Our Christmas tree was a small live sapling in a pot, and we hope to be able to use it again next year.

In our in our house we’ve decided to start a tradition of leaving Christmas decorations up till January 5, which means that we can continue to enjoy them throughout the “12 days of Christmas” (yes, the traditional period of “Christmastide” only begins on December 25).  Appreciating this duration in our season of Christmas might even help avoid the commercial and materialistic extremes of what Bill Bailey has called the “primary gifting period”.

This all means that we took down our tree last night, which is the reason for writing about Christmas ornaments now even though its too late.  Things like this could work really well for Easter too, so publishing it now gives you all time to have a go yourself.

A self-imposed rule of using only hand-made ornaments has meant that our tree has been sparsely decorated even though it is only 2 feet tall.  This year I finally completed some projects that have been in the cupboard for more than 12 months, and want to share them because I personally enjoy reading about other people’s creativity. I get particularly excited and inspired reading about the crafty and creative exploits of a friend who can make nearly anything.  Not only did she make some fantastic looking Christmas birdies, banners and garlands, but she managed to blog about it before Christmas day!

Home-grown lemon, cloves, spices, and a piece of recycled ribbon make this aromatic ornament.

The first special ornament on our tree was a pomander that I made from a lemon off our very own little potted tree.  It is a dried citrus fruit cured with spices, and I followed this pomander recipe.

I poked the cloves into the lemon in four quadrants, leaving clear strips for the ribbon.  Since the whole thing shrinks quite a bit as it dries, my strips ended up too narrow, but I don’t mind the ribbon being a bit crinkled and folded.  This ornament has a beautiful spicy aroma, which mixes wonderfully with the traditional conifer scent.

Using a home grown lemon and some recycled ribbon made this an extremely low-ecological-footprint and personally satisfying decoration.  It is plenty durable enough to last a few years at least, and can even be stored in the wardrobe to put its aroma to good use until next Christmas.

An empty egg shell makes an ornament light enough to hang from the smallest branches

Decorating eggs is a tradition in many cultures, and is an excellent way to make light Christmas tree baubles.  I drill the egg shell through at each end with a 1 or 2 millimetre bit in a battery drill, which is much easier than trying to delicately poke around with something pointy and sharp.  The drill at fairly high speeds will get through the shell with hardly any pressure, and this helps avoid smashing the whole thing.

With a hole in each end, the contents of the egg can be blown out and made into breakfast! It does require quite a lot of pressure, and doing lots at once can leave you with sore lips and light-headded.  It is a good idea to rinse the shell out with water to make sure that no potentially smelly contents are left inside.

The full set of baubles from this year. The red and blue egg in the middle was decorated with permanent marker and white-out, and the bottom egg has punched pieces of Ferrero Rocher wrapper as leaves

My first trial was decorated with coloured permanent marker, which was surprisingly successful.  However, the best way to put a solid base colour on the shells is with nail polish.  This has a nice gloss, and strengthens the egg shell at the same time.  I used gold metallic acrylic paint (water-based) to put a thick and chunky pattern on this set, but there are plenty of other options.  The really nice thing about egg ornaments is that it is trivial to find storage boxes for them!

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Unlike the “live” stats image back in my first boinc post, this one is static as a celebration of this milestone. If you’re interested, you can read a much more comprehensive summary of my activity over at BoincStats.

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The BOINC client gets computational jobs to do from the project server, and works on them when it notices that you are not using your computer. Participants all over the world create an giant distributed “super-computer”, and idle computers do something useful.

I decided to try it out, and installed the client on my laptop about a week ago. I’ve been very impressed with the way that it does its stuff in the background, and have not had it interfere with any of my computer usage. It’s even smart enough to know not to run when I’m operating on battery power!

I’m participating in the Spinhenge@home project, which is researching “nano-magnetic molecules”. This field is somewhat related to my own research.

Here is a snapshot of my statistics so far:

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The second thing is a fantastic example of what OSM has to offer. Flickr, the amazingly popular photo-sharing site, has wonderful tools for geo-tagging photos and then browsing interesting photos by their position on a map. A week ago, coinciding with the start of the Olympic Games, Flickr introduced OpenStreetMap coverage of Beijing to their geotagging map. This was not just done for fun; the fact is that the OpenStreetMap of Beijing is far more complete than the Yahoo map (which is used by Flickr for the rest of the world).

Interestingly, this reveals a remarkable symbiosis between OSM and Yahoo. A while ago Yahoo agreed to let OSM contributors freely use their aerial imagery to trace features. This enabled people to contribute significantly to the OSM project even without a GPS device, and a lot of OSM data has been obtained this way. Now Yahoo (who own Flickr) are able to use the OSM dataset to enhance the geotagging service that they provide. Yet another example of how opening up access to information invariably leads to win-win outcomes.

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As a design basis I referred to the Jack Sparrow photograph in Wikipedia and the pictures on this pattern. For ideas and comments about some of the finer details I found this Jack Sparrow costume article very insightful.

As the base I used a pair of my trousers made from organic hemp and silk which have a rough texture, and a frill-collared shirt that Clansi purchased for a stage costume years ago. For the long waistcoat, a quite essential item, I found a $3 blue striped cotton dressing gown at our ADRA op-shop and dyed it brown. It needed the sleeves tearing off, as well as a bit off the bottom to get the right length.

I borrowed some tall boots from Clansi (luckily we have almost the same size feet) which worked fairly well even though they didn’t have the authentic folded down tops. I used a scrap of curtain fabric to tie around my waist as a sash, and the scabbard of my cheap plastic sword was held in the knot. One belt above the sash and another belt over one shoulder really added life to the costume.

The obligatory bandanna was easy once I found an appropriate muted pink scrap of fabric, but the hat took a bit of work. I had my heart set on the tricorne that forms such a memorable part of Sparrow’s “effects”, and used an on-sale $10 hat as a base. After broadening the brim with some vinyl, I folded up the sides and sewed them to the crown with large crossed stiches. I rolled the back and held it in place with a single stitch.

A few beads on embroidery thread formed an ornament hanging from my bandanna. A bit more time and expense could have allowed me to do more exotic beads and perhaps some hair wraps, but these remained undone.

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After starting so closed in, the weather cleared up dramatically by the middle of the day (although it remained very cold). This afternoon I caught the S-Bahn into the city to sort out some train tickets and have a quick look around; I wanted to see what the city of Stuttgart actually looked like after being here for a week and a half.

I climbed the tower of the Hauptbahnhof (main train station), which has a revolving Mercedes Benz emblem at the top of it which is lit up at night. From the open observation platform most of the centre of the city can be conveniently viewed. The most significant landmark on the horizon is the Fernsehturm Stuttgart (TV Tower Stuttgart), quite an analogous structure to Canberra’s Telstra Tower on Black Mountain.

I had a quick wander through the Schlossplatz, a large and fairly formal square in the centre of Stuttgart. The day was so clear that very nice afternoon sunlight lit up some great photos. Although much of the city is new, there are a few beautiful old buildings among the streets, lawns and gardens of the city centre. I had to get back to the physics, but at least I can now say I’ve seen more of Stuttgart than simply the inside of the Hauptbahnhof!

It snowed again this afternoon before sunset, leaving me feeling that the S-Bahn to the city might have been a magic journey to another realm.

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Trailers in the second category are probably the most common, and usually have two wheels. They are configured much like a standard car trailer; the weight is distributed in front of and behind the axle so that there is only a small amount of weight bearing down on the hitching mechanism. These trailers can be built to carry a remarkable load.

While two-wheel trailers are obviously useful workhorses, I am more captivated by single wheel designs. BOB trailers are probably the most well known example, and their basic design has been copied many times over.

There are some other interesting design features that have been explored. While many trailers attach to the rear axle or the nearby rear frame, some attach to the bicycle seat-post. The Oxtail trailer attaches to the seat-post, and it is correctly argued that such an arrangement is less likely to fish-tail and jack-knife when rolling downhill. The Oxtail trailer also folds down for easy storage and transport.

The Extrawheel is an innovative design for a single-wheel trailer, and is probably my favourite. Its large wheel gives stability and a smoother ride, and its simplicity allows it to be very light (only 4.8 kg). The large wheel in the centre would, however, make it difficult to carry any load that could not be divided up and placed on either side.

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Tasks such as buying groceries, while clearly more healthy and eco-friendly when done on a bicycle, are fraught with difficulties. Hanging shopping bags on the handle-bars is the most intuitive, but least effective, technique. It makes control dramatically erratic, and the bags are typically destroyed as they brush against the front wheel. A slightly more exotic solution, one which we currently use regularly, is to take a back-pack in which to bring home the groceries.

A trailer that could be pulled behind a bicycle would, however, be the most satisfactory solution. They exist, and for a while now I have been observing the various designs that are available.

Of course, a well-designed trailer would be good for a lot more than simply shopping. I have wanted to do a cycling expedition for many years now, and one of the challenges is finding a way to carry tents and camping gear. Riding a bike while wearing my Macpac Cascade is something I’d rather avoid.

So I think I will build a custom bicycle trailer, and will attempt to keep notes here on my progress.

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The first image shows one of our diamond samples sitting on the end of an Allen Key. We normally use more reliable mounts, but I was after clear visibility for the photo shoot. The second image shows the sample under 10 mW illumination from a green laser. At the flick of a dial I could have had up to about 5 W of laser power, but I was concerned for the poor camera (and my own eyes!). The last image shows the laser-illuminated sample viewed through a filter that cuts out the green laser light. As I keep tellling people, the diamond just glows red.

Click on the thumbnails to see a slideshow of larger images.

There is a surprising amount of physics that can be discovered by studying this red emission.

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The first litre distilled had a higher ethanol concentration than the first litre distilled in the previous run. This could indicate that the baffles help raise output concentration. The density measurements seem to be a reasonable way to estimate the ethanol percentage.

More baffles should be added to the column to see if this further increases the quality of the yield.

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