Planet Labs is on target to get daily pictures this year. 
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thanks for the link!
These wonderful machines we have built to extend our senses peer down on us and our impact with unblinking eyes that see everything from infrared to the near ultraviolet. Never have we been able to see our world so clearly.
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Thank goodness! We can only solve the issues we can face.
#LetsFixEarth
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Hello all.
Not Bridget, but “Him indoors” as I’m apparently known.
I’ve just popped on to give the perspective of someone who works in the field of wildlife conservation.
Here are the problems as I see them.
We, in the 21st century live in a world of now.
We want everything yesterday, but we are willing to wait until tomorrow if we ordered online. Everything has to be fast, and cheap, and yesterday.
We have moved away from a life where we saved, we valued what we had and we looked after it. My father would have bought a mower for the lawn and cared for it, maintenance would have been part of the ritual of mowing. Now a mower is cheap and you use it and then get a new one next year, his lasted him 35 years.
We buy what we fancy, because we can, just whack it on the card, there’s no sense of sacrifice there, so we don’t look after it. He would have weeded his garden, now we give it a good dose of Roundup. Water came from a tap and wasn’t trendy. He didn’t need the latest tech and an upgrade to his phone every year. Food was never thrown away, because we hadn’t eaten it.
In my opinion we would still live this way, but we are encouraged not to. Advertising, credit, the couple next door who’ve just got the most amazing mower.
All that is fine, because we have huge Multinationals who are here to supply our every need. These organisations now feed us, house us, provide our energy, invent stuff we didn’t even know we needed, hell, they even fight our wars for us now ( and dictate where they are fought). Our governments facilitate them at our and the environments expense.
In the UK we are now facing the prospect of TTIP (The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership). This is a deal being negotiated between the EU and US. The implications are huge for the environment.
Currently, in the EU, a substance can be banned if it is though to be harmful to humans or the environment.
Currently the EU’s REACH regulations ban 1,200 substances on environmental grounds, The US bans just 12 of those substances.
70% of processed food in the US now contain GM produce, in the EU it’s almost nil.
Perhaps the most worrisome aspect though is something called Investor-State Dispute Settlements. This will allow companies to sue the government of any country they feel has passed legislation which impacts on their profits. Effectively this means that (lets be honest) Multinational companies can now set government policy. Whilst they have always had some considerable clout, this really steps things up a level. This threatens the very idea of democracy itself.
These arrangements already exist, but TTIP will really have a huge impact on the environment in the EU and will pretty much take all power away from global governments to enact any legislation on things such as climate change.
Sorry, it’s turned into a bit of a rant, but I’ve felt for years that I’m swimming against the tide in my job and the current’s just getting stronger and stronger.
I’ll keep on keeping on though.
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Thank you for the perspective.
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world” - Mandela
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Yikes - interesting. (But think how much easier they could roast that hornet if they had a laser!!)
On one of my road trips last year, I traveled from the mouth of the Mississippi River to the headwaters in Minnesota. I was just meeting random people, doing portraits and interviewing them along the way.
I was extremely fortunate to meet the District Attorney of a little place in Iowa who happened to be a beekeeper. He had a number of hives in different locations in the area but his prized hives were right on the Mississippi River. The bees would fly out and collect pollen from the water lilies and American Lotus’ in the river. THE best honey I have ever had. It was clear on the comb and almost reminded me of an agave nectar.
I spent a couple of days hanging out with him watching and learning. It was an amazing experience.
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Sounds like a great experience!
Out of the blue we cross paths with someone who touches our lives and leaves us with an unexpected fascinating education.
He learned from his bees about the lillies and lotus, and you walked away with a new appreciation for the man, his bees and their passion.
With just a little insight, we never see the thing the same way again!
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Bees are pretty cool. Had them growing up for about a year and a half. Dad, still learning, didn’t catch the virus that was eating away the wings fast enough and they wound up dying out. Only bothered anyone if bothered themselves. Like when the youngest of us decided to say hi to them and just upped the lid one day and got stung up his nose in addition to other places.
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Well for me it will be rebuilding after this afternoon’s “oops”. This is why you don’t walk away! This was a functional piece for work in Nylon, which had some weird early failure causing the print to go off to the side, which then caused curling, then causing the piece to get launched which then hit the right extruder’s fan which tore it off the x-carriage (breaking parts off in the process) tearing the wires out of the fan, and ultimately ejecting the print bed! Timelapse movie link is more entertaining
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I should add, it still prints believe it or not, I just only have cooling on the left head…
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Ouch! 
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Now that is a 3d printer! I’ve had failed prints due to bump /adhesion failure but never any damage to my machine.
I would imagine anything other than Nylon would not have been as damaging. Nasty failure ><
Yikes 
whoa! I havent had anything quite that crazy happen yet. I recently picked up a geckotek print bed and I have to say, its amazing. It has a magnetic base with a removable thin, coated piece of metal on top which prints stick to amazingly well, and pop off of by themselves when cooled. I have the heated plate for ABS and PLA, but they also make a plate for non heated stuff, and one for specifically for nylon as well!
Now I dont have to worry about tape, glue, hairspray, scraping pieces off, or any of that nonsense. Its gotten me pretty spoiled
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That’s pretty similar to what I use on mine - they’re MIC6 aluminum plates with a PEI top surface.
No adhesive needed, perfectly flat surfaces with even heat distribution to the very edges. (win!)
That PEI surface holds on to just about everything when it’s heated, up to and including polycarb. (Haven’t tried it with nylon though, so not sure about that.)
The plates are 1/4" thick, which is pretty hefty, but it’s the smallest you can buy from McMaster -Carr.
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That is awesome! How did you get them coated with PEI? Did you coat them yourself? very highly interested in this process as I would like to be able to make some custom/multiple plates for use and not have to buy them.
… I would send a like your way but it seems I overdid myself yesterday so 
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Yes, PEI works great with nylon. Bridge is one of my favorite filaments for practical parts.
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It is available in self adhesive sheet.
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