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Urban skills. Research #4.

2/16/2015

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What urban skills do you need, other than driving?

Well, you should know how to maintain and fix basic issues with your car, for starters.

I know how to do very simple stuff to get a car back on its tires and running, about 95% of the time. I wish I knew the other 5% but that takes years to learn. Also, modern cars are completely computerized, so you can't pound on them and duct-tape them like the old days. I learned most of what I know by owning a beautiful 1970 BMW 2002 for more than a decade. Honestly, don't you want to know more about how to drive better (e.g. emergency collision avoidance) and how to get a stuck car going again?

Have you ever had to cut a padlock off because you lost the key? Have you ever locked yourself out? We did. The first week we were here, we locked ourselves out. It took from midnight until 5 am until we could get a locksmith. He didn't know how to pick a lock well, but he tried for more than half an hour. Then he drilled the lock and re-keyed it. I know how to do the latter, from years as a landlord. I don't know how to pick a lock, so I'm learning. Locksmith skills, like plumbing, are very important when you can't get someone to come and help you. Also, I don't like the feeling of helplessness waiting for an "expert" to show up, only to watch him do it incorrectly! Enough of that. Seriously. It's not brain surgery. My brother agrees with me on that. 

Look, I'm all for paying experts to fix stuff. I'll always pay extra and tip generously for a good job too. But sometimes, even in a city, help just doesn't come in time; and they can't save the day when they do. Out in the woods, where I grew up, power would go out for 2 weeks at a time, in the winter ice storms. We had a pump which supplied water to the house which would fail at the worst possible times. My mom and dad would heat and cook with wood and my dad would fix the pump himself. What heroes they were! I want to be a hero too.

Basic automobile repair, plumbing, electrical work, locksmithing, and computer hacking are all essential urban skills. It's time to fill the gaps in my urban hacking resume. Each time I fix any of those, my wife adores me more. Maybe that's the best reason of all.

The strangest skill is lock picking. It's more an art than a science. All of the others are hard science, and you either know them or you don't. Black or white. Even lock building, repair, and installation are all hard science. As a result, I'm going to post some lock picking experiments. I'm not inherently coordinated. If I can learn it, you can too. What you won't see are all the failed attempts and fumbling. There's a lot of that. My hope is that the thrill of seeing it work in video will inspire you to try.

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Then there is Outdoor Bush Craft. Research #3.

2/14/2015

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What is Bush Craft and why study it?

There is no perfect definition of Bush Craft, a term some believe was invented by Mors Kochanski. Bush Craft is generally the study of outdoor skills and wilderness survival. No, I'm not a doomsday prepper. However, I was raised in the middle of the woods, on the side of a mountain, with no neighbors you could see.

I often joke that I was raised by wolves. This is only half-joking. If you met the closet case that was me in grade school, then you would conclude I was half-nerd and half-wolf. I spent all of my time, 100% of it, either studying or working outdoors or training athletics. Notice there was no social aspect there? That came much later. :) I did lots of Bush Craft activities, such as building fires, hunting, hiking, exploring, orienteering (navigation by map and compass), preparing food in the woods, etc... It was great fun and my brother and I loved our little adventures and experiments.

Why study Bush Craft in the modern age? Don't get me wrong. I love my modern comforts and am ridiculously lucky to cook and eat gourmet meals. I love a firm, comfy bed and Internet on tap. However, studies are showing that the more we insulate and isolate ourselves from the outdoors, the less healthy we become. We were simply not meant to eat three meals a day, sitting in a climate controlled and sanitary bubble, day after day, year after year. Processed foods every day? Fuggettabouttit! 

My wife has never known the joys of exploring the woods. In fact, she barely knows how to swim. When we have kids, we feel it is important for them to really experience the wild outdoors, to make them stronger, healthier, and more confident. If you've ever camped out, you know that food tastes super-yummy after a long hike. We want our kids to know that sense of satisfaction. Also, ingesting some deep-woods-dirt and natural bacteria is good for you, especially for kids' health.

We still have much to learn, starting with the foods we eat. Of course, delicious, healthy food starts with fresh, wild, healthy ingredients. We are butchering and fresh-killing more of our meats, especially poultry. We are buying the freshest vegetables I've ever seen in my life, outside of my dad's garden. We are learning the various heirloom vegetables and fruits. We are trying to vary our nutrition. My wife is baking everything from scratch, and she's amazing at it already! This year, I'm going hunting with a friend from badminton. One of our neighbors is from Austria and comes from a family of professional butchers. He is going to teach me how to make sausage. Another friend is amazing at hardwood smoking, butchering, and BBQ. I'm going to study under him too. We constantly ask questions and learn from local farmers we know.

It all starts in the deep woods, oceans, and mountain streams, so let's get out there! Let's go to where the healthy living is.

Where to start?

This is an insanely complex field of study. You could spend a lifetime studying plants, hunting, shelter, weather, clothing, navigation, logistics, first-aid, food processing, fire craft, hydration, rope craft/knots, and more. For every single one of those fields of study, there are high-tech (e.g. GPS navigation) and low-tech (e.g. compass and non-compass navigation) techniques. My outdoors-related postings will be random samplings of various experiments, and things I'm learning. I have a knowledge base and can live in the woods OK. However, the study of Bush Craft is humbling. I am following in the footsteps of brilliant experts, sometimes literally.

One of my co-founders, Allen Hillery, is an expert sailor and also an experienced outdoorsman. Once, I joined him for a week-long hike in the Grand Canyon, in July! We needed to hang our food to keep it from rodents, and he tied a clever slip knot. It was like a magic trick. Years later, I felt like less of a (woods)man for not knowing more rope craft. I'm starting with that. I also took a mountain climbing course at Cornell, so I'm re-learning mountain climbing rope craft too.

There are great advances in lightweight backpacking technology. There are new fabrics, composites, ropes, fibers, and insulators. There are new backpack and shoe designs. There are new tent and sleeping bag designs. There are new stoves and camping foods to learn. There are new water filtration systems. There are new clothing designs. There are new knife steels, steel coatings, knife designs, even new handle materials.

There are tiny, family-owned companies which specialize in producing just a couple of these high-tech things. There are YouTube experts and blogs which specialize in each of these areas of study. I am studying all this, buying and trying all sorts of amazing things.
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Then, there was Water Filtration. Research #2.

2/12/2015

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While I was doing some plumbing and waiting weeks for plumbers, I researched ways to better filter (horrible) Cambridge water. Cambridge and Somerville MA will (sometimes) mail you a pamphlet which explains all the various contaminant levels in the city water, many of which are several times the EPA maximum levels. For example, the lead levels are well above EPA max levels. They also explain that they are not going to do anything about it. Too bad for you. Delightful. So glad we moved to Washington state, where the tap water is delicious and clean.

I decided on Reverse Osmosis (RO) membrane filters, for MA water. These separate out particulate contaminants, as well as chemicals. Some chemicals, such as solvents, lead, chlorine, and god-knows-what, are bad, so I want them removed with extreme prejudice. However, some chemicals are good, such as fluoride and healthy minerals, which are also removed by the RO filter system. This is a known problem, so good RO filters include a "filter" stage which adds minerals back in. There are less effective filter systems (carbon and ceramic stack filters) and more effective systems (water distillers which condense steam). RO systems are the sweet-spot tradeoff in terms of maintenance vs purity. One strange thing about RO filters is that the RO membrane generates 5x-10x volume of waste water. You will hear this gurgling into your drain when the tank is filling. Oh, and they typically have a storage tank, so you can tap a gallon or two quickly, for drinking or cooking, and it will slowly refill the tank in an hour or so.

I settled on the very expensive but super-compact, Aquaphor DWM-101. I'm trying to make that link donate to the ASPCA charity. I'm not entirely sure my Amazon settings are correct though. Our constraints were that it had to be a good RO filter with pre-filters (for when they flush muddy goo into the supply without warning). Also, we need it to be compact to leave space for the sink disposal and a Franke HT-200 water heater. The RO has to have easily-replaceable filters, since the water quality is so terrible. Finally, this all had to fit into a single Franke LB-2000 hot-cold filtered-water spigot, since I didn't want to drill a second hole in the stone counter.

The filter works great!! Below are some before and after measurements. TDS stands for Total Dissolved Solids, a very general indicator of drinking water quality. 

Distilled water should be 0-5 ppm. 
Bottled spring water might range 5-120 ppm. 
Bottled store water (e.g. Aquafina) is RO filtered, so it should be 10-50. 
Carbon filtered should be 50-100 ppm. 
Hard water is 100-200 ppm.
Average city water is roughly 200-400 ppm, which great variation above that.
EPA TDS max is 500 ppm. 

Like most EPA limits, this is generous. Water with 500-600 ppm, such as Arizona, tastes disgusting according to blogs I've read. Our Cambridge water was TDS 350 ppm from the tap. It tastes like sucking on a radiator.

I researched water measurement tools. Here is a TDS-4 meter by HM Digital, for less than $25, which is pre-calibrated for temperature variation and drinking water, accurate to 2% in ppm. I recommend this. The reviews are quite educational. You can read multiple accounts where this tiny computerized stick is more accurate than $400-$2000 TDS meters, probably due to pro meters being more accurate but requiring constant calibration. You can take the tiny meter to restaurants. I do. Here is an EtekCity 2011 pH meter for less than $25, which I also recommend.

Unfiltered cold tap water, after running for a while: TDS = 350 ppm
Filtered with a Brita: TDS = 335 ppm
Filtered cold tap: TDS = 20 ppm
Filtered hot tap from our under-sink heater: TDS = 30 ppm
Standalone water heater filled with our filtered cold: TDS = 20 ppm

The filtered water has 6% = 20/350 of TDS, which means our filter removes 94% of impurities. Perhaps most importantly, my wife loves the taste of the filtered water. LOVES it! She drank four or more glasses a day and refused to drink anything else (other than a glass of milk for nutrition). We noticed that Washington water is very good, but at night, our apartment complex water gets metallic-tasting from standing in the pipes. We ordered another RO water filter and are installing it there soon.



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Latest Hacking - What am I researching these days?

2/10/2015

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This is a multi-post series

I am researching tons of stuff. It all falls under hacking. I can't describe it all. It's many dozens of books and thousands of hours. It's going well but it is difficult. I've decided to branch out, in addition to my normal work-related research. It's all part of THE BIG PICTURE, a secret plan we are working on out here in the Pacific Northwest. :) 

These posts are roughly in order. They will show up in reverse order on this blog, since they are sorted by date, most recent first. Sorry. Scroll to this one and then scroll up? It might make more sense that way.

First, there is Plumbing. Research #1.

I lost an entire month to a plumbing disaster on the East coast. Not. Fun. I wound up doing 100% of the plumbing repair work myself. Those pictures are horrible, so I may or may not post them. Turns out a "plumber" who installed the fancy tub spigot in the 90's decided to cheat and use a steel coupling with the copper. Then he sealed it all up behind a tiled wall! Steel is verboten and against code for many reasons, one of which is that the steel will react and rust, then fail. Which it did...behind our wall. 

I managed to stop the leak, without water damage, but in terms of repair I was not so lucky. Total. Disaster. I eventually fixed it all, except for re-tiling the wall with exotic, matching, Italian glass tiles. After this "learning experience" I made up my mind to learn more plumbing. Any plumbing I do, and any plumbing I see done, will all be 100% to code and tested as well. Luckily, my friend Mark and his wife do all of their own plumbing, so I'm going to have them school me. 

I can do lots of plumbing, mostly learned from fixing the slum. For instance, our latest plumber used the wrong pressure fit connector, one designed for copper and not plastic pipe. Also, he didn't test it. Sure enough, it leaked and was fairly unfixable. I disassembled it, and then wound some waxed dental floss in a critical area. Under compression, this can form an arbitrary "washer" which will hold for decades. I learned this by disassembling and ancient toilet supply system and found some cotton thread in there. It had held for decades and I didn't even know it was in there. Cool trick!

However, I don't yet trust that I can solder a copper pipe blind (where you can only see the front third) and then seal it up behind plaster and tile. I need to be able to wet the entire joint, all the way around, without seeing the back side. Then I should never have to wait for a plumbing emergency again.
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    Author

    I'm an applied-math-research Ph.D. and serial startup founder. I am a recognized computer security expert, fortunate to join the ranks of many, great CTO's. I've founded and seed-funded multiple, successful, VC-backed companies. I'm still at it!

    My wonderful wife and I moved from New England to near the Portland Oregon area. We LOVE the Pacific Northwest, and we've been here a few years now. We have an adorable baby girl, Vivi.

    People here are nice and smile a lot. Vegetables are insanely delicious. Driving is not like Mad Max.

    This blog is very Vivi-centric. Our family just can't resist. :) Also, there are some stupid hacking and geek tricks.


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