Introduce yourself! AKA the "Say hello" thread

Hi everybody.

I'm Fins, and i'm not new here. But it's been long time and i forgot exact login to NMA (was it Finsy or something?), so i just made a new one. I'm sure nobody missed me 'cause i'm extremely minor being as far as NMA goes. Probably will remain so, too. Other than playing (F1, F2, FT, F3, FNV, F4) through the years, i did very little. Few tips and hints here and there shared, couple videos in me youtube channel (things like 22-floor skyscraper in F4) and that's pretty much that.

But who knows how it'll be further on. What i know for sure, though, is that i am glad NMA remains true to itself through all the years. I respect it. Way to go!
 
Greetings all. Introducing me, The Urban Predator.

Been a fallout series fan since....scheisse!..since I downloaded a demo of fallout 1, and its never stopped since. Just bought fallout-tactics, first time I have actually PAID for a game in..Tartarus only knows how long since I BOUGT software at all...must have been a little kid when I last did that, s'teeth, it has been a looooong long time (used to have a free copy many years ago but my HD with that on went and buggered itself up)

I'm from sunny england, a Kanner's autie guy with a bent for biotech and chemistry, both organic and inorganic, specializing most of all in neuropsychopharmacology, with an interest in condensed matter physics and when I'm not relaxing with a nice folder of scientific journal article papers on this, that and the other subject, I've got a liking for symphonic doom, industrial and tech-metal as well as building various bits and pieces, experimenting in my lab, I like to let my hair down with videogames also, in particular, the fallout series and the X-com series, when I'm not tinkering in my lab (no, not grown any mutant armies yet, at least not of the kind that carry plasma weapons and wear heavy armor whilst intellectually resembling a carrot.)

Not yet, anyway.

Anyhow, thats my intro post. Thats me. Big fallout fan, the humor in particular. Although IMO tactics is somewhat lacking in the hilarity and comedy that are a big part of F1 and F2. Chem/bio/tech-punk, metalhead gothy looking bugger, spazz and proud, in summary.

There we go, my first speech after being dipped in the vats :)
 
Urban Predator said:
Greetings all. Introducing me, The Urban Predator.

Been a fallout series fan since....scheisse!..since I downloaded a demo of fallout 1, and its never stopped since. Just bought fallout-tactics, first time I have actually PAID for a game in..Tartarus only knows how long since I BOUGT software at all...must have been a little kid when I last did that, s'teeth, it has been a looooong long time (used to have a free copy many years ago but my HD with that on went and buggered itself up)

I'm from sunny england, a Kanner's autie guy with a bent for biotech and chemistry, both organic and inorganic, specializing most of all in neuropsychopharmacology, with an interest in condensed matter physics and when I'm not relaxing with a nice folder of scientific journal article papers on this, that and the other subject, I've got a liking for symphonic doom, industrial and tech-metal as well as building various bits and pieces, experimenting in my lab, I like to let my hair down with videogames also, in particular, the fallout series and the X-com series, when I'm not tinkering in my lab (no, not grown any mutant armies yet, at least not of the kind that carry plasma weapons and wear heavy armor whilst intellectually resembling a carrot.)

Not yet, anyway.

Anyhow, thats my intro post. Thats me. Big fallout fan, the humor in particular. Although IMO tactics is somewhat lacking in the hilarity and comedy that are a big part of F1 and F2. Chem/bio/tech-punk, metalhead gothy looking bugger, spazz and proud, in summary.

There we go, my first speech after being dipped in the vats :)
Click to expand...

Hmmm, Interesting, I just read all that in the Doctors voice. Welcome.
 
Cell member-Do you refer to the EMH on voyager, in star trek, voyager?

If so then...you are not altogether far from the mark, as the colloquialism goes. However in life, I resemble science officer Spock more than I do the EMH. I even have the pointy vulcan ears (that is not a joke), and follow a similar path with regards to logic vs emotion.

Too many humans are ruled by their emotions, and the worst of them are little more than puppets with emotion pulling their strings. It is disappointing to see what too many people have become, or perhaps, rather, have merely failed to evolve beyond.

Lets just say, when I read accounts of the 'autism epidemic' aside from the whole bit about my insides instinctively making a concerted effort to become 'outsides', with regards to the 'epidemic', it is pleasing to see the statistical figures, once balanced for bias factors, show an increase.

Now...one of these days I really ought to head to my lab (somewhat of a hobby of mine, biotech and chemistry in its various incarnations, whilst not what one could call a particularly emotional person, I do allow myself that much, one pride-and-joy in life) and cook up an NT-specific FEV, turn the whole world autistic overnight. Although coordinating the delivery with an instruction manual of sorts might be somewhat tricky on a worldwide scale :D (and yes, if I could be certain of the effect being exactly as intended, I would do it. Absofuckinglutely I would :P)

Not that I'd wish to end up as an equivalent of 'the master' minus the whole doom-esque flesh-walls and demons (in the modern sense of the word) running amok and eating people, to say nothing of ending up as a grotesque blob of tentacled meat which would make courteney love look attractive without..I'd say 'beer goggles' but in her case 'pint of vodka goggles' would be more appropriate.

Yup...people call me a mad scientist, friends and others alike, but I'm not. Well, I'm not mad, at any rate, just....people aren't used to encountering pointy-eared folk who tend to use the term 'illogical' rather more frequently than is encountered in common speech.

Not me thats mad, its every other bugger thats mental :D

Anyway, thats me, half-vulcan, spazz-tech (see what I did there? :P)
and big time fallout-fan.
 
Why thank you. I have always found things such as metamaterials fascinating, such things as being able to apply an electrical charge to a conductive surface THROUGH a nonconductor...., bending light in various frequencies or having EM emissions essentially disappear using split-ring resonators, getting trapped and dissipated, one presumes, as heat (which of course for something like a cloaking device, could be compensated for with additional cooling systems, such as compressed gas)

And I cannot help but wonder about phases of matter like quantum spin-glasses and liquids, where a magnetic ordering is essentially 'trapped' in a way it would not naturally be in. Keep thinking there might be the potential for a sort of magnetic capacitor in there somewhere, a component that could be charged in a strong external magnetic field, and allowed to return to its 'locked' space..I keep wondering, if that disorder was momentarily quenched, if one could use such a material to generate an electromagnetic pulse. Of course I doubt very much I need to elucidate to fallout fans, the sorts of things an EMP generator could be used fir
 
Yeah, condensed matter has some extremely interesting aspects to it. The actual work is way less glorious than what it sounds like on paper, but it's still pretty awesome :D
 
There are just so many, if you'll pardon my french, fucked-up-freakish effects that happen on the quantum scale of matter, and when such effects scale to micro-/meso-scales.

I've been wanting of late, to start experimenting a bit with graphene, and particularly, the spin-locked states of matter, the idea of a potential magnetic equivalent of a capacitor is just sticking in my mind and I want to pursue it. Not too high-energy to access in a home lab either. (I've been wanting to build some higher-energy stuff, cyclotron in particular, and calutron (oldschool ruski sector-based mass spectrometer, they used it for isotope separation, by deflecting an ion beam with a magnetic field to enrich a sample, in their case for nuclear weapons research, since isotopes of different weight would deflect to a different degree in a homogenous magnetic field) but its annoying as hell that there really isn't any way to get past a certain limit, being in a house, the energy levels that can be reached in an accelerator are limited by the energy levels which can be tapped from a home mains supply.

Not of course, that I am in the least interested in building a nuke, It'd be interesting to say, separate natural lithium-6 from lithium-7 (since 6Li-deuteride is used as fuel in fusion bombs, not that I would be likely to be able to build one, if I wanted to without a HUGE amount of effort and time, and to build the fission nuke to set it off)

Or almost-ideally, selenium isotopes, given that Se has several non-radioactive isotopes, one in the upper 40% range of natural Se, another just under one quarter percent and for a bit more of a challenge, two others that occur at under 10% each. Harmless from a radiological perspective), or else natural potassium , since a radioisotope, 40K makes up part of the natural K occuring terrestially, and being an alkali metal it has a relatively low melting and boiling point compared to the transition metals), and 40K could easily be identified via its radioactivity (beta- decay, electron capture and very rarely, positron emission), and given it isn't TOO volatile, and that the quantities worked with are in the tracer levels, far less dangerous than the REALLY damn sweet technetium sample that I've managed to find on the market, plated onto gold in a thin layer (its 99Tc, plated onto a gold strip to give a perfectly visible sample, in a sealed glass vial, about £400, but being rather uncommon on the market available to hobbyists to say the very least, that one, I've GOT to have whilst it's available and before someone else snaps it up, for the element collection). That one is again, safe enough, being although a powerful one, an alpha emitter, and its radiation is stopped dead by paper, never mind the borosilicate glass tube it comes in, under argon.)



(although excess Se absorption is toxic, although in such an experiment it isn't as if exposure would be likely, given the care one would need to take with energetic particle beams to begin with, and besides, I would imagine if (bar one unfortunate and downright unpleasant accident in my early childhood with the stuff, during a distillation of it) I'm alright handling white phosphorus, cyanides etc. then a little bit of selenium in the elemental state is not a great worry, sufficient to send off to someone with some suitable equipment for isotopic analyses [hobbyist scientists tend to coprecipitate, so to speak]

And in particular, another project that has intrigued me, is a SASER (think of it as the phonon-based analog of a laser, the result being a collimated beam of sound. I've probably played too much of the 2nd X-com series game, terror from the deep for a sonic cannon not to have some appeal :D) and polaritonic lasing, already been done, but can produce high outputs for relatively low pump energy, extremely energy efficient.

Which isn't to say I'd not do it anyhow just for the interest factor, and seeing what I can learn (I learn a lot better getting my hands dirty than I do from pure theory with no practical applications..it all gets a lot clearer once I SEE how parameters change, and results alter as a result. )

Although primary interest is bio/neurochemistry. Comes in rather handy at times, in a 'myron less the pervert and complete arsehole factor coupled with far better looks, a fair bit older [I swear...my knee and hips are slowly getting ghoulified] and of course minus the slavery bit', kind of way.

(lets just leave THAT part of my hobby as a reference only FO series fans are going to get, that won't attract the kind of attention I don't need, if you get what I mean. Healing if needed is practical in many cases, but so are..some of his other inventions...)

Wish I had his inventory bug though (at least for stimpaks, if you leave the broc flower and xander root in his inventory, as many pairs as he has, you can have him make stimpaks at the same number required at once, without them being used up, nor does the syringe)....what wouldn't I give for those tubs of phosphorus to just infinitely refill themselves, it'd save me about 130-140 euro per 2kg, or my SOCl2 not to fume acid and stink like satan's own flatulence, lose its water-sensitivity and refill itself.

I'd have nothing to do with the rest of that particular little brat kid, but the infinite inventory bug....I could use that alright :D

Good to see someone else here with an interest in condensed matter physics and science.
 
Well, I did my MSc in physics on graphene quantum dots, so if you have any questions about how to prepare graphene and construct graphene/hexagonal boron nitride heterostructures for high quality, ask away.
But I can already tell you that all the neat spin-locked states are not something you do in a home lab unless your home lab has some nice measurement amplifiers and possible a dilution refrigerator.
You also need a cleanroom environment to prepare your graphene samples (complete with spincoater, plasma cleaning, and so on), bonding equipment and lot of other non-trivial equipment to actually get somewhere. And for contacting you need some form of lithography, reactive ion etching, gold sputtering... Not trivial.
Graphene is a fun material, though. I always thought about using the odd properties of graphene to potentially build a desktop-sized Free Electron Laser, since surface ripples in graphene can lead to enormous pseudomagnetic fields, and charge carriers in graphene are (sorta) relativistic already.
There was a research project on using graphene in FELs a few years ago, but I'm still waiting on papers from that.
Also, now that large-scale CVD graphene in good quality is finally getting somewhere (my old group from university basically revolutionized the techniques, and now CVD graphene has the same or better properties than exfoliated graphene at millimeter sample sizes), I wonder how well an electrical capacitor made of graphene and hexagonal boron nitride would work. Imagine a few meters of continuous graphene in a stripe about 10 cm tall. Put a few layers of hBN on it (which is a very good insulator, chemically inert and has basically the same lattice structure as graphene), and roll it up into a capacitor. Since the stack of graphene and hBN is less than a 100 nm thick you should get quite a lot of layers in this capacitor, and potentially a huge capacity.
But well, while CVD graphene is able to produce such large samples in the near future, hBN production is not there yet. The combination of graphene and hBN is still relatively new.

If you want to do CVD graphene though, that's actually quite easy, you just need methane, a fused silica tube oven, and some copper.
 
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That could be an interesting choice for a supercapacitor alright, although I confess I haven't researched the dielectric breakdown voltage of the boron nitride.

There is of course, the requirement of synthesis of the boron nitride, and for such applications (barring unpredicted specific effects of dopants) one is going to need ultrapure boron. And the easiest way to that, is a bit hairy to say the least. Borane/diborane. Highly toxic, stinks and at least the latter (never produced diborane-free BH3), is pyrophoric. Like a nastier version of diphospine. Had more to do with pentaborane than either BH3 or diborane.

I'd be prepared to work with it, mind you, I'm not averse on principle to hazmat materials, although I do have my limits (such as I wouldn't go near methyl/dimethylmercury with a 20-foot stick, and I'm leaving all the fluorinated interhalogens out of my interhalogen project, save perhaps some of the iodine fluorides..maybe. Undecided on that one)

I do have a room I could convert for a clean-room as it happens, given that due to my hip and knee issues, I exclusively sleep downstairs, and my bedroom more or less now is just a place to keep books and my microscope, to avoid its being in the proximity of anything disagreeable.

Generally, fairly well equipped, although atm, my main setup is for organic/inorganic work, anything from AMPAkine nootropics to novel opioidergics to run of the mill alkali metal production, and rather well connected in terms of people who are good at getting the kind of things that don't appear on ebay. Got another project in the offing though which is going to require me to covert the never-used bedroom into a cleanroom anyhow, working with Claviceps, ergot fungi, if you are familiar. C.purpurea in particular, although if I can either find any or get any through contacts I think I'd go for C.paspali instead. But as far as keeping things clean goes, I do have some experience at least, I've had a fascination with mycology since, so I am told, 4. Lol, taught myself to read with Phillips et. al. And there is little more annoying than spending time on cultures of organisms only to have them get infested by contaminants.

Interesting little critters they are, but finnicky as all hell made flesh when it comes to culture. Isolating a production strain is time consuming but doable, KEEPING it productive, avoiding senescence is a real bugger, although I have hopes for electrospraying cultures via charged hypodermic needles and oppositely charged baths of a CaCl2 solution, the culture being mixed in with alginic acid, the result being instant polymerization, which in effect simulates a pseudo-sclerotium. The culture, being mixed with a perfluorocarbon emulsion, the objective being the smallest polymer microspheres with the optimal ratio of toughness in culture, given that below a couple of mm, the microspheres become anoxic, and one only gets clavine alkaloids rather than lysergic peptides, the perfluorocarbons serve as oxygen transporters (some, again as emulsions have even been tested for blood replacements for emergencies that unlike simple albumin/electrolyte solutions act not only as volume expanders, but also to transport O2, having in the case of some perfluorocarbons, a higher affinity than haemoglobin.)

I am, I guess, somewhat of a polymath. There is little I am NOT interested in. Anything from scorpion, spider, Hymenopteran, marine venoms and toxins to whatever reading I can find on cosmology to paleontology.

You might find this interesting.

http://www.realitybeyondmatter.com/2017/12/nasas-stunning-breakthrough-its-first.html

Neat site, this article in particular, seems like NASA are working on proof-of-concept level alcubierre drives. Damn....that one surprised me alright...the thought of even the potential for trips in a few hours to mars, the moons of Saturn.....maybe within our lifetimes if we get lucky. That would be..well..with the way humanity is going, we are going to end up with a home planet that will make fallout's in-game universe look like the garden of bloody eden, and the people with half a brain in their heads are going to have to put up with what the ones in power and the ones with the money are doing, trashing the environment.

So somewhere along the line, people are going to have to get off this particular rock, if we don't manage to get our heads screwed on in the right direction before we tip the balance TOO far towards the fire and brimstone and handbasket option to recover. (no, I'm not religious, but the metaphor is apt enough)

Not found the edit function (is there one?) yet. So, missed the nerd-talk remark. LOL. You've never met me. If you did, aside from the obvious classic autie bit, then I'm as far from obvious as a geek as you'll get. At least on the surface. There is a lot below it obviously, but up top, what one sees, at least when out of the gas mask, blast shield and goggles, elbow-length gloves etc. is combat boots/newrock goth-y boots, combat fatigues torn at the knees (deliberately) and more leather and metal spikes than you'd find in a cybernetically-enhanced bastard child of a hedgehog and a cow.

But, admittedly, I can't very well hide my spock-ish side.
 
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Don't hold your breath for the Alcubierre drive, though. What most articles don't mention is that the Alcubierre metric always requires negative energy, which is theoretically fine, but we have no way of creating it.
Also, the Alcubierre bubble might possibly collect interstellar particles en route and release a massive blast of blue-shifted particles in the direction of travel when the bubble collapses, making it a bit of a planet killer.

Anyway, boron nitride isn't the issue, it's the particular allotrope that's the issue. Hexagonal boron nitride needs extreme pressures to form, and that might be a problem if you want to synthesize large amounts of it.

The edit button is below the post.

/edit: I think there are a few science-threads around. Gotta look for them.
Here's one.
http://nma-fallout.com/threads/the-official-dark-matter-ask-me-about-science-thread-oto.205248/
 
I am aware of the negative energy requirement, but I thought you might find it interesting that the alcubierre drive is actually being tested at proof of concept level. I'm going to have to go digging for that research using sci-hub (you familiar? the paywall cracker? if not I can post the server IP. Its amusing, kazakh student created a way to fake access tokens from unis, to allow free open access to paywalled papers from a HUGE number of journals. And Elsevier (bunch of wankers at best) are absolutely PISSED. Took her to court, from the amount of times her domain names have been relocated, quite a few times, and more or less, her first domain name got shut down, she just pops up like a slavic Lernean hydra, cut off one head and the body sticks up a middle finger and up pop several more heads)

She got takedown orders from court and more or less just told them to go get stuffed. Meanwhile, Elsevier and their ilk are fuming off fury like a bottle of LAH getting pissed in :D They won their suit, but being located in the rectal sphincter of eastern europe means they can't physically touch her, and the only thing they can do is have domain names taken down, and when they do, they kill one, another four or five get put up. Has me laughing every time.

(I'm really no fan of the big publishing houses, the way they treat the researchers themselves, the unis, and of course, us plebs (I.e the kind of folk who don't work for an institute, don't have the money for a degree, and are self-taught beyond secondary school)

The plebs, so to speak. they wouldn't spit on hobbyists, charging ripoff sums to rent articles for a short time without even letting people print copies. I'm dead against closed access to knowledge on principle. Goes against everything I stand for and work for. No, I'm not above cutting a profit for a while before I release something, but is not somebody who does come up with something good, deserve to enjoy the first bite of the fruit of their labour? that, IMO is fair enough, someone who's worked for something, and potentially worked hard, worked at the bench, down and dirty with toxins, pyrophoric compounds and in some cases stayed up for several days without sleep babysitting something, or spent time sifting through mercury-saturated aluminium amalgam slops, they deserve to enjoy the reward for their work.)

So if you want, I can post the IP to direct connect to sci-hub, the IP remains valid even if the hosts are shot down. Its great...the money I'd never have paid, that in theory if I would cough up for those moneygrubbing svinya, if I had it to begin with I'd be rolling in it by now. If for a project, I need (like the ergot work) I need literally YEARS of reading (I even went as far as buying a hard copy of Kren and Cvak's 'the genus Claviceps'), I'd be paying out £40-60-80 every ten minutes or so at best. If I had to pay that, I'd never be able to so much as afford a test tube, petri dish or bag of agar.
 
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