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Yep. Heard about it on Rock Paper Shotgun.
It does give a nice sense of sitting at that control station, you learn all the switches too. 
Random! We have a yearly poster conference at the end of the semester, and yesterday my group won one of the best in show awards for poster presentations. Iām just excited and maybe some of you guys/gals might be interested in what we did for research.
Iām from California and weāre in a pretty bad drought(if you didnāt know already), so we created a cheap system using Raspberry Piās and an arduino to measure/monitor a well system for ground water. My professor has a few wells on his ranch so we were able to test out our system there.
It was pretty cool seeing pump down/recovery times on a well where the water is 500ft below the surface. Weāve managed to automate the pumping in a way that pumps near the top of the recovery cycle in a more efficient regime for the pump which also promotes longer life for the pump and the well itself.
Itās amazing what couple of cheap micro controllers can do for less than the cost of a commercial monitoring system while adding the ability to automate the whole system.
If any of you are interested/want to know more let me know. Iām continuing this project next semester as well, so Iām also open for ideas on extra features, or maybe something you might want on your well system(if you have(had?)one). Many brains are better than 1. We are already looking into an algorithm that would alert you via email/text if your water tank is emptying quickly over a short amount of time. Someone left a hose on for 7 hours and we were able to clearly see for long and exactly what times, for example. The Pi is connected to the internet so we can do cool things.
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Sounds great! Well then, Iāll suggest āinternet of thingsā and āubiquitous computingā applications. Thereās got to be a few neat services that you could add to the information you get from the Arduinos and get some cool new functionality out of it. Maybe weather? How about also optimizing for electricity consumption if your prof has a flexible rate?
Iām not overly good with ideas, sorry. 
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Iām not sure weather is something needed to monitor a well, and something that canāt already be figured out by looking outside 
. We are also already optimizing for electrical efficiency by pumping when the well is more full. This pumps in the pumpās highest efficiency footage, while also keeps most of the well wet and prevents calcification from the water on the edges of the well and the pump itself(if it were pumped dry).
I appreciate the feedback though
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I meant weather in the sense of extra information to utilize. It might be for example that after a rain the ground water rises a bit, so you could pump more when it rains. Or on hot days youād prefer pumping at night to prevent losses if you have an open reservoir.
Or integrate it with his calendar? No need to pump water if heās not at home, same for vacations. You get the idea A lot of this stuff depends on the exact system though, so your mileage may vary.
What do you think would be better:
Having a highly flamable fluid under pressure enclosed two meters from where you sleep in proximity to heat and eletricity.
OR
Having a midly toxic fluid enclosed under pressure two meters from where you sleep in proximity to heat and eletricity.
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Why not neither?
Why is my bed next to a disaster waiting to happen like that? 
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Because I NEED a substance with a boiling point close to room temperature at atmospheric pressure. If you can point me to one that isnāt either highly flamable nor toxic I would be glad ā¦ though it will probably be highly reactive or some other anoying shenanigans.
And no. There is no neither. I have this idea. And it will work and be tottally cool shmool. 
Why donāt you just ask us to sleep on a water bed, and at the stroke of midnight, release a large amount of potassium in the middle of the water bed. Before you point out, yes I know it doesnāt boil at room temperature at 1 atm.
Copernicium is a gas at room temp and in 1 atm. But it only fits if you consider radioactive as shit not being toxic.
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If the flammable one is not in sufficient quantity to explode and kill you immediately, go with the flammable one and buy a smoke detector and a fire extinguisher. Problem with the toxic one is that once it leaks, you wont have much warning when sleeping and could kill you without you ever knowing that it was leaking. However, if the flammable one is an immediate death one, go with the toxic one and buy a canary (or some other sort of sensor). Or maybe the toxic one is not lethal even if the whole canister discharges, then go with the toxic one.
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Well, after having slept over it, and not died, I think I can accept the increased engineering challenge of having another material that needs increased pressure to be liquid but does not harm stuff near it in case something goes wrong.
Hereās a cool list of some of the chemicals I checked: http://www.linde-gas.com/internet.global.lindegas.global/en/images/Refrigerants%20Product%20Data%20Summary17_108590.pdf
The first material that fit my desired properties was Diethylether. Now ā¦ it is both higly flamable and toxic. 
But readily available in pharmacies and very compatible to a lot of other materials.
After some searching around and looking at a lot of pressure-enthalpy diagrams. I think I would go with 1,1,1,2-Tetrafluoroethane or commonly called R-134a. It is neither flammable nor especially toxic.
It has a boiling point of ā26.3 Ā°C and it takes only 0.5MPa (5 Bar) to make it liquid at room temperature. Most of those coolants are very aggressive to certain other common piping and materials ā¦ so I would need to be careful.
Seems like everything that has a boiling point close to room temperature at 1 atm has to be either toxic or highly flamable. Itās kind of strange.
I donāt know about you, but -26.3 Ā°C doesnāt seem like room temperature to me.
Yep it isnāt. But I think I over-prioritized ease of operation over safety ā¦ a little too much.
Thereās also the new 1,3,3,3-Tetrafluoropropene / R1234ze which has a boiling point of ā19 Ā°C, Isobutan with -12 Ā°C
Oh and in case you wondered: R123 was the toxic of the two in question.
Hmm strange ā¦ R123 actually has the same NFPA 704 toxicity clasification as R134a ā¦
But R123 has a lot higher toxicity ratings in the GHS Classification system.
R134 has also a big big bonus of being widely used and easily accessible.
I watched a movie. I just knew it was going to be absolutely terrible. Bad plot, etc, (I mean, itās title is even a little sketchy: Harlock: Space Pirate) but, as my mantra is āIāll try almost anything at least onceā, I stuck it in my dvd player (got it in the 5$ bin at BestBuy ;)).
Imagine my surprise when, even within the first five minutes, it completely erased any prejudices about back-water anime producers. Sure, the movie tipped itās hat to SW and Wall-E with suspiciously similar plot devices, but wow, animation was top-notch, easily on par or better with anything Pixar has pumped out recently. Story was actually not that bad (as long as you are fine with a somewhat unceremonious plot dump), and all in all the film was a pleasant surprise. If youāre looking for a good animated movie, this is probably the best Iāve ever seen.
Considering the previous post was a chemistry lesson, this is pretty random. But hey, title.
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Oh yeah, I remember seeing it in cinema. Yeah, it was actually pretty good - then again, Harlock (or Albator as it is called here for some reason) is a big one. Like, featuring in nearly 30 (sometimes wildly) different manga and anime so far - nearly 50 years old and still going strong.
(The film itself is an independent story, donāt worry.)
I was going to say āthere was no way they were going to screw it upā, but they could have try and just cash-grab it. Fortunately, they actually gave it the talent, work and resources it deserved.
But I canāt let that pass!
The best you should have ever seen is obviously Battle for Terra, and I donāt care if itās a decade old and with a shoestring budget.
In fact, if a nearly unknown animated movie can do Avatar ten years before for a hundredth of the budget and ending up incomparably better, it deserves to be the best animated film youāve ever seen
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Iād have to disagree on BfT. Iāve seen it, but I wasnāt really impressed. It was a while ago, and I should probably watch it again just to make sure. For science.