Yearly Archives: 2009

The Colony – Premieres Tuesday July 21st @ 10pm E/P

Wow.. this is already getting pretty freaky. All day long I heard from folks that they saw the trailer for The colony on Discovery.  It’s a short 15 second clip that shows some moments from the first episode. There’s a few pictures of me  though I can’t quite figure out what I’m doing in the shots.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8U9NsaKFpk

It’s really wonderful seeing my friends in these clips. I like that my

old freinds can sort of ‘meet’  my new freinds now. It’s hard to

explain how close the ten of us got in the course of the two months of

filming. Let me tell you.. you don’t know someone until you’ve spent 58

days with them in a place with no electricity, no water.. and no

sanitation.  The 10 of us are talking all the time these days in the

lead up to the start of the show. I’d like you to meet them all:

Old friends, meet my new friends, New friends meet old friends.. I love you all.. (and there’s not a thing you can do about it.. as new friend George would say)

OK.. gotta go now..nite all,  nite Sam
-me

Tuesday night – sometimes spacey man

OK.. it’s official. An early website for our TV show The Colony just appeared on Discovery’s web site today . The show will premier at 10PM on Tuesday July 21st right after ‘Deadliest Catch’. It will run for 10 weeks. he web site is definitely a work in progress, but there’s some cool stuff in there. The bios in particular are a hoot. . I’m glad to see that I’m only spacey ‘sometimes’ . I’m not sure what else I’m allowed to say at this point other than .. watch the show. I’m nervous and excited to see how it comes out. It’s goign to be a wild ride !

I love you all.. Love you Sam
-me

Monday night – almost there

Folks,
   Busy. busy day.. I was on the phone from 7:30 AM until 6PM .. and then had to run off to UVM to do a show for the Governor’s institute. As such.. not much happened today that I can report on.   The show at UVM was great. It was 96 kids from all over the US and a few other countries. They all are here for a one week camp on science and engineering. Our good friends Tom and Beth are the leaders. It’s a wonderful group of kids.. all so bright and creative. I eneded up spended about an hour tlakignto them all after the show.. My heart feels good when I knwo that we’ll eventually be  turning our world over to this next getneration.

The one other thing I was planning on writing about was the launch of the publicity for the Discovery show. I had thought they were goign to start advirtising for the show today.. but I just learned it’s likely to be tomorrow. I’m excited.. and a bit nervous.. to see what they do withthe show. Stay tuned and I’ll share what I can.
  Fr now it’s time for bed.. More tomorrow !. Nite folks. nite Sam
-me

 

Sunday night – a ittle white lye

Wonderful peaceful day here in Jonesville. Our big event for the day was making our own soap. Diane had made some with friends last week.. and I’d made some recently.. so we decided to make some together. It’s good clean fun !

The process starts with pure sodium hydroxide.. or Lye.. as it’s also called. It’s used to unclog drains among other things. It’s nasty stuff. toxic, caustic and reactive..

We got our safety glasses  and gloves on and measured the stuff out.

 (Note.. always add lye to water.. NEVER add water to lye.. it splatters violently !)

As soon as you add it to water it starts a pretty amazing exothermic reaction.. the water quickly heats up to a near boil..

While we waited for the lye solution to cool, we went in and measured out our fats.. We were using a mix of olive oil, coconut oil and hydrogenated palm oil (crisco).. I’ve also made it from lard in the past. (yuck)   Here’s us thawingign the coconut oil.. when you see what it does in the fridge, you realize what this stuff might do in your arteries..

We melted all the fats together

Then cooled them to a lukewarm 80 degrees F.

We then took the fat outside and poured it into our soap bucket

Then Diane added the Lye solutin that we’d also cooled to 80 degrees F.

We then started blending it with a hand mixer.. It immediately started to react and become soap through the process of ‘saponification’

Miraculously it began to set in just about 10 minutes.. compared to the 3 hours both dinae and I had to wait in our last two batches.. must have been the highly hydrogenated oils we were using in this batch

It was soon the consistency of stiff cake batter. Diane added coloring (we used the spice Tumeric) .. and some scent we’d found..

THen Diane poured it into a cardboard box we’d lined with wax paper

It was already so thick we had to spread it ourselves.

We added a SamStone for the final touch !

Then we wrapped it up and put it away to cure for a week. I’ll let you all knwo how it comes out !

That was pretty much the day.. except that I finally got around to cleaning up my lab a bit.. Here it is before..

Here it is after.. not a huge difference.. .. but it helps

OK.. I gotta go finish our burning man car application.. so that’s it for today.. More tomorrow.. Nite all.. nite Sam
-me