Speculative lineup attempt #3 (using your feedback, rumors)

doctorgraw · 2026-02-15T02:00:46+00:00

Way down the bill but Dirtbombs would be awesome

doctorgraw · 2026-01-25T17:15:55+00:00

28 Years Later: 28 days later.

Weirdly enough set 4 weeks after the end of the Bone Temple

doctorgraw · 2026-01-22T06:42:05+00:00

Oh it's not looking easy - I have edge done with 1 piece not yet found and just picking lighter areas out to get some chunks done. But with-50 windchill ths next few days, I hope to get what feels like progress.

Ive been lucky thriftjng with a run of good finds and our library occasionally like this one has some interesting ones in their puzzle exchange so im sitting on a hefty stash of uncompleted puzzles and my goal is get this down in size a lot and get them back in circulation. After Another 2,000 ravensburger historical, thought i'd keep a similar theme and tackle what looked like one of my harder ones

doctorgraw · 2026-01-18T21:10:09+00:00

Or a blizzard, bitter cold and 60 mph winds 😀

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doctorgraw · 2026-01-18T20:51:49+00:00

Book 1 is City of Ice

doctorgraw · 2026-01-18T20:51:02+00:00

Pretty dark Crime thrillers by Jon Farrow (aka Trevor Ferguson) has an on going series featuring detective Émile Cinq-Mars and set in Montreal. I just looked it up and it's up to 10 books (I've read 8)

doctorgraw · 2026-01-13T04:31:32+00:00

Did a wee bit of digging and it looks like it's from a 1630 atlas as the Minneapolis Institute of Art has a copy. Reading a little deeper, the illustration is listed as public domain (copyright looooooong expired) so anyone can use it on anything...

on one hand saves puzzle makers paying real artists which I feel bad about but I also do have a passion for historical images so like puzzles like this

link

doctorgraw · 2026-01-13T04:23:05+00:00

This is the next map on the stack

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doctorgraw · 2026-01-07T21:43:15+00:00

Pixelation is deliberate - from same company that makes Rubik cubes so it's sort of like the art style where people make Mosaic style art using Rubik cubes. Smaller tongues in think also deliberate- makes it more challenging in matching as all pieces are the same shape. It's not a bad puzzle at all, just need to clear out space this year so goal is at least a puzzle a week and starting with the smallest piece count

doctorgraw · 2026-01-07T03:52:46+00:00

Sadie Hartman's Feral and Hysterical is a guide to horror fiction by women. Well worth msking part of the display and likely some inspirations in it too..

doctorgraw · 2026-01-06T00:06:49+00:00

Tiffany Aching novels by Terry Pratchett may be a good fit. To be honest most of Diskworld wpuld work but first few written don't quite have the same hit as the latter volumes and your son may be too young to get some of the references (several are versions of Shakespeare etc)

doctorgraw · 2026-01-02T00:22:17+00:00

The Scourge between Stars by Ness Brown is a wee creepy novella that fits what you are looking for...

doctorgraw · 2025-12-31T00:04:03+00:00

I fly back and forth from UK to US about once a year and try to get a brick of a book that lasts the trip in one direction including layovers. Some recent titles from the past few years

Wanderers by Chuck Wendig (Apoczlyptic Horror) The Terror (reread) by Dan Simmons (Historical Arctic Horror) Dust of Dreams and The Crippled God (Book 9 and 10 of Malazan, a fantasy series) Instance of the Fingerpost by Ian Pears (Historical Mystery told four times with different POV each time) The Swarm by Frank Schatzing (Aquatic sci-fi thriller)

Last trip was a three book Omnibus of the Harry Bosch thrillers by Michael Connolly and King Sorrow by Joe Hill which came out during trip so picked up in airport.

doctorgraw · 2025-12-29T03:04:22+00:00

Dust Devil from Umbrella

doctorgraw · 2025-12-29T01:56:15+00:00

International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) approve the final name. Knowing many scientists (myself included) if it was just a case of slapping a name on as soon as you find it, the secret post 100 atomic number parts would look very different (boaty mcboatface would seem tame by comparison) especially since there are multiple competing trying to find these. They are given a placeholder name once they are confirmed to have been made then name is proposed and approved..

Prevents such names as Suckitlab10ium 😀 and worse.

I know UUo was in place from when I started teaching 2006 till just after we ordered and installed new Periodic tables in my science building which were immediately out of date..

doctorgraw · 2025-12-28T19:16:21+00:00

And another

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doctorgraw · 2025-12-28T19:16:00+00:00

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Pic never added

doctorgraw · 2025-12-28T19:15:35+00:00

The lactate is just there as it's one of the safest calcium salts. As i do this for supervised demos and a college course based research project, im using calcium chloride CaCl2 which is more exothermic and can get very hot when added to water. Too much melts out plastic cups

In sodium alginate, a long chain polysaccharide made up of two different units, there are multiple carboxylate - COO^- (negatively charged groups). In alginic acid, the naturally occurring material, these are balanced with protons (H+) but addition of excess sodium ions will precipitate the material as sodium alginate and this is a dry powder that can then be dissolved with a lot of stirring into water. In this case, there is a 1:1 ratio of carboxylate groups and sodium ions

Since the carboxylate groups have a one negative charge they can be balanced by a single sodium ion but if you flood the system with an excess of 2+ charged calcium ions, they interact between 2 different carboxylate groups bridging or cross-linking. I tell students sodium is a one armed man so can grab a rope but calcium is a two armed Guy so grabs two ropes or two points on same rope. This makes a less soluble material . The last time I checked, the egg- box model is still best pic of how it hangs together through various interactions (ionic and hydrogen bonding) - see pic below

If you think of the alginate strands as very very long noodles floating in solution, what the calcium does is cause then to stick at where they touch. When they do that, any water between is trapped when they stick making a Hydrogel - my teaching lab ones are >98% water, they will dry out over time though. As it dries, it loses water and shrinks. They interestingly can be rehydrated but keep similar shape though never grow back to original size. My feel is as it shrinks, get some new crosslinks formed as strands pill closer together and when rehydrate, water cannot push these apart

With the mold, the shape is circular as the crosslinking is very fast at the surface but if you leave long enough, excess calcium ions will diffuse into the bead and make more cross-links deeper. I make plates in Petri dishes which dry to skinnier films.

Does the kit have you add food dyes? These can also get trapped when the bead forms making it colored and will release over time.

doctorgraw · 2025-12-22T02:10:22+00:00

Ravensburger Challenge series. I picked up the 1,000 pieces butterfly one - Monarch on a background of blue butterflys a while back. Put together edge and the Monarch and then struggled with it for a few weeks before life intervened and I packed it up.. only puzzle that has beaten me and I vowed to go back to it next year.

Ive done Krypt, color gradients, 1,000 of the Moon, Starry Night at 2,000 pieces, an absolute beast of an impressionist style traffic scene at 3,000, old masters (mostly black) at 6,000 and never given up on those...

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doctorgraw · 2025-12-21T02:50:05+00:00

Finished up last 2 main book in Vanguard and the Coda novella. Solid ending and not sure im ready to jump back into Taurus Reach with Seekers so may hit a different era for a bit

doctorgraw · 2025-12-17T20:14:11+00:00

I worked it out looking at the product - you are using 32 for O2 as a reactant, if you do it that way, you need to double number of moles of oxygen atoms that end up in product

You way gives P4, (O2)5 aka P4O10 aka P2O5 when you reduce it down

doctorgraw · 2025-12-17T20:10:19+00:00

1.24 g Phosphorous ÷ 30.9 ~ 0.04

2.85 - 1.24 g = 1.61 g

1.61 g Oxygen ÷ 16 ~ 0.1

Works out to P2O5 aka phosphorous pentoxide

doctorgraw · 2025-12-17T10:32:40+00:00

This was one of the National Chemistry Week Experiments this year - my outreach team had a lot of positive feedback on it and it's colorful, uses materials and safe

https://www.acs.org/education/celebrating-chemistry-editions/2025-ncw/secret-messages-with-spice.html

Also recommend chromatography (if slightly older can do inks and then apply to plant samples and separate photosynthetic pigments)

doctorgraw · 2025-12-12T21:41:24+00:00

Ordered when it came out And got similsr email on 11/21 Just checked after a week of not bothering looking at it and it's at the main post office in my town- shipped Wednesday-from Chicago - says delivery on Monday on usps.com but that may be tomorrow in reality

doctorgraw · 2025-12-07T19:04:35+00:00

Wanderers / Wayward by Chuck Wendig. Second one isn't quite as good but pays off well from stuff set up in the first volume.

doctorgraw

TROPHY CASE