[the_third_wave]

Arc lamps...

Both Waterhouse and Ghnxh are encased in planklike wrappings of genuine Qwghlm wool, and the latter carries THE GALVANICK LUCIPHER. The Galvanick Lucipher is of antique design. Ghnxh, who is about a hundred years old, can only smile in condescension at Waterhouse's U.S. Navy flashlight. In the sotto voce tones one might use to correct an enormous social gaffe, he explains that the galvanick lucipher is of such a superior design as to make any further reference to the Navy model a grating embarrassment for everyone concerned. He leads Waterhouse back to a special room behind the room behind the room behind the room behind the pantry, a room that exists solely for maintenance of the galvanick lucipher and the storage of its parts and supplies. The heart of the device is a hand-blown spherical glass jar comparable in volume to a gallon jug. Ghnxh, who suffers from a pretty advanced case of either hypothermia or Parkinson's, maneuvers a glass funnel into the neck of the jar. Then he wrestles a glass carboy from a shelf. The carboy, labeled AQUA REGIA, is filled with a fulminant orange liquid. He removes its glass stopper, hugs it, and heaves it over so that the orange fluid begins to glug out into the funnel and thence into the jar. Where it splashes out onto the tabletop, something very much like smoke curls up as it eats holes just like the thousands of other holes already there. The fumes get into Waterhouse's lungs; they are astoundingly corrosive. He staggers out of the room for a while.

When he ventures back, he finds Ghnxh whittling an electrode from an ingot of pure carbon. The jar of aqua regia has been capped off now, and a variety of anodes, cathodes, and other working substances are suspended in it, held in place by clamps of hammered gold. Thick wires, in insulating sheathes of hand-knit asbestos, twist out of the jar and into the business end of the galvanick lucipher: a copper salad bowl whose mouth is closed off by a Fresnel lens like the ones on a lighthouse. When Ghnxh gets his carbon whittled to just the right size and shape, he fits it into a little hatch in the side of this bowl, and casually throws a Frankensteinian blade switch. A spark pops across the contacts like a firecracker.

For a moment, Waterhouse thinks that one wall of the building has collapsed, exposing them to the direct light of the sun. But Ghnxh has simply turned on the galvanick lucipher, which soon becomes about ten times brighter, as Ghnxh adjusts a bronze thumbscrew. Crushed with shame, Waterhouse puts his Navy flashlight back into its prissy little belt holster, and precedes Ghnxh out of the room, the galvanick lucipher casting palpable warmth on the back of his neck. "We've got about two hours before she goes dead on us," Ghnxh says significantly.

   The Cryptonomicon
   Neal Stephenson
   pp 289-290

Oh, and fixies are silly city-dweller contraptions, the grown-up version of the BMX they rode as kids. Here's a nickel, son, get yourself a derailleur. I've been cycling from more or less when I could walk - being born in the Netherlands - and never stopped. The human machine works best at a cadence of around 80-100 rpm but the landscape does not take this into account by putting hills in the way. The same goes for the weather which sometimes giveth, sometimes taketh away.

[eimrine]

Cudos to Netherlands riders! I've heard of insanely good design of your bicycles, compared to rest of the world. Don't you have a coaster brake hubs? What wheels/tires are the most common in your country?

And do not confuse an arc lamp with fictional light sources, despite of the starting arc light is really doing that kind of impression you have described.

[the_third_wave]

Yes, coaster brake hubs - "terugtraprem" in Dutch - are standard on the more traditional bikes. Those tend to run on 28"x1½" (40-635) tyres. The most common size is 28x1⅝x1⅜ (37-622).

As to arc lights that quote is somewhat - but not entirely - tongue in cheek. There is a metal-halide lamp in most video projectors (except for the more modern LED-equipped versions) and they're there for a reason, this being their wide colour spectrum. They do have quite a few disadvantages though ranging from their often relatively short life (in projector applications around 1500 hours) through the potential for self-destruction - older lamps run at higher currents and temperatures which eventually can lead to explosions - to the copious amount of heat they produce and the long startup time. Do you have a reef aquarium or do you use them as grow lights?

[eimrine]

Thank you for the answer with numbers, as another lifetime rider I consider wheels as the most important part of the bicycle and Youtube bloggers I have seen do not tell much information about wheel sizes.

I use MHL at kitchen because it makes food to look delicious and also at my workshop because sometimes I do some paint work. But a friend of mine uses MHL on growing phase and Sodium lamps while flowering because a proper use of LED requires a lens and sometimes even an active cooling.