[Rezwan]

Ormond Otvos wrote: Sounds like the peer review and press release path is the one for Focus Fusion.

That is made clear to me from this hearing. Also in communications with the committee, wherein I was asked:

Do you have a unique way to get there that has been validated through peer review in physics and fusion journals outside of the aneutronic community?

The reality of the scientific method is that it takes place in a social/political/human world. Much as we’d all like to just do things in the most straightforward way possible, test out the cheapest, most plausible (or least unplausible) alternative first, and move up to the big, unwieldy things, the matter gets stuck in procedure/tradition.

The “aneutronic community” (AC?) is referred to pejoratively in that quote. Apparently, the AC is not part of the big boys fusion club at this time. That club is pretty well organized. Well connected, and they cooperate enough to get government to underwrite the compiling of a “state of the research” document, and this document is what the quest for fusion is limited to, and all the govt can see.

Take a look at it – (ReNeW project site has links to the pdf you can download). The document they produced spells out all the problems/challenges the official fusion world has mapped. They call them “Thrusts”. Interesting imagery. Militaristic, swordplay? So, the Aneutronic community could use a document like this, to map out the rest of the fusion challenge in terms the political world can relate to. It needs to be created/compiled by the collaboration of the disparate fellows of the AC, outlining the AC’s thrusts.

So, to sum up, no big newsflash – the AC needs to get more organized. And an object to organize around could be an AC ReNeW doc, put together with the cooperation of hundereds of AC scientists, who, hopefully, have a list a mile long of peer reviewed docs.

Anyway – I’ve set up a tentative section to begin compiling this. It’s probably misnamed. “Plasma Network”. Need to brainstorm on that as well. As you see, that section is just a placeholder for now. https://focusfusion.org/index.php/site/category/C66/

[Rezwan]

Ormond Otvos wrote: Sounds like the peer review and press release path is the one for Focus Fusion. To that end, I’d like to work up what is called a diary for Daily Kos, and post it there for comment, and build on that for a public document. I realize that this site might be thought of as the public document, but the pieces of the story are scattered all over it.

What I’d like to do is start a collaborative effort to put together a thousand-word or so essay, …

It needs to tell the whole story, with pictures, on one scrollable page, with no fancy video player needed, for the vast majority that you need to get your public support to sway the financial and media people. What do you think?

Everything needed is on this site, but it’s not in one place, on one page, and we live in a one-page world. Ignoring the limited attention span of the voters and funders might not be a good idea. They have all the money.

Ormond, thanks for the initiative! That would be great. Between you and Keith we can have Daily Kos covered. As to the essay all on one page – I’ve started reorganizing the site to that effect. As you see now, the link in the menu to “What is Focus Fusion” takes you to a single article that explains it. It’s still a work in progress/I still have to go through the article and rewrite it and update it with the new pictures. I’m working my way through the site to make it all more streamlined, simplified and easy to navigate.

Although, in fact, today I’m working on a video that explains the DPF (fancy video!). There is a lot to do.

[Rezwan]

Human beings have a lot of power on this planet. We can change our environment. And many human beings have a religious streak, or some kind of ethical or logical conceit going on. I think the urge to make sweeping decisions about the way “humanity” should be is a common one.

The way this urge manifests itself in me is the fantasy of a future in which people, voluntarily (that being the key word) perceive themselves as noble. And this manifests itself in the pursuit of a positive footprint (rather than zero or negative). Like, we decide since we’re so clever and all powerful compared to animals, that we’ll make our infrastructure a bit more friendly to them. Pedestrian friendly, habitat friendly. Of course, we’ll zone them out in a lot of areas. You get ticks out in nature, you don’t want them in malls. But really, human land needs are not that great. Once you get skyscraper farms – you can leave a lot of land to heirloom plants, forests, diversity, or whatever.

I think this will only happen large scale when more people become affluent. Then, rather than using eminent domain, people will just join to create more natural areas and market forces will prevail, people will all want to live adjacent to spectacular grounds and build in ways that make that work. It won’t be “natural”, though. Being people, there will probably be more gardening and landscape manipulation going on. And houses and structures that stand out like trophies and assertions of human ego.

I don’t have a problem with that. I love built stuff. But I also get a thrill looking at all these new eco-city ideas. A lot of them are practical and no harm done to the environment. Also, I think you can have both a cool human infrastructure and actually enhance biodiversity. That “Gardener’s of Eden” book has always been a favorite.

I think, as affluence and power increase, we will do things like set up millenium long treasure hunts, burying treasures for people to find and puzzle over centuries from now. Build giant whimsical works of architecture – statues that can be blown up centuries from now when Taliban-esque folks rise up.

Anyway, the upshot is that, the outrage over the “environmental lobby” and its proposals that I sense here might be related to the sense that the lobby is misanthropic. That whole zero sum thing where it’s people against nature.

It’s like they’re more interested in punishing people than finding a blend of nature with human power/consciousness. A lot of guilt and control.

That aside, I do want to live in a world where we transition easily from sleek urban areas with the option of jumping in a supersonic chopper to hawaii, or hopping on a horse and riding all day to the next town…

I mean, this corporate American western civilization is a bit boring. I’d like to see more anachronism and greater expanses of wild land where that could happen.

So, I have a number of fantasies of alternative futures and landscapes. None of these is very viable in the current limited resources paradigm where everyone’s struggling to make ends meet and being all miserly with each other.

[Rezwan]

Hi Rematog,
I’m going to start a new thread with that comment. Just posting here to let you know before it switches.

[Rezwan]

Brian H wrote: P.S. As far as the winning entry not having been suggested, #10 up from the bottom on the entry page https://focusfusion.org/index.php/site/name_form is “Focus Fusion-1”. How is that different?

Yes, but did you click on the arrow to see who submitted that entry? Eric. So, we could give him a prize, but that’s kind of circular 🙂

[Rezwan]

Thanks. I put in a few responses, and twittered about this.

[Rezwan]

John’s camera is a Nikon D60 and it’s been great to work with. Check out our latest pictures in the gallery. Alas, he’s leaving tomorrow and taking his camera with him. I’m hooked. it’s a D-SLR, with lots of control. My delight in taking pictures is re-awakened with that manual control.

So…gotta get my own, I guess.

And it doesn’t have the “face recognition” of the panasonic lumix. That’s a trip.

[Rezwan]

Brian H wrote: Getting back to C-a-T, since the advent of FF will render all the CO2 generation issues moot,

Ah! I see the problem here. For you, C&T;only applies to carbon trading, and so, instead of talking about the economics of cap and trade in general, you go into these climatology debates. These two are somehow inseperable for you.

Then you’re hoping for focus fusion to rescue us from this whole GG issue.

So…let’s pretend it has. The issue is no longer carbon, or greenhouse gases. But C&T;remains! Now, some people want to use a cap and trade scheme to better distribute water in a desert, and use focus fusion plants to desalinize, but still, people will have to pay for the water rather than use historic water rights.

So, would cap and trade be a sound economic way to transition the water rights distribution scheme? Can we think of a problem along those lines? Or will we get mired back in the gases?

P.S. In case you missed it, they’re attempting to get in the first test shots TODAY — right now, or actually as of an hour ago!!
https://focusfusion.org/index.php/site/article/test_shots_may_be_fired_todayplease_stand_by/

Yes, but the shots can’t be fired before a few more things happen, which they’re hoping to get done today…but still it’s not a sure fire. Steady…steady.

[Rezwan]

Hey Breakable:

Yes. No drivers for this particular camera. Also – not available anymore online it seems (the usb cable did detect in “memory”/picture mode, just not in film mode – but sent us on a wild goose chase for a driver – which was unable to be detected or procured by the elves in the machines).

But no worry! We got the firewire pci card and it works just fine. Able to download the video no problem. Also, was fun to open up a computer. Apples should be so easy to get into.

Thanks again! Looks like we have all the pieces.

Except original music.

Feel free to recommend some sources – particular tunes that would go well with this endeavor that are open source!

[Rezwan]

Oh Joy! Vegas is up and running. The sound has inexplicably kicked back in. Maybe it was a restart, Breakable.

So, now the only issue is the pc card or whatever to import our footage, and then, just the editing.

Thanks for the help so far!

[Rezwan]

By the way – why can’t I just use the USB port to import film to the PC? The camera has one. Why doesn’t it detect the thing?

[Rezwan]

jamesr wrote: firewire is just a name (mainly used by apple) for IEEE1394 – Sony used to call it i.Link.

Yeah, those mac folks like to make things sound magical and mystical. “firewire”. And here it’s just your basic IEEE1394.

If your PC doesn’t have one you’ll need to get an interface card to put in it – like these.

…and then I just slide this mystical card into the back of the big rectangular thing? Will I know where to slide it in? Or does someone have to come with a screw driver, open it up and install it somehow?

Alternatively if another PC there has one, capture the material on that and copy it over.

You mean, burn it onto a dvd and then copy the dvd contents onto the 2nd computer?

Just to confuse things a newer firewire 800 standard (IEE1394b) is also around, the old one runs at 400Mbps, which has a yet another type of connector.

Ah! This, I knew. Ending on a sense of omniscience.

[Rezwan]

Breakable wrote: You should be able to convert m2v files:
http://www.soft29.com/m2v_converter.html
Restarting windows could restore Movie Maker.

Great! Works like a charm. That open source stuff just adds more things for me to have to figure out and compare.

So…windows movie maker is now working, sound levels are decent. Lost the hiss. Seems like that’s how we’ll do it.

Vegas – with the converter, we can now use the other clips. But still have to figure out why I can’t hear anything in edit mode. I swear every place I see the option of “mute” it’s off.

New Issue, for all you PC people – how do I download the DV footage to the pc? On my mac, I just used a firewire. This cable apparently does not do anything with the pc. Went out and got a digital IEEE 1394 cable which looks just like a firewire cable – but don’t see where to stick it into the PC. And using a regular USB cable, the thing doesn’t detect anything.

[Rezwan]

What a frustrating day.

Was able to narrate one thing with movie maker before a weird behavior occured. That is, you narrate one clip, it’s fine. Narrate a second, and you can’t. A window pops open to have you save it as something else. Before you’ve even made it.

So, downloaded vegas. Free trial period. Sat through the intro featurette. Looks great. Lots of features.

2 immediate working bugs:

1) .m2v files are not supported (!!!) – which eliminates Torulf’s animations.

2) Can’t hear the sound track as I’m editing. Sound comes through fine on the windows movie maker software, so it can’t be the speakers. And I can see the sound waves, so I know the sound is there in the timeline from the clips. And when I export a bit to see what’s put together, the exported/rendered clip has the sound on it. No mute button appears to be on anywhere.

These guys are putting together a fusion reactor and I can’t get this free software to work.

[Rezwan]

Cool! Just plugged in speakers and the Narrate Timeline thing appears.

No mic, mind you. Speakers. I guess they assume you won’t think about narration without a mic. Coming from mac background, the mic’s in the machine already, so you don’t need an external one. [Eric says laptop vs. desktop, not mac pc]

Anyway, problem is solved.

We may look into that sony vegas thing in the future if these movies don’t seem too spiffy.

But right now, time is of the essence!

[Author]

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