Story Notes: Test Kitchen (Como Salsa para los Tacos) · 12:11am May 26th, 2023
It's ~back!~
First off, I gotta give a big thanks to MSPiper for pre-reading this a long time ago . . . seriously, the editing notes are from back in November 2020. I'd like to say I have a good excuse.
Cinnamon Breeze is a toy-only pony. One of the clients I work with at the group homes is into various collectables/toys (Marvel figures, Legos) which gives us a lot of stuff to talk about or do—couple weeks ago we spent a nice afternoon building a Lego Groot together.
Anyway, he picked up a pony somewhere, and knew I liked ponies, so he gave it to me, and I'd be remiss to not use her in a story.
Source
Now, those of you who read lots of my stuff may have noticed that there's already a story with Cinnamon Breeze in it. That's a spinoff of this series; for those of you who haven't read it, Cinnamon has a human girlfriend named Harper.
I should also mention here that this isn't the first time that I've published a spinoff before the thing that it came from, and it probably won't be the last . . . such are the inscrutable workings of an author.
Firenza is both a kind of pepper and a kind of Oldsmobile. Well, back when there were Oldsmobiles.
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And here's where long delays cause problems . . . my notes say that Flowerdew's a comic pony. Aside from Temperance Flowerdew, there are currently no comic ponies named "Flowerdew," officially or otherwise . . . if I had to guess, the pony I picked for Flowerdew got re-named.
We've been down this route before; Onto the Pony Planet has a major character named "Starlight" . . . that was the fanon name of a pony before Starlight Glimmer came along.
Maybe this could be Flowerdew:
Micro 05 Unnamed Mare - Flower 2 isn't the best name for her, now is it?
The bus routes were accurate in November 2020, I can't promise that they are now. If you're planning your bus route based on a fanfiction, might I suggest there are better options available?
There is a Direct Casket Outlet, and it's where I said it was. I'll be honest, that's one of the beautiful things about using real locations in stories, I would never have thought of a casket outlet being a store that existed. They also offer burial vaults and cremation urns. I'm not an expert in funerary appurtenances, but their website says that they offer some American-made caskets for under $1000, including the "Shoe Box Wood Grain." I can't decide if "Shoe Box" is a brilliant model of casket or a terrible one. "Harmony Deluxe" sounds better; that comes in blue or tan.
Gordon Food Service is a store that sells restaurant-quantity foods and other supplies to both restaurants and the public. You don't need a membership to shop there, and they don't have any kind of grocery bags. You get your shopping in a recycled shipping box or nothing at all.
They also don't have any stores in Independence, MO, or anywhere near it. While I did do my due diligence for the Direct Casket Outlet, I just assumed that the Kansas City metro area would have a GFS when they do not.
The thing is, I already published a story where the GFS that's (not) located in the KC area is a significant plot element, and I don't feel like changing that story, so . . .
There's a GFS in St. Peters, MO which is kind of close, maybe they'll expand to Kansas City in the near future which will change this from me not doing my research to me being a visionary.
MSPiper asked if I was doing worldbuilding with my mentions of "monopolar current" and "Pixiis."
Not exactly.
The first term came from Stephen King's Dark Tower series, and is me working from memory—the two electrical currents that are used in one place are 'monopolar' [DC, direct current] and 'bipolar' (or 'dipolar,' I can't remember) [AC, alternating current]. In a nutshell, AC's better for transmission and DC's simpler; IRL there are a lot more complications to it. In my headcanon, ponies would be more used to DC, since that's what lightning is.
As for the Pixiis, AvE on YouTube—and possibly others—refer to electrons as 'pixies,' which is what I was going to use . . . but then I went down a research rabbit hole and discovered that a man named Hippolyte Pixii was one of the earliest inventors of an alternating current generators (1832) . . . first, you can't make this stuff up; second, 'Hippolyte Pixii' is an amazing name.
Lightning is only one directional because its so fast and so bright, you dont see the little leader wiggle its way down first, because its the big Booom that goes back up gets all the attention.
Oh look, X rays, gammas and antimatter. Tops of thunderclouds are nasty places to live and fantastic places for particle experiments?
Oh yeah, I remember that story title!
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Suddenly, pegasus physicists. Presumably, the first thing they always have to explain to new human colleagues is how the
they can fly with their tiny wings (at least until that sort of thing becomes common knowledge in scientific circles if not the general public).
fun thing about AC, as the frequency gets higher you can do funky stuff with copper runes.
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Im waiting for someonbe to use say lightscribe equivalent optical or even just the CD/DVD/BD blaser writer systems to scrawl this stripline build all over the inside of a weathe balloon, given the ability to make oscilators as well so active signal processing, especially given the raceway structure?
For what it's worth, I dig graves as a side job.
Business is pretty dead right now, though.
Thank goodness, because the backhoe ate a front hub a couple weeks ago. Bad on me for not checking the oil levels.
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I mean, that's probably a good thing that not a lot of people are dying?
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That's the beauty of high-speed cameras! Now you can see it!
Also, lightning does come in two directions, positive and negative. Normal lightning's negative and will ruin your day; positive lightning is way, way more horrifying.
I submit that's another reason why pegasi are the initial developers of many pony scientific theories, but then the unicorns go and do proper experiments and get all the credit.
Some pegasus figured out if she sat on top of a cloud and tripped the shutter on her camera at just the right time, she could see her wingpony's bones; pretty soon they were all doing it, and then some unicorn came along, stuffed the right kind of lightning in a tube, and now she gets all the credit.
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As well you should
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It's pegasus magic, I don't gotta explain
"Sure, you've done an aerodynamic model and put me in a wind tunnel, but did you consider the thaumic energy component? What do you mean you don't even know what thaums are? That's foal stuff!"
Seriously, though, I do imagine that pegasi are in some parts amazed by all the human weather monitoring equipment, and at the same time disappointed that humans don't really understand how clouds really work. Probably trying to explain it like an adult explaining a concept to a kid.
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I'm probably gonna misquote this, but I once saw a meme that said that computing was only specific runes drawn on rocks, and that's not far from the truth.
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They say the cemetery is the most popular place in town; people are just dying to get in.
I feel ya, my van did the same. (blog post coming soon!) I started hearing it before I left on a 1400 mile road trip, but I couldn't pin down which one it was. The good news is that it lasted that 1400 miles, and also when I got back it was loud enough it was easy to identify which one it was.
I have to imagine that the $80 plus about an hour's labor (free, since I was off the clock) is cheaper and easier than doing the same repair on a backhoe.
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I was thinking the same
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Im pretty sure I have that book, Stories In Sand or something, a variation on the history of the digital electronic computer.
Although theres some suggestions that if you stand at the right locations in stone circles, you can get addition and subtraction effects in the volume of the right frequencies of chanting from other positions.
Sort of like the uprights are acting as diffraction gates for the sound waves.
Oops.. Wheres that recent article on researchers demonstrating an aluminium rod frame showing acoustic signal interference for logic processing?
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"I have to imagine that the $80 plus about an hour's labor (free, since I was off the clock) is cheaper and easier than doing the same repair on a backhoe."
Yeah, we're trying to find parts for less than a thousand total. Probably four hours or so for the task, partly due to learning as we go.
340 Magnum update: new machine has quirks due to being used, though a bunch of those are being fixed by the dealership. I need to check the bolts underneath where I used a paint marker to see if they came loose. Probably not, different style and pattern on this machine. Plus more of them.
This is offtopic, but the funeral-business is scummy:
Customer:
Funeral-Director:
Customer:
Funeral-Director:
Customer:
Here is the true story about an independent Funeral-Director who took on a corporate-giant and won:
Thanks for writing, chapter and blog post both. :)
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Yes, they call it topological analog signal processing.
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Unfortunately because modern search engines are offensive, I cant find the old guiness World Record example of a crystal of material being driven by a green laser and vibrating with the photon phonon coupling at optical frequencies of 600 Terrahertz.
Dont forget, Colur TVs had multi Mhz delay Surface Acoustic Wave crystals in th 1960s, and Cornell barely has 10 Ghz in 2021?
I thought 10nm structures had acoustic frequencies higher than that? Say, about 20 THz depending if rigidity of base material was similar to aluminium? For a curent MEMS to be only 10 Ghz, it would have to be microns in size, which is what youd expect of a human watch maker hand gluing hair thin gold wires together in the 1600-1800s than something recent. even 1600s, Newton was making visible diffraction patterns demonstrating fractional wavelength of light sizes.
As for the sizes? I was using a 12 lambda cardboard box as an example in the 1990s. I would hope modern researchers would be using something a little more advanced than something I picked up from the 1970s.
Apparently noone even reads up on the articles about 4 Dimentional packing solutions discovered in random deposited particles.
I'm glad to see someone else acknowledge the absolute glorious incredibleness of the name Hippolyte Pixii. I had it on a forum for a while until trolls got my account banned.
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It is one of the best names ever, and I found it quite by accident. I'm very happy that I did