and we are going to take our guarantee and go rain on Lowe’s customer service: they installed it, and they installed our countertop. The two have parted company and the dishwasher is being damaged to the point we now fear the seal cannot be relied upon. We’re really ticked about that. And we’re not willing to flood the house.
Also, the primary pump for the marine tank has slowed to a trickle, and I think this means we have to service it rather than buy a new one: the pump that drives that tank is expensive, and should be nearly indestructible, but it can swallow sealife down its inch-wide gullet and get a problem. So first I have to get a cap I can screw on to the bulkhead connector INSIDE the sump to stop the water…so we can unscrew the coupling that holds the pump to the sump: not as bad as it sounds: it all sits on a table in the basement. The pump is about a foot long, heavy as old guilt, and it is encrusted with salt creep and needs cleanup anyway. We undo about six screws and lift off the front of the pump, to get at the impeller, a single piece of very heavy metal that has a couple of holes bored into it: a magnetic coil causes this thing to spin, and the tiny holes create a 2600 gallons an hour water flow into the tank—or should. I’m also going to get a valve to insert into the hose, because the last time this thing ran properly, it could shoot water across the living room, and I want to be able to control it. Its function has been declining, and we took the valve out, but I am hoping it only needs cleaning—it’s run 24/7 for seven going on eight years, with one cleaning, so we don’t know what we’re getting into. Our other choice is to buy a very spendy replacement. And the real nightmare would be if something happens to the flow worse than what we have, because that tank can only live for 8 hours with that pump shut down.
Kind of a dicey operation, this. But we are pretty confident even if we have to declare the pump moribund, it won’t be defunct. If we can get to limp back into operation even if it’s worn out, we’re good. Otherwise, I’ll be really upset and looking somewhere in this city on a Saturday for something that can drive this system.
Must be a dishwasher sort of day. Miss Busybody (a tabby, aka Casey) noticed a dribble of water across the kitchen floor last night with ours. I’m hoping it just hadn’t sealed properly. Trust her to stick a whisker into anything she deems interesting.
NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday had a story about “cat music”. Online URL here.
Can you sing at the same time in more than one key?
Duets by Rossini and waltzes by Strauss?
And can you (as cats do) begin with a ‘C’?
That always triumphantly brings down the house?
Jellicle cats are queen of the nights
Singing at astronomical heights
Handling pieces from the ‘Messiah’
Hallelujah, angelical Choir
The mystical divinity of unashamed felinity
Round the cathedral rang ‘Vivat’
Life to the everlasting cat!
I don’t know much about this kind of thing (okay, zero) but seeing “impeller” made me wonder, is the kind of setup that uses a diaphragm? I seem to recall years ago when my sister had a fish tank with a pump, impeller, etc., sometimes the diaphragm needed replacing. It was always amusing to walk into the fish/aquarium store and say “Hi, I need a new diaphragm!” 😉
A diaphragm is a barrier. A diaphragm pump works much like your own diaphragm or heart. A magnet in the center of the diaphragm is vibrated by house current 50 or 60 times a second, drawing air in and pushing it out, of a cavity analogous to your lungs. Unlike your lungs but like your heart, valves allow intake only from the surrounding air and exhaust only into the tank. Diaphragm pumps are cheap to make, but low volume and inefficient, suited for small tanks.
An impeller is something of a technical term, I believe–not my engineering field. Although there’s no hint in the word itself, in addition to moving or impelling fluids an impeller is always rotary. Propellers, turbines, and paddles–paddle wheels or axial flow (centripetal) pumps or agitators, as in a washing machine–are all impellers. A diaphragm or a piston, as in a bicycle pump, is not an impeller.
Ah, hmm, my cat just turned on my printer by himself.
One is reminded of the print queue on the Pride and the Legacy.
You trying for junior assistant crew-boy sitting lower deck coms, the printer bin, mi’lad?
I need another print of a few files anyway, so thanks, kitty.
An impeller is a fanblade that (by magnetics) drives water rather than being driven by it. Technically what my Iwaki pump has isn’t really quite an impeller. Envision a massive copper coil surrounding a 3″ wide metal cylinder, which it drives to rotate at very high speeds. In the top of this 3″ deep and 3″ wide cylinder is attached a plate about half an inch deep, which has six slanted holes bored clear to a depression in the top: these holes, about the size of one of those small cocktail straws, do what in some pumps an impeller does. The high speed revolutions suck in water and drive it up to the hose outlet. The beauty of this machine is that it can clog, but it can’t stop. You’d never want it to overheat from lack of water, but it is external, ie, it is not a submersible pump, and the things are nearly indestructible, being nothing but a coil pushing a cleverly designed cylinder. Forever. Or nearly so.
If anyone has one of the Drinkwell pet fountains, a tiny impeller is what drives the recirculating flow of water through the system. This is one of those fountains on steroids.
Looking for some advice on what format —Nook or Kindle— to download onto my IPad. The book is Deborah Dickson’s Goal, Motivation and Conflict which was highly recommended by writers at Boston’s Arisia Sci-Fi Con for learning how to write characters in novels. It is out of print and, rather than pay a fair amount for a decent, used copy, it occured to me I could download the book. But, I don’t know what handles better, B&N’s Nook format or Amazon’s Kindle. Apparently you can use both on an IPad. Advice appreciated.
I’ld go with Kindle. Why not have both?
Either one would work well. I’m more familiar with the Kindle emulation on my computer, but for straight reading and just text, you very likely won’t notice any difference in the two kinds of file. You can also use either file on your computer, via a shareware called Calibre (note the spelling) which can convert a file from one to the other. Calibre’s ‘native’ language is Nooklike, but it also does Kindle. And there is Kindle Previewer which you can install on your PC, or probably on an Apple computer. You’ll be working via iTunes on the iPad, I’m sure, and I think iTunes can take either.
Thanks!
Raesean, the Kindle app is available for the iPad from the iTunes Store, and Amazon’s links will also get you there. Kindle uses an .AZW file format, their custom, proprietary varsion of the .MOBi format. But Amazon is one of the biggest ebook sellers, so their format’s what you use for Kindle and their app.
The Nook uses the open source .EPUB format. Apple’s iBooks uses (I think) a somewhat customized flavor of .EPUB. You can get an app for Barnes & Noble and/or Nook on your iPad also.
There are other apps to read ebooks on the iPad besides, which are fine, and Apple’s own iBooks.
CJ already said about Calibre, which you probably want for your computer anyway. (And each of those booksellers make apps for reading on your comptuer too.)
You can set up the Kindle App and your Amazon “Manage My Digital Media / Manage My Kindle” so that they will automatically sync and automatically update your iPad’s Kindle app with any and all of your ebooks purchased from Amazon. (However, you have to handle third-party ebooks separately, but it’s simpler than it used to be.)
Probably likewise with the Nook / B&N app, but I’m not familiar with it.
To get an .EPUB into iBooks, yuo simply drag and drop the file from your computer to the iTunes app on your computer, or go into iTunes and File -> Add To Library, then navigate to the ebook file on your computer. When you sync your iPad with your computer, you can also go in where it handles apps and their files, and select your new ebook and have it uploaded onto your iPad within an app. This takes a bit of getting used to, and the process has changed a few times since I first began using it.
Thanks to the Kindle app and how Amazon syncs things, you can email a copy of a third-party purchased ebook (.MOBI or .AZW) to your Kindle email address, and it will be sent to your Kindle (and Kindle on iPad app). — Or you can similarly go in when synching your iPad and tell the Kindle app where your third-party file is and have the Kindle app upload it onto your iPad from your computer, as above.
In other words — You can, with a little fiddling, have both the .EPUB and .AZW / .MOBI formats on your iPad for use by whichever apps you wish to use. The reading experience will be pretty good with either one, whether Kindle app, iBooks app, Nook/B&N, or other app.
However, reading and using PDF files is a pain, but can be done. I have successfully loaded PDF files into both Kindle app and iBooks. You get a page image you can scale up or down by pinching or expanding two fingers. You may or may not get active hyperlinks. Moving between pages requires dragging your finger; it isn’t automatic, and the experience is, IMHO, clunkier.
However, I see there’s also now an Adobe Acrobat PDF Reader app for iPad, which may offer a better reading / usability experience. I’ll need to try that.
So — You can use both .EPUB and Amazon’s Kindle formats on your iPad, and either one will give a pretty good reading experience. Personally, I tend to use the Kindle app and the iBooks app. I also have Stanza and (iirc) it’s called BlueFire Reader and Google’s PlayBooks app, and hmm, a while back, I’d gotten the two B&N/Nook apps. (Barnes & Noble changes apps at one point, thus my conflating them.)
So as Tulrose said, you can have both, try them, see which suits you best. I think either one is good. I will confess, I often go with Amazon Kindle ebooks. However, I like that the .EPUB format is open-source, non-proprietary, and the format’s free. There arte resources to learn it. Learning Amazon’s format is iffy, because there isn’t as much out there.
Happy Reading!
Response re ebooks is waiting approval in the filter.