Terraria

2014-05-24_00001I recently bought Terraria on Steam when it was on offer.  It’s best described as a 2D Minecraft alike where you have to survive on a hostile world.  I’m still very much learning how to play it and have got as far as creating a small house for me and my adviser.  We can now survive the night without be killed by zombies or flying eye things.

I’ll post more updates as I learn more and expand my home!

Anatomy of a bicycle chain

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I changed the chain on my bicycle awhile ago and decided to keep the old one and recycle it.  I haven’t decided what or if I’m going to us it for yet but was curious about the wear on its components.  So I used a chain too to remove 3 of the links so I could completely disassemble one of the links.
Once I disassembled it I could see that the main component that show wear is the connecting pins.  They have quit obvious grooves which is probably the main thing the cause train stretch.  Surprisingly I couldn’t see any obvious wear on the two bearings.  I also saw some wear on the silver coloured connecting links.
It was also quite interesting how the rear sprocket had worn.  It looks like some of the teeth have actually bent out of shape.

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Day off to visit the NPL (Plus picture of me!).

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Wearing stompy goth boots and leggings for my visit to the NPL!

So I had a day off yesterday to visit the National Physics Laboratory for there open house event.  Me and S saw lots of interesting exhibits including seeing a house fly under an electron microscope which was amazing.  You could see the compound eye in amazing detail.  I also got the chance to use a ultrasound machine to plastic stick men in gel which was a lot harder then it looks and lot of fun.

Unfortunately my stompy Goth boots got the better of me and my feet were aching after several hours so me and S retreated to a nearby pub for food and then got the train home.

 

Space engineers

I recently bought Space Engineers on steam when it was discounted. It’s pretty much minecraft in space the object is to build ships and spacestations. Like Minecraft it has a survival mode and creative mode. In survival mode you have to mine asteroids for minerals which you can smelt down and assemble into components needed to build things and run nuclear reactors to generate power.
It’s currently early Alpha but still fun. I like the fact you build your space ships and platforms out of blocks then fly them around. You can also enable space ships which fly through the game area which you can either salvage for parts or just take control of yourself.