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Month: June 2019

Torque

Torque

A new property of light, called ‘self-torque’ was recently discovered. You can read about it here:

https://phys.org/news/2019-06-property.html

And the actual paper here:
https://sci-hub.se/10.1126/science.aaw9486

It is a really interesting discovery working with the properties of orbital angular momentum which itself wasn’t really understood until 1992 ( see https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.45.8185).

Of course car people everywhere are wondering if light has torque, it must have horsepower! Sadly the power ( dE/dt ) is based on E=hv, so no light cycles to ride just yet.

Plumbing

Plumbing

Plumbing is underway. Drains are almost installed. We are using iron pipe where possible in the walls to reduce the sound of water.

Wire

Wire

My low voltage wiring trailer is coming together. Some more cable showed up today, as well as 2600m of fiber.

Solar

Solar

No doubt most of you know today was the summer solstice for us Northern Hemisphere inhabitants. It was also another day with 0 sunspots (33 in a row so far), as we are very near the minimum solar activity of the approximately 11 year long solar cycle number 24. Solar cycle 24 has been exceptionally low activity, and 2019 looks to be the least active year since records started in the 1700s.

The reduced activity allows an increased amount of galactic cosmic radiation exposure due to the weakening of the sun’s magnetic field. This is more pronounced at higher elevations ( for example, while flying in a plane).

One other downside of the reduction in solar activity is reduction in propagation of HF radio because of changes in the E and F atmospheric layers. As the solar activity gets smaller, propagation at higher frequencies gets worse. There is a slight reduction in D layer absorption for the very lowest frequencies, so the 40m and 80m bands can still be usable at night.

So, enjoy this especially long, especially solar spot free day.

House

House

A few updated pictures of the house – The water and ice shield has been installed on the roof, and all but 2 windows are installed. Plumbing and HVAC are getting installed.

Audio

Audio

When I was a young lad, I remember the first tape deck that I got that had Dolby B and Dolby C NR [Teac V-350C]. Dolby C was for the cool kids. Eventually the idea of ‘home theater’ came into existence, and with it Dolby Surround and Dolby Prologic. They took the standard stereo sound track and expanded it into front and rear surround using DSP (sorta 4.0). It seemed like magic. Along came the ever awesome Laserdisc with support for AC-3 5.1. That AC-3 (Dolby Digital) is still in use today on every Blu-ray. The enthusiast with the ear for the finer things might remember DTS, which is the early days required a laserdisc to offer either DTS or AC-3, but not both.

Fast forward 30 years.

I need to figure out speaker and speaker wire placement for the room in our new house that will have a TV. I’m not big into watching TV these days, but having it sound in a way that doesn’t suck is worthwhile. This isn’t for music either.

What is the current cool audio surround format? It seems like Dolby Atmos is probably the most interesting. It can support anything from 2.0 to 24.2.12. I’m thinking about wiring for 7.1.4 (more or less 11.1). This seems like a good compromise supporting some in ceiling speakers. If I need more than 12 speakers, I’ll just have to miss out. Thoughts?

Cat6A

Cat6A

So I ordered the Cat6A and Cat6 I need for the house.. Interestingly enough the Cat6 was shipped as individual shipments (so 30 boxes shipped via FedEx each 30lbs), but the Cat6A F/UTP was shipped as freight (50 boxes, 2400 lbs total). Fiber is on the way as well, but much smaller only 150lbs. They both arrive the same day… so I’ll be curious if they figure out to bring the shipments with the freight.