Author: Rauf Aliev

I’m diving into the topic of Prohibition in the USA — it’s when they added an amendment to the constitution prohibiting all alcohol, completely, including beer. Back then, Fruit Industries was producing briquettes of dried grape juice, which, of course, being dried, contained no alcohol (by the way, the pills called “dry alcohol” sold in the USSR also contained no alcohol, as alcohols cannot be in a dry form). So, in this packaging, as stated on every corner, there was an instruction: “After dissolving in water, do not allow the mixture to stand in a dry and dark place, or it will turn into wine.” Apparently, millions of Americans hoarded these briquettes for two years and, of course, didn’t dilute them. Until the court finally banned them. It’s claimed that they were sold across the entire USA, and only in the first year a million gallons were sold (hm, dry concentrate in gallons?). But what’s interesting is that there are almost no images of these packages on the web, and absolutely no images of that very instruction. How can this be? Such things always puzzle me. Either they sold too few, or someone made up the instruction, or both. https://grapecollective.com/articles/prohibitions-grape-bricks-how-to-not-make-wine

Another piece of art. A gyroid intersected by a sphere. A gyroid is a continuous (non-self-intersecting) structure that infinitely repeats in three dimensions and lacks reflection symmetries. By the way, it’s the only such structure known to science. Essentially, it consists of sinusoids along three coordinates.

With the new 3D printer, I realized that not everything I designed could be manufactured at all. It seems obvious that the design must be not only beautiful but also technologically feasible. An example of a non-technological design is on the left. With a regular FDM printer, I knew the limitations and thought that for stereolithography, I just needed to flip the model upside down, and the errors would only be in the fact that many ideas simply wouldn’t print. Well, it turned out everything works differently there. One error just stops the printing process. That is, you only find out that it has been idly working because of an error about an hour and a half after the start of printing.

I have always had (and still have) the idea to learn how to manufacture parametric models of complex shapes, what is called “generative design” and “bio design”. This is a design where programming and art intersect. Here are some good examples https://3dheals.com/generative-design-in-healthcare-3d-printing-and-3d-bioprinting. So, with these, the complexity needs to come at the end, not the start, because there are too many situations where something goes wrong and ruins the entire model, and something inevitably does go wrong.

Here the situation has been like this for a while. The Walmart, not far from home, spans 19,000 square meters (slightly larger than the Auchan Mega in Khimki) and is operated by one cashier during the day and none at all in the evenings and at night. Several times, I found myself unable to locate anyone in the store to ask a question. Of course, there are always some people around the checkout area. If a cashier calls for help, they come running. However, they certainly don’t monitor the customers to ensure they don’t sneak out merchandise without scanning, nor do they scan items for the customers themselves.

We also have an ALDI nearby. It also has no cashiers, but neither does it have self-checkout stations. You either have to wait for a cashier or wander around the hall looking for one since they multitask quite a bit. Furthermore, there are no free bags at the checkouts in ALDI. Only purchasable bags (not disposable) are available, though they are fairly cheap. The store justifies this as a cost-saving practice that allows them to keep food prices low.

A little further away, there’s a Wegmans. We buy everything there that feels too risky to purchase from Walmart due to uncertain quality. Wegmans is a very old chain. It’s already 105 years old.

https://www.fox5ny.com/news/walmart-looks-to-remove-all-cashiers-from-stores

Today the new 3D printer arrived! First pancake is not a lump! It’s a little ring, prints in 1.5 hours, costs an estimated 2 cents according to the software. And a few hundred dollars more for the equipment and tools 😉

It turns out there is a version of the movie soundtrack where a voice-over explains what is happening between the actors’ dialogues.

The second lecture is about eyes. Alexander Yakushev has a quite unusual diction and style of presenting the material – it’s somewhat emotional and with intonations, but essentially the lecture is very interesting.

However, it’s unclear where the lecturer got some of his information. For example, it is known that since the octopus’s eye evolved along a different evolutionary path, its color vision (as well as that of squid) is either absent or uses a different, still unclear principle compared to, say, mammals. It used to be believed that it sees with its skin (I have an unfinished book called The Soul of an Octopus by Montgomery lying in my phone – that’s exactly what is written there). Humans have three types of rods and cones, tuned to blue, green and red, whereas the octopus has only one type of photoreceptors, tuned to brightness (but it has many of them and its vision is sharper). How do we know it can distinguish colors? Because many species, like the chameleon, can replicate the pattern of their surroundings to blend in. So, Alexander Yakushev claims that their unusual pupil pulsates, and light reaches the retina at different angles. I never read about pulsation, but I did read that octopus uses an unusual eye shape (U or W shapes). Eventually, the eye focuses light waves of certain wavelengths on different parts of the retina. Color is determined through the brain processing different “snapshots” from the eye. Pulsation – is also an interesting theory, but usually people insert at least some reference to supporting works in their slides.

But overall, the lecture is short, and interesting with a set of facts about the nature of the eye.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Jsr9v6WH8c

Two good lectures. This post is about music, the next one – about the eye.

This lecture is very fun and informative. Especially its second part, about Wagner and his approach to life. Anna talks about it with great enthusiasm, it’s captivating. Highly recommended.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le88yU2-UpU

Initially, I made thin plastic holders that were not meant to be removed from the car. The sun killed them. Then I replaced them with thick, but ugly wooden ones. They look eternal, but in reality, they are fragile. And today, I made an exact replica of the wooden ones, but so far from PLA plastic. It is biodegradable, does not like UV and direct sunlight, but unlike the first holders, it is still thick and, hopefully, stronger. Now the hooks are removable, so they can be taken off and not left under the scorching sun when not needed. On Monday, a new photopolymer printer will arrive, and I can try to print them from transparent green plastic.

Of course, all these experiments are not so much about making another phone holder. In general, the wooden one was enough for me. It’s just that in the process, I get to master new skills and abilities that would not have been acquired without the project. For example, to make this holder, it was necessary to figure out how to transfer the curvature profile to the computer (a cardboard that I scanned and outlined in Inkscape, saved in SVG), then transform the profile into a three-dimensional part (Autodesk Fusion 360), then refine the profile in Blender, figure out how to transfer it back from Blender to Fusion as a solid body (non-trivial), then conveniently cut the large part into sections connected by a screw and nut, virtually drill holes for them so that the nut is recessed, and eventually paint it all to protect the plastic from UV rays. Blender turned out to be a very interesting tool; I will continue to explore it further.

On Monday, they will deliver the photopolymer (stereolithography) printer, Creality LD-002R. So today I already have a phone holder model, I’ll try to print it on that as well. Unlike my existing printer, it prints with resin and the resolution is ten times higher (though it doesn’t matter in this case). Resin is not as strong as PLA plastic, but it is less vulnerable to UV, and there are no loads to worry about anyway.

Went to the store without a mask for the first time today. It felt strange