Outdoor: Tritium Torch

My new toy:) A tritium powered torch from betalight.nl. This torch will provide me a weak green light for at least 15 years to come (the half life of tritium is 12.3 a). The source is 1.9 Ci Tritium at the date of manufacture and emitts 900 millilamberts of light. Thats enough for reading a map, compass or a watch and even to read a book in the total darkness.. ok maybe its not recommendable to read a book with such a dim light. The torch itself is complete rubber coated and thus wear resistant and a tight fitting cap to protect the light source. On the backside is a rubber coated ring, with fits the torch on a pole or whatever you want. Needlessly to say, the torch even continues to operate under water, in the extreme cold or hot, in total vacuum, space or on the moon...

Comparison of the tritium torch (left) with an ordinary tritium zip marker (middle) and an americicum powered self-illuminating keychain (right)

Survival: Evolution Of Fire Making

I'am very interested in friction fire making and since a couple of years I also managed to improve and miniatureize my bow drill fire set. So Here's my personal evolution in bow drill sets:

One of my first bow drill sets (2008) consisted of an simple socket and drill made from beech and a bow made from hazel. The fireboard was soft wood collected in the nearby forest. The bow was approximately 60 cm long.

One of my earliest bow drill friction fire sets

 The next set, from late 2008, had an shorter bow but uses a longer drill. At some point in 2009 I used an 40 cm bow which was splitted in half. For drilling the pieces were connected by a wooden clad. The set was used with a 30 cm long drill!

A more elaborated friction fire set

The next step was a considerable miniaturization: The bow was shortened to 20 cm and the rest of the set was made to fit into a little sheath made from leather, attachable to my belt. I experienced much with different designs and materials. The sets below had a laminated (manilkara bidentata/ nauclea diderrichii/ zebrawood) bow and an socket made from manilkara bidentata with an inlet of antler or, at the left, lignum vitae (provides an excellent self-lubrication). The outer left socket was made from lignum vitae alone. The sheath had a button made from shorea laevis or antler, respectively.

miniaturized bow drill friction fire sets

The set below was made in 2010 more for a decoration purposes rather than practical use: The socket was made from six layers of different woods (coconut, manilkara bidentata, nauclea diderrichii, african blackwood, bocote) and an antler inlet encased in manilkara bidentata. The bow was more simple: A piece of nauclea diderrichii, partly laminated with zebra wood and african blackwood.

A decorative bow drill set

The vital parts of my recent (2012) set is made almost completely from lignum vitae. The drill is hazel and the fire board is made from red cedar wood. A thin piece of manilkara serves as fire pan. More and more I'am tending to leave the bow at home, since a straight branch for a bow is to be found almost everywhere and the very short bow (20 cm) is sometimes hard to handle (e.g. when you want to make fire after a long hike).

A bow drill friction fire set made from lignum vitae

Lignum Vitae Paper Knive

Lignum vitae paper knive with bocote handle

Lignum vitae paper knive

I made an wooden paper knife from lignum vitae and bocote. The lignum vitae wood offers a brilliant surface when polished. I treated the knife with shellac resin finish additionally. The handle was attached by glueing two pieces of bocote with fish glue on both sides of the lignum vitae. Despite the heavy resin content of lignum vitae they still keep up holding strong together. The lignum vitae (one of the world's hardest woods) holds a sharp edge even suitable to cut some soft fruits. The point of the knife is strong enough to stab through thick cardboard and 1mm leather.

Bloomery: Goat Skin Bellows

I built a new pair of goat skin bellows to operate my next bloomery with them. So enjoy my video documentation on youtube:

Maybe you'll call it cheating, but the next project is to made an electric air blower with exactly the same air output (450 L/min) as the goat skin bellows, so I'am not damned to operate them the whole time at the next bloomery ;)

The goat skins, already sewed to two bellows.

The prepared air nozzles and air inlet.

The almost completed bellows.

The air inlet

The wind pipes made from plant stems (japanese knotweed).

The finished goat skin bellows.

The goat skin bellows in operation.

Lyx 2.0 (LaTeX): Using the angewandte style with BibLaTeX, or how to make grouped citations.

I tried for a long time to generate a proper angew. chem. citation style with good old BibTeX. Currently there is no style-file for bibtex available, which will result in a 100% correct output. Especially the problem with grouped citations in one entry, i. e. multiple references should be cited as a single one and listed as a single block in the bibliography. That's crucial for the citation of articles published in the german angew. chem and english angew. chem. Int. Ed., respectively. Grouped citations are impossible, or at least, very hard to make with bibtex.

Luckily the BibLaTeX package provides the possibility to make grouped citations. The grouped citations are called ‘entry sets’ or ‘reference sets’ in the biblatex documentation. To use biblatex, angew. chem citation style AND grouped citations with Lyx 2.0, you first have to write the following commands in the latex preamble:


\usepackage[natbib=true, citestyle=numeric-comp, style=chem-angew, backend=biber, hyperref]{biblatex}
\usepackage{hyperref}

%you can change the bibliography title by:

\defbibheading{head}{\chapter{my title}}

%the bibliography is loaded by:

\bibliography{
mybib1,
mybib2,
%....and so on
}

I get biblatex to work only with absolute paths of my .bib files like "C:/folder/mybib1".

The bibliography processor has to be set to "biber" and "natbib" with "author-year" format.

Include the bibliography by typeing in a TeX command box

\printbibliography[] 

% if you changed the bibliography title you have to define [heading=head]

You may also include the bibliography in your document as a Lyx-note if you wish to use the Lyx internal citation function  ("plain" format).

For generating grouped citations you have to define them at the very beginning of your text body:

\defbibentryset{key1}{entry1,entry2}

The entrys are, let's say, Miller2008 and Miller2008b or as whatever the references are named in your .bib file.* So if you want to cite both of them as a grouped citation, you write in a TeX box:

\defbibentryset{Miller}{Miller.2008,Miller.2008b}

The key {Miller} is used to cite the whole entry  (i.e. Miller.2008 AND Miller.2008b). You have to cite the entry within the text by a TeX command:

\autocite{Miller} 

%or \supercite{Miller} which will give the same result

Within the compiled text {Miller} appears as ^[1] and in your bibliography as
[1] (a) ...... ; (b) ......

If you wish to cite only Miller.2008b, you simply write:

\autocite{Miller.2008b}

In the compiled text it appears as ^[1b]

That's how the references are cited within the text...

and the bibliography itself.

*I'm using Citavi with the BibLaTeX export option to generate my bib files.

Lyx 2.0 (LaTeX): How to export from Lyx (2.0.5 Win7) to MS Office (2010)

Lyx 2.0 (LaTeX): How to export from Lyx (2.0.5 Win7) to MS Office (2010)

I assume you've Phyton 2.7 and Elyxer installed (they should be installed by default).

1# Go to Lyx Preferences/File Handling/File Formats: Choose "HTML (Word)"
Set active: "Document format", "Show in export menu"
Choose Short Name: "wordhtml"
Choose Extension: "html"
Set Editor and Viewer: "None"  (or a program of choice)
Copier: "python -tt $$s/scripts/ext_copy.py -e html,png,jpg,jpeg,css $$i $$o" (Without " ")
Set Output Format: "PDF (pdflatex)".

2#Switch to Entry "Converters", Choose "Lyx->HTML (MS Word)"
Set From format: "Lyx" and To format: "HTML (MS Word)"
Write in "Converter": "python -m elyxer --html --directory $$r $$i $$o"  (Without " ")
Enable "Converter File Cache".

3# Now you should be able to export (File/Export/HTML (MS Word)) your document to HTML. (There is a known clash with \xdefinecolor if you have enabled "change tracking" + "show in output" and \definecolor without O_o)

4# The HTML Document can be opened by MS Word and looks quite good. There's only a minimal polishment needed with Hyperlinks and \ce environment.

The file formats settings.

The converter handling options.

Lyx 2.0 (LaTeX) Nomenclature as numbered chapter/section

Lyx 2.0 (LaTeX): How to set nomenclature as numbered section:


%Nomenclature
\usepackage{nomencl}
\let\abbrev\nomenclature
\renewcommand{\nomname}{Abkürzungsverzeichnis}
\setlength{\nomlabelwidth}{.25\hsize}
\renewcommand{\nomlabel}[1]{#1 \dotfill}
\setlength{\nomitemsep}{-\parsep}
\makenomenclature
%...with number
\usepackage{etoolbox}
\makeatletter
\patchcmd{\idx@@heading}{\chapter*}{\section}{}{}%<= or \chapter*... \chapter
\patchcmd{\thenomenclature}{\chapter*}{\section}{} {}% dito
\makeatother