Killer Bees from MARS

Image by David Jones via Flickr

Thanks for visiting I’m looking for comments and feedback on the plot outline for a new story – short poll at the bottom.

Killer Bees from MARS

Theme                       Technology without ethics can be deadly

Setting                       Dallas, Texas and parts of South America, in the current day

Characters                Spencer Doyle – CEO and chief technologist MARS (Mobile Autonomous Robotic Systems)

Elwood Woodrow – Investor/Business Tycoon – Woodrow Investments

Clarence Olsen – Retired CEO and Founder of MARS

Rory Olsen – Deputy CEO MARS (Clarence’s headstrong son)

Abby Napier – Gifted technologist at MARS

Honey bees in large parts of the world are dying, hives are being abandoned.

Thanks to developments by MARS and backing by Woodrow Investments – robotic bees planned to offer pollination strategies are released into the wild with great success.  Doyle receives world environment award for innovation.

Woodrow Investments puts unwanted pressure on MARS to develop bees with more artificial intelligence and almost military like capabilities to perform activities like surveillance.  Doyle is opposed to the direction but Rory Olsen supports it.

Rory Olsen creates a breakaway division (MARS Scope) to concentrate on more experimental developments, including worker bees who can build more bees without human intervention.

MARS Scope wins a major contract to deliver their modified bee robots to South America in an unprecedented pest eradication programme.  Olsen calls for Doyle’s resignation when he refuses to let the mainstream workforce deliver on the contract.

Olsen overturns Doyle as CEO in the boardroom/Doyle steps down.

Olsen is called to an emergency briefing after 14 men are killed in South America – purportedly by the MARS bees.

Olsen and Woodrow shift the blame to a local virus and deny any involvement.  Abby Napier discovers evidence that they are lying after observing similar bee behaviour in the lab.  She visits Doyle with her concerns.

The bees begin to target “pests” indiscriminately – using their AI to boost their killing power by forming small swarms and striking larger targets en masse.

Woodrow and Olsen launch a strike against the bees in South America.

The strike harms, but does not eradicate the South American colony.  Large numbers of bees are now being constructed as man is seen as the enemy.  Woodrow is killed during an attack.  Huge superswarms begin heading north from South America to their “home” in Dallas, leaving destruction and death in their wake.

Olsen panics and runs.  When the board gets wind of the crisis, Clarence Olsen steps in to denounce his son, and reinstates Doyle who has been working undercover with Napier on a potential solution.

Swarms infiltrate Dallas, breaking through glass and into buildings.

Reunion Tower

Their mass is concentrated around Reunion Tower – a large ball-shaped building in the middle of Dallas.  They share their knowledge with the local robotic population as they prepare for a complete eradication of man.

Doyle and Napier make their way to Reunion Tower with a massive low-frequency electrotransmitter which works to attract the bees through pseudo magnetism.  They release a new model of the pollinator robot into the air who also help to attract the bees towards Reunion Tower.  Once the swarm reaches its maximum, a high powered microwave pulse is emitted – destroying the bees and most other electronic equipment within a city block including MARS Scope.  Olsen is arrested.  MARS is shut down after a massive fall in shares and no investor confidence.  Doyle and Napier are cleared of any wrongdoing.  Napier becomes chief technologist of a new company – Just Technology focussing on fair and ethical practices – with CEO – Spencer Doyle.

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Paper brick planning

Most paper brick makers use a steel box section, two pressure plates with holes to release the water, and two overcentre arms to gain mechanical advantage and really apply pressure.

The best paper mix is well saturated and agitated.

I plan to use bleach as a wetting agent.

I have a paint stirrer that fits onto the end of a drill so that will be a low energy (for me) agitation option.

I’ll weigh the paper slush into even sized batches, and use hydraulic pressure (a modified log splitter) to ensure each brick has the same pressure applied to it.

I will split the finished, dried bricks into three batches:

1.  Planter box

The bricks will be formed into four walls over a wooden base and filled with potting mix and a selection of spring bulbs.

When the bulbs finish flowering in October/November I will disassemble and see  how well the bricks hold up to all that organic matter and water.

2. Small wall

The bricks will be formed into a single wall held together by weak mortar.

The unrendered wall will be evaluated at the same time as the planter

3. Loose bricks on concrete

How well can a set of  bricks out in all weathers hold up?

Pictures as the project develops.

Comments welcome!

A structure built from paper bricks

We all know you can mash paper together to make paper bricks for recycling those stacks of newspapers.

What if you used them like bricks and made a compost bin from them – or rendered them to make a garden. or a garden wall. or a house.

how long does it take for a natural paper brick to break down?

You might think vermin might pose a problem, but haybale homes are commonplace now, with a bit of render on the outside. Why not paper? They are excellent insulators.

I’m going to experiment some more.

Solar heater – Parabolic trough

Image via Wikipedia

There’s something very cool about parabolas. What I really want is a solar furnace to heat water and incinerate weeds.

Rob over at cockeyed made a “light sharpener”  with a ton of mirrors.

I thought I’d take a simpler tack and start with a parabolic trough.  Because it focuses light along a single line and not a single point it’s not as lethal as a dish – but first results are just swell.

Step one was to work out the size parabola to use.  Most materials come in 600mm or 1200mm wide so I figured I’d go for around 600mm wide.  I wanted the focal height to be 50mm so just used a standard calculation of

x²/4p where p = focal height.

In retrospect this made a reasonably thin parabola and I think a more shallow trough wouldn’t require the same degree of critical alignment with the sun.

At 300mm out from the very bottom of the parabola, the height is 450mm.

focus point	50
x	y
25	3.13
50	12.5
75	28.13
100	50
125	78.13
150	112.5
175	153.13
200	200
225	253.13
250	312.5
275	378.13
300	450

Step two was to mark out a pattern using these dimensions.  I plotted out the parabola on a piece of 3mm MDF we had lying around.

Next I used the pattern to mark out some flooring board and got my partner to cut 3 identical “negatives” of the pattern.

Step three was assembly – hang the whole thing together with some fence palings.  Luckily I have a good friend in the engineering trade and I was able to source some mirror stainless.  We screwed this into place and put a length of black PVC tube through the focal point – attached the hose and started it up.  Unfortunately the PVC tube melted and disintegrated before I got to take pics of this step.  Now before you think I’m a complete idiot -  I do realise that it was going to get very hot and plastic melts – but I was running cold water through the pipe and it was after 6pm at night… I thought it would last the 10 mins or so I wanted to run the test for.  Nevermind – I took the meltdown as a complete success!

We found a length of copper tube and replaced the PVC pipe:

I’m going to paint this black in the future.  Now with the trough angled at the sun that copper tube got VERY hot.  Too hot to touch.  Excellent.

We hooked up the hose with a very makeshift fitting:

and angled it towards the sun again.

Experiment One: I first turned the tap on at a dribble – the water was VERY hot – so hot that it was hard to let it dribble over your hand.

Experiment Two: Turn up the tap to a slow stream – the water was tepid.  By this time the water coming out of the tap was pretty cold, but after racing through the parabolic heat sleeve – it’s definitely warm.

Upcoming experiments -

Build a tank to hold the water and pump it through the trough in a circuit.

Build an oil tank and run a copper coil inside an old water cylinder to act as a heat exchanger.  If this works it might be worth hooking it up to a pre-tank before our instantaneous water supply.

If nothing else, this awesome free hot water will be great in the greenhouse this winter to heat the nutrient mix.

Have you built one of these?  Any pointers?

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