Tuesday night – retro experiments

August 5, 2014 johncohn 1 Comment

Nice, lazy evening with Diana and gave it home. Well gabe grilled veggies on the grill I went in and did an experiment I hadn't done in years. I picked up some calcium hypochlorite pool shock at the pool store the other day. And I also bought some brake fluid which is mostly ethylene glycol. I mixed the two and 30 seconds later there was a 3 foot, orange fire. Just like when I was a kid. Sorry I didn't take any pictures. Heres another kids version of the same thing i found on google. ( please be safe with this one.. The fumes are dangerous as is the fire )

After dinner, Gabe found a cool Twitter post about an experiment that I also done as a kid. It involves tying a cotton string around the glass bottle, soaking it in alcohol, and lighting it on fire. After it burns out, you quickly dunk it in cold watr. If you're lucky…… As we were…. the bottle will break cleanly near where the string was. All you need to do then is sand the edges and you've got a pretty cool drinking glass. Heres how it went

Then a quick dunk in the water and 'clink'

Nothing like a little father/son bonding over chemistry nostalgia

Nite all, nite sam

-me

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Monday night – Crickets

August 4, 2014 johncohn Leave a comment

I’m sitting here in a quiet house listening to the most wonderful sound.: crickets.. lots of them.. Out singing for mates.. or singing for the heat.. or just singing for the heck of it. The quiet pulsing chirp of these things slowly works its way into our brains as summer starts to wind down.. all nights get full of this sound.. i love falling asleep to it.. It reminds me of cooler days coming.. cold wet dew in the morning and sweatshirts at night.. even as it’s still hot during the day.

it reminds me a gain how much i love were, whne and how we live here..

nite all. nte sam

-me

The Cricket sang,

by Emily Dickinson

The cricket sang,
And set the sun,
And workmen finished, one by one,
Their seam the day upon.

The low grass loaded with the dew,
The twilight stood as strangers do
With hat in hand, polite and new,
To stay as if, or go.

A vastness, as a neighbor, came,–
A wisdom without face or name,
A peace, as hemispheres at home,–
And so the night became.

Sunday night – Trinapathon

August 3, 2014 johncohn Leave a comment

I woke up and realized that today is the 33rd anniversary of my taking my job at IBM .. unbelievable !

We had an incredibly lazy day today.. we called it the ‘trinapathon’… we started with a 2 mile run.. then a 2.5 mile canoe ride. We drove 2.5 miles down dusxbury rd and floated back to our house.

..then I fell asleep on the couch for a few minutes.. then a 2.5 mile run to get the car for me.. and a 7 mile bike ride for diane then a 30 min float in the pool.. (during which i fell asleep twice) .

Then a nice dinner with ellen, will and julia.. after which gabe, will and I each fell asleep on the floor..

doesn’t get better than that !

nite all. nite sam

-me

Saturday night – steer clear

August 2, 2014 johncohn Leave a comment

Full and fun day.. It began with an eary (for me) morning Jolts and Volts science show for the E21 conference… My friend Mara had gathered school l Librarians from all over the country at champlin college for a packed two days of ‘making’ and exchanging ideas. I wasn’t able to attend yesterday.. but I heard it was great. the librarians toured Generator, made blinking badges and got in all sorts of mischief. Today I was the kick off.. they were a great audience !

I also got to hang around for my friends Jeff and Drrick (from Sparkfun) to hear their awesoem talk on Internet of THings. I got to play around more wiht their open sensor data platform https://data.sparkfun.com/ .. I was a beta tester for it.. t’s simple and secure..very nice job !

i loved this morning.. the only downside was that I dropped and broke my phone. ugh… getting a replacement on monday.. right now it looks pretty cool !

diane and I managed to get a quick hike in this afternoon .. dodging the bugs..

Than around5:30 we headed over to the Lacey’s for their steer roast.. this year it was a benefit put on by Black Fly.. and artist collective which included several of our friends (aaron. mary. joe, connor… )

we saw the first red leaves of fall today as we drove up.. noooooo! not yet !

the centerpiece of the event was one of Chucks steers roasted ona contraption that our friend mark invented.. it was able to roast about 600 lbs of meat at a time.. it swivels in 2 directions to allow the meat to be cooked on both sides. It’s really brilliant.