Guutz Projects

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[brightening-the-stars]

'twas the night before the cosmology final...

photo courtesy of @guutzprojects

[guutzprojects]

in the context of an astronomically unlikely but technically energetically favorable collapse of a quantum field which causes a chain reaction that becomes the big bang

(correct me if I inaccurately transcribed you @brightening-the-stars)

[guutzprojects]

take me back to the days when covfefe was funny

[guutzprojects]

tagged by @brightening-the-stars

Last song - The Great Port of the Air, Luis Humanoide

Fav color - a nice dark royal purple

Currently watching - Frieren and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Currently reading - The Three Body Problem, Graphic Novel edition

Current obsessions - speech recognition on ESP32, Stardew Valley

Currently working on - massively parallel video readout circuits for a $1 million spectrography sensor

Last google search - "is frieren ace" – depends on your stance on bioessentialism, but also labels are fake (what even is a gender amirite)

tagging my only followers on tumblr who haven't already done it <3 @astrocarbon @noncommuting

[guutzprojects]

@brightening-the-stars

[guutzprojects]

I will never cease to be infuriated with the existence of pay toilets. European cities, maybe your streets wouldn't smell so strongly of piss if you didn't make people pay 1€ to have the privilege of emptying their bladders in a sanitary location. I refuse to patronize these pretentious shitholes on principle.

[guutzprojects]

I have since noticed free restrooms throughout L.A. courtesy of the Metro. I retract my statement about the causality of [street piss smell] and [opportunity to piss somewhere other than the street].

[ratfuck]

they should make a bird who's call sounds like a hard fart on a leather couch

[despazito]

[guutzprojects]

holy shit bro has a hella resonant cavity in there

[guutzprojects]

i'm going to try and finally launch my own high altitude balloon HAB-SAT gadget!

science goal:

demonstrate ability to continuously store and transmit basic telemetry, including

GPS location

GPS altitude

Temperature inside package

Temperature outside package

Pressure

Battery current/voltage?

from 10 minutes before launch to 1 hour after landing;

reach Tropopause (~15km altitude) and observe subsequent increase in temperature;

survive the landing;

and be recovered.

hardware

Primary system: Adafruit 433 MHz RFM96 / M0 Feather, PA1010D GPS receiver, 2x BME680 pressure/temp sensor

Backup system: SPOT Trace satellite GPS tracker

POWER BUDGET -- conservative

2x Energizer Ultimate Lithium AA battery -- 4000mAh combined, at -40F

RFM96 transmit current / duty cycle: 125mA / 6%

GPS tracking current / duty cycle: 30mA / ?%

LINK BUDGET

RFM96 TX power: +20dBm

Monopole TX antenna gain: +3dBi

Free space path loss at 50km: 120dB

Yagi RX antenna gain: +7dBi

RFM96 RX sensitivity: -148dBm

Margin: +2dB ... real close ...

software

TBD

relevant FAA regulations

-> basically if the total mass of the flying thing is less than 4 pounds (1814 grams) then these rules don't apply to us, although it is still good practice to call the nearest air traffic control and tell them the predicted flight path

MASS BUDGET -- conservative

SPOT Tracker: 100 grams

Battery: 100 grams

Arduino: 10 grams

Antenna: 10 grams

Insulation: 300 grams

'Other': 80 grams

Total Payload: 600 grams

helium volume calculator

-> Takeaway summarized in graph below (using Hwoyee brand balloon specs) (plot code)

I think we can get away with a 300g balloon and about 50 cu.ft. of helium.

Sourcing the helium

Lowkey I might just buy a couple of these little 55 cu.ft. tanks from a welding supply shop.

flight train

TBD

[comfort-care]

[wyldstallyn]

[lady-vermin]

Bury me with these soldiers to protect me in the afterlife

[wheremyfeathersflock]

New crop of babies from Lucy! I gave them some corn

[brightening-the-stars]

@guutzprojects !

[guutzprojects]

me: explain it like i'm 5 g*mini: i think the user is literally 5 years old > 🧸🧒 me: now explain it like i'm in 2025 g*mini: what do people in 2025 like? of course: ai > 🫵✨🤖👍? me: now explain it like i'm me right now g*mini: based on the context, I understand "me" to be a technically skilled individual, likely a developer > 🫵✨🤖📝‼️ me: who tf do you think i am 😂 g*mini: Assessing User Response I'm currently digesting the user's reaction to my suggestion. The laughing emoji and self-deprecation signal some interesting internal processing. I need to gauge their level of seriousness and identify the core concerns underlying their response. I'm focusing on parsing the subtext of the user's reaction to refine my approach. Refining the Approach I'm now carefully processing the user's input, particularly the quoted text, emoji, and self-deprecating comment. I believe the core sentiment is playful skepticism, implying the suggestion is beyond their current skill set. My goal is to acknowledge the humor, encourage them, and demystify the concept without being dismissive. The response needs to be brief, light, and maintain the established rapport. > 😃😌🫵🧠🧠‼️ 📝‼️

i found myself laughing about how LLMs are kinda autism-coded just like the sci-fi trope of robots or androids

[guutzprojects]

Today is the last day of our last WWOOF this summer. We've been to a production veggie farm in Île-de-France, a couple-owned fruit and jam farm in the small village of Maubert, an agriturismo "Ecolieu" near Bordeaux, a goat farm near Biella, and now here, at the Mandali Lighthouse in Quarna Sotto. But this experience has been unique in that there were other WWOOFers living with us! We've made such a beautiful little family, the 7 of us, over the past weeks.

@brightening-the-stars and I are both academics -- we both finished our undergrad degrees in physics before starting our WWOOF summer trip. We spent our days (and will soon return to spending our days) living in relatively cramped, choked, manicured, complicit metropolitan society, eyes trained on screens for a large portion of our waking hours. It's the less-than-glamorous reality of our theoretically humankind-bettering passions for learning how the universe works and looks. I don't want to go back. I'm itching to go back. It's confusing.

A word on permaculture -- its principles have really resonated with us throughout the summer. That's why we decided to do the ceiling mural in the living room. It's been really neat to see all the different WWOOF hosts' interpretations of the practices, too. Some live by the principles out of practical, physical necessity; others voluntarily and/or selectively, in incremental effort to live a good example; still others focus on the "fluffier" aspects of people care, like nonviolent assertive communication. It all just makes sense -- emotionally and scientifically.

We've really enjoyed learning from the folks at Mandali, learning from their example. We've even been inspired to try and revive the little community garden outside the Catalina apartments at Caltech. With all the staggering amounts of food and plant waste coming out of the Institute, I reckon we can make some stuff grow (Maubert giant sunflowers?) with that nice, rich compost, even under the scorching southern California sun.

Is that enough though?

As we continue to live in apartments that source water and electricity unsustainably, as we continue to buy our food from supermarkets with less-than-sustainable supply chains because it's all we have time to shop at in between our gasoline-powered commutes and workaholic 16-hour schedules of burning oxygen in our brains into arguably frivolous scientific pursuits that, from some perspectives, serve only to extract more minerals from the earth and further differentiate an elite technocratic priesthood who can afford to just move to more stable climates once the environmental effects of their industry catches up with them, leaving the common class behind to drown?

Is our little garden enough?

Answering 'yes' feels insensitive somehow. Answering 'no' begs the question of whether anything will ever be enough.

It's confusing.

[guutzprojects]

I will never cease to be infuriated with the existence of pay toilets. European cities, maybe your streets wouldn't smell so strongly of piss if you didn't make people pay 1€ to have the privilege of emptying their bladders in a sanitary location. I refuse to patronize these pretentious shitholes on principle.

[guutzprojects]

5 days to finish my last few assignments at Caltech.

Fill in the blanks in my senior thesis and submit that by Friday.

Study for and take a 50-question Intro Psychology final exam.

Write up the results from my independent study project on setting up radio transceivers.

Turn in three assignments and give a final presentation for Astronomy Observation on Friday.

Devise a 10-15 minute public talk about my research and how I got here for the storytelling presentation on Friday.

chat, am I cooked?

[guutzprojects]

the assignment i'm currently distracted from:

my brain: "ha. like the night vale episode."

[guutzprojects]

What would you name your pet goose, hypothetically speaking

goose names:

Ryan (gosling)

Walter Honkite

Hambone

Dog

Bumps

Charlatan

War

Peace

Fortran

Her Majesty the Harbinger of Terror (harby for short)

[unseelie]

i am sitting on the couch, i hear tapping on the door behind me, i turn around and see this

what do i do

[unseelie]

he is here….

[narcissus-thee-squeekual]

i still lose it every time i see this post because someone let a fucking goose into their house just because tumblr said to and if that doesn’t perfectly define all of our experiences on this shitty excuse for a website i dont know what does  

[brightening-the-stars]

@guutzprojects

[guutzprojects]

did you know you can buy geese online

https://www.metzerfarms.com/embden-geese.html

it is taking every ounce of self control i have to not buy two embden geese right now

LOOK AT THEIR FUNNY LITTLE FACES 😭

[guutzprojects]

overleaf mobile app when