vital functions
Nov. 22nd, 2020 10:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberettReading. Fire Logic, Laurie J. Marks. This was significantly less compelling in the reading than it is in retrospect, for me; this wasn't helped by my copy of the ebook being egregiously typo-ridden (up to and including things like ",," for "."), but the unthinking ableism rankled and I was generally grumbly and... the setting has stayed in my head and I'm contemplating actually buying the sequels. (I have already checked and my library doesn't have them as ebooks.)
Just started: The Martian, Andy Weir. tl;dr I could really use some easy reading involving someone having a worse time with science than I am right now. (Am I going ??? at the "how much water will my reserve oxygen make?" YES I AM. Enough to actually go and look up all the details and work it through for myself? Nope!)
Writing. Ugh. Well. First draft of introduction plus abstracts done, sent to supervisor, and I got feedback earlier today, which I have read, and it's basically all fine except that supe. pointed out I should check regulations for abstract length and it needs to be 300 words max, whoops. I also went back over chapter 2 (methods & reference materials) and finished sorting out the words, I think; there's figures and numbers and formatting to go but I think it's adequately rearranged.
Watching. CXG S01E18 "Paula Needs To Get Over Josh!" I really like this show. I really like how carefully it's all set up. They are doing such a good job. There's narrative detail seeded absolutely! all! the way! through! and also EVERYONE'S STILL TERRIBLE and I love them all (except Josh).
Listening. TMA 188.
Not any Vienna Teng, even though I keep earworming myself with Last Snowfall every time I start playing the geology-themed implementation of Candy Crush on the dragons website, because it doesn't remember that I always turn the sound off and the opening chord is just similar enough that etc. I... might get to it.
Playing. Dragons dragons dragons. I am enjoying the dragons a lot, still, and not just because they provide me with clicky games that let me do More Dragons out the other side.
Hanabi, one round with Adam, Saturday evening, in a break from thesis. I think that was our highest score yet (18, for my future reference), and we have Further Thoughts On Strategy. Definitely we managed communicating with each other a bit more efficiently than previously, I think.
Among Us, several rounds, with cousins, lunchtime today. I think! I'm okay with this! I think I want to play... more? I still struggle to articulate why I want to play more of games that involve Other People, for the most part, but hey, personal growth. Or something.
The horn trundles along slowly.
Cooking. Mushroom stroganoff! Which is homefood, so I always forget I can make it for other people, but A continues to enjoy it and also I entreated him to buy me Fancy Rice to go with, so we had it with that and mange touts and I slice some almonds thin by hand and toasted them, so that was eminently satisfactory.
And another batch of roti canai! Adam made the dough and heated up the freezer-dal and also turned one of the tromboncino into the squash-and-spinach curry I'd been craving; I did the stretching, and while day #1 wasn't great day #2 was so that was lovely.
And. "Want some medlars?" said Adam. "There's some on Freegle." Expecting, I think, me to go "lol nice but nah I'm good without them" because, well, fruit he'd not previously heard of, etc. "YES," I said, "LOTS. SEVERAL. GIMME." Which is how (he was a bit nonplussed) I came to be in possession of 3kg of medlars, about 80% of which were already bletted, i.e. exactly the necessary proportions for medlar jelly. I boiled them up and then simmered them earlier (in the preserving pan, with a baking sheet over it; they... did not... fit in the stock pot, being as I ended up with about 12 pints or 7.5 litres of Stuff, fruit included) with LEMONS OFF THE LEMON TREE, and am leaving the fruit to drip overnight so I can jelly them... tomorrow. Yes. That is definitely going to happen.
A dither: all plain? Or do I do half of them (with the attendant extra faff) as cinnamon-and-star-anise?
Eating. A was off work last week! Which means that in addition to the roti and the various other things he's been cooking me (stir fried vegetables with noodles! the pasta squash thing! another batch of pseudo-Ben's Cookies!) I have had waffles and crumpets for breakfast on days various, and felt v cared for.
Growing. I left the house to go to the allotment by myself on Tuesday. And need to go back again this week but that might be a little easier now, fingers crossed. Anyway, main project was infrastructure: there's now bubble wrap taped to the inside of the frame along all the glass where I still have tomatoes touching the outside world, and we'll see if that's enough to keep them going over the winter. There's a variety of onions and other allium coming along; the garlic I saved and replanted was sprouting when last checked; carrots and beetroot continue on; the bin is much happier when I'm feeding it twice a week than once, sigh.
At home: the lemon has been Less Visibly Infested, and I've potted it up (goodness it turns out it needed it) and given it its second treatment. Finger crossed. Patio tomatoes continue producing; the chilli I brought home looks happy and has dozens of buds on it so we'll see whether it actually manages flower; and the holy basil's looking a little sorry for itself and I need to get better at watering it.
And on we go.
Just started: The Martian, Andy Weir. tl;dr I could really use some easy reading involving someone having a worse time with science than I am right now. (Am I going ??? at the "how much water will my reserve oxygen make?" YES I AM. Enough to actually go and look up all the details and work it through for myself? Nope!)
Writing. Ugh. Well. First draft of introduction plus abstracts done, sent to supervisor, and I got feedback earlier today, which I have read, and it's basically all fine except that supe. pointed out I should check regulations for abstract length and it needs to be 300 words max, whoops. I also went back over chapter 2 (methods & reference materials) and finished sorting out the words, I think; there's figures and numbers and formatting to go but I think it's adequately rearranged.
Watching. CXG S01E18 "Paula Needs To Get Over Josh!" I really like this show. I really like how carefully it's all set up. They are doing such a good job. There's narrative detail seeded absolutely! all! the way! through! and also EVERYONE'S STILL TERRIBLE and I love them all (except Josh).
Listening. TMA 188.
Not any Vienna Teng, even though I keep earworming myself with Last Snowfall every time I start playing the geology-themed implementation of Candy Crush on the dragons website, because it doesn't remember that I always turn the sound off and the opening chord is just similar enough that etc. I... might get to it.
Playing. Dragons dragons dragons. I am enjoying the dragons a lot, still, and not just because they provide me with clicky games that let me do More Dragons out the other side.
Hanabi, one round with Adam, Saturday evening, in a break from thesis. I think that was our highest score yet (18, for my future reference), and we have Further Thoughts On Strategy. Definitely we managed communicating with each other a bit more efficiently than previously, I think.
Among Us, several rounds, with cousins, lunchtime today. I think! I'm okay with this! I think I want to play... more? I still struggle to articulate why I want to play more of games that involve Other People, for the most part, but hey, personal growth. Or something.
The horn trundles along slowly.
Cooking. Mushroom stroganoff! Which is homefood, so I always forget I can make it for other people, but A continues to enjoy it and also I entreated him to buy me Fancy Rice to go with, so we had it with that and mange touts and I slice some almonds thin by hand and toasted them, so that was eminently satisfactory.
And another batch of roti canai! Adam made the dough and heated up the freezer-dal and also turned one of the tromboncino into the squash-and-spinach curry I'd been craving; I did the stretching, and while day #1 wasn't great day #2 was so that was lovely.
And. "Want some medlars?" said Adam. "There's some on Freegle." Expecting, I think, me to go "lol nice but nah I'm good without them" because, well, fruit he'd not previously heard of, etc. "YES," I said, "LOTS. SEVERAL. GIMME." Which is how (he was a bit nonplussed) I came to be in possession of 3kg of medlars, about 80% of which were already bletted, i.e. exactly the necessary proportions for medlar jelly. I boiled them up and then simmered them earlier (in the preserving pan, with a baking sheet over it; they... did not... fit in the stock pot, being as I ended up with about 12 pints or 7.5 litres of Stuff, fruit included) with LEMONS OFF THE LEMON TREE, and am leaving the fruit to drip overnight so I can jelly them... tomorrow. Yes. That is definitely going to happen.
A dither: all plain? Or do I do half of them (with the attendant extra faff) as cinnamon-and-star-anise?
Eating. A was off work last week! Which means that in addition to the roti and the various other things he's been cooking me (stir fried vegetables with noodles! the pasta squash thing! another batch of pseudo-Ben's Cookies!) I have had waffles and crumpets for breakfast on days various, and felt v cared for.
Growing. I left the house to go to the allotment by myself on Tuesday. And need to go back again this week but that might be a little easier now, fingers crossed. Anyway, main project was infrastructure: there's now bubble wrap taped to the inside of the frame along all the glass where I still have tomatoes touching the outside world, and we'll see if that's enough to keep them going over the winter. There's a variety of onions and other allium coming along; the garlic I saved and replanted was sprouting when last checked; carrots and beetroot continue on; the bin is much happier when I'm feeding it twice a week than once, sigh.
At home: the lemon has been Less Visibly Infested, and I've potted it up (goodness it turns out it needed it) and given it its second treatment. Finger crossed. Patio tomatoes continue producing; the chilli I brought home looks happy and has dozens of buds on it so we'll see whether it actually manages flower; and the holy basil's looking a little sorry for itself and I need to get better at watering it.
And on we go.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-11-22 10:42 pm (UTC)(I have never tried them. Very interested, though.)
(no subject)
Date: 2025-11-15 12:06 pm (UTC)Ha! How times have changed :)
(no subject)
Date: 2020-11-22 11:36 pm (UTC)Yay for good things!
The movie version of The Martian is also very good if that’s a thing that might be of interest (though I can’t really vouch for any of the science in either book or movie)
(no subject)
Date: 2020-11-23 12:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-11-23 05:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-11-23 02:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-11-23 02:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-11-23 04:33 pm (UTC)That article touches on another problem; it's not clear the soil can support his potatoes, even with a lot of human poo mixed in. (One might also complain about dietary deficiencies, but he has multivitamins and I think we can imagine his limited stock of non-potato food includes about enough protein to survive).
A third problem, unless I'm mistaken, is light. Mars' sunlight is feeble, and besides, it's not clear that the Hab is transparent. However, growing plants under artificial light needs a lot of artificial light, as cannabis growers know all too well; it seems unlikely that NASA outfitted the Hab with an array of grow lights (which are enormously overspecified for "humans seeing things"), or that he has enough electricity to run it. A very quick search suggests cannabis growers use 800W/m^2; the Hab is 92 m^2; IIRC Watney can use about 2/3 of that, so he needs around 75kW of lighting. Mars gets circa 590 W/m^2 solar flux so if our solar panels are 10% efficient (figure from the book, presumably because they're engineered for W/kg not W/m^2), he'll need 1200 m^2 of panels just to power his grow farm (12 times the 100m^2 he has in the book). He's going to spend a lot of time wiping off dust.
They have inexplicably buried the RTG even though it's an extremely reliable and safe source of 100W - not a lot compared to even the realistic energy requirements of the mission, but a backup one that works in the dark and that can probably (for example) run the control computer when it's needed to get the main power system out of a stuck state.
He manages to make the air in the Hab into an explosive mixture by burning stuff. Why does it not, then, explode while he's burning stuff?
(no subject)
Date: 2020-11-23 04:43 pm (UTC)...eesh right I hadn't even considered the light problems. Yeah. That's a thing.
(As for the RTG, yeah. It's safe enough as it stands but I always parsed that as a political/image decision. People can be...irrational...about radiation.)
(no subject)
Date: 2020-11-23 05:21 pm (UTC)Also, the RTG may be engineered to survive it but I suspect if you bury something that puts out a steady 1500W of heat in sand, you may have to extract it from some sort of glass shell if you want to use it again...
(no subject)
Date: 2020-11-24 08:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-11-24 08:42 am (UTC)Thank you for saying! Details have mostly been going in IM elsenet but my other observation re the S1 finale (other than HOW WELL IT'S SET UP and HOW GOOD JOSH'S FACIAL EXPRESSIONS ARE and how validated I am in my assertion that everything that was wrong in Josh's relationship with Valencia was already wrong in Josh's relationship with Rebecca) is that... Paula spent most of the season saying "never you mind, don't worry about that" whenever Rebecca asked "... but HOW?" - which makes her final song even more (which I thought impossible) inappropriate...
(no subject)
Date: 2020-11-24 01:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-11-26 09:15 pm (UTC)