuring Lope like this one should be perfect for what you want..

Measuring Loupe

I have used similar in the past and found it easy to use.

I note in the video posted by Steviegtr (and authored by Dr Alastair Godfrey) that the front dial has 360 indents and show the angle from the first appearance of the Sun in Aries.. Not sure of anyone else has made this suggestion but it does suggest a Solar rather than lunar calendar .

It seems that the date of this mechanism is based , mostly, on epigraphical details. At one time there was debate about the conclusions drawn , ,i.e., that it was a first century BC date. There was a suggestion that it could have been as late as 4th century AD . Of course that would mean it was not part of the cargo on the shipwreck but just happened to be found on the same site or at the same time.

If you go to the Command prompt and hold down the CTRL key and they type G ( ^G should be displayed) then hit the enter key. Yoy should hear a beep if the internal speaker is working

Dave, your suggestion that the problem is the way that SE selects the face . Selecting anywhere on the curved cisrcular face created the problem but selecting on the boss at the bottom ( the elevated part containing the two hexagon holes) allowed the correct orientation.

Thanks for taking time to help,

gerard

I have played around with a simple cube and can add the text correctly.

So it appears to be a problem with the particular sketch.

I need to go back and do a little more experimenting

Thanks Dave

Below is print output of the sketch in SE. I selected to add text but it positions the text on the 'other side' of the plane and the text becomes a mirror image.