DreamWorks Animation has released a new trailer for Voltron: Legendary Defender season two. Spoiler alert: It’s awesome! Fans are in for a wild ride this season. It looks like they have really ramped up the action this time around. The team who is handling this show is really doing a great job. The story, characters, and animation are all amazing. I really enjoyed watching the first season. It is definitely one of the best animated series airing anywhere right now.
If you haven’t seen the first season yet, head over to Netflix and watch it. You will love it. Season two airs on Netflix January 20, 2017.
Now this is some fun times. The Backyard Scientist strapped a kitchen knife to some homemade sugar rockets, put it on a track sprayed with graphite lubricant so it could murdercut things while zooming down at 150MPH, and then put various sliceable items on the other end to reach their imminent doom (for our infinite viewing pleasure).
A whole chicken, a chuck roast, a toy car, a pineapple and all sorts of other fruits got sliced in half before you could even realize what happened. The rocket knife flies down in a blinding fury and then the next thing you know, everything just slides apart because it got cut the hell up. It’s so easy to chop things up with a rocket knife that you don’t even see it happen.
With a new year upon us, let’s take a few minutes and talk about essential prepping gear.
Hang on a minute, in the grand scheme of things, what would be considered “essential”? This is an subjective term. The definition depends on who is reading this article.
To someone is a rural area, a 22 rifle is essential; you never know when an unwanted pest will go into the chicken house. To someone in an urban area, they may want a bug out bag or fuel stored for their vehicle.
Let’s talk about items that will serve preppers well, regardless of their setup or location.
Water Filter
Water, water everywhere but nary a drop to drink. The timeless words from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge ring true to all. Does not matter how much water you have, if the water is not safe to drink, you might as well have a single drop.
There are the classic iodine water tablets, Lifestraw, Sawyer, MSR, Katadyn, and water bottles with built in filters. There is a ridiculous amount of water filters on the market. Do your research and buy wisely.
Portable filter: Every prepper should have some kind of water filter in their prepping gear. What about a purifier? A purifier is for viruses. If you live in an area where sewage runs into streams, lakes and rivers, get a purifier.
When the water I filter is in doubt, I use a two step process. First, the water is cycled through a Katadyn hiker water filter. Second, a SteriPen is used to kill anything that made it though the filter. The SteriPen uses ultra-violet light to kill bacteria and viruses.
Home filter: My home filter is a Royal Berkey. The Royal Berkey is made up of two stainless steel tubes, which are stacked on top of each other.
Pour the water in the top tube, and gravity pulls the water through the filters. The Royal Berkey can have up to 4 filters with each one filtering an estimated 3,000 gallons. The filters remove 99.9% of viruses and bacteria.
Something like the Royal Berkey is family sized and portable. Going to a remote camp for a weekend? Bring the Berkey along for the trip
Solar Powered Radio
Everyone needs a radio in their prepping gear. It does not matter if they live in a rural area or big city, The public needs a way to get information when the power goes out.
When the power goes off, I find myself doing three things:
Flipping the light switch on, which is a habit.
Turn on an AM/FM radio and tune it into a local station.
Get a book.
Even when there is a complete grid down situation, chances are radio stations will be in operation, at least for a little while. After hurricanes Ike and Rita made landfall in Southeast Texas, the local radio station was operating on a generator backup and was able to provide locals with important information.
The built in solar cell keeps the radio going when the batteries run out.
Radios like this are not “just” for emergencies. Use them when there is a family get-together, cook out, or anywhere you may want music playing.
Freeze Dried Food
This is something we covered in another article – stockpiling freeze dried food. This stuff has a shelf life of up to 30 years. Freeze dried food is available in pouches and #10 cans. Pouches serve one or two people, while #10 cans are for family sized meals.
The #10 cans are perfect to store at a bug out location, deer camp, or in a closet. Since they are made of metal, rodents are unlikely to chew through them.
Pouches are perfect for camping or hiking. Just add boiling water and wait until it cools to eat.
With regular canned foods, you have to keep up with rotation and expiration dates.
Freeze dried foods, just remember to eat it sometime in the next 30 years.
Well Rounded Prepping Stockpile
There is so much to prepping it would be impossible to cover it all in a single article. I decided to pick three topics that I thought would fit just about all prepping needs. These are water, food and communications.
Even in a complete grid down situation, with these three items hopefully you will have safe drinking water, something to eat (if you can boil water), and be able to listen to a local radio station for news.
Preppers and survivalists are obsessed with bags. Most start with the quintessential Bug Out Bag known colloquially in the survivalist movement as the BOB. Depending on your interpretation of what a BOB needs to be and loaded with what, it is typically a quick grab bag that contains enough supplies to sustain yourself and family for say the first 72 hours of a SHTF event. There are many options and nuances to building out your own personal BOB bag.
What I am here to advocate is not to replace the BOB, but rather to add another option by creating what I will call a Ready Bag. This may in fact in some cases actually duplicate some of the items you might have in the more long term sustainment BOB bag, but it is a bag you would keep in your daily travel vehicle, office, or other location nearby on an everyday basis.
The Ready Bag can contain a lot of useful items, but keep the choices focused on the immediate needs to protect ones’ self in the short term, such as getting from work to home or from home to the grocery and back, or to pick up children at school or daycare in the event of a sudden SHTF occurrence. The Ready Bag is not intended for 2-3-4 days of keeping yourself alive.
So, what would you put in a Ready Bag? Right now my lightweight Ready grab bag has a pistol, four loaded magazines, two canisters of water, two packs of snack crackers (cheese and peanut butter), light gloves, flashlight, compact first aid kit, metropolitan map, flip-open knife, vial of headache meds, and $50 in cash. Other seasonal stuff could be added like a space blanket, wool hat, sunglasses, common OTC meds, and more water. What would you suggest adding?
As to a type of bag, I like a heavy duty bag of nylon, canvas, or Denier material. Thus far I have tested and used bags from L.L. Bean, Filson, Maxpedition, and Tenzing. I like exterior handles to grab, but am not too crazy about the strap ones that have a fold over Velcro ® wrap. Don’t go overboard with the number of smaller outside pockets to confuse things. If your bag goes/rides in a SUV type vehicle where things inside are visible, go with a black bag for low visibility.
We would love to hear your thoughts on a Ready Bag of your own. Give us your thoughts so we can all learn. Nothing is perfect in this business.
Kodak issued wonderful news at CES 2017. To the joy of all film lovers, they are bringing back the legendary Ektachrome Still Film. The company plans to reformulate and produce the Ektachrome 135 still frame. In late 2017, the film will be back on the market. Also, Kodak is re-launching Ektachrome Super 8 film to go along their recently introduced Super 8 movie camera. So, both photographers and filmmakers have something to look forward to!
As digital photography took over the market, the company discontinued production of Ektachome in 2012. However, analog photography seems to be rising in popularity again. So, four years later, the company has decided to re-launch their iconic film.
Steven Overman, Kodak’s chief marketing officer, stated that the company is aware of a “broad resurgence of excitement about capturing images on film.” According to him, “Kodak is committed to continuing to manufacture film as an irreplaceable medium for image creators to capture their artistic vision.”
Dennis Olbrich, President of Kodak Alaris stated in the official press release: “We’ve been listening to the needs and desires of photographers over the past several years and wanted to bring back a color reversal film. In assessing the opportunity, EKTACHROME was the clear choice.”
Ektachrome is a color positive film (“reversal”, “slide” or “transparency” film). It makes it great for high-resolution projections and presentations. It also gives great results with scanning and printing onto various photographic media. In addition, it is famous for its fantastic contrast, tones and colors, and very fine grain. Because of all this, film photographers and videographers all over the world are looking forward to the great comeback of this film.
The company has announced that the film will be available in the fourth quarter of 2017. We don’t know the price yet, but one thing’s sure – it will certainly be cheaper than the rare pieces you can find online nowadays.
By now, we’ve talked our heads off about the ILM recreations of 1977 Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher in Rogue One. We’ve talked ethics, quality, and even the process. The last piece is to simply watch how it was done, and now you can.
ABC’s Nightline was given the scoop. They did a piece from Industrial Light and Magic in San Francisco, talked to John Knoll, and revealed never before seen footage of the process of creating not just Tarkin, but Leia too. Check it out.
It’s definitely an interesting video, especially now since Carrie Fisher has passed away. Kind of gives the whole process another layer of contemplation.
You can read (and discuss) more about the process with the below links.
Your hard drive failing is one of the worst things that can happen to your computer, since you lose tons of data. Fortunately, most drives include a tool set called SMART that can monitor your drive and let you know when you’re about to have a problem.
As the video above from Techquickie explains, SMART monitors all kinds of details about your hard drive including its temperature, vibration levels, bad sectors, write cycles (for SSDs), and tons more. With this data, it can give you an early warning when your hard drive might fail.
However, you have to seek out SMART to use it. The feature is kind of like the diagnostic computer in your car. Your PC doesn’t just come with an app to show you all of that data. There are a couple of ways to access it, though. First, you can use a command prompt. Run the following two commands to see if there are any errors:
Onions are some of the easiest crops to grow and they are a good place to start for backyard farmers. They are also an excellent cold weather crop for a fall garden.
If you want super easy, go to a locally owned farm supply store in early December and buy a bundle of onion sprouts. Onion seeds are available for those who would rather start from there.
Let’s use the Texas Super Sweet (1015 Y) as an example. Depending on location, they can take anywhere from 75 to over 110 days to grow. The name comes when the seed is supposed to be planted, which is on October 15th, and it is a yellow onion.
The 10-15Y produces a large bulb that has a pleasant, sweet taste. When stored in a dry and dark location, it can be stored for a couple of months.
Preparing Soil
Onions can be grown in just about any soil. They prefer well drained, plenty of organic material, rocks and tree roots removed, and little clay. The bulb needs room to expand, so removing roots and rocks is important.
I use either raised beds or use a tiller to work up an area. If the onions are going to be planted directly into the ground, I use a tiller to break up the soil until it is fine and all the clumps are removed. Either in a raised bed or directly in the soil, I like to add organic potting soil or compost along with commercial fertilizer.
Onions love nitrogen. I usually use just a little 13-13-13 while the sprouts are young. A month or so later, I side dress with a high nitrogen fertilizer, such as 16-6-12 or 21-0-0. The first number of the fertilizer is the nitrogen content.
Make sure the onion beds will have access to water. It is important that the onions have plenty of water, but they do not like to sit in water. The soil must be well drained.
Planting Onions
If you bought onion seed, plant them directly in the soil. If you are growing 10-15 Y, the seeds are supposed to be planted on October 15th.
Sprouts will start arriving at farm supply stores around the first week of December. I usually buy the sprouts rather than plant from seed.
Plant the onion sprouts about 6 inches apart. This gives the sprout plenty of room to grow the bulb and access moisture and nutrients.
Growing Onions
Planted in the first part of December, depending on type, they should be ready around May – June.
First thing to grow will be green shoots. The bulb will not form until much later. Onions use nitrogen to grow the shoots. The shoots store nutrients, which are used to grow the bulb.
If the shoots lean over towards the ground, the onion may need water.
About every 4 – 6 weeks, side dress with a high nitrogen fertilizer. After side dressing, water the onions or side dress right before a rain.
Side dressing means to throw fertilizer on the ground next to the plant.
Good Crop For New Farmers
Onions are one of the easiest crops someone can grow, and they are an excellent start for anyone who is interested in gardening.
If you want to get started with gardening, go down to the local farm supply store, pick up a batch and plant them.
We already know which one is supposed to be more “fun”, but what do the innards of manual and automatic transmissions look like? How do all the parts to together?
This delightful video, nearly eight minutes long, is an excellent visual explainer on how both transmissions work and how they are different from one another. If you’re a visual learner like I am, this is a real treat. It’s also a good primer on why internal combustion engines need transmissions at all.
The automatic transmission gets a bad rap among enthusiasts, but it’s a technical marvel even today, and modern ones keep getting better and better. That’s not to say a manual gearbox isn’t equally amazing, as you’ll see here.