It's been a quiet day. I think that this is likely to be the type of beginning for my entries for a long while to come as people start to forget about my existence as the year (and my sabbatical) goes on. But it's okay.
I spent much of the day reading The Book of Malachi, the remaining 10 psalms from Psalms, and The Revelation of Jesus Christ from the New King James Version. With that, I have successfully finished reading The Holy Bible, New King James Version. This second read-through definitely has a different feel to it, partly because the text is better formatted (with a more modern English), and partly because I am reading it from the perspective of a believer as opposed to one who is merely curious about one of the biggest sources of inspiration of Western literature. I think I might have said it before, but the Old Testament really doesn't get much love---many people, well-meaning or otherwise, have a tendency to quote very heavily from the five books of Moses, but then conveniently forget about the later parts of the Old Testament that revolve around how Israel has sinned repeatedly, together with the associated ramifications and God's actions in getting them to steer back onto the righteous path.
Of course, this is where I say that I'm no theologist and not-so-subtly sidestep talking about the details of it. Please consult your neighbourhood pastor/minister/deacon for details about proper biblical interpretation.
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I'm not sure if I ever talked about the I C Weld YouTube channel here. It's a fun channel of a guy who does heavy machinery repairs with his plasma cutter and various welding tools. It's not as heavily produced as say Linus Tech Tips, but there is a certain honest charm about it. It also helps that he is rather skilled at problem solving as well, including the art of articulating what it is he is doing, and why he is doing it. He does make it clear that he is merely showing how he does it, as opposed to how it ought to be done, which helps to set the correct tone that it is a showcase rather than a credited source of introduction.
Watching I C Weld and even Stuff Made Here made me realise that much of the industrial world's structures revolve around sheet metal. Anything structural has a tendency to begin life as some form of sheet metal, which includes things like pipes. This includes things like the many different types of cranes that feature as part of the repair videos on I C Weld itself. I think part of the reason why sheet metal is so important is just the ease of fabrication---metal is malleable, and many structures can be built out of simply bending a pre-cut sheet metal into the right shape. The resultant structure is as light as it can get without using exotic processes and using/wasting too much material.
This thought also made me realise that one of the earliest topics in primary school mathematics that appears in only one module, that of nets, actually plays a rather important role in modern industry. I mean, we can go even deeper down the rabbit hole and look at the mathematics of paper folding, of which there is a textbook on it, with practical uses of reducing space needed for solar panels and antennae without massive re-engineering of the stiff planar components.
I think I'm rambling again. Heh.
That's all I have for today. Till the next update, I suppose.
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