A while a go, I realized that there's events which I've added to Facebook but not my own blog. Anyway, I'm going to add some of that now. Here's a list of my issues patents so far. (Not included are international patents for the same inventions.)
My personal glimpse into the first half of the 21st Century for some yet to be known future
Tuesday, November 02, 2021
Patents issued, so far
Thursday, October 28, 2021
A wikipedia article all grown up: Brine Pools
So, why all this talk about brine pools now? Well, at that time, I was interested to learn more about them. Upon searching the topic on the Internet, I found nearly nothing. Wikipedia didn't even have an article about brine pools. That means it was up to me to create the article. The only thing I had to go on was what I remembered from the nature show. So, all I could say was this:
"Brine pools have been discovered at on the ocean floor near methane vents. Lifeforms around these pools do not depend on the sun for energy."
That's it. That was the whole article. It's dangerous (metaphorically) to add articles to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a vicious and uncaring environment with nearly draconian rules about what can stay and what must be removed. It's doubly risky (again, metaphorically) to create an article with only one sentence for a topic that isn't well know. The final risk is posting such an article without any citations.
By some miracle, the brine pool Wikipedia article grew. This happened due to other editors adding more detail and cited sources. Images were added soon after. I kept an eye on the article and helped edit it further from time to time until late 2010. At that time, the article grew to include a couple of images and three subheadings, each with a short paragraph. By the Wikipedia measure, it was "2,960 bytes".
Wednesday, October 06, 2021
Tuesday, October 05, 2021
Monday, October 04, 2021
Sunday, October 03, 2021
Saturday, October 02, 2021
Monday, September 20, 2021
Another random shooting star, this time as a fallen angel
I've seen many random shooting stars in my life. The first one wasn't until my mid-teens. From there, I've seen shooting stars relatively frequently. In the past 10 years, I spotted most of these while walking my dogs. That makes sense, since my dogs are the main reason I'd be outside at night often enough for the opportunity to see these spectacles.
A couple nights ago, I spotted yet another shooting star. This one was unlike any others I've seen before. At first, it appeared as a piercingly bright light just above my line of sight. I thought a street light just blew out. However, I quickly remembered there was no street light above me, and I instantly realized it was yet another shooting star. I looked up to see the shooting star falling down in the Northwestern sky towards the horizon. However, instead of just a bright spot, or a bright spot with a streaking tail, or just a steak, or a quick flash, or a massive fireball; this shooting star was composed of opposed half-circle plumes on either side of a small bright spot. The plumes were bright at their tangent point and faded at their respective vertical centerlines. There was also a short streak emanating from the bright tangent point. The color of the shooting star was unusual. Though being generally bright-white, the shooting star appeared to have a faint tint of green on the left plume (to my perspective) and more reddish on the right plume. These features gave the shooting star an appearance of an angel plummeting to Earth.
As the shooting star came down to the tree line, it faded out nearly completely. It's core remained as a dimming amber just as it reached the tree line. Judging the final brightness, the shooting star seemed like it landed somewhere close-by (well, closer than usual).