He has now released his new album called “The Sun Still Rises”, available on his website, and as a special introductory promotion, when you order your copy by December 25th, you will be given a complimentary, immediate download copy. As if that isn’t good enough, you also have the option to have the CD autographed to you (or the person of your choosing)—perfect for a Christmas gift!

I’ve been talking to him throughout this project and have had the chance to preview his work, and it’s great to see his hard work come to fruition. I really like the music player that he put into the site, so you can also preview the songs yourself, before you buy. Go ahead and check it out. They make a great gift, so grab one for a friend or family member when you order yours! Definitely take advantage of getting autographs.

For months I have been on the hunt for a replacement, and in particular I love the concepts of open source, and had been hoping there was an open source project out there. I found none.

Some time later, Google+ was released and I joined up for the single fact that it wasnt Facebook. But in all honesty, google is just as bad if not worse than that. It wasn’t good enough for me.

Last night, I was catching up on my news feeds and I noticed an article titled simply “RIP Ilya”. Of course my curiosity kicked in high gear. I always am curious about people I am unfamiliar with. If there’s a news feed about someone, they must have done something worth mentioning. I clicked through some links and was brought to diaspora*. It is exactly what I had given up hope on ever finding… a social network that was not interested in selling out. Open Source is a great thing to come out of computing. It gives back the users the rights that corporations have spent years trying to take away. Probably my favorite thing about this project is that you can download the code, and use it to host *your own* socical network!! For free! The only “catch” is that you cant sell it as your own. It is protected as a free work. I understand that just because I’m excited, people won’t leave Facebook in droves… as much as they need to… But its still nice to know that there are still alternatives.

To make a long story short, you can find me at:

https://group.lt/u/naicamine

If you would like an invite, send me an email. If you use GnuPG, thats even better. Sign your message. You can find my public key here: http://naicamine.wordpress.com/gnupg-key/

The History of Janney Furnace

During the summer of 1864, the Janney Furnace was completed by Alfred A. Janney in Ohatchee, Alabama. It was built with the intention to supply the Confederation with cannon balls rifle barrels and other items made from iron by first making local ore into  pig iron and then by further refining it into cast iron and other forms.

Unfortunatly, the furnace was never put into production, as on the 14th of July, 1864, 2,300 Union troops came into the area, under the command of Major General Lovell Harrison Rousseau, and destroyed the wooden portions of furnace including its chimney. Now, 147 years later, the only remaining part of the Janney Furnace is the stone base of the structure.

The site now is home to a memorial and a park that bears the name of its builder.

DIY

I’d love to turn this experience  into a home DIY project… I’ve once taken a wood stove and used it to melt an aluminium radiator, and make little ingots of aluminium with it, but aluminium is a metal I don’t really feel comfortable in dealing with as it may or may not be linked to Alzheimer’s Disease. I’d much rather deal in iron or steel, but these require much hotter temperatures for proper flow.

The problems I’m facing at present is whether I would want to take on the extra hassle of using coal for my fires, which is more dangerous, and less clean than some other options I have, and how I can build a low cost scale model of something like this structure, taking into account that some major components of it  no longer remain in physical form, although the museum does have a sketch drawing of the structure as it was in 1864.

Update:

It has been speculated that this construction was done mostly by slaves, although it is, as of yet, uncertain.

For me personally, this is bureaucratic nonsense and is the kind of thing ruining this country. If they want to give kids pizza for lunch, I’m pretty ok with that. As long as its like a once a week thing or more or less often than that. I don’t care. Whatever. But when that pizza lunch is reported, it shows up on federal documents, and it is shown to taxpayers and government officials, in particular the people that make decisions that effect this country as a whole. This is not something we brush under the rug. On federal documentation of the United States of America, they want to put a slice of pizza in the vegetable category… I think we have a problem.

Bottom line: Give the kids pizza. Fine. But don’t lie to me and tell me it’s a carrot.

I had a pretty good idea, but to make sure I sent out an email to some friends of mine that know more on the subject, and the joking response I got back was this:

“I’ve found German Techno to be the most effective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UDs-x0_rwk “

Of course, if money isn’t a concern, there are professional shredding services, that will make sure your data is gone.

But this site is a DIY blog, so I rephrased my question, and asked for an effective, cheap, and DIY way. To which the reply was:

“Many hard drives have glass or ceramic platters these days, so a hammer could do well to shatter them.  Then fire could oxidize what remains of the magnetic coatings beyond any chance of recovery.  Probably the more entertaining the application of blunt force + fire, the better.”

So basically if you have access to a high temperature oven, that could work, but it has to be pretty hot — like almost a couple thousand degrees hot. Of course there’s manual disassembly, and then you could throw the bits into a good hot fire, but make sure that the platters do not stay in one piece, and that they are no longer shiny on any part… even if it looks toasted, there are ways of getting information from platters that appear ruined.

And at any or all points of this procedure, a hammer is your friend. The less like a hard drive any of it looks, the more likely you’ve succeeded.

There is an old assumption that running a magnet next to the drive will erase it. It may make the drive no longer boot, but all professionals and even most amateurs will be able to recover most, if not all of your data. For your datas protection, the drive should be as unrecognizable as possible.

It’s still a work in progress, but it looks like it’s gonna be awesome!

http://www.instructables.com/id/Steampunk-goggles-N-Axis/

I love steampunk. I wish I was a little more artistic, because I would love to make things like this all the time!!

I would love to try and build a wagon like this. I really like that it has a wood stove, and that its legal to pull on the road.