It's a Small World

Having monitored this blog for a year, Google's analytical tools reports that I have hits from a very large percentage of the world's countries.

The map is a little deceptive, because it's grouped by countries. My hits from Russia, for instance, were entirely in the densely populated western end, with nothing east of Moscow. Some countries only provided hits from one particular city, while others had reach all over.
I am amazed that I have hits from every continent. Sure, Africa's a little light, but no continent goes unrepresented, with the possible exception of Antarctica, which has no permanent residents anyway. Quite a few of these hits came only once, stayed for only a few seconds, and then left, but wow was the entire world listening.
Some of the absences are obvious. North Korea, for instance, has few operating computers, a sporadically functioning power grid, regards my country as their mortal enemy, and cares not about the opinions of outsiders. Others, less so. Central Africa and Asia, for instance, are strange little holes.
Looking forward to another year of crazy inventions and rants.

Common Topics

I've checked Google's analysis of this blog again. I notice the popularity of some articles. And sometimes I'm totally confused.
The Forbidden Experiment
baby experiment, language spoken, 1 search
results of a forbidden experiment, 1 search
the forbidden experiment, 1 search
In medieval times, it was commonly thought that humankind had one original language, and that if children were raised without ever hearing speech, that they would therefore speak this language. Furious debates emerged about if this would be Latin, Greek, Hebrew, or Egyptian, all languages with a religion-based significance and high prestige to medieval people. The experiment was run from children taken from orphanages to finally settle the argument once and for all.
To everyone's surprise, none of these languages were spoken. Instead, children raised in the absence of speech learned no language at all, and grew up massively intellectually crippled, when they survived at all. The experiment is now "forbidden" on the grounds that it is hideously evil, but is sometimes accidentally re-run when a child is abandoned in the wild (sometimes due to the abrupt death of their parents, sometimes because their parents evilly abandon them there). See feral children for more information about this.
Jungle Gyms
jungle gym structure, 1 search
architecture based on jungle gym, 1 search
A "Jungle Gym" is a playground structure consisting of many metal bars arranged in a pattern. Children exercise by climbing it, swinging across the bars, and so on. The metal parts are typically attached by welding, the entire structure is embedded in cement on the site, and a rubber mat is cut and laid across the ground to minimize falling injuries.
I once proposed a very very large one.
Genetic Algorithms
Genetic Algorithm music, 1 search
Genetic Algorithm number theory, 1 search
Genetic Algorithms are a use in Computer Science for the biological principles of evolution, to produce a data structure that has traits you're certain of, but the fine details you are not. It works by having a pool of structures, eliminating the ones least like the goal structure, combining the ones most like the goal structure to refill the pool, and giving a few some random alterations, and repeating until the goal structure emerges. The program thus "evolves" like biological life does, reaching the goal in small incremental steps. (The "goal" of biological life is to "survive and multiply under the currently prevailing conditions.") Genetic algorithms are useless if one does not have a fitness criteria to explain which structures are better adapted. Biological life's criteria is "the ability to survive and reproduce under the current circumstances."
A genetic algorithm for music would require listening to quite a lot of bad music before it would ever produce good music. Unless you could mathematically define what good music would be.
I'm not entirely sure how it would be applied to number theory.
have some recurring searches.
Materialism vs. Idealism
Materialism vs. Idealism, 6 searches
Materialist vs. idealist, 4 searches
materialism vs, 2 searches
Materialism and idealism are philosophical positions about the nature of the universe. Materialism says that only things that have mass, and in theory can be touched, are real. So the sun, Mars, your computer, the grass, are all real because they can be touched, and things like ghosts and spirits are not real because they cannot be touched. Idealism says that the physical world is unreal, it is ideas that are real. In idealist situations, the world you know may very well be imagined by you and have no reality whatsoever.
Emotional Computing
Emotional computing, 8 searches
People and animals have emotions about things. This helped animals to survive, by running from threats, taking pleasure in things that helped them survive, fighting irritations in rage, and so on. Machines like computers do not have emotions, but can be programmed to anticipate the emotional state of the user. With this information, it can adapt to be more helpful, like noting a confused or frustrated state and observing that maybe it needs to offer an easier interface, if available.
Algae and Food
how to grow edible algae, 1 search
grow edible algae, 1 search
There's some 18 species of algae that you can eat, and that readily grow in certain types of water. A helpful note if we ever run out of farmland.
Mispelled Things
a pole of how many people would want domotics, 1 search
materialist, 1 search
materalist, 1 search
mad engginering, 1 search
A pole is a long cylinder, this guy wanted a "poll." Everyone could use domotics, but for many, it's not worth the effort. It's of most interest to engineers, who like the challenge, the physically disabled, who can accomplish more that way, and the very busy, who get more spare time from it.
Materialism's root word is "material." Physical stuff.
Engineering has two "g"s, not three.
Pyschology
deformation professionalle, 1 search
cognitive dissonance global warming denialism, 1 search
negative opinions of exploited cognitive dissonance, 1 search
"Deformation Professionalle" is seeing the world with a bias due to your profession. It's a pun in French from "Formation Professionalle," with translates to "Professional Training."
Cognitive dissonance is the uncomfortable feeling one gets when one realizes that two ideas of yours conflict, and therefore one must be discarded as wrong. It's speculated to fuel denial of climate change with the following chain of thought: "Economic activity is always good. Economic activity produces carbon dioxide. Climate change theory says that carbon dioxide is harmful. The only way to reduce carbon dioxide is via reduced carbon dioxide, or tax-paid sequestering, either of which would slow economic activity. This would mean some economic activity is not good. Since all economic activity is good, therefore climate change must be incorrect." (See how the two ideas conflicted, so one was discarded?)
As for people not liking to be manipulated, no, they don't. Yes, they probably would be annoyed if you intentionally gave them cognitive dissonance.
Bizarre Nanoscale Ideas
gender altering nanites transgender fiction, 1 search
nanite gender change, 1 search
Nanobots, or "nanites" as common sci-fi has taken to calling them, are nanometer-scale mechanical devices, small enough to manipulate individual atoms. Very crude ones have recently been invented, but when this technology matures, it would revolutionize manufacturing, medicine, and engineering forever, because it could very cheaply manipulate materials and gather energy from all kinds of cheap sources. The field is slowed in progress by the fact that at this small scale, the rules are totally different. Large engines need lubrication from motor oil to continue to run, but this would only terminally clog a motor on this scale.
The medical uses revolve around the fact that they could completely redesign your body, power themselves on your excess blood sugar, which you could recover by just eating more. They could close any open wounds, repair any of your failing organs, re-engineer your bones to multiple times their original strength, give you superhuman musculature without exercise, arbitrarily change almost any trait imaginable, and help you survive in the most hostile environments available. If you wanted to reshape yourself into a giant bird with hydrogen filled bones, they could do it.
...but the internet being what it is, there's more interest for some reason in recreating Rumiko Takahashi's famous transformation tale. Why?
Things my blog mentioned and I'm not sure why people followed
Schlock Mercenary, 1 search
water system engineer webcomic, 1 search
xkcd mad engineering, 1 search
how to drive for maximum mileage, 1 search
human survival in space webcomic, 1 search
quantum vector collector..., 2 searches
Schlock Mercenary is Howard Taylor's tale of a company in the deep future, the overly complicated machine is from Andy Weir's Casey and Andy, the only comic I know with water system engineering is Angela Melnick's Wasted Talent, and XKCD is Randall Monroe's stick-figure bits of math and science ideas. I'm not sure if by "human survival in space" they meant inside a space ship (likely, see Schlock) or outside one (manifestly impossible).
As for driving for maximum gas milage, accelerate slowly, coast as often as possible, slow down if a stop is threatening, and brake slowly ahead of time. Avoid braking if possible.
Things that I have no idea what the hell
meat barge, 1 search
brownian engine gas, 1 search
fictional things to do on venus, 1 search
fusion 1911 slab longside, 1 search
google famous composers 1400-1800 classical music, 2 searches
conclusion in prevention of global warming, 1 search
Is a meat barge a small ship that carries meat, in which case a train or a plane would probably bring it to market faster, or a small ship made of meat, which is as crazy as it is stupid?
Is a brownian gas engine one that uses the brownian motion in a gas, like air? Or did they mean from gasoline?
Fictionally on Venus, one could hypothetically do anything you could on Earth. Practically, though, you'd want to cool it and reduce its atmosphere to a level that didn't instantly crush you.
As for famous composers, I'm aware of: Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven. Probably many more that I'm not aware of.
As for the fusion slab, I just can't make any sense of that at all.
And the global warming guy, he wants a conclusion? A conclusion to prevent? I don't see how these two words fit together.

What were you interested in?

Once again, I consult Google Analytics to tell me what my readers are thinking, because they leave next to no comments. However, Google's tools do tell me what keywords they searched to reach me, and I can therefore determine what they most wanted to hear about. I am grouping similar entries.

#1 Ultimate Computer Setup
#5 Build Ultimate Computer
#6 Ultimate Computer Setups
#12 Basic Computer Setup
#20 Cut I Beam for Basement Stairs
#35 mad computer setups
#58 Ultimate Computer Room
#60 Ultimate Computer Setup

These people are presumably interested in my unlimited budget computer center construction idea, in which I discuss building an insanely expensive facility with a major supercomputer, out of parts that, alone, aren't terribly expensive. Not sure why they were interested, especially the one mentioning my stair construction. Why? There are probably better ways to build stairs.
Why that is my most popular article is a mystery to me.

#2 Railgun Space Launch
#47 Railgun Space Travel
#48 Raingun for Space Lunch(sic)
#49 Railgun Space
#50 Railgun Space Launches
#51 Railgun Space Travel
#52 Rails for Space Lunch(sic)
#55 Space Launch Railgun
#56 Space Rail Gun

Yes, give yourself enough energy in the right direction and you will go to space. I'm assuming the people with "lunch" were misspelling "launch" instead of just planning to eat their mid-day meal in outer space, which is probably not the most cost effective way to do it. You need a lot of energy to reach the escape velocity of 11km/s.

#3 Mad Engineering
#33 M.A.D. engineering
#35 Mad Engineer
#36 Mad Engineering, M.D.
#37 Mad Mechanical Machines
#39 madengineering

These people seem to have heard of my blog before, but can't remember the address. I'm sorry to say that I don't have a Medical Doctor ("MD") degree, and probably never will. It was my childhood dream, but as an adult I realize that I'd never survive medical school. I hope my machines were insane enough for the person interested in "Mad Mechanical Machines."

#4 Diamond computing
#21 Diamonds and cpu
#22 Diamonds computing

I think diamond computing will be awesome, too.

#7 Air Filter Engineering Google Ads

You want what now?

#8 Automated House Construction
#9 Automated House Design
#10 Automatic House
#11 Automatic Houses Construction

I described the steps possible to automatically construct a house, given the already designed plans, but all these went to that article. Scott Addams has an idea of Automated House Design, which I'm not going to work with because I have a terrible understanding of art and aesthetics.

#13 Benefits of Solar Power

Solar Power produces some carbon emissions when the panels are initially produced, but after they're installed, they generate power when the sun is shining, half as much when it's cloudy, and none at night. The panels incur no additional expenses after being placed. If the sun ever stops shining, we'll have bigger problems than where our electricity comes from.

#14 Building Custom 19 Inch Rack

19 inch racks are a standard for servers. So named because they are 19 inches wide. They have slots so that the servers can be slid in for operation, and out for moving or maintenance. All of this is standardized so that any 19-inch server fits any 19-inch rack. Customize this, are you mad?

#15 Building a Computer How to Setup Wires

I'll assume that you've already connect the non-wires, like RAM, CPU, and the like. Fans have three-pin wires which connect to marked sets of three pins on the motherboard. All drives (hard drive, floppy drive, CD-ROM, etc) must connect a data cable to the motherboard. All drives require a power connector, from your power supply. Your motherboard gets it's power from that big bundle of 20 or 24 cables that ends in the big rectangular plastic thing. Plug that into the plastic slot with 20 or 24 holes. There's another four-hole pastic connector, which has a four-cable connector. All of these are keyed so that they cannot be inserted backwards. Push, but do not force, as bent pins are extremely bad. Now close your computer and turn it on. If it doesn't, open it back up and check your connections.

#16 Carbon Dioxide Absorbing Air Filter Auto

Almost any hydroxide chemical absorbs some amount of carbon dioxide. This is why they are used in re-breathers and the like. Did you want some sort of machine that automatically changes your hydroxide filter, or what?

#17 Carnivorous Clock Produce Energy

Well, kind of. The bacteria-pit inside the clock produces the energy. Not much, all it can run with it is a clock.

#18 Crayfish Eat Mussels
#19 Crayfish Eat Zebra Mussels
#23 Do Crawfish Eat Zebra Mussels

Yes, they do, if they can get the shell open.

#24 Engineering Blogspot

Sorry, I'm an amateur engineer, as I'm sure I described in my first post. There are engineer blogs, I'm sure of it. I even know a comic strip written by a professional engineer, Wasted Talent. I highly recommend it.

#25 Engineering Riddle
#26 Engineering Riddles

I don't think there are any of those, as such.

#27 Extracting Energy From Gravity

I can think of three systems that do that. Hydroelectric dams take energy from falling water, Tidal dams take energy from High-Tide water falling back into the ocean during low tide, and compression springs take the energy from a falling weight. (You don't get much from that.) All are quite conventional engineering at this point.

#28 Gravity Mesh Field

Viktor showed me how this could work if I shape the field in a conservative vector. In Science Fiction, they usually posit some sort of means of artificial gravity, but shape it in distinctly non-conservative ways. It's been 2 years since I've had to work with this kind of calculus, and I can barely remember how to do it anymore.

#29 Greenhouse Engineering Firms

A greenhouse is easy to build, any construction crew should be able to do it. You may be more interested in "Geoengineering," in which massive projects are made to assist the environment.

#30 Harvesting Zebra Mussels

Put something in one of the Great Lakes, remove it the next day. Scrape off the Mussels. I suggest against eating them now, as they are filter feeders and have no doubt absorbed considerable pollution.

#31 Impossible Diaper Change

I wrote an article on automatic diaper changes, and get this person's interest. The only impossible diaper change I can think of would be for a baby that is somehow tens of feet tall and weighs over 400 pounds. And even then, I could probably pull something off with a series of cranes.

#32 Jewish Shibboleth

The ancient Hebrews were the first one to come up with the idea of a Shibboleth, which it is why it is named after the word they used for it. Shibboleth is Hebrew for "ear of corn," or "torrent of water," my sources are unclear on if either or both. It was chosen because the enemy tribe was unable to pronounce many of the sounds in it, namely the "sh" and "th." I asked if anti-American shibboleth's were possible. Apparently so.

#30 Material Engineer Blog

Google brought you here by mistake, you will be sorely disappointed. I talk about material engineering maybe once, and don't really have much to say about it.

#41 Midi Reverse Engineer

I don't think my article about a midi-controlled orchestra is of any use to this person, but they probably ended up there because Google's robots got confused. They were probably interested in the midi standard for programming, instrument control, or any of the other things it does. A man named Chris has the information that I think that person wanted.

#42 Minuses about Hydro Power

Hydroelectric dams flood the region behind the dam, and are made of grey concrete. It costs money, does some damage to the environment, and is mind-bogglingly difficult to paint. Also, prime terrorism target, as you've seen in multiple movies.

#43 Most Profitable Crustation

I don't know, ask a fisherman.

#44 Nootropics Blog

Nootropics are drugs that make you smarter. The best people to ask about them are medical doctors and chemists. Not blogs.

#45 Old-Fashioned Diaper

Layer 5-6 layers of cotton cloth. Or more. Cut a "U" shape in the middle at both sides. Sew the layers together. Wrap around your baby, and pin together on both sides. When baby wets it or soils it, remove the pins and wash it as you would a really dirty shirt. Is reusable. Is not used today on the grounds that it is a major pain in the ass.

#46 P Trap Placement Laundry Room

After the appliance, but before the wall. A P-Trap is a "P" or "U" shaped pipe that stores some water, preventing your drain pipes from reeking like the sewer.

#53 Reverse 10 Keyboard

This probably lead to my "tube keyboard" idea, but "10?" What?

#54 Sakiyama-Elbert 2009

Apparently, this is a Doctor of Biomedical Engineering at Washington University. I'm not her. Her page is here. Good luck with your research, Dr. Sakiyama-Elbert. Why looking for her lead to me, I don't know.

#57 The Art of Smuggling

They were either interested in my article on insane narcosubs, or want to get something somewhere where it's not supposed to be. Think of anywhere you'd look if you thought someone was sneaking something past you. Don't put it there.

#61 Union of Mad Engineers

We have a union now?

#62 Why Subway Systems Only in Large Cities

Stop number 3338238: "Corn farm." Please wait for Stop number 3338239: "Oh hey, it's yet another vacant field." This cost a lot to build, so stop complaining. After that, please stay on the line for Stop number 3338240: "It's yet another vacant field, please don't scream in frustration."

A Use For Mercury

When I study why people come to this blog using Google Analytics, I find out some odd things about my readership. For one, something like 3/4ths of the searches are for things I specifically wrote about. Perhaps these people half-remember something they read here and wanted to see it again. Or perhaps my reputation somehow proceeds me, and they've somehow heard of me through non-internet means. Or perhaps they think strange thoughts like I do.
I also learn interesting things about where they are. Most of my readers are American like I am, and the most common hits are New York and California, the two most populous states, and Texas, where I'm physically located. (Some of those Texan hits may have been me, up to all of them.) And then there's the weird parts. One person in Trondheim, Norway, reads my blog 7 times a month. It does not tell me what he or she is looking for, other than the read time is very very fast and that it's one distinct person. I hope he or she finds whatever it is that he or she wanted to read here. I also have hits elsewhere in Europe, Asia and Australia, but they've mostly seemed to have left quickly after a few seconds. Not quite what they wanted, I suppose. But I'm getting off topic.
One person apparently read my article about terraforming Mars and Venus, and was trying to find a plan to terraform Mercury. It was a very interesting idea, and I've thought it over, and I regret to say that no, Mercury cannot be terraformed. For several reasons. There is one bright spot, but first the reasons why it cannot happen.
The first reason is that Mercury is too close to the sun. Powerful solar winds strike mercury at all times, and any atmosphere brought to it would quickly be blasted into outer space. Also, any humans brought to the surface would be dead of skin cancer within a year's time even if the atmosphere was continuously magically replenished.
Two, mercury is semi-tidally-locked. It orbits the sun in a 3:2 resonance, such that 1.5 mercurial days make up a mercurial year. Any plants brought along would die during the 44 day long night. Unlike Venus, if spun up, it would spin back down due to the gravitational effects.
Three, even if we somehow magically solve the first two problems, mercury is smaller than mars. It would have difficulty retaining the atmosphere even without the solar wind, and gravity would be incredibly low, which would have unpredictable results on human health.
And lastly, the vastly closer sun provides 10 times the sunlight that the earth receives, resulting in temperatures about 20 times higher. If you think the desert is hot, wait until you see weather that can melt aluminum. Oh, and if you don't bake to death, you'll dehydrate to death sweating.
However, Mercury is not completely useless for us. In the early 1900s, Nikola Tesla discovered that power could be wirelessly beamed about. So we send in a probe to work on the cold, night side, and have it endlessly construct solar panels that wire together to a beaming station. We have it continuously move along the axis of rotation, staying perpetually on the night side where it is cold enough to operate. On the poles, we build the beaming station that receives all the energy from the panels.
When the panels are rotated into the day side by Mercury's natural rotation, they produce lots of power. Mercury gets 1370 watts per square meter, of which we can hope to capture about 10%. The station changes it into a wireless form that we can pick up elsewhere in the solar system. We can pick this up on Mars for heating, on the ISS for powering scientific tools, or hypothetically even on earth to power our cities. The panels should be replaced every 20 or so years.
Downsides: How to build the power-transmitting station such that it doesn't melt down when in the day side. How to deal with rotation, as Mercury is not perpendicular to the solar system plane, but slightly tilted. (About 6 degrees.) Oh, and getting thousands of square miles of solar panels and hundreds of thousands of feet of power transmitting cable not only into space, but onto Mercury's surface without being damaged. Also, the robot probably needs to be able to build everything without human intervention, which could take up to 12 minutes depending on the distance of our planets at the time. (Speed of light limitations are a bitch, aren't they?)