Uncategorized – Page 8 – Alexander Miles

Magic: Learning to make foil peel alters and an alternative method

Update 2: I've started adding the newer attempts to the gallery linked on the top bar. If there are any major process changes I'll likely make another post about it.

Update: It seems allowing the cards to soak for long times (that is, overnight) has mixed results. One of the two I tried came out perfectly, the other had some minor cracking though I'm not sure when it developed. Moving forward I'll probably keep it to 2 hours and make sure to use cold water when removing the residual paper. Hopefully I can update with more results this weekend!

I'd spotted some really excellent work posted up on reddit by users djpattiecake and bigupalters and became interested in giving foil alters a go. In short, the idea is to carefully peel away the foil layer from one card, trim it down, and glue it onto another card for visual effect.

My first attempt at this turned out to be rather ambitious, transferring a gnawing zombie I'd happened to have onto the text box of a swamp. I started primarily following the guide put up by bigupalters on facebook, here. Using a hobby knife I picked at the edges until I was able to get at a layer with mostly foil and very little paper. I thought it wasn't an issue, but it turns out having the fibrous layer beneath makes cutting small accurate segments very difficult and results in ragged white edges. A second gripe, once peeled the foil has the tendency to want to coil up like a scroll. I did try to flatten the foil out by pressing it under a stack of hefty books, but that didn't work.

A M14 Gnawing Zombie composited onto an 8th edition swamp.

For my second attempt I decided that getting a paper-free foil was absolutely key. I followed the advice given here. Namely, I got some acetone and rubbed the corner until it managed to dissolve the adhesive between the paper and foil layers, giving me a good clean peel. However, this still had the issue of yielding a very tightly curled foil layer.

At this point I decided to science at it a little bit: what causes the curling? Internal stress from the peeling process. The 'curl' clearly aligns with the direction of the peeling, likely due to alignment of the polymer in the film. We can, in principal, remove internal stress by heating the material up with it in the desired orientation, essentially ironing. I used two advertisement cards (generally regarded as worthless) to sandwich the foil flat, and kept a scrap of parchment paper on top. This stack was ironed for 10 seconds, cooled for 10 seconds, ironed for 10 seconds, then cooled for 10 seconds. This did indeed flatten it out, however the glue remelted and stuck it to one of the cards. After carefully pulling it off of that card it was much less curled, but it did begin to wrinkle and crack in several regions. Testing with a foil scrap showed that a single 10 second cycle produced substantially less wrinkling and cracking.

Joint Assault composited onto a Shards of Alara Forest. Note the cracking.

The peeling process itself was the cause of the problems. It got me thinking, "If only we could lift it straight off of the paper-adhesive stack without tensioning the film, we'd be golden", and it turns out we can. Given that the peeling method is destructive anyways, it opens the door to a lot of other methods I would normally shy away from. Short story: intentional water damage. When soaking the to-be-peeled card for long periods in water the adhesive eventually dissolves, the paper backing soaks up water and breaks away as it expands. The foil layer is a polymer, a water-proof plastic with water-proof ink on it, so it survives unscathed.

Below is an example, I wanted to composite the art from the 2012 Lifelink onto a 10th edition plains.

I used a small tupperware with room temperature tap water. Linked are images taken immediately, at 10 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes. Below the card after 1.5 hours is shown. I'll be honest, I did get a bit impatient and started tugging at the corners after 45 minutes, hoping for a clean separation. This may have influenced the resulting curling, and I'm planning to let one soak over night to see if my impatience was a factor.

The foil layer was easily separated from the backing, with any residual paper removed by rubbing it under running water. Once the entire foil layer was smooth it was dried by pressing it between paper towels a few times, then being left to air dry. Some curling is still apparent, and this may just be a property of the foil as curling of foiled cards is an established problem. It is, however, much less curled than the peeled foil. From here we can simply cut it to size and glue it to the host card.

The foil layer removed from the cardboard backing. — The foil layer removed from the cardboard backing after drying.

From here on I cut out the art from the foil. In order to get the art the right size for the text box on the plains, I went ahead and made a template using a newspaper, artist's tape, and two advert cards, yielding three well-defined edges.

The foil layer cut apart, isolating the art

The template allowing me to cut a rectangle with the correct angle and height.

After the art was cut out, all that was left to do was to gingerly glue it in place and trim any stray edges.

The round handle of the hobby knife was used to roll over the glued region to ensure it lay flat. The final product actually looks pretty nice!

As with everything in life, there are many right ways to do it, but I'm happy to say I've found a method that works for me.

Four Wave Mixing: Setup Photo

The materials characterization project I've been working on for a good deal of time now recently required a new four wave mixing setup to be constructed. It had to be based around a novel laser that was built through a collaboration with another research group. It took a handful of very long days and a good deal of painstaking alignment to get everything right; if anyone was wondering why I fell off the map for a while, this would be why. We needed some photos for a report, so I went ahead and did a long-exposure card-drag through the beam path, which always looks suitably futuristic. Here's hoping I get to post an update about publishing on this work before too terribly long!

"Reboot Even If System Utterly Broken"

I've had some system instability on my laptop for the first time in ages, and had to recall a trick I learned several years back. On a linux machine, even if everything else is entirely locked up, one can safely reboot. The gist is, by using the Magic SysRq key you can force low-level commands in. This consists, on my laptop at least, of holding left alt and the print screen key down while typing out the letters REISUB, with the mnemonic "Reboot Even If System Utterly Broken". Personally, I think about the store REI and submarines. Each letter sends a specific command, namely:

R - This takes the keyboard input away from the X session
E - Sends SigTerm to all processes, asking them nicely to shutdown
I - Sends SigKill to all processes, forcing them to shutdown
S - Syncs all changes to disk
U - Unmounts all file systems
B - Reboots the machine

With all the processes stopped, all changes written to disk, and all file systems unmounted, there is no risk of file system corruption when rebooting with this method. If you follow the link above you can see that there are a good many things you can do with the Magic SysRq key, even intentionally initiate a system crash, but the sequence above seems to be the single most useful.

HP Laserjet P1606dn on Ubuntu 12.04

Today I had a large batch of papers to print and decided that duplex would save a lot on paper and heft, however the driver I had set up for the office networked printer did not support duplexing. I went down a bit of a rabbit hole trying to get everything working, so I'm going to lay out the final process below.

Determine the IP address of the printer. This can be done by holding down the green "ok" button for several seconds causing it to print the status page.
Install hplip through your package manager or just "sudo apt-get install hplip"
Run hp-setup from bash. Choose Network/Ethernet/Wireless and under Show Advanced Options check the Manual Discovery box and type the IP address in the box next to it.
The next screen should show one entry for your printer, if it does not then either the IP is incorrect or other network issues are present. Assuming it's there, simply click next.
It will download the HP driver for it (the one that doesn't duplex, strangely) and will have you provide a description, location, etc.
After the wizard closes, open the System shortcut through unity. From here open up Printing.
Your newly added printer will be in the list, right click and go to Properties.
In the window this opens, there should be a line for "Make and Model", click the button next to it that says "Change..."
At this point it will search for drivers, go ahead and cancel this and select "Provide a PPD file".
Now is a good time to grab the file for the OpenPrinting.org. Just look for "directly download PPD" and make sure the file name is "Generic-PCL_5e_Printer-hpijs-pcl5e.ppd". Feed this file to the previously opened window.
With that driver chosen, under "Printer Options" in the printer properties window you can now set an option for Double Sided Printing. Choose "Long edge (standard)".
Print away, it should finally work. I did end up restarting CUPS a few times (using sudo stop cups and sudo start cups at the terminal).

Best of luck with this demon machine, leave additional confusion in the comments.

Christmas morning post

Merry Christmas and happy holidays!

Christmas Recipes

At my annual Christmas shindig I provided a few treats to the friends that could make it, and there was some interest in getting the recipes. I'll give a quick run-down for two of them here, namely the chocolate mousse and spiced cider. The chocolate mouse was adapted from The Joy Baking by Barbara Grunes, while the cider was modified from the food.com recipe for Marley's Mulled Cider. I know the steps outlined below might be overly specific, but this post will serve as a future reference for myself as well.

Chocolate Mousse - Makes 4 servings
Nutrition per serving

Calories	Carbs (g)	Fat (g)	Protein (g)	Sodium (mg)	Sugar (g)
349	18	29	6	96	13

Ingredients

4 oz (1/2 cup) of bittersweet chocolate chips (one can substitute butterscotch chips or any other candy that melts entirely)
2 tbsp of butter
2 eggs, separated
3 tbsp white sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream

Procedure

Set out three bowls. Use hot water from the sink to raise the temperature of the first bowl as much as possible, and then dry it off and quickly add the chocolate and butter. If the residual heat is not enough to melt it together, microwave for 20-30 seconds, it's very easy to burn it at this point.
Once melted, thoroughly mix the chocolate and butter together with a spoon or spatula. Place the bowl in the refrigerator and let it cool.
In the second bowl, crack two eggs and separate out the yolks, I use a slotted spoon. It is critical to not get yolk in the whites, as the presence of fat will entirely prevent them from being whipped up correctly by breaking the surface tension on the tiny bubbles. Keeping the whites in this second bowl, add the yolks to the first bowl containing the chocolate and butter and mix them in completely. Return that bowl to the fridge.
In the bowl containing the whites add two tablespoons of sugar and mix very thoroughly, until the whites are bubbly. I use a handheld electronic mixer as it takes a lot of effort to whip them enough by hand. This step does much to determine the consistency of the final product.
In the third bowl use a mixer to whip up the whipping cream, vanilla extract, and remaining one tablespoon of sugar. Again, mix until thick. My indicator is when the cream retains wrinkles on the surface surrounding the point of mixing.
Take the first bowl out of the fridge and gradually mix in the contents of the second bowl. Then fold in the whipped cream and mix until completely homogeneous.
Pour into 4-5 serving glasses and place in fridge for at least an hour, but up to 24 hours. Longer setting time will produce a firmer and less 'soupy' mousse.

Spiced Cider - Makes 8 servings

Nutrition per serving

Calories	Carbs (g)	Fat (g)	Protein (g)	Sodium (mg)	Sugar (g)
230	55	0	0	58	55

Ingredients

3 quarts apple cider
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon whole cloves
1/2 teaspoon whole allspice
2 cinnamon sticks
1 sliced orange
1 dash salt
1 dash ground nutmeg

Procedure

Put everything on the list in the crockpot or slow cooker.
Set it to low for 6-8 hours. By the end the cinnamon sticks should have rehydrated and 'unfurled' quite a bit.
Serve directly into mugs. Add rum if desired (not included in the numbers above, a shot of rum adds 105 calories).

Ceramics at home: Slip casting mugs

Having had brief exposure to the concept of slip casting in MSE classes years ago, I decided to make some mugs as Christmas gifts using a mold I'd acquired years back. The process was fairly straightforward as I chose probably the laziest and most repeatable approach to forming ceramic objects. The first step was acquiring the slip, glazes, rubber bands, and a sturdy bucket. All together this totaled about $20 between Marjon Ceramics and Ace hardware. I went with low-fire slip on their advice, specifically because ceramic slip suffers substantially more shrinkage on firing (about 1/3 shrinkage compared to 1/15 for low-fire slip).

The mold was banded together after a few minutes or sorting out the best way to do that (the single vertical band required rotating the mold pieces and bracing them with books on both sides while I lowered the band on a bit at a time). The slip was well agitated then poured and allowed to deposit for about 30-35 minutes, which turned out to be a little less time than I should have allowed. The excess was poured into the bucket and allowed to drain at an angle for several minutes. This was then transferred back to into the jug using a funnel. A knife was used to trim off the sprue (excess lip).

It took about two hours for the deposited clay to release from the mold. At that point the mold was carefully removed from the clay, being very careful not to dent nor gouge the soft clay.

The mug was left in front of a small floor fan over night to drive off the excess water. The next morning, using a wet paper towel, the flash, seams, and rim were smoothed out. Once I had all four of them complete and dried, I packed them up very carefully and made the trip back to Marjon to get them fired. They were able to get them done quickly, taking about two days to bisque fire.

After the bisque fire they took on a flat off-white color and much smoother texture. I applied two coats of glaze to every surface, choosing different colors for the different mugs. While the outside surfaces were brushed on, the interior surfaces were rolled on; that is, the glaze was poured in and the vessel rotated to produce a good coating of all the surfaces.

Once glazed there were handed back over to Marjon for the final firing cycle. Two days later I stopped by and picked up the mugs, just in time for the Christmas party too.

The resulting mugs were a bit thin, so if I try this again (and I probably will, given how much leftover slip I have) I'd likely increase the slip time from 30-35 minutes to 45-55 minutes to produce heftier mugs and spend more time cleaning up the seams, which ended up being really apparent in the finished pieces due to variations in glaze thickness. Also I would consider more detailed glazing methods or use of ceramic decals to put designs on them. As a first foray into making ceramics at home, I'd call it a success.

Less than quiet times

I only wish things were as quiet as the inactivity here would normally suggest. Coursework and research has conspired to keep me busy lately, so I haven't had the opportunity to write up any updates. I've had projects that I would have liked to write up come and go; hopefully I'll find time for them once classes end and I've got some space to breath. As I despise posts without content: did you know the entire 6-episode run of Police Squad (imagine an extra 3 hours of sight-gags al la Airplane or Naked Gun) is on YouTube these days? It made my day.

I should be making a fair few gifts this Christmas, and if I have the presence of mind to snap a few photos I may post about those.

Communicating Scientific Results in LaTeX

Communicating Scientific Results in LaTeX [tex, bib] [pdf]

I recently gave a short 15-minute presentation as part of the Optical Sciences 2013 Community Speakers series on ways to extend the usefulness of LaTeX to improve communication. This was given alongside another presentation focusing on what LaTeX is and how to get starting using it, so I veered into topics perhaps more interesting to an already-initiated audience. I included concrete step-by-step instructions on getting started with Beamer and BibTeX, as well as cursory (and flashy) examples of chemfig and pgfplots with generating code presented side-by-side.

Jones Vectors and Visualizing Polarization

I recently had an assignment wherein I was presented with a handful of polarization states and asked to estimate the Jones vector for each one. Usually this isn't so bad, as there is only so much variation between linear, elliptical, and circular, however they also asked that I add the appropriate phase such to have the vector indicate a specific point in the trajectory. I spent some time thinking it through, but did finally decide to spend a bit of time writing a program to check my answers. Parametric plotting in Python turned out to be trivial, so it went quick. The result of that is this script, which creates two functions. One of them, jones_plot(), will take in a two-element Jones vector and generate a 2D plot of the trajectory of the tip of the electric field vector. That is, circular polarization will draw graphs of circles, and so on. The second of them, jones_check(), takes in the same Jones vector, but returns a string describing the nature of the polarization.

jones_check([exp(-1j*pi/2), -0.5j]) => 'Linear polarization at 26.565051 degrees CCW from x-axis' jones_check([exp(-1j*pi/4), -0.5j]) => 'Right elliptical polarization, rotated with respect to the axes'

The jones_plot() output for [ exp(-1j*pi/4), -0.5j ]. Red dot indicates phase = 0, green dot indicates phase = pi/5

The code is probably not bullet-proof, but it provided a good means for practicing manipulating the vectors and understanding how to interpret them. For the curious, the sign convention used is decreasing phase in the style of Hecht's Optics 4th edition.