For those passing thru
For daily fix of Haiku
A welcome to you
This object/sculpture/nightmare is a 3-dimensional development of the Vogon guard profile sculpture of April 28th, and has been in construction a long time. The components were sub-assemblies that had a long wait while i scheemed up a method of assembling them without a disastrous collapse.
And finally yesterday i built a wet clay scaffolding to hold it up and in position while assembling its structure, and then when it was able to support itself, i cut the still soft scaffolding away and removed it in little pieces.
Not sure, should i finish it off with the lobster claws that featured on the flat version ?
This is the original Vogon Guard.
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Oh my goodness i just looked up Iron(III) acetate on wikipedia.
Oh heavens, it forms a complex (not a great surprise) with…
3 ferric ions, total charge 9+
6 acetate ions, total charge 6-
an oxygen atom in the center 2-
for a nett charge of plus one
and three water molicules, attracted by the charges of the iron ions.
Just when you thought it was safe to pour vinegar onto rust.
And i would imagine that shining blue light onto it will photoreduce iron3 to iron2 and oxidise an acetate to CO2, but as to what else might happen, well mind completely boggled.
My wife! When shes in top gear - a cross between a fog horn and a politician going ballistic.
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My wife! When shes in top gear - a cross between a fog horn and a politician going ballistic.
Odearme, im not sure how to feel about that. Wife - i used to have a lovely one but i accidentally broke her.
A Bird
You are under Sewer Valience
Kiwi Policeman Perhaps?
No, more likely a ForEx trader looking to go long on the UK Pound?
(It is a one pound weight - see the coil swingers under todays wasteland finds)
James 1:26
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Pottery Gargoyles and Grotesque Figurines, Dad Jokes, bad puns and japanese poetry forms.
A disturbing alliance.
Mike Pence to “The Don”
(On Airforce One) “You’re fired !”
Would that be high coup ?
Anyone mentioning unsolicited Vogons can’t be half bad.
Package in the post for you tomorrow, slow I know, but speed isn’t everything 
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So what you are saying is that you will send me magical white powder in the post, but that speed isnt everything ?
Now this small blue-green planet had a problem in that most of the people were unhappy more or less most of the time, even the ones with digital watches. Many schemes were devised to solve this, and most of these schemes involved the movement of small green pieces of paper. This was odd, because, on the whole, it was not the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
(Quoting from memory so quote may be wildly inaccurate, or even apocrophal. Spelling may be worse as i have dreadful ADHD. Squeaking of magical white powders, I was on Ritalin for a while but my particular form of ADHD did not convincingly respond to amphetamine. ( Mine has characteristics of SCT and ASD ))
In natural light
“Motherhood in New Zealand” and
new work tentitively entitled “O-face”
are still photographing with too much blue and not enough yellow/green
Changing white ballance from daylight to shade does not help much
Now here is something surprising.
This is an icecream container of Terra Silgata, a clay suspension that is fine enough and charged enough to permanently suspend in pure water. This is a clay sample from a lake containing the weathering products of an extinct volcano, Banks peninsula. I think that this shield volcano features mafic type basalts and possibly scoria, giving clays of considerable iron content. This clay was wet ball milled briefly with dilute vinegar and the clay settled out (vinegar acted as a flocculant) and this clay was diluted and resuspended in Christchurch tap water. The suspension of clay was left 24hr to settle out and the fraction which remained in suspension was decanted off. This suspension was flocculated with milk and aluminium sulphate. The floc settled and was poured into the icecream container for evaporation in a warm place.
Now i have a silver layer formed on top, which i am struggling to explain. Alumina, magnetite or some hybrid therof formed by the atmospheric oxidation of aluminium or ferrous or ferric ions is my guess.
Opinions from the floor most welcome.
It has the silvery black sheen of polished magnetite jewellery
If you’ve got milk products in there, it could be biological.
Yes, i think that it is likely something to do with some bacteria/archea using iron ion redox as its energy source. The casin residue can easily supply its nitrogen, whilst carbon could come from several sources and other trace needs (S, P, K) are present in clay.
And it does smell like the bottom of a river.
Further update on Silver Scum
After the Terra Silgata with the mystery silver scum dried here are pictures of the resultant clay cake.
Piece on left is exposed drying surface up, piece on right is inverted to be container side up.
It can be seen from the colour difference that considerable iron has migrated in solution to be deposited at the drying surface.
Bubbles of gas have been evolved underneath, away from the surface exposed to oxygen, in a presumably hypoxic layer, resulting in pososity of the bottom surface.
closeup
The silver layer has lost its flatness and become silvey grey. The rest of the evaporating side is rust coloured with paler round blotches.